So we have before us "The Glass Bead Game" by the brilliant Hermann Hesse. A book you can't read in an evening. A book that can not be "swallowed. A book before reading which must become familiar with the personality of the author. A book, before reading which it is desirable to get acquainted with a dozen or so philosophical treatises. A book for which it is precisely not enough a single reading. The book, which after reading makes the desire to say, twisting the classic: "I realized that I did not understand.
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. His best known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi) which explore an individual's search for spirituality outside society.
No, of course, we can discard all the philosophies of the author, all his allusions, hints, and symbols, and say that "The Bead Game" is a biography of the Master of the Game, Josef Knecht. Indeed, the reader is introduced to him when Josef is only 10 or 12 years old, and then follows the hero through all his stages of growing up, learning, and becoming, until his death. One could also call this book a kind of Utopia, because the ideal world of Castalia, the Pedagogical Province, appears before us, where "the spiritual freedom of the student is infinitely wider than in universities of previous eras, and opportunities for research are much richer, besides, Castalia knows no influence of material conditions, here do not play a role ambition, fear, poverty of parents, concern about earnings and career and the like. All students, whatever their background, have unconditionally equal opportunities; their appointments to the various ranks of the hierarchy are determined solely by data of intellect and character. In contrast, most of the liberties, temptations and dangers that beset young people in secular universities, both in the spirit and in the material realm, do not exist at Castalia.
In my view, this perception of the Bead Game is akin to raking over the surface. It's interesting, but you can't see the depths. Of course, "The Bead Game" is by no means a biography of a certain Master of the Game, otherwise the book would not have such a title. Joseph Knecht is merely a guide to the world of the Game. The true hero is the Game itself. But this hero is ambiguous and very mysterious. You may ask, what is the Bead Game and what is its meaning? Unfortunately, Hesse does not give a concrete answer to this question. Let's turn to the author himself:
"To the reader, who is probably unfamiliar with our Game, we would recommend to imagine such a scheme approximately as a game in chess, but only the values of the pieces themselves, the variants of their mutual relations, as well as the possibilities of their influence on each other should be multiplied mentally many times and each piece, each position, each move should be ascribed a certain symbolic content, which is expressed by this very move, this position, this piece, and so on.
Clearly, it is very difficult to understand, isn't it?
Play is not a field of any particular science, nor is it actually a science. Rather, it is a kind of quintessence of all scientific knowledge in general.
Here is Josef Knecht. A most gifted musician, one of Castalia's best students. At first he sort of shuns the game, almost ignores it. But: "The game is just a formal art, a skill of the mind, a knack for witty combinations, and therefore is it not better to quit playing it and do pure mathematics or good music? But it was then, for the first time, that the inner voice of the Game itself sounded to me, its intimate meaning penetrated my bones, and from that hour I believed: our royal Game is truly a lingua sacra, a sacred and divine language.
And Joseph dedicates himself to the game, he becomes not only the best player, but he is elected Master of the Game. But what happens next? Josef is not like everyone else. He hesitates. He worships the Game and Castalia, but he grows tired of living in this closed, refined world. He ponders and realizes that the Game is just a game, and if tomorrow Castalia is no longer needed in that other world outside the Pedagogical Province, then the mathematician, the musician, and the philologist can find their place among ordinary people. But what of the Game? Outside the scientific Castalia world, no one or almost no one understands the Game. Without Castalia, the Game would fade into oblivion, and with it the Master of the Game. Having come to this conclusion, Josef Knecht decides to resign his powers and leave Castalia in order to become an ordinary teacher and do visible good.
At the end of the book are 3 hagiographies written by Josef Knecht himself, and as the author tells us at the beginning of the book, this is perhaps the most important thing in the book. What are these hagiographies?
"The student was tasked with mentally transporting himself into the environment and culture, the spiritual atmosphere of some historical era, and inventing for himself a life appropriate to that setting."
We have three hagiographies before us--The Rainmaker, The Confessor, and The Indian Hagiography. Why are they so important? Because they characterize very clearly the stages of the formation of Josef Knecht's personality, his faith in the Game, and his renunciation. "The Rainmaker" is about Knecht's young and college years, his desire to absorb as much knowledge as possible, the formation of his faith in the Game. "Confessor" is Knecht in his years as Master of the Game, when he serves his ideals long and faithfully, but begins to realize that Castalia's world has all but crumbled; he not only doubts, he believes there can be no other outcome. "The Indian Life Story" is Knecht's journey of renouncing faith and serving the Game and his attempt to come to himself. There is something about this Game and Knecht's Way of Believing, Doubting, and Denying God, isn't there?
So, what is the Bead Game after all? As I read and pondered, a thought haunted me and I can't help but share it. The Bead Game is what modern "scientists" in the humanities do. Working at a Russian university, all teachers are always subjected to pressure from above: you are required to defend your dissertation, become a PhD, a doctoral candidate, etc. Today it is almost impossible to remain just a good practitioner; you must also become a theorist, a "scientist. But can every theorist be a good practitioner and every practitioner a theorist? I'm sure not. And Hesse agrees with me: "Not every good philologist can be a good teacher. Indeed, that is true. But if the bosses demand it, then we have to do it. And what do we see? A whole galaxy of new "scholars" who do nothing more than play beads! What are beads? Little glass beads. Beautiful, iridescent, sparkling with color. But they're just glass beads. You can put them this or that way, but no matter how you spin them, they do not turn into diamonds. It is the same with the scientific research of contemporary humanities scholars (I am not talking about all of them, but I am talking about the overwhelming majority). They read and re-read each other, quote and rewrite, but are they making scientific discoveries? Are they doing real research? Not only do they not prove their theories with practice, they offer no new theories. What is this but a Bead Game? Every newly minted "scientist" pours glassware on the table, shuffles it around, arranges it with some originality, but it doesn't change the world. And in my opinion, Josef Knecht was right: take away the Glass Bead Game, take away the "masters of the game," it will have no effect on people's lives.
This article was sponsored by Victor Nassar
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