Figure 1. Narziß und Goldmund

The Hesse poem was another in a series on the duality of flesh and intellect—It’s curious to me that when I wrote it, I was projecting eleven years ahead to 2015 and posing a question to which I can now blandly answer, “no.” I would have been surprised to say yes, and by now I think I’ve abandoned any thought of teleology. There is no end point, just wandering. Just look how Narcissus and Goldmund fell into my hands in the first place. I don’t know how I found the book twenty-some years ago. Was it in my parents’ books? In the library? And how did it get there? Well, Hesse had become hep in the American counter-culture 60’s, which launched an unexpected revival, putting Siddhartha and Steppenwolf on the shelves of teenage boys looking for paperbacks with naked babes on the cover (see Figure 1). These intellectual accidents worry me, and I have of late dumped solvents on my early ideas to see which will recongeal. Not that I have anything over Hermann—I’m not fighting the cleverness wars here—rather, all ideas want testing against the quiver of experience, most of all our best beloved.