To Pick the Flowers that Grow in the Midst of Hell

Herman Hesse, the better part of our nature: Our constant conflict between duty and being, obligation and freedom of choice, nature and spirit are profoundly linked.

As a young man, Herman Hesse¹ ran away from education as a minister in the seminary at Maulbronn Monastery. He struggled to fit in an education system “aimed at subduing and breaking the individual personality.”

Three editions of the book by Herman Hesse, German-born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter.

He knew he wanted to become a writer early in his life, a poet. An apprenticeship at a bookshop in Tübingen gave him the opportunity to discover the classics of the German Romantics. Spirituality, aesthetic harmony, and transcendence became the themes that influenced his work.

Well-read on Francis of Assisi, Buddha, Nietzsche, and Dostoyevsky, a mature Hesse would zero into the individual’s quest for authenticity, spirituality, and balance. Narciss and Goldmund in his omonimous novel are two halves of the same whole.

In the tale, there’s tension between two types of death embodied by each protagonist. The duality and comparison is between Goldmund’s feminine and Narcissus’ male energies, artistic inclinations and religious fervor.

Set in medieval Germany, the story has that sense of timelessness as it explores duality, the human longing for purpose, aging and mortality, the nature of art, and the conflict between flesh and spirit.

We’re made of contradictions.

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“All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person-no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other.”

One day, a new student, Goldmund, arrives at the Mariabronn Abbey. His father wants him to complete his studies there and stay there, dedicating his life to God to atone for a mysterious sin linked to his birth.

Among the ancient cloisters and the large halls of the monastery, the blond Goldmund, sensual and dreamy, forms a deep friendship with the young teacher Narcissus, the scholar, the prodigy of science and literature.

Narcissus is all spirit, destined for a brilliant religious career sheltered from the dangers of the world and history; Boccadoro on the other hand is a ‘Wanderer’, a wayfarer, a homeless person. Tempted by the infinite richness of life and secretly in love with its transience, he will become a brilliant artist without ever ceasing to wander the world in search of answers to his anxieties.

The life of the mind and the life of the flesh.

It will be Narcissus, the thinker, so close to sublimation, to speak openly to his friend, and reveal to him what not even he had yet understood of his own destiny. He expresses his thoughts with solicitude, sincerity, and true generosity towards his friend.

“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.”

By setting Narcissus and Goldmund in the legendary Middle Ages of monastic Catholicism, Hesse had the opportunity to reflect on the central theme of his work: the contrast between nature and spirit, eros and logos, art and asceticism, in search of their possible integration.

The dialectic between spirit and matter

In the novel, Narcissus’s monastic life represents a spiritual refuge from the complexity and temptations of the outside world. A Plato of reason and mind has the strongest influence on the treacher’s character, but a Plato fully aware of the power of art and the senses.

“The thinker tries to determine and to represent the nature of the world through logic. He knows that reason and its tool, logic, are incomplete—the way an intelligent artist knows full well that his brushes or chisels will never be able to express perfectly the radiant nature of an angel or a saint. Still they both try, the thinker as well as the artist, each in his own way. They cannot and may not do otherwise. because when a man tries to realize himself through the gifts with which nature has endowed him, he does the best and only meaningful thing he can do. That’s why, in former days, I often said to you: don’t try to imitate the thinker or the ascetic man, but be yourself, try to realize yourself.”

Today, this search for refuge in isolation and purity can be compared to the contemporary trend towards minimalism and digital detox.

In an age where we are constantly bombarded by digital stimuli and overabundant information, many people seek refuge in practices that promote simplicity and mindfulness, similar to Narcissus’s ascetic life.