
The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel

it was played both in England and Germany before it was “invented” here in the Musical Academy of Cologne, and was given the name it bears to this day,
Hermann Hesse • The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
These games sprang from their deep need to close their eyes and flee from unsolved problems and anxious forebodings of doom into an imaginary world as innocuous as possible.
Hermann Hesse • The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
it was equivalent to being a very good mathematician.
Hermann Hesse • The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
For us, a man is a hero and deserves special interest only if his nature and his education have rendered him able to let his individuality be almost perfectly absorbed in its hierarchic function without at the same time forfeiting the vigorous, fresh, admirable impetus which make for the savor and worth of the individual.
Hermann Hesse • The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
Such a language, like the ancient Chinese script, should be able to express the most complex matters graphically, without excluding individual imagination and inventiveness, in such a way as to be understandable to all the scholars of the world. It was at this point that Joculator Basiliensis applied himself to the problem. He invented for the
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originally a kind of exercise employed by those small groups of musicologists and musicians
Hermann Hesse • The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
“No noble and exalted life exists,” he once said, “without knowledge of devils and demons, and without continual struggle against them.”
Hermann Hesse • The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity.
Hermann Hesse • The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel
This mathematical and astronomical game of formulas required great attentiveness, keenness, and concentration.