i have been interested in secondary worlds, i have created some entries about this subject.
in this entry, i want to talk about an intriguing secondary world, the glass bead game written by hermann hesse. but unfortunately, i am not going to be able to share the required details from the world to be informative about the book, as this entry is just a personal feeling being shared.
note: spoilers ahead
hesse thought of a utopia. a utopia that includes pedagogical states, educated scholars, a perfectly designed order without natural negative human behavior that can endanger the order, many disciplines living together by always reaching back to the classics, to prior knowledge, to sources; music and maths breathing alongside philosophy and literature; and most importantly, the glass bead game. and he chose a person named josef knecht to make us understand this utopia that seems ideal at first sight, and criticize this broken imaginary ideal through him.
this secondary world called castalia had its sides that are defendable and not defendable as every utopia does. but to imagine or to participate to an imagination of an ideal is not what makes secondary worlds persuasive. the secondary belief comes when everything about the secondary world is in harmony and consistency with each other. to make this happen, worldbuilders use so many techniques. but i am not here to talk about them. i am here to talk about josef knecht, who made me not only a visitor but a dweller to this secondary world. i am not sure if i can say that it was hesse’s master of writing that made me connected with the character, therefore with the world; but i feel like there was more than just a literary genius behind this connection. i felt like i knew him, understood him, sometimes not fully agreed with him, but a minute later i found myself talking and even arguing with the knecht of my own. knecht didn’t reflect the world to me, knecht was the world, and i was just trying to be friends with this cool guy.
i am not here to be his defender, i am not going to present you his ideas and what he did, i leave that to the readers of the book. i am here to relieve myself of a loss of a friend, a magister.
i saw a child named knecht falling in love with his teacher, the music magister, who has shaped the kid’s life. the first time our kid saw him, I saw him with the kid. i’ve seen a teen knecht’s face with a big smile when talking about something they believe in but also question at the same time, saw young adult knecht writing a new bead game with a classic pen which he holds between his long pale fingers. and i saw adult knecht’s smiling face going into the nearly frozen lake where he didn’t want to show weakness in front of the boy he had just chosen to give his life to. and that last smile remained on his face through his last breath.
this is a farewell to josef knecht. a farewell with a smile.
a bag of holding 