The final novel of Hermann Hesse, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literatureSet in the twenty-third century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of ...
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The final novel of Hermann Hesse, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, The Glass Bead Game is a fascinating tale of the complexity of modern life as well as a classic of modern literatureSet in the twenty-third century, The Glass Bead Game is the story of Joseph Knecht, who has been raised in Castalia, the remote place his society has provided for the intellectual elite to grow and flourish. Since childhood, Knecht has been consumed with mastering the Glass Bead Game, which requires a synthesis of aesthetics and scientific arts, such as mathematics, music, logic, and philosophy, which he achieves in adulthood, becoming a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game).
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Hesse's Magister Ludi is the superlative capstone of a life's work permeated by a gentle wistfulness, a growing sense that the goal of the journey (of life) may be the journey itself,and a deeper, richer sense that such human contentment as may be found is to be found in a life integrating action and deepest thought.
Joseph Knecht, the central character, reflects both the immediacy of Hesse's inner journey from Goethe to Thomas Mann, and the universality of the quest of the search for the divine (spirituality, art, music, philosophy) which distinguishes man from beast. His resolve to return from the intellectual inner sanctum of Castalia to the maelstrom of daily life in the "outer world" marks his (and Hesse's) fulfilment in a life uniting both spirit and body, technical and intellectual, thought and deed, classic and romantic, Dionysian and Apollonian.
A must read for all who would seriously ponder the role fo the intellectual in the modern world.
