Narcissus and Goldmund
A cloister school in medieval Germany holds two friends: a young teacher of severe intellect marked out for the abbacy, and a pupil he recognises as belonging to an altogether different kind of life. Sent out over the wall, the pupil wanders through villages, women and a countryside emptied by plague until a carved apostle in a church shows him what he is for. Hesse's most sensuous book, and his clearest statement of the split — thinker against artist, spirit against mother-world — that his whole work turns on.
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Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
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Quest object (Greimas)
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Closest analogues
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