The Glass Bead Game
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The Glass Bead Game
Hermann Hesse
Literature
James Mustich
Aug 1, 2018
Imagine a game in which the player is called upon to use all the insights, noble thoughts, works of art, and products of scientific and scholarly inquiry that have shaped civilization. In his last novel, Hermann Hesse conceived of just such a pastime, an elaborative imaginative enterprise whose rules “constitute a kind of highly developed secret language” that allows a Magister Ludi (Master of the Game) to manipulate “the total contents and values of our culture.” Hesse’s novel, set a few centuries into the future, purports to be the biography of the great Magister Ludi Joseph Knecht. Knecht's story—as well as the history of Castalia and its famous game—is related by a narrator whose solemn pedantry is at humorous odds with the high spirits of Hesse’s invention of a land that is the ultimate ivory tower.
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Christopher Rohland
Dec 17, 2018
I can't add anything to the description . . .
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Eli
Jan 29, 2024
Must read!
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Kip
Jun 6, 2024
Superb writing with lots of interesting ideas throughout the novel. One of Hesse's best, for sure
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