Near the end of Hermann Hesse’s novel Narcissus and Goldmund, Goldmund returns to the abbey for the last time where he had begun his education decades earlier. The setting is medieval Europe, in what is now the south of Germany. Hesse’s novel, a coming of age story about the battle between the spirit and the senses does not fit neatly into today’s assessment of plot and character development. Goldmund is the artist in search of what it means to live a full life, however, critics will immediately take offense at the way in which women are portrayed in this writing: They are not developed as characters and generally serve the needs of the protagonist Goldmund on his many trips of wanderlust.
With those criticisms acknowledged, the novel struck a chord with those of us on journeys of discovery during the great epic of the 1960s and early 1970s. Goldmund’s travels were a distant precursor to Kerouac’s On The Road, but no less romantic in its view of being in motion. Hesse was a kind of Kerouac without eight cylinders at his disposal, with horse and foot travel propelling a medieval life of discovery.
The road trip is a peculiar U.S. invention that has some degree of reflection in Europe and elsewhere. Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries was pretty close and had the unmistakable political undertones that would later drive Che’s life to both its heroic and tragic end. The latter is not an endorsement of all of Che’s actions as a revolutionary.
The thing that was also remarkable about the road trip, besides the absolute waste of fossil fuel, was that it had a democratic component that almost everyone could take part in. Almost anyone could be on the road and untold numbers of people were. If someone didn’t own a car or a truck or a motorcycle, there was always the reliable thumb with a risk element that was not very high.
And so it is now when I go back out onto the road much like Goldmund that everything seems possible in the nearly limitless destinations and romantic call of the highway. But there is something apparent now in what the poet Kenneth Rexroth writes about in the right-wing closing “iron fist” that he refers to in his poem “Fish Peddler and Cobbler,” the tribute to the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti who were executed because of their politics.
The possibilities for discovery and the dynamic of coming of age now take a backseat (no pun intended) to the horrific politics of hate and greed that fill the landscape of much of the world. An imbecile and his retinue of enablers now hold power in the U.S., which is pure poison to those who wanted the “newer world” that the poet Alfred Tennyson writes so eloquently about in his poem “Ulysses.” Not a single day passes, even to those still on the road either in reality or in spirit, that does not include some wrongdoing on a major scale by the inarticulate-in-chief. Like global warming, it is as if this right-wing disaster that is politics in the U.S. and elsewhere, is eating away at the polar icecaps as they are at our psyches, both individual and collective.
On the road now, a long line formed in front of a church food pantry in the relatively well-off college town of Ithaca, New York. The U.S. backed Saudi-led war in Yemen has killed 15,000 civilians and has caused a cholera epidemic. While those who see what they want to see focus on Korea, the Trump administration is orchestrating a replay of 2003 in Iraq with Iran: nothing will satiate their lust for war and profits and power. Some liberals scream about Russia, as the right is murdering the right to vote and to form unions. Twenty innocent kids and six of their school staff were gunned down in Newtown, Connecticut, and besides statewide initiatives, those innocent kids’ murders went unchallenged. In the U.S. Southwest, American Exceptionalism has had the bright light of the sun shine upon it, as defenseless immigrant children are torn from the arms of their families. The open road once looked so much more hopeful! Perhaps it was always just an illusion?
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On the road in a time of global disaster
Posted on June 19, 2018 by Howard Lisnoff
Near the end of Hermann Hesse’s novel Narcissus and Goldmund, Goldmund returns to the abbey for the last time where he had begun his education decades earlier. The setting is medieval Europe, in what is now the south of Germany. Hesse’s novel, a coming of age story about the battle between the spirit and the senses does not fit neatly into today’s assessment of plot and character development. Goldmund is the artist in search of what it means to live a full life, however, critics will immediately take offense at the way in which women are portrayed in this writing: They are not developed as characters and generally serve the needs of the protagonist Goldmund on his many trips of wanderlust.
With those criticisms acknowledged, the novel struck a chord with those of us on journeys of discovery during the great epic of the 1960s and early 1970s. Goldmund’s travels were a distant precursor to Kerouac’s On The Road, but no less romantic in its view of being in motion. Hesse was a kind of Kerouac without eight cylinders at his disposal, with horse and foot travel propelling a medieval life of discovery.
The road trip is a peculiar U.S. invention that has some degree of reflection in Europe and elsewhere. Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries was pretty close and had the unmistakable political undertones that would later drive Che’s life to both its heroic and tragic end. The latter is not an endorsement of all of Che’s actions as a revolutionary.
The thing that was also remarkable about the road trip, besides the absolute waste of fossil fuel, was that it had a democratic component that almost everyone could take part in. Almost anyone could be on the road and untold numbers of people were. If someone didn’t own a car or a truck or a motorcycle, there was always the reliable thumb with a risk element that was not very high.
And so it is now when I go back out onto the road much like Goldmund that everything seems possible in the nearly limitless destinations and romantic call of the highway. But there is something apparent now in what the poet Kenneth Rexroth writes about in the right-wing closing “iron fist” that he refers to in his poem “Fish Peddler and Cobbler,” the tribute to the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti who were executed because of their politics.
The possibilities for discovery and the dynamic of coming of age now take a backseat (no pun intended) to the horrific politics of hate and greed that fill the landscape of much of the world. An imbecile and his retinue of enablers now hold power in the U.S., which is pure poison to those who wanted the “newer world” that the poet Alfred Tennyson writes so eloquently about in his poem “Ulysses.” Not a single day passes, even to those still on the road either in reality or in spirit, that does not include some wrongdoing on a major scale by the inarticulate-in-chief. Like global warming, it is as if this right-wing disaster that is politics in the U.S. and elsewhere, is eating away at the polar icecaps as they are at our psyches, both individual and collective.
On the road now, a long line formed in front of a church food pantry in the relatively well-off college town of Ithaca, New York. The U.S. backed Saudi-led war in Yemen has killed 15,000 civilians and has caused a cholera epidemic. While those who see what they want to see focus on Korea, the Trump administration is orchestrating a replay of 2003 in Iraq with Iran: nothing will satiate their lust for war and profits and power. Some liberals scream about Russia, as the right is murdering the right to vote and to form unions. Twenty innocent kids and six of their school staff were gunned down in Newtown, Connecticut, and besides statewide initiatives, those innocent kids’ murders went unchallenged. In the U.S. Southwest, American Exceptionalism has had the bright light of the sun shine upon it, as defenseless immigrant children are torn from the arms of their families. The open road once looked so much more hopeful! Perhaps it was always just an illusion?
Howard Lisnoff is a freelance writer.