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During the first days Goldmund lived in the cloister, in one of the guest cells. Then, at his own request, he was given a room across the fe, in one of the administrative buildings that surrouhe main yard like a marketplace.His homeing put him under a spell, so violent that he himself was astonished by it. Outside the Abbot no one knew him here, no one knew who he was. The people, monks as well as lay brothers, lived a well-ordered life and had their own special occupations, a him in peace. But the trees of the courtyard knew him, the portals and windows knew him, the mill and the water wheel, the flagstones of the corridors, the wilted rosebushes in the arcade, the storks s on the refectory and granary roofs. From every er of his past, the st of his early adolesce came toward him, sweetly and movingly. Love drove him to see everything again, to hear all the sounds again, the bells for evening prayer and Sunday mass, the gushing of the dark millstream between its narrow, mossy banks, the slapping of sandals oone floors, the twilight jangle of the key ring as the brother porter went to lock up. Beside the stoters, into which the rainwater fell from the roof of the lay refectory, the same herbs were still sprouting, es-bill and plantain, and the old apple tree in the farden was still holding its far-reag branches in the same way. But more than anything else the tinkling of the little school bell moved him. It was the moment when, at the beginning of recess, all the cloister students came tumbling dowairs into the courtyard. How young and dumb and pretty the boys faces were—had he, too, once really been so young, so clumsy, so pretty and childish?
Beside this familiar cloister he had also found ohat was unknown, one which even during the first days struck his attention and became more and more important to him until it slowly liself to the more familiar one. Because, if nothing new had been added, if everything was as it had been during his student days, and a hundred or more years before that, he was no longer seeing it with the eyes of a student. He saw ahe dimension of these edifices, of the vaults of the church, the power of old paintings, of the stone and wood figures oars, in the portals, and although he saw nothing that had not been there before, he only now perceived the beauty of these things and of the mind that had created them. He saw the old stoher of God in the upper chapel. Even as a boy he had been fond of it, and had copied it, but only now did he see it with open eyes, and realize how miraculously beautiful it was, that his best and most successful work could never surpass it. There were many such wonderful things, and each was not placed there by ce but was born of the same mind and stood between the old ns and arches as though in its natural home. All that had been built, chiseled, painted, lived, thought and taught here in the course of hundreds of years had grown from the same roots, from the same spirit, and everything was held together and unified like the branches of a tree.
Goldmu very small in this world, in this quiet mighty unity, and never did he feel smaller than when he saw Abbot John, his friend Narcissus, rule over and govern this powerful yet quietly friendly order. There might be tremendous differences of character between the learhin-lipped Abbot John and the kindly simple Abbot Daniel, but each of them served the same unity, the same thought, the same order of existence, received his dignity from it, sacrificed his person to it. That made them as similar to one another as their priestly robes.
In the ter of his cloister, Narcissus grew eerily tall in Goldmunds eyes, although he was never anything but a cordial friend and host. Soon Goldmund hardly dared call him Narcissus any more.
"Listen, Abbot John," he once said to him, "Ill have to get used to your new name eventually. I must tell you that I like it very mu your house. I almost feel like making a general fession to you and, after penand absolution, asking to be received as a lay brother. But you see, then our friendship would be over; youd be the Abbot and I a lay brother. But I o longer bear to live o you like this and see your work and not be or do anything myself. I too would like to work and show you who I am and what I do, so that you see if it was worth snatg me from the gallows."
"Im glad to hear it," said Narcissus, pronoung his words even more clearly and precisely than usual. "You may set up your workshop any time you wish. Ill put the blacksmith and the carpe your disposal immediately. Please use any material you find here and make a list of all the things you want brought in from the outside. And now hear what I think about you and your iions! You must give me a little time to express myself: I am a scholar and would like to try to illustrate the matter to you from my own world of thought; I have no other language. So follow me once more, as you so often did so patiently in earlier years."
"Ill try to follow you. Go ahead and speak."
"Recall how, even in our student days, I sometimes told you that I thought you were an artist. In those days I thought you might bee a poet; in your reading and writing you had a certain dislike for the intangible and the abstract, and a special love for words and sounds that had sensuous poetic qualities, words that appealed to the imagination."
Goldmund interrupted. "Five me, but arent the cepts and abstras which you prefer to use really images too? Or do you really prefer to think in words with whie agine anything? But ohink without imagining anything?"
"Im glad you ask! Yes, certainly one think without imagining anything! Thinking and imagining have nothing whatsoever in on. Thinking is do in images but with cepts and formulae. At the exact point where images stop, philosophy begins. That recisely the subject of our frequent quarrels as young men; for you, the world was made of images, for me of ideas. I always told you that you were not made to be a thinker, and I also told you that this was no lack since, in exge, you were a master in the realm of images. Pay attention and Ill explain it to you. If, instead of immersing yourself in the world, you had bee a thinker, you m<dfn>..</dfn>ight have created evil. Because you would have bee a mystic. Mystics are, to express it briefly and somewhat crudely, thinkers who ot detach themselves from images, therefore not thinkers at all. They are secret artists: poets without verse, painters without brushes, musis without sound. There are highly gifted, noble minds among them, but they are all without exception unhappy men. You, too, might have bee such a man. Instead of which you have, thank God, bee an artist and have taken possession of the image world in which you be a creator and a master, instead of being stranded in diste as a thinker."
"Im afraid," said Goldmund, "Ill never succeed in grasping the idea of your thought world, in whie thinks without images."
"Oh yes, you will, and right now. Listen: the thiries to determine and to represent the nature of the world through logic. He knows that reason and its tool, logic, are inplete—the way an intelligent artist knows full well that his brushes or chisels will never be able to express perfectly the radiant nature of an angel or a saint. Still they both try, the thinker as well as the artist, ea his way. They ot and may not do otherwise. Because when a man tries to realize himself through the gifts with whiature has endowed him, he does the best and only meaningful thing he do. Thats why, in former days, I often said to you: dont try to imitate the thinker or the asceti, but be yourself, try to realize yourself."
"I uand something of what you say, but what does it mean to realize oneself?"
"It is a philosophical cept, I t express it in any other way. For us disciples of Aristotle and St. Thomas, it is the highest of all cepts: perfect being. God is perfect being. Everything else that exists is only half, only a part, is being, is mixed, is made up of potentialities. But God is not mixed. He is one, he has no potentialities but is the total, the plete reality. Whereas we are transitory, we are being, otentials; there is no perfe for us, no plete being. But wherever we go, from potential to deed, from possibility to realization, we participate in true being, bee by a degree more similar to the perfed divihat is what it means to realize oneself. You must know this from your own experience, since youre an artist and have made many statues. If such a figure is really good, if you have released a mans image from the geable and brought it to pure form—then you have, as an artist, realized this human image."
"I uand."
"You see me, friend Goldmund, in a plad fun where it is made rather easy for me to realize myself. You see me living in a unity and a tradition that corresponds to me and furthers me. A cloister is no heaven. It is filled with imperfes. Still, a detly run cloister life is infinitely more helpful to men of my nature than the worldly life. I dont wish to speak morally, but from a merely practical point of view, pure thinking, the practid teag of which is my task, offers a certain prote from the world. It was much easier for me to realize myself here in our house than it would have been for you. But, in spite of the difficulty, you found a way to bee an artist, and I admire that a great deal. Your life has been much harder than mine."
This praise made Goldmund blush with embarrassment, and also with pleasure. In order to ge the subject, he interrupted his friend: "Ive been able to uand most of what you wao tell me. But there is ohing I still t get through my head: the thing you call pure thinking. I mean your so-called thinking without images, and the use of words with whie agine anything."
"Well, youll be able to uand it with an example. Think of mathematics. What kind of images do figures tain? Or the plus and minus signs? What kind of images does aion tain? None. When you solve a problem in arithmetic ebra, no image will help you solve it, you execute a formal task within the codes of thought that you have learned."
"Thats right, Narcissus. If you give me a row of figures and symbols, I work through them without using my imagination, I let myself be guided by plus and minus, square roots, and so on, and solve the problem. That is—I once could, today I could no longer do it. But I t imagihat solving such a formal problem have any other value than exerg a students brain. Its all right to learn how to t. But Id find it meaningless and childish if a ma his who<samp>藏书网</samp>le life ting and c paper with rows of figures."
"You are wrong, Goldmund. You assume that this zealous problem-solver tinuously solves problems a teacher poses for him. But he also ask himself questions; they arise within him as pelling forces. A man must have measured and puzzled over much real and much fictitious space mathematically before be risk fag the problem of space itself."
"Well, yes. But attag the problem of space with pure thought does not strike me as an occupation on which a man should waste his work and his years. The word space means nothing to me and is not worth thinking about unless I imagine real space, say the space between stars; now, studying and measuring star space does not seem an unworthy task to me."
Smilingly, Narcissus interrupted: "You are actually saying that you have a rather low opinion of thinking, but a rather high one of the application of thought to the practical, visible world. I answer you: we lao opportuo apply our thinking, nor are we unwilling to do so. The thinker Narcissus has, for instance, applied the results of his thinking a huimes to his friend Goldmund, as well as to each of his monks, and does so at every instant. But how would he be able to apply something if he had not learned and practiced it before? And the artist also stantly exercises his eye and imagination, and we reize this training, even if it finds realization only in a few good works. You ot dismiss thinking as sbbr>?９９lｉb.</abbr>ud san only its application! The tradi is obvious. So let me go on thinking and judge my thoughts by their results, as I shall judge your art by your works. You are restless now and irritable because there are still obstacles between you and your works. Clear them out of the way. Find or build a workshop for yourself ao work! Many problems will be solved automatically that way."
Goldmund wished nothier.
Beside the courtyard gate he found a shed that was both empty and suitable for a workshop. He ordered a drawing board and other tools from the carpenter, all to be made after precise plans he drew himself. He made a list of the materials which the cloister carters were t him from nearby cities, a long list. He ied all the felled timber at the carpenters and in the forest, any pieces and had them carried to the grassy lot behind his workshop, where he piled them up to dry under a roof he built with his own hands. He also had much work to do with the blacksmith, whose son, a dreamy young man, was pletely charmed and won over by him. Together they stood half the day at the fe, over the anvil, by the cooling trough or the whetstone, making all the bent or straight cutting khe chisels, drills, and planes he needed for his work. The smiths son, Erich, an adolest of almost twenty, became Goldmunds friend. He helped him with everything and was full of glowing i and curiosity. Goldmund promised to teach him to play the lute, which he fervently desired, and he also allowed him to try his hand at carving. If at times Goldmu rather useless and depressed in the cloister and in Narcissuss presence, he was able to recover in the presence of Erich, who loved him timidly and admired him immensely. He often asked him to tell him about Master Niklaus and the bishops city. Sometimes Goldmund was glad to tell stories. Then he would be suddenly astoo find himself sitting like an old man, talking about the travels and adventures of the past, when his true life was only now about to begin.
Retly he had ged greatly and aged far beyond his years, but this was visible to no one, sinly one man here had known him before. The hardships of his wandering and uled life may already have undermined his strength, but the plague and its many horrors, and finally his captivity at the ts residend that gruesome night in the castle cellar had shaken him to his roots, and several signs of these experieayed with him: gray hair in his blond beard, wrinkles on his face, periods of insomnia, and occasionally a certain fatigue ihe heart, a slaing of desire and curiosity, a gray shallow feeling of having had enough, of being fed up. During preparations for his work, during his versations with Erich or his pursuits at the blacksmiths and at the carpenters, he grew vivacious and young and all admired him and were fond of him; but at other times hed sit for hours, exhausted, smiling and dreaming, giveo apathy and indifference.
The question of where to begin was very important to him. The first work he wao make here, and with which he wao pay for the cloisters hospitality, was not to be an arbitrary piece that one placed just anywhere for the sake of curiosity, no, it had to blend with the old works of the house and with the architecture and life of the cloister and bee part of the whole. He would have especially liked to make an altar or perhaps a pulpit, but there was no need or room for either. He found another plastead. There was a raised niche in the refectory, from which a young brother read passages from the lives of the saints during meals. This niche had no or. Goldmund decided to carve for the steps to the le and for the le itself a set of wooden panels like those around a pulpit, with many figures in half-relief and others almost free-standing. He explained his plan to the Abbot, who praised and accepted it.
When finally he could begin—snow had fallen, Christmas was already oldmunds life took on another form. He seemed to have disappeared from the cloister; nobody saw him any more. He .99ｌｉb?no longer waited for the students at the end of classes, no longer drifted through the woods, no lorolled uhe arcades. He took his meals in the mill—it wasnt the same miller now whom he had often visited as a student. And he allowed no o his assistant Erich to enter his workshop; and oain days Erich did not hear a word out of him.
For this first work he had long sihought out the following design: it was to be in two parts, one representing the world, the other the word of God. The lower part, the stairs, growing out of a sturdy oak trunk and winding around it, was to represent creation, images of nature and of the simple life of the patriarchs and the prophets. The upper part, the parapet, would bear the pictures of the four apostles. One of the evas was to have the traits of blessed Abbot Daniel; ahose of blessed Father Martin, his successor; and the statue of Luke was to eternalize Master Niklaus.
He met with great obstacles, greater than he had anticipated. And these obstacles gave him many worries, but they were sweet worries. Now ented and now despairing, he wooed his work as though it were a relut woman, struggled with it as firmly aly as a fisherman struggling with a giant pike, and each resistaaught him and made him more sensitive. He fot everything else. He fot the cloister; he almost fot Narcissus. Narcissus came a number of times, but was only shown drawings.
Then one day Goldmund surprised him with the request that he hear his fession.
"I could n myself to fess before," he admitted. "I felt too small, and I already felt small enough in front of you. Now I feel bigger, now I have my work and am no longer a nobody. And since I am living in a cloister, Id like to submit myself to the rules."
Now he felt equal to the task and did not want to wait a moment lohose first meditative weeks at the cloister, the abando of all the homeing, all the memories of youth, as well as the stories Erich asked him for, had allowed him to see his life with a certain order and clarity.
Without solemnity Narcissus received his fession. It lasted about two hours. With immobile face the Abbot listeo the adventures, sufferings, and sins of his friend, posed many questions, never interrupted, and listened passively also to the part of the fession in whiund admitted that his faith in Gods justid goodness had disappeared. He was struck by many of the admissions of the fessing man. He could see how much he had been shaken and terrified, how close he had sometimes e to perishing. Then again he was moved to smile, touched when he found that his friends nature had remained so i, when he found him worried aant because of impious thoughts which were harmless enough pared to his own dark abysses of doubt.
To Goldmunds surprise, to his disappoi even, the father fessor did not take his actual sins too seriously, but reprimanded and punished him unsparingly because of his in praying, fession, and union. He imposed the following penance upon him: to live moderately and chastely for a month before receiving union, to hear early mass every m, and to say three Our Fathers and one Hail Mary every evening.
Afterwards he said to him: "I exhort you, I beg you not to take this penance lightly. I dont know if you still remember the exact text of the mass. You are to follow it word by word and give yourself up to its meaning. I will myself say the Our Father and a few ticles with you today, and give you instrus as to the words and meanings to which you are to direct your particular attention. You are to speak ahe sacred words not the way one speaks and hears human words. Every time you catch yourself just reeling off the words, and this will happen more often than you expect, you are to remember this hour and my exhortation, and you are to begin all ain and speak the words in such a way as to let them enter your heart, as I am about to show you."
Whether it was a beautiful ce, or whether the Abbots knowledge of souls was great enough to achieve it, a period of fulfillment and peace came foldmund from this fession and pe made him profoundly happy. Amid the many tensions, worries, and satisfas of his work, he found himself m and evening released by the easy but stiously executed spiritual exercises, relaxed after the excitements of the day, his entire being submitted to a higher order that lifted him out of the dangerous isolation of the creator and included him as a child in Gods world. Although the battles of his work had to be overe in solitude, and he had to give it all the passions of his sehese hours of meditatio him return to innoce again and again. Still hot with the rage and impatience of his work, or moved to ecstasy, he would pluo the pious exercises as though into deep, cool water that washed him of the arrogance of enthusiasm as well as the arrogance of despair.
It did not always succeed. Sometimes he did not bee calm and relaxed in the evening, after burning hours of work. A few times he fot the exercises, and several times, as he tried to immerse himself in them, he was tortured by the thought that saying prayers was, after all, perhaps only childish striving fod who did or could not help. He pained about it to his friend.
"tinue," said Narcissus. "You promised; you must keep your promise. You are not to think about whether God hears your prayers or whether there is a God such as you imagine. Nor are you to wonder whether your exercises are childish. pared to Him to whom all our prayers are addressed, all our doing is childish. You must forbid yourself these foolish childs thoughts pletely during the exercises. You are to speak the Our Father and the ticles, and give yourself up to the words and fill yourself with them just the way you play the lute or sing. You dont pursue clever thoughts and speculations then, do you? No, you execute one finger position after another as purely and perfectly as possible. While you sing, you dont wonder whether or not singing is useful; you sing. Thats how you are to pray."
And once more it worked. Again his taut, avid ego extinguished itself in wide-vaulted ain the venerable words floated above him like stars.
With great satisfa, the Abbot saw Goldmund tinue his daily exercises for weeks and months after his period of penance was over and after he had received the holy sacraments.
In the meantime Goldmunds work advanced. A small surging wrew from the thick spiral of the stairs: creatures, plants, animals, and people. In their midst stood Noah between grape leaves and grapes. The work icture book of praise for the creation of the world and its beauty, free in expression but directed by an inner order and discipline. During all these months no o Erich saw the work; he was allowed to execute small tasks and thought of nothing but being an artist himself. But oain days not even he was allowed to ehe workshop. On other days Goldmund took his time with him, showed him a few things a him try, happy to have a believer and a disciple. If the work turned out successfully, he might ask Erichs father to release the boy a him be trained as his perma assistant.
He worked at the statues of the evas on his best days, whehing was harmonious and no doubts cast their shadows over him. It seemed to him that he was most successful with the figure that bore the traits of Abbot Daniel. He loved it very much; the face radiated kindness and purity. He was less satisfied with the statue of Master Niklaus, even though Erich admired it most of all. This figure revealed discord and sadness. It seemed to be brimming over with lofty plans for creation ahere was also a desperate awareness of the futility of creating, and m for a lost unity and innoce.
When Abbot Daniel was finished, he had Erich up the workshop. He hid the remaining statues under a cloth and placed only that one figure in the light. Then he went to Narcissus, and when he found that he was busy, he waited patiently until the day. At the noon hour he took his friend to see the statue.
Narcissus stood and looked. He stood there, taking his time, examining the work with the attention and care of the scholdmund stood behind him, in silerying to domihe tempest in his heart. "Oh," he thought, "if one of us does not pass this test, it will be bad. If my work is not good enough, or if he ot uand it, all my w here will have lost its value. I should have waited longer."
Minutes felt like hours to him, ahought of the time when Master Niklaus ha.d held his first drawing in his hands. He pressed his hot humid palms together in the effort of waiting.
Narcissus turo him, and immediately he felt relieved. In his friends narrow face he saw flower something that had not flowered there since his boyhood years: a smile, an almost timid smile on that faind and will, a smile of love and surrender, a shimmer, as though all its loneliness and pride had been pierced for a sed and nothing shone from it but a heart full of joy.
"Goldmund," Narcissus said very softly, weighing his words even now, "you dont expect me to bee an art expert all of a sudden. You know Im not. I tell you nothing about your art that you would not find ridiculous. But let me tell you ohing: at first glance I reized our Abbot Daniel in this eva, and not only him, but also all the things he once meant to us: dignity, kindness, simplicity. As blessed Father Daood before our youthful veioands here before me now and with him everything that was sacred to us then and that makes those years unfettable to us. You have given me a generous gift, my friend, and not only have you given our Abbot Daniel bae; you have opened yourself pletely, to me for the first time. Now I know who you are. Let us speak about it no longer; I ot. Oh Goldmund, that this hour has been given us!"
It was quiet in the large room. His friend the Abbot was moved to the depth of his heart. Goldmund saw this and embarrassment choked his breathing.
"Yes," he said curtly, "I am happy. But now its time to go a."
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