The Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse

Well, I had to read it at school, about 40 years ago.

As far as I remember, you can interpret the book in various ways.

One main idea seems to be [Josef Knecht > Knecht= menial!] that you should change between vita activa and vita contemplativa, not flee from one of it to the other.

As far as I remember, Hesse showed here (again) that he isn't fixed to just one style of life.
(But I'm sure, others will have different thoughts.)

I see. It seems that most of his other famous books deals with the reclusive life though.

Steppenworlf
My favorite Herman Hesse book was Steppenwolf. I read one or two others but it was some time ago. I was told that HH wrote his books under the influence of drugs. Some seem to have a hazy dream quality to them. Maybe that is why he was reclusive.

AE

Re: Steppenworlf


As far as I know, until know no-one had found a proof that Hesse took drugs.

I'm under the impression that he would be against taking drugs. Anyways, I'm not reading the book for the moment, going to save it for when I'm older. It reads like a history book, and history is interesting at times, but I'm not into this book at the moment at least.

Opium
The person that told me about HH opium addiction I think was sincere. He too liked HH. I want to know if its true too. It will not make a difference to me if he did or not, I still like HH.

I searched in google and came up with much on HH and opium. I did not have time to look at all of them, but here are two I did looked at. You have to go down to where it says: (1) "19th century drug use - from medicinal use to inspirational" (2) You have to go down maybe 1/4 the way to find it.
(1)
http://www.hht.net.au/news_room/media_releases__all2/exhibitions/drugs_a_social_history

(2)
http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0702.htm

AE

HH
I would like to add: That when you study a painting, poem, or book, you should also study the artists life, and the time (era) to better understand the work.

AE

Thanks AngeliqueEast. I'll look into it, and I agree that it's probably better to study the author's life.

It appears that he did use drugs to experiment...

I actually took an entire college course on Hesse, but that was years ago. He was VERY popular among some US college students during the late '60s...

I recall that "The Glass Bead Game" was subtitled "Magister Ludi" ( = master of the game, I think).

Yep. Magister Ludi = Glass bead Game master.

BTW what does this passage mean?

""I learned through my body, & soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property & experience nausea & the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world..."

The title/subtitle in the original German language is:

Das Glasperlenspiel. Versuch einer Lebensbeschreibung des Magister Ludi Josef Knecht samt Knechts hinterlassenen Schriften = Attempt of a biography of Magister Ludi Josef Knecht including Knecht's bequested writings

personal opinion, I rank the glass bead game as one of my top ten works of fiction ever written.

HH



Maybe, that is what he believed, at the time he was experimenting with drugs. That to suffer and experience sin was a way to become a better man, and even writer.

AE

by that passage hesse meant.. " man is a social animal" . < winkz >