wish that if ever the time comes and it proves to be necessary, that I too will be able to free myself and leap, only not backward into something inferior, but forward and into something higher.”
“Well, that is what we are headed for. Eschholz was one step; the next will be higher, and finally the Order awaits us.”
“Yes, but that isn’t what I meant. Let’s move on,
This mood and those words, which his classmate recorded, already sound the note which prevailed during the stormy period of Knecht’s adolescence.
The hikers tramped for two days before they reached the Music Master’s current home, Monteport, high in the mountains, where the Master lived in the former monastery, giving a course for conductors. Knecht’s classmate was lodged in the guest house, while Knecht himself was assigned a small cell in the Magister’s apartment. He had barely unpacked his knapsack and washed when his host came in. The venerable man shook hands with the boy, sat down with a small sigh, and for a few minutes closed his eyes, as was his habit when he was very tired. Then, looking up with a friendly smile, he said: “Forgive me; I am not a very good host. You have just come from a long hike and must be tired, and to tell the truth so am I — my day is somewhat overcrowded — but if you are not yet ready for bed, I should like to have an hour with you in my study. You will be staying here two days, and tomorrow both you and your classmate will be dining with me, but unfortunately my time is so limited, and we must somehow manage to save the few hours I need for you. So shall we begin right away?”
He led Knecht into a large vaulted cell empty of furniture but for an old piano and two chairs. They sat down in the chairs.
“You will soon be entering another stage,” the Master said. “There you will learn all sorts of new things, some of them very pleasant. Probably you’ll also begin dabbling in the Glass Bead Game before long. All that is very fine and important, but one thing is more important than anything else: you are going to learn meditation there. Supposedly all the students learn it, but one can’t go checking up on them. I want you to learn it properly and well, just as well as music; then everything else will follow of its own accord. Therefore I’d like to give you the first two or three lessons myself; that was the purpose of my invitation. So today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow let us try to meditate for an hour each day, and moreover on music. You will be given a glass of milk now, so that hunger and thirst do not disturb you; supper will be brought to us later.”
He rapped on the door, and a glass of milk was brought in.
“Drink slowly, slowly,” he admonished. “Take your time, and do not speak.”
Knecht drank his cool milk very slowly. Opposite him, the dear man sat with his eyes closed again. His face looked very old, but friendly; it was full of peace, and he was smiling to himself, as though he had stepped down into his own thoughts like a tired man into a footbath. Tranquility streamed from him; Knecht felt it, and himself grew calmer.
Now the Magister turned on his chair and placed his hands on the piano. He played a theme, and carried it forward with variations; it seemed to be a piece by some Italian master. He instructed his guest to imagine the progress of the music as a dance, a continuous series of balancing exercises, a succession of smaller or larger steps from the middle of an axis of symmetry, and to focus his mind entirely on the figure which these steps formed. He played the bars once more, silently reflected on them, played them again, then sat quite still, hands on his knees, eyes half closed, without the slightest movement, repeating and contemplating the music within himself. His pupil, too, listened within himself, saw fragments of lines of notes before him, saw something moving, something stepping, dancing, and hovering, and tried to perceive and read the movement as if it were the curves in the line of a bird’s flight. The pattern grew confused and he lost it; he had to begin over again; for a moment his concentration left him and he was in a void. He looked around and saw the Master’s still, abstracted face floating palely in the twilight, found his way back again to that mental space he had drifted out of. He heard the music sounding in it again, saw it striding along, saw it inscribing the line of its movement, and followed in his mind the dancing feet of the invisible dancers…
It seemed to him that a long time had passed before he glided out of that space once more, again became aware of the chair he sat on, the mat-covered stone floor, the dimmer dusk outside the windows. He felt someone regarding him, looked up and into the eyes of the Music Master, who was attentively studying him. The Master gave him an almost imperceptible nod, with one finger played
“Stay on,” he said. “I shall be back. Try once again to track down the music; pay attention to the figure. But don’t force yourself; it’s only a game. If you should fall asleep over it, there’s no harm.”
He left; there was still a task awaiting him, left over from the overcrowded day. It was no easy and pleasant task, none that he would have wished for. One of the students in the conducting course was a gifted but vain and overbearing person. The Music Master would have to speak to him now, curbing his bad habits, showing him his faults, all this with an even balance of solicitude and superiority, love and authority. He sighed. What a pity that no arrangements were ever final, that recognized errors were never eliminated for good, that again and again the selfsame failings had to be combated, the selfsame weeds plucked out. Talent without character, virtuosity without values, had dominated musical life in the Age of the Feuilleton, had been extirpated during the musical Renaissance — and here was that same spirit again, making vigorous growth.
When he returned from his errand to have supper with Joseph, he found the boy sitting still, but contented and no longer tired in the least. “It was beautiful,” Joseph said dreamily. “While it was going on, the music vanished completely; it changed.”
“Let it reverberate inside you,” the Master said, leading him into a small chamber where a table was set with bread and fruit. They ate, and the Master invited him to sit in on the conducting course for a while in the morning. Just before showing his guest to his cell and retiring for the night, he said: “During your meditation you saw something; the music appeared to you as a figure. If you feel so minded, try to copy it down.”
In the guest cell Knecht found pencils and paper on the table, and before he went to bed he tried to draw the figure which the music had assumed for him. He drew a line, and moving diagonally off from the line at rhythmic intervals short tributary lines. It looked something like the arrangement of leaves on the twig of a tree. What he had produced did not satisfy him, but he felt impelled to try it again and yet again. At last he playfully curved the line into a circle from which the tributary lines radiated, like flowers in a garland. Then he went to bed and fell asleep quickly. He dreamed that he was once again on that height above the woods, where he had rested with his classmate, and saw dear Eschholz spread out below him. And as he looked down, the quadrangle of the school building contracted into an oval and then spread out to a circle, a garland, and the garland began turning slowly; it turned with increasing speed, until at last it was whirling madly and burst, flying apart into twinkling stars.
He had forgotten this dream by the time he awoke. But later, during a morning walk, the Master asked him whether he had dreamt, and it seemed to him that he must have had an unpleasant experience in his dreams. He thought, recovered the dream, told it, and was astonished at how innocuous it sounded. The Master listened closely.
“Should we be mindful of dreams?” Joseph asked. “Can we interpret them?”
The Master looked into his eyes and said tersely: “We should be mindful of everything, for we can interpret everything.”
After they had walked on a bit, he asked paternally: “Which school would you most like to enter?”
Joseph flushed. He murmured quickly: “Waldzell, I think!”
The Master nodded. “I thought so. Of course you know the old saying: ‘
Still blushing, Joseph completed the saying familiar to every student: “
The old man gave him a warm look. “Probably that is your path, Joseph. As you well know, there are some who do not think well of the Glass Bead Game. They say it is a substitute for the arts, and that the players are mere popularizers; that they can no longer be regarded as truly devoted to the things of the mind, but are merely artistic dilettantes given to improvisation and feckless fancy. You will see how much or how little truth there is in that. Perhaps you yourself have notions about the Glass Bead Game, expecting more of it than it will give you, or perhaps the reverse. There is no doubt that the Game has its dangers. For that very reason we love it; only the weak are sent out on paths without perils. But never forget what I have told you so often: our mission is to recognize contraries for what they are: first of all as contraries, but then as opposite poles of a unity. Such is the nature of the
