He loved nothing but his freedom, his perpetual student status, and preferred spending his whole life as the unpredictable and obstinate loner, the gifted fool and nihilist, to following the path of subordination to the hierarchy and thus attaining peace. But basically he was incurable, for he did not want to be cured he cared nothing for co-ordination and a place in the scheme of things. When highly stimulated he could be entrancing his mordant wit sparkled and he overwhelmed everyone with the audacity and richness of his sometimes somber inspirations. Every so often he would display the liveliness of his intellect. “Tegularius was a willful, moody person who refused to fit into his society. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun.”

The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: “There is truth, my boy. The master had never heard him speak so fervently. Isn’t there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?” The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness.

Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential there are no certainties anywhere. “If only there were a dogma to believe in. His resolve to return from the intellectual inner sanctum of Castalia to the maelstrom of daily life in the 'outer world' marks his (and Hesse's) fulfilment in a life uniting both spirit and body, technical and intellectual, thought and deed, classic and romantic, Dionysian and Apollonian.Ī must read for all who would seriously ponder the role fo the intellectual in the modern world.“Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding,” Joseph exclaimed. Joseph Knecht, the central character, reflects both the immediacy of Hesse's inner journey from Goethe to Thomas Mann, and the universality of the quest of the search for the divine (spirituality, art, music, philosophy) which distinguishes man from beast. Hesse's Magister Ludi is the superlative capstone of a life's work permeated by a gentle wistfulness, a growing sense that the goal of the journey (of life) may be the journey itself,and a deeper, richer sense that such human contentment as may be found is to be found in a life integrating action and deepest thought.

The glass bead game by hermann hesse