When Goldmund woke it was dark. His head swam, no thoughts came into it. He could feel himself lying on a bed, but where he knew not. He strove, and yet nothing came to him. How had he travelled here: from what strange country of new knowledge? He had been in some far-off place, where he had seen some rare and glorious sights, terrible, and never to be forgotten. Yet now he was forgetting them all. When was it? What was this thing that had risen up before him, so dolorous, mighty, full of beauty, to fade again? He strove to see far down into himself, to the deeps out of which this thing had come. What had it been? A covey of vain images swirled around him.
--from "Narziss and Goldmund" by Hermann Hesse
It is interesting the way that Hesse makes this waking state so vivid. The use of so many questions in sequence evoke so much without assigning a precise interpretation of what has taken place during Goldmund's sleep. This passage so beautifully leaves you suspended with the character, hovering in between the reality of a dream and consciousness. These ideas always seem to be what Hesse is driving at, maybe balance or the idea of it, or maybe its birth.
yeah!
ReplyDeleteYou write that Hesse can "evoke so much without assigning a precise interpretation." It sounds like someone else I know.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I was reading about John Keats (whose poetry I've never read) idea of "negative capability" -which is when, in Keats words, "a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason ... the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather OBLITERATES ALL CONSIDERATION."
For me this is central to what I'm seeking (though the word 'seek' is of limited usefulness), this embrace of question and mystery and all things name-able; this looking into the spaces between -and through those spaces, brushing up against what-is-not. I think it's the same thing you're interested in, though we speak of it differently. I feel like we're always talking AROUND it, because it can not be spoken of directly.
There are so many routes for getting to that place of open-ness to mystery (prayer, art, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, mountain-climbing, taking a walk, knitting, sleeping), and in Hesse's work I've found someone very very very alive to the many paths in the inner realm leading to and from that open-ness to mystery, and who is, I think, quite familiar with that great silence within that comes in that openness. This thing Hesse is doing in the passage you've quoted, of evoking without interpreting, puts us on the borderland of the unsee-able face of God, or its unspeakable name, or what Meister Eckhart calls "a something which is neither this nor that."
Hesse writes,
"Yet now he was forgetting them all. When was it? What was this thing that had risen up before him, so dolorous, mighty, full of beauty, to fade again?"
It has no name and no purpose, so all that exists is an observer/thinker. But can one go further than that even, to a place/state of no observation? Is that the mystical union with Christ?
By evoking without interpreting Hesse moves close to communicating the incommunicable.
The snow is falling Winnipeg. I'll stare at that for a while and see where it takes me.
Thanks for provoking my thoughts.
-sSs
correction in third paragraph:
ReplyDeleteit should "this embrace of question and mystery and all things UNname-able"
unname-able, not name-able.