Hermann Hesse “The Glass Bead Game. Castalia: rules of the Glass Bead Game Analysis of the Glass Beads

Hermann Hesse. It was published in 1943 by a Zurich publishing house. And in 1946, Hesse received the Nobel Prize in Literature, possibly thanks to the book “The Glass Bead Game.” The summary of the work is as follows: the action takes place in the future, the narration is told on behalf of a fictional scientist-historian who is working on the biography of the main character of the novel - the Game Master Joseph Knecht.

Game Master is a title given to the main character, who teaches specially selected, talented, elite descendants of European society in an educational institution specially designated for this purpose, located in the province of the fictional country of Castalia. The name of the country clearly echoes the word “caste”, which is the teachers and students of the school. The main subject of this educational institution is the glass bead game, which involves a mixture of science and art.

By and large, Hesse’s fictitious Castalia echoes many other works, the authors of which were carried away by thoughts of utopia. But Hesse brings under his myth the idea of ​​the spiritual and intellectual end of European thought, in a sense, the “twilight of the gods.” And we accept the creation of Castalia as a necessity.

Hesse describes the spiritual catastrophe that befell industrial Europe, in which all spiritual and creative life ceased. And vital issues, such as economics and politics, began to be judged by people incompetent in these matters.

Lots of different people remember The Glass Bead Game. Reviews from readers tell us that Hesse's novel is a not-so-subtle hint to the modern elite that they are engaged in all sorts of nonsense that will lead society to collapse.

So, “The Glass Bead Game.” The summary of the novel is as follows: the main character Joseph Knecht, having begun his studies at a Castalian school, acquires a friend named Plinio Designori, with whom they have long polemical conversations. In these disputes, Designori tries to convince Knecht that he considers attempts to preserve science, culture and art, as well as the system of educating the elite in closed educational institutions of Castalia, unviable.

The names of the main characters speak for themselves: “Knecht” - servant, “Designori” - senior. It is likely that they were not chosen by Hesse by chance, since he considers the position defended by Designori to be correct. Designori leaves Castalia to live a “real life” in the “real world.”

Knecht, having successfully completed his studies, was called upon to lead the school of Castalia. One day he decides to start teaching with his friend’s son, comes to him and, after staying for a short time, dies, leaving us with a collection of poems and stories of his own composition.

The question that Hesse asks throughout the narrative can be formulated as follows: “Is not all science and art, all the spiritual daring of mankind a simple game of glass?”

In the novel, Hesse asks the question of what will happen to art in a bourgeois society that is deeply hostile to any creativity? The death of the main character shows us, people like Knecht, that there is no place among ordinary individuals.

IN I first read Hesse’s novel in the winter of 1973 at the fire station of the Riga bus plant, lying on a sanitary stretcher an inch from the cement floor of an unheated garage. It was minus ten outside, no more inside. The plywood walls protected from the wind, but not the frost, so I lay in a tied earflap, grandma’s mittens and tarpaulin boots without foot wraps, which I never learned how to wrap. But it was fresh and quiet here. Colleagues drank behind the wall, in a hot heated closet with trestle beds and dominoes, but I did not envy them, but myself, because it seemed to me that I had found happiness, and this, you see, does not happen to everyone, especially at 20 years old. Since then, my favorite book has become The Glass Bead Game. From it I learned about beautiful Castalia, where scholars worshiped knowledge and played with it in an austere and spacious monastery.

“Actually,” I consoled my libido, which was aroused, “Hesse’s monks are not such monks, they are just not of this world, for they nurture their spirit in whatever way comes to their mind.”

Living in a hopeless country, I could not imagine a more beautiful ideal. The contemplative life promised freedom of choice: I dreamed of reading only what I wanted. My future became completely clear on page 247:

“It was a life full of passion and work, but free from compulsion, free from ambition and full of music.”

There was still a quarter of a century before music, the authorities sorted out their ambition by welding all the hatches leading up, and the rest was decided by arithmetic. In the fire department I was paid 62 rubles 40 kopecks. An excellent student scholarship added another 40 rubles. It turned out to be approximately what everyone received. I had pants, almost a coat too. By my third year, I hitchhiked around the western part of the USSR, knew how to dine on eggplant caviar, drink whatever flowed, and even managed to marry a classmate who did not interfere with my dream.

“I’ll finish the philology department,” I bent my fingers, “and immediately move on to history, then philosophy, then art history.” Enough for 15 years, but I didn’t think beyond that. I was blinded by the prospect: vitacontemplativa, replacing labor study. For the sake of this, I was ready to endure Vaclav Meirans, who had not dried out since he was expelled from the KGB, although he stole sandwiches, dried himself with my towel and urinated in the boots of his comrades.

Reality, however, ruined the carefully planned future. The plant burned down (without the help of firefighters), and I left for America, where not a day goes by without me remembering the fire that became the example of my Castalia.

2

IN I was only interested in The Glass Bead Game, and every year I re-read the book to refresh my memory of its rules.

In fairness, it must be admitted that the author was more interested in the polar characteristics of the personality. Jung’s analytical psychology was supposed to harmonize, but I was disappointed in it because of the head of the Moscow Jungians, who decided to get to know me. At the table, he never stopped talking about his achievements. He became interested in mine only for dessert.

— Do you have a straight-through fireplace? he asked, and I still don’t know how to answer.

Hesse was luckier. Dr. Jung cured him of his misanthropy, and he wrote a utopia, published at the height of the war, when even his neutral Switzerland mobilized half a million soldiers to guard the borders. The pathos of the Nobel Prize-winning book is that only the Glass Bead Game can save humanity from itself. However, before you agree with this seductive thesis, you need to understand what it actually is.

First of all, no matter how we translate the German name “DasGlasperlenspiel”, it will remain “Spiel” - a game, and therefore not work, not duty, not politics, not religion, and still not art. Or rather, everything taken together, but only to the extent that this would be true for the Olympic Games. This parallel suggests itself. After all, if sport provides benefits, it is indirectly. The Olympic Games, say, improve the human race, but only among Olympians, who rarely create dynasties.

Castalians, however, are athletes not of body, but of spirit. They are knights of knowledge, which does not make them scientists. The game differs from science in that, on the one hand, it does not go deep to the atomic level, where everything is the same, and on the other hand, it does not generalize to a theory, which, as happened with the Maelström of Marxism, sucks all living things into the funnel. The glass bead game is played at the human level of generalization, allowing the symbol to remain a thing, the idea to retain its originality, the chains to remain visual.

The glass bead game, Hesse writes in the introduction, reminds “an organ whose keys and pedals span the entire spiritual cosmos.” By playing it, the Castalians could “to reproduce all the spiritual content of the world.”

Each party, as the author gives a quite technical definition, was “the successive connection, grouping and opposition of concentrated ideas from many mental and aesthetic spheres.”

The essence of the Game is in its elements, in these very "concentrated ideas". I see them as evaporated hieroglyphs of culture, understandable "to all people of spirit." They serve the game as notes do for musicians, but this letter is much more complex and richer. The signs of the Game are the seeds of culture, what it began with and what it ended with. Goethe, one of the idols of Castalia, bequeathed to grind the grain selected for sowing into the bread of books. The Igrets, as Hesse calls them, make beautiful and meaningful patterns out of it, subordinated to the proposed theme. One can, say, imagine a party developing the motif of foolishness through centuries and cultures - from the Greek Cynics, Zen teachers and Hasidic tzaddikim to Ivan the Terrible, Khlebnikov, Zhirinovsky and the girls from PussyRiot, who expelled Putin from the fashionable temple.

But here, Hesse warns, there is a great danger of falling into heresy, the worst manifestations of which are crossword puzzles and feuilletons. The former replace erudition with mnemonics, the latter profane knowledge, offering newspapers opuses like "The favorite dish of the composer Rossini."(Of course, I know that it was beef tenderloin with foie gras and bone marrow, which is still called “Rossini tornado” on the menus of expensive restaurants.) So as not to replace the Game “quick recollection of timeless values ​​and flight through the realms of the Spirit”,each move of the game was accompanied by a long pause, during which “magical penetration into distant times and states of culture”.

To squeeze the spirit into the body, Hesse proposed (and practiced) a special meditation. Not the one that directly connects us to the cosmos, bypassing consciousness, but a kind of mental effort that leads us deeper into what we contemplate and connects us with it. Apparently, this is how Hegel understood the path of the philosopher he had paved: having merged in an act of deep knowledge with the Absolute, he, Hegel, himself became it.

The glass bead game, however, is smaller and more rigorous. She seeks the specific and different, not the universal and united. The game is not a religion, although it also changes life. Play is not a philosophy, although all its schools recognize it. The game is not a revelation, although it considers itself the only way out. She is a Game, and I guess its purpose when, having read until I am stupefied, I try to turn off today in myself in order to get into yesterday - and smell it, including with my nose. Sometimes I really smell the smells of a foreign culture, which, of course, makes it my own.

3

H what is the Glass Bead Game? Even after studying its rules, it is difficult to understand how to fit the endless chaos of culture into a closed and observable form. It is clear that the path followed by the encyclopedia, this intellectual version of Robinson, always trying to list the world and never keeping up with it, is not suitable for this. Another thing, I thought, is an intellectual novel that allows you to capture the spirit of the times and play it on the stage of an epic canvas.

After parting with Hans and Grete, Thomas Mann and Robert Musil tried to close the world by recreating its central ideas. The first distributed them to the characters, like masks in a commedia dell'arte, the second hung ideas on the walls of the plot, like trellises in a castle. (In Dostoevsky, ideas rape the heroes, in Tolstoy they are presented separately, in Chekhov they are not at all, for which in the West they love him more than all Russians.) For the Glass Bead Game, however, such novels are too long.

The game operates with abbreviations, and this is the task of poetry. Not every kind, and not even the best one, but the one that, out of helplessness, is called philosophical and uses the knotty writing of an overripe - Alexandrian - culture. Such poems are an intellectual novel folded into a rebus, the final record of a dead culture, which was raised to its feet by a poet who can best be called Mandelstam.

In four, laconic, like Morse code, lines, he could contain the entire “magical” culture of the West described by Spengler:

Here the parishioners are children of the dust
And boards instead of images,
Where the chalk is - Sebastian Bach
Only numbers appear in the psalms.

Or return Venice from tourist Canaletto to crystalline Carpaccio:

Your clothes, Venice, are heavy,
There are mirrors in cypress frames.
Your air is cut. The mountains are melting in the bedroom
Blue decrepit glass...

Or play tennis, turning the agony into a dance:

He creates ritual games,
So lightly armed
Like an Attic soldier
In love with his enemy.

What makes these games priceless is the gift of instantaneous, heart-attack-like choice of words: one indisputable adjective encapsulates an entire historiosophy. Mandelstam, omitting links that were obvious to him, wrote in disputes of meaning and called the hatched lines “wild meat” of poetry. His poems are a garland of acorns, each of which is an embryo with entelechy, a “self-growing logos,” as another master of the Game, Venichka Erofeev, said, grimacing.

Such poems are not even flowers, but the pollen of culture, but collecting it is the fate of a genius. Meanwhile, the Glass Bead Game requires a lot, but it is accessible. In addition, the Castalians, writes Hesse, profess "complete refusal to create works of art". Novels and poems need a creator, Games need a performer. Grandmasters don't invent chess, they play it. And this means that the players do not create culture, but perform it. And it seems that I know how, because I have been playing with beads since childhood.

It seems to me that I always knew what Hesse was hiding under the Glass Bead Game, but only now has progress finally convinced me of it.

“Man,” said Berdyaev, “conquered nature in order to become a slave to the machine.”

“Only a person who reads can free himself from it,” we will add, noticing how our intellectual muscles are weakening.

Every day we give the computer everything we are willing to do without: writing and counting, facts and figures, forecasting and advice. And with each retreat, it becomes more and more important to find, identify and protect what a computer cannot replace. He can be taught to write, but not to read - just as the Castalians can, for the Glass Bead Game is reading.

Every reader is a palimpsest, retaining traces of everything he read. A skilled reader does not store, but uses. But only a master masters the art of stringing. His goal is not a mechanical centon, but an organic fusion of what is taken. He reads not by plots and heroes, but by eras and cultures, and sees behind the author his school, enemies and neighbors. Loading someone else's text with his own associations, he pulls the book into a new party. By joining the world of what she read, she changes its meaning and composition. The glass bead game is like tennis, but with a library that ricochets back to the reader's challenge. The success of the game depends on how long we can last it without leaving the field and without reducing the force of the blow.

The best games are played in a mind so rich in internal connections that it no longer needs external reality: Borges did not go blind by accident.

The glass bead game is indeed dangerous. I have seen where it leads the Pharisees, scribes and illegal Marxists. Once carried away, it is easy to accept spiritual reality as the only one. It is dangerous not to distinguish the reality in which we live from the one in which we think. Realizing this, the hero Hesse left Castalia for the world, but I would have stayed. Play is creativity for yourself, at least for me.

The action takes place in the distant future. The infallible Master of the Game and hero of Castalia, Joseph Knecht, having reached the limits of formal and substantive perfection in the game of the spirit, feels dissatisfaction and then disappointment and leaves Castalia for the harsh world beyond its borders in order to serve a specific and imperfect person. The Castalian Order, of which the hero is the Master, is a society of guardians of truth. Members of the Order renounce family, property, and participation in politics, so that no selfish interests can influence the process of the mysterious “game of glass beads” to which they indulge - “a game with all the meanings and values ​​of culture” as an expression of truth. Members of the Order live in Castalia, an amazing country over which time has no power. The name of the country comes from the mythical Castalian spring on Mount Parnassus, near the waters of which the god Apollo dances with nine muses, personifying the arts.

The novel is written on behalf of a Castalian historian from the distant future and consists of three unequal parts: an introductory treatise on the history of Castalia and the glass bead game, a biography of the main character and the works of Knecht himself - poems and three biographies. The background of Castalia is presented as a sharp critique of 20th century society. and its degenerating culture. This culture is characterized as "feuilletonistic" (from the German meaning of the word "feuilleton", which means "newspaper article of an entertaining nature"). Its essence is newspaper reading - “feuilletons” as a particularly popular type of publication, produced by the millions. They do not contain deep thoughts or attempts to understand complex problems; on the contrary, their content consists of “entertaining nonsense”, which is in incredible demand. The authors of such tinsel were not only newspaper clickers, there were among them poets and often professors of higher educational institutions with a famous name - the more famous the name and the stupider the topic, the greater the demand. The favorite material for such articles were anecdotes from the lives of famous people under headings like: “Friedrich Nietzsche and ladies’ fashions in the seventies of the nineteenth century,” “Favorite dishes of the composer Rossini,” or “The role of lap dogs in the lives of famous courtesans.” Sometimes a famous chemist or pianist was asked about certain political events, and a popular actor or ballerina was asked about the advantages or disadvantages of a single lifestyle or the cause of financial crises. At the same time, the smartest of the feuilletonists themselves made fun of their work, permeated with the spirit of irony.

Most uninitiated readers took everything at face value. Others, after hard work, spent their leisure time guessing crossword puzzles, bending over squares and crosses from empty cells. However, the chronicler admits that those who played these children's riddle games or read feuilletons cannot be called naive people, carried away by meaningless childishness. They lived in constant fear amid political and economic turmoil, and they had a strong need to close their eyes and escape reality into the harmless world of cheap sensationalism and childish riddles, for “the church did not give them consolation and spirit of advice.” People who endlessly read feuilletons, listened to reports and solved crossword puzzles did not have the time and energy to overcome fear, understand problems, understand what was happening around them, and get rid of the “feuilleton” hypnosis; they lived “convulsively and did not believe in the future " The historian of Castalia, behind whom the author stands, comes to the conclusion that such a civilization has exhausted itself and is on the verge of collapse.

In this situation, when many thinking people were confused, the best representatives of the intellectual elite united to preserve the traditions of spirituality and created a state within a state - Castalia, where a select few indulge in the glass bead game. Castalia becomes a kind of abode of contemplative spirituality, existing with the consent of a technocratic society permeated with the spirit of profit and consumerism. Bead game competitions are broadcast on the radio throughout the country, but in Castalia itself, whose landscapes are reminiscent of Southern Germany, time has stood still - people ride horses there. Its main purpose is pedagogical: the education of intellectuals free from the spirit of opportunism and bourgeois practicality. In a certain sense, Castalia is a contrast to Plato's state, where power belongs to the scientists who rule the world. In Castalia, on the contrary, scientists and philosophers are free and independent of any power, but this is achieved at the cost of separation from reality. Castalia does not have strong roots in life, and therefore its fate is too dependent on those who have real power in society - on generals who may consider that the abode of wisdom is an unnecessary luxury for a country preparing, for example, for war.

The Castalians belong to the Order of Servants of the Spirit and are completely divorced from the practice of life. The Order is built on the medieval principle - twelve Masters, Supreme, Educational and other Collegiums. To replenish their ranks, Castalians throughout the country select talented boys and teach them in their schools, developing their abilities in music, philosophy, mathematics, teaching them to reflect and enjoy the games of the spirit. Then the young men go to universities, and then devote themselves to the arts and sciences, teaching, or the glass bead game. The bead game, or glass bead game, is a kind of synthesis of religion, philosophy and art. Once upon a time, a certain Perrault from the city of Calva used a device he invented with glass beads in his music classes. Then it was improved - a unique language was created, based on various combinations of beads, with the help of which you can endlessly compare different meanings and categories. These activities are fruitless, their result is not the creation of something new, only the variation and reinterpretation of known combinations and motifs in order to achieve harmony, balance and perfection.

Around 2200, Joseph Knecht became Master, having followed the entire path taken by the Castalians. His name means "servant" and he is ready to serve truth and harmony in Castalia. However, the hero only temporarily finds harmony in the game of glass beads, for he increasingly senses the contradictions of Castalian reality and intuitively tries to avoid Castalian limitations. He is far from scientists like Tegularius - a solitary genius, isolated from the world in his fascination with sophistication and formal virtuosity. A stay outside Castalia in the Benedictine monastery of Mariafels and a meeting with Father Jacob have a great influence on Knecht. He thinks about the paths of history, about the relationship between the history of the state and the history of culture and understands what the true place of Castalia is in the real world: while the Castalians play their games, the society from which they are moving further and further may consider Castalia a useless luxury. The task, Knecht believes, is to educate young people not behind the walls of libraries, but in the “world” with its harsh laws. He leaves Castalia and becomes the tutor of his friend's son Designori. Swimming with him in a mountain lake, the hero dies in icy water - so says the legend, as stated by the chronicler leading the story. It is not known whether Knecht would have achieved success on his path, one thing is clear - you cannot hide from life in the world of ideas and books.

The same idea is confirmed by three biographies that conclude the book and provide the key to understanding the work. The hero of the first, the Servant, the bearer of the spirituality of a primitive tribe in the midst of obscurantism, does not humble himself and sacrifices himself so that the spark of truth does not go out. The second, the early Christian hermit Joseph Famulus (Latin for “servant”), becomes disillusioned with his role as a comforter of sinners, but, having met an older confessor, still continues to serve with him. The third hero, Dasa (“servant”), does not sacrifice himself and does not continue serving, but runs into the forest to the old yogi, that is, he goes to his Castalia. It was precisely this path that Hesse’s hero Joseph Knecht found the strength to abandon, although it cost him his life.

The Glass Bead Game is a novel by Hermann Hesse. Completed in 1943. The novel “The Glass Bead Game,” which we will analyze, contains a description of the “republic of the spirit” - Castalia, where in his youth the hero of the book, Joseph Knecht, was taken as a student, eventually becoming the supreme master of this community. Combining the features of a “novel of education” (Knecht’s biography), philosophical prose, where the movement of characters is subordinated to the development of ideas, and utopia (created in the twenty-second century after the catastrophes experienced by humanity, Castalia is conceived by its founders as an outline and repository of a culture that has disappeared from everyday relations people outside this corner of the earth), “The Glass Bead Game” can also be read as a transparent contrasting parallel to the events that took place in the world of the 1930s and 1940s.

Knecht and his antagonist Plinio Designore conduct a debate throughout the novel about the highest values ​​and the meaning of human existence, sometimes sharp enough to add intriguing interest and tension to an almost eventless story. However, while remaining adversaries, these main characters do not enter into a conflict that could be called irreconcilable. In the opinion of Hesse, who from his youth was fascinated by the philosophical concepts of ancient India and China, being is not a contrast, but a unity of opposite principles - a concept consistently implemented on the pages of The Glass Bead Game, which contains special comments not directly related to action, which explain the most important concepts (Tao, yin-yang, etc.), drawn from the books of eastern sages and the works of sinologists.

The coexistence and interaction of opposites determines both the arrangement of characters and the development of the most important conflicts of the novel. Castalia itself is shown in a dual light, turning out to be both a stronghold of true spirituality and the guardian of those cultural layers that do not acquire truly significant significance “within the structure of the people, the world, world history,” since the values ​​​​protected in the citadel were definitely not involved in this history. The discussion between Knecht and Designori, concerning primarily the purpose of Castalia, as well as the justification of its very existence, is read under the sign of the validity of both of these positions: outwardly incompatible, they appear as complementary to each other and practically equally expressing the author’s view.

The composition of the novel “The Glass Bead Game” by Hesse is intended to embody the multiplicity of acceptable readings and possible interpretations of the content of the main conflicts. The publisher's extensive preface, which provides the most essential information about the meaning of the ritual known as the glass bead game, is followed by several biographies of Knecht and his poems. Among the three versions of his possible fate, which were invented by Knecht himself, the “Indian” one stands out, where the hero, like Master Castalia, also leaves the world, settling in the forest with a yogi, but, unlike Knecht, carefully guards his hermitage, which becomes a declaration of complete rejection vain and aimless worldly life, which is devoid of a moral guideline, and thereby justification. In contrast to Knecht, who was burdened by that pure contemplation that is recognized as law and norm by the inhabitants of Castalia, the hero of the “Indian” version of Das chooses absolute passivity, becoming the personification of the Eastern worldview, opposite to the active European spirit. For Hesse, neither Knecht nor Das, who make fundamentally different choices, can, however, claim to possess the ultimate truth. Absolute truth is understood by the writer as a chimera, and Knecht, completing his journey, formulates a very important idea for the writer that what is important is not truths, which in the end most often appear one-sided or illusory, but the ability to “endure reality” while maintaining human dignity.

This ethical imperative prompts Knecht to leave the world when he hears the secret call of his student, and plunges forever into the icy waters of a mountain lake. The meaning of the epilogue of “The Glass Bead Game” was deciphered as the hero’s dissolution in the natural elements, which always has an irresistible attraction against the backdrop of sophisticated but dispassionate reasoning, or as the acquisition of nirvana, or as a sacrificial death, predetermined by the hero’s very decision to come out to people from his Castalian isolation. The ending is open to a variety of interpretations, as required by the polyphonic principle of constructing the novel, in this respect akin to the art of Dostoevsky, which attracted Hesse from a young age (an article about “The Idiot,” written in 1920, is crowned with a conclusion about Myshkin’s inherent “magical thinking”, that is, the ability to “feel the interchangeability of spirit and nature, spirit and freedom, good and evil” - a gift that Knecht was generously endowed with).

The most important stimulus that determines the nature of the hero’s decisions in situations that are fateful for him is not peace, which gives enlightenment, but eternal spiritual anxiety, emphasized in Hesse’s texts, which serve as an auto-commentary to his novel. Objecting to those who reduced the meaning of the story told on the pages of “The Glass Bead Game” to the preaching of stoicism, the Taoist “principle of non-action” and departure from an irreparably degraded world, Hesse more than once pointed out that he introduced too much European into the Eastern understanding of life, although it and indeed it always retained great attraction for him.

The idea of ​​service remains dominant in Knecht's mind, regardless of the circumstances in which he finds himself. The noble, although in many ways naive attempt to build an impeccably harmonious world, when reality is in the grip of tragic chaos, was not only a subjective spiritual need for Knecht, but expressed his desire to create a bastion of culture and intellectual purity, recalling that the highest meanings of human existence, like and the highest moral criteria predetermined by them are preserved at all times.

The distant future is unfolding before us. Master of the Game and hero of Castalia Joseph Knecht achieved maximum formal and substantive perfection in the game of the spirit. He has nowhere else to strive, and only dissatisfaction lies ahead. Soon disappointment is added to this, and he leaves Castalia for the cruel outside world to serve one specific and far from ideal person. He is a Master of the Castalian Order. This is the name of a society whose members protect the truth. They give up family, property, politics,

Money, so that nothing could tempt them to be distracted from the mysterious “bead game” in which they are engaged. It is “a play with all the meanings and values ​​of culture,” an expression of truth. All members of this Order live in Castalia. There is no time in this amazing country.

The name comes from the mythical Castalian key, which is located on Mount Parnassus. This mountain is surrounded by water, in which the god Apollo and the nine muses dance in circles. Each muse represents one type of art. The story is told from the perspective of a Castalian historian who lives in the distant future. The novel consists of three parts that differ from each other

By volume. The first part is an introductory treatise telling about the history of Castalia and the essence of the glass bead game. The second part is about describing the life of the main character. The third part includes works by Knecht himself; These are poems and three biographies.

The prehistory of Castalia sharply criticizes the society of the 20th century and its culture, which has already completely degenerated. This culture is called “feuilletonistic,” and translated from German means “newspaper article of an entertaining nature.” These “feuilletons” are an extremely popular type of publication in modern times. They are printed in the millions and are second-rate reading material. Such newspapers do not give rise to deep thoughts, do not try to understand some problems that are complex, on the contrary - they consist entirely of “entertaining nonsense”, which is what society needs. The authors of such articles were not only newspaper reporters, but also respected poets and professors from higher educational institutions. The more famous the author was and the stupider the article he wrote, the higher the demand rose.

The main material for such newspapers were anecdotes about the lives of celebrities. Their headings were approximately the following: “Friedrich Nietzsche and ladies’ fashions in the seventies of the nineteenth century”, “Favorite dishes of the composer Rossini”, “The role of lap dogs in the life of famous courtesans”. Sometimes, in order to create an article, celebrities were interviewed about certain political events or about the advantages and disadvantages of the premarital period. But the feuilletonists themselves did not take their work seriously; the atmosphere was saturated with irony. However, most narrow-minded readers had no idea how exactly such newspapers were written and believed everything that was written in them. Others stayed up after a hard day at work doing crossword puzzles. However, later the chronicler admits that all these readers cannot be called those who waste time on meaningless childishness.

They were constantly afraid of economic and political instability, and they needed to relax and immerse themselves in the world of cheap popular articles, children's crosswords and riddles. The church could not help them - it did not give them consolation. When people read feuilletons almost non-stop, they did not have the strength to find out the reasons for their fear and get rid of it. Therefore, they lived “convulsively and did not believe in the future.” The historian of Castalia (essentially Hesse himself) is convinced that such a civilization is no longer viable and will soon collapse itself. A situation arose that all thinking people and intellectuals united to preserve the traditions of spirituality. They created a new state within the already existing one - Castalia. Only a select few lived in it, and they were given the opportunity to play with glass beads. Castalia becomes partly a citadel of contemplation and spirituality. All this was allowed to exist by a technocratic society, saturated with profit and consumerism. The whole world watches the bead game competition.

The action and results of this game were broadcast on the radio everywhere except Castalia itself, where people still ride horses - time has stood still in this state. The main purpose of Castali is edifying: intellectuals were educated here, so that the brain was not clogged with the current situation and bourgeois thinking. Castlia is a kind of antipode to Plato's state, which was ruled by scientists. In Castalia, scientists, philosophers and thinkers are free from any oppressive law or power, but this can only be achieved by breaking away from reality. Castalia has not taken root in life itself, and is heavily dependent on those who have real power in the real world. Generals, for example, may decide that Castalia is an unnecessary luxury, or that it is preparing to declare war.

All Castalians serve the spirit and do not practice life skills. A medieval hierarchy reigns here - twelve Masters, the Supreme, Educational and other Collegies. The Castalians take into their ranks boys with special talent from anywhere in the country. Then they themselves teach them in schools, find out their inclinations, abilities and develop them in music, philosophy, and mathematics. At the same time, boys learn to reflect and enjoy the play of the spirit. Then the boys, who by this time have already become young men, enter universities, and after graduation they study science, the arts, pedagogy, or the glass bead game. The glass bead game is a combination of religion, philosophy and art. This has been going on since a certain Perrault, teaching music in the city of Calva, came up with a device with glass beads for his classes. After its improvement, a new language, unlike any other, appeared. It was created using different combinations of beads. With the help of these beads it was possible to compare different meanings and categories. These activities are meaningless, and are aimed not at creating something new, but at achieving harmonious improvement by reinterpreting previously created combinations and motifs.

In 2200, a new Master appears, Joseph Knecht, who also went all the way to becoming a Castalian. The name “Joseph” translates as “servant”, and he is truly ready to serve Castalia in the name of truth and harmony. It is increasingly difficult for the hero to find harmony in the game of glass beads, as he feels and understands more and more clearly all the contradictions that permeate the state. He intuitively runs away from this limitation. He is not like scientists like Tegularius, that genius hermit who became so carried away by sophistication and formal virtuosity that he completely renounced the world.

Finding himself outside Castalia in the Benedictine monastery of Mariafels and meeting Father Jacob there, Knecht is inspired: he begins to think about history in general and its relationship to the state, reflects on the history of the formation of culture and finally realizes what Castalia is for the real world. While the residents there play their bead game, they are increasingly moving away from the real world and are already on the threshold of the moment when the world recognizes them as an unnecessary luxury. The task according to Knecht is that the younger generation should not be brought up in libraries, protected by walls, but in a world ruled by harsh laws.

So he finally leaves Castalia and becomes a mentor to the son of his friend Designori. One day, while swimming with a boy in a mountain lake, Knecht’s joints cramp from the cold and he drowns. In any case, this is what the legend says and this is what the chronicler assures the reader. It will never be known whether Knecht became successful in life. There is only one moral - you cannot hide from the world in ideas and books. The same moral is supported by three biographies, which are printed at the end of the book and contain the key to understanding the entire work. The hero of the first part, the Servant, is a vessel of spirituality in a primitive tribe. He does not resign himself to obscurantism and sacrifices himself for the sake of a spark of truth.

The second was the early Christian recluse Joseph Thamulus. He is tired of his role as a consolation and support for sinners, but having met a confessor who is even older than him, he stays with him and they serve together. The third hero, Dasa, does not want to be a victim, does not want to serve, and flees to his own Castalia, namely, he runs away to the old yogi in the forest. It is precisely this proposed path that Hesse’s hero refuses, although it was difficult and in the end he lost his life.

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