Narcissus And Goldmund Quotes
"In the spring it waited until all the surrounding trees were green... before sprouting its own first leaves."
"Generations of cloister boys passed beneath the foreign tree, carrying their writing tablets, chatting, laughing, clowning, and squabbling."
"Books were written and annotated, systems invented, ancient scrolls collected, new scrolls illuminated, the faith of the people fostered, their credulity smiled upon."
"One interest would usually outweigh another, predominating in accord with the personality of the incumbent abbot or the tendency of the day."
"The beautiful treetop—secret kin to the portal’s slender sandstone columns and the stone ornaments of the window vaults and pillars, loved by the Savoyards and Latins—swayed above the cloister entrance."
"The cells and halls of the cloister, between the thick round window vaults and the trim double columns of red stone, were filled with life, with teaching, learning, administration, ruling."
"I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable force, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them."
"You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at the mother’s breast; I wake in the desert."
"The few who permitted themselves an occasional smile at their Abbot’s simplicity were all the more enamored of Narcissus, the handsome prodigy."
"One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I’ll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer’s sea and the waters on which Saint Peter wandered; or it becomes a bird, flaps its tail, shakes out its feathers, puffs itself up, laughs, flies away."
"The mind favors the definite, the solid shape, it wants its symbols to be reliable, it loves what is, not what will be, what is real and not what is possible."
"It was you who said that I take my being from my mother, you who discovered that I was living under a spell and had forgotten my childhood!"
"No, my dear Goldmund, you cannot. Some people are capable of learning a great deal, but you are not one of them. You’ll never be a student. And why should you be? You don’t need to. You have other gifts."
"You created difficulties for me, but I am no enemy of difficulties. I’ve learned from them, I’ve partly overcome them."
"There will be others to teach you. What you could learn from me, you child, you have learned."
"I don’t know what will become of me, I can’t think about that now."
"You’ll find out where your road will lead you. It began by leading you back to your mother, and it will bring you closer to her still."
"Your road will be more beautiful and more difficult than mine."
"No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself."
"Attractive and disturbing, the beautiful, capricious child flittered between the two lovers..."
"Sometimes Goldmund asked himself why he had not left long ago."
"In her gentle, lost voice Lydia said to him: 'You mustn’t be sad, not because of me; I want to bring you only joy, to see you happy.'"
"One morning Goldmund awoke shortly after dawn and continued to lie in his bed for a while, musing."
"As they ate their gruel for breakfast, everybody mentioned the first snow."
"The two sisters had quarreled during the day, but Goldmund knew nothing of it."
"GOLDMUND knew the area from many previous rides."
"He walked until he felt tired. 'My riding days are over,' he thought."
"He thought he heard the sound of distant hoofs and looked around in surprise."
"But after a while his thoughts and words turned away from lanky Viktor."
"Lost in the deserted, snow-covered landscape, without shelter, without a path, without food and almost without sleep, he fell into a bottomless despair."
"AGAIN ice was floating down the rivers, and a scent of violets rose from under the rotten leaves."
"That evening he found shelter in a cloister, and the next morning he went to mass."
"When he finally turned to leave, the father confessor was standing behind him."
"Goldmund was still unfamiliar with the gallows humor and wayfaring Latin of this wanderer."
"The next morning, as they moved on, for the first time Goldmund had a taste of walking in company."
"He had long since lost all sense of direction; he didn’t know where he was running, what he was saying, whether he was lying or standing."
"When Goldmund first came to his senses on his bed of straw in the stable, he missed the gold piece in his pocket."
"It was not long before he was back on his feet."
"In art, in being an artist, Goldmund saw the possibility of reconciling his deepest contradictions, or at least of expressing newly and magnificently the split in his nature."
"Something plunged him into solitude and brooding, made him contemplate suffering and death, the vanity of all undertaking, as he stared into the abyss."
"He had only to smell a flower or play with a cat, and his childlike agreement with life came back to him."
"All true mysteries, it seemed to him, were just like this mysterious water; all true images of the soul were like this: they had no precise contour or shape: they only could be guessed at, a beautiful distant possibility that was veiled in many meanings."
"What are reason and sobriety without the knowledge of intoxication? What is sensuality without death standing behind it? What is love without the eternal mortal enmity of the sexes?"
"They are the sons of Adam, who was driven out of Paradise; the brothers of the animals, of innocence."
"It is mystery I love and pursue. Several times I have seen it beginning to take shape; as an artist, I would like to capture and express it."
"She was conscious. Sometimes she slept, and when she woke up she only half opened her eyes; the lids were tired and limp."
"He wept for his dead master, for the lost beauty of Lisbeth, for Lene, for Robert, for Rebekka, for his wilted, squandered youth."
"He could not swallow the bread or drink the wine. That night he slept on a bench in the tavern. In the morning the owner waked him. He thanked her and left, eating the piece of bread in the street."
"Everything passed, faded, lost its depth, its value, and finally there came a time when one could no longer remember what had pained one so."
"Nothing had permanence, and he regretted that, too."
"As long as he was drawing, he did not know where he was. His world consisted of nothing but a table, white paper, and, at night, a candle."
"How long since he had last ridden! He came to life again, grew young and animated, rode many a race with the groom."
"He recognized the hills across which he had once ridden with the knight’s daughter Lydia, and the heath across which he had walked that day of thinly falling snow, banished and deeply sad."
"He felt like that throughout the day, sitting gloomily in the saddle, not speaking at all."
"He thought of her with joy, and gratefully remembered last night. To have been able to experience the happiness of that night, to have been able to make that marvelous woman happy, he had needed his entire life."
"I find bliss, and for an hour I forget the horror. But that does not mean that it does not exist."
"All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast."
"It was shameless how life made fun of one; it was a joke, a cause for weeping!"
"The outpouring of work, the mastering of these faces, did him great good."
"What a joy to be still alive, to have been spared by death during all these gruesome months!"
"I’m beginning to understand what art is. [...] the path of the mind is not the only one and perhaps not even the best one."
"You don’t look away from the world; you give yourself to it, and by your sacrifice to it raise it to the highest, a parable of eternity."
"There is only the peace that must be won again and again, each new day of our lives."
"In the end our works make us feel ashamed, we have to start out again, and each time the sacrifice has to be made anew."
"I’ve never taken any payment for my work here…"
"I must confess to you that I worried about you on several occasions during the last months."
"I cannot give up the thought that, instead of death with his scythe, it will be my mother who will come to take me back to her, who will lead me back to nonbeing and innocence."
"You are used to love; it is not rare for you; so many women have loved and spoiled you."
"How mysterious this life was, how deep and muddy its waters ran, yet how clear and noble what emerged from them."
"Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die."