Fish

Fish are more than food or incidental scenery in Goldmund’s story: they become a recurring measure of how attentively he perceives living things and how he confronts mortality. At the market he sees individual creatures suffering where other people see merchandise; in a vision of the universal mother, their lives and deaths belong to the same encompassing order as human existence. Their presence also connects the practical exchanges of his wandering life to his reflections on beauty, art, and decay.

Fish at the Market

During a bleak day in the city, Goldmund watches fish sellers draw silvery fish from their barrels and display them at the fountain in the fish market. He attends to the fish’s response to their deaths: their mouths open, their eyes remain fixed with fear, and their tails move in resistance. To the sellers and customers, the fish are wares to be bargained over; to Goldmund, the sale conceals the death of graceful animals. His attention lingers on the change from living creatures to food, a transformation that passes unnoticed by the busy crowd.

The scene turns Goldmund’s perception into a contrast with ordinary public life. He judges the townspeople numb to the fish before them, yet recognizes that he too has often eaten fish without horror and enjoyed the same social ease he now condemns. His pity is therefore part of a recurring change in his own feeling, not a settled position above other people: pleasure and calm can return, but so can grief for dying fish and other fragile life.

The Universal Mother and Mortality

While watching the market, Goldmund thinks again of Viktor, whom he killed during their travels. He imagines what remains of Viktor’s body and wonders whether anyone found and buried him, whether his bones still retain their form, and what remains of a person’s life after death. The dead traveler and the dying fish enter the same meditation: both prompt Goldmund to confront the disappearance of living beings and the limits of memory.

In the midst of these thoughts, Goldmund briefly sees the face of the universal mother leaning over the abyss of life. The vision includes birth and death, flowers and autumn leaves, art and decay. Within it, the dying carp is as dear to the mother as Goldmund himself, and Viktor’s scattered bones belong to the same encompassing care. The fish thus become part of a vision that does not separate human worth from the lives of other creatures, even as the vision retains the sadness and uncertainty of mortality.

Feeding Fish and the Wandering Life

After this revelation, Goldmund sees a boy eating bread on the river road and asks for a small piece. He removes some soft crumb, shapes it into little balls, and drops them one by one into the water, watching fish gather and take the pieces. The episode is modest beside the market scene, but it reverses the fish’s position there: rather than being displayed for sale, they receive food from a passerby.

That act belongs to a life sustained by temporary encounters and what others provide. On another occasion Goldmund receives a meal at a farmer’s house but is told there is no room for him under the roof; he must find a bed in the hay outside. Later, Lydia’s gifts for the road include a knitted wool vest and a gold piece concealed in a piece of ham. Goldmund’s attention to fish therefore appears amid a larger world of food, shelter, and gifts, where living things and material provisions carry meanings beyond their immediate use.

Fish and the Limits of Art

Goldmund’s response to the fish also sharpens his doubts about the value of artistic achievement. He thinks that the gold in a carp’s eye is more alive and precious than a room full of ornate religious works. The comparison does not erase his vocation as an artist; it expresses his fear that art might become polished, prized, and lifeless if it separates itself from the world it seeks to represent. Fish offer him an instance of beauty inseparable from vulnerability, and their deaths make that beauty difficult to treat as decoration.

This tension accompanies his later return to artistic work. In the refectory, he plans a lectern whose lower section will represent creation through nature and the lives of patriarchs and prophets, while its upper part will bear images of the apostles. The design gives a place to the natural world within a religious object, echoing the perception that makes a fish at the market more than a commodity. Across these episodes, fish help frame Goldmund’s effort to see life without turning away from its suffering or reducing its beauty to a finished work.