Narcissus and Goldmund
Hermann Hesse's 1930 novel, written between Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game, is set in a vaguely medieval Germany and follows two friends across a lifetime. Narcissus is a brilliant young monk and teacher at the cloister of Mariabronn, an ascetic of pure intellect who recognizes early that the boy Goldmund placed in his charge is not made for the contemplative life at all. Goldmund leaves the cloister to wander, sleeping with peasant women and noble women, falling in love repeatedly, surviving the Black Death, killing a man, learning to carve wood, and finally apprenticing himself to a master sculptor whose work he both loves and outgrows. The novel is Hesse's deliberate counterpoint between the spiritual and the sensual, the thinker and the artist, and it ends with the two friends together again at the end of Goldmund's road. It is one of his most popular books in English.
What you might want to know about Narcissus and Goldmund
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Inside a German monastery in the high Middle Ages, the ascetic young monk Narcissus and his sensual student Goldmund split apart. Goldmund spends decades wandering Europe, and Hesse uses their two paths to argue with itself.
Narcissus and Goldmund was written by Hermann Hesse and originally published in German in 1930. Hesse won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946; this novel is often grouped with Siddhartha and Steppenwolf as his major mid-career works.
Yes. A 2020 German film adaptation directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky was released internationally on streaming platforms. Earlier German versions exist as well.
Narcissus and Goldmund is a standalone novel by Hermann Hesse, not part of a series.
Narcissus and Goldmund is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
