Hermann Hesse, if you have never heard of him, is quite an important literary figure who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, predominantly for his achievement with ‘Das Glasperlenspiel’. His other famous novels included ‘Steppenwolf’, but ‘Das Glasperlenspiel’ is the most renowned and was published in 1943 in Switzerland. Hesse was German, rather than Swiss, and in fact served an apprenticeship in a bookshop in Tuebingen, the town where my sister is currently completing her Erasmus year. However, he relocated to Zurich during the war years, the Nazis not being terribly big fans of his writings, and I have read somewhere that he also assisted Thomas Mann in starting a new life outside of Germany. It is important, incidentally, not to get confused and think that Hesse was a Nazi himself. He wasn’t at all, but my subconscious seems to get mixed up somewhere between Rudolf Hess and Heinrich Himmler and convince himself that he used to serve in the SS

My brainstorms aside, this is a very good book but a rather bizarre one which I feel I may struggle to coherently explain. It is set in the twenty-fifth century, in a state called Kastalien that is located somewhere in German-speaking Western Europe. Having survived a period of world wars, Western Europe is now relatively peaceful and prosperous and Kastalien has been set up as a state entirely devoted to learning and academia. Seemingly populated exclusively by men, the inhabitants of this province do not have to work for a living but spend their days pursuing studies in whatever weird faculties their fancy lies. Of principal importance appear to be music and mathematics, but there is also considerably study of linguistics and philosophy. Only history and subjects relating to the real world appear to be neglected. Young boys who show intellectual promise are removed from their families at a young age and sent to attend boarding schools in Kastalien. There their intense academic education begins, and as they mature they are initiated into what is called the Order. Kastalien is not a religious state, (to say it was atheistic might be misleading for their is simply no consideration of God at all) but the Kastalien Order does not seem significantly different from a monastic one, the young men living lifes of chastity, poverty and obedience. They have no contact with or even any concept of the outside world in the form of women, family, commerce.

It is indisputable that a very high level of learning has been achieved in Kastalien. The role of the state appears to be to safeguard culture, morality and the arts and keep them free from outside influences and taints. And yet the curious thing about it is that there is very little original work which takes place at all; it is not a creative place, where people invent new music, new mathematics, new art – it is a place, where people concentrate only on acquiring pre-existing knowledge, and then synthesising it.

Despite not being religious, Kastalien is a very spiritual place, almost in a Eastern sort of way. There are mentions of people practising yoga, and a heavy emphasis on meditiation. The most spiritual and sacred thing in the entire province, however, is the strange invention known as the Glass Bead Game.

Precisely what the Glass Bead Game involves is left rather vague throughout the book, but it is purported to be a method through which links can be found between widely different fields of study. Through the synthesis of the Glass Bead Game, a Mozart sonata can be linked to an algebraic equation which can in turn be linked the growth pattern of a plant in the natural world. The game used to be played in the so called olden days by arranging glass beads on what I imagine to look like a sort of abacus, in different patterns which represented themes from mathematics and music. Over time it has developed its own language which can now be written with squiggles on paper, but the overall concept remains the same. The Glass Bead Game is supposed to be capable of representing all the learning which is known to mankind.

So much for the background. The story itself is a biography of a man called Josef Knecht. Taken to Kastalien at a young age he grows up there and is soon singled out as having remarkable talents. A combination of circumstances lead him to be awarded one of the most honourable positions in the Kastalien hierarchy by the time he is forty. Knecht becomes Magister Ludi, the Master of the Game, and so has overall responsibility for developing, safe guarding and teaching the Glass Bead Game in Kastalien.

The book documents his success in this role. He is widely regarded as one of the most popular and intelligent people in Kastalien. But it soon becomes clear that Knecht is far from happy and he begins to develop an urge to leave Kastalien and start a new life in the outside world. There, he believes he can do more good, and he also comes to recognise that the Kastalien ideal is not one which can last forever. The only problem is that for someone of his rank, or indeed anyone, to leave Kastalien is unheard of, and he soon faces a bitter battle with the authorities.

How the book ends I won’t say in case anyone wants to read it and I spoil it, but it is peculiarly abrupt. Having led the reader at a leisurely pace through the 600 preceding pages, Hesse suddenly cuts off sharply at the most potentially exciting part of the entire story, in a way which is both dramatic and unsatisfying. The narrative finishes at this point but the book continues with the inclusion of a couple of writings of Knecht’s which are unrelated to anything which has happened and form a peculiar anticlimax.

All in all I have to say that I enjoyed the novel a lot. Whilst it was long and sometimes the subject matter was hard-going, the prose nevertheless flowed so naturally that it wasn’t an effort to read. Unlike Thomas Mann’s ‘Der Zauberberg’ which I read earlier this year, I actually wanted to pick up the book to see how the story continued, and there were no points at which I felt I was losing the will to live. This is despite the fact that it is actually a book with far more reflection and conversation than action.

As to what the message of the novel actually is, I am finding it hard to conclude. I have seen it described in reviews as Utopian, but that doesn’t seem to me to be the case. If Kastalien were a true Utopia, Knecht would not expose the flaws in it which cause him to leave. To me, the whole atmosphere in the place seems rather sterile, the inhabitants potter about with already existant creations without ever finding the impetus to create anything of their own. While it would be a gross exaggeration to suggest it was dystopian, I feel sure there is a warning message somewhere about the danger of an intellectual so completely removed from the outside world…

A very thoughtprovoking book, well worth a read.