Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #227070 in Books
• Published on: 1971-03-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

wonderful
This tale is essentially a diagnosis of human existence and the way individuals respond to it. Without death, says Hesse, life is either an impossibility or an absurdity. It is death that gives value to life and life that gives value to death and the shortness and brevity of life gives it both its absurd insignificance and its amazing importance. The genius of Hesse lies in his ability to capture both the horror and the beauty of life within the same novel: to conjure with the lyricism of a magician the hope out of hopelessness, the joy out of despair and the will to live out of the seeming absurdity of beings born to die and return to dust. Life is indeed meaningless but it is this very meaninglessness that gives life a meaning, as being aware of the finite and absurd nature of life we are, instead of being constrained by a pre-ordained “meaning”, forced to find value in our lives. Life is a series of (seeming) contrasts: sadness to happiness, life to death (the absence of life), masculine to feminine…etc, etc. This is the conception of existence that Narziss attempts to shun by withdrawing into the realm of the mind and Goldmund the world of non-rationalised passion. Both are attempts to escape the essential reality of existence. In this sense Narziss lives like an ascetic – fasting and learning to overcome and negate his sensual nature – and Goldmund the hedonist – sleeping with gipies, wandering roads and plagued towns – and allowing himself to be governed by his senses, seeking no overreaching logic for sheer, unmitigated pleasure and pain. The emotional (our feminine quality) and the intellect (our masculine quality) are the two driving forces behind all that we do, and unlike Narziss and Goldmund, who attempt to adhere to one of the two extremes, Hesse seems to think it is better for us to find a balance between the two: which, in my opinion, is shown by both characters failing in their respective attempts to take mastery over life. It is a complex novel, which would require more thought than I have had time to put into it to fully understand what is being said. Where the novel fails is from a literary (as opposed to philosophical) angle. The prose is flowery – albeit way below the poetic genius of Steppenwolf – but, as there are no descriptions of character or scene, it is impossible to read it as anything but a novel of types and ideas. This is understandable and insightful. It is understandable because Hermann Hesse was not Stephen King: this book is not intended to entertain but to encourage self-reflection, to get people to examine the way they are living, not to give them a few hours cheap entertainment. It is insightful because the book works on an intellectual rather than an emotional level, it appeals to the Narziss in us rather than the Goldmund.

Another amazing work of art, which I have come to expect of Hesse.