Reading Questions
1. What are the three most important oppositions of the book?
2. Is the maturity of Narcissus or Goldmund the more important of the book?
3. What does Goldmund’s mother represent?
4. How is Narcissus’ life enriched by his friendship with Goldmund?
5. What does the plague represent in the narrative?
6. How do Julia and Rebekka exceptionally affect Goldmund?
7. Why didn’t Goldmund return to the monastery when he was injured?
8. Was it more important to the closure of the story: that Goldmund return to Narcissus, or that Goldmund carve the Mary statue?
9. Describe the transcendence stages of Goldmund in Conceptualization.
Reason and Sensibility
Narcissus is the thinker, the gifted scholar who is wise and accomplished in the monastery. Reason comes easy to him, and he sees the unique abilities in Goldmund quickly. Goldmund tries to be a scholar and a monk, but these things are more difficult. It is only after Narcissus awakens the sensibility side of Goldmund that the journey of living begins. Goldmund develops as an artist, gifted in seeing the beauty in life and enjoying it, from the art of seducing women, living as a vagabond at home in the forest or on the road, to learning the craft of capturing emotion in the sculptures he makes with the master sculpture. In the end, Narcissus recognizes that Goldmund has lived a full life, has much to learn from him, and that neither life is better, but that each is enriched by the other’s complementary style of living via their friendship.
Feminine and Masculine
The masculine is represented by Narcissus, monkhood, scholarship, the religious, the law and structure of society, discipline, and expectations. Goldmund is prepared to study, become a monk, and fulfill the expectations of his father. But Narcissus recognizes and awakens in Goldmund something that was asleep, something invoked by the memory of his mother. The feminine is represented by the divine, the freedom of exploration, the women Goldmund meets who introduce him to beauty, living beyond the rules, not caring for the guildship or honors or the proper order of things. The masculine offers structure, but the feminine offers beauty. Narcissus leads a fulfilled and accomplished religious life, yet Goldmund seems to enrich his life most of all with access to the divine through the feminine, sensual, and artistic way of being.
Life and Death
Goldmund sets out to live life in the world, while all around him there are characters who are living in various degrees, with the plague all around representing death. The knight and the sculpture master are both waiting on life to bring to them the right man with the right qualifications to marry their daughters. They protect life as if it is an investment, not to enjoy in the moment, but to optimize as if there is some sort of return at the end of it. While Goldmund enjoys life with the gypsy woman, with the wives who are tired of their husbands, and even with Victor who takes life in the moment. The plague brings a crisis to those who treat life as a careful investment, and we find they were not much better than forgotten on Goldmund’s return journey. Death is the threat that shows how the characters treat life: preciously stifled or enjoyed in the moment.