read The Glass Bead Game

I still have the last of the three lives to read which I should do tonight. I don’t know why this has taken me so long to read as I got off to a good start with it, and Hesse (or the translation anyway) is easy to read. Perhaps it was Castalia. And never really understanding what the Glass Bead Game was. I certainly enjoyed Narziss and Goldmund, when I reread it earlier this year, over this book (for which HH won the Nobel Prize, can that be right?)

And really I’m not a very worldy person, so it surprised me to be on Knecht’s side when he made his decision to quit Castalia. He didn’t get very far once he’d left and that surprised me as well.

I enjoyed the three lives more (with one left to read of course). How typical were Knecht’s three lives to what other Castalians wrote, I wonder.

It was odd to think of them having cars, and of Knecht driving himself to visit the Grand Master (or whatever he was) to hand in his resignation. The novel has this whole timeless feel to it, so the mention of cars (even in the 23rd century) felt like an anachronism.

This book made me consider my own values, my mortality, and the way I’ve attempted to lead my life.

The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. The grace of a minuet by Handel, or Couperin, the sensuality sublimated into delicate gesture to be found in many Italian composers or in Mozart, the tranquil, composed readiness for death in Bach – always there may be heard in these works a defiance, a death-defying intrepidity, a gallantry, and a note of superhuman laughter, of immortal gay serenity. Let that same note also sound in our Glass Bead Games, and in our whole lives, acts, and sufferings.

The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse