MAGISTER LUDI - THE GLASS BEAD GAME (Completed)

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 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 Game Village as well as its role in Castalian life, were revealed to him in their full reality for the first time. 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 practice 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, nor 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. Toward 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 ardor, 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 good-by 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 his 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 skillful 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, but 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 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 these 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 Eschholz 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 gray, 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 fulfill 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 toward 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 bis 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 Tusculum and magical island of the Muses where the Master came for recuperation and meditation. Since he himself had become Magister and the garden his, he had scarcely entered it and hardly ever enjoyed it at leisure. Even now he was coming only for fifteen minutes after dinner, and he allowed himself merely a brief carefree stroll among the high bushes and shrubs beneath which his predecessor had planted a good many evergreens from southern climes. Then, since it was already cool in the shade, he carried a light cane chair to a sunlit spot, sat down, and opened the book he had brought with him. It was the Pocket Calendar for the Magister Ludi, written seventy or eighty years before by Ludwig Wassermaler, the Glass Bead Game Master of the day. Ever since, each of his successors had made in it a few corrections, deletions, or additions, as changing times indicated. The calendar was intended as a vade mecum for still inexperienced Masters in their first years in office, and led the Magister through his entire working and official year, from week to week, reminding him of his duties sometimes in mere cue phrases, sometimes with detailed descriptions and personal recommendations. Knecht found the page for the current week and read it through attentively. He came upon nothing surprising or especially urgent, but at the end of the section stood the following lines: "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 by 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 honor and joy, must have become far more a burden demanding great effort, a chore to which he had to attune himself, persuade himself, and somewhat stimulate himself. At this moment Knecht felt something more than grateful reverence toward this wise old man and experienced adviser — 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 savor 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 toward 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 Far Eastern College, and some reading up on the subject, there was no reason why Tegularius could not become sufficiently acquainted with the magical symbolism of Chinese architecture. After all, no philological questions were involved. Still, that would take time, especially for a pampered person like his friend who did not feel up to working every day, and so it was well to start the business going at once. In this respect, then, he realized with a smile and pleasant feelings of surprise, the cautious old author of the Pocket Calendar had been perfectly right. 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 marvelous 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 toward him. Joyfully stirred, he was conscious not only of the honor 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 honorable 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 College of Far Eastern Studies. There Knecht's recommendations proved more effective. As a Magister's emissary, the petitioner was given a friendly reception and all the help he needed. Before long he had learned as much about his subject as could possibly be acquired without knowledge of Chinese, and in the course of his work he became so intrigued with Knecht's idea of using house symbolism for the underpinning of the Game that his failure in the Bamboo Grove ceased rankling, and was forgotten. While he listened to Fritz's report on his visit to Elder Brother, and afterward, 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 colorful 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 colored 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 China, the Magister paused as he was skimming through the entries in his secretariat's daily calendar. He had come upon a note that caught his interest: "Student Petrus, arrived from Monteport, recommended by Magister Musicae, brings special greetings from former Music Master, requests lodgings and admission to Archives. Has been put up in student guesthouse." Knecht could be easy in his mind about leaving the student and his request to the Archive staff; that was routine. But "special greetings from the former Music Master" was directed only to himself. He sent for the student — who turned out to be a quiet young man, at once contemplative and intense. Evidently he belonged to the Monteport elite; at any rate he seemed accustomed to audiences with a Magister. Knecht asked what message the former Music Master had given him. "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 into 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 proteges. Cautiously, he queried: "How long do you linger in our Archives, studioseV "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 honored 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 honored 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 had 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 favorites, 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 aging, his physical aging. 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 aging 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 tranquility 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 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 gray-shot hair had gradually turned completely gray and then white, while his voice 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 differing 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 toward silence, away from words and toward music, away from ideas and toward 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 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 neighbors, 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 ever- 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 practices 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 honor 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 we 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 toward 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.