Two of my favorite passages from Hermann Hesse's
Narcissus and Goldmund. If this was a school paper on art, i would hold your hand and tell you what to think. However, I am already telling you by cutting out the other 300 pages and leaving you with two part-paragraphs:
page 155:
He thought that fear of death was perhaps the root of all art, perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.
and on page 169
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 of his nature. But art was not just a gift. It could not be had for nothing; it cost a great deal; it demanded sacrifices. For over three years Goldmund sacrificed his most essential need, the thing he needed most next to
desire and love: his freedom.
-mark
