Reading - Reflections as a Personal Diary

The reader of this page needs to be aware that the author of this page has no intention to review any books, but is being used as personal thoughts on books he read.

Herman Hesse - The Glass Bead Game

I haven't read many books from Hesse, and after a big gap that I hadn't read any literature books, that was a good comeback to reading classical books. The Glass Bead Game is some type of school or perhaps a closed society that the students/scholars/students/teachers learn how to use it as the ultimate mastery that is being cultivated by spending years of solitude and monastic life. During these years the residents study philosophy, science, maths, arts, and meditate in order to master the game.

The Glass Bead Game isn't something that exists. It isn't a real game, but the characters of the book take all the necessary actions and devote a big part of their life like some type of religion and something that will make them wiser and superior to other humans. A sacrifice to a sacred purpose of getting the best knowledge of all the scientific and theoretical fields that were all concentrated on the best knowledge of the Glass Bead Game.

According to Wikipedia, the book begun in 1931, and every reader could understand that it was written before World War II, although the book takes place in a closed society in the 23rd century. Hesse was very famous for his anti-fascist views, and as a result, it was hard to publish the book. However, except for those who don't know the personal views of Hesse, the followers of the Glass Bead Game have this type of dedication that at the end is expected to build a human with excellent knowledge. Perhaps it was the time that Hesse as a wise man could sense that fascist Germany was aiming to build an army that would be more powerful compared to other countries and civilizations. and consisted of these super-humans. And it is an interesting fact that although it is a some type of futuristic outlook on his times, the experiments and catastrophic ideology of Nazism happened much earlier.

Thinking of Hesse and reading more the Glass Bead Game, the reader can't avoid thinking about previous German philosophers, such as Nietzsche, although Hesse isn't so critical around morality in this book. But also Hesse seems like rejecting the example of this type of blind dedication to the values that the master of the Glass Bead Game tries to pass to him. The superiority of the school is being doubted and finally criticized from the main character of the book, whose name is Joseph Knecht and becomes master of the game, and renamed as Magister Ludi. Although a dedicated student and scholar of the school, he writes a letter to the highest committee that he feels that darkest times are about to come and that the school is very narrow-sighted to do something and prevent great dangers, but also doesn't give the freedom of free-will to its followers. And indeed Knecht's insight is being dealt with rejection and criticism, and his views that it keeps people away from the real world are considered as total nonsense.

By reading this book about Knecht's character, I couldn't stop thinking another German artist, Werner Herzog and his movie "The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser". Kaspar is a person that has lived outside the real world before his adult life, and always wonders and strives to understand the motivations and actions of the other people. Until the end that people doubt his thinking, and think that it is his fault,  he was some type of crazy, and everything else is just normal. That was to a great extent and the case of Knecht with his views being rejected and the worries about his thinking from the committee. 

At the end of the book, there are other 3 stories that take place in an unspecified time period, although they could be placed chronologically in the past or the future. Two of the stories were very interesting to me, the first, as the main character being the wiser or magician in a tribe. In this story, the magician uses a lot of knowledge that develops by forecasting the weather and how this affect the cultivation of the corps of the tribe and his reliability and validity by the other members of the tribe. The way that he develops this ability is by studying the stars and the sky for years, and immediately reminded some of the theories of the anthropologist Claude-Levi Strauss that after studying for years tribes, he supported that witchcraft is closer to science, compared to religion and the practices are based on trial as in science.

The other story is about someone who escapes from his village and finds shelter in a yogi's hut that lives in the forest without talking or interacting with humans. While reading this book there is a big reference about the importance of meditation and its importance on mastering the game, and the hero of the story finds wisdom and moral escape through yogi's advice and practices. Like higher wisdom or atonement for his crime after finding out that his wife had cheated on him.