SEVEN
IN
OFFICE
AT
FIRST, ASSUMPTION of the Magister's office seemed to have brought more loss
than gain. It had almost devoured his
strength and his personal life, had crushed all his habits and hobbies, had
left a cool stillness in his heart, and in his head
something resembling the giddiness after overexertion. But the period that now followed brought
recovery, reflection, and habituation.
It also yielded new observations and experiences.
The greatest of these, now that the
battle was won, was his collaboration with the elite on the basis of mutual
trust and friendliness. He conferred
with his Shadow. He worked with Fritz
Tegularius, whom he tried out as an assistant on his correspondence. He gradually studied, checked over, and
supplemented the reports and other notes on students and other associates which
his predecessor had left. And in the
course of this work Knecht familiarized himself, with increasing affection,
with this elite whom he had imagined he knew so
well. Now its true
nature, and the whole special quality of the
Of course he had belonged to this artistic and ambitious elite and to the Players'
Village in Waldzell for many years. He
had felt completely a part of it. But
now he was no longer just a part. Not
only did he intimately share the life of this community, but he also felt
himself to be something like its brain, its consciousness, and its conscience
as well, not only participating in its impulses and destinies, but guiding them
and being responsible for them.
In an exalted moment, at the end of a
training course for teachers of beginners in the Game, he once declared:
"Castalia is a small state in itself, and our Vicus Lusorum a miniature
state within the state, a small, but ancient and proud republic, equal in
rights and dignities to its sisters, but with its sense of mission lifted and
strengthened by the special artistic and virtually sacramental function it
performs. For our distinction is to
cherish the true sanctuary of Castalia, its unique mystery and symbol, the
Glass Bead Game. Castalia rears
pre-eminent musicians and art historians, philologists, mathematicians, and
other scholars. Every Castalian
institute and every Castalian should hold to only two goals and ideals: to
attain to the utmost command of his subject, and to keep himself and his
subject vital and flexible by forever recognizing its ties with all other
disciplines and by maintaining amicable relations with all. This second ideal, the conception of the
inner unity of all man's cultural efforts, the idea of universality, has found
perfect expression in our illustrious Game.
It may be that the physicist, the musicologist, or other scholar will at
times have to steep himself entirely in his own discipline, that renouncing the
idea of universal culture will further some momentary maximum performance in a
special field. But we, at any rate, we
Glass Bead Game players, must never allow ourselves such specialization. We must neither approve nor practise it, for
our own special mission, as you know, is the idea of the Universitas
Litterarum. Ours
to foster its supreme expression, the noble Game, and repeatedly to save the
various disciplines from their tendency to self-sufficiency. But how can we save anything that does not
have the desire to be saved? And how can
we make the archaeologists, the pedagogues, the astronomers, and so forth,
eschew self-sufficient specialization and throw open their windows to all the
other disciplines? We cannot do it by
compulsory means, say by making the Glass Bead Game an official subject in the
lower schools, now can we do it by invoking what our predecessors meant this
Game to be. We can prove only that our
Game and we ourselves are indispensable by keeping the Game ever at the summit
of our entire cultural life, by incorporating into it each new achievement,
each new approach, and each new complex of problems from the scholarly
disciplines. We must shape and cultivate
our universality, our noble and perilous sport with the idea of unity, endowing
it with such perennial freshness and loveliness, such persuasiveness and charm,
that even the soberest researcher and most diligent specialist will ever and
again feel its message, its temptation and allure.
"Let us imagine for the moment that
we players were to slacken in our zeal for a time, that the Game courses for
beginners became dull and superficial, that in the Games for advanced players
specialists of other disciplines looked in vain for vital, pulsating life, for
intellectual contemporaneity and interest.
Suppose that two or three times in a row our great annual Game were to
strike the guests as an empty ceremony, a lifeless, old-fashioned, formalistic
relic of the past. How quickly, then,
the Game and we ourselves would be done for.
Already we are no longer on those shining heights where the Glass Bead
Game stood a generation ago, when the annual Game lasted not one or two but
three or four weeks, and was the climax of the year not only for Castalia but
for the entire country. Today a
representative of the government still attends this annual Game, but all too
often as a somewhat bored guest, and a few cities and professions still send
envoys. Towards the end of the Game days
these representatives of the secular powers occasionally deign to suggest that
the length of the festival deters many other cities from sending envoys, and
that perhaps it would be more in keeping with the contemporary world either to
shorten the festival considerably or else to hold it only every other year, or
every third year.
"Well now, we cannot check this
development, or if you will, decadence.
It may well be that before long our Game will meet with no understanding
at all out in the world. Perhaps we
shall no longer be able to celebrate it.
But what we must and can prevent is the discrediting and devaluation of
the Game in its own home, in our Province.
Here our struggle is hopeful, and has repeatedly led to victory. Every day we witness the phenomenon: young
elite pupils who have signed up for their Game course without any special
ardour, and who have completed it dutifully, but without enthusiasm, are
suddenly seized by the spirit of the Game, by its intellectual potentialities,
its venerable tradition, its soul-stirring forces, and become our passionate
adherents and partisans. And every year
at the Ludus sollemnis we can see scholars of distinction who rather
looked down on us Glass Bead Game players during their work-filled year, and
who have not always wished our institution well. In the course of the great Game we see them
falling more and more under the spell of our art; we see them growing eased and
exalted, rejuvenated and fired, until at last, their hearts strengthened and
deeply stirred, they bid goodbye with words of almost abashed gratitude.
"Let us consider for a moment the
means at our command for carrying out our mission. We see a rich, fine, well-ordered apparatus
whose heart and core is the Game Archive, which we gratefully make use of every
hour of the day and which all of us serve, from Magister and Archivist down to
the humblest errand boy. The best and
the most vital aspect of our institution is the old Castalian principle of
selection of the best, the elite. The
schools of Castalia collect the best pupils from the entire country and educate
them. Similarly, we in the Players'
Village try to select the best among those endowed by nature with a love for
the Game. We train them to an
ever-higher standard of perfection. Our
courses and seminars take in hundreds, who then go their ways again; but we go
on training the best until they become genuine players, artists of the
Game. You all know that in ours as in
every art there is no end to development, that each of us, once he belongs to
the elite, will work away all his life at the further development, refinement,
and deepening of himself and our art, whether or not he belongs to our corps of
officials.
"The existence of our elite has
sometimes been denounced as a luxury. It
has been argued that we ought to train no more elite players than are required
to fill the ranks of our officialdom.
But in the first place, our corps of officials is not an institution
sufficient unto itself, and in the second place not everyone is suited for an
official post, any more than every good philologist is suited for
teaching. We officials, at any rate,
feel certain that the tutors are more than a reservoir of talented and
experienced players from which we fill our vacancies and draw our successors. I am almost tempted to say that this is only
a subsidiary function of the players' elite, even though we greatly stress it
to the uninitiated as soon as the meaning and justification of our institute is
brought up.
"No, the tutors are not primarily
future Masters, course directors, Archive officials. They are an end in themselves; their little
band is the real home and future of the Glass Bead Game. Here, in these few dozen hearts and heads the
developments, modifications, advances, and confrontations of our Game with the
spirit of the age and with the various disciplines take place. Only here is our Game played properly and
correctly, to its hilt, and with full commitment. Only within our elite is it an end in itself
and a sacred mission shorn of all dilettantism, cultural vanity,
self-importance, or superstition. The
future of the Game lies with you, the Waldzell tutors. And since it is the heart and soul of Castalia,
and you are the soul and vital spark of Waldzell, you are truly the salt of the
Province, its spirit, its dynamism.
There is no danger that your numbers could grow too large, your zeal too
hot, your passion for the glorious Game too
great. Increase it, increase it! For you, as for all Castalians, there is at
bottom only a single peril, which we all must guard against every single
day. The spirit of our Province and our
Order is founded on two principles: on objectivity and love of truth in study,
and on the cultivation of meditative wisdom and harmony. Keeping these two principles in balance means
for us being wise and worthy of our Order.
We love the sciences and scholarly disciplines, each his own, and yet we
know that devotion to a discipline does not necessarily preserve a man from selfishness,
vice, and absurdity. History is full of
examples of that, and folklore has given us the figure of Doctor Faust to
represent this danger.
"Other centuries sought safety in
the union of reason and religion, research and asceticism. In their Universitas Litterarum, theology
ruled. Among us we use meditation, the
fine gradations of yoga technique, in our efforts to exorcise the beast within
us and the diabolus dwelling in every branch of knowledge. Now you know as well as I that the Glass Bead
Game also has its hidden diabolus, that it can lead to empty virtuosity,
to artistic vanity, to self-advancement, to the seeking of power over others
and then to the abuse of that power.
This is why we need another kind of education beside the intellectual
and submit ourselves to the morality of the Order, not in order to reshape our
mentally active life into a psychically vegetative dream-life, but on the
contrary to make ourselves fit for the summit of intellectual achievement. We do not intend to flee from the vita
activa to the vita contemplativa, nor vice versa, but to keep moving
forward while alternating between the two, being at home in both, partaking of
both."
We have cited Knecht's words - and many
similar statements recorded by his students have been preserved - because they
throw so clear a light upon his conception of his office, at least during the
first few years of his magistracy. He
was an excellent teacher; the profusion of copies of his lectures which have
come down to us would alone provide evidence for that. Among the surprises that this high office
brought him right at the start was his discovery that teaching gave him so much
pleasure, and that he did so well at it.
He would not have expected that, for hitherto he had never really felt a
desire for teaching. Of course, like
every member of the elite, he had occasionally been given teaching assignments
for short periods even while he was merely an advanced student. He had substituted for other teachers in
Glass Bead Game courses at various levels, even more frequently had helped the
participants in such with reviews and drill; but in those days his freedom to
study and his solitary concentration had been so dear and important to him that
he had regarded these assignments as nuisances, despite the fact that he was
even then skilful and popular as a teacher.
He had, after all, also given courses in the Benedictine abbey, but they
had been of minor importance in themselves, and equally minor for him. There, his studies and association with
Father Jacobus had made all other work secondary. At the time, his greatest ambition had been
to be a good pupil, to learn, receive, form
himself. Now the pupil had become a
teacher, and as such he had mastered the major task of his first period in
office: the struggle to win authority and forge an identity of person and
office. In the course of this he made
two discoveries. The first was the
pleasure it gives to transplant the achievements of the mind into other minds
and see them being transformed into entirely new shapes and emanations - in
other words, the joy of teaching. The
second was grappling with the personalities of the students, the attainment and
practice of authority and leadership - in other words, the joy of educating. He never separated the two, and during his
magistracy he not only trained a large number of good and some superb Glass
Bead Game players, by also by example, by admonition, by his austere sort of
patience, and by the force of his personality and character, elicited from a
great many of his students the very best they were capable of.
In the course of this work he had made a
characteristic discovery - if we may be permitted to anticipate our story. At the beginning of his magistracy he dealt
exclusively with the elite, with the most advanced students and the
tutors. Many of the latter were his own
age, and every one was already a thoroughly trained player. But gradually, once he was sure of the elite,
he slowly and cautiously, from year to year, began withdrawing from it an
ever-larger portion of his time and energy, until at the end he sometimes he
could leave it almost entirely to his close associates and assistants. This process took years, and each succeeding
year Knecht, in the lectures, courses, and exercises he conducted, reached
further and further back to ever-younger students. In the end he went so far that he several
times personally conducted beginners' courses for youngsters - something rarely
done by a Magister Ludi. He found,
moreover, that the younger and more ignorant his pupils were, the more pleasure
he took in teaching. Sometimes in the
course of those years it actually made him uneasy, and cost him tangible
effort, to return from these groups of boys to the advanced students, let alone
to the elite. Occasionally, in fact, he
felt the desire to reach even further back and to attempt to deal with even
younger pupils, those who had never yet had courses of any kind and knew
nothing of the Glass Bead Game. He found
himself sometimes wishing to spend a while in Escholz or one of the other
preparatory schools instructing small boys in Latin, singing, or algebra, where
the atmosphere was far less intellectual than it was even in the most
elementary course in the Glass Bead Game, but where he would be dealing with
still more receptive, plastic, educable pupils, where teaching and educating
were more, and more deeply, a unity. In
the last two years of his magistracy he twice referred to himself in letters as
"Schoolmaster", reminding his correspondent that the expression
Magister Ludi - which for generations had meant only "Master of the
Game" in Castalia - had originally been simply the name for the
schoolmaster.
There could, of course, be no question
of his realizing such schoolmasterly wishes.
They were arrant dreams, as a man may dream of a midsummer sky on a
grey, cold winter day. For Knecht there
were no longer a multitude of paths open.
His duties were determined by his office; but since the manner in which
he wished to fulfil these duties was left largely to his own discretion, he had
in the course of the years, no doubt quite unconsciously at first, gradually
concerned himself more and more with educating, and with the earliest
age-groups within his reach. The older
he became, the more youth attracted him.
At least so we can observe from our vantage point. At the time a critic would have had
difficulty finding any trace of vagary in his conduct of his office. Moreover, the position itself compelled him
again and again to turn his attention back to the elite. Even during periods in which he left the
seminars and Archives almost entirely to his assistants and his Shadow,
long-term projects such as the annual Game competitions or the preparations for
the grand public Game of the year kept him in vital and daily contact with the elite. To his friend Fritz he once jokingly
remarked: "There have been sovereigns who suffered all their lives from an
unrequited love for their subjects.
Their hearts drew them to the peasants, the shepherds, the artisans, the
schoolmasters, and schoolchildren; but they seldom had a chance to see anything
of these, for they were always surrounded by their ministers and soldiers who
stood like a wall between them and the people.
A Magister's fate is the same. He
would like to reach people and sees only colleagues; he would like to reach the
schoolboys and children and sees only advanced students and members of the
elite."
But we have run far ahead of our story,
and now return to the period of Knecht's first years in office. After gaining the desired relationship with
the elite, he had next to turn his attention to the bureaucracy of the Archives
and show it that he intended to be a friendly but alert master. Then came the
problem of studying the structure and procedures of the chancery, and learning
how to run it. A constant flow of
correspondence, and repeated meetings or circular letters of the Boards,
summoned him to duties and tasks which were not altogether easy for a newcomer
to grasp and classify properly. Quite
often questions arose in which the various Faculties of the Province were
mutually interested and inclined towards jealousy - questions of jurisdiction,
for instance. Slowly, but with growing
admiration, he became aware of the powerful secret functions of the Order, the
living soul of the Castalian state, and the watchful guardian of its
constitution.
Thus strenuous and overcrowded months
had passed during which there had been no room in Joseph Knecht's thoughts for
Tegularius. However, and this was done
half instinctively, he did assign his friend a variety of jobs to protect him
from excessive leisure. Fritz had lost
his friend, who had overnight become his highest-ranking superior and whom he
had to address formally as "Reverend sir". But he took the orders the Magister issued to
him as a sign of solicitude and personal concern. Moody loner though he was, Fritz found
himself excited partly by his friend's elevation and the excitable mood of the
entire elite, partly by the tasks assigned to him, which were activating him in
a way compatible with his personality.
In any case, he bore the totally changed situation better than he
himself would have thought since that moment in which Knecht had responded to
the news that he was destined to be the Glass Bead Game Master by sending him
away. He was, moreover, both intelligent
and sympathetic enough to see something of the enormous strain his friend was
undergoing at this time, and to sense the nature of that great trial of
strength. He saw how Joseph was annealed
by the fire, and insofar as sentimental emotions were involved, he probably
felt them more keenly than the man who was undergoing the ordeal. Tegularius took the greatest pains with the
assignments he received from the Magister, and if he ever seriously regretted
his own weakness and his unfitness for office and responsibility, he did so
then, when he intensely wished to stand by the man he so warmly admired and
give him what help he could as an assistant, an official, a "Shadow".
The beech forests above Waldzell were
already browning when Knecht one day took a little book with him into the
Magister's garden adjoining his residence, that pretty little garden which the
late Master Thomas had so prized and often tended himself with Horatian
fondness. Knecht, like all the students,
had once imagined it as an awesome and sanctified spot, a
"Gradually begin to turn your
thoughts to the coming annual Game. It
seems early, and in fact might seem to you premature. Nevertheless I advise you: Unless you already
have a plan for the Game in your head, from now on let not a week pass,
certainly not a month, without turning your thoughts to the future Game. Make a note of your ideas; take the pattern
of a classical Game with you now and then, even on official journeys, and look
it over whenever you have a free half-hour.
Prepare yourself not be trying to force good ideas to come, but by
recalling frequently from now on that in the coming months a fine and festive
task awaits you, for which you must constantly strengthen, compose, and attune
yourself."
These words had been written some three
generations before by a wise old man and master of his art, at a time
incidentally in which the Glass Bead Game had probably reached its supreme
refinement in the formal sense. In those
days the Games had attained a delicacy and wealth of ornamentation in their
execution comparable to the arts of architecture and decoration in the late
Gothic or rococo periods. For some two
decades it had been a Game so fragile that it seemed as if it were really being
played with glass beads, a seemingly glassy game almost empty of content, a
seemingly coquettish and wanton pastime full of frail embellishments, an airy
dance, sometimes a tightrope dance, with the subtlest rhythmic structure. There were players who spoke of the style of
those days as if it were a lost talisman, and others who condemned it as
superficial, cluttered with ornamentation, decadent, and unmanly. It had been one of the masters and
co-creators of that style who had composed the sagacious advice and
admonishments in the Magister's calendar, and as Joseph Knecht searchingly read
his words a second and third time he felt a gay, blissful stirring in his
heart, a mood such as he had experienced only once before, it seemed to
him. When he reflected, he realized that
it had been in that meditation before his investiture; it was the mood that had
swept him as he imagined that strange round-dance, the round between the Music
Master and Joseph, Master and beginner, age and youth. It had been a very old man who had thought
and set down these words: "Let no week pass..." and "... not by
trying to force good ideas." It had
been a man who had held the high office of Master of the Game for at least
twenty years, perhaps much longer. And
in that sportively rococo age he must undoubtedly have dealt with
an extremely spoiled and arrogant elite.
He had devised and celebrated more than twenty of those brilliant annual
Games which in those days lasted for a month - an old man for whom the annually
recurring task of composing a grand, solemn Game must long since have ceased to
be merely a high honour and joy, must have become far more a burden demanding
great effort, a chore to which he had to attune himself, and somewhat stimulate
himself.
At this moment Knecht felt something
more than grateful reverence towards this wise old man and experienced advisor
- for the calendar had already served him frequently as a valuable guide. He also felt a joyous, a gay and
high-spirited superiority, the superiority of
youth. For among the many cares of a
Magister Ludi, with which he had already become acquainted, this particular
care did not occur. He really did not
have to force himself to think about the annual Game in good time, or worry
about not encountering this task in a sufficiently joyful and composed
spirit. He need not fear any lack of
enterprise, let alone ideas, for such a Game.
On the contrary, Knecht, who had at times during these few months given
an impression of being aged beyond his years, felt at the moment young and
strong.
He was unable to yield to this fine
feeling for long. He could not savour it
to the full, for his brief period of rest was almost over. But the inspiriting joyful emotion remained
in him; he took it with him when he left; and so the brief rest in the
Magister's garden, and his reading of the calendar, had after all borne fruit. It had given him relaxation and a moment of
happily heightened vitality, but it had also produced two inspired thoughts,
both of which at once assumed the character of decisions. First, whenever he too became old and weary
he would lay down his office the moment the composition of the annual Game
became a troublesome duty and he found himself at a loss for ideas. Secondly, he would in fact start work on his
first annual Game soon, and he would call in Tegularius to be his foremost
assistant in this work. That would
gratify and gladden his friend, and for himself it
would be a good trial step towards a new modus vivendi for their
temporarily arrested friendship. For the
initiative could not come from Fritz; it had to come from the Magister himself.
The task would certainly give his friend
plenty to do. Ever since his stay in
Mariafels, Knecht had been nurturing an idea for a Glass Bead Game which he now
decided to use for his first ceremonial Game as Magister. The pretty idea was to base the structure and
dimensions of the Game on the ancient ritual Confucian pattern for the building
of a Chinese house: orientation by the points of the compass, the gates, the
spirit wall, the relationships and functions of buildings and courtyards, their
co-ordination with the constellations, the calendar and family life, and the
symbolism and stylistic principles of the garden. Long ago, in studying a commentary on the I
Ching, he had thought the mythic order and significance of these rules made
an unusually appealing and charming symbol of the cosmos and of man's place in
the universe. The age-old mythic spirit
of the people in this tradition of domestic architecture had also seemed to him
wonderfully and intimately fused with the mandarin and magisterial spirit of
speculative scholarliness. He had
lovingly dwelt on the plan for this Game, though without so far setting down
any of it, often enough for the Game to have really been formulated as a whole
in his mind; but since taking office he had not had a chance to apply himself to it. Now he
resolved to construct his festival Game on this Chinese idea; and if Fritz
proved receptive to the spirit of the plan, he would ask him to begin at once
on the necessary background studies and the procedure for translating it into
the Game language. There was one
difficulty: Tegularius knew no Chinese.
It was far too late for him to learn it now. But with some briefing from Knecht himself
and from the
The very next day, since his office
hours happened to end early, he sent for Tegularius. He came, made his bow with that rather
markedly submissive and humble expression he had assumed in his dealings with
Knecht, and was quite astonished not to be addressed in the laconic manner his
friend had recently adopted. Instead, Joseph
nodded to him with a certain roguishness and asked:
"Do you recall that in our student years we once had something like a
quarrel in which I failed to convert you to my view? It was about the value and importance of Far
Eastern studies, particularly Chinese subjects, and I tried to persuade you to
spend a while in the college learning Chinese?
You do remember? Well, I am
thinking again what a pity that I could not persuade you at that time. It would be so fortunate now if you knew
Chinese. There's a marvellous project on
which we could collaborate."
He teased his friend a while longer,
holding him in suspense, and finally came out with his proposal: that he wanted
to begin working out the annual Game and would like Fritz, if it were agreeable
to him, to take over a large part of this work, just as he had helped with the
preparations for the prize Game in the elite competition while Knecht was
living among the Benedictines. Fritz
looked at him almost incredulously, profoundly surprised and delightfully upset
by the merry tone and smiling face of his friend, who had been comporting
himself solely as superior and Magister towards him. Joyfully stirred, he was conscious not only
of the honour and confidence expressed by this proposal, but also grasped the
significance of this handsome gesture.
He realized that it was an attempt at healing the breach, at reopening
the newly closed door between his friend and himself. He brushed aside the factor of his ignorance
of Chinese, and promptly declared his willingness to be wholly at the Reverend
Magister's disposal and to devote his full time to developing the Game.
"Good," the Magister said,
"I accept your offer. So we shall
once again be sharing periods of work and studies, as we used to in those days
that seem strangely far away, when we worked through and fought through so many
a Game. I am glad, Tegularius. And now the main thing is for you to inform
yourself concerning the underlying idea of the Game. You must come to understand what a Chinese
house is and the meaning of the rules for its construction. I shall give you a recommendation to the Far
Eastern College; they will help you there.
Or - something else occurs to me - a prettier notion. Perhaps we can try Elder Brother, the man in
the Bamboo Grove, whom I used to tell you so much about. He may feel it beneath his dignity, or too
much trouble to bother with someone who knows no Chinese, but we might try it
at any rate. If he cares to, this man
can make a Chinese of you."
A message was sent to Elder Brother,
cordially inviting him to come to Waldzell for a while as the Glass Bead Game
Master's guest, since the cares of office did not permit the Magister Ludi to
call on him and explain what help he wanted of him. Elder Brother, however, did not leave his
Bamboo Grove. The messenger returned
with a note in Chinese ink and script.
It read: "It would be honourable to behold the great man. But movement leads to obstacles. Let two small bowls be used for the
sacrifice. The younger one greets the
exalted one."
Knecht thereupon persuaded his friend,
not without difficulty, to make the trip to the Bamboo Grove and ask to be
received and instructed. But the journey
proved fruitless. The hermit in the
grove received Tegularius almost deferentially, but answered every one of his
questions with amiable aphorisms in the Chinese language and did not invite him
to stay, despite the fine letter of recommendation from the hand of the
Magister Ludi, drawn elegantly on handsome paper. Rather out of sorts, having accomplished
nothing, Fritz returned to Waldzell. He
brought back a gift for the Magister: a sheet of paper on which was carefully
brushed an ancient verse about a goldfish.
Tegularius now had to try his luck in
the
While he listened to Fritz's report on
his visit to Elder Brother, and afterwards, by himself, while he read the lines
about the goldfish, Knecht felt surrounded by the hermit's atmosphere. Vivid memories arose of his long-ago stay in
the hut, with the rustling bamboos and yarrow stalks outside, along with other
memories of freedom, leisure, student days, and the colourful paradise of
youthful dreams. How this brave,
crotchety hermit had contrived to withdraw and keep his freedom; how his
tranquil Bamboo Grove sheltered him from the world; how deeply and strongly he
lived in his neat, pedantic and wise Sinicism; in how beautifully concentrated
and inviolable a way the magic spell of his life's dream enclosed him year
after year and decade after decade, making a China of his garden, a temple of
his hut, divinities of his fish, and a sage of himself! With a sigh, Knecht shook off this
notion. He himself had gone another way,
or rather been led, and what counted was to pursue his assigned way
straightforwardly and faithfully, not to compare it with the ways of others.
Together with Tegularius, he sketched
out and composed his Game, using whatever leisure hours he could find. He left the entire task of selection in the
Archives, as well as the first and second drafts, to his friend. Given this new content, their friendship
acquired life and form once more, though the form differed from that of the
past. Fritz's eccentricities and
imaginative subtlety coloured and enriched the pattern of their Game. He was one of those eternally dissatisfied
and yet self-sufficient individuals who can linger for hours over a bouquet of
flowers or a set table that anyone else would regard as complete, rearranging
the details with restive pleasure and nervous loving manipulations, turning the
littlest task into an absorbing day's work.
In future years the association
persisted: the ceremonial Game represented a joint accomplishment each time
thereafter. For Tegularius it was a
double satisfaction to prove that he was more than useful, indispensable, to
his friend and Master in so important a matter, and to witness the public
performance of the Game as the unnamed collaborator whose part was nevertheless
well known to the members of the elite.
One day in the late autumn of Knecht's
first year in office, while his friend was still deep in his initial studies of
"Greetings," the student said,
"very cordial and respectful greetings for you, reverend sir, along with
an invitation."
Knecht asked him to sit down. Carefully choosing his words, the young man
continued: "As I have said, the venerable former Magister requested me to
give you his warmest regards. He also
hinted that he hoped to see you in the near future, in fact as soon as possible. He invites you, or urges you, to visit him
before too long a time has passed, assuming, of course, that the visit can be
fitted in to an official journey and will not excessively discommode you. That is the burden of the message."
Knecht studied the young man, convinced
that he was one of the old Master's protégés.
Cautiously, he queried: "How long do you linger in our Archives, studiose?"
"Until I see that you are setting
out for Monteport, reverend sir," was the reply.
Knecht considered a moment. "Very well," he said. "And why have you not repeated the exact
wording of the ex-Master's message, as you should have done?"
Petrus unflinchingly met Knecht's eyes,
and answered slowly, still circumspectly choosing his words, as if he were
speaking a foreign language. "There
is no message, reverend sir," he said, "and there is no exact
wording. You know my reverend Master and
know that he has always been an extraordinarily modest man. In Monteport it is said that in his youth,
while he was still a tutor but already recognized by the entire elite as
predestined to be the Music Master, they nicknamed him 'the great
would-be-small'. Well, this modesty, and
his piety no less, his helpfulness, thoughtfulness, and tolerance have actually
increased ever since he grew old, and more so since he resigned his
office. Undoubtedly you know that better
than I. This modesty of his would forbid
him to do anything like asking your Reverence for a visit, no matter how much
he desired it. That is why, Domine, I
have not been honoured with any such message and nevertheless have acted as if
I received one. If that was a mistake,
you are free to regard the nonexistent message as actually nonexistent."
Knecht smiled faintly. "And what about your
work in the Game Archives, my good fellow? Was that mere pretext?"
"Oh no. I have to obtain the ciphers for a number of
clefs, so that I would in any case have had to cast myself upon your
hospitality in the near future. But I
thought it advisable to speed this little journey somewhat."
"Very good," the Magister
said, nodding, his expression once again grave.
"Is it permissible to ask into the reason for this haste?"
The young man closed his eyes for a
moment. His forehead was deeply
furrowed, as though the question pained him.
Then he looked once more into the Magister's face with his searching,
youthfully incisive gaze.
"The question cannot be answered
unless you would be so good as to frame it more precisely."
"Very well then," Knecht
said. "Is the former Master's
health bad? Does it give reason for
anxiety?"
Although the Magister had spoken with
the greatest calm, the student perceived his affectionate concern for the old
man. For the first time since the
beginning of their conversation a gleam of good will appeared in his rather
fierce eyes, and as he at last prepared to state candidly the real object of
his visit, his voice sounded a trace friendlier and less distant.
"Reverend Magister," he said,
"rest assured that my honoured Master's condition is by no means bad. He has always enjoyed excellent health and
does so still, although his advanced age has naturally greatly weakened
him. It is not that his appearance has
so much changed or that his strength has suddenly begun to diminish rapidly. He takes little walks, plays a little music
every day, and until recently even continued to give two pupils organ lessons,
beginners moreover, for he has always preferred to be surrounded by the
youngest pupils. But the fact that he
dismissed these pupils a few weeks ago is a symptom that caught my attention
all the same, and since then I have watched the venerable Master rather more
closely, and drawn my conclusions about him.
That is the reason I have come.
If anything justifies my conclusions, and my taking such a step, it is
the fact that I myself was formerly one of the former Music Master's pupils,
more or less one of his favourites, if I may say so; moreover, for the past
year I have served him as a kind of secretary and companion, the present Music
Master having named me to look after him.
It was a very welcome assignment; there is no-one in the world for whom
I feel such veneration and attachment as I do for my old teacher and patron. It was he who opened up the mystery of music
for me, and made me capable of serving it; and everything I may have acquired
since in the way of ideas, respect for the Order, maturity, and inner concord
has all come from him and is his doing.
This past year I have been living at his side, and although I am
occupied with a few studies and courses of my own, I am always at his disposal,
his companion at table and on walks, making music with him, and sleeping in an
adjoining room. Being so close to him
all the time, I have been able to keep close watch over the stages of - I
suppose I must say, of his ageing, his physical ageing. A few of my associates comment pityingly or
scornfully now and then about its being a peculiar assignment that so young a
person as myself should be the servant and companion of a very old man. But they do not know, and aside from myself I
suspect no-one really knows, what kind of ageing the Master is privileged to
undergo. They do not see him gradually
growing weaker and frailer in the body, taking less and less nourishment,
returning from his short walks more fatigued every time, without ever being
really sick, and at the same time becoming, in the tranquillity of age, more
and more spiritual, devout, dignified, and simple in heart. If my office of secretary and attendant has
any difficulties at all, they arise solely from the fact that his Reverence
does not want to be waited on and tended at all. He still wants only to give and never to
take."
"Thank you," Knecht said. "I am happy to know that his Reverence
has so devoted and grateful a pupil at his side. And now, since you are not speaking on his
orders, tell me plainly why you feel that I should visit Monteport."
"You asked with concern about the
reverend former Music Master's health," the young man answered,
"evidently because my request suggested to you that he might be ill and it
could be high time to pay him one last visit.
To be frank, I do think it is high time.
He certainly does not seem to me to be close to his end, but his way of
taking leave of the world is quite unique.
For the past several months, for example, he has almost entirely lost
the habit of speaking; and although he always preferred brevity to loquacity,
he has now reached a degree of brevity and silence that frightens me somewhat. At first, when he did not answer a remark or
question of mine, I thought that his hearing was beginning to weaken. But he hears almost as well as ever; I have
made many tests of that. I therefore had
to assume that he was distracted and could no longer focus his attention. But this, too, is not an adequate
explanation. Rather, it is as if he has
been on his way elsewhere for some time, and no longer lives entirely among us,
but more and more in his own world. He
rarely visits anyone or sends for anyone; aside from me he no longer sees
another person for days. Ever since this
started, this absentness, this detachment, I have tried to urge the few friends
whom I know he loved most to see him. If
you were to visit him, Domine, you would make your old friend happy, I
am sure of that, and you would still find relatively the same man whom you have
revered and loved. In a few months,
perhaps only in a few weeks, his pleasure in seeing you and his interest in you
will probably be much less; it is even possible that he would no longer recognize
you, or at any rate pay attention to you."
Knecht stood up, went to the window, and
stood there for a while looking out and breathing deeply. When he turned back to Petrus he saw that the
student was also standing, as though he thought the audience over. The Magister extended his hand.
"I thank you once more,
Petrus," he said. "As you
surely know, a Magister has all sorts of duties. I cannot put on my hat and leave at once;
schedules have to be rearranged. I hope
that I shall be able to leave by the day after tomorrow. Would that be time enough, and would you be
able to finish your work in the Archives by then? Yes?
Then I shall send for you when I am ready."
A few days later Knecht left for
Monteport, accompanied by Petrus. When
they reached the pavilion in the gardens where the former Music Master now
lived - it was a lovely and beautifully tranquil monastic cell - they heard
music from the back room, delicate, thin, but rhythmically firm and deliciously
serene music. There the old man sat
playing a two-part melody with two fingers - Knecht guessed at once that it
must be from one of the many books of duets written at the end of the sixteenth
century. They remained outside until the
music ended; then Petrus called out to his master that he was back and had
brought a visitor. The old man appeared
in the doorway and gave them a welcoming look.
The Music Master's welcoming smile, which everyone loved, had always had
an open, childlike cordiality, a radiant friendliness; Joseph Knecht had seen
it for the first time nearly thirty years before, and his heart had opened and
surrendered to this friendly man during that tense but blissful morning hour in
the music room. Since then he had seen
this smile often, each time with deep rejoicing and a strange stirring of his
heart; and while the Master's grey-shot hair had gradually turned completely
grey and then white, while his face had grown softer, his handshake fainter,
his movements less supple, the smile had lost none of its brightness and grace,
its purity and depth. And this time
Joseph, the old man's friend and former pupil, saw the change beyond a
doubt. The radiant, welcoming message of
that smiling old man's face, whose blue eyes and delicately flushed cheeks had
grown paler with the passing years, was both the same and not the same. It had grown deeper, more mysterious, and
intense. Only now, as he was exchanging
greetings, did Knecht really begin to understand what the student Petrus had
been concerned about, and how greatly he himself,
while thinking he was making a sacrifice for the sake of this concern, was in
fact receiving a benefaction.
His friend Carlo Ferromonte was the
first person to whom he spoke about this.
Ferromonte was at this time librarian at the famous Monteport music
library, and Knecht called on him a few hours later. Their conversation has been preserved in a
letter of Ferromonte's.
"Our former Music Master was your
teacher, of course," Knecht said, "and you were very fond of
him. Do you see him often nowadays?"
"No," Carlo replied. "That is, I see him fairly often, of
course, when he is taking his walk, say, and I happen to be coming out of the
library. But I haven't talked with him
for months. He is more and more
withdrawing and no longer seems able to bear sociability. In the past he used to set aside an evening
for people like me, those among his former subordinates who are officials in
Monteport now; but that stopped about a year ago. It amazed us all that he went to Waldzell for
your investiture."
"Ah yes," Knecht said. "But when you do see him occasionally,
haven't you been struck by any change in him?"
"Oh yes. You mean his fine appearance, his
cheerfulness, his curious radiance? Of
course we have noticed that. While his
strength is diminishing, that serene cheerfulness is constantly
increasing. We have grown accustomed to
it. But I suppose it would strike
you."
"His secretary Petrus sees far more
of him than you do," Knecht exclaimed, "but he hasn't grown
accustomed to it, as you say. He came specially to Waldzell, on a plausible excuse, of course, to
urge me to make this visit. What do you
think of him?"
"Of Petrus? He has a first-rate knowledge of music,
though he's more on the pedantic than the brilliant side - a rather slow-moving
if not slow-witted person. He's totally
devoted to the former Music Master and would give his life for him. I imagine his serving the master he idolizes
is the whole content of his life; he's obsessed by him. Didn't you have that impression too?"
"Obsessed? Yes, but I don't think this young man is
obsessed simply by a fondness and passion; he's not just infatuated with his
old teacher and making an idol out of him, but obsessed and enchanted by an
actual and genuine phenomenon which he sees better, or has better understood
emotionally, than the rest of you. I
want to tell you how it struck me. When
I went to the former Master today, after not having seen him for six months, I expected
little or nothing from this visit, after the hints his secretary had dropped. I had simply been alarmed to think that the
revered old man might suddenly depart from us in the near future, and had
hastened here in order to see him at least once more. When he recognized and greeted me, his face
glowed, but he said no more than my name and shook hands with me. That gesture, too, and his hand, seemed to me
also to glow; the whole man, or at least his eyes, his white hair, and his rosy
skin, seemed to emit a cool, gentle radiance.
I sat down with him. He sent the
student away, just with a look, and there began the oddest conversation I have
ever had. At the beginning, I admit, it
was very disturbing and depressing for me, and shaming also, for I kept
addressing the old man, or asking questions, and his only answer to anything
was a look. I could not make out whether
my questions and the things I told him were anything but an annoying noise to
him. He confused, disappointed, and
tired me; I felt altogether superfluous and importunate. Whatever I said to the Master, the only
response was a smile and a brief glance.
If those glances had not been so full of good will and cordiality, I
would have been forced to think that he was frankly making fun of me, of my
stories and questions, of the whole useless trouble I had taken to come and
visit him. As a matter of fact, his
silence and his smile did indeed contain something of the sort. They were actually a form of fending me off
and reproving me, except that they were so in a different way, on a different
plane of meaning from, say, mocking words.
I had first to wear myself out and suffer total shipwreck with what had
seemed to me my patient efforts to start a conversation, before I began to
realize that the old man could easily have manifested a patience, persistence,
and politeness a hundred times greater than mine. Perhaps the episode lasted only fifteen
minutes or half an hour; it seemed to me like half a day. I began to feel sad, tired, and angry, and to
repent my journey. My mouth felt
dry. There sat the man I revered, my
patron, my friend, whom I had loved and trusted ever since I could think, who
had always responded to whatever I might say - there he sat and listened to me
talk, or perhaps did not listen to me, and had barricaded himself completely
behind his radiance and smile, behind his golden mask, unreachable, belonging
to a different world with different laws; and everything I tried to bring by
speech from our world to his ran off him like rain from a stone. At last - I had already given up hope - he
broke through the magic wall; at last he helped me; at last he said a few
words. Those were the only words I heard
him speak today.
"'You are tiring yourself,
Joseph," he said softly, his voice full of that touching friendliness and
solicitude you know so well. That was
all. 'You are tiring yourself,
Joseph.' As if he had long been watching
me engaged in a too-strenuous task and wanted to admonish me to stop. He spoke the words with some effort, as
though he had not used his lips for speaking for a long time. And at that moment he laid his hand on my arm
- it was light as a butterfly - looked penetratingly into my eyes, and
smiled. At that moment I was
conquered. Something of his cheerful
silence, something of his patience and calm, passed into me; and suddenly I
understood the old man and the direction his nature had taken, away from people
and towards silence, away from words and towards music, away from ideas and
towards unity. I understood what I was
privileged to see here, and now for the first time grasped the meaning of this
smile, this radiance. A saint, one who
had attained perfection, had permitted me to dwell in his radiance for an hour;
and blunderer that I am, I had tried to entertain him, to question him, to
seduce him into a conversation. Thank God
the light had not dawned on me too late.
He might have sent me away and thus rejected me forever. And I would have been deprived of the most
remarkable and wonderful experience I have ever had."
"I see," Ferromonte said
thoughtfully, "that you have discovered something akin to a saint in our
former Music Master. A
good thing that you and none other has told me about this. I confess that I would have received such a
story with the greatest distrust from anyone else. I am, taken all in all, not fond of
mysticism; as a musician and historian I am pedantically given to neat
classification. Since we Castalians are
neither a Christian congregation nor a Hindu or Taoist monastery, I do not see
that any of us qualify for sainthood - that is, for a purely religious
category. Coming from anyone but you,
Joseph - excuse me, I mean Domine - I would regard any such ascription
as going off the deep end. But I imagine
that you do not mean to initiate canonization proceedings for our former
Master; you would scarcely find a competent consistory for them in our
Order. No, don't interrupt me, I am
speaking seriously; I don't mean that as a joke at all. You have told me about an experience, and I
must admit that I feel somewhat ashamed, because neither I nor any of my
colleagues here at Monteport has entirely overlooked the phenomenon you
describe. No, we have merely noticed it
and paid it little heed. I am reflecting
on the reason for my failure and my indifference. One explanation of course is the fact that you
encountered the Master's transformation as a finished product, whereas I
witnessed its slow evolution. The former
Magister you saw months ago and the one you saw today differed sharply from
each other, whereas we, his neighbours, meeting him every so often, observed
almost imperceptible changes. But I
admit that this explanation doesn't satisfy me.
If something like a miracle is taking place before our eyes, however
quietly and slowly, we ought to have been more stirred by it than we have been,
and would have been if we had been unbiased.
Here, I think, I've hit on the reason for my obtuseness: I was not in
the least unbiased. I failed to observe
the phenomenon because I did not want to observe it. Like everyone else, I noticed our Master's
increasing withdrawal and taciturnity, and the concurrent increase in his
friendliness, the every brighter and more ethereal radiance of his face when we
met and he responded mutely to my greeting.
I noticed that, of course, and so did everyone else. But I fought against seeing anything more in
it, and I fought against it not from lack of reverence for the old Magister,
but in part out of distaste for the cult of personality and enthusiasm in
general, in part out of distaste for such enthusiasm in this special case, for
the kind of cult the student Petrus practises with his idolization of the
Master. I've only fully realized all
this as you were telling your story."
Knecht laughed. "That was quite a roundabout way for you
to discover your own dislike for poor Petrus," he said. "But what now? Am I also a mystic and enthusiast? Am I too indulging in the forbidden cult of
personality and hagiolatry? Or are you
admitting to me what you won't admit to the student, that
we have seen and experienced something real, objective, not mere dreams and
fancies?"
"Of course I admit it to you,"
Carlo replied slowly and thoughtfully.
"No-one is going to deny your experience or doubt the beauty and
serenity of the Magister who can smile at us in that incredible way. The question is only: Where do we classify
this phenomenon? What do we call it, how
explain it? That sounds like the
pedantic schoolmaster, but we Castalians are schoolmasters, after all; and if I
want to classify and find a term for your and our experience, it is not because
I wish to destroy its beauty by generalizing it, but because I want to describe
and preserve it as distinctly as possible.
If on a journey I hear a peasant or child humming a melody I have never
heard before, that is likewise an important experience for me, and if I
immediately try to transcribe this melody as precisely as I can, I am not
dismissing and filing it away, but paying due honour to my experience, and
taking care that it is not lost."
Knecht gave him a friendly nod. "Carlo," he said, "it is a great pity we can so rarely see each other any
more. Not all friendships of youth
survive reunions. I came to you with my
story about the old Magister because you are the only person here whose knowing and sharing it matters to me. Now I must leave it to you to do with my
story whatever you like, and to assign whatever term you will to our Master's
transfigured state. It would make me
happy if you would call on him and stay in his aura for a little while. His state of grace, perfection, wisdom of
age, bliss, or whatever you want to call it, may belong to religious life. But although we Castalians have neither denominations nor churches, piety is not altogether
unknown to us. And our former Music
Master in particular was always a thoroughly pious person. Since there are accounts of blessed,
perfected, radiant, transfigured souls in many religions, why should not our
Castalian piety occasionally have this kind of blossoming?...
It is late by now - I ought to go to sleep - I must leave early tomorrow
morning. But I hope to come back
soon. Let me just briefly tell you the
end of my story. After he had said to
me, 'You are tiring yourself', I was at last able to stop straining at
conversation; I managed not only to be still, but to turn my will away from the
foolish goal of using words in the effort to probe this man of silence and draw
profit from him. And the moment I gave
up that effort and left everything to him, it all went of its own accord. You may want to substitute terms of your own
for mine, but please listen to me, even if I seem vague or confound
categories. I stayed about an hour or an
hour and a half with the old man, and I cannot communicate to you what went on
between us or what was exchanged; certainly no words were spoken. I felt, after my resistance was broken, only
that he received me into his peace and his brightness; cheerful serenity and a
wonderful peace enclosed the two of us.
Without my having deliberately and consciously meditated, it somewhat
resembled an unusually successful and gladdening meditation whose subject might
have been the Magister's life. I saw or
felt him and the course of his growth from the time he first entered my life,
when I was a boy, up to this present moment.
His was a life of devotion and work, but free of obstructions, free of
ambition, and full of music. It was as
if by becoming a musician and Music Master he had chosen music as one of the
ways towards man's highest goal, inner freedom, purity, perfection, and as
though ever since making that choice he had done nothing but let himself be
more and more permeated, transformed, purified by music - his entire self from
his nimble, clever pianist's hands and his vast, well-stocked musician's memory
to all the parts and organs of body and soul, to his pulses and breathing, to
his sleep and dreaming - so that he was now only a symbol, or rather a
manifestation, a personification of music.
At any rate, I experienced what radiated from him, or what surged back
and forth between him and me like rhythmic breathing, entirely as music, as an
altogether immaterial esoteric music which absorbs everyone who enters its
magic circle as a song for many voices absorbs an entering voice. Perhaps a non-musician would have perceived
this grace in different images: an astronomer might have seen it as a moon
circling around a planet, or a philologist heard it as some magical primal
language containing all meanings. But
enough for now, I must be going. It's
been a great pleasure, Carlo."
We have reported this episode in some
detail, since the Music Master held so important a place in Knecht's life and
heart. We have also been drawn into
prolixity by the chance circumstance that Knecht's talk with Ferromonte has
come down to us in the latter's own record of it in a letter. This is certainly the earliest and most
reliable account of the Music Master's "transfiguration"; later, of
course, there was a swarm of legends and embroideries.