Hermann Hesse

Narcissus and Goldmund

Mine is the nature of a scholar, and my branch of scholarship is science. And science, to quote your own words, is nothing else than a "strange hankering after differences". Her essence could not be better defined. For men of science nothing is so important as the clear definition of differences. To find, for instance, on every man, those signs which mark him off from all other men : that is to know him.'

But my aim is this: always to be where I can serve best, where my disposition, talents, and industry may find their best soil and be most fruitful. That is the only aim in my life. 

 Oh, why must men know scarcely anything? Why could he never talk to this flower? But not even two men could really talk: for each to know the other's thoughts they had need of a moment of special happiness, close friendship, and willingness to hear. No, it was fortunate indeed that love had such small need of speech, or else love itself would have been bitter, full of misunderstandings and craziness. 

Nothing - nothing at all, could ever truly be spoken or thought of from beginning to end; and yet each of us was for ever longing to speak, each felt the never-ceasing urge to thought.

Perhaps, thought Goldmund, fear of death is the root of all our image-making, and perhaps, too, of all our intellect. We shrink from death, shuddering at our frail instability, sadly watching the flowers fade again and again, knowing in our hearts how soon we shall be as withered as they. So that when, as craftsmen, we carve images, or seek laws to formulate our thoughts, we do it all to save what little we may from the linked, never-ending dance of death. 

Experience had taught him that every woman is beautiful and worth loving; that those least flaunting, the scorned of men, possess undreamed of ardour and self-forgetfulness, that withered virgins bear within them a tenderness as great as any mother, a sweet, confiding gentleness of their own - so that every woman in the world has her own magic, her own secret, which to read will bring happiness to a man. 

In this all women were alike. Every lack of youth or beauty found its recompense in some special gesture or tone of voice.  

There is no eternal life. A withered tree is dead for ever; a frozen bird can never stir its wings again. Why should a man be a better corpse? 

Narcissus and Goldmund quotes

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