The Glass Bead Game (18 page)

We may ask why he had chosen this toilsome, eccentric, and above all lonely path, for his ultimate goal (outside of Castalia, people would say: his choice of profession) was undoubtedly the Glass Bead Game. He might freely have entered one of the institutes of the Vicus Lusorum, the settlement of Glass Bead Game players in Waldzell, as a guest scholar. In that case all the special studies connected with the Game would have been made easier for him. Advice and information on all questions of detail would have been available to him at any time, and in addition he could have pursued his studies among other scholars in the same field, young men with the same devotion to the Game, instead of struggling alone in a state that often amounted to voluntary banishment. Be that as it may, he went his own way. We suspect that he avoided Waldzell partly to expunge as far as possible from his own mind and the minds of others the memory of his role as a student there, partly so that he would not stumble into a similar role among the community of Glass Bead Game players. For he probably bore away the feeling from those early days that he was predestined to become a leader and spokesman, and he did all that he could to outwit the obtrusiveness of fate. He sensed in advance the weight of responsibility; he could already feel it toward his fellow students from Waldzell, who went on adulating him even though he withdrew from them. And he felt it especially toward Tegularius, who would go through fire and water for him—this he knew instinctively.

Therefore he sought seclusion and contemplation, while his destiny tried to propel him forward into the public realm. It is in these terms that we imagine his state of mind at the time. But there was another important factor that deterred him from taking the usual courses at the higher Glass Bead Game academies and made an outsider of him. That was an inexorable urge toward research arising from his former doubts about the Glass Bead Game. To be sure, he had once tasted the experience that the Game could be played in a supreme and sacred sense; but he had also seen that the majority of players and students of the Game, and even some of the leaders and teachers, by no means shared that lofty and sacramental feeling for the Game. They did not regard the Game language as a
lingua sacra,
but more as an ingenious kind of stenography. They practiced the Game as an interesting or amusing specialty, an intellectual sport or an arena for ambition. In fact, as his letter to the Music Master shows, he already sensed that the search for ultimate meaning does not necessarily determine the quality of the player, that its superficial aspects were also essential to the Game, that it comprised technique, science, and social institution. In short, he had doubts and divided feelings; the Game was a vital question for him, had become the chief problem of his life, and he was by no means disposed to let well-meaning spiritual guides ease his struggles or benignly smiling teachers dismiss them as trivial.

Naturally he could have made any one of the tens of thousands of recorded Glass Bead Games and the millions of possible games the basis of his studies. He knew this and therefore proceeded from that chance Game plan that he and his schoolmates had composed in an elementary course. It was the game in which he had for the first time grasped the meaning of all Glass Bead Games and experienced his vocation as a player. During those years he kept with him at all times an outline of that Game, noted down in the usual shorthand. In the symbols, ciphers, signatures, and abbreviations of the Game language an astronomical formula, the principles of form underlying an old sonata, an utterance of Confucius, and so on, were written down. A reader who chanced to be ignorant of the Glass Bead Game might imagine such a Game pattern as rather similar to the pattern of a chess game, except that the significances of the pieces and the potentialities of their relationships to one another and their effect upon one another multiplied many-fold and an actual content must be ascribed to each piece, each constellation, each chess move, of which this move, configuration, and so on is the symbol.

Knecht's studies went beyond the task of acquainting himself in the utmost detail with the contents, principles, books, and systems contained in the Game plan, and retracing as he went a way back through various cultures, sciences, languages, arts, and centuries. He had also set himself the task that none of his teachers even recognized, of employing these objects to check in detail the systems and possibilities of expression in the art of the Glass Bead Game.

To anticipate his results: here and there he found a gap, an inadequacy, but on the whole our Glass Bead Game withstood his stringent reassessment. Otherwise he would not have returned to it at the end of his work.

If we were writing a study in cultural history, a good many of the places and scenes of Knecht's student days would certainly merit description. As far as possible he preferred places where he could work alone, or with only a very few others, and to some of these places he retained a lifelong grateful attachment. He frequently stayed in Monteport, sometimes as the Music Master's guest, sometimes as a participant in a musicological seminar. Twice we find him in Hirsland, the headquarters of the Order, as a participant in the “Great Exercise,” the twelve-day period of fasting and meditation. He used later to tell his intimates with special affection about the “Bamboo Grove,” the lovely hermitage which was the scene of his
I Ching
studies. There he learned and experienced things of crucial importance. There, too, guided by a wonderful premonition or Providence, he found unique surroundings and an extraordinary person: the founder and inmate of the Chinese hermitage, who was called Elder Brother. We think it proper to describe at greater length this most remarkable episode in his years of free study.

Knecht had begun his studies of the Chinese language and classics in the famous Far Eastern College which for generations had been affiliated to St. Urban's, the academic complex devoted to classical philology. There he had made rapid progress in reading and writing and also struck up friendships with several of the Chinese working there, and had learned a number of the odes of the
Shih Ching
by heart. In the second year of his stay he turned to a more and more intense study of the
I Ching,
the Book of Changes. The Chinese provided him with all sorts of information, but no introductory course; there was no teacher available in the college, and after Knecht had repeatedly petitioned them for an instructor for a thorough study of the
I Ching,
he was told about Elder Brother and his hermitage.

It had become apparent to Knecht that his interest in the Book of Changes was leading him into a field which the teachers at the college preferred to keep at a distance, and he therefore grew more cautious in his inquiries. Now, as he made efforts to obtain further information about this legendary Elder Brother, it became obvious to him that the hermit enjoyed a measure of respect, and indeed a degree of fame, but more as an eccentric loner than as a scholar. Knecht sensed that he would have to help himself; he finished a paper he had begun for a seminar as quickly as possible, and took his leave. On foot, he made his way to the region in which the mysterious man, perhaps a sage and Master, perhaps a fool, had long ago established his Bamboo Grove.

He had gathered a few bits of information about the hermit. Some twenty-five years before, the man had been the most promising student in the Chinese Department. He seemed to have been born for these studies, outdid his best teachers, both Chinese by birth and Westerners, in the technique of brush writing and the deciphering of ancient texts, but became somewhat notorious for the zeal with which he also tried to make himself into a Chinese in outward matters also. Thus he obstinately refused to address his superiors, from the instructor of a seminar to the Masters, by their titles, as all other students did. Instead, he called them “My Elder Brother,” until at last this appellation became attached to himself as a nickname. He devoted special attention to the oracular game of the
I Ching,
and developed a masterly skill at practicing it with the traditional yarrow stalks. Along with the ancient commentaries on the Book of Changes, his favorite book was the philosophical work of Chuang Tzu. Evidently the rationalistic, somewhat antimystical, and declaredly Confucian spirit of the Chinese Department of the college, as Knecht encountered it, had already been prevalent at that time, for one day Elder Brother left the Institute, which would gladly have kept him as a teacher, and set out on a walking tour, armed with brush, Chinese ink saucer, and two or three books. He made his way to the southern part of the country, turning up here and there to visit for a while with brethren of the Order. He looked for and finally found the suitable spot for the hermitage he planned, stubbornly bombarded both the secular authorities and the Order with written and oral petitions until they granted him the right to settle there and cultivate the area. Ever since, he had been living in an idyllic retreat strictly governed by ancient Chinese principles. Some referred to him with amusement as a crank, others venerated him as a kind of saint. But apparently he was content with himself and at peace with the world, devoting his days to meditation and the copying of ancient scrolls whenever he was not occupied with his Bamboo Grove, which sheltered from the north wind a carefully laid out Chinese miniature garden.

Joseph Knecht, then, tramped toward this hermitage, making frequent stops to rest, delighting in the landscape that lay smiling beneath him as soon as he had climbed through the mountain passes, stretching southward in a blue haze, with sunlit terraced vineyards, brown stone walls alive with lizards, stately chestnut groves, a piquant mingling of southland and high mountain country. It was late afternoon when he reached the Bamboo Grove. He entered and looked with astonishment upon a Chinese pavilion set in the midst of a curious garden, with a splashing fountain fed by a wooden pipe. The overflow ran along a gravel bed into a masonry basin, in whose crevices all sorts of green plants flourished. A few goldfish swam around in the still, crystalline water. Fragile and peaceful, the feathery crowns of the bamboos swayed on their strong, slender shafts. The sward was punctuated by stone slabs carved with inscriptions in the classical style.

A frail man dressed in tan linen, glasses over blue eyes that bore a tentative look, straightened up from a flower bed over which he had been bending and slowly approached the visitor. His manner was not unfriendly, but it had that somewhat awkward shyness rather common among solitaries and recluses. He looked inquiringly at Knecht and waited for what he had to say. With some embarrassment Knecht spoke the Chinese words he had already formulated: “The young disciple takes the liberty of paying his respects to Elder Brother.”

“The well-bred guest is welcome,” Elder Brother said. “May a young colleague always be welcome to a bowl of tea and a little agreeable conversation; and a bed for the night may be found for him, if this is desired.”

Knecht kowtowed, expressed his thanks, and was led into the pavilion and served tea. Then he was shown the garden, the carved slabs, the pond, the goldfish, and was even told the age of the fish. Until suppertime they sat under the swaying bamboos exchanging courtesies, verses from odes, and sayings from the classical writers. They looked at the flowers and took pleasure in the fading pinks of sunset along the mountain ranges. Then they re-entered the house. Elder Brother served bread and fruit, cooked an excellent pancake for each of them on a tiny stove, and after they had eaten he asked in German the purpose of his visit, and in German Knecht explained why he had come and what he desired, which was to stay as long as Elder Brother permitted him, and to become his disciple.

“We shall discuss that tomorrow,” the hermit said, and showed his guest to a bed.

Next morning Knecht sat down by the goldfish pool and gazed into the cool small world of darkness and light and magically shimmering colors, where the bodies of the golden fish glided in the dark greenish blueness and inky blackness. Now and then, just when the entire world seemed enchanted, asleep forever in a dreamy spell, the fish would dart with a supple and yet alarming movement, like flashes of crystal and gold, through the somnolent darkness. He looked down, becoming more and more absorbed, daydreaming rather than meditating, and was not conscious when Elder Brother stepped softly out of the house, paused, and stood for a long time watching his bemused guest. When Knecht at last shook off his abstraction and stood up, he was no longer there, but his voice soon called from inside an invitation to tea. They greeted each other briefly, drank tea, and sat listening in the matutinal stillness to the sound of the small jet of water from the fountain, a melody of eternity. Then the hermit stood up, busied himself here and there about the irregularly shaped room, now and then glancing, blinking rapidly, at Knecht. Suddenly he asked: “Are you ready to don your shoes and continue your journeying?”

Knecht hesitated. Then he said: “If it must be so, I am ready.”

“And if it should chance that you stay here a little while, are you ready to be obedient and to keep as still as a goldfish?”

Again Knecht said he was ready.

“It is well,” Elder Brother said. “Now I shall lay the stalks and consult the oracle.”

While Knecht sat and looked on with an awe equal to his curiosity, keeping “as still as a goldfish,” Elder Brother fetched from a wooden beaker, which was rather a kind of quiver, a handful of sticks. These were the yarrow stalks. He counted them out carefully, returned one part of the bundle to the vessel, laid a stalk aside, divided the rest into two equal bundles, kept one in his left hand, and with the sensitive fingertips of his right hand took tiny little clusters from the pack in his left. He counted these and laid them aside until only a few stalks remained. These he held between two fingers of his left hand. After thus reducing one bundle by ritual counting to a few stalks, he followed the same procedure with the other bundle. He laid the counted stalks to one side, then went through both bundles again, one after the other, counting, clamping small remnants of bundles between two fingers. His fingers performed all this with economical motions and quiet agility; it looked like an occult game of skill governed by strict rules, practiced thousands of times and brought to a high degree of virtuoso dexterity. After he had gone through the same process several times, three small bundles remained. From the number of stalks in them he read an ideograph which he drew with a tapering brush on a small piece of paper. Now the whole complicated procedure began anew; the sticks were divided again into two equal bundles, counted, laid aside, thrust between fingers, until in the end again three tiny bundles remained which resulted in a second ideograph. Moved about like dancers, making very soft, dry clicks, the stalks came together, changed places, formed bundles, were separated, were counted anew; they shifted positions rhythmically, with a ghostly sureness. At the end of each process an ideograph was written, until finally the positive and negative symbols stood in six lines one above the other. The stalks were gathered up and carefully replaced in their container. The sage sat crosslegged on the floor of reed matting, for a long time silently examining the result of the augury on the sheet of paper.