The Glass Bead Game (24 page)

“But how is anyone to study history without attempting to bring order into it?” Knecht asked.

“Of course one should bring order into history,” Jacobus thundered. “Every science is, among other things, a method of ordering, simplifying, making the indigestible digestible for the mind. We think we have recognized a few laws in history and try to apply them to our investigations of historical truth. Suppose an anatomist is dissecting a body. He does not confront wholly surprising discoveries. Rather, he finds beneath the epidermis a congeries of organs, muscles, tendons, and bones which generally conform to a pattern he has brought to his work. But if the anatomist sees nothing but his pattern, and ignores the unique, individual reality of his object, then he is a Castalian, a Glass Bead Game player; he is using mathematics on the least appropriate object. I have no quarrel with the student of history who brings to his work a touchingly childish, innocent faith in the power of our minds and our methods to order reality; but first and foremost he must respect the incomprehensible truth, reality, and uniqueness of events. Studying history, my friend, is no joke and no irresponsible game. To study history one must know in advance that one is attempting something fundamentally impossible, yet necessary and highly important. To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.”

Among the remarks of Father Jacobus which Knecht at the time quoted in letters to his friends, here is one more characteristic outburst:

“Great men are to youth like the raisins in the cake of world history. They are also part of its actual substance, of course, and it is not so simple and easy as might be thought to distinguish the really great men from the pseudo-greats. Among the latter, it is the historical moment itself, and their ability to foresee its coming and seize it, that gives them the semblance of greatness. Quite a few historians and biographers, to say nothing of journalists, consider this ability to divine and seize upon a historical moment—in other words, temporary success—as in itself a mark of greatness. The corporal who becomes a dictator overnight, or the courtesan who for a while controls the good or ill humor of a ruler of the world, are favorite figures of such historians. And idealistically minded youths, on the other hand, most love the tragic failures, the martyrs, those who came on the scene a moment too soon or too late. For me, since I am after all chiefly a historian of our Benedictine Order, the most attractive and amazing aspects of history, and the most deserving of study, are not individuals and not coups, triumphs, or downfalls; rather I love and am insatiably curious about such phenomena as our congregation. For it is one of those long-lived organizations whose purpose is to gather, educate, and reshape men's minds and souls, to make a nobility of them, not by eugenics, not by blood, but by the spirit—a nobility as capable of serving as of ruling. In Greek history I was fascinated not by the galaxy of heroes and not by the obtrusive shouting in the Agora, but by efforts such as those of the Pythagorean brotherhood or the Platonic Academy. In Chinese history no other feature is so striking as the longevity of the Confucian system. And in our own Occidental history the Christian Church and the Orders which serve it as part of its structure, seem to me historical elements of the foremost importance. The fact that an adventurer contrives to conquer or found a kingdom which lasts twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years, or that a well-meaning idealist on a royal or imperial throne once in a while brings greater honesty into politics, or attempts to carry some visionary cultural project to fruition; that under high pressure a nation or other community has been capable of incredible feats of achievement and suffering—all that interests me far less than the ever-recurrent efforts to establish such organizations as our Order, and that some of these efforts have endured for a thousand or two thousand years. I shall say nothing of holy Church itself; for us believers it is beyond discussion. But that communities such as the Benedictines, the Dominicans, later the Jesuits and others, have survived for centuries and, despite their ups and downs, the assaults upon them, and the adaptations they have made, retain their face and their voice, their gesture, their individual soul—this is, for me, the most remarkable and meritorious phenomenon in history.”

Knecht even admired Father Jacobus's spells of angry unfairness. At the time, however, he had no notion of who Father Jacobus really was. He regarded him solely as a profound and brilliant scholar and was unaware that here was someone who was consciously participating in world history, and helping to shape it as the leading statesman of his Order. As an expert in contemporary politics as well as political history, Father Jacobus was constantly being approached from many sides for information, advice, and mediation. For some two years, up to the time of his first vacation, Knecht continued to think of Father Jacobus solely as a scholar, knowing no more of the man's life, activity, reputation, and influence than the monk cared to reveal. The learned Father knew how to keep his counsel, even in friendship; and his brothers in the monastery were also far abler at concealment than Joseph would have imagined.

After some two years Knecht had adapted to the life in the monastery as perfectly as any guest and outsider could. From time to time he had helped the organist modestly continue the thin thread of an ancient and great tradition in the monastery's small chorus of motet singers. He had made several finds in the monastic musical archives and had sent to Waldzell, and especially to Monteport, several copies of old works. He had trained a small beginners' class of Glass Bead Game players, among whom the most zealous pupil was young Anton. He had taught Abbot Gervasius no Chinese, but had at least imparted the technique of manipulating the yarrow sticks and an improved method of meditating on the aphorisms in the Book of Oracles. The Abbot had grown accustomed to him, and had long since stopped trying to coax his guest into taking an occasional glass of wine. The semiannual reports sent by the Abbot to the Glass Bead Game Master, in reply to official inquiries as to the usefulness of Joseph Knecht, were full of praise. In Castalia, the lesson plans and marks in Knecht's Game course were scrutinized even more closely than these reports; the middling level of instruction was recognized, but the Castalian authorities were satisfied with the way the teacher had adapted to this level and, in general, to the customs and the spirit of the monastery. They were even more pleased, and truly surprised—although they kept this to themselves—by his frequent and friendly association with the famous Father Jacobus.

This association had borne all sorts of fruits, and perhaps we may be permitted to say a word about these even at the cost of anticipating our story somewhat; or at any rate about the fruit which Knecht most prized. It ripened slowly, slowly, grew as tentatively and warily as the seeds of high mountain trees that have been planted down in the lush lowlands: these seeds, consigned to rich soil and a kindly climate, carry in themselves as their legacy the restraint and mistrust with which their forebears grew; the slow tempo of growth belongs among their hereditary traits. Thus the prudent old man, accustomed to keep close watch over all possible influences upon him, permitted the element of Castalian spirit brought to him by his young friend and antipodal colleague to strike root only reluctantly and inch by inch. Gradually, however, it sprouted; and of all the good things that Knecht experienced in his years at the monastery, this was the best and most precious of all to him: this scanty, hesitant growth of trust and openness from seemingly hopeless beginnings on the part of the experienced older man, this slowly germinating and even more slowly admitted sympathy for his younger admirer as a person and, beyond that, for the specifically Castalian elements in his personality. Step by step the younger man, seemingly little more than pupil, listener, and learner, led Father Jacobus—who initially had used the words “Castalian” and Glass Bead Game player only with ironic emphasis, and often as outright invective—toward a tolerant and ultimately respectful acceptance of this other mentality, this other Order, this other attempt to create an aristocracy of the spirit. Father Jacobus ceased to carp at the youth of the Order, though with its little more than two centuries the Benedictines were the elder by some fifteen hundred years. He ceased to regard the Glass Bead Game as mere aesthetic dandyism; and he ceased to rule out the prospect of friendship and alliance between two Orders so ill matched in age.

Joseph regarded this partial conquest of Father Jacobus as a personal cause for rejoicing. He remained unaware that the authorities considered it the utmost of his accomplishments on his mission to Mariafels. Now and again he wondered in vain what was the real reason for his assignment to the monastery. Though initially it had seemed to be a promotion and distinction envied by his competitors, could it not signify a form of inglorious premature retirement, a relegation to a dead end? But then one could learn something everywhere, so why not here too? On the other hand, from the Castalian point of view this monastery, Father Jacobus alone excepted, was certainly no garden of learning or model of scholarship. He wondered, too, whether his isolation among nothing but unexacting dilettantes was not already affecting his prowess in the Glass Bead Game. He could not quite tell whether he was losing ground. For all his uncertainty, however, he was helped by his lack of ambition as well as his already quite advanced
amor fati.
On the whole his life as a guest and unimportant teacher in this cosy old monastic world was more to his liking than his last months at Waldzell as one of a circle of ambitious men. If fate wished to leave him forever in this small colonial post, he would certainly try to change some aspects of his life here—for example, contrive to bring one of his friends here or at least ask for a longish leave in Castalia every year—but for the rest he would be content.

The reader of this biographical sketch may possibly be waiting for an account of another side of Knecht's experience in the monastery, namely the religious side. But we can venture only some tentative hints. It is certainly likely that Knecht had some deeply felt encounter with religion, with Christianity as daily practiced in the monastery. In fact from some of his later remarks and attitudes it is quite clear that he did. But whether and to what extent he became a Christian is a question we must leave unanswered; these realms are closed to our researches. In addition to the respect for religions generally cultivated in Castalia, Knecht had a kind of inner reverence which we would scarcely be wrong to call pious. Moreover, he had already been well instructed in the schools on the classical forms of Christian doctrine, especially in connection with his studies of church music. Above all he was well acquainted with the sacramental meaning and ritual of the Mass.

With a good deal of astonishment as well as reverence, he had found among the Benedictines a living religion which he had hitherto known only theoretically and historically. He attended many services, and after he had familiarized himself with some of the writings of Father Jacobus, and taken to heart some of their talks, he became fully aware of how phenomenal this Christianity was—a religion that through the centuries had so many times become unmodern and outmoded, antiquated and rigid, but had repeatedly recalled the sources of its being and thereby renewed itself, once again leaving behind those aspects which in their time had been modern and victorious. He did not seriously resist the idea, presented to him every so often in those talks, that perhaps Castalian culture was merely a secularized and transitory offshoot of Christian culture in its Occidental form, which would some day be reabsorbed by its parent. Even if that were so, he once remarked to Father Jacobus, his, Joseph Knecht's, own place lay within the Castalian and not the Benedictine system; he had to serve the former, not the latter, and prove himself within it. His task was to work for the system of which he was a member, without asking whether it could claim perpetual existence, or even a long span of life. He could only regard conversion as a rather undignified form of escape, he said. In similar fashion Johann Albrecht Bengel, whom they both venerated, had in his time served a small and transitory sect without neglecting his duties to the Eternal. Piety, which is to say faithful service and loyalty up to the point of sacrificing one's life, was part and parcel of every creed and every stage of individual development; such service and loyalty were the only valid measure of devoutness.

Knecht had been staying with the Benedictine Fathers for some two years when a visitor appeared at the monastery who was kept apart from him with great care. Even a casual introduction was avoided. His curiosity roused by these procedures, he observed the stranger for the few days of his visit and indulged in all sorts of speculations. He became convinced that the stranger's religious habit was a disguise. The unknown held long conferences behind closed doors with the Abbot and Father Jacobus, and was always receiving and sending urgent messages. Knecht, who by now had at least heard rumors about the political connections and traditions of the monastery, guessed that the guest must be a high-ranking statesman on a secret mission, or a sovereign traveling incognito. As he reflected on the matter, he recalled several guests of the past few months whose visits, in hindsight, seemed to him equally mysterious or significant. Now he remembered the chief of the Castalian “police,” his friendly mentor Dubois, and the request that he keep an eye on such events in the monastery. And although he still felt neither the urge nor the vocation for making such reports, his conscience troubled him for having not written to the kindly man for so long a time. No doubt Dubois was disappointed in him. So he wrote him a long letter, tried to explain his silence, and in order to give some substance to his letter said a few words about his association with Father Jacobus. He had no idea how carefully and by how many important persons his letter would be read back in Castalia.