The Glass Bead Game

will not immediately understand it. In Knecht’s day it was a slogan bandied about a good deal. No doubt all periods have seen currents, vogues, struggles, and differing views and approaches among the initiates of the Glass Bead Game. At that time two opposing concepts of the Game called forth controversy and discussion. The foremost players distinguished two principal types of Game, the formal and the psychological. We know that Knecht, like Tegularius — although the latter kept out of the arguments — belonged to the champions of the latter type. Knecht, however, instead of speaking of the “psychological” mode of play usually preferred the word “pedagogical.”

In the formal Game the player sought to compose out of the objective content of every game, out of the mathematical, linguistic, musical, and other elements, as dense, coherent, and formally perfect a unity and harmony as possible. In the psychological Game, on the other hand, the object was to create unity and harmony, cosmic roundedness and perfection, not so much in the choice, arrangement, interweaving, association, and contrast of the contents as in the meditation which followed every stage of the Game. All the stress was placed on this meditation. Such a psychological — or to use Knecht’s word, pedagogical — Game did not display perfection to the outward eye. Rather, it guided the player, by means of its succession of precisely prescribed meditations, toward experiencing perfection and divinity. “The Game as I conceive it,” Knecht once wrote to the former Music Master, “encompasses the player after the completion of meditation as the surface of a sphere encompasses its center, and leaves him with the feeling that he has extracted from the universe of accident and confusion a totally symmetrical and harmonious cosmos, and absorbed it into himself.”

Knecht’s entry, then, was a formally rather than a psychologically constructed Game. Possibly he wanted to prove to his superiors, and to himself as well, that in spite of his elementary course and diplomatic mission in Mariafels, he had lost none of his deftness, elegance, and virtuosity and had not suffered from lack of practice. If so, he succeeded in proving it. Since the final elaboration and clean copy of his Game outline could only be completed in the Waldzell Archives, he entrusted this task to his friend Tegularius, who was himself participating in the competition. Joseph was able to hand his drafts to his friend personally, and to discuss them with him, as well as to go over Tegularius’s own outline; for Fritz was finally able to come to the monastery for three days. Magister Thomas had at last authorized the visit, after Knecht had made two previous requests in vain.

Eager as Tegularius had been to come, and for all the curiosity he, as an insular Castalian, had about life in the monastery, he felt extremely uncomfortable there. Sensitive as he was, he nearly fell ill amid all the alien impressions and among these friendly but simple, healthy, and somewhat rough-hewn people, not one of whom would have had the slightest understanding for his thoughts, cares, and problems. “You live here as if you were on another planet,” he said to his friend, “and I don’t see how you have been able to stand it for three years. I certainly admire you for that. To be sure, your Fathers are polite enough toward me, but I feel rejected and repelled by everything here. Nothing meets me halfway, nothing is natural and easy, nothing can be assimilated without resistance and pain. If I had to live here for two weeks, I would feel as if I were in hell.”

Knecht had a difficult time with him. Moreover, it was disconcerting to witness, for the first time as an onlooker, how alien the two Orders, the two worlds were to one another. He felt, too, that his oversensitive friend with his air of anxious helplessness was not making a good impression among the monks. Nevertheless, they revised their respective Game plans for the competition thoroughly, each critically examining the other’s work. When, after an hour of this Knecht went over to Father Jacobus in the other wing, or to a meal, he had the feeling that he was being suddenly transported from his native country to an entirely different land, with a different soil and air, different climate, and different stars.

After Fritz had departed, Joseph drew out Father Jacobus on his impressions. “I hope,” Jacobus said, “that the majority of Castalians are more like you than your friend. You have shown us an inexperienced, overbred, weakly, and nevertheless, I am afraid, arrogant kind of person. I shall go on taking you as more representative; otherwise I should certainly be unjust to your kind. For this unfortunate, sensitive, overintelligent, fidgety person could spoil one’s respect for your whole Province.”

“Well,” Knecht replied, “I imagine that in the course of the centuries you noble Benedictines have now and then had sickly, physically feeble, but for that very reason mentally sound and able men, such as my friend. I suppose it was imprudent of me to have invited him here, where everyone has a sharp eye for his weaknesses but no sense of his great virtues. He has done me a great kindness by coming.” And he explained to Father Jacobus about his joining in the competition. The Benedictine was pleased with Knecht for defending his friend. “Well answered,” he said with a friendly laugh. “But it strikes me that all of your friends are difficult to get along with.”

He enjoyed Knecht’s bewilderment and astonished expression for a moment, then added casually: “This time I am referring to someone outside Castalia. Have you heard anything new about your friend Plinio Designori?”

Joseph’s astonishment increased; stunned, he asked for an explanation.

It seemed that Designori had written a political polemic professing violently anticlerical views, and incidentally strongly attacking Father Jacobus. Through friends in the Catholic press, Jacobus had obtained information on Designori, and in this way had learned of Plinio’s schooldays in Castalia and his relationship to Knecht.

Joseph asked to borrow Plinio’s article; and after he had read it he and Father Jacobus had their first discussion of current politics. A few more, but only a few, followed. “It was strange and almost alarming,” Joseph wrote to Ferromonte, “for me to see the figure of our Plinio — and by-the-by my own — suddenly standing on the stage of the world’s politics. This was something I had never imagined.” As it turned out, Father Jacobus spoke of Plinio’s polemic in rather appreciative terms. At any rate, he showed no sign of having taken offense. He praised Designori’s style, commenting that his training in the elite school showed up clearly; in the run of everyday politics, one had to settle for a far lower level of intelligence, he said.

About this time Ferromonte sent Knecht a copy of the first part of his subsequently famous work entitled The Reception and Absorption of Slavic Folk Music by German Art Music from Joseph Haydn on. In Knecht’s letter of acknowledgment we find, among other things: “You have drawn a cogent conclusion from your studies, which I was privileged to share for a while. The two chapters dealing with Schubert, and especially with the quartets, are among the soundest examples of modern musicology that I have read. Think of me sometimes; I am very far from any such harvest as you have reaped. Although I have reason to be content with my life here — for my mission in Mariafels appears to be meeting with some success — I do occasionally feel that being so far from the Province and the Waldzell circle to which I belong is distinctly oppressive. I am learning a tremendous amount here, but adding neither to my certainties nor my professional skills, only to my problems. I must grant, though, a widening of horizon. However, I now feel much easier about the insecurity, strangeness, despondency, distraitness, self-doubt, and other ills that frequently assailed me during my first two years here. Tegularius was here recently — for only three days, but much as he had looked forward to seeing me and curious though he was about Mariafels, by the second day he could scarcely bear it any longer, so depressed and out of place did he feel. Since a monastery is after all a rather sheltered, peaceful world, and favorable enough to things of the spirit, in no way hike a jail, a barracks, or a factory, I conclude from my experience that people from our dear Province are a good deal more pampered and oversensitive than we realize.”

At about the date of this letter to Carlo, Knecht persuaded Father Jacobus to address a brief letter to the directorate of the Castalian Order acquiescing in the proposed diplomatic step. To this Jacobus added the request that they would permit “the Glass Bead Game player Joseph Knecht, who is universally popular here” and who was kindly giving him a private course de rebus castaliensibus, to remain for a while longer. The Castalian authorities were, of course, glad to oblige. Joseph, who had been thinking that he was still very far from any such “harvest,” received a commendation, signed by the directorate and by Monsieur Dubois, congratulating him on the success of his mission. But what struck him as most important about this honorific document and what gave him the greatest pleasure (he reported it in well-nigh triumphant tones in a note to Fritz) was a short sentence to the effect that the Order had been informed by the Magister Ludi of his desire to return to the Vicus Lusorum, and was disposed to grant this request after completion of his present assignment. Joseph also read this passage aloud to Father Jacobus and now confessed how greatly he had feared possible permanent banishment from Castalia and being sent to Rome. Laughing, Father Jacobus commented: “Yes, my friend, there is something about Orders; one prefers living in their bosom rather than out on the periphery, let alone in exile. You’ve touched the soiled fringes of politics here, but now go right ahead and forget it, for you are not a politician. But do not break your troth with history, even though it may remain forever a secondary subject and a hobby for you. For you had the makings of a historian. And now let us profit by our time together, as long as I have you.”

Joseph Knecht seems to have made little use of his privilege to pay more frequent visits to Waldzell.