Recommendations
Books Like Narcissus and Goldmund
Best books to read after Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
Readers who love Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse are drawn to its combination of the medieval setting, the beautiful prose, and the investigation of the two fundamental human types — the ascetic intellectual and the passionate artist — and the friendship that bridges them, they want novels that deal with the spirit-nature opposition, the life of the artist versus the life of the monk, and the tradition of the German spiritual novel.
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Steppenwolf
by Hermann Hesse
The companion — Harry Haller and the Magic Theatre. The companion investigation of the man who exists between the world of the spirit and the world of the senses and cannot be fully at home in either
- 2Buy
Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse
The companion — the spiritual journey and its goal. The companion investigation of the relationship between the spiritual life and the life of experience, and the question of whether a synthesis is possible
- 3Buy
The Glass Bead Game
by Hermann Hesse
The companion — Josef Knecht and the Castalian intellectual world. The companion investigation of the same Narcissus-Goldmund theme in a more elaborate and futuristic setting: the tension between intellectual service and the active world of engagement
- 4Buy
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
The companion medieval intellectual novel. The companion investigation of the same medieval intellectual world — the monastery, the library — from a different angle: Eco's ironic postmodernism versus Hesse's romantic idealism
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Doctor Faustus
by Thomas Mann
Mann's companion investigation of the German artist who makes a bargain with the Devil. The companion investigation of the relationship between artistic genius and moral responsibility in a twentieth-century setting
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
Joyce's companion Bildungsroman — Stephen Dedalus's artistic development. The companion investigation of the young artist's departure from the world that formed him and the question of what must be sacrificed to art
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The Journey to the East
by Hermann Hesse
The companion — the League's journey toward a spiritual East. The companion as the novella-length investigation of the same themes: the spiritual community, the meaning of service, the dissolution of the individual into the spiritual whole
- 8Buy
Confessions
by Saint Augustine
Augustine's companion autobiography. The companion as the theological predecessor: Goldmund's journey is a secular version of the Augustinian pattern — 'our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee' — and his eventual return to Narcissus mirrors Augustine's return to the Church
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