“Men of dreams, the lovers and the poets, are better in most things than the men of my sort; the men of intellect. You take your being from your mothers. You live to the full: it is given you to love with your whole strength, to know and taste the whole of life. We thinkers, though often we seem to rule you, cannot live with half your joy and full reality. Ours is a thin and arid life, but the fullness of being is yours; yours the sap of the fruit, the garden of lovers, the joyous pleasaunces of beauty. Your home is the earth, ours the idea of it. Your danger is to be drowned in the world of sense, ours to gasp for breath in airless space. You are a poet, I a thinker. You sleep on your mother's breast, I watch in the wilderness. On me there shines the sun; on you the moon with all the stars. Your dreams are all of girls, mine of boys—” PoetsThinkersGoldmundNarzissMen Of Dreams Book:Narcissus and Goldmund Source: Narcissus and Goldmund
“...how mean and foolish are the living, with their never-ending terrors and curiosities, the puny effort of their lives, when faced with the quiet, kingly dead.” The DeadGoldmundThe LivingNarziss Book:Narcissus and Goldmund Source: Narcissus and Goldmund
“Narziss was dark and thin of face, and Goldmund open and radiant as a flower. Narziss was a thinker and anatomiser, Goldmund a dreamer and a child. Yet things common to both could bridge these differences. Both were knightly and delicate; both set apart by visible signs from their fellows, since both had received the particular admonishment of fate.” DescriptionGoldmundNarziss Book:Narcissus and Goldmund Source: Narcissus and Goldmund
“I understand you well. Now we have no need to dispute: you are awake, and so you have seen the difference between us, the difference between men akin to their father and those who take their destiny from a woman; the difference between spirit and intellect.” SpiritIntellectGoldmundNarziss Book:Narcissus and Goldmund Source: Narcissus and Goldmund
“Een wonderlijke vriendschap was het, die tussen Narziss en Goldmund tot ontplooiing kwam; er waren maar weinig mensen, die er plezier in hadden, en af en toe had het er zelfs de schijn van, dat de twee er zelf geen plezier in hadden. Narziss, denker die hij was, kon er in het begin het minst gemakkelijk mee uit de voeten. Hij was een en al geest, ook in de liefde; het was hem niet vergund zich zonder verder na te denken aan iemands aantrekkingskracht gewonnen te geven. Hij had in deze vriendschapsverhouding geestelijk de leiding, en gedurende een aanzienlijke periode bleef hij eenzaam in een leven van genegenheid, en wist hij, dat hij zijn vriend pas werkelijk de zijne zou kunnen noemen op het moment, dat hij hem tot inzicht gebracht zou hebben. Goldmund gaf zich, van binnen uit, met warmte, speels en zonder zich rekenschap te geven, over aan het nieuwe leven; Narziss zag hun verheven noodslot in het volle bewustzijn van zijn verantwoordelijkheid onder ogen.” GoldmundNarziss Author:Hermann Hesse