Narciso encarna el rigor idealista, el espíritu ascético, la claridad; Goldmundo es el alma artística y errante atraída por el amor mundano y la pasión de vivir. Su enfrentamiento es una alegoría de los dos componentes básicos de la personalidad.
First published in 1930, Narcissus and Goldmund is the story of two diametrically opposite men: one, an ascetic monk firm in his religious commitment, and the other, a romantic youth hungry for worldly experience.Hesse was a great writer in precisely the modern sense: complex, subtle, allusive: alive to the importance of play. Narcissus and Goldmund is his very best. What makes this short book so limitlessly vast is the body-and-soul-shaking debate that runs through it, which it has the honesty and courage not to resolve: between the flesh and spirit, art and scientific or religious speculation, action and contemplation.