Narcissus and Goldmund in Around the World in 80 Books

Jan 01, 2014 Bogdan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: german

Under the disguise of a novel, Mr Hesse gave us a great philosophy manifesto. All in this novel is carefully chosen to express one of the ideas he believed it about the philosophical questions of the modern world: dualism as a central aspect of human existence, primordial mother or essence of artists. I enjoyed it, but it is a pretty dense work and it requires the same effort of reading as a regular philosophical book.

The premise is pretty clear: demonstrate that the above mentioned philosophica Under the disguise of a novel, Mr Hesse gave us a great philosophy manifesto. All in this novel is carefully chosen to express one of the ideas he believed it about the philosophical questions of the modern world: dualism as a central aspect of human existence, primordial mother or essence of artists. I enjoyed it, but it is a pretty dense work and it requires the same effort of reading as a regular philosophical book.

The premise is pretty clear: demonstrate that the above mentioned philosophical concepts are true. I was not convinced of all of them and neither the novel made me change my mind too much, so I will give it a 3 for premise.

The form chosen by Herman Hesse to deliver his message was at least interesting. Instead of writing a philosophical work, he used the novel format. He set this novel in Medieval Germany, but without giving too precise location or time details. Also it is clear from the first paragraphs that he is a master writer. In his place, I would have tried to get more of the story in spite of the message that it is omnipresent. So, I will give it a 4 at form.

In terms of originality, I have not read too many philosophical novels. Especially set in Medieval Germany and with a story so interesting and rich in senses. That rightfully requires a 5.

The characters are mostly schematically, simple placeholders for ideas, maybe except for Goldmund that it is present throughout the novel. Few psychological introspection are made in characters mind and this limits the possibilities of identifying with them. But taking into account that they are not the most important in this novel genre, I can rate them with a 3.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, I admired philosophers and their ability to write intricate books. As this is also a philosophical work disguised into a novel, I will rate it with a 5 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, I was not able to resonate with some of the philosophical concepts that make up the core of this novel. I believe they are based on late 19th century philosophy and some concepts popular at the time when he wrote it. They are not necessarily wrong, but slightly outdated. So I will rate it with a 3 for credibility.

The last criteria is edition. I had it in an eBook format, that I appreciated as it has very few spelling errors. Unfortunately it had couple of places where the text was displaced or even missing. Not too many and for sure not an impediment to read, so I will rate it for edition with a 3.

To summarize, I enjoyed it although I did not considered true all the concepts that made up the core of this novel. All in all, my final rating for the novel is 3.71, rounding it up to a 4 stars on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 3.71 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+