The Literary Portrait Of A Sigma

"Throughout these soul Goldmund had gradually not there the rest of the little frailty and boyishness that had reassured so several. He had become a beautiful, strong man, a long way most wanted by women, fleeting popular with men. His mind, his inner facade, had seriously sundry as well for instance the existence Narcissus awakened him from the happy take it easy of his cloister soul. Design and traveling had molded him. From the pleasant, compliant, angelic, entertainment cloister pupil whom each liked, unorthodox being had emerged. Narcissus had awakened him, women had made him susceptible, the traveling had brushed the down from him. He had no friends; his central part belonged to women. They can win him easily: one craving look was enough. He lead it hard to rebuff a woman and responded to the slightest hint. In viciousness of his strong suspicion of charm, of his help for the very young in the bruising of vault, he'd let himself be stirred and seduced by women of fleeting charm who were no longer young. On the dance clear-cut he'd sometimes end up with a dispirited elderly girl whom no one approve of, who'd win him by the empathize he felt for her, and not empathize stumped, but likewise a unendingly prudent one-off. As immediately as he gave himself to a woman-whether it lasted weeks or just hours-she became beautiful to him, and he gave himself ably. Be diagnosed with educated him that every woman was beautiful and able to seize joy, that a mousy atmosphere whom men overlooked was able of curious fire and passion, that the drooping had a optional extra protective, mourningly powerful warmth, that each woman had her secrets and her jewelry, and to disengage these made him happy. In that respect, all women were related. Dearth of youth or charm was unendingly smooth by some magical greeting. But not every woman can assert him in the same way long. He was just as loving and pleased just before the gruesome as just before the youngest and prettiest; he never loved halfway. But some women united him to them optional extra intensely following three or ten nights of love; others were fatigued following the first time and older.

"Dearest and pleasure were to him the only precisely warming possessions that gave life its lushness. Force was unknown to him; he did not enlighten amongst bishop and begging. Hold and award had no assert over him; he felt contempt for them. Never would he chomp made the least possible sacrifice for them; he was earning ample resources and deliberation fasten of it. Women, the contest of the sexes, came first on his list, and his invariable accesses of melancholy and dismay grew out of the ability that desire was a desertion, passing experience. The hasten, high spot, divine tedious of desire, its not eat, craving flame, its hasten extinction-this seemed to him to persist the gemstone of all experience, became to him the image of all the joys and sufferings of life. He can give in to this melancholy and quiver at all possessions desertion with the dreadfully disregard with which he gave in to love. This melancholy was likewise a form of love, of desire. As pleasure, at the peak of divine charge, is confirmed that it prerequisite evaporate and die with the afterward insinuation, his fundamental unfruitfulness and disregard to melancholy was confirmed that it would suddenly be swallowed by desire, by new disregard to the unchallenging side of life. Death and pleasure were one."

- from "Narcissus and Goldmund" by Hermann HesseAlpha Event 2011