SIX
MAGISTER
LUDI
KNECHT
HAD DECIDED to postpone his final return to Waldzell until the spring, the time
of the great public Glass Bead Game, the Lusus anniversarius or sollemnis.
The era when annual Games lasted for
weeks and were attended by dignitaries and representatives from all over the
world - what we may call the great age in the memorable history of these Games
- already belonged forever to the past.
But these spring sessions, with the one solemn Game that usually lasted
for ten days to two weeks, still remained the great festive event of the year
for all of Castalia. It was a festival
not without its high religious and moral importance, for it brought together
the advocates of all the sometimes disparate tendencies of the Province in an
act of symbolic harmony. It established
a truce between the egotistic ambitions of the several disciplines, and
recalled to mind the unity which embraced their variety. For believers it possessed the sacramental
force of true consecration; for unblievers it was at least a substitute for
religion; and for both it was a bath in the pure springs of beauty. The Passions of Johann Sebastain Bach had
once upon a time - not so much in the time they were written as in the century
following their rediscovery - been in similar fashion a genuine consecratory
act for some of the performers and audience, a form of worship and religious
substitute for others, and for all together a solemn manifestation of art and
of the Creator spiritus.
Knecht had had scant difficulty
obtaining the consent of both the monks and his home authorities for his
decision. He could not quite determine
the nature of his position after his reassignment to the little republic of the
Vicus Lusorum, but he suspected that he would not long be left unoccupied and
would soon be burdened and honoured with some new office or mission. For the present he looked forward
happily to returning home, to seeing his friends and participating in the
approaching festival. He enjoyed his
last days with Father Jacobus, and accepted with dignity and good humour the
rather demonstrative kindness of the Abbot and monks when the time came for
farewells. Then he left, feeling some
sadness at parting from a place he had grown fond of and from a stage in his
life he was now leaving behind, but also in a mood of festive animation, for
although he lacked guidance and companions, he had, on his own initiative,
scrupulously undertaken the whole series of meditation exercises prescribed as
preparations for the festival Game. He
had not been able to prevail on Father Jacobus to accept the Magister Ludi's
formal invitation to attend the annual Game and accompany him, but this had not
affected his good spirits; he understood the old anti-Castalian's reserved
attitude, and he himself for the moment felt entirely relieved of all duties
and restrictions and ready to surrender his whole mind to the impending
ceremonies.
Festivities have their own peculiar
nature. A genuine festival cannot go
entirely wrong, unless it is spoilt by the unfortunate intervention of higher
powers. For the devout soul, even in a
downpour a procession retains its sacral quality, and a burned feast does not
depress him. For the Glass Bead Game
player every annual Game is festive and in a sense hallowed. Nevertheless, as every one of us knows, there
are some festivals and games in which everything goes right, and every element
lifts up, animates, and exalts every other, just as there are theatrical and
musical performances which without any clearly discernible cause seem to ascend
miraculously to glorious climaxes and intensely felt experiences, whereas
others, just as well prepared, remain no more than decent tries. Insofar as the achievement of intense
experiences depends on the emotional state of the spectator, Joseph Knecht had
the best imaginable preparation: he was troubled by no cares, returning from
abroad loaded with honours, and looking forward with joyous anticipation to the
coming event.
Nevertheless, this time the Ludus
sollemnis was not destined to be touched by that aura of the miraculous and
so arise to a special degree of consecration and radiance. It turned out, in fact, a cheerless,
distinctly unhappy, and sometimes very close to an unsuccessful Game. Although many of the participants may have
felt edified and exalted all the same, the real actors and organizers of the
Game, as always in such cases, felt all the more inexorably that atmosphere of
apathy, lack of grace and failure, of inhibition and bad luck which
overshadowed this festival. Knecht,
although he of course sensed it and found his high expectations somewhat
dashed, was by no means among those who felt the fiasco most keenly. Even though the solemn act failed to reach
the true peak of perfection and blessing, he was able, because he was not
playing and bore no responsibility for it, to follow the ingeniously
constructed Game appreciatively, as a devout spectator, to let the meditations
quiver to a halt undisturbed, and with grateful devotion to share that
experience so familiar to all guests at these Games: the senses of ceremony and
sacrifice, of mystic union of the congregation at the feet of the divine, which
could be conveyed even by a ceremony that, for the narrow circle of initiates,
was regarded as a "failure".
Nevertheless, he too was not altogether unaffected by the unlucky star
that seemed to preside over this festival.
The Game itself, to be sure, was irreproachable in plan and
construction, like every one of Master Thomas's Games; in fact it was one of
his cleanest, most direct, and impressive
achievements. But its performance was
especially ill-starred and has not yet been forgotten in the history of Waldzell.
When Knecht arrived, a week before the
opening of the great Game, he was received not by the Magister Ludi himself,
but by his deputy Bertram, who welcomed him courteously but informed him rather
curtly and distractedly that the venerable Master had recently fallen ill and
that he, Bertram, was not sufficiently informed about Knecht's mission to
receive his report. Would he therefore
go to Hirsland to report his return to the directorate of the Order and await
its commands.
As he took his leave Knecht
involuntarily betrayed, by tone or gesture, his surprise at the coolness and
shortness of his reception. Bertram
apologized. "Do forgive me if I
have disappointed you, and please understand my situation," he said. "The Magister is ill, the annual Game is
upon us, and everything is up in the air.
I don't know whether the Magister will be able to conduct the Game or
whether I shall have to leap into the breach." The revered Master's illness could not have
come at a more difficult moment, he went on to say. He was ready as always to assume the
Magister's official duties, but if in addition he had to prepare himself at
such short notice to conduct the great Game, he was afraid it would prove a
task beyond his powers.
Knecht felt sorry for the man, who was
so obviously depressed and thrown off balance; he was also sorry that the
responsibility for the festival might now lie in the deputy's hands. Joseph had been away from Waldzell too long
to know how well founded Bertram's anxiety was.
The worst
thing that can happen to a deputy had already befallen the man: some time past
he had forfeited the trust of the elite, so that he was truly in a very
difficult position.
With considerable concern, Knecht
thought of the Magister Ludi, the great exponent of classical form and irony,
the perfect Master and Castalian. He had
looked forward eagerly to the Magister's receiving him, listening to his
report, and reinstalling him in the small community of players, perhaps in some
confidential post. It had been his
desire to see the festival Game presided over by Master Thomas, to continue
working under him and courting his recognition.
Now it was painful and disappointing to find the Magister withdrawn into
illness, and to be directed to other authorities. There was, however, some compensation in the
respectful good will with which the secretary of the Order and Monsieur Dubois
received him and heard him out. They
treated him, in fact, as a colleague.
During their first talks he discovered that for the present at any rate
they had no intention of using him to promote the Roman project. They were going to respect his desire for a
permanent return to the Game. For the
moment they extended a friendly invitation to him to stay in the guesthouse of
the Vicus Lusorum, attend the annual Game, and survey the situation. Together with his friend Tegularius, he
devoted the days before the public ceremonies to the exercises in fasting and
meditation. That was one of the reasons
he was able to witness in so devout and grateful a spirit the strange Game
which has left an unpleasant aftertaste in the memories of some.
The position of the deputy Masters, also
called "Shadows", is a very peculiar one - especially the deputies to
the Music Master and the Glass Bead Game Master. Every Magister has a deputy who is not
provided for him by the authorities.
Rather, he himself chooses his deputy from the narrow circle of his own
candidates. The Master himself bears the
full responsibility for all the actions and decisions of his deputy. For a candidate it is therefore a great
distinction and a sign of the highest trust when he is appointed deputy by his
Magister. Whenever the Magister is
prevented from performing his official duties, he sends the deputy in his
stead. The deputy, however, is not
entitled to act in all capacities. For
example, when the Supreme Board votes, he may transmit only a yea or nay in the
Master's name and is never permitted to deliver an address or present motions
on his own. There are a variety of other
precautionary restrictions on the deputies.
While the appointment elevates the
deputy to a very high and at times extremely exposed position, it is at a
certain price. The deputy is set apart
within the official hierarchy, and while he enjoys high honour and frequently
may be entrusted with extremely important functions, his position deprives him
of certain rights and opportunities which the other aspirants possess. There are two points in particular where this
is revealed: the deputy does not bare the responsibility for his official acts,
and he can rise no farther within the hierarchy. The law is unwritten, to be sure, but can be
read throughout the history of Castalia: At the death or resignation of a
Magister, his Shadow, who has represented him so often and whose whole
existence seems to predestine him for the succession, has never advanced to
fill the Master's place. It is as if
custom were determined to show that a seemingly fluid and moveable barrier is in
fact insuperable. The barrier between
Magister and deputy stands like a symbol for the barrier between the office and
the individual. Thus, when a Castalian
accepts the confidential post of deputy, he renounces the prospect of ever
becoming a Magister himself, or ever really possessing the official robes and
insignia that he wears so often in his representative role. At the same time he acquires the curiously
ambiguous privilege of never incurring any blame for possible mistakes in his
conduct of his office. The blame falls
upon his Magister, who is answerable for his acts. A Magister sometimes becomes the victim of
the deputy he has chosen and is forced to resign his office because of some
glaring error committed by the deputy.
The word "Shadow" originated in Waldzell to describe the Magister
Ludi's deputy. It is splendidly apposite
to his special position, his closeness amounting to quasi-identity with the
Magister, and the make-believe insubstantiality of his official existence.
For many years Master Thomas von der
Trave had employed a Shadow named Bertram who seems to have been more lacking
in luck than in talent or good will. He
was an excellent Glass Bead Game player, of course. As a teacher he was at least adequate, and he
was also a conscientious official, absolutely devoted to his Master. Nevertheless, in the course of the past few
years, he had become distinctly unpopular.
The "new generation", the younger members of the elite, were particularly hostile to him, and since he did
not possess his Master's limpid, chivalric temperament, this antagonism
affected his poise. The Magister did not
let him go, but had for years shielded him from friction with the elite as much
as possible, putting him in the public eye more and more rarely and employing
him largely in the chanceries and the Archive.
This blameless but disliked man, plainly
not favoured by fortune, now suddenly found himself at the head of the Vicus
Lusorum due to his Master's illness. If
it should turn out that he had to conduct the annual Game, he would occupy for
the duration of the festival the most exposed position in the entire
Province. He could only have coped with
this great task if the majority of the Glass Bead Game players, or at any rate
the tutors as a body, had supported him.
Regrettably, that did not happen.
This was why the Ludus sollemnis turned into a severe trial a
very nearly a disaster for Waldzell.
Not until the day before the Game was it
officially announced that the Magister had fallen seriously ill and would be
unable to conduct the Game. We do not
know whether this postponement of the announcement had been dictated by the
sick Magister, who might have hoped up to the last moment that he would be able
to pull himself together and preside.
Probably he was already too ill to cherish any such ideas, and his
Shadow made the mistake of leaving Castalia in uncertainty about the situation
in Waldzell up to the last moment.
Granted, it is even disputable whether this delay was actually a
mistake. Undoubtedly it was done with
good intentions, in order not to discredit the festival from the start and
discourage the admirers of Master Thomas from attending. And had everything turned out well, had there
been a relation of confidence between the Waldzell community of players and
Bertram, the Shadow might actually have become his representative and - this is
really quite conceivable - the Magister's absence might have gone almost
unnoticed. It is idle to speculate
further about the matter; we have mentioned it only because we thought it
necessary to suggest that Bertram was not such an absolute failure, let alone
unworthy of his office, as public opinion in Waldzell regarded him at the
time. He was far more a victim than a
culprit.
As happened every year, guests poured
into Waldzell to attend the great Game.
Many arrived unsuspectingly, others were deeply
anxious about the Magister Ludi's health and had gloomy premonitions about the
prospects of the festival. Waldzell and
the nearby villages filled with people.
Almost every one of the directors of the Order and the members of the
Board of Educators were on hand.
Travellers in holiday mood arrived from the remoter parts of the country
and from abroad, crowding the guesthouses.
On the evening before the beginning of
the Game, the ceremonies opened with the meditation hour. In response to the ringing of bells the whole
of Waldzell, crowded with people as it was, subsided into a profound, reverent
silence. Next morning came the first of
the musical performances and announcement of the first movement of the Game,
together with meditation on the two musical themes of this movement. Bertram, in the Magister Ludi's festival
robes, displayed a stately and controlled demeanour, but he was very pale. As day followed day, he looked more and more
strained, suffering and resigned, until during the last days he really
resembled a shadow. By the second day of
the Game the rumour spread that Magister Thomas's condition had worsened, and
that his life was in danger. That
evening there cropped up here and there, and especially among the initiates,
those first contributions to the gradually developing legend about the sick
Master and his Shadow. This legend,
emanating from the innermost circle of the Vicus Lusorum, the tutors,
maintained that the Master had been willing and would have been able to conduct
the Game, but that he had sacrificed himself to his Shadow's ambition and
assigned the solemn task to Bertram. But
now, the legend continued, since Bertram did not seem equal to his lofty role,
and since the Game was proving a disappointment, the sick man felt to blame for
the failure of the Game and his Shadow's inadequacy, and was doing penance for
the mistake. This, it was said, this and
nothing else was the reason for the rapid deterioration of his condition and
the rise in his fever.
Naturally this was not the sole version
of the legend, but it was the elite's version and indicated that the ambitious
aspirants thought the situation appalling and were dead set against doing
anything to improve it. Their reverence
for the Master was balanced by their malice for his Shadow; they wanted Bertram
to fail even if the Master himself had to suffer as well.
By and by the story went the rounds that
the Magister on his sickbed had begged his deputy and two seniors of the elite
to keep the peace and not endanger the festival. The next day it was asserted that he had
dictated his will and had named the man he desired for his successor. Moreover, names were whispered. These and other rumours circulated along with
news of the Magister's steadily worsening condition, and from day to day
spirits sagged in the festival hall as well as in the guesthouses, although
no-one went so far as to abandon the festival and depart. Gloom hung over the entire performance all
the while that it proceeded outwardly with formal
propriety. Certainly there was little of
that delight and uplift that everyone familiar with the annual festival
expected; and when on the day before the end of the game Magister Thomas, the author
of the festival Game, closed his eyes forever, not even the efforts of the
authorities could prevent the news from spreading. Curiously, a good many participants felt
relieved and liberated by the outcome.
The Game students, and the elite in particular,
were not permitted to don mourning before the end of the Ludus sollemnis,
nor to make any break in the strictly prescribed sequence of the hours, with
their alternation of performances and meditation exercises. Nevertheless, they unanimously went through
the last act and day of the festival as if it were a funeral service for the
revered deceased. They surrounded the
exhausted, pale, and sleepless Bertram, who continued officiating with
half-closed eyes, with a frigid atmosphere of isolation.
Joseph Knecht had been kept in close
contact with the elite by his friend Tegularius. As an old player, moreover, he was fully
sensitive to all these currents and moods.
But he did not allow them to affect him.
From the fourth or fifth day on he actually forbade Fritz to bother him
with news about the Magister's illness.
He felt, and quite well understood, the tragic cloud that hung over the
festival; he thought of the Master with sorrow and deep concern, and of the
Shadow Bertram - condemned as it were to sharing the Magister's death - with
growing disquiet and compassion. But he
sternly resisted being influenced by any authentic or mythical account,
practised the strictest concentration, surrendered gladly to the exercises and
the course of the beautifully structured game, and in spite of all the discords
and dark clouds his experience of the festival was one of grave exaltation.
At the end of the festival Bertram was
spared the additional burden of having to receive congratulants and the Board
in his capacity of vice-Magister. The
traditional celebration for students of the Glass Bead Game was also
cancelled. Immediately after the final
musical performance of the festival, the Board announced the Magister's death,
and the prescribed days of mourning began in the Vicus Lursorum. Joseph Knecht, still residing in the
guesthouse, participated in the rites.
The funeral of this fine man, whose memory is still held in high esteem,
was celebrated with Castalia's customary simplicity. His Shadow, Bertram, who had summoned up his
last reserves of strength in order to play his part to the end during the
festival, understood his situation. He
asked for a leave and went on a walking trip in the mountains.
There was mourning throughout the Game
village, and indeed everywhere in Waldzell.
Possibly no-one had enjoyed intimate, strikingly friendly relations with
the deceased Magister; but the superiority and flawlessness of his aristocratic
nature, together with his intelligence and his finely developed feeling for
form, had made of him a regent and representative such as Castalia with its
fundamentally democratic temper did not often produce. The Castalians had been proud of him. If he had seemed to hold himself aloof from
the realms of passion, love, and friendship, that made him all the more the
object for youth's craving to venerate.
This dignity and sovereign gracefulness - which incidentally had earned
him the half-affectionate nickname "His Excellency" - had in the
course of years, despite strong opposition, won him a special position in the
Supreme Council of the Order and in the sessions and work of the Board of
Educators.
Naturally, the question of his successor
was hotly discussed, and nowhere so intensely as among
the elite of the Glass Bead Game players.
After the departure of the Shadow, whose overthrow these players had
sought and achieved, the functions of the Magister's office were temporarily
distributed by vote of the elite itself among three temporary deputies - only
the internal functions in the Vicus Lusorum, of course, not the official work
in the Board of Educators. In keeping
with tradition, the Board would not permit the Magistracy to remain vacant more
than three weeks. In cases in which a
dying or departed Magister left a clear, uncontested successor, the office was
in fact filled immediately, after only a single plenary session of the
Board. This time the process would
probably take rather longer.
During the period of mourning, Joseph
Knecht occasionally talked with his friend about the festival game and its singularly
troubled course.
"This deputy, Bertram," Knecht
said, "not only played his part tolerable well right up to the end - that
is, tried to fill the role of a real Magister - but in my opinion did far more
than that. He sacrificed himself to this
Ludus sollemnis as his last and most solemn official act. You all were harsh - no, the word is cruel -
to him. You could have saved the
festival and saved Bertram, and you did not do so. I don't care to express an opinion about that
conduct; I suppose you had your reasons.
But now that poor Bertram has been eliminated and you have had your way,
you should be generous. When he comes
back you must meet him halfway and show that you have understood his
sacrifice."
Tegularius shook his head. "We did understand it," he said,
"and have accepted it. You were
fortunate in being able to participate in the Game as a guest; as such you
probably did not follow the course of events so very closely. No, Joseph, we will not have an opportunity
to act on whatever feelings for Bertram we may have. He knows that his sacrifice was necessary and
will not attempt to undo it."
Only now did Knecht fully understand
him. He fell into a troubled
silence. Now he realized that he had not
experienced these festival days as a real Waldzeller and a comrade of the
others, but in truth much more like a guest; and only now did he grasp the
nature of Bertram's sacrifice. Hitherto
Bertram had seemed to him an ambitious man who had been undone by a task beyond
his powers and who henceforth must renounce further ambitious goals and try to
forget that he had once been a Master's Shadow and the leader of an annual
Game. Only now, hearing his friend's
last words, had he understood - with shock - that Bertram had been fully
condemned by his judges and would not return.
They had allowed him to conduct the festival Game to its conclusion, and
had cooperated just enough so that it would go off without a public scandal;
but they had done so only to spare Waldzell, not Bertram.
The fact was that the position of Shadow
demanded more than the Magister's full confidence - Bertram had not lacked
that. It depended to an equal degree on
the confidence of the elite, and the unfortunate man had been unable to retain
it. If he blundered, the hierarchy did
not stand behind him to protect him, as it did behind his Master and
model. And without the backing of such
authority, he was at the mercy of his former comrades, the tutors. If they did not respect him, they became his
judges. If they were unyielding, the
Shadow was finished. Sure enough,
Bertram did not return from his outing in the mountains, and after a while the
story went round that he had fallen to his death from a cliff. The matter was discussed no further.
Meanwhile, day after day high officials
and directors of the Order and of the Board of Educators appeared in the Game
village. Members of the elite and of the
civil service were summoned for questioning.
Now and then some of the matters discussed leaked out, but only within
the elite itself. Joseph Knecht, too,
was summoned and queried, once by two directors of the Order, once by the
philological Magister, then by Monsieur Dubois, and again by two
Magisters. Tegularius, who was also
called in for several such consultations, was pleasantly excited and joked
about this conclave atmosphere, as he called it. Joseph had already noticed during the
festival how little of his former intimacy with the elite had remained, and
during the period of the conclave he was made more painfully aware of it. It was not only that he lived in the
guesthouse like a visitor, and that the superiors seemed to deal with him as an
equal. The members of the elite
themselves, the tutors as a body, no longer received him in a comradely
fashion. They displayed a mocking
politeness towards him, or at best a temporizing coolness. They had already begun to drift away from him
when he received his appointment to Mariafels, and that was only right and
natural. Once a man had taken the step
from freedom to service, from the life of student or tutor to member of the
hierarchy, he was no longer a comrade, but on the way to becoming a superior or
boss. He no longer belonged to the
elite, and he had to realize that for the time being they would assume a
critical attitude towards him. That
happened to everyone in his position.
The difference was that he felt the aloofness and coolness with
particular intensity at this time, partly because the elite, orphaned as it now
was and about to receive a new Magister, defensively closed its ranks; partly
because it has just so harshly demonstrated its ruthlessness in the case of the
Shadow, Bertram.
One evening Tegularius came running to
the guesthouse in a state of extreme excitement. He found Joseph, drew him into an empty room,
closed the door behind him, and burst out: "Joseph, Joseph! My God, I should have guessed it, I ought to
have known, it was likely enough.... Oh, I'm
altogether beside myself and truly don't know whether I ought to be
glad." And he, who was privy to all
the sources of information in the Game village, babbled on: it was more than
probable, already virtually certain, the Joseph Knecht
would be elected Master of the Glass Bead Game.
The director of the Archives, whom many had regarded as Master Thomas's
predestined successor, had obviously been eliminated from the sifted group of
prospects the day before yesterday. Of
the three candidates from the elite whose names had hitherto headed the lists
during the enquiries, none, apparently, enjoyed the special favour and
recommendation of a Magister or of the directorate of the Order. On the other hand, two directors of the Order
as well as Monsieur Dubois were supporting Knecht. In addition to that, there was the weighty
vote of the former Music Master, who to certain knowledge of several persons
had been consulted by several Masters.
"Joseph, they're going to make you
Magister!" Fritz exclaimed once more.
Whereupon his friend placed his hand over his mouth. For a moment Joseph had been no less
surprised and stirred by the possibility than Fritz, and it had seemed to him
altogether impossible. But even while
Tegularius was reporting the various opinions circulating in the Game village
about the status and course of the "conclave", Knecht began to
realize that his friend's guess was not likely to be wrong. Rather, in his heart he felt something akin
to assent, a sense that he had known and expected this all along, that it was
right and natural. And so he placed his
hand on his excited friend's mouth, gave him an aloof, reproving look, as if he
had suddenly been removed to a great distance, and said: "Don't talk so
much, amice; I don't want to hear this gossip. Go to your comrades."
Tegularius, though he had meant to say a
great deal more, fell silent at once. He
turned pale under the gaze of this utter stranger, and went out. Later he remarked that at first he had felt
Knecht's remarkable calm and iciness at this moment as if it were a blow and an
insult, a slap in the face and a betrayal of their old friendship and intimacy,
an almost incomprehensible overstressing and anticipation of his impending
position as supreme head of the Glass Bead Game. Only as he was leaving - and he actually went
out like a man who had been slapped - did the meaning of that unforgettable
look dawn on him, that remote, loyal, but likewise suffering look,
and he realized that his friend was not proud of what had fallen to his lot,
but that he was accepting it in humility.
He had been reminded, he said, of Joseph Knecht's thoughtful expression
and the note of deep compassion in his voice when, recently, he had inquired
about Bertram and his sacrifice. It was
as if he himself were now on the point of sacrificing and extinguishing himself
like the Shadow. His expression had been
at once proud and humble, exalted and submissive, lonely and resigned; it was
as if Joseph Knecht's face had become an effigy of all the Masters of Castalia
who had ever been. "Go to your
comrades," he had said. Thus, in
the very second he first heard of his new dignity, this incomprehensible man
had fitted himself into it and saw the world from a new centre, was no longer a
comrade, would never be one again.
Knecht might easily have guessed that
this last and highest of his calls, the appointment as Magister Ludi, was
coming, or at least he might have seen it as possible, or even probable. But this time, too, his promotion startled
him. He might have guessed it, he
afterwards told himself, and he smiled at his zealous friend Tegularius, who to
be sure had not expected the appointment from the start, but all the same had
calculated and predicted it several days before the decision and
announcement. There were in fact no
objections to Joseph's election to the highest Board except perhaps his youth;
most of his predecessors had entered on their high office at the age of
forty-five to fifty, whereas Joseph was still barely forty. But there was no law against any such early
appointment.
Now, when Fritz surprised his friend
with the results of his surmises and observations, the observations of an
experienced elite player who knew down to its smallest detail the complex
apparatus of the small Waldzell community, Knecht had immediately realized that
Fritz was right; he had instantly grasped the fact of his election and accepted
his fate. But his first reaction to the
news had been that rejection of his friend, the refusal to "hear this
gossip". As soon as Fritz had left,
stunned and very nearly insulted, Joseph went to a meditation room to order his
thoughts. His meditation started from a
memory that had assailed him with unusual force. In his vision he saw a bare room and a
piano. Through the room fell the cool,
blithe light of forenoon, and at the door of the room appeared a handsome,
friendly man, an elderly man with greying hair and a lucid face full of
kindness and dignity. Joseph himself was
a small Latin school pupil who had waited in the room for the Music Master,
partly frightened, partly overjoyed, and who now saw the venerated figure for
the first time, the Master from the legendary Province of elite schools, and
the Magister who had come to show him what music was, who then led him step by
step into his Province, his realm, into the elite and the Order, and whose
colleague and brother he had now become, while the old man had laid aside his
magic wand, or his sceptre, and had been transformed into an amiably taciturn,
still kindly, still revered, but still mysterious elder whose look and example
hovered over Joseph's life and who would always be a generation and several
stages of life ahead of him, as well as immeasurably greater in dignity and
also modesty, in mastership and in mystery, but would always remain his patron
and model, gently compelling him to walk in his steps, as a rising and setting planet
draws its brothers after it.
As long as Knecht permitted the flow of
inner images to come without distinction, as they do, like dreams, in the
initial stage of relaxation, there were two principal scenes which emerged from
the stream and lingered, two pictures or symbols, two parables. In the first Knecht, as a
boy, followed the Master along a variety of ways. The Music Master strode before him as his
guide, and each time he turned around and showed his face he looked older, more
tranquil and venerable, visibly approaching an ideal of timeless wisdom and
dignity, while he, Joseph Knecht, devotedly and obediently walked along after
his exemplar, but all the time remaining the selfsame boy, at which he
alternately felt at one moment shame, at another a certain rejoicing, if not
something close to defiant satisfaction.
And the second picture was this: the scene in the piano room, the old
man's entering where the boy waited, was repeated again and again, an infinite
number of times; the Master and the boy followed each other as if drawn along
the wires of some mechanism, until soon it could no longer be discerned which
was coming and which going, which following and which leading, the old or the
young man. Now it seemed to be the young
man who showed honour and obedience to the old man, to authority and dignity;
now again it was apparently the old man who was required to follow, serve, worship the figure of youth, of beginning, of mirth. And as he watched this at once senseless and
significant dream circle, the dreamer felt alternately identical with the old
man and the boy, now revering and now revered, now leading, now obeying; and in
the course of these pendulum shifts there came a moment in which he was both,
was simultaneously Master and small pupil; or rather he stood above both, was
the instigator, conceiver, operator, and onlooker of the cycle, this futile
spinning race between age and youth.
With shifting sensations he alternately slowed the pace and speeded it
to a frantic rush. Out of this process
there evolved a new conception, more akin to a symbol than a dream, more
insight than image: the conception or rather the insight that this meaningful
and meaningless cycle of master and pupil, this courtship of wisdom by youth,
of youth by wisdom, this endless, oscillating game was the symbol of
Castalia. In fact it was the game of
life in general, divided into old and young, day and night, yang and yin, and
pouring on without end. Having arrived
at this in his meditation, Joseph Knecht found his way from a world of images
to tranquillity, and after long absorption returned strengthened and serenely
cheerful.
When a few days later the director of
the Order summoned him, he went confidently.
He received the fraternal greeting of the superiors, a brief clasping of
hands and suggestion of an embrace, with composure and grave serenity. He was informed of his appointment as
Magister Ludi, and commanded to appear at the festival hall on the day after
the morrow for the investiture and swearing-in.
This was the same hall in which, so short a while ago, the deceased
Master's deputy had completed the dismay ceremonies as if he were a sacrificial
beast decked out with gold. The day
before the investiture was to be devoted to a careful study, accompanied by ritual
meditations, of the formula of the oath and the "breviary for the
Magister" under the guidance and supervision of two superiors. This time they were the Chancellor of the
Order and the Magister Mathematicae, and during the
The election of the new Master was,
however, all the more animatedly discussed and criticized among those who had
hitherto been Knecht's fellow aspirants.
He had no downright adversaries, but he had had rivals, among them some
who were of riper years than he. The
members of this circle were not at all minded to approve the choice without a
trial of strength, or at least without subjecting the new Master to extremely
exacting and critical scrutiny. Almost
in every case a new Magister's inauguration and early period in office is a
kind of purgatory.
The investiture of a Master is not a
public ceremony. Aside from the Board of
Educators and the directorate of the Order, the only participants are the
senior pupils, the candidates, and the officials of the faculty which is
receiving a new Magister. At the
ceremony in the festival hall, the Master of the Glass Bead Game had to take
the oath of office, to receive from the authorities the insignia of his office,
consisting of certain keys and seals, and to be clad by the Speaker of the
Order in the festive robe which the Magister wears at all the major ceremonies,
especially while celebrating the annual Game.
Such an act lacks the splash and mild intoxication of public
festivities; it is by nature ceremonious and rather sober. On the other hand, the mere presence of all
the members of the two highest authorities confers an uncommon dignity upon it. The small
This time the festive rejoicing was
overshadowed by mourning for the previous Master, by the unhappy temper of the
annual Game, and by the tragedy of the deputy, Bertram. The investiture was performed by the Speaker
of the Order and the Chief Archivist of the Game. Together, they held the robe high and then
placed it over the shoulders of the new Glass Bead Game Master. The brief festival oration was spoken by the
Magister Grammaticae, the Master of classical philology in Keuperheim. A representative of the elite of Waldzell
handed over the keys and seal, and the aged former Music Master in person stood
near the organ. He had come to see his
protégé invested, and to give him a glad surprise by his unexpected presence,
perhaps also to offer a helpful bit of advice.
The old man would have liked to provide the music for the ceremony with
his own hands, but he could no longer risk such exertions and therefore left
the playing to the organist of the
The new Magister was familiar with most
of the functions of his office, for he had already assisted in the performance
of them on various occasions, both in lowly and responsible capacities. The most important were the Game courses,
stretching from courses for schoolboys and beginners, holidayers and guests, to
the practice sessions, lectures, and seminars for the elite. Every newly appointed Magister could feel
himself equal to all but the last of these tasks, whereas the new functions
which had previously lain outside his scope caused him far more concern and
effort. Such was the case with Joseph
also. He would have liked to turn first
of all, with undivided zeal, to these new duties, the properly magisterial
duties: sitting on the Supreme Council of Educators, working with the Council
of Magisters and the directorate of the Order, representing the Vicus Lusorum
in dealings with all the authorities. He
was all afire to familiarize himself with these new tasks and to strip them of
the menace of the unknown. He wished
that he could initially set aside several weeks for a careful study of the
constitution, the formalities, the minutes of previous sessions of the Board,
and so on. He knew, of course, that
information and instruction on these matters were readily available to
him. He need only turn to Monsieur
Dubois and to the specialist on magisterial forms and traditions, the Speaker
of the Order. Although not a Magister
himself, and therefore ranked below the Masters, the Speaker held the chair in
all sessions of the Board and took care that the traditional rules of order
were observed. In this he somewhat
resembled the master of ceremonies at a sovereign's court.
Joseph would only too gladly have asked
this prudent, experienced, inscrutably courteous man, whose hands had just
solemnly decked him with the robes of office, for a few private lessons, if
only the Speaker had lived in Waldzell instead of Hirsland, half a day's
journey away. How gladly, too, Joseph
would have fled to Monteport for a while to be instructed in these matters by
the former Music Master. But such
recourses were out of the question; it was not for a Magister to harbour any
such private desires, as if he were still a student. Instead, he had to start off by attending to
those very functions which he fancied would give him little trouble, and to
concentrate his whole mind on them.
During Bertram's festival Game he had
observed a Magister forsaken by his whole community, the elite, fighting and as
it were suffocating in airless space. He
had sensed something then, and his presentiment had been confirmed by the old
Music Master's words on the day of his investiture. Now he faced it every minute of his official
day, and every moment he could spare for reflection on his situation: that he
must above all concern himself with the elite and the tutorship, with the
highest stages of the Glass Bead Game studies, with the seminar practice sessions,
and with personal intercourse with the tutors.
He could leave the Archives to the archivists, the beginners' courses to
the present set of teachers, the mail to his secretaries, and would not be
neglecting any serious matters. But he
did not dare leave the elite to themselves for a moment. He had to keep after them, impose himself on
them, and make himself indispensable to them.
He had to convince them of the merit of his abilities and the purity of
his will; he had to conquer them, court them, win them, match wits with every
candidate among them who showed a disposition to challenge him - and there was
no lack of such candidates.
In this struggle he was aided by a
number of factors which he had earlier considered drawbacks, in particular his
long absence from Waldzell and the elite, who therefore looked upon him as
something of a homo novis. Even
his friendship with Tegularius proved useful.
For Tegularius, that brilliant, sickly outsider, obviously did not have
to be considered a rival for office, and seemed so little career-minded himself
that any preference shown him by the new Magister would not be seen as an
affront to other candidates.
Nevertheless it was something of a task for Knecht to probe and penetrate
this highest, most vital, restive, and sensitive stratum in the world of the
Glass Bead Game, and master it as a rider masters a
thoroughbred horse. For in every
Castalian institute, not only that of the Glass Bead Game, the elite group of
candidates, also called tutors - men who have completed their formal education
but are still engaged in free studies and have not yet been appointed to serve
on the Board of Educators or the Order - constitute the most precious stock in
Castalian society, the true reserve and promise for the future. Everywhere, not only in the Game Village,
this dashing select band of the younger generation tends to resist and
criticize new teachers and superiors, accords a new head the bare minimum of
politeness and subordination, and must be convinced, overpowered, and won over
on a purely personal basis. The superior
must devote his whole being to courting them before they will acknowledge him
and submit to his leadership.
Knecht took up his task without
timidity, but he was nevertheless astonished at its difficulties; and while he
solved them and gradually won the arduous, consuming battle, those other duties
which he had been inclined to worry about receded of their own accord and
seemed to demand less of his attention.
He confessed to a colleague that he had participated in the first
plenary session of the Board - to which he travelled by the fastest express and
returned in the same way - almost in a dream and afterwards had no time to give
another thought to it, so completely did his current task claim all his energies. In fact, even during the conference itself,
although the subject interested him and although he had looked forward to it
with some uneasiness, since this was his first appearance as a member of the
Board, he several times caught himself thinking not of his colleagues here and
the deliberations in progress, but of Waldzell.
He saw himself rather in that blue room in the Archives where he was
currently giving a seminar on dialectics every third day, with only five
participants. Every hour of that bred
far greater tension and demanded a greater output of energy than all the rest
of his official duties, which were also not easy and which he could not evade
or postpone. For as the former Music
Master had informed him, the Board provided him with a timekeeper and coach who
supervised the course of his day hour by hour, advising him about his schedule
and guarding him against too much concentration on any one thing, as well as
against total overstrain. Knecht was
grateful to him, and even more grateful to Alexander, the man deputized by the
directorate of the Order, who enjoyed a great reputation as master of the art
of meditation. Alexander saw to it that
Joseph, even though he was working to the utmost limit of his strength,
practised the "little" or "brief" meditation exercises
three times daily, and that he abided strictly by the prescribed course and
number of minutes for each such exercise.
Before his evening meditation he and his
aides, the coach and the meditation master, were supposed to review each
official day, noting what had been well done or ill done, feeling his own
pulse, as meditation teachers call this practice, that is, recognizing and
measuring one's own momentary situation, state of health, the distribution of
one's energies, one's hopes and cares - in a word, seeing oneself and one's
daily work objectively and carrying nothing on unresolved into the night and
the next day.
While the tutors observed the prodigious
labours of their Magister with an interest partly sympathetic, partly
aggressive, missing no opportunity to set him new tests of strength, patience,
and quick-wittedness, trying one moment to inspire, the next to block his work,
an uncomfortable void had come into being around Tegularius. He understood, of course, that Knecht could
not spare any attention, any time, any thought or sympathy for him right
now. But he could not harden himself
sufficiently, could not resign himself to being so neglected. It was all the more painful to him because he
not only seemed to have lost his friend from one day to the next, but also
found himself the object of some suspicion on the part of his associates, and
was scarcely spoken to. That was hardly
surprising. For
although Tegularius could not seriously stand in the way of the ambitious
climbers, he was known as one of the new Magister's partisans and favourites.
Knecht could easily have grasped all
this. To be sure, the responsibilities
of the moment involved his laying aside all private, personal affairs for a
while, including this friendship. But,
as he later admitted to his friend, he did not actually do this wittingly and
willingly, but quite simply because he had forgotten Fritz. He had so thoroughly converted himself into
an instrument that such personal matters as friendship vanished into the realm
of the impossible. If on occasion, as
for example in that seminar he held for the five foremost Glass Bead Game
players, Fritz's face and figure appeared before him, he did not see Tegularius
as a friend or personality, but as a member of the elite, a student, candidate,
and tutor, a part of his work, a soldier in the regiment whom he had to train
so that he could march on to victory with it.
A shudder had gone through Fritz when the Magister for the first time
addressed him in that way. From Knecht's
look, it was clear that this remoteness and objectivity were not pretence, but
uncannily genuine, and that the man before him who treated him with this
matter-of-fact courtesy, accompanied by intense intellectual alertness, was no
longer his friend Joseph, was entirely a teacher and examiner, entirely Master
of the Glass Bead Game, enveloped and isolated by the gravity and austerity of
his office as if by a shining glaze which had been poured over him in the heat
of the fire, had had cooled and hardened.
During these hectic weeks a minor
incident connected with Tegularius occurred.
Sleepless and under severe psychological strain, he was guilty during
the seminar of a discourtesy, a minor outburst, not towards a Magister but
towards a colleague whose mocking tone had grated on his nerves. Knecht noticed, noticed also the delinquent's
overwrought state. He reproved him
wordlessly, merely by a gesture of his finger, but afterwards sent his
meditation master to him to calm the troubled soul. Tegularius, after weeks of deprivation, took
this concern as a first sign of reviving friendship, for he assumed that it was
an attention directed towards himself as a person, and willingly submitted to
the cure. In reality Knecht had scarcely
been aware of the object of his solicitude.
He had acted solely as the Magister, had observed irritability and a
lack of self-control in one of his tutors, and had reacted to it as an
educator, without for a moment regarding this tutor as a person or relating him
to himself. When, months later, his
friend reminded him of this scene and testified how overjoyed and comforted he
had been by this sign of goodwill, Joseph Knecht said nothing. He had completely forgotten the affair, but
did not disabuse his friend.
At last he attained his goal. The battle was won. It had been a great labour to subdue this elite, to drill them until they were weary, to tame the
ambitious, win over the undecided, impress the arrogant. But now the work was done; the candidates at the
The next time he attended a meeting of
the Board, Knecht distinctly sensed, although the matter was never so much as
mentioned, that he was now regarded by his colleagues as tested and
proved. He was their equal. After the intensity of the struggle to prove
himself, he was now overcome once more by a sense of awakening, of cooling and
sobering. He saw himself in the
innermost heart of Castalia, sat in the highest rank of the hierarchy, and
discovered with strange sobriety and almost with disappointment that even this
very thin air was breathable, but that he who now breathed it as though he had
never known anything different was altogether changed. That was the consequence of this harsh period
of trial. It had burned him out as no
other service, no other effort, had previously done.
The elite's acknowledgement of him as
their sovereign was marked this time by a special gesture. When Knecht sensed the end of their
resistance, the confidence and consent of the tutors, and knew that he had
successfully put the hardest task behind him, he realized that the moment had
come for him to choose a "Shadow".
In point of fact he would never more sorely need someone to relieve him
of burdens than right now, after the victory was won, when he found himself
suddenly released into relative freedom after an almost superhuman trial of
strength. Many a Magister in the past
had collapsed just as this point in his path.
Knecht now renounced his right to choose among the candidates and asked
the tutors as a body to select a Shadow for him. Still under the impact of Bertram's fate, the
elite took this conciliatory gesture very seriously, and after several meetings
and secret polls, made their choice, providing the Magister with one of their best
men, a deputy who until Knecht's appointment had been regarded as one of the
most promising candidates for the office of Magister.
He had survived the worst. Now there was time for walks and music
again. After a while he could once more
think of reading. Friendship with
Tegularius, occasional correspondence with Ferromonte, would be possible. Now and then he would be able to take half a
day off, perhaps sometimes permit himself to go away for a short vacation. But all these amenities would benefit another
man, not the previous Joseph who had thought himself a keen Glass Bead Game
player and a tolerably good Castalian, but who had nevertheless had no inkling
of the innermost nature of the Castalian system. Hitherto he had lived in so innocuously selfish,
so puerilely playful, so inconceivably private and irresponsible a way. Once he recalled the tart reproof he had
incurred from Master Thomas after he had expressed the desire to go on studying
freely for a while longer: "You say a while, but how long is that? You are still speaking the language of
students, Joseph Knecht." That had
been only a few years ago. He had
listened with admiration, with profound reverence, along with a mild horror of
this man's impersonal perfection and discipline, and he had felt Castalia
reaching out for himself as well, seeking to draw him close in order, perhaps,
to make him just such a Thomas some day, a Master, a sovereign and servant, a
perfect instrument. And now he stood on
the spot where Master Thomas had stood, and when he spoke with one of his
tutors, one of those clever, sophisticated players and scholars, one of those
diligent and arrogant princes, he looked across to him into a different world
of alien beauty, a strange world that had once been his, exactly as Magister
Thomas had gazed into his own strange student world.