Hermann Hesse - The Glass Bead Game

While the appointment elevates the deputy to a very high and at times extremely exposed position, it is at a certain price. The deputy is set apart within the official hierarchy, and while he enjoys high honor and frequently may be entrusted with extremely important functions, his position deprives him of certain rights and opportunities which the other aspirants possess. There are two points in particular where this is revealed: the deputy does not bear the responsibility for his official acts, and he can rise no farther within the hierarchy. The law is unwritten, to be sure, but can be read throughout the history of Castalia: At the death or resignation of a Magister, his Shadow, who has represented him so often and whose whole existence seems to predestine him for the succession, has never advanced to fill the Master’s place. It is as if custom were determined to show that a seemingly fluid and movable barrier is in fact insuperable. The barrier between Magister and deputy stands like a symbol for the barrier between the office and the individual. Thus, when a Castalian accepts the confidential post of deputy, he renounces the prospect of ever becoming a Magister himself, of ever really possessing the official robes and insignia that he wears so often in his representative role. At the same time he acquires the curiously ambiguous privilege of never incurring any blame for possible mistakes in his conduct of his office. The blame falls upon his Magister, who is answerable for his acts. A Magister sometimes becomes the victim of the deputy he has chosen and is forced to resign his office because of some glaring error committed by the deputy. The word “Shadow” originated in Waldzell to describe the Magister Ludi’s deputy. It is splendidly apposite to his special position, his closeness amounting to quasi-identity with the Magister, and the make-believe insubstantiality of his official existence.

For many years Master Thomas von der Trave had employed a Shadow named Bertram who seems to have been more lacking in luck than in talent or good will. He was an excellent Glass Bead Game player, of course. As a teacher he was at least adequate, and he was also a conscientious official, absolutely devoted to his Master. Nevertheless, in the course of the past few years, he had become distinctly unpopular. The “new generation,” the younger members of the elite, were particularly hostile to him, and since he did not possess his Master’s limpid, chivalric temperament, this antagonism affected his poise. The Magister did not let him go, but had for years shielded him from friction with the elite as much as possible, putting him in the public eye more and more rarely and employing him largely in the chanceries and the Archives.

This blameless but disliked man, plainly not favored by fortune, now suddenly found himself at the head of the Vicus Lusorum due to his Master’s illness. If it should turn out that he had to conduct the annual Game, he would occupy for the duration of the festival the most exposed position in the entire Province. He could only have coped with this great task if the majority of the Glass Bead Game players, or at any rate the tutors as a body, had supported him. Regrettably, that did not happen. This was why the Ludus sollemnis turned into a severe trial and very nearly a disaster for Waldzell.

Not until the day before the Game was it officially announced that the Magister had fallen seriously ill and would be unable to conduct the Game. We do not know whether this postponement of the announcement had been dictated by the sick Magister, who might have hoped up to the last moment that he would be able to pull himself together and preside. Probably he was already too ill to cherish any such ideas, and his Shadow made the mistake of leaving Castalia in uncertainty about the situation in Waldzell up to the last moment. Granted, it is even disputable whether this delay was actually a mistake. Undoubtedly it was done with good intentions, in order not to discredit the festival from the start and discourage the admirers of Master Thomas from attending. And had everything turned out well, had there been a relation of confidence between the Waldzell community of players and Bertram, the Shadow might actually have become his representative and — this is really quite conceivable — the Magister’s absence might have gone almost unnoticed. It is idle to speculate further about the matter; we have mentioned it only because we thought it necessary to suggest that Bertram was not such an absolute failure, let alone unworthy of his office, as public opinion in Waldzell regarded him at that time. He was far more a victim than a culprit.

As happened every year, guests poured into Waldzell to attend the great Game. Many arrived unsuspectingly; others were deeply anxious about the Magister Ludi’s health and had gloomy premonitions about the prospects of the festival. Waldzell and the nearby villages filled with people. Almost every one of the directors of the Order and the members of the Board of Educators were on hand. Travelers in holiday mood arrived from the remoter parts of the country and from abroad, crowding the guest houses.

On the evening before the beginning of the Game, the ceremonies opened with the meditation hour. In response to the ringing of bells the whole of Waldzell, crowded with people as it was, subsided into a profound, reverent silence. Next morning came the first of the musical performances and announcement of the first movement of the Game, together with meditation on the two musical themes of this movement. Bertram, in the Magister Ludi’s festival robes, displayed a stately and controlled demeanor, but he was very pale. As day followed day, he looked more and more strained, suffering and resigned, until during the last days he really resembled a shadow. By the second day of the Game the rumor spread that Magister Thomas’s condition had worsened, and that his life was in danger. That evening there cropped up here and there, and especially among the initiates, those first contributions to the gradually developing legend about the sick Master and his Shadow. This legend, emanating from the innermost circle of the Vicus Lusorum, the tutors, maintained that the Master had been willing and would have been able to conduct the Game, but that he had sacrificed himself to his Shadow’s ambition and assigned the solemn task to Bertram. But now, the legend continued, since Bertram did not seem equal to his lofty role, and since the Game was proving a disappointment, the sick man felt to blame for the failure of the Game and his Shadow’s inadequacy, and was doing penance for the mistake. This, it was said, this and nothing else was the reason for the rapid deterioration of his condition and the rise in his fever.

Naturally this was not the sole version of the legend, but it was the elite’s version and indicated that the ambitious aspirants thought the situation appalling and were dead set against doing anything to improve it. Their reverence for the Master was balanced by their malice for his Shadow; they wanted Bertram to fail even if the Master himself had to suffer as well.

By and by the story went the rounds that the Magister on his sickbed had begged his deputy and two seniors of the elite to keep the peace and not endanger the festival. The next day it was asserted that he had dictated his will and had named the man he desired for his successor. Moreover, names were whispered. These and other rumors circulated along with news of the Magister’s steadily worsening condition, and from day to day spirits sagged in the festival hall as well as in the guest houses, although no one went so far as to abandon the festival and depart. Gloom hung over the entire performance all the while that it proceeded outwardly with formal propriety. Certainly there was little of that delight and uplift that everyone familiar with the annual festival expected; and when on the day before the end of the game Magister Thomas, the author of the festival Game, closed his eyes forever, not even the efforts of the authorities could prevent the news from spreading. Curiously, a good many participants felt relieved and liberated by this outcome. The Game students, and the elite in particular, were not permitted to don mourning before the end of the Ludus sollemnis, nor to make any break in the strictly prescribed sequence of the hours, with their alternation of performances and meditation exercises. Nevertheless, they unanimously went through the last act and day of the festival as if it were a funeral service for the revered deceased. They surrounded the exhausted, pale, and sleepless Bertram, who continued officiating with half-closed eyes, with a frigid atmosphere of isolation.