Episode 109: Infinite Play: On 'The Glass Bead Game,' by Hermann Hesse

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2021

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

JF and Phil have been talking about doing a show on The Glass Bead Game since Weird Studies' earliest beginnings. It is a science-fiction novel that alights on some of the key ideas that run through the podcast: the dichotomy of work and play, the limits and affordances of institutional life, the obscure boundary where certainty gives way to mystery... Throughout his literary career, Hesse wrote about people trying to square their inner and outer selves, their life in the spirit and their life in the world. The Glass Bead Game brings this central concern to a properly ambiguous and heartbreaking conclusion. But the novel is more than a brilliant work of philosophical or psychological literature. It is also an act of prophecy -- one that seems intended for us now. Header image by Liz West, via Wikimedia Commons. REFERENCES Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game Paul Hindemith, German composer Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture Alfred Korzybski, concept of Time Binding Christopher Nolan, Memento William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism Jeremy Johnson, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness Teilhard de Chardin, French theologian Mathesis Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze Weird Studies, Episode 22 with Joshua Ramey Joseph Needham, British historian of Chinese culture James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:23.3	For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weird studies. This is Phil.
0:53.1	This week, J.F. and I are discussing Herman Hesse's
0:56.1	1943 novel The Glass Bead Game. It's a strange, quiet piece of science fiction about a future
1:03.7	society that has risen from the rubble of what looks suspiciously like our own era.
1:09.4	We don't know how many centuries have passed since an unspecified catastrophe befell the
1:15.1	decadent age of the Feiton.
1:17.4	The anonymous scribe who tells us the tale of Joseph Knacht, the novel's main character,
1:23.6	alludes to the sacrifices made by a monkish order to rescue and preserve the noblest part of a culture gone to utter ruin.
1:32.3	In the end, we are told, the order prevailed and recreated something of the world's pre-cataclysm culture by means of the glass bead game.
1:42.8	In this episode, J.F. and I spend much of our time talking about this game, and games generally,
1:49.0	so I won't talk too much about that right now. Neither will I say much about Knaisht's
1:54.3	rise in the hierarchy of the order to become the master of the glass bead game, or
1:59.3	Magister Ludi. But here I will say something about
2:02.3	what happens after that. Knashd, whose name means servant, or bondsman, now rules the great
2:09.9	institutional edifice that has been built around the game. He is a good leader, and learns what
2:15.5	leaders must, that to lead is to serve, and to serve is to sacrifice.
2:21.1	Kness is a faithful and selfless servant of the game, but in serving it, he comes to see its limits.
2:27.5	He shocks his colleagues by writing a manifest a warning of the incipient decadence of the game,
2:33.1	believing it is lost touch with the wellsprings of human life and creativity.
2:38.7	Knesset's colleagues ignore his warnings and thereby fail to see that their institutions of higher learning have become complacent,
	...

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