posted
Ah, pooka, I see myself as more of a Rodion Romanovich Raskalnikov than an Anna. Or maybe someday I'll be a Sonia. She's probably my favorite character in all of literature. I heard Marilyn Monroe did a wonderful job playing Sonia in some movie version of Crime and Punishment that I've never seen but I'd love to see someday.
Someone once told me I reminded them of Prince Myskhin and I don't think I've ever had a nicer compliment.
But no, ak stands for Anne Kate, or Anna Katarina in Russian, or Ana Kata in Greek (which is a way of saying first one way then the other, which is also quite apt). <laughs>
And it seems we do have a consensus on our first book which is "The Glass Bead Game" by Hermann Hesse. If Danzig likes he can change the thread title temporarily to reflect that. We might as well pile all the discussions into this one thread, if that suits people, so we can add more later or go back to earlier books at will.
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I love the whole novel (especially the ending), but there's something about the episode with Levin's dying brother that really gets to me. Part of it may be how 'current' the situation still is -- you know, the sick, drugged out brother with the (somewhat) skanky girlfriend. [note: none of my brothers take drugs or have skanky girlfriends]. Another factor is the physicality of it all. Toltstoy totally captures the textures and smells and gestures of a sick man's room. And finally, the way Kitty and Levin negotiate through the experience and how it affects their relationship seems very true to life.
It's not my favorite part of the work by any means -- it's a rather unpleasant episode. But it works. And it stays with me.
Any other sections that particularly grabbed people?
-----
I should add (in case Raia didn't know or had forgotten) that I actually love _The Master and Margarita_ (yes, the author is Bulgakov), and I've recommended it numerous times on this site.
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posted
For Deirdre and any others who have met creepy Hesse devotees:
I had the same preconceptions, but I found the following passage from the forward to my translation of _The Glass Bead Game_ heartening...
"...the Hesse cult in the United States has revolved primarily around such painfully humorless works as _Demian_ and _Siddhartha_, in which readers have discovered an anticipation of their infatuation with Eastern mysticism, pacifism, the search for personal values, and revolt against the establishment. Those who have gone on to _Steppenwolf_ have greeted it as a psychedelic orgy of sex, drugs, and jazz, but have conveniently overlooked the ironic attitude through which those superficial effects are put back into perspective by the author. It was partly as a reaction against such self-indulgent interpretations, which he encountered as much as forty years ago, that Hesse undertook _The Glass Bead Game_." (Theodore Ziolkowski)
On to the reading!
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posted
Yes! I found Hesse himself to be quite good, coming to him as I did decades after the spin put on him by some of his early fans. To me he is more in the tradition of Goethe, just a passionate and deeply thinking person. The opposite of how some people would maybe like to see him as a sort of mindless free love type.
[ September 10, 2003, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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I'm going to be out of town for a week or so, but I do have a copy of the book, which I have actually started (and read through page 17!), and I should be should be able to get through a chunk of it while I'm away. So don't get any funny ideas like, hey, no one else is reading the book so I guess I'm off the hook. I'll check in when I get back.
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posted
I'll be starting The Glass Bead Game tomorrow and will gladly talk about it once I am finished.
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posted
When we start any Eco stuff, I'm all in. ^_^ I kinda came to the thread late.
I'd vote Potok, but like others, I've already read all of his stuff (and would willingly read it again). Kind of the same with Eco; I've already read several of his, but would be more than happy to re-read as long as there were people to discuss it with. . .
posted
We could start another thread to discuss Potok, I've just discovered him and no one I know has heard of him, please? <insert begging smiley here>
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posted
We can discuss Potok here if you like! He's so wonderful! Which book(s) are you reading / have you read?
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posted
I have read The Chosen and Davita's Harp. I'm in the middle of My Name is Asher Lev and should be finished with it by Monday afternoon. The Chosen was my favorite of the two I've read, but Davita's Harp grows on me the more I think about it.
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posted
Q: I'm not going to try to tell you that if you like Eco, you'll like Hesse. But you should try _The Glass Bead Game_.
Like Eco's works, it's about philsophy, aesthetics, monasticism, patterns (esp. mathmatics and music), and the role of learning in the 'real world.'
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posted
Okay, there are several works floating around, and I really do not have time to read more than one at a time... Can we settle on The Glass Bead Game? I should be able to pick it up either tomorrow evening or Sunday, and hopefully read it on Sunday.
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quote: We could start another thread to discuss Potok, I've just discovered him and no one I know has heard of him, please? <insert begging smiley here>
I've heard of him!!!!!!!
I just haven't read him...
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posted
Okay, I finished Giovanni's Room tonight and am starting on The Glass Bead Game.
Giovanni's Room was really good for me right now. It's amazing how clear things are when you see them in books.
As I see the story, David, the main character, killed himself, his fiancee Hella, and his male lover Giovanni by being dishonest in his loves. Oh, and he also destroyed another friend much earlier named Joey.
The thing that struck me was how men define themselves as men by the women who love them, how those women act, and how they treat them, and who they are. And so do women define themselves as women according to the men who love them in the same way. David could not accept the him that was defined by his love for Giovanni (or for Joey earlier). So he let himself love them, but then denied that love inside himself, and rejected their love and rejected them as people. He tried to make the definition of himself as a man be about the girl Hella, instead. But that was a lie, though he loved her too. He didn't love her truly, as he did Giovanni. After he killed Giovanni, he couldn't stand the sight of her anymore.
What does this mean? Well, I guess one thing is that being desperately confused about whom you love is very destructive, both to yourself and to those you love, yet how could he help that? He was a tragic figure because he really didn't know himself well enough to decide. Yet he was so... I don't know... dispassionate about the destruction he caused, that it was very hard to feel sympathy for him. I have to say that I don't like David, except for just understanding his humanness, his weakness, the tragedy of that, and feeling for him. Oh, and also the fact that "David" wrote this book (clearly he is the character James Baldwin himself identifies with), means that he does see what he did and feel it, the wrongness of it.
So is it right or wrong the way we define ourselves as women and men by the way we are treated by the opposite sex? Is a person who is so strong in themselves that they can't be deeply hurt by someone they love even human? Is that even love? It seems like real love is like Christ's love. Love that gives everything. Life itself. Yet after being scourged and tortured and sacrificed, love still lives. It rises ever again and again. It is made of flesh yet it transcends flesh, and is immortal, indestructible, ever reborn. Spring comes every year and love ever rises again from the flames.
<Rises as a dragon from the ashes and flies away across the solar system.>
[ September 14, 2003, 11:05 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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Hesse was a morning person. I'm almost sure of it.
And he definately wore a watch. A digital one with a seconds display, a calendar, a calculator, and a compass.
He'd also have a PDA, if they'd been invented back then.
Oh, and one other thing [SPOILERS! sort of]: *
*
*
The next time he mentions how the common children are mean to Knecht and the other special children because they are actually secretly envious I'm going to have to do something drastic, like key the first car I see with an Honor Student bumpersticker. It's really starting to get to me.
posted
Yeah, boy he sure doesn't know how to write science fiction does he? Can you say "TOO MUCH EXPOSITION!!!!" ?
I'm still in the freaking introduction which I wish I could just skip. But he's describing what seems to be a dystopia of people all working crossword puzzles and listening to these stupid lectures and having no real intellectual depth or artistic vision, but MAN I wonder what he would have thought about television? I mean he truly has no IDEA!
[ September 17, 2003, 11:06 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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posted
I finally got "The Glass Bead Game" out of the library. I keep nibbiling into it, but I don't know. I'm not sure this is really for me. Well, I'll give it a try, since I got hold of it.
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posted
I feel bad for poor Hermann. I want to tell him not to worry that it all worked out okay. But maybe he wouldn't even think that, who knows? Maybe he's very very glad he is dead before he saw what a total mess the world is in today!
I hate science fiction in the orwellian type of warning or political axe-grinding or whatever mode, don't you guys? I hope this book isn't going to be like that.
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Not really, at least not at the moment. What's funny to me right now is the though of Zamyatin and Hesse in a cage match, fighting to the death. Funny because Zamyatin, of course, would win.
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quote: I'm still in the freaking introduction which I wish I could just skip.
I have bad news, ak. I actually found the introduction more interesting than the first chapter, which deals with Knecht's childhood. But then again, I find children boring, and I love Orwellian doom and gloom, even if it's overblown, as long as it's articulate and well-observed. I love anything that promises to shake me out of my complacency.
So I had some hope starting out, after reading that bit Zal posted from the forward, which suggested that the book might not be completely humorless (humor makes all the difference for me when dealing with these dry German intellectuals) and reading lines like this in the introduction:
quote:in all of [the lectures] a number of fashionable phrases were shaken up like dice in a cup and everyone was delighted if he dimly recognized one or two catchwords.
But now that the apocolypic wry-analysis-of-contempory-culture theme has been replaced by the the-superiority-of-the-well-tempered-artist-beloved-by-the-masters-to-the-volatile-artist-"of bad character"-who-has-issues-with-authority, I'm starting to get bored and annoyed.
I'm still on page 74. I took a break, but now I'm going give it another go. I'm still hoping it'll pick up a bit.
posted
I see and kind of agree. The problem of this text is that it demands a reader who has the patience and interest to wade through the thick stuff and at the same time not get so caught up in it as to take it completely seriously. It is deeply ironic and that's why Ziolkowski believes that part of Hesse's motivation for writing it was to discomfit those who took his earlier works so seriously, who flatten his intentions.
In other words, the way the material is presented is part of the satire of the novel. So for instance, I find it hilarious how the narrator is always going on about how, as a proper Castalian, he is avoiding a psychological approach to biography and yet the reified versions of Knecht's life that we get seem to rely heavily on perceptions of his psychology, of his inner life. As the novel progresses, you realize how brilliant Knecht is for forcing the Castalians to have to approach his life like this, like they do, and yet at the same time because you can only approach him through their materials, you realize that you can't quite see him clearly.
And yep, the novel is almost all exposition. It is a work of speculative fiction, but it's certainly not like most sf books, and only fits into that category as an idea [it's a speculation into the future of culture and cultural history] -- not as a part of the genre.
I want to talk about the volatile vs. well-tempered artist, but later.
Finally, the million dollar question is how much Hesse participates in his own denunciation. Does he have sympathies for elements of the Castalian life, esp. for music and meditation? Is it wholly ironic or is he implicated in the irony himself? I think this question can be better dealt with after the supplementary materials (the poems and three life histories) have been read [which I have yet to fully do].
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posted
Hmmmm. You've read past page 74, haven't you, Zal.
I did note the irony, but for some reason it never occured to me that it might be intended. In the first chapter, I figured Hesse was using the Music Master as a mouthpeice since he seemed like such a benevolant, authoratative figure, kind of like Zosima in The Brothers Karamozov (though, granted, some would argue that Zosima is an ironic figure as well). I guess I'd better read a little further.
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posted
Oh, no, surely it's not all exposition! Arrrgh! Okay, I'll read at least through the second chapter and if it doesn't get more interesting by then I'm going to start skipping over the slow parts.
Heck, his other stuff was really good, I thought. I mean even when I didn't particularly identify with the characters, they were still very interesting characters that I cared about.
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posted
Okay, I talked to someone else today who said this book is really great. Just to keep on going and we will see. That made me feel a lot better about it, that there will be some sort of payoff for all this FREAKING EXPOSITION!!!!!
posted
I don't know why it's taking me so long to read this book. No, I guess I do. Until tonight I was slogging through it. But I just finished the episode with the improvisation in chapter one and that was completely charming to me. I think I am catching the spirit in which he has written this and feeling very happy about it. I will definitely pick up the pace now, I think. Thanks to those who encouraged me to keep going! Anyone else still reading? Anyone decide to give it up?
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posted
I cleared page 150 a couple days ago. It's still pretty slow going, but I do plan to stick with it. Nothing has really charmed me so far, but some of his characters and ideas keep popping into my mind every now and again, especially recently when I was reading the Bloom/King thread. Also, there’s new character, Tegularius, who promises to be one of those brilliant unstable types you and I find so perversely fascinating. He hasn't done much yet, but it's enough to keep my hopes up.
So keep slogging. We're still with you.
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posted
You kwow, that's kind of how I feel about it [I've read everything but the last two character sketches]. It didn't grab me in the way a normal 'great' novel does, but there are moments and aspects of it that keep gnawing at me. And there's something about the whole project that I found quite charming.
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posted
He's just returned to the monastery after his vacation, with his new diplomatic mission he's been given. I am definitely interested now and involved, though it's still certainly not what I'd call a page turner. I wondered when he talked about the students writing "lives" of themselves as characters in different time periods, if this life of Knecht is not just such a life written by Hesse about himself at this time in the future. He really is a good writer, and thinker, I think, though his dislike of so many things rather worries me. He seems to virulently dislike a lot of things that I think merit instead a sort of affectionate neglect of notice. Does he strike anyone else that way?
It's thank goodness not turning out to be a 'dire warning' sort of speculative fiction book. It's more akin to Kazantzakis' dynamic opposition of the ideal, the mental, versus the concrete or physical. Zorba and the Boss, or Buddhist thought versus Christian thought. Not really sure where he's going with the Catholicism. I wonder if Knecht isn't going to become profoundly religious before the end?
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posted
I'm a little ways past that, but not by much. He's back from his second trip to the monastary, and doing...um...I don't quite remember. Preparing for some glass bead tournament or something. I set it aside for awhile again, but I'll try to knock out another hundred pages or so this weekend.
I like your idea about the novel being Hesse's life in another time. I don't know enough about the author to say much about it, though.
What did you think Hesse is being so negative about? Aside from the introduction, his attitude strikes me as ironic, but not overly critical. More ambivolent than anything, I think. My first impressions were negative, but mostly because the first chapter brought back bad memories of my Bach-obsessed piano teacher and the fits she'd throw when I forgot to do my theory homework. Also, I was sick on my vaction, and that put me in a pretty cranky mood. But now that I'm picking up on more of the irony and ambivalence in the tone, novel's become a lot more interesting ot me. Not exciting, but interesting.
I love the idea of academic discourse as a game. It seems very apt. I also like the way he presents the interactions between the spheres of his world: Castilia, the Church, and the realm of secular politics.
posted
I was thinking of Hesse as a whole, on the virulent dislikes. Just the overall tone I feel from him in which I may, in fact, be mistaken. From all of his work I've read so far he seems to feel, for instance, a virulent contempt for the bourgeoisie, their lifestyle, their way of interacting with the world, their very existence. But perhaps others don't get that feeling from him as I do. He also seems rather dismissive bordering on contemptuous for people whose intellects he feels are not pure. Those who have ambition or some other quality admixed, perhaps. This saddens me. I wish I could show him an affectionate regard or even an affectionate disregard or benign neglect for such. But, alas, dear Hermann is already dead. That also saddens me.
[ October 04, 2003, 03:20 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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posted
I just finished the main section, and am starting the first character sketch. What really helped me to pick up on a lot more in the story was reading the foreword by someone else. I didn't know much about Hesse going into the book, so the foreword just pointed out some trends in his writing that made things much much more clear.
I found the novel was really hard to read when I started, but the more I read the more it took possession of me. It's been in my thoughts constantly, and I haven't really been able to do anything else. I also really enjoyed the poetry at the end. I don't generally enjoy poetry, but this was very clean and eloquent.
I'll wait to say anything about the actual content of the story until I know someone else has finished, to avoid spoilers.
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posted
I'm reading his letter to the magisters asking to be released. So I'm getting close to the end. I too am enjoying it a lot and thinking about it all the time. I'm glad we chose this one! Go ahead and spoiler away, though. Don't wait for me. I'll catch up! Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I don't know how I missed this thread. Sigh! Coincidentally, I started reading "Das Glasspearlenspeile" about the end of August, then classes started and I haven't had time for it in weeks. I guess I'll have to speed it up. I just don't read german very fast. Maybe I should get an English translation but I did so much want to read it in German.
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It seems to me like Mann's _The Magic Mountain_ -- the kind of work that would be nice to read in German but would take so much effort that I don't know if it'd be worth it. I mean the prose is akademisch enough -- I can't imagine how heavier it must be auf Deutsch (and I'm too lazy to try at the moment). If I'm going to read something in the original, I want the prose to be more poetic or the voice to be more strong -- but that's just me.
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posted
You know? This is super cool! I'm so excited! I never dreamed so many people would actually read the book! A first!
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Why did he have to do that? I was so happy for him and excited. I could feel how great it was for him to finally be on the right road at last. I could tell how right everything felt for him now. Why did he have to just die like that? Can anyone explain that to me? Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I thought it was sort of like, that was his final transcendence, he couldn't go any farther, so it was ok for him to die. Does that make any sense?
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Or maybe someday I'll be a Sonia. She's probably my favorite character in all of literature. I heard Marilyn Monroe did a wonderful job playing Sonia in some movie version of Crime and Punishment that I've never seen but I'd love to see someday.
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