* • C • *

The Glass Bead Game: From Post-Tonal to Post-Modern

by Yves Guillaume Saint-Cyr

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto

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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. •*• Canada The Glass Bead Game: From Post-Tonal to Post-Modern

Yves Saint-Cyr

Doctor of Philosophy

Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto

2008

Abstract

By drawing on the writings of Northrop Frye, Arnold Schoenberg, Michel Tournier, and

Thomas Mann, this thesis explores the implications of using Hermann Hesse's fictional

Glass Bead Game to model the role of recursion in literary criticism and, by extension, in the creative process itself. While Hesse associates the quintessential modernism of his

Game with the fugue of the High Baroque, his 1943 novel Das Glasperlenspiel ironically gestures toward post-tonal music, just as it anticipates the development of what has come to be known as post-modernism. Tournier's 1970 novel Le Roi des aulnes, when read as

a Glass Bead Game, exemplifies the modal counterpoint that Frye associates with the

Ironic Mode of twentieth-century literature, thus completing Hesse's journey from

Romantic assonance to ironic dissonance. However, Hesse and Tournier's novels also illustrate that Frye's conception of centripetal counterpoint, like the Glass Bead Game

itself, is closer to Schoenberg's music than it is to Bach's, as is his conception of

twentieth-century literature and criticism.

n Acknowledgements

I would like to express my warmest and sincerest thanks to the following people, without whom this dissertation could not have been written:

s?»The members of my thesis committee, J. Edward Chamberlin, Caryl Clark, and Jorg Bochow, whose advice and expertise resonate in every chapter;

s?»Stefan Soldovieri, who graciously joined my committee on very short notice;

•^•Linda Hutcheon, my advisor, whose judicious guidance, unparalleled perspicacity, and inexhaustible patience shaped every phase of this project, from inception to completion; s^My parents, Lise and Jean Saint-Cyr, for their ongoing support, as well as their proof­ reading and brainstorming help; s^-My brother, Pierre Saint-Cyr, for his help with the scanner and Photoshop, and whose mathematical insights were indispensable in chapter three;

•^•My wife, Andrea Raymond, without whose loving support, encouragement, and passionate dinner-time conversation I would never be able to write a word.

iii Table of Contents

Introduction: Ludic Language

Chapter One: Das Spiel der Spiele

Introduction 7 The Story of Joseph Knecht 8 Defining the Glass Bead Game 11 The Historical Evolution of the Glass Bead Game 15 The Glass Bead Game Language 19 The Third Course Game and the Chinese House Game 23 Conclusion 29

Chapter Two: The Spiral Tower

Introduction 31 Der Steppenwolf 33 The Exilic Stages of Joseph Knecht's Life 41 Serving the Highest Master 49 The Two Poles 58 Dialectic Oscillation 69 Conclusion 76

Chapter Three: Northrop Frye and Arnold Schoenberg as Glass Bead Game Players

Introduction 79 Frye's Modal Counterpoint 82 The Modal Counterpoint of Das Glasperlenspiel 84 Das Glasperlenspiel as Comedic Counterpoint 90 Frye and Schoenberg 96 Opsis 104 Frye, Schoenberg, and the Mathematics of the Glass Bead Game 108 a) Infinity 111 b) Godel Numbering 116 c) The Possible Worlds of Recursion 125 Virtuous and Sinister Spirals 127 Conclusion 131

iv Chapter Four: Faustian Dissonances

Introduction 135 Hesse's Faust 140 This Is my Mann 145 Adorno's Totalitarian Interpretation ofSchoenberg 149 Schoenberg Strikes Back 153 Conclusion 158

Chapter Five: Michel Tournier, le Roi des Perles de Verre

Introduction 162 Semiotic Child's Play 164 Le roi des aulnes as Twentieth-Century Counterpoint 176 Tournier's Prime Row 182 P0: The Ogre 184 Pj: Abel Tiffauges, Garagiste, Place de la Porte-des-Ternes 185 Pz". The Hybrid Mythological Animal 187 P3: Inverting Alpha and Omega: Retrogression, Inversion, and Retrograde-Inversion 191 P4: The Maternal Vocation of the Ogre (the Ogress) 207 P5: A Fugue of Ogres 211 Faustian Alchemy: "Historicizing" Mythology vs. "Mythologizing" History 233 Conclusion 243

Conclusion: Ludic Legends 246

Appendix: Figures 250

Works Cited and Consulted 269

v Saint-Cyr 1

Introduction:

Ludic Language

In his later notebooks, Northrop Frye speculates on the association between prophetic vision and the vision of a child, a perspective that he explicitly links to the concept of neoteny, understood here as the prolongation of the infant phase of development1 (Northrop Frve's Late Notebooks. 1982-1990 4, 654; hereinafter Late

Notebooks). Human beings are one of the few species on the planet that continue to play beyond childhood. This neotenic tendency is indicative of play's generative and transformative power: rather than leaving play behind upon entering adulthood, humans go on to create increasingly complex rituals and performances that allow us to go on manipulating, shaping, exchanging, and (re)creating our perceptions of a complex and evolving world. In the healthy psychological development of children, play is a biological imperative; therefore, it can be reasonably concluded that humanity's ludic predisposition is fundamental and cross-cultural.

As children learn how to conceptualise the world around them, they are creating their own reality for the first time. Even before children learn the nature of what they perceive, they must learn how to perceive it by building a working model of reality within which to grow and develop. It takes years for children to learn how to classify and process sensory information. At first, a child's working model of the external world will be fragmented; this is because young children compartmentalise their experiences and cannot link their perceptions together sequentially (Weininger, Children's Phantasies

1 In zoology, neoteny is defined either as the retention of juvenile features in the adult animal or the sexual maturation of an animal while still in a larval state (Concise Oxford Dictionary 959; see also Morris 32). Saint-Cyr 2

138).2 The behavioural and cognitive tool that children use to overcome this

fragmentation is play. As children grow, play is the means by which they learn how to

manipulate, organise, and explore their world; even at relatively early stages of

development, infants play with such basic elements as sight and hand movements.3

Eventually, they will learn how to order a large and complex world through the smaller

world of toys. Play has no rules outside of those created by the child; he or she can, therefore, "function for a time in a narcissistic, almost omnipotent, way" (Weininger,

Play and Education 9).

Despite our society's traditional distinction between work and play - the former is

energy centrifugally expended to affect changes in the world, while the latter is energy

centripetally expended for its own sake - Frye points out that "playing well" is very hard

work; this "self-contained energy of play," as he calls it, creates an embryonic space that

is just as closely allied to the world of the artist as it is to world of the child (Words with

Power 41). This may be why Frye is so fascinated by Johan Huizinga's concept of Homo

Ludens, from which he derives the principle that play is an end in-and-of itself that

expends "energy for its own sake" (Late Notebooks 114, 188). Drawing on D.W.

Winnicott's discourse on the psychology of play, Roland Barthes similarly argues that playing is "le reel de l'enfant - et de l'artiste -, c'est le processus de manipulation, non

l'objet produit..." (159).4 For Frye and Barthes, play is thus a containing activity, in that,

2 For example, an infant will not necessarily recognise that "mother with glasses" is the same person as "mother without glasses," even though both are recognised as "mother." 3 Canadian psychologist Otto Weininger has observed that an infant will "play with his sight: he observes, he watches, he begins to discriminate patterns, shapes, people. He does this in an exploratory way..." (Play and Education v, Weininger's emphasis). 4 Throughout, French is the only language for which I will not be offering English translations. Saint-Cyr 3 it incubates the child/artist's reality within a process of imaginative manipulation. In his later notebooks, Frye writes:

In the shelter-play gyre the embryo is, like food, within another body, and

separation is the beginning of (play) life. So all the primary concerns oscillate

between assimilating and separating. The artist assimilates the content of nature

into form, then releases his work to the public. The shelter-embryo link is the

source of my hunch that painting is an embryonic art, the art of the unborn world.

(Late Notebooks 98)5

Essential to this gestational process is play's capacity to generate hypothetical worlds - alternate, counter-factual ontologies that are neither true nor false. "The criterion of the imaginative," Frye stresses, "is the conceivable, not the real, and it expresses the hypothetical or assumed, not the actual. It is clear that such a criterion takes us into the verbal area we call literature" (Words with Power 22).

Within the securely-contained freedom of the play-space, the child/artist manipulates perceptions, images, and ideas; however, it is through storytelling that these units of meaning will acquire narrative coherence. Thus, the significance of the German pun based on the assonance of Mutter and Mythe becomes apparent: "the world of the

'Mothers' is also the world where the stories that are about nothing, verbal energy without content, take shape on the threshold just below consciousness" (Words with

Power 291). Frye writes that literature "constitutes the intensely difficult and exacting

5 In his famous earlier work, Anatomy of Criticism. Frye had already placed literature at the embryonic, centripetal centre of art, due to its capacity to draw equally on the musical (melos) and the pictorial (opsis). In the Anatomy, these two extra-literary influences respectively stand for the sequential and the simultaneous aspects of literature: opsis governs form and structure, image and symbol, while melos is the force that links these elements together into a continuous narrative. Frye's later privileging of the pictorial, as evidenced in this quotation, may be linked to his long-standing fascination with pictograms and ideograms, as well as his tendency to express his theories diagrammatically [see Figures 1,1a, lb, lc]. Saint-Cyr 4 operation of word-play, and even granting that there is something of Hermann Hesse's

Glass Bead Game about the arts, the element of play in them should not be misunderstood as withdrawing from the serious business of society" (Words with Power

41, Frye's emphasis). Here, Frye is referring not merely to Hesse's Glass Bead Game itself, but to its place within the society he creates in his 1943 novel Das Glasperlenspiel; for, in the fictional province of Castalia, the Game of Games has become the quintessence of intellectual elitism and social irrelevance. Likewise, in Frye's discourse, the fact that the poet need not assert the ontological existence of poetry "may seem to deprive him of all social usefulness and influence, and in many respects it does" (Words with Power 23); nevertheless, this distinctly Castalian "uselessness" both regulates and liberates the centripetal ordering of words that shapes our perceptions of reality from an early age.

As children mature, what started as fragmented free-play assumes increasingly complex structures. It is here that Winnicott's distinction between play, playing, and playing a game (to which Barthes also refers) becomes most useful (see Winnicott 38-52,

53-64). The babble of young children is representative of rudimentary word-play, one that takes on progressively more narrative qualities as language skills develop. When it comes to playing a game, however, language crosses an ambiguous, osmotic boundary into literature, whether the product is a myth, a folktale, a poem, a novel, or a children's skipping game. "The awareness of language may begin with ordinary consciousness,"

Frye argues, "but it soon becomes clear that language is a means of intensifying consciousness" (Words with Power 28). It is with a certain sense of puzzlement that Frye notes how, as in the Castalian Order, New Age trends in pop-psychology and spiritualism Saint-Cyr 5 tend to advocate the intensifying of consciousness through techniques of meditation, rather than language; since "all intensified language sooner or later turns metaphorical," he argues, literature is the most obvious and inescapable "guide to higher journeys of consciousness" (Words with Power 28). It is in this sense that the limit of language is not really a limit at all, but "an open gate to something else" (Words with Power 29), one that swings open on a hinge called "metaphor" (see Chamberlin, If This Is Your Land 146,

163).

Over the following five chapters, I will be exploring various aspects of the ludic theory sketched out above; moreover, in order to ground this theory in a specific literary image, I have chosen to base my argument on the tentative connection that Frye makes between artistic creativity and Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game. The result is a conceptual model that privileges paradox over logic, ambiguity over certainty, dynamism over stasis. It is a model within which ludic language folds back on itself contrapuntally, allowing the tension between what Frye calls centripetal and centrifugal forces to come to the fore. Human creativity is irrational, full of nonsense and counter-factual chimeras; the models we use to investigate the creative process must therefore be animated by the same unresolved/unresolvable contradictions that animate consciousness itself.

By drawing on the writings of Northrop Frye, Arnold Schoenberg, Michel

Tournier, Thomas Mann, and Douglas Hofstadter, I will investigate the implications of

using Hermann Hesse's fictional Glass Bead Game to model the role of recursive paradox in literary criticism and, by extension, in the creative process itself. While Hesse

associates the quintessential Modernism of his Game with the fugue of the High Baroque,

Das Glasperlenspiel ironically gestures toward post-tonal music, just as it anticipates the Saint-Cyr 6 development of what has come to be known as post-modernism. Michel Tournier's 1970 novel Le roi des aulnes, when read as a Glass Bead Game, exemplifies the modal counterpoint that Frye associates with the ironic mode of twentieth-century literature, thus completing Hesse's journey from Romantic assonance to ironic dissonance.

However, Hesse and Tournier's novels also illustrate that Frye's conception of centripetal

counterpoint, like the Glass Bead Game itself, is closer to Schoenberg's music than it is

to Bach's, as is his conception of twentieth-century literature and criticism. Saint-Cyr 7

Chapter One:

Das Spiel der Spiele

Introduction

Hermann Hesse's fictional Glass Bead Game - a game whose idea and ideal are reflected in "jeder Geselligkeit einer geistigen Elite" 'every league of an intellectual elite'

(Das Glasperlenspiel 14; Magister Ludi 7)6 - represents a fundamental and cross-cultural human drive. As Hesse's narrator grandiloquently asserts, the Glass Bead Game underlies "jedem Annaherungsversuch zwischen den exakten und freieren

Wissenschaften, jedem Versohnungsversuch zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst oder

Wissenschaft und Religion" (14) 'every rapprochement between the exact and the more liberal disciplines, every effort toward recognition between science and art or science and religion' (7). With its roots in mathematics and music, Hesse's Glass Bead Game is at once epitome and parody. On the one hand, the Game is the epitome of symbolic construction, of intellectual and artistic pattern-making; on the other, it is a parody of academic scholarship, intellectual mysticism, and (at its most extreme) fascist ideologies that seek to construct a nationalist Utopia by "historicizing" cultural mythologies.

Hermann Hesse's 1943 novel Das Glasperlenspiel is the fictional biography of

Joseph Knecht, a member of a twenty-fifth century brotherhood of monastic scholars known as the Castalian Order. The story is narrated by an anonymous biographer in an even more distant future who is looking back on Knecht's life and whose text, we are

6 Unless otherwise indicated, all English quotations of Das Glasperlenspiel are taken from Richard and Clara Winston's 1969 translation, Magister Ludi (see Works Cited and Consulted). 7 Joseph's surname - which means "servant" in German - establishes the theme of service that runs throughout the novel. In Chapter Two, I will be addressing this theme in relation to the novel's structure as a series of hierarchical stages that loosely parallels the story of St. Christopher. Saint-Cyr 8 told, is intended as an historical account not only of the venerated Knecht's life, but also of an important stage in the development of the Castalian province, its Order, and their most hallowed and sacred institution, the Glass Bead Game. The biography, despite its claim of historical accuracy, seems from the outset to be more of an attempt at hagiography than an accurate, human portrait. Knecht is portrayed as a saintly figure and his story is told using such inflated, even worshipful language, that the tone often borders on the obsequious. In fact, the narrator's voice facilitates the gentle yet relentless irony that runs throughout the novel, constantly undercutting the story's prima facie seriousness, gravity, and reverence. This obsequious canonization is diametrically opposed to the Castalian aversion to the cult of personality (or cult of celebrity), a conflict that the narrator acknowledges is inherent in the biographical process itself.

Irony notwithstanding, the narrator escapes from the un-Castalian demands of biography by cultivating a mythological aesthetic, a process that becomes more and more overt as the story progresses. Thus, by transposing his biographical subject from the historical to the mythological, the narrator manages to move from the personal to the general, from the life of an individual to a universal model. By the end of the novel, the narrator abandons all pretence of historicity and openly acknowledges that Knecht's biography has passed into myth and legend, in other words into fiction.

The Story of Joseph Knecht

Joseph Knecht's biography begins when he is a young boy at school. After being identified by the Castalian Music Master as a gifted student, Knecht is transferred into

Castalia's system of elite schools. From there, his path towards the Glass Bead Game is Saint-Cyr 9 set. Progressing from school to school, Knecht excels in his new environment, achieving a level of academic success that sets him apart from most of his peers. During his student years, Knecht befriends a young outsider named Plinio Designori, one of the few non-

Castalians permitted to attend the elite schools. The son of a wealthy and high-ranking family, Plinio comes to represent, in Knecht's eyes, the world outside Castalia. When the two of them engage in a series of public debates concerning the nature and ultimate value of Castalian life, with each playing the role of spokesperson for their respective cultures, they come to represent the embodiment of worldly and Castalian values - or rather, the embodiment of the dichotomy between the outside world and its Pedagogical Province.

As Knecht's years of free study come to a close and he is admitted into the Order, we see that he truly is becoming the quintessence of the perfect Castalian. After a successful ambassadorial posting in a Catholic monastery (where for the first time he gains an appreciation for the value of history and historiographical philosophy), Knecht wins a prestigious Glass Bead Game competition. Shortly thereafter, he is made Magister Ludi, the Glass Bead Game Master, possibly the most significant position within the Castalian hierarchy. After several years of exemplary service, Knecht becomes convinced that

Castalia's long term survival is in jeopardy. Drawing on the historiographical insight that he developed during his stay at the monastery, Knecht comes to realise that Castalia has grown less and less socially relevant over the years, that devotion to the Glass Bead

Game has estranged the Order from the society it is meant to serve. Knecht decides to bring his concerns to the attention of the Directorate by tendering his resignation,8 something no previous Magister Ludi has ever done. He comes to the conclusion that the

8 Knecht's resignation from his post may have been partially inspired by Hesse's own resignation from the Literary Section of the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1930 (The Hesse/Mann Letters: The Correspondence of Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann. 1910-1955 8-11; hereinafter H/M Correspondence). Saint-Cyr 10 most worthwhile and meaningful course of action is to exile himself from Castalia and become a teacher in the outside world. To this end, he accepts a position as private tutor for Plinio Designori's son Tito. Just as Tito's apprenticeship is starting, however, Knecht suffers a heart attack while swimming in an icy mountain lake and disappears under the cold, dark water.

The biography proper is followed by a posthumous collection of Knecht's writings, consisting of thirteen poems and three counter-factual autobiographies. As the reader learned earlier in the novel, these autobiographies are writing assignments from

Knecht's student days. Hesse's novel was originally to have been a succession of trans- temporal biographies of the same man who lived in various historical periods: prehistoric times, early Christianity, the Golden Age of India, eighteenth-century Germany, and circa

2400 A.D. in the pedagogical province of Castalia (Remys 1). In the end, the first three biographies became, respectively, "Der Regenmacher," "Der Beichtvater," and

"Indischer Lebenslauf," while the fifth became the main body of the novel.9 Thus, Das

Glasperlenspiel is from the start composed of recursive figures, nested one inside the other, in the sense that the alternate biographies are written by Knecht, Knecht's life is written by the anonymous biographer, and the biographer's own text is written by Hesse.

Furthermore, each of the counter-factual biographies functions as a microcosm of

Knecht's life, or at least of his life as portrayed by his biographer. In each alternate life,

Knecht masters occult, mystical, or spiritual arts that constitute metaphorical representations of the Glass Bead Game. A final, meta-textual twist is added to this

9 Hesse wrote two versions of the "Fourth Life of Joseph Knecht," neither of which were included in the final version of Das Glasperlenspiel, modelled loosely on eighteenth-century biographies of theologians such as Johann Albrecht Bengel, Friedrich Christopher Oetinger, and Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg; Knecht's "Fourth Life" was not published until 1965, three years after Hermann Hesse's death (H/M Correspondence 29; see also Mileck, Hesse Companion 200-202). Saint-Cyr 11 recursive narrative structure when one considers Thomas Mann's assertion that the novel is itself a Glass Bead Game (H/M Correspondence 92).

Defining the Glass Bead Game

But what exactly is the Glass Bead Game? This is a difficult question to answer, as Hesse never explicitly describes it. Rather, he describes the society that has grown up around it, the Castalian Order, as well as details concerning its history, philosophy, and conceptual structure. Simply put, the Glass Bead Game is a means by which players can transform scientific, philosophical, cultural, and artistic concepts into quasi-musical, symbolic compositions that can expand in space and time. These compositions are made possible by the Game language, an elegant system of symbolic notation capable of representing any complex conceptual motif as a single point on the Game's playing field.

Using the Game language, the player creates a pattern, shape, or motif that is itself made up of constituent motifs and ideas taken from the annals of human scholarship, arts, and culture. These constituent elements, in turn, must relate to each other thematically, symbolically, or structurally, such that the Game's form and content are brought into a close relationship with one another. The Game is played either by students or in a public arena where the player's moves are simultaneously duplicated on a large screen. Each move is followed by a prescribed meditation session during which players and spectators are invited to reflect on the symbolic patterns unfolding before them.

Before discussing the historical evolution of the Game, as summarized by the narrator, as well as its relationship with music and mathematics, let us begin by taking a Saint-Cyr 12 closer look at the language that Hesse uses on those rare occasions when he is describing the Game. The clearest and most direct description of the Game is as follows:

Diese Regeln, die Zeichensprache und Grammatik des Spieles, stellen eine Art

von hochentwickelter Geheimsprache dar, an welcher mehrere Wissenschaften

und Kiinste, namentlich aber die Mathematik und die Musik (beziehungsweise

Musikwissenschaft) teilhaben und welche die Inhalte und Ergebnisse nahetzu

aller Wissenschaften auszudriicken und zueinander in Beziehung zu setzen

imstande ist. Das Glasperlenspiel ist also ein Spiel mit samtlichen Inhalten und

Werten unserer Kultur, es spielt mit ihnen, wie etwa in den Bliitezeiten der

Kiinste ein Maler mit den Farben seiner Paelette gespielt haben mag. Was die

Menschheit an Erkentnissen, hohen Gedanken und Kunstwerken in ihren

schopferischen Zeitaltern hervorgebracht, was die nachfolgenden Perioden

gelehrter Betrachtung auf Begriffe gebracht und zum intellektuellen Besitz

gemacht haben, dieses ganze ungeheure Material von geistigen Werten wird vom

Glasperlenspieler so gespielt wie eine Orgel vom Organisten, und diese Orgel ist

einer kaum auszudenkenden Vollkommenheit, ihre Manuale und Pedale tasten

den ganzen geistigen Kosmos ab, ihre Register sind beinahe unzahlig, theoretisch

lieBe mit diesem Instrument der ganze geistige Weltinhalt sich im Spiele

reproduzieren. Diese Manuale, Pedale und Register nun stehen fest, an ihrer Zahl

und ihrer Ordnung sind Anderungen und Versuche zur Vervollkommnung

eigentlich nur noch in der Theorie moglich: die Bereicherung der Spielsprache

durch Einbeziehung neuer Inhalte unterliegt der denkbar strengsten Kontrolle

durch die oberste Spielleitung. Dagegen ist innerhalb dieses feststehenden Saint-Cyr 13

Gefuges oder, um in unserem Bilde zu bleiben, innerhalb der komplizierten

Mechanik dieser Riesenorgel dem einzelnen Spieler eine ganze Welt von

Moglichkeitenund Kombinationen gegeben [...]. (12-13)

These rules, the sign language and grammar of the Game, constitute a kind of highly developed secret language drawing upon several sciences and arts, but especially mathematics and music (and/or musicology), and capable of expressing and establishing interrelationships between the content and conclusions of nearly all scholarly disciplines. The Glass Bead Game is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture; it plays with them as, say, in the great age of the arts a painter might have played with the colours on his palette. All the insights, noble thoughts, and works of art that the human race has produced in its creative eras, all that subsequent periods of scholarly study have reduced to concepts and converted into intellectual property - on all this immense body of intellectual values the Glass Bead Game player plays like the organist on an organ. And this organ has attained an almost unimaginable perfection; its manuals and pedals range over the entire intellectual cosmos; its stops are almost beyond number. Theoretically this instrument is capable of reproducing in the

Game the entire intellectual content of the universe. These manuals, pedals, and stops are now fixed. Changes in their number and order, and attempts at perfecting them, are actually no longer feasible except in theory. Any enrichment of the language of the Game by addition of new concepts is subject to the strictest conceivable control by the directorate of the Game. On the other hand, within this fixed structure, or to abide by our image, within the complicated mechanism of Saint-Cyr 14

this giant organ, a whole universe of possibilities and combinations is available to

the individual player. (6-7)

In the above extended passage, Hesse is attempting to describe the indescribable. The

Glass Bead Grame is the ultimate abstraction, the perfect union of science and art; it cannot be described without being, so to speak, invented or created. He therefore draws on a series of metaphors and similes in order to help the reader imagine how such a game-of-games might function. The passage can be roughly divided into a series of six interrelated images: (a) The Glass Bead Game is first and foremost a language. Hesse's use of words like Zeichensprache (sign language), Grammatik (grammar), and

Geheimsprache (secret language) clearly establishes the Game's linguistic nature. Hesse specifies that this interdisciplinary language is most closely related to (b) mathematics and (c) music. Playing the Game, we are told, is like being able to play with all of human culture as an artist plays with art. Here, Hesse offers two artistic similes. On the one hand, playing the Game is like (d) a painter playing with colours, evoking not only a parallel between musical scales and the colour spectrum, but also a pictorial aesthetic.

On the other hand, playing the Game is also like (e) an organist on an organ, evoking an image of J.S. Bach perfecting the art of the fugue or making his "musical offering" to the

King of Prussia.10 The figurative organ upon which the Glass Bead Game player plays is made up of manuals, pedals, and stops. Despite being almost unzahlig, and therefore capable of unlimited expression, the organ's mechanisms and controls, we are told, are now completely fixed and no longer subject to alteration or expansion. Thus, we can infer that the Glass Bead Game is (f) a finite system capable of infinite expression.

10 The first name of the Glass Bead Game's inventor, Bastian Perrot, is an allusion to Johann Sebastian Bach's middle name. Saint-Cyr 15

The Historical Evolution of the Glass Bead Game

When Knecht's biographer describes the Game's pre-history, its primordial roots, he employs a broad range of historical references (13-14). These references locate the

Game's earliest roots in pre-Socratic mathematical philosophy and Classical Gnosticism.

Pythagoras, as the father of numbers, is thus the grandfather (or perhaps the great­ grandfather) of the intellectual tradition that was to find its ultimate expression in the

Glass Bead Game. Indeed, the assumption that, through mathematical processes, all of life can be measured and expressed in rhythmic patterns is a typically Castalian perspective. The reference to Classical Gnosticism is also apt, considering that Knecht's biography is written as a thinly veiled mythological drama that casts its subject into the role of a semi-divine redeemer figure; within this drama, Knecht acquires redemptive knowledge and insight through a succession of awakenings. The biographer's elevation of Knecht's individual enlightenment to the level of a cosmically significant event thus transforms the biography into a collective, cultural mythology, a transformation that is echoed and reinforced by the three alternate biographies that follow it. Hesse's next references are to ancient Chinese and Arabic-Moorish cultures. Here, he expands the primordial scope of the Game beyond the Western tradition, thus establishing the Game's universalism as being not only interdisciplinary, but also cross-cultural. Throughout the novel, he draws on many Eastern systems of belief and thought, including Zen Buddhism,

Hindu creation mythology, Chinese architecture, and yogic philosophy. Hesse then returns to the European tradition by tracing the rest of the Game's prehistory, in a single sweeping phrase, through medieval Scholasticism, Renaissance Humanism, seventeenth- Saint-Cyr 16

and eighteenth-century mathematics, and Romantic philosophy. The ideal upon which

the Game is based is that of the universitas litterarum, an ideal that holds as its goal the reconciliation of science and religion. Hesse's references to Abelard, Leibniz, and Hegel

are indicative of the Game's rationalist underpinnings, specifically of Scholasticism's

influence on European rationalist discourse and the resultant proliferation of philology

and formal logic as analytical tools. The stress placed on the reconciliation of

"Wissenschaft und Kunst oder Wissenschaft und Religion" is representative of an

intellectual tradition that sought to impose rational, formal systems and models onto what had previously been the exclusive domain of theology and mysticism.

The narrator concludes his discussion of the Glass Bead Game's prehistory by

referring to the cross-fertilization between mathematics and music, a seemingly binary

opposition that reflects the rapprochement of science and art (or science and religion)

noted above. The Game's relationship to mathematics and music is directly connected to

its origins. Beyond the schools of thought and authors identified by the narrator as

belonging to the Game's prehistory, the two figures most directly responsible for

"inventing" the Game are Bastian Perrot of Calw and Joculator Basiliensis. Hermann

Hesse was born in the city of Calw, on the edge of the Black Forest, in July of 1877

(Senes and Senes 38). After being expelled from high school in 1893, he worked for a

year in a machine shop owned by clockmaker Heinrich Perrot (Senes and Senes 95, 98);

years later, Hesse named the inventor of the Glass Bead Game after his first employer.

11 When biographers Michel and Jacqueline Senes recount the sixteen-year-old Hesse's attitude to his new profession, their description is distinctly evocative of the Glass Bead Game: "Horloger? La magie etant sa tentation, Hermann pressentait que sa pensee desinteressee se plairait au jeu savant des engrenages? II cederait au vertige de cheviller sa vie a une imbrication de rochets et de dents pour en declencher le mouvement perpetuel. Quelle compensation pour lui que ce reve d'une technique capable de soumettre a un rythme precis son esprit gueri du desordre! Une horloge tenait de ces organismes qui evoquent la supreme harmonie" (98). Saint-Cyr 17

According to the narrator, Bastian Perrot was a musicologist at the Musical Academy of

Cologne who noticed that the students at the Academy had devised a game to develop their memory and concentration:

.. .sie riefen einander in den abkiirzenden Formeln ihrer Wissenschaft beliebige

Motive oder Anfange aus klassischen Kompositionen zu, worauf der Angerufene

entweder mit der Fortsetzung des Sttickes oder noch besser mit einer Ober- oder

Unterstimme, einem kontrastierenden Gegenthema und so weiter zu antworten

hatte. Es war eine Gedachtnis- und Improvisieriibung, wie sie ganz anlich (wenn

auch nicht theoretisch in Formeln, sondern praktisch am Cembalo, mit der Laute,

der Flote oder der Singstimme) moglicherweise einst bei eifrigen Musik- und

Kontrapunktschulern in der Zeit von Schiitz, Pachelbel und Bach mochte im

Schwange gewesen sein. (29-30)

One would call out, in the standardized abbreviations of their science, motifs or

initial bars of classical compositions, whereupon the other had to respond with the

continuation of the piece, or better still with a higher or lower voice, a contrasting

theme, and so forth. It was an exercise in memory and improvisation quite similar

to the sort of thing probably in vogue among ardent pupils of counterpoint in the

days of Schiitz, Pachelbel, and Bach - although it would then not have been done

in theoretical formulas, but in practice on the cembalo, lute, or flute, or with the

voice. (21-22)

The narrator establishes that the first recognisable incarnation of the Glass Bead Game was based on musical quotation and improvisation; the only other of Perrot's works cited in the novel is his treatise entitled Bliite und Verfall der Kontrapunktik (Blossom and Saint-Cyr 18

Decline of Counterpoint). By means of this citation, Hesse subtly emphasises the symbolic significance of contrapuntal musical forms such as the fugue. However, despite the musicological context within which Bastian Perrot worked (or perhaps we could say because of it), the Game's mathematical nature is also evident at its earliest stage of development.

The narrator explains that Bastian Perrot modeled the very first Glass Bead Game on an abacus, described as "einen Rahmen mit einigen Dutzend Drahten darin, auf welchen er Glasperlen von verschiedener GroBe, Form und Farbe aneinanderreihen konnte" (30) 'a frame with several dozen wires on which could be strung glass beads of various sizes, shapes, and colours' (22). The initial signification of these wires and beads was musical, in that, they represented the lines of the musical staff and the time values of notes, respectively. However, the fact that the abacus itself is primarily a mathematical tool - a primitive calculator or even, one could say, a form of proto-computer - suggests that the Game has a close relationship to numerical and computational processes. A

Glass Bead Game player can thus express a particular cultural motif (or sub-set of associated motifs) as a mathematician would write an equation or a programmer would write a line of computer code. The Game player can then "play" with this equation or program in the same way that a musician can improvise variations on a musical theme.

More specifically, the Game's structure resembles the permutations of a Baroque fugue: "[So] baute er aus Glasperlen musikalische Zitate oder erfundene Themata, veranderte, transposierte, entwickelte sie, wandelte sie ab und stellte ihnen andre gegeniiber" (30) 'In this way he could represent with beads musical quotations or invented themes, could alter, transpose, and develop them, change them and set them in Saint-Cyr 19 counterpoint to one another' (22). The Game's conceptual similarity to canons and fugues will be developed more fully in subsequent chapters. However, its contrapuntal structure - and, more specifically, its use of devices such as transposition, augmentation, diminution, inversion, retrogression, and retrograde inversion - does not limit its form and style to that of the High Baroque. As we shall see, post-tonal forms of music, such as the twelve-tone method developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s, may be more appropriate when attempting to model the structural principles of the Glass Bead Game.

The Glass Bead Game Language

Such a Game would have to have its own language, one just as versatile and expressive as musical and mathematical notation. Furthermore, if the Game were to become fully intertextual and interdisciplinary, it would have to eschew specialization and develop a completely universal language, a language capable of expressing complex ideas in a fluid, systematized short-hand or symbolic code. In mathematical terms, each symbol would represent a separate computable function - thus effectively transforming the Game into a form of Godel Numbering. The narrator's description of the Glass Bead

Game language (34-36) introduces an anonymous figure from Castalian history nicknamed Joculator Basiliensis. Like Bastian Perrot, this is one of Hesse's many personnages a clef, characters who stand for real people. Joseph Mileck argues that the name Basiliensis is a reference to Hesse's friend Otto Basler; however, more convincing is Kurt Fickert's suggestion that the name refers to the city of Basel, where Hesse lived for many years (qtd. in Tusken, 154). The "Joker of Basel" would thus be Hesse himself.

Not surprisingly, the narrator tells us that this Swiss musicologist had a passion for Saint-Cyr 20 mathematics. Joculator Basiliensis' anonymity is also in keeping with Castalian collectivism and aversion to the cult of personality. In response to his society's longing for synthesis and its dissatisfaction with specialization, this unknown musical and mathematical genius invented a new alphabet, a sign language (or language of symbols) that transformed the Game from a small collection of loosely associated, esoteric games played by highly specialized academics, into a single, homogeneous game played by students from all disciplines and fields of study.

The narrator concludes his description of Joculator Basiliensis' universal Game language by telling us that in an essay entitled Chinesischer Mahnruf (Chinese Warning

Cry), a Parisian scholar (who, like Joculator Basiliensis, remains unnamed) called for the creation of an international language of symbols and warned of the cultural dangers of failing to do so. At the time, this anonymous scholar was mocked as a Don Quijote - a significant reference in two respects. First, Miguel de Cervantes' famous knight errant is a character who is born of and inhabits a world of texts and intertextual allusion; this underscores the Game's fundamentally interdisciplinary and intertextual aesthetic.

Second, Don Quijote's dedication to achieving the unachievable (presumably the basis of the mockery directed at the Parisian scholar) is reflected in Joseph Knecht's motivation for resigning his post and leaving Castalia. The Game, originally meant to universalize all human knowledge by eliminating specialization, eventually becomes a specialization in and of itself, so esoteric and abstruse that Castalia has lost all trace of social and cultural relevance. The Game's universality thus contains the seeds of its own limitation; and what was at first a tool of inclusivity ultimately becomes the epitome of exclusivity.

The Game, it seems, can universalize and manipulate anything and everything except Saint-Cyr 21 itself; therefore, the Castalian dream of revolutionizing society by universalizing all culture and knowledge proves to be as obdurate as a windmill. In order to transcend

Castalia and lake the Game (or, rather, the Castalian ideal) to its next level of development, Knecht must break out of the system. He must transcend from intertextuality to metatextuality, just as twentieth-century mathematicians sought to use meta-mathematics (or meta-logic) to establish once and for all the fundamental nature of the reasoning that unites all mathematical systems. What Castalia and metamathematics have in common is, as Douglas Hofstadter puts it, the desire to establish "a complete codification of the universally accepted modes of human reasoning..." (Godel. Escher.

Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid 23; hereinafter GEB). The Castalian ideal, as embodied by the Glass Bead Game, is therefore just as quixotic as Russell and Whitehead's dream of an hierarchical object language through which paradoxes could be definitively eliminated from mathematics. Congruently, Knecht's exile from Castalia at the end of the novel can be associated with Kurt Godel's refutation of Principia Mathematica, a refutation that lead to his conception of the Incompleteness Theorem.

The narrator then tells us that this anonymous Parisian scholar, an expert in

Chinese philology, suggested that this hypothetical Zeichensprache should resemble ancient Chinese script - in other words that it should be pictographic in nature. In addition to being able to express complex ideas graphically, it should also, he stressed, facilitate improvisation by giving the imagination free rein. The last requirement was, of course, that the language should be readily understandable to all of the world's scholars.

Joculator Basiliensis therefore invented a language of symbols and formulae that met the requirements outlined in Chinesischer Mahnruf. From musical notation, he borrowed Saint-Cyr 22 elements of harmony and dissonance, meter and rhythm, and improvisational inventiveness; from mathematics, he borrowed elements of codification, set theory, and isomorphic permutation; and from graphics and pictography, he drew on a picture's ability both to communicate images instantaneously and to represent images three- dimensionally. When the narrator describes the Game as being able to combine such disparate elements as astronomical and musical formulae, he evokes a tradition that looks both ahead to astrophysics and backwards to astrology and other forms of mysticism.

Moreover, the contrapuntal juxtaposition of the physical sciences and the arts represents one of the fundamental dichotomies of Hesse's novel: the head and the heart. When the narrator writes of reducing mathematics and music to a common denomenator, he is describing what is essentially an interdisciplinary form of counterpoint: "Das Spiel der

Spiele hatte sich, unter der wechselnden Hegemonie bald dieser, bald jener Wissenschaft oder Kunst, zu einer Art von Universalsprache ausgebildet, durch welche die Spieler in sinnvollen Zeichen Werte auszudriicken und zueinander in Beziehung zu setzen befahigt waren" (38) 'Under the shifting hegemony of now this, now that science or art, the Game of games had developed into a kind of universal language through which the players could express values and set these in relation to one another' (29).

Das Glasperlenspiel contains references to serveral specific Games; however, the

Third Course Game and the Chinese House Game are the only ones that the narrator describes in any detail. Because Knecht's biographer offers so little direct description of the Glass Bead Game, these two examples will help to establish more clearly how the

Game is acually played. Saint-Cyr 23

The Third Course Game and the Chinese House Game

At the very end of his stay at the Mariafels monastary, Joseph Knecht participates in the annual Game competition of the Waldzell elite. Knecht is awarded first prize and

1 ry his friend Fritz Tegularius wins the second. Unfortunately, the narrator does not describe Knecht's winning entry directly, except to say that it is symmetrical. In the course of describing it generally, however, he introduces the distinction between the formale Spielmethode and the psychologische Spielmethode (196-197). These two methods (the formal and the psychological), we are told, were the two principle trends in

Game construction at the time of Knecht's life. With the formal method, players transform the objective content of each Game (that is, its mathematical, linguistic, musical, or philosophical material) into a unified pattern that resembles an harmonic structure; adherents of the formal method strive to compose patterns that are dense, coherent, and formally perfect. Thus, the perfect symmetry of Knecht's competition entry identifies it as a formal, or classical, Glass Bead Game. With the psychological method, which Knecht preferred to call the pedagogical method (197), more emphasis is placed on the meditation that follows every stage of the Game; the sense of unity and harmony, rather than being created structurally, is created by allowing the player or

spectator to experience divinity through meditation. Such psychological (or pedagogical)

Games may not appear structurally perfect from the outside, since their harmonic unity is

experiential rather than objective. With these two Game methods in mind, let us now

consider the two most directly described Glass Bead Games in Hesse's novel: the Third

Course Game and the Chinese House Game.

Tegularius, who represents Friedrich Nietzsche, is another of Hesse's personnages a clef. Saint-Cyr 24

During Joseph Knecht's student years at Waldzell, he remains hesitant about the

Glass Bead Game, preferring to pursue advanced courses in music and musicology. It is not until later in his studies, after having completed introductory Game courses and established himself as an excellent player, that he is gripped by a passion for the Game of games. His vocation, as he explains to Tegularius in a letter, came to him during a third level course:

Du entsinnst dich, in grofien Ziigen wenigstens, jener Glasperlenspielubung, die

wir damals als Schuler im dritten Kurs mit Hilfe des Leiters aufbauten und in

deren Verlauf ich jene Stimme vernahm und meine Berufung zum Lusor erlebte.

Nun, jenes Ubungsspiel, das mit einer rhythmischen Analyse des Themas zu einer

Fuge begann und in dessen Mitte ein angeblicher Satz des Kungtse stand [...].

(118)

You will recall, at least in general outline, the Glass Bead Game exercise we

constructed at that time, as pupils in the Third Course, and with the leader's

assistance - in the course of which I heard that voice and experienced my

vocation as a lusor. That game began with a rhythmic analysis of a fugal theme

and in the center of it was a sentence attributed to Confucius. (106)

Here, Knecht identifies the two principal elements of the Third Course Game: fugal

structure (with a focus on rhythmic analysis) and Confucian philosophy. Despite the fact

that neither the fugal theme nor the Confucian citation are specified, these two general

references are nevertheless significant. The Third Course Game could even be

considered a prototypical Glass Bead Game, since it incorporates elements of both the

formal and psychological methods. The reference to the fugal theme represents the Saint-Cyr 25 structural perfection that formal players seek to create in their Games. The Confucian sentence represents what Knecht calls the pedagogical method, one that seeks perfection through meditation, ritual, discipline, and self-improvement.

Having identified this Third Course Game as the catalyst or starting point of his vocation as a lusor, Knecht undertakes a lengthy and arduous analysis of its construction by translating each of its phrases from the Game language back into the original language, that is, back into music, mathematics, Chinese, etcetera. What could be expressed so succinctly in the Game language takes Knecht several years to reconstruct:

Um sich die Inhalte dieses einzigen Spielschemas anzueignen, welches sie einst

als Schiller zu Ubungszwecken in wenigen Tagen komponiert hatten und das, in

der Sprache des Glasperlenspiels, in einer Viertelstunde abzulesen gewesen war,

verwendete er Jahr um Jahr, saB in Lehrsalen und Bibliotheken, studierte

Froberger und Alessandro Scarlatti, Fugen und Sonatenbau, repetierte

Mathematik, lernte Chinesisch, arbeitete ein System der Klangfiguren und die

Feustelsche Theorie von der Entsprechung zwischen der Farbenskala und den

musikalischen Tonarten durch. (121)

In order to assimilate the contents of this one pattern, which the schoolboys had

composed as an exercise within a few days, and which could be read off in a

quarter hour in the language of the Glass Bead Game, [Joseph] spent year after

year sitting in lecture halls and libraries, studying Froberger and Alessandro

Scarlatti, fugues and sonata form, reviewing mathematics, learning Chinese,

working through a system of tonal figuration and the Feustelian theory of the

correspondence between the scale of colours and the musical keys. (108) Saint-Cyr 26

In this description, the narrator provides a few more hints as to the actual content of the

Third Course Game. First, there is a reference to seventeenth-century Baroque music, with fugue and sonata form specified as being of primary significance. The reference to

German Baroque composer Johann Jakob Froberger is particularly relevent in light of the fact that he was a contrapuntalist and forerunner of J.S. Bach. Then, naturally, mathematics is mentioned, although the narrator does not specify what kind. The fact that Knecht must also learn Chinese is not surprising considering this Game's focus on

Confucianism.

Lastly, the narrator mentions the Feustelsche Theorie concerning the relationship between the colour spectrum and musical key signatures. This reference is another one of Hesse's private jokes. During his second period in Basel, from 1899 to 1904 (see

Senes and Senes 149-182), Hesse made the acquaintance of the painter Max Bucherer; it has even been suggested that it was upon Bucherer's "game of ideas" involving optics, mathematics, and music that Hesse based the concept of the Glass Bead Game. The

"Feustelian theory" mentioned by the narrator is a reference to Bucherer's wife, Els

Feustel, who had developed a system of correlation between colours and music (Mileck,

Life and Art 42, 279). Better known (and perhaps also of relevance to Hesse's conception of the Game) is the intersection of painting and music explored by Bauhaus painters such as Wassily Kandinski and Paul Klee.13 Although principally concerned with music's ability to represent and manipulate rhythm and time, Klee was also concerned with the metaphorical parallels between pitch sequences and colour sequences.

It is possible that Hesse could also have been thinking of Arcimboldo, Maximilian's official portraitist, who proposed "une methode colorimetrique de transcription musicale, selon laquelle 'une melodie pouvait etre representee par de petites taches de couleur sur un papier'" (Barthes 122). Saint-Cyr 27

The second Glass Bead Game to be described in any significant detail is the

Chinese House Game. Every year in Castalia, a ceremonial Glass Bead Game, the Ludus sollemnis, is conducted by the Magister Ludi. Once Knecht is promoted to this lofty rank, he decides to base his first ceremonial Game as Magister on "die magische

Symbolik des Chinesenhauses" (246) 'the magical symbolism of Chinese architecture'

(225). With the help of Fritz Tegularius, Knecht contracts a Glass Bead Game whose structure is based entirely on the Confucian method of designing a house:

Es solite diesem Spiel, dies war der hubsche Einfall, fur Struktur und

Dimensionen das alte, konfuzianisch rituelle Schema das chinesischen Hausbaues

zugrunde liegen, die Orientierung nach den Himmelsrichtungen, die Tore, die

Geistermauer, die Verhaltnisse und Bestimmungen der Bauten und Hofe, ihre

Zuordnung zu den Gestirnen, dem Kalender, dem Familienleben, dazu die

Symbolik und Stilregeln des Gartens. (246)

The pretty idea was to base the structure and dimensions of the Game on the

ancient ritual Confucian pattern for the building of a Chinese house: orientation

by the points of the compass, the gates, the spirit wall, the relationships and

functions of buildings and courtyards, their co-ordination with the constellations,

the calendar and family life, and the symbolism and stylistic principles of the

garden. (224)

Beyond the similarities between Castalian and Confucian philosophy mentioned above,

the significance of Knecht's design is based on the symbolic role of the Chinese house as

a microcosm of the universe. Within the patterns and rules of Confucian domestic

architecture, humanity's place in the cosmos is symbolised by the physical parameters Saint-Cyr 28 that envelop or contain the family and regulate family life. In addition, like the Third

Course Game, Knecht's Chinese House Game contains elements of both the formal and psychological/pedagogical methods of Game construction. On a structural level, the

Chinese House Game could be regarded as an example of the formal or classical method: its form is strict and organised, displaying structural elements such as symmetry and balance, order and harmony. However, while this Game's content (as opposed to its form) is never described, its thematic associations and metaphysical resonances identify it as more of a psychological/pedagogical Game. Given the latter's emphasis on the search for perfection and truth through meditation, the Chinese House Game does seem to fit into the pedagogical category. Knecht's use of architectural symbolism thus invites the spectator or fellow player to meditate on the beauty, simplicity, and perfection of humanity's place in the universe, and of the harmony that can exist between the form and content of human life.

The narrator's description of the Chinese House Game being played at Joseph

Knecht's first Ludus sollemnis (264-265) provides us with the novel's only direct example of the Glass Bead Game's rules and style of play. The annual Game is played in front of thousands of spectators in a great hall or auditorium in the Player's Village at

Waldzell. When Knecht makes his entrance, the narrator compares him to a high-priest and describes him as a "weiB und golden gekleidete Leitfigur auf dem feierlichen

Schachbrett der Symbole" (264) 'white-and-gold-clad major piece on the solemn chessboard of symbols' (240). Knecht appears in front of the audience surrounded by acolytes who perform ritual gestures and actions, such as bowing and drawing a curtain around the Magister as he meditates. To play the Game, Knecht uses a luminous golden Saint-Cyr 29 stylus to inscribe the characters of the Game language upon a tablet, the care and delicacy with which he performs this task recalling the art of Chinese calligraphy. As Knecht writes out the phrases of his Game, the characters appear simultaneously on a giant screen behind him and are called out by the Speakers so all in attendance can follow the

Game's progress. As the narrator explains, the Game language is so flexible and nuanced that it can respond to the mind, voice, temperament, and even handwriting of an individual player. At the end of the first act, Knecht writes the summary formula for the act on his tablet, then assumes a meditation posture and meditates for a prescribed period of time. All those who are watching (both in the hall and around the world) meditate along with the Magister and follow his every gesture, letting him lead them through the twists and turns of his Game. The narrator describes the Magister as a guide who leads his followers down "den phantastisch-hieratischen Gang durch die unendlichen, vieldimensionalen Vorstellungsraume des Spieles" (265) 'the hieratic and labyrinthine ways through the endless, multidimensional imagery of the Game' (241).

Conclusion

Das Glasperlenspiel and Hesse's earlier novel Per Steppenwolf are, figuratively

speaking, two parts of a single story. From Harry Haller's exile from the world and into

the Magic Theatre, to Joseph Knecht's exile from Castalia and back into the world,

Haller/Knecht's path through life describes a spiral, a geometrical structure that, together

with the concept of the Glass Bead Game itself, will form the basis of my interpretation

of Hesse's vision. This archetypal (and, in Knecht's case, allegorical) path leads to the

animation of what I will call a "dialectic oscillation," a process whereby Hesse brings Saint-Cyr 30 opposing forces into a dynamic, reciprocal relationship. For Northrop Frye, this oscillation is expressed as the reciprocal relationship between what he refers to as

"centripetal" and "centrifugal" forces. As we shall now see in chapter two, the image of the spiral, understood as an amalgamation of linear and circular movement, forms the basis of Das Glasperlenspiel's structure. Like a fugal theme that folds back on itself through recapitulation and variation, Joseph Knecht's life progresses through a series of modulations that lead him into the heart of - and ultimately beyond - Castalia and the

Glass Bead Game. By the end of his life, Knecht has returned from the "dominant" of

Castalia to the "tonic" of the outside world from whence he came. More significantly, he has returned to the teacher/student relationship that set him on his path when he was a child. This path, however, is not merely circular; it is also a linear progression, a development that has inverted his role from student to master. Thus, the inversion of

Knecht's role animates a new modulation: Tito's experience at the end of the novel represents a recapitulation of the main theme of Knecht's life - but a recapitulation in a new key, and whose melodic development is alive with the promise of new variations. Saint-Cyr 31

Chapter Two;

The Spiral Tower

Introduction

The trajectory of Joseph Knecht's life is based on spiral structure. On the one

hand, "war sein Weg denn im Kreise gegangen" (386) 'his path had been a circle' (350): just as his life started in the outside world, so does it end there. On the other hand, he

walks a "gradlinige Pfad" (386) 'straight path' (350): the timid, inexperienced student

who leaves Berolfingen for Eschholz at the beginning of the novel evolves into the wise

and seasoned Master who leaves Waldzell for the mountains of Belpunt at the end. By

amalgamating Joseph's circular return to the outside world with his linear development,

Hesse has, on the most fundamental level, created a spiral journey. Moreover, by

tranforming the student into the master, Hesse has inverted Knecht's role just as Bach

inverts the Royal Theme in the fourth Canones diversi in the Musical Offering. Indeed,

the structure of a canon or fugue can be described as a figurative spiral: not only does it

fold back on itself to become its own accompaniment, but it also recapitulates with

variation. In keeping with this recursive aesthetic, Hesse's narrator describes Knecht's

path through life as "einer [...] Spirale" (386).

In L'obvieetl'obtus, a collection of essays on the semiotics of visual and acoustic

art forms, Roland Barthes writes:

la spirale, comme cercle deporte a l'infini, est dialectique: sur la spirale, les

choses reviennent, mais a un autre niveau: il y a retour dans la difference, non

ressassement dans l'identite [...]. La spirale regie la dialectique de l'ancien et du Saint-Cyr 32

nouveau; grace a elle, nous ne sommes pas contraints de penser: tout est dit, ou:

rien n 'a ete dit, mais plutot rien n'est premier et cependant tout est nouveau. [...]

[E]n se repetant, [la spirale] engendre un deplacement. (199, Barthes' emphasis)

Significantly, Douglas Hofstadter's definition of recursion in Godel. Escher. Bach is almost identical to Barthes' definition of the spiral: "recursion is a domain where

'sameness-in-difference' plays a central role. Recursion is based on the 'same' thing happening on several different levels at once. But the events on different levels aren't exactly the same - rather, we find some invariant feature in them, despite many ways in which they differ" (148, Hofstradter's emphasis). The conceptual and thematic congruencies between Das Glasperlenspiel and Hofstadter's Godel. Escher. Bach can provide a useful theoretical framework that has the potential to inform our reading of both texts. It is almost as if, unconsciously, Hofstadter is attempting to "invent" the

Glass Bead Game, in theory if not in practice. The complementary nature of Hesse and

Hofstadter's preoccupation with recursive structures and meta-textual devices illustrates the extent to which, in the 1930s and '40s, Hesse was engaged in an intellectual movement that ultimately had a profound impact on what has come to be known as post­ modernism. The development of twentieth-century mathematics, which Hofstadter discusses at length, was an important part of this movement.

As a step toward analysing the recursive aesthetic at work in Das

Glasperlenspiel's various levels of structural organisation, it is important to establish the points of contact between Knecht's story and that of Harry Haller in Per Steppenwolf. In fact, figuratively speaking, Das Glasperlenspiel can be read as a continuation and, ultimately, a fulfillment of the themes and ideas introduced in Per Steppenwolf. Saint-Cyr 33

Per Steppenwolf

Pas Glasperlenspiel was composed over a period of eleven years, from 1931 to

1942; however, Joseph Mileck's research indicates that Hesse most likely started to think about the novel as early as 1927 (Remys 1), the year Per Steppenwolf was first published. Based on this chronology, it is reasonable to surmise that a continuity might exist from one novel to the other, that Das Glasperlenspiel's central theme might have been nascent in Per Steppenwolf and that Per Steppenwolf s themes and images could have been taken up in Pas Glasperlenspiel and developed to their logical conclusion.

Both novels are stories within stories, with the life of the main character mediated by an anonymous outside observer. Just as Knecht's life story is told by a biographer, Harry

Haller's story is discovered, edited, and published by his landlady's nephew. In addition, both Knecht and Haller are portrayed as Faustian figures caught between two worlds.

Knecht is pulled between the maternal outside world and the paternal world of Castalia.

Haller is caught in the grips of a crippling psycho-spiritual dichotomy, a polarisation in which his persona is split into man and wolf, the former representing rationality, self control, and civilisation, the latter representing viciousness, passion, and barbarity.

Haller's escape from this false dichotomy parallels Knecht's escape from the outside world, in the sense that the Magic Theatre is equivalent to the Glass Bead Game. Just as the Castalians play with the very fabric of cultural reality, so does Haller play with the elements of his new-found multiplicity, his personae taking the role of chess pieces in an endlessly evolving game. Hesse himself makes the connection between the two novels explicit in the narrator's general introduction to Knecht's biography: Saint-Cyr 34

[Das Glasperlenspiel] wurde zum Beispiel zur Zeit des Plinius ZiegenhalB nicht

seltenauch mit einem Ausdruck bezeichnet, welcher noch aus der Dichtung der

feuilletonistischen Epoche stammt und fiir diese Epoche das Sehnsuchtsziel

manches vorahnenden Geistes benannte, mit dem Ausdruck: magisches Theater.

(36)

Indeed, in the days of Plinius Ziegenhalss, for instance, [the Glass Bead Game]

was often called by a different name, one common in the literature of the

Feuilletonistic Age. That name, which for many a prophetic spirit in those days

embodied a visionary ideal, was: Magic Theatre. (28)

This passage has a dual function: to establish a conceptual link between Der Steppenwolf and Das Glasperlenspiel. and to function as a reminder to the reader not to take the narrator's pretentious tone too seriously. Since the "prophetic spirit" with the "visionary ideal" is Hesse himself, the narrator's obsequious tone makes the Steppenwolf reference

function as an ironic, self-referential joke at the author's expense.

The Magic Theatre's Immortals are, in many respects, identical to the Castalian

Order. Stelzig, for instance, sees the Immortals as an adumbration of the Castalians

(219), and Tusken argues that "Hesse is portraying Joseph Knecht as the most superior

and last in line of his immortals-to-be" (179). Both the Immortals and the Castalians

exhibit the same sense of Heiterkeit (cheerfulness), usually translated in Hesse's novels

as "cheerful serenity" and expressed by Hesse's characters as a readiness to laugh. At the

end of Der Steppenwolf, Haller's "execution" consists of being laughed at: "Und auf drei

stimmten samtliche Anwesende mit tadellosem Einsatz ein Gelachter an, ein Gelachter

im hfiheren Chor, ein furchtbares, fiir Menschen kaum ertragliches Gelachter des Saint-Cyr 35

Jenseits" (261) 'On the word "three" all who were present broke into one simultaneous peal of laughter, a laughter in full chorus, a frightful laughter of the other world that is scarcely to be born by the ears of men' (215).14 The figure of Mozart then explains to

Haller: "Sie sollen lachen lernen [...]. Sie sollen den Humor des Lebens, den

Galgenhumor dieses Lebens erfassen" (261) 'You have got to learn to laugh. [...] You must apprehend the humor of life, its gallows-humor' (216). In Das Glasperlenspiel.

Joseph Knecht expresses a similar sentiment when he is quoted by the narrator in the introduction:

Die Gebarde der klassischen Musik bedeutet: Wissen um die Tragik des

Menschentums, Bejahen des Menschengeschicks, Tapferkeit, Heiterkeit! Ob das

nun die Grazie eines Menuetts von Handel oder von Couperin ist, oder die zu

zartlicher Gebarde sublimierte Sinnlichkeit wie bei vielen Italienern oder bei

Mozart, oder die stille, gefaBte Sterbensbereitschaft wie bei Bach, es ist immer ein

Trotzdem, ein Todesmut, ein Rittertum, und ein Klang von iibermenschlichem

Lachen darin, von unsterblicher Heiterkeit. So soil es auch in unsern

Glasperlenspielen klingen, und in unsrem ganzen Leben, Tun und Leiden. (42)

Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human

condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. The grace of

a minuet by Handel or Couperin, the sensuality sublimated into delicate gesture to

be found in many Italian composers or in Mozart, the tranquil, composed

readiness for death in Bach - always there may be heard in these works a

defiance, a death-defying intrepidity, a gallantry, and a note of superhuman

14 Unless otherwise indicated, all English quotations of Der Steppenwolf are taken from Joseph Mileck and Horst Frenz's 1963 revision of Basil Creighton's 1929 translation (see Works Cited and Consulted). Saint-Cyr 36

laughter, of immortal gay serenity. Let that same note also sound in our Glass

Bead Games, and in our whole lives, acts, and sufferings. (33-34)

The Music Master, a character whose symbolic canonization (257-264) transforms him into more of an Immortal than any other character in Das Glasperlenspiel, becomes more

and more an embodiment of Heiterkeit the closer he gets to death. When Knecht asks his

old friend Carlo Ferrornonte15 about the Music Master's transformation, Carlo answers:

O ja, Ihr meint sein gutes Aussehen, seine Heiterkeit, sein merkwurdiges Strahlen.

Natiirlich haben wir das bemerkt. Wahrend seine Krafte hinschwinden, nimmt

diese Heiterkeit bestandig zu. (257)

Oh yes. You mean his fine appearance, his cheerfulness, his curious radiance?

Of course we have noticed that. While his strength is diminishing, that serene

cheerfulness is constantly increasing. (234)

Knecht then admits that, in his last meeting with his former teacher, he felt ill at ease and

at a loss for words; no matter what Knecht said, the Music Master would only respond

with a glance and a smile. Knecht states that this behaviour almost led him to think that

the Music Master was laughing at him. Later in the novel, in chapter nine, "Ein

Gesprach" 'A Conversation,' this situation is inverted when Plinio Designori interprets

Knecht's cheerful smile as mockery:

Da der andre nicht weitersprach, lieB Knecht seinen Blick auf ihm ruhen, voll

Wohlwollen und mit einem Ausdruck von Befriedigung, ja von Vergmigen, dem

der Freund eine Minute oder langer finster standhielt.

15 The name Carlo Ferrornonte is an Italianized reference to Hesse's nephew Karl Isenberg (Mileck, Life and Art 286). Saint-Cyr 37

»Du lachst?« rief Plinio dann heftig, doch nicht bose. »Du lachst? Du findest

alles in Ordnung?« (308)

Since Designori did not continue, Knecht rested his eyes on him, with a look of

good will and satisfaction, in fact with a touch of amusement. For a minute or

longer Plinio bleakly met that gaze. Then he cried out forcefully, although not

angrily: "You're laughing! Laughing? You think it was all fine?" (279)

By the end of their interview, Knecht and Designori have succeeded in bridging the gap created by years of living in different worlds. In an effort to help his old friend, whom he addresses as "mein lieber Trauriger" (320) 'my dear devotee of sadness' (290), Knecht expounds on the importance of cheerfulness and laughter. In doing so, the philosophy he describes could easily be read as a summation of what Harry Haller learns from the

Immortals:

Diese Heiterkeit ist weder Tandelei noch Selbstgefalligkeit, sie ist hochste

Erkenntnis und Liebe, ist Bejahen aller Wirklichkeit, Wachsein am Rand aller

Tiefen und Abgriinde, sie ist eine Tugend der Heiligen und der Ritter, sie ist

unstorbar und nimmt mit dem Alter und der Todesnahe nur immer zu. Sie ist das

Geheimnis des Schonen und die eigentliche Substanz jeder Kunst. (321)

Such cheerfulness is neither frivolity nor complacency; it is supreme insight and

love, affirmation of all reality, alertness on the brink of all depths and abysses; it

is a virtue of saints and of knights; it is indestructible and only increases with age

and nearness to death. It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art.

(291) Saint-Cyr 38

In this sense, Knecht represents Haller's final stage of evolution, the Harry Haller who has learned the lesson of the Magic Theatre. However, if Plinio Designori is read as the worldly reflection of Joseph Knecht (as is clearly suggested by Hesse in the second chapter), then a closer correlation can be inferred between Haller and Designori than between Haller and Knecht.

Indeed, Designori's description of the life he lived after his student years at

Waldzell bears a striking resemblance to the life of excess, debauchery, and experimentation led by Harry Haller: "Wir haben getrunken und gehurt, wir haben alle erreichbaren Betaubungsmittel durchprobiert, wir haben alles Wohlanstandige,

Ehrwiirdige, Ideale bespien und verhohnt" (318) 'We drank and whored; we tried all available narcotics; we sneered at decency, reverence, idealism' (288). Designori's cynicism, his impulse to sneer at decency, recalls Haller's lupine characteristics, the part of him that rejects bourgeois society as effete and contemptible. Like Haller, Designori becomes a lonely and troubled outsider - a "vereinsamten und vergramten AuBenseiter"

(324). Isolated and emittered, he throws himself into the role he has assumed; he rejects all of his Castalian training, stops meditating, and embraces the shallow, materialistic pragmatism of the outside world. By failing to integrate his Castalian education into the rest of his life, Designori has pitted one part of his psyche against the other, a schizophrenic state of mind that exactly parallels Haller's division into man and wolf. In fact, the narrator's description of Designori's post-Castalian life could just as easily be read as a description of Harry Haller's pre-Magic Theatre life: "Und es schien, als miisse er, nun einmal auf diesen dornenvollen Weg der Vereinzelten und NichtangepaBten geraten, auch selber noch allerlei tun, um sich abzusondern und seine Schwierigkeiten zu Saint-Cyr 39 vergrofiern" (324) 'It seemed, moreover, that since he had once stumbled into this thorny path of maladjustment, he was driven to commit all kinds of acts that increased his isolation and his difficulties' (295).

Haller and Designori, the Music Master and Knecht - all of these characters essentially represent the same figure at different stages of development. Haller's rejection of volkisch cultural propaganda (symbolised, for example, by the professor's etching of Goethe; see Per Steppenwolf 75, 78-79) leads him into an untenable psychological dichotomy, a division that compels him to exile himself from society. His identity as a middle-class German academic, a man of letters, draws him towards a bourgeois society in which the propagandistic appropriation of cultural and intellectual material is on the rise; his identity as a wolf of the steppes pulls him away from this society, leaving him isolated and suicudal. He escapes both the insanity of Nazi cultural monism and the schizophrenia of his lycanthropic dualism by embracing the plurality of the Magic Theatre. Designori, on the other hand, reverses this process: he exiles himself

from the limitless multiplicity of the Glass Bead Game in favour of a divided and isolated

existence in the outside world. The Music Master, as has been noted above, most closely

resembles the Immortals of the Magic Theatre; he represents the enlightenment to which

all Castalians aspire, an enlightenment that leaves behind the merely human in favour of

the ultimate abstraction. The Music Master is the pilgrim who entered the Magic Theatre

and never left; he is an image of what Knecht would have become had he stayed in

Castalia. It is only Joseph Knecht who succeeds in breaking out of the system, who

succeeds in integrating the head and the heart, the abstract and the human, the paternal

and the maternal. In psychoanalytical terms, Knecht has completed the process of Saint-Cyr 40 individuation. Thus, Knecht's story represents the final stage of the journey started by

Harry Haller, the completion of Haller's unfinished growth from disfunctional neurotic to fully individuated human being.

When, as quoted above, Das Glasperlenspiel's narrator tells us that Knecht's journey has gone "in einer [...] Spirale" (386), he is referring to Knecht's return to die outside world from whence he came, as well as, perhaps, his recapitulation and inversion of the teacher/student (or master/disciple) relationship. However, on a deeper level, what

Hesse may be telling us via the narrator is that life's journey - of which Haller,

Designori, and Knecht represent the three developmental stages - is a game of recapitulation-with-variation; within this game, circular repetition and linear displacement are amalgamated to form a spiral progression. Haller, as he enters the world of the Magic Theatre, learns how to let go of the rigidity with which he perceives his own psyche, as well as the rigidity of bourgeois-Nazi ideology, in favour of the fluid plurality of the Immortals' world. The Immortals, in the guise of musical and intellectual geniuses from the past, embody the essence of artistic and scholarly system-building.

When Haller plays chess with pieces of his own psyche, he is playing the game of the

Immortals; and this game, taken to its ultimate incarnation, is, of course, the Glass Bead

Game. Thus, we have a progression wherein the protagonist moves from the rigidity of

fascist monism and schizophrenic dualism, to the fluidity of free-play, while this free- play, taken to its logical extreme, comes to reflect a new rigidity that must, in turn, be left behind. The Magic Theatre and Castalia are synonymous with each other; however,

while the Magic Theatre stands for fluidity, Castalia, in its effort to become the ultimate

Magic Theatre, engenders the very rigidity that it sought to undermine in the first place. Saint-Cyr 41

And so, the spiral structure of Knecht's life can be expanded to include Haller's journey as well, representing a dynamism that oscillates between two poles as it spirals from one developmental stage to the next. As we shall see presently, this spiral pattern can be read not only as a psychological, but also as a political metaphor.

The idea that Hesse's characters represent different stages of personal or political development is consistent with the emphasis that he places in Das Glasperlenspiel on transcendental epiphanies that propel the protagonist from stage to stage. Similarly, the act of progressing through a series of hierarchical stages is a central component of

Hofstadter's discourse on recursion and what he calls "strange loops." Every time

Knecht rounds another curve of his spiral journey, the spiral's linear displacement advances or raises him to a new level while, at the same time, exiling him from die stage that came before. It is therefore important to understand how the binary concepts of transcendence and exile function within Joseph Knecht's biography.

The Exilic Stages of Joseph Knecht's Life

Near the beginning of the narrator's biography, the reader is warned that the final stage of Knecht's life is shrouded in mystery and mymology. However, even as the biographer is undermining the historical authenticity of his text's final chapter, he is also justifying it as a natural continuation of what comes before:

Wir sehen sein Leben, soweit es bekannt ist, in klarer Stufenfolge aufgebaut, und

wenn wir in unsern Vermutungen iiber sein Ende uns willig der Legende

anschlieBen und sie glaubig ubernehmen, so tun wir es, weil uns das, was die Saint-Cyr 42

Legende berichtet, als letzte Stufe dieses Lebens vollig den vorhergegangenen zu

entsprechen scheint. (46)

We regard his life, insofar as it is known, as built up in a clear succession of

stages; and if in our speculations about its end we gladly accept the legend and

faithfully report it, we do so because what the legend tells us about the last stage

of his life seems to correspond fully with the previous stages. (38)

The theme of stages is so essential, according to the narrator, that it overrides even the demands of historical accuracy. Even the "verbotenen Personen- und Heiligenkult" (261)

- the "forbidden cult of personality and hagiolatry" (237) - seems to be permissible, so long as the mythologisation (or canonisation) functions as a natural extension of the historically documented stages that precede it. In fact, the narrator's attitude can be described as a form of biographical determinism, in that the story of Knecht's life is determined by literary, rather than historical, considerations. The narrator is writing a history that self-consciously blends into fiction, a text in which consistency of theme and form, in a literary sense, is more important than authenticity. Thus, the legendary account of Knecht's self-imposed exile from Castalia becomes a prototypical representation of the exilic stages that make up the rest of the biography.

Even as a young child, before ever setting foot in Castalia, Knecht's first meeting with the Music Master leaves him feeling as though he has already been exiled from

Berolfingen (56-57). Then later, as an electus at Eschholz, Knecht feels deeply distraught every time one of his fellow classmates is expelled from Castalia. However, his distress, at first motivated by a combination of pity for the dismissed students and anxiety that he himself could suffer the same fate, eventually develops into a form of empathy. Knecht Saint-Cyr 43 gains the insight that Castalia is not the only reality, that students who return to the outside world are not simply being punished, but are being called back into the world because that is where they belong. He recognises that life's journey involves leaps of faith that lead from the familiar into the unknown; by leaving the Pedagogical Province, these students are discarding the familiar security of Castalia in order to follow a different destiny. In a foreshadowing of his eventual resignation, Knecht wonders if the banishment of these pupils is, for them, a positive, courageous act. When Knecht graduates from Eschholz and prepares to embark on the next stage of his own journey, he thinks of the outcasts again and hopes that someday he too will be able to leap forward, to transcend his current stage in life on his way to a higher level (74). Over the course of the novel, as he progresses through the Order's hierarchy, he comes to experience the movement from one stage to the next as a series of awakenings. Each new awakening carries him forward, brings his vocation as a lusor into sharper focus, and increases his self-awareness. However, just like the students dismissed from Eschholz, Knecht must pay the price of exile every time he awakens to a new stage in life. When he finally leaves Castalia for good, it is only the latest in a long series of partings:

Derselbe strenge, klare, eindeutige, gradlinige Pfad, der ihn nach Waldzell, nach

Mariafels, in den Orden, in das Magisteramt gefuhrt hatte, der fiihrte ihn nun

wieder hinaus. Was eine Folge von Akten des Erwachens gewesen, war zugleich

eine Folge von Abschieden. Kastalien, das Glasperlenspiel, die Meisterwiirde

waren jedes ein Thema gewesen, welches abzuwandeln und zu erledigen, ein

Raum, der zu durchschreiten, zu transzendieren gewesen war. (386) Saint-Cyr 44

The same strict, clear, unequivocal, straight path that had brought him to

Waldzell, to Mariafels, into the Order, into the office of Magister Ludi, was now

leading him out again. What had been a consequence of acts of awakening had

likewise been a consequence of partings. Castalia, the Game, the magistracy -

each had been a theme which needed to be developed and dismissed; each had

been a space to pass through, to transcend. (350)

In his posthumously published poem "Klage" 'Lament,' Knecht writes of the impermanence of life's stages, drawing on the image of human beings as unfired clay that flows from mold to mold, longing in vain to stiffen into stone while remaining forever homeless (439). Paradoxically, however, the image of homelessness - of exile - is at the same time identified as, in itself, a form of Heimat (home). In the counter-factual autobiography "Der Beichvater" 'The Father Confessor,' for example, Josephus the hermit travels "als ware seine Reise nicht eine Flucht, sondern eine Heimkehr" (507) 'as if his journey were not a flight but a homecoming' (463). After Knecht, via his "Circular

Letter," announces to the Board of Educators his decision to resign, he meets with

Magister Alexander, President of the Order. Alexander attempts to dissuade Knecht from leaving, debating point by point all of the latter's arguments and justifications. In response, Knecht tells him, "der Weg, den ich angetreten habe, ist jetzt mein ein und

alles, mein Gesetz, meine Heimat, mein Dienst" (400) 'the way I have embarked on is now my one and all, my law, my home, my service' (362). The paradoxical characterisation of exile as home underscores the fact that the human condition is

animated by dynamic rather than static forces that must perpetually tear themselves down

and build memselves anew, inevitably leaving behind the familiar in an effort to establish Saint-Cyr 45 new patterns that, in turn, will also be left behind. In this context, the concept of "home" is indelibly connected to the themes of exile and homelessness. This is because home is defined more by its absence than its presence - by emotions such as the desire to return home, nostalgia for a past or childhood home, the need to search for a future home, or the drive to re-create an imagined home that never really existed. Home is unattainable; and it is this very unattainability that bestows upon the image of home all of its emotional and psychological power. In his book If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?. J.

Edward Chamberlin discusses at length the interconnections between our representations of home in stories and songs and our fascination with (and need for) wandering, pilgrimage, and exile. In Das Glasperlenspiel. this fascination is constantly brought to the fore as Knecht progresses from stage to stage, seeking through continuous exile, an unattainable homecoming that recedes into the distance with every step forward.

There is also a musical dimension to the exilic stages of Knecht's life. Every note and every beat in a piece of music is but a catalyst for the next; thus, the principle of movement, of a sequential progression whose momentum is continuously pushing it forward to the next stage, is inherent within the concept of melody. Likewise, when a melody or chord progression ventures forth from the tonic, it is inexorably drawn forward towards its resolution, creating a need or hunger in the listener for what is to come. In his conversation with Magister Alexander, Knecht explains how the impulse to move from stage to stage has shaped his life; recalling the progression of a piece of music, Knecht describes the pattern that his life has followed:

Mein Leben, so etwa nahm ich mir vor, sollte ein Transzendieren sein, ein

Fortschreiten von Stufe zu Stufe, es sollte ein Raum um den andern durchschritten Saint-Cyr 46

und zuriickgelassen werden, so wie eine Musik Thema um Thema, Tempo um

Tempo erledigt, abspielt, vollendet und hinter sich laBt, nie miide, nie schlafend,

stets wach, stets vollkommen gegenwartig. Im Zusammenhang mit den

Erlebnissen des Erwachens hatte ich gemerkt, daG es solche Stufen und Raume

gibt und daB jeweils die letzte Zeit eines Lebensabschnittes eine Tonung von

Welke und Sterbenwollen in sich tragt, welche dann zum Hiniiberwechseln in

einen neuen Raum, zum Erwachen, zu neuem Anfang fiihrt. (406-407)

My life, I resolved, ought to be a perpetual transcending, a progression from stage

to stage; I wanted it to pass through one area after the next, leaving each behind,

as music moves from theme to theme, from tempo to tempo, playing each out to

the end, completing each and leaving it behind, never tiring, never sleeping,

forever wakeful, forever in the present. In connection with the experiences of

awakening, I had noticed that such stages and such areas exist, and that each

successive period in one's life bears within itself, as it is approaching its end, a

note of fading and eagerness for death. That in turn leads to a shifting to a new

area, to awakening and new beginnings. (368)

Like music, life exists only in the present, made up of moments and stages that are forever dying and being reborn - and within which we ourselves are forever dying and being reborn. In his organ piece "Little Harmonic Labyrinth," J.S. Bach creates a series of modulations that do not resolve back to the original key. This incompleteness has the effect of leaving the listener hanging - in harmonic exile, so to speak - and prevents the piece from returning home to its anticipated resolution. As Northrop Frye puts it in

Sound and Poetry, music "is concerned not with beauty of sound but with organization Saint-Cyr 47 of sound, and beauty has to do with the form of the organization. A musical discord is

[...] a sound which throws die ear forward to the next beat: it is a sign of musical energy

[...] music is not a sequence of harmonies, but a sequence of discords ending in harmony" (xi). In the case of the "Little Harmonic Labyrinth," the resolution is absent, thus preserving the sense of musical energy by preventing the piece from coming to rest.

The passage in Hesse's novel that best captures this concept is Knecht's poem "Stufen"

'Stages,' originally entitled "Transzendieren!" The narrator describes the poem as follows:

Knecht erinnerte sich jetzt wieder, wie er damals, vom Gedanken seines

Gedichtes beschwingt, das Wort »Transzendieren!« hingeschrieben hatte, als

einen Zuruf und Befehl, eine Mahnung an sich selbst, als einen neu formulierten

und bekraftigten Vorsatz, sein Tun und Leben unter dies Zeichen zu stellen und es

zu einem Transzendieren, einem entschlossen-heitern Durchschreiten, Erfullen

und Hintersichlassen jedes Raumes, jeder Wegstrecke zu machen. (381)

Knecht now remembered how at the time, filled with the idea of this poem, he had

written down the word 'Transcend!' as an invocation and imperative, a reminder

to himself, a newly formulated but strong resolve to place his actions and his life

under the aegis of transcendence, to make of it a serenely resolute moving on,

filling and then leaving behind him every place, every stage along the way. (345)

It is Fritz Tegularius who points out to Knecht that this poem can be interpreted musically, that what Knecht has written as a metaphor for life's journey can just as easily be read as a metaphor for musicial development and momentum (or, as Frye calls it, muscial energy). On the evening before his final departure from Waldzell, Knecht visits Saint-Cyr 48 his old friend's cell and asks him if he remembers the poem; after a moment's reflection,

Tegularius produces an old, yellowed copy that Knecht had given him in their student days. Presumably, Knecht is subtly trying to explain in advance why he is leaving

Castalia (even though he has not informed Tegularius that he is doing so). Tegularius, however, rejects what he calls the poem's moralisierenden or predigenden expression of personal development, in favour of a musical interpretation:

Denn nach Abzug jener moralisierenden oder predigenden Haltung ist es recht

eigentlich eine Betrachtung iiber das Wesen der Musik, oder meinetwegen ein

Lobgesang auf die Musik, auf ihre stete Gegenwartigkeit, auf ihre Heiterkeit und

Entschlossenheit, auf ihre Beweglichkeit und rastlose Entschlossenheit und

Bereitschaft zum Weitereilen, zum Verlassen des eben erst betretenen Raumes

oder Raumabschnittes. (381-382)

For if we discount the moralizing or preachy attitude, it is really about the nature

of music, or if you will a song in praise of music, of its serenity and resolution, its

quality of being constantly present, its mobility and unceasing urge to hasten on,

to leave the space it has only just entered. (346)

As Joseph Knecht modulates from key to key, much like the fifth Canones diversi from the Musical Offering (what Hofstadter calls the Endlessly Rising Canon), his goal is not simply his own personal development, nor the perfection of his skills as a Glass Bead

Game player (although he certainly achieves both of these). Rather, Knecht comes to realise that his true vocation, the impetus behind his exilic progression from stage to stage, is based on a desire to be of service. His interstitial motility is thus an expression of his endeavour to give his life meaning. In contrast to Harry Haller's self-centred quest Saint-Cyr 49 for personal growth - those very narrative elements that prompt many critics to classify

Per Steppenwolf as a Bildungsroman - Knecht's personal development is oriented towards more altruistic principles. Hesse's protagonist has passed from the ego-centricity of childhood, in which the combinatorial game of the Immortals represents the child's developmental imperative to engage in free-play, to the individuated maturity of an adulthood in which the spirit of free-play is passed on to the next generation. In psychoanalytical terms, Knecht's desire to serve and to teach is an expression of an individuated adult's capacity to conceive of an equivalent centre of self in others.

Knecht's pedagogical impulses, conditioned and channelled by Castalian philosophy, animate what I will call a cycle of dialectic oscillation. Within this cycle,

Knecht's ascension to the level of Magister proves to be, not an end, but the beginning

(or continuation) of an oscillatory dynamic that represents the balance between two poles.

In a manifestation of what Hofstadter would describe as a "strange loop," Knecht's search for the highest master, the pilgrimage that led him into Castalia and up through the

Order's hierarchy, demands that he return to the beginning. The highest service paradoxically ends up being the lowliest; and what began as a Faustian quest to learn the most abstract answers ends as an exile vocation to teach the most basic human questions.

Serving the Highest Master

During his last few days at Eschholz, Knecht approaches the Music Master and enquires why certain professions - the so-called "free professions" open to students at outside universities - are forbidden to Castalian students. It is then that the significance of Joseph's surname is emphasised. The Music Master points out that being born with Saint-Cyr 50 the name Knecht ("servant" or "serf") may have given Joseph a naive fascination with the concept of freedom. This childish fascination, however, overlies another paradoxical

Castalian truth. In a long speech on the contrast between worldly and Castalian freedom

(71-72), the Music Master explains why, for members of the Order, the word "freedom" contains such ironic overtones. Outsiders, he tells Knecht, are free only to the extent that they can choose their professions; thereafter, they must suffer under the triple yolk of financial, political, and social constraints, forever trapped within the narrow socio­ economic niche to which their nominally free choice has condemned them. By contrast, a Castalian accepts his designated place within the hierarchy, a place that has been chosen according to his talents; however, after his early courses and prior to entering the

Order, the electus is granted an indefinite period of completely free study (unlike the outside student who, in preparation for a profession, must conform to a narrow course of study). Since the electus' position within the Order is an outgrowth of this free study, every Castalian ends up being assigned duties to which his natural inclinations have guided him. The paradox, which for the Music Master seems to be a source of considerable amusement, is that Castalians serve in freedom, whereas outsiders are free to be slaves.

In the novel's last chapter, as he is waiting for his final meeting with Magister

Alexander, Knecht re-reads a booklet that contains the official rules of the Order. These rules offer a different yet equally paradoxical vision of the relationship between service and freedom: Saint-Cyr 51

.. .jeder Aufstieg in der Stufe der Amter ist nicht ein Schritt in die Freiheit,

sondern in die Bindung. Je groBer die Amtsgewalt, desto strenger der Dienst. Je

starker die Personlichkeit, desto verponter die Willkiir. (385)

Each upward step on the ladder of officialdom is not a step into freedom, but into

constraint. The greater the power of the office, the stricter the servitude. The

stronger the personality, the more forbidden is the arbitrary exercise of will. (348-

349)

The higher Knecht rises within the hierarchy, the more he is forced into a contradictory situation. On the one hand, his insight and vocational dedication to service increase with each of his awakenings; on the other hand, as his insight grows, his freedom to act diminishes. Throughout the majority of his career, Knecht's compulsion to find the highest form of service motivates him to hone his Glass Bead Game skills, refining his understanding of the Game's subtleties and complexities, until he finds himself one of a small group of virtuoso players unofficially regarded as the pinnacle of Waldzell's intellectual aristocracy. Nevertheless, he finds that faith and doubt are as inseparable as two sides of the same coin, that as his Game skills grow, so too do his misgivings about the Game's ultimate worth. As the narrator explains, Knecht's impulse to seek out the most worthwhile service is a force that comes from within himself:

AuBer seiner groBen Begabung fur die Musik und fur das Glasperlenspiel wuBte

er noch andere Krafte in sich vorhanden, eine gewisse innere Unabhangigkeit,

einen hohen Eigensinn, der ihm zwar keineswegs das Dienen verbot oder

erschwerte, der aber von ihm verlangte, daB er nur dem hochsten Herrn diene.

(133) Saint-Cyr 52

Aside from his great talent for music and for the Glass Bead Game, he was aware

of still other forces within himself, a certain inner independence, a self-reliance

which by no means barred him or hampered him from serving, but demanded of

him that he serve only the highest master. (119-120)

The Castalian Order, naturally, regards the Glass Bead Game as its highest achievement; service to the Game, therefore, is by definition the most worthwhile form of service, just as the office of Magister Ludi is the most important position in the hierarchy. The fact that Knecht's desire to serve comes from within rather than from the Order, however, allows him to conceive of worthy service in broader terms, terms not exclusively limited to Castalian philosophy. In the end, it is this capacity that enables him to break out of the system and apply his skills in a more socially relevant context.

When trying to explain his personal dedication to service to Magister Alexander,

Knecht sums up his life's journey by drawing on the story of St. Christopher:16

Konnt Hir Euch an die Legende vom heiligen Christophorus erinnern? Ja? Also

dieser Christophorus war ein Mann von groBer Kraft und Tapferkeit, er wollte

aber nicht Herr werden und regieren, sondern dienen, das Dienen war seine Starke

und Kunst, darauf verstand er sich. Doch war es ihm nicht einerlei, wem er diene.

Es muBte der groBte, der machtigste Herr sein. Und wenn er von einem Herrn

horte, der noch machtiger war als sein bisheriger, so bot er diesem seine Dienste

an. Dieser groBe Diener hat mir imrner gefallen, und ein wenig muB ich ihm

ahnlich sein (404-405).

16 St. Christopher is one of the most important images in Michel Tournier's novel Le roi des aulnes. As we shall see in chapter five, Tournier's novel is, in many respects, a functional example of a Glass Bead Game. Thus, in my comparative analysis of Tournier and Hesse's work, I will be treating the story of St. Christopher as an intertextual link between Le roi des aulnes and Das Glasperlenspiel. Saint-Cyr 53

Do you recall the legend of St. Christopher? Yes? Well now, Christopher was a

man of great strength and courage, but he wanted to serve rather than be a master

and govern. Service was his strength and his art; he had a faculty for it. But

whom he served was not a matter of indifference to him. He felt that he had to

serve die greatest, the most powerful master. And when he heard of a mightier

master, he promtly offered his services. I have always been fond of this great

servant, and I must in some way resemble him. (366)

The Western version (as opposed to the Greek version) of the legend of St. Christopher

(Attwater 84-85) is the story of a gigantic, ogre-like man who, wishing to serve the mightiest of masters, served first a king and then Satan. Having been disappointed by both, he went to live alone by the side of a ford, seeking Christ. One night, as he was carrying a child across the water, he found the child getting terribly heavy, as though he carried the weight of the world. The child was Christ; and upon arriving at the other shore, He caused Christopher's staff to burst into bloom. The significance of mis story, however, goes beyond the simple parallel between Knecht and Christopher' desire to serve the highest master.

First, while Christopher's ogre-like physique bears no resemblance to Knecht, it does correspond to Harry Haller's wolf persona, in that there is a strong folkloric connection between the image of the ogre and that of the wolf. In Jacob and Wilhelm

Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmarchen (hereinafter KHM), for example, the portrayal of the villainous wolf often draws on mythological and folkloric representations of ogres from around the world. Not only is the Grimm wolf related to Fenrir (or Fenric), a son of Loki destined to be released at Ragnarok to eat Odin, but he is also related to the Greek god Saint-Cyr 54

Cronus who, like the wolf in KHM 5 ("The Wolf and the Seven Kids"), swallows children whole. There are several images and motifs that are common both to the Greek myth and the Grimm tale: the image of the stone as a substitute for the cannibal's victim, the "re-birth" of the siblings from the belly of the ogre, the youngest kid's concealment within the clock case (suggesting an association with the later development of Cronus into Chronos, or Father Time, whose traditional scythe recalls Cronus' emasculation of

Uranus), and, finally, the mother goat (who could be an evolution of Zeus' surrogate mother, the she-goat Amaltheia). The image of the cannibalistic ogre as a carnivorous, predatory animal is also evident in Asian versions of both KHM 5 and KHM 26 ("Red

Riding Hood"), such as, respectively, "The Gluttonous Ogress and Children" and "The

Tiger Grandma."17

Second, the fact that St. Christopher's penultimate master is Satan can be related to Knecht's association with Faust. In many versions of the Faustian legend, Faust sells his soul to Satan in exchange for ultimate knowledge. Sometimes this knowledge takes the form of the secret of alchemy, sometimes it is the cure for a plague, and sometimes it is the secret of eternal youth; however, the Faustian prize almost always represents some form of occult or divine science, a branch of mystical knowledge that can unlock forbidden secrets.18 The Glass Bead Game, as the ultimate incarnation of intellectual and artistic system building (and holding, as it does, the promise of true universalism), stands for the Faustian prize that Knecht pursues in the mistaken belief that it represents the

17 Summaries of various versions of these Asian stories can be found in Hiroko Ikeda's A Type and Motif Index of Japanese Folk-Literature and Nai-Tung Ting's A Type Index of Chinese Folktales. 18 Peter Werres argues that, in the modern Western experience, the Faustian archetype has "come to symbolise humankind's quest for ever greater knowledge and understanding" (2). In chapter four, the significance of the Faust legend will be explored in greater depth when I discuss both the parallels and contrasts between Das Glasperlenspiel and Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. Saint-Cyr 55 fruits of the highest service. Michel Tournier's protagonist in Le roi des aulnes, Abel

Tiffauges, also imitates St. Christopher's penultimate service to Satan; however,

Tiffauges' second-mightiest master takes the form of Nazism, whose pagentry and mythologized propaganda he mistakes for spiritual truth and cultural perfection.

Similarly, Castalia has been characterised by many critics as a metaphorical representation of fascism. Osman Durrani, for example, suggests that Castalian society is

a dystopian satire of the modern police state (663-664). He points out that it is a closed

society, and that, due to its suppression of creativity and its hostility towards

individualism, Castalia is "inevitably reminiscent of the cultural policies of the

totalitarian state" (660). Thus, St. Christopher's service to Satan can, in the context of

Das Glasperlenspiei be read as an implied condemnation of the Third Reich. While

Knecht does not overtly refer to St. Christopher's service to Satan, nor does he imply that

Castalia is evil or fascistic, Castalia's correspondence to Christopher's second-to-last

master enriches and complicates the political, social, and cultural layers of meaning

beneath the surface of Hesse's text.

Third, Christopher's flowering staff can be related to the spiritual and intellectual

fecundity that Knecht engenders in Tito's life at the end of the novel. The walking staff

itself recalls the image of the peripatetic hermit, an image that, again, recalls Faust, who

historically has almost always been characterised as a wandering scholar (Brough 10).

On several occasions throughout the novel, Knecht undertakes journeys on foot, or

chooses to walk when other means of transportation are available; and it is often

suggested that it is not uncommon for both the electi and the members of the Order to

embark on pilgrimages in which value is placed on walking. In fact, the wandering Saint-Cyr 56 hermit in "Der Beichtvater" is the character who most closely resembles St. Christopher.

The spontaneous flowering of Christopher's staff can also be associated with the natural fertility magic practiced by Knecht's other hermitic alter-ego, the shaman in "Der

Regenmacher" who is responsible not only for the rainfall, but also for other natural phenomena such as the bounty of the harvest, the success of the hunt, and the turning of the seasons.

Fourth, the act of service that finally elevates Christopher to the level of sainthood

- the carrying of a child - corresponds to Knecht's desire to teach only children. Several times over the course of the novel, references are made to Knecht's secret wish to devote himself to the education of the youngest possible students (see 240, 279, 290,407). The last of these references comes when Knecht is in conversation with Magister Alexander in the novel's final chapter:

Und allmahlich entdeckte ich noch weiter, dafi das Erziehen mir desto mehr

Freude mache, je junger und unverbildeter die Zoglinge waren. Auch dies fuhrte,

wie manches andre, mit den Jahren dahin, dafi ich mir junge und immer jiingere

Schiiler wiinschte, da6 ich am liebsten Lehrer an einer Anfangerschule geworden

ware [...]. (407)

And I gradually discovered, furthermore, that teaching gave me all the more

pleasure, the younger and more unspoiled by miseducation the pupils were. This

too, like many other things, led me in the course of the years to desire younger

and younger pupils, so that I would have liked most to have become a teacher in

an elementary school (368). Saint-Cyr 57

Knecht's longing to teach in an elementary school, a longing that ultimately overrides his dedication to the Glass Bead Game, clearly establishes the education of children as the highest form of service. In the St. Christopher legend, the message is a Christian one; however, in the more secular "legend" of Knecht's final days, the message focuses on the vital importance of inter-generational effects. In other words, the value of our intellectual and spiritual development lies not in the perfection and refinement of abstract systems of meaning (beautiful and elegant though they may be), but in our responsibility to the next generation. Knecht learns early on that life, like music and the Glass Bead Game, is based on recapitulation with variation; indeed, his conception of successive awakenings that, stage by stage, signal the thematic development of his life is distinctly musical in nature (as Tegularius points out). Rather than channelling this generative power into the abstruse patterns of the Glass Bead Game, however, he comes to realise that the real pattern is life itself, that its components and parameters are social rather than mathematical, and that the fugal recapitulation of a theme is actually an expression of one generation's influence on the next. Broadly speaking, the developmental pattern of

Knecht's life can be read as a microcosmic representation of the forces that shape all aspects of human evolution, whether social, political, cultural, psychological, or biological. When Knecht brings his life around full spiral it is so that the theme(s) of his life can be recapitulated, not for posterity in the annals of the Game Archives, but in the living context of a child's life.

Knecht's compulsion to serve the highest master takes him through a progression that leads him, step by step, back to the beginning of his journey. Having reached the apex of the Castalian hierarchy, and having dedicated his talents and energies to the Saint-Cyr 58 ostensible perfection of the Glass Bead Game, the only way for him to break out of the system, to "awaken" to a yet higher level of service, is to call on the contradictory power of recursive paradox. Knecht's return to the outside world, when seen as a return to the

"grass roots" of Castalian philosophy, recalls Hofstadter's description of how a Strange

Loop can manifest itself in government: "The irony is that once you hit your head against

[a] ceiling [...] where you are prevented from jumping out of the system to a yet higher authority, the only recourse is to forces which seem less well defined by rules, but which are the only source of higher-level rules anyway: the lower-level rules [...]" (GEB 692).

And so, paradoxically, the Omega becomes the Alpha as the last stage becomes the first.

The bipolar structure of the student/teacher relationship reflects that of the society Hesse has created. It is this structure that regulates the oscillatory dynamic at the heart of

Hesse's poetic vision.

The Two Poles

Knecht's spiral path is an allegorical illustration of dynamic rather than static forces. In analysing Das Glasperlenspiel's various dichotomous structures, however, many critics (including, as we shall see, Edmund Remys) end up making what

Chamberlin would call a choice between false alternatives. By perceiving the novel's division into Castalia and the outside world (or, more colloquially, the head and the heart) as a static dichotomy, some critics such as Remys are prompted to interpret Hesse's message as a rejection of one principle in favour of the other. It is important to remember, however, that Knecht's resignation is not presented as a condemnation of

Castalia and the Glass Bead Game; nor does the narrator suggest that Knecht was wrong Saint-Cyr 59 to dedicate the majority of his life to the Pedagogical Province. Rather, it is the overall progression, the cyclical or spiral dynamism of Knecht's story (and, by extension, Harry

Haller's as well), that matters. This progression can be characterised as an oscillation between two poles, a process within which the most fundamental principles of human development are animated. To represent me two poles between which Knecht's life oscillates, Hesse draws on several images; however, the most fundamental of these is the physical division between Castalia and the outside world, which respectively stand for the paternal Geist and the maternal Welt.

When the Music Master reminds a young Knecht that the nature of the Glass Bead

Game is based on the concept that Gegensatze (contrasts, opposites) must be perceived

"als Pole einer Einheit" 'as poles of a unity' (79), he is establishing a structural principle that runs throughout the novel. Congruently, the major fictional characters discussed in this dissertation all possess divided souls: Harry Haller is divided into Man and Wolf;

Faust is a figure torn between Heaven and Hell, youth and old age; St. Christopher is

drawn first to Satan, then to Christ; Abel Tiffauges' metamorphosis from man into ogre is

symbolised by images of mythical hybridity, such as the Centaur. As for Joseph Knecht,

the narrator tells us that,

Die beiden Grundtendenzen oder Pole dieses Lebens, sein Yin und Yang, waren

die Tendenz zum Bewahren, zur Treue, zum selbstlosen Dienst an der Hierarchie,

und andrerseits die Tendenz zum »Erwachen«, zum Vordringen, zum Greifen und

Begreifen der Wirklichkeit. (277)

The two tendencies or antipodes of this life, its Yin and Yang, were the

conservative tendency toward loyalty, toward unstinting service of the hierarchy Saint-Cyr 60

on the one hand, and on the other hand the tendency toward 'awakening,' toward

advancing, toward apprehending reality. (251)

Quite literally, the former tendency pulls him towards Castalia while the latter pulls him towards the outside world; thus, Knecht's personal, or psychological, division is in direct correlation with the novel's dichotomous setting.

None of the novel's relationships embody this bicameral aesthetic so completely as the relationship between Knecht and Plinio Designori. These two "Gegensatze" (90) embody "[die] beiden Welten, die beiden Prinzipien" (103) - the two worlds, the two principles - that make up the very fabric of the fictional society that Hesse has created.

Like a sonata movement on two themes, Knecht and Designori's friendship is described as "Musik iiber zwei Themata" (90), an image that resonates with many critics' characterisation of Per Steppenwolf as a sonata in literary form, within which Haller's man/wolf persona represents the contrast between the tonic and the dominant.19 In keeping with this musical imagery, Ferromonte tells us that Knecht and Plinio's public debates and resulting friendship sublimated the contrast between Geist and Welt from a

"Kampf zweier unversohnlicher Prinzipien" (106) 'conflict of two irreconcilable principles' (94) into a double concerto. Later in life, in chapter nine, when Designori and

Knecht meet again as adults, the synthesis that, between the two of them, they managed to create in their youth temporarily eludes them - the gulf that separates the world from its Pedagogical Province stretches between them and impedes their ability to communicate. Indeed, Hesse tells us that it is as if they are speaking to each other across

19 Analogously, in 1930 Northrop Frye attempted to write a novel in sonata form called Quiet Consummation, its three parts representing the exposition, the development, and the recapitulation; although he never finished the work, he did return to it fifty years later when searching for a form that could be both creative and critical (Robert D. Denham, personal correspondence). Saint-Cyr 61

a language barrier (297-298, 315), as if the serenely cheerful Knecht and the world-weary

Designori come from fundamentally different cultures on opposite sides of the globe -

Knecht even calls Designori an Abendlander (westerner) and himself a Chinese (298).

This division is also dysfunctionally reflected in Designori himself. Having been sent

away to study in Castalia in his youth (not as an electus, but as visiting student),

Designori was never wholly accepted by his Castalian classmates, who viewed him as an outsider; on the other hand, when he returned home to pursue a worldly career after completing his studies, his Castalian upbringing differentiated him from others and made him feel just as out of place as he had been among the electi. At home in neither place,

an exile in both, Designori falls into Harry Haller's dilemma; recalling both Haller and

Faust, Knecht tells him that he has split his own soul: "[Du] hast deine eigene Seele [...]

aufgespalten" (317). Designori's status as an in-between compels him, in his political

career, to act as a go-between, thus emphasising the linguistic nature of the

Castalia/World division by casting himself in the role of translator or interpreter. He tells

his old friend that his sole purpose in life has been to bring the two sides together by

acting as a Vermittler (mediator), Dolmetsch (interpreter), and Versohner (arbitrator)

(301). However, it is Knecht's patience, attentive listening, and Heiterkeit that, in the

end, bridge the gulf between them. By accomplishing between the two of them what

their respective societies have failed to do, each helps the other: Knecht gains an outside

ally to help him escape Castalia and Designori is "awakened" to the dysfunctional

consequences of denying and suppressing the Castalian part of himself. Again, the result

is paradoxical, in that, Knecht pulls Designori closer to Castalia as Designori pulls

Knecht closer to the outside world (331). Saint-Cyr 62

Chainberlin would characterise the two poles of Hesse's fictional world as the

distinction between the "yard" and the "tower," a metaphor that corresponds to Hesse's portrayal of Castalia as a parody of the "ivory tower." From the Order's point of view, useful work is done by Castalians in the tower, while the useless melodrama of greed, politics, and materialism takes place in the yard. From Designori's point of view,

Castalians play useless academic and intellectual games in the tower, while useful tilling

of the soil is figuratively done in the yard. Designori accuses the Castalians of playing

the Glass Bead Game "wahrend drauBen im Schmutz der Welt arme gehetzte Menschen

das wirkliche Leben leben und die wirkliche Arbeit tun" (316) 'while outside in the filth

of the world poor harried people live real lives and do real work' (286). Even the Music

Master, the epitome of the perfect Castalian, confesses to entertaining these sorts of

doubts when he says to Knecht,

Ich hatte damals den Ehrgeiz, eine Geschichte der Sonate mit neuen

Gesichtspunkten auszuarbeiten, aber es kam da eine Zeit, in der ich nicht nur

nicht mehr vorwartskam, sondern mehr und mehr daran zu zweifeln anfing, ob

alle diese musikalischen und historischen Forschungen denn uberhaupt einen

Wert hatten, ob sie wirklich mehr seinen als ein leeres Spiel fur miiBige Leute und

ein flitterhafter, geistig-kiinstlerischer Ersatz fur echtes, gelebtes Leben. Kurz,

ich hatte eine von den Krisen durchzumachen, in denen alles Studium, alle

geistige Bemuhung, aller Geist uberhaupt uns zweifelhaft und entwertet wird und

wo wir dazu neigen, jeden pflugenden Bauern und jedes abendliche Liebespaar zu

beneiden oder auch jeden Vogel, der im Baume singt, und jede Zikade, die im

sommergras zirpt, denn sie scheinen uns so naturlich, so erfiillt und glticklich zu Saint-Cyr 63

leben, und von ihren Noten und von den Harten, Gefahren und Leiden ihres

Lebens wissen wir ja nichts. (99)

At the time I was ambitious to work out a history of the sonata from a new point

of view; but then for a while I stopped making any progress at all. I began more

and more to doubt whether all these musical and historical researches had any

value whatsoever, whether they were really any more than vacuous play for idle

people, a scanty aesthetic substitute for living a real life. In short, I had to pass

through one of those crises in which all studies, all intellectual efforts, everything

that we mean by the life of the mind, appear dubious and devalued and in which

we tend to envy every peasant at the plow and every pair of lovers at evening, or

every bird singing in a tree and every cicada chirping in the summer grass,

because they seem to us to be living such natural, fulfilled, and happy lives. We

know nothing of their troubles, of course, of the elements of harshness, danger,

and suffering in their lot. (87-88)

For the Music Master, these doubts are merely part of a crisis of faith, a spiritual and emotional test through which he must pass in order to move on to a serene acceptance of and commitment to Castalian philosophy. What Hesse may actually be suggesting, however, is that both perspectives have limitations - or, more specifically, that each perspective lacks qualities and benefits that the other possesses. As Chamberlin argues in

If This Is Your Land, "[an] exclusive commitment to particulars - that is, [...] the yard - limits us to a diminished perspective and precludes any genuine understanding of the world as a whole [...]. Life in the tower, on the other hand, leaves us caught up in absurd generalizations and completely detached from life" (209-210). This is why privileging Saint-Cyr 64 one pole over the other - something that can only be done if one perceives the novel's dichotomous symbolism as static rather than dynamic - constitutes a fundamental misreading of Hesse's message and, for his characters as for his readers, can never result in a harmonious emotional and spiritual life. Like a child forming parental bonds of attachment, Knecht oscillates back and forth between both maternal and paternal influences.

In his Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel: A Concealed Defence of the Mother

World, Edmund Remys suggests that much of the novel's maternal and paternal symbolism is derived from the quasi-Jungian writings of nineteenth-century Swiss historian and anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887). In his diary of 1920,

Hesse wrote that he had devoted much thought to the old matriarchal society discussed in

Bachofen's 1861 Das Mutterrecht (Remys 25). While he most likely first came into contact with Bachofen's work while he was living in Basel from 1899 to 1903, Hesse's interest in his work was renewed by the Swiss psychoanalyst Joseph B. Lang20 in the

1920s (Remys 25). Although many of the theories of early anthropologists such as

Johann Bachofen, Edward Tyler, and James George Frazer have been rejected by modern historians, they nevertheless had a profound impact on the early development of psychoanalytical thought. Bachofen saw the "history of mankind as a myth and legend, expressed in symbols and rituals which represent a true inner picture of human society"

(Remys 29), a perspective that seems to be reflected in Jung's work when, for instance,

20 As Michel and Jacqueline Senes document in their biography, Hermann Hesse le magicien. Hesse first met Dr. Lang at a clinic in Lucerne, Switzerland, in the summer of 1916 (228). Lang was a disciple of Carl Jung (227), with whom Hesse underwent psychoanalysis in Zurich in 1912 (252). Jung's influence on Hesse's writing has been discussed by many critics, in relation to novels such as Demian and Per Steppenwolf. In fact, Harry Haller's experimentation with drugs, sex, and all-night parties in Per Steppenwolf is based on Hesse and Lang's experiences in Zurich in 1926, during which Lang encouraged his friend and former patient to indulge in the city's night-life. Saint-Cyr 65 he writes that "[the] collective unconscious produces universal symbols or archetypes which are primordial types and have existed since the earliest times. They are expressed in myths which in turn symbolise the unconscious" (9:5). Carl Jung, who was born in

1875 (just two years before Hesse) and who, like Bachofen and Hesse, lived in Basel, was indebted to Bachofen's study of "ancient cult symbols and the matriarchal state"

(Remys 25-26).

Simply put, Bachofen claimed that all civilisations progress through three historical stages as they grow from the primitive to the advanced. The first is the tellurian stage, which Bachofen calls hetaerism.21 Symbolically, this stage is expressed as the wildest and lowest level of development. It represents the life of the swamps, the natural prototype. In this realm, motherhood is exclusive and children are fatherless and descended from many fathers (Remys 29-30). It is the unregulated animalistic aspect of matriarchy. Knecht seems to refer to this world in his "Circular Letter" when he notes that "triebhafte Bestialitat [...] immer noch etwas von der Unschuld der Natur behalt"

(366) 'instinctual bestiality [...] always retains something of the innocence of nature'

(332). The next stage is "the lunar or conjugal stage of mother right" (Remys 27). This stage, sometimes represented as Amazonism, is a realm of ordered agriculture (as opposed to the uncultivated swamp vegetation) (Remys 35). In the conjugal stage of mother right, the fertile union of mother and father is expressed as the regulated tilling of the soil, a symbol of ordered sexual union. In Das Glasperlenspiel, the world of the mother right could be the aboriginal society in "Der Regenmacher," which is described as matriarchal (452). Lastly comes the solar stage of spiritual father right, in which the

21 This is a word that Bachofen derives from "hetaera" (or "hetaira"), meaning "an ancient Greek courtesan or mistress." Saint-Cyr 66

sunrise represents a triumph over maternal darkness (Remys 41). Prima facie, this paradigm seems to correspond loosely to Das Glasperlenspiel's symbolic structure.

Knecht begins his life in the unregulated, or maternal, outside world. Then, he moves to

the disciplined, spiritual, and patriarchal Castalian world, and, finally, his death at the end

of the novel (even though it takes place outside Castalia) is greeted by a sunrise.

In opposition to the maternal outside world, Castalia can be read as a Jungian

father world, a realm of the spirit. For Jung, spirit is anti-natural and stands for the sum

total of all rational or intellectual thought (Remys 53). The father archetype, as champion

of the spirit, is associated with moral commandments, prohibitions, power, the sun,

authority, law, the state, self-control, and repression of feeling (Remys 53). These

"masculine" associations certainly seem to correspond to the Castalian society, a society

which, we must remember, is composed entirely of men. For Hesse, the Music Master

could be said to represent the quintessence of father right, especially in relation to the fact

that Jung perceived the "wise old man" as an archetypal personification of Geist, a figure

rooted in the world of the father (9:222). Congruently, one of Designori's strongest

criticisms of Castalia is that it is "eine Welt ohne Familie, ohne Mutter, ohne Kinder, ja

beinahe ohne Frauen" (316) 'a world without family, without mothers, without children,

almost without women' (286). As such, he argues, it is condemned to sterility and

stagnation, to an intellectual life completely divorced from the rhythms of human life and

estranged from the very society it is meant to serve.

While Bachofen, like the Castalian Order, believed that the conjugal father right is

the highest and most perfect stage of human development, Remys argues that, because

Knecht exiles himself from Castalia, Hesse must logically be rejecting this belief. Remys Saint-Cyr 67 therefore sides with Designori who, in an empassioned speech about the meaning of his life's work, overtly identifies the outside world as Castalia's Mutterlande:

Ich weiB nicht, ob mein Leben nutzlos und bloB ein MiBverstandnis war oder ob

es einen Sinn hat. Sollte es einen Sinn haben, so ware es etwa der, da£ ein

einzelner, konkreter Mensch unserer Zeit einmal auf das deutlichste und

schmerzlichste erkannt und erlebt hat, wie weit Kastalien sich von seinem

Mutterlande entfernt hat [...]. (300)

I don't know whether my life has been useless and merely a misunderstanding, or

whether it has a meaning. If it does have a meaning, I should say it would be this:

that one single specific person in our time has recognized plainly and experienced

in the most painful way how far Castalia has moved away from its motherland.

(273)

Not only does Knecht cross over to the outside, maternal world, but he also ends up

drowning in an icy mountain lake. As Jung wrote: "Water symbolism represents the

unconscious, the maternal depth, the mother of every living thing" (5:389). For Jung,

water corresponds to the womb; it is a place of birth, death, and rebirth: "The maternal

significance of water is one of the clearest interpretations of symbols in the whole field of

mythology. From water comes life [...]. All living things rise [...] from water, and sink

into it again. Born of springs, rivers, lakes, and seas, man at death comes back to the

waters" (5:218). If the mountain lake at Belpunt is read as the symbolic (if not

geographic) nadir of the maternal outside world and the post of Magister Ludi is read as

the zenith of the paternal Castalian hierarchy, then Knecht's final journey at the end of

the novel represents a shift from one extreme to another. Saint-Cyr 68

In A Concealed Defence of the Mother World, Remys argues that Knecht's self- imposed exile from Castalia signifies Hesse's rejection of the father world in favour of the mother world, that, contradicting Bachofen, Hesse perceived the conjugal mother right to be the most perfect stage of human development (24). This reductive and simplistic conclusion, however, fails to take into account the overall, spiral progression of the Haller/Knecht figure from beginning to end to beginning. To understand Hesse's message, one must recognise the interstitial motility of Knecht's journey, rather than focusing exclusively on his final stage of development. The theme of moving from stage to stage, of valuing the dynamic over the static, would seem to suggest that the act of transcendence is more important than any single stage, whether of the mother or the father. When Knecht first meets Designori's wife and son, he notices that Tito has inherited his mother's condescending attitude towards his father (332); later, Designori himself admits that Tito "hat sich dann entschieden zur Partei der Mutter geschlagen"

(342) '[has] decidedly gone over to his mother's side' (310). Rather than attempting to reverse this trend, as the Bachofen model would suggest, or join himself to it, as Remys' argument suggests, Knecht's response to Tito's situation is to eschew the choice between false alternatives. He assures Designori that what Tito lacks is harmony between maternal and paternal influences (343), a position that necessarily precludes the rejection of one influence in favour of the other.

It is in this spirit that Knecht takes on the mentorship and tutoring of Tito. Just as the Music Master travels outside Castalia when he first tutors young Joseph, so does

Magister Knecht travel to Belpunt to tutor Tito; this inversion of Knecht's role - from that of outside student to that of Castalian Master - describes a circle. However, his Saint-Cyr 69 unprecedented resignation from the office of Magister Ludi - an event that signals the eventual decline of the Order's isolationism and exclusive commitment to Geist - describes a linear progression. As noted above, the amalgamation of these circular and linear principles constitutes a spiral aesthetic. It is not Knecht's final destination, the last stage of his progressive awakening, that denotes his attainment of enlightenment; rather, it is the oscillatory dynamic of his journey (or of the Haller/Knecht journey) that animates the reciprocal relationship between two opposing yet complementary poles.

Dialectic Oscillation

After establishing the exemplariness of Knecht's performance in the office of

Magister Ludi, the narrator prepares his reader for the unusual outcome of Knecht's career. Near the beginning of the novel's eighth chapter, "Die beiden Pole" 'The Two

Poles,' the narrator states that "[v]ielmehr wird es unsere Aufgabe sein, von jetzt an diese

Spaltung oder besser diese unaufhorlich pulsierende Polaritat in Knechts Seele recht als das Eigentliche und Kennzeichnende im Wesen des Verehrten anzunehmen und zu bejahen" (266) '[fjrom now on our task, in fact, will be to accept this dichotomy in

Knecht's soul, or rather this ever-alternating polarity, as the central feature of his nature, and to affirm it as such' (242). This incessantly pulsating polarity is Das

Glasperlenspiel's central thematic and symbolic motif. It is a pattern that Hesse repeats again and again, reflecting and refracting it throughout the novel in multiple relationships and images. In each of Knecht's counter-factual autobiographies, the protagonist undergoes a similar inversion; moreover, the progression of the three short stories constitutes an alternating pattern: in "Der Regenmacher," Knecht is transformed from Saint-Cyr 70 disciple to master; in "Der Beichtvater," Josephus Famulus is transformed from master to disciple; and in "Indischer Lebenslauf," Dasa reestablishes the original pattern. The effect is not unlike the transition from an inversion to a retrograde-inversion in canon forms such as the fugue and serial composition. However, the novel's clearest example of oscillatory dynamism occurs when Joseph Knecht learns for the first time that he is to become Magister Ludi.

Upon hearing of Knecht's immanent promotion to the lofty office of Magister,

Fritz Tegularius bursts in upon his friend and announces the news; Knecht, however, reacts with a cool, almost aloof resignation that Tegularius at first mistakes for an insult.

Vaguely citing Tegularius' later remarks on his interpretation of Knecht's facial expression, the narrator then fervently assures his reader that what Tegularius had almost mistaken for aloofness was in fact Knecht's noble and selfless acceptance of his new burden. Waxing rhapsodic (in a tone that once again borders on the obsequious), the

narrator describes the look on Knecht's face as "fernen" 'remote,' "koniglichen" 'royal,'

and "leidenden" 'suffering,' a look that establishes his state of mind as simultaneously

"stolz" and "demiitig" ('proud' and 'humble'), "erhaben" and "ergeben" ('exalted' and

'submissive'), "einsam" and "schicksalbereit" ('lonely' and 'resigned'); according to the

narrator, it is as if Knecht's face had been transformed into "ein Monument aller je

gewesenen Magister Kastaliens" (218) 'an effigy of all the Masters of Castalia who had

ever been' (198). This effusive hagiolatry, as elswhere in the novel, elevates Knecht's

character from the human to the abstract, from the level of an individual person to that of

a collective symbol or allegory. Saint-Cyr 71

The narrator then abandons all attempts to reference his historical sources and slips into an omniscient narration of Knecht's private thoughts and feelings.

Overwhelmed by the news of his promotion, Knecht retreats to a meditation room to collect his thoughts. From his privileged (if ironic) position inside Knecht's mind, the narrator describes the content of Knecht's meditation. His vision begins with the memory of himself as a young Latin school student, waiting for the Music Master. As he relaxes and lets the images flow freely, Knecht's vision transforms into an allegorical oscillation between two parables - the parable of the student, and that of the master:

Und wahrend er diesem unsinnig-sinnvollen Traum-Rundlauf zusah, war in

seinem eigenen Gefiihl der Traumende bald mit dem Alten, bald mit dem Knaben

identisch, war bald Verehrer, bald Verehrter, bald Fuhrer, bald Gehorchender, und

im Verlauf dieses schwebenden Wechsels kam ein Augenblick, da war er beide,

war zugleich Meister und Schuler, ja er stand vielmehr iiber beiden, war der

Veranstalter, Ersinner, Lenker und Zuschauer des Kreislaufs, des ergebnislos in

der Runde spielenden Wettlaufes von alt und jung, den er mit wechselnden

Empfindungen bald verlangsamte, bald zur hochsten Eile antrieb. Und aus

diesem Stadium entwickelte sich eine neue Vorstellung, mehr schon Symbol als

Traum, mehr schon Erkenntnis als Bild, namlich die Vorstellung oder vielmehr

Erkenntnis: dieser sinnvoll-sinnlose Rundlauf von Meister und Schuler, dieses

Werben der Weisheit um die Jugend, der Jugend um die Weisheit, dieses endlose,

beschwingte Spiel war das Symbol Kastaliens, ja war das Spiel des Lebens

uberhaupt, das in alt und jung, in Tag und Nacht, in Yang und Yin gespalten,

ohne Ende stromt. (221) Saint-Cyr 72

And as he watched this at once senseless and significant dream circle, the dreamer

felt alternately identical with the old man and the boy, now revering and now

revered, now leading, now obeying; and in the course of these pendulum shifts

there came a moment in which he was both, was simultaneously Master and small

pupil; or rather he stood above both, was the instigator, conceiver, operator, and

onlooker of the cycle, this futile spinning race between age and youth. With

shifting sensations he alternately slowed the pace and speeded it to a frantic rush.

Out of this process there evolved a new conception, more akin to a symbol than a

dream, more insight than image: the conception or rather the insight that this

meaningful and meaningless cycle of master and pupil, this courtship of wisdom

by youth, of youth by wisdom, this endless, oscillating game was the symbol of

Castalia. In fact it was the game of life in general, divided into old and young,

day and night, yang and yin, and pouring on without end. (200-201)

Hesse's description of this dynamic image as a "beschwingte Spiel" is translated by

Richard and Clara Winston as an "oscillating game," a translation that takes into account

that fact that the verb schwingen (to swing), when used in the context of physics and

electromagnetism, for instance, is interchangeable with oszillieren (to oscillate). Due to

Das Glasperlenspiel's primary concern with the action of opposing social and

philosophical forces (as well as the narrator's ostensible investigation of the "truth" that

underlies the divergent opinions regarding Knecht's life and career), Hesse's novel can

be characterised as a form of dialectics; indeed, Knecht's student debates with Plinio

Designori, his later conversations with Father Jacobus, and his final crossing of swords

with Magister Alexander clearly establish him as a dialectician. I have therefore chosen Saint-Cyr 73

the term "dialectic oscillation" to describe the fundamental motif that animates Hesse's

allegorical vision in Das Glasperlenspiel. What Edmund Remys fails to recognise in A

Concealed Defence of the Mother World is that it is the dialectic oscillation between

opposing forces that puts Knecht on the path to enlightenment. To represent these forces,

Hesse uses various opposing pairs of images, including GeistlLeben, math/music, master/student, Castalia/world, and paternal/maternal; however, these pairs are not always interchangeable (for example, correlating math/music and Castalia/world would

suggest that members of the Order persue mathematics exclusively while banishing music to the outside world - something that is clearly not the case). By viewing all of the novel's dichotomous images strictly through the lense of paternal/maternal symbolism, then making a false choice between mem, Remys ironically makes the same kind of mistake as the Directorate of the Order, the kind of mistake that Knecht tries to reverse by resigning his post. What Knecht's story (filtered as it is through the ironic perspective

of the narrator) affirms is that enlightenment consists of first recognising, then

internalising, the oscillatory principle that regulates the harmonic tension between

opposing forces, whether these forces are social, philosophical, psychological, or

spiritual.

Near the end of Knecht and Designori's reconciliatory meeting in chapter nine,

"Ein Gesprach," Knecht digresses from his speech on Heiterkeit to tell Designori about

the oscillation of creation and destruction in Hindu mythology:

Die Welt, wie diese Mythen sie darstellen, beginnt in ihrem Anfang gottlich,

selig, strahlend, fruhlingsschon, als goldenes Zeitalter; sie erkrankt sodann und

verkommt mehr und mehr, sie verroht und verelendet, und am Ende von vier Saint-Cyr 74 immer triefer sinkenden Weltzeitaltern ist sie reif dafiir, vom lachenden und tanzenden Schiwa zertreten und vernichtet zu werden - aber es endet damit nicht, es beginnt neu mit dem Lacheln des traumenden Vischnu, der mit spielenden

Handen eine neue, junge, schone, strahlende Welt erschafft. Es ist wunderbar: dieses Volk, einsichtig und leidensfahig wie kaum ein anderes, hat mit Grauen und Scham dem grausamen Spiel der Weltgeschichte zugesehen, dem ewig sich drehenden Rad von Gier und Leiden, es hat die Hinfalligkeit des Geschaffenen

gesehen und verstanden, die Gier und Teufelei des Menschen und zugleich seine

tiefe Sehnsucht nach Reinheit und Harmonie, und hat fur die ganze Schonheit und

Tragik der Schopfung diese herrlichen Gleichnisse gefunden, von den Weltaltern

und dem Zerfall der Schopfung, vom gewaltigen Schiwa, der die verkommene

Welt in Triimmer tanzt, und vom lachelnden Vischnu, der schlummernd liegt und

aus goldenen Gottertraumen spielend eine neue Welt werden laBt (322).

The world these myths represent begins divinely, blissfully, radiantly, with a

springtime loveliness: the golden age. Then it sickens and degenerates more and

more; it grows coarse and subsides into misery; and at the end of four ages, each

lower than the others, it is ripe for annihilation. Therefore it is trampled underfoot

by a laughing, dancing Siva - but it does not end with that. It begins anew with

the smile of dreaming Vishnu whose hands playfully fashion a young, new,

beautiful, shining world. It is wonderful - how these Indians, with an insight and

capacity for suffering scarcely equalled by any other people, looked with horror

and shame upon the cruel game of world history, the eternally revolving wheel of

avidity and suffering; they saw and understood the fragility of created being, the Saint-Cyr 75

avidity and diabolism of man, and at the same time his deep yearning for purity

and harmony; and they devised these glorious parables for the beauty and tragedy

of the creation: mighty Siva who dances the completed world into ruins, and

smiling Vishnu who lies slumbering and playfully makes a new world arise out of

his golden dreams of gods. (291-292)

The image of a cycle that tears down the world, builds it up, and tears it down again, in a never ending pas de deux between creation and destruction, is an ancient archetype that can resonate in many different contexts. It is the image of the great spiral of life, a progression that loops back around to the beginning while, at the same time, propelling itself forward by re-shaping and re-cycling the building blocks of what came before. On a collective, societal level, this process recalls the cobbling together of mythological and cultural imagery that anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss describes as bricolage in his famous 1962 book La pensee sauvage: "Les images signifiantes du mythe, les materiaux du bricoleur, [...] peuvent encore servir au meme usage, ou a un usage different pour peu qu'on les detourne de leur premiere fonction" (48-49). On a personal, psychological level, it is a process that recalls the developmental role of play in the life of young children, giving Hesse's image of die beschwingte Spiel a deeper resonance that echoes the ways in which children build up, tear down, and manipulate their perceptions of the world through the smaller world of toys.

On the morning of Knecht's death, as he and Tito watch the first rays of the sun breaking out from behind the mountain, Tito is seized by the impulse to perform a ceremonial dance. Without thinking, hardly aware of what his body is doing, Tito throws himself into his spontaneous "Morgen- und SonnenbegriiBungstanz" 'morning- and sun- Saint-Cyr 76 welcoming dance' (432), as Knecht watches. In this moment, Tito too is transformed from an individual into an allegorical figure. He becomes the tanzenden Schiwa who laughingly heralds the ending of an era, the heidnischer (heathen) diety who "die verkommene Welt in Triimmer tanzt." Although he is not aware of it, the ending that

Tito's dance presages is the death of his new teacher and master. Out of this ending, however, will arise a new beginning, as Tito internalises the experience and cobbles together his new, individuated sense of self and of the world around him. The narrator describes Tito's dance as "einsamen Spielen" 'solitary play' and, at the dance's conclusion, describes the self-conscious Tito as "kindlichen" 'childish' (434). Thus, in the space of a single page, Tito oscillates from the allegorical role of Siva to that of

Vishnu, who "mit spielenden Handen eine neue, junge, schone, strahlende Welt erschafft" - thanks to Knecht's influence, his playful hands will be free to create a new, young, beautiful, radiant world. Just as a child at play dreams up new worlds, so will

Tito "aus goldenen Gottertraumen spielend eine neue Welt werden laBt."

Over the course of the novel, Hesse's fugal theme (or, in terms of serial composition, his Prime Row) has been stated, developed, inverted, and recapitulated.

However, it is in the context of Tito's life that this "strange loop" will cycle around to its next stage. Just as the bricoleur recycles mythological images in a new social context, just as a child rearranges its perceptions through play, and just as fugal permutation recapitulates a musical theme through variation, so does the contrapuntal nature of

Knecht's life find its ultimate expression in the sounding of the next generation's voice.

Conclusion

My translation. Saint-Cyr 77

The concept of the strange loop, or tangled hierarchy, forms the basis of the

thematic threads that run through Douglas Hofstadter's Godel. Escher. Bach: it is a

phenomenon that Hofstadter tells us "occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or

downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we find ourselves right back

where we started" (10). When expanded metaphorically, this concept opens the door to paradoxes in which hierarchical systems of representation are both the cause of and

solution to the problem of recursion. In a strange loop "there is a conflict between the

finite and the infinite, and hence a strong sense of paradox" (GEB 15), although it should

be noted that, while all strange loops are by definition recursive, not all recursive patterns

are strange loops. From the very first chapter of Godel, Escher. Bach, Hofstadter argues

that the fifth of Bach's Canones diversi super thema regium from the Musical Offering

(which he nicknames the "Endlessly Rising Canon") is the epitome of a strange loop.

This canon consists of rising modulations that bring the piece back to the original key

(although an octave higher) after six modulations; in the original manuscript, Bach added

the dedication "Ascendenteque Modulatione ascendat Gloria Regis" 'And may the glory

of the King rise with the rising modulation' (7). As he ascends through the hierarchy of

the Order, Knecht's glory rises in the same fashion. Just as Knecht's "Erwachen"

'awakenings' are characterised as modulations through the "Stufen" 'stages' of his life,

modulations that signal the recapitulation-with-variation of the novel's theme, so does

Hofstadter characterise the recursive paradox that animates human consciousness as a

metaphorical fugue. Thus, Das Glasperlenspiel's multiple references to contrapuntal

music, as well as to pictographies and mathematics, signify the same kind of conceptual

structure that Hofstadter associates with the work of Kurt Godel, M.C. Escher, and J.S. Saint-Cyr 78

Bach. The Glass Bead Game contains within itself all three threads of Hofstadter's famous "golden braid." No matter what it is called (strange loop, recursive paradox, beschwingte Spiel), a fugal system of organisation that folds back on itself represents a universal dynamic, a form of self-reference that has its roots in number theory.

In order to get a clearer idea of the Game's potential as a metaphorical model for use in literary, musical, pictographic, and mathematical fields, however, we will have to find ways of conceiving of specific theorists and artists as Glass Bead Game Players. To this end, chapter three will focus on the Castalian overtones of Northrop Frye and Arnold

Schoenberg's literary and musicological writings and of the theoretical points of contact between them. Not only will this association pave the way for specific literary and musical applications of the Glass Bead Game paradigm, but it will also allow for a

Castalian interpretation of artwork by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and M.C. Escher, as well as of mathematical discourse ranging from Epimenides, to Nicholas of Cues, to

Russell and Whitehead, to Douglas Hofstadter. Saint-Cyr 79

Chapter Three:

Northrop Frye and Arnold Schoenberg as Glass Bead Game Players

Introduction

Northrop Frye's conception of pure literary meaning is informed by the image of

centripetal form and movement, spiralling inward to create a self-contained "cultural

envelope" within which human beings negotiate and construct their perceptions of reality.

In his Anatomy of Criticism (hereinafter Anatomy), he writes that literary meaning

moves in two directions at once: centrifugally, in which we move from language to phenomenological reality - that is, from the individual words to the things they signify -

and centripetally, in which these words coalesce into a purely verbal pattern (73).23 Only

centrifugal writing can be "true" or "false" in the sense that only referential language can

assert or imply a truth-of-correspondence; by contrast, centripetal writing is neither true

nor false, but hypothetical (Anatomy 74). The dynamic tension between these two

opposing forces animates the cultural envelope, whose function is to contain the educated

imagination. Centripetalism, Frye argues, goes to the heart of humanity's capacity both

to construct and deconstruct reality, to build up and tear down the hypothetical worlds

through which we order our perceptions. The diagram in Figure 1 illustrates the inward

and outward orientation of linguistic meaning. When symbols move centrifugally, Frye

calls them "signs." When they move centripetally, he calls them "motifs." Despite the

fact that descriptive or assertive writing tends toward outward referentiality, while

23 Roland Barthes' conception of the linguistic paradox that animates all artistic expression is quite similar to Frye's notion of centripetal and centrifugal meaning: "...d'un bout a l'autre de son histoire, l'art n'est que le ddbat varie de l'image et du nom: tant6t (au pole figuratif), le Nom exact regne et le signe impose sa loi au signifiant; tantot (au pole 'abstrait' [...]), le Nom fuit, le signifiant, en explosant sans cesse, cherche a deTaire ce signifie tetu qui veut revenir pour former un signe..." (207-208). Saint-Cyr 80 literary structures tend toward inward, self-contained meaning, it is important to note that these two modes of understanding "take place simultaneously in all reading" (Anatomy

74).

Within the Anatomy's diagrammatic framework, art's emancipating function is based on its ability to draw equally on the worlds of action and thought, to reach out into centrifugal constructs such as historical, scientific, and philosophical discourse and transform them into centripetal images, motifs, and hypothetical structures that can then be manipulated in total freedom. For this reason, Frye situates art at the centre of events and ideas. At the centre of art, Frye places literature, arguing that its simultaneous appeal to the ear and the eye allows it to partake of both the musical and the plastic arts

(Anatomy 243-244), or, in keeping with his Aristotelian terminology, to partake of both melos and opsis [see Figure la]. Thus, in the Anatomy, literature becomes the central division of the humanities (12). In their most radical incarnations, melos and opsis

respectively become the charm and the riddle, the former representing magical

compulsion or impetus, the latter representing magical imprisonment or containment

(Anatomy 278-280).

According to composer John Beckwith, Frye felt that literary critics should envy

music critics because of the fact that the the latters' discourse can so easily transcend

content - in other words, music critics deal more in structures and relationships, which is

what literary critics like Frye would like to do, rather than getting bogged down in style

and content (personal interview). In fact, in the Anatomy of Criticism's third essay, Frye

imagines how much easier his task would be if his book "were an introduction to musical

theory instead of poetics" (132-134). He then goes on to state that the Anatomy is his Saint-Cyr 81 attempt to relate the grammatical structures of literary expression to corresponding musical elements such as tonality, simple and compound rhythm, and contrapuntal variation (133). In literature, these sorts of structural principles are difficult to discuss without resorting to analogy. Just as Hermann Hesse can only describe his fictional

Glass Bead Game by telling us that it is like music, pictographies, and mathematics, so too does Frye draw on musical, pictographic, and mathematical analogies when discussing the various forms and structures of literary expression (and of their historical development).

Frye's use of musical analogy can be broken down into two distinct categories: sound and structure. When he writes of the melos of literature, he is usually referring to the sound of the language. By contrast, when he discusses concepts such as literary counterpoint, he is referring to the structural principles that underlie the use of images and archetypes. Frye regards his five historical modes of literature as the equivalent of musical keys. Literary counterpoint can thus be defined as the recapitulation, layering, and variation of two or more modes. Each of Frye's modes is made up of literary contexts or relationships, which he calls phases; and each phase, in turn, is characterised by its own dianoia (theme), mythos (plot formula/narrative), and ethos

(characterisation/setting) (Anatomy 52, 73, 83).

As previously discussed, in Das Glasperlenspiel Hesse foregrounds the

significance of contrapuntal structures - specifically the fugue. However, this use of musical imagery is more than simply a metaphorical or figurative device for allowing the reader to understand the structure of the Glass Bead Game (although it certainly is that as

well). On a more fundamental level, Hesse achieves a form of archetypal counterpoint in Saint-Cyr 82

Frye's sense of the term. That is, he succeeds in writing a novel that can be read as an admixture of all five of the historical modes discussed in the Anatomy. Thus, Frye's concept of modal counterpoint has the potential to inform a comprehensive structural analysis of Hesse's use of imagery. Moreover, Das Glasperlenspiel can, in turn, be regarded as a functional example of the types of structural interrelationships that Frye attempts to describe through musical analogy.

Frye's Modal Counterpoint

In her insightful article "Musical/Literary Boundaries in Northrop Frye," Deanne

Bogdan identifies the fugue as the most heuristic metaphorical representation of Frye's conception of centripetalism and the cultural envelope (see 57-58, 62, 64). J.S. Bach, for whom Frye had a deep affection, was a master of counterpoint. Bach's ability to interweave multiple canonic variations recalls the spiral, in that, not only is fugal structure fundamentally recursive, but fugal recapitulation-with-variation also amalgamates circular movement and linear displacement. The fugue is thus evocative of the spiral imagery that informs Frye's conception of centrifugal and centripetal linguistic meaning.

Frye divides the history of Western literature into five modes, based on the protagonist's power of action; these are the musical keys in which works of literature are

written and to which they resolve (Anatomy 158). In the first mode, the mythical mode,

the protagonist is a divine being, superior in kind both to other people and the

environment; myths such as those about the Olympian gods fall into this category, as do

all creation myths. The second mode, that of romance, includes legends and folk tales in Saint-Cyr 83 which the protagonist is superior in degree both to other people and the environment; legends about heroes such as Heracles and Theseus fall into this category. In the high mimetic mode, in which we find epic and tragedy, the protagonist is a leader, superior in degree to other people, but not to his environment. Next comes the mode of the low mimetic; in this kind of comedy or realistic fiction, the protagonist is "one of us," superior neither to other people nor the environment. Finally comes the fifth mode, the ironic, covering most fiction written after 1850, in which the protagonist is inferior both to other people and the environment (see Anatomy 33-35).

One of die most important features of Frye's system of modes is its circularity.

As irony "descends," as he puts it, from the low mimetic, it begins in realism, then moves towards myth; thus the sixth mode would actually be an ironic recapitulation of the first

(Anatomy 42,140). Each mode is divided into six phases (contexts or sets of relationships); and the first three phases of a given mode correspond to die last three of the one before. Both the symmetry and the circularity of Frye's theory of modes are

suggestive of the circle of fifths [Figure 2]. Therefore, when a work of modern fiction recapitulates images, archetypes, or motifs from one or more of the earlier modes,

whether ironically or nostalgically, the effect is contrapuntal. "Once we have learned to

distinguish the modes," Frye argues, "we must then learn to recombine them. For while

one mode constitutes the underlying tonality of a work of fiction, any or all of the other

four may be simultaneously present. Much of our sense of the subtlety of great literature

comes from this modal counterpoint" (Anatomy 50-51). Saint-Cyr 84

The Modal Counterpoint of Das Glasperlenspiel

Hesse's obsequious narrator goes to great lengths, especially at the end of the novel, to impress upon the reader the mythical nature of Knecht's life. Thus, the archetypal dimension of Knecht's biography, the sense in which his life stands for an intellectual and spiritual ideal that goes beyond the merely human, recalls the first of

Frye's modes. His miraculous transformation - or, as Knecht would put it, his awakening - into divinity is foreshadowed in chapter seven by the Music Master's quiet

"Verklarung" 'transfiguration' from a man into a god (264). Indeed, in this chapter alone, the Music Master is variously described as a saint, as blessed, as perfect, as an abstract symbol, and even as the very personification of music itself. It is this kind of divinity that Joseph Knecht acquires by the end of the novel - a transcendent apotheosis that is not simply spiritual, but metaphysical.

Frye writes that the "association of a god's death with autumn or sunset does not, in literature, necessarily mean that he is a god 'of vegetation or the sun, but only that he is a god capable of dying, whatever his department" (Anatomy 36). Similarly, Knecht's

death at the end of the novel in no way diminishes his divinity; and the fact that his death

is greeted by a sunrise rather than a sunset is indicative of the cyclical nature of Hesse's

archetypal imagery: the death of one god is merely the rebirth of another. Citing

Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, Frye argues that the death of a god engages the

"solemn sympathy" of nature, where the term "solemn" carries etymological implications

relating to ritual (Anatomy 36). Thus, the ritualistic tone of the scene (and especially of

Tito's ceremonial dance) seems to fit perfectly with Frye's characterisation of the

archetypal death of a god. "The use of 'solemn sympathy' in a piece of more realistic Saint-Cyr 85

fiction," he argues, "indicates that the author is trying to give his hero some of the

overtones of the mythical mode" (Anatomy 36). Hesse's use of mythical tonality is then

recapitulated by the shamanistic life of the Weathermaker in Knecht's counter-factual

autobiography, "Der Regenmacher."

In the second mode, romance, the themes of exile and wandering are of

paramount importance. "The age of romantic heroes," Frye explains, "is largely a

nomadic age, and its poets are frequently wanderers (Anatomy 57). The most

paradigmatic example of this mode of literature is Dante's Divina Commedia. Frye notes

that Dante himself was an exile and that the fantastic, spiral pilgrimage that spans the

Inferno. Purgatorio, and Paradiso returns again and again to the themes of wandering and

exile. As we saw in the last chapter, Knecht's path through life is likewise an exilic

spiral pilgrimage that leads him up through Castalia's concentric, hierarchical rings, all

the way to the threshold of an ideal just as unattainable as the Pilgrim's desire "per

misurar lo cerchio" 'to square the circle' (Paradiso 33:134).24 Generally speaking, most

stories that feature "the marvellous journey," as Frye calls it, are derivative of the

romance mode (Anatomy 57) - and Das Glasperlenspiel is no exception. Frye argues

that the opening lines of the Inferno clearly identify the Divina Commedia with both the

poem of exile and the poem of vision (Anatomy 58); indeed, the Pilgrim's episodic journey takes him from exile to vision to revelation. Similarly, Knecht leaves behind his

old life in favour of the vita nuova, exiling himself in order to pass from one stage to

another. However, just as romance poetry's episodic theme stands for "the theme of the

boundary of consciousness, the sense of the poetic mind as passing from one world to

24 All English quotations of Dante's Divina Commedia are taken from Allen Mandelbaum's 1980-84 verse translation (see Works Cited and Consulted). Saint-Cyr 86 another, or as simultaneously aware of both" (Anatomy 57), so too do the stages of

Knecht's episodic biography stand for intellectual and spiritual interstitiality. In Knecht's counter-factual autobiography "Die Beichtvater," the reader is presented with an elegant illustration of how literature in this mode can also function as "an agent of catholicity, whether Hellenistic in one age or Roman Christian in another" (Anatomy 57). Thus, just as "Der Regenmacher" recapitulates the first mode, "Die Beichtvater" recapitulates the second.

In the third mode, the high mimetic, the shift from romance to epic and tragedy is characterised by a shift from centrifugalism (the quest) to a centripetal orientation that places national symbols such as the prince, the court, or the capital at the centre of the narrative (Anatomy 58). In Castalia's introverted society, faith in the ultimate value of the Glass Bead Game plays the same role as do nationalism and aristocracy in the literature of the high mimetic. Frye argues that works in which the centripetal gaze of the poet is directed at a mistress, a friend, or a deity all seem to recall "the court gazing upon its sovereign, the court-room gazing upon the orator, or the audience gazing upon the actor. For the high mimetic poet is pre-eminently a courtier, a counsellor, a preacher, a public orator or a master of decorum" (Anatomy 58). It is interesting to note that Knecht, over the course of his life in the Order, assumes aspects of all five of these roles. Just as

Ursa Minor contains the Pole Star, Castalia contains the Game - it is the cynosure around which the society has been constructed. Castalian society's preoccupation with symposium and dialogue, with the social and pedagogical dimensions of an elite culture, is suggestive of Renaissance Humanism. In fact, the ideal that underlies the Glass Bead

Game seems to be patterned on the Neo-Classical attitude that a poetic theme should be Saint-Cyr 87 thought of as a manifestation of nature's true form. Knecht's role within this society, as portrayed by his biographer, is that of an almost divine leader, thus recalling Frye's description of the divine leadership of the high mimetic poet in the Anatomy of Criticism: just as "the function of [the high mimetic leader's] education is the service of his prince"

(58), Castalia defines its function as the service of the Glass Bead Game; and while Frye identifies courtly love as the climax of the courtier-poet's service (which certainly does not apply to Knecht), he also points out that the "religious poet may transfer this imagery to the spiritual life" (59), just as every electus of the Castalian Order is required to do.

The low mimetic, the fourth mode, is the age of nineteenth-century

Romanticism.25 Identifying Faust (particularly the second part) as the most definitive example, Frye suggests that the fourth mode tends toward "the construction of mythological epics in which the myths represent psychological or subjective states of mind" (Anatomy 60). Like the romance hero, the Romantic hero is an exceptional individual. He lives on a higher plane of consciousness and has extraordinary powers of imagination mat surpass nature. In fact, like Knecht, the "Romantic poet's mind is normally in a state of pantheistic rapport with nature, and seems curiously invulnerable to the assaults of real evil" (Anatomy 59). This accounts for the cheerful serenity

(Heiterkeii) with which Knecht goes through life - he is invulnerable to the assaults of pride, jealousy, and ambition (all of which are explicitly identified as Faustian vices).

The thematic poet of the low mimetic "thinks socially in terms of a biological difference between the genius and the ordinary man, and genius to him is a fertile seed among abortive ones" (Anatomy 60). This sentiment is certainly Castalian in nature, although it

25 Frye distinguishes between the mode of legend and fairy-tale, romance, and the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century by capitalising the latter and not the former, a convention that I have also adopted for the purposes of this discussion. Saint-Cyr 88 is an attitude that Knecht throws off by the end of the novel. However, despite Knecht's ultimate rejection of intellectual elitism, in Castalian society at large, as in the literature of the low mimetic, "the possession of creative genius confers authority, and its social impact is revolutionary" (Anatomy 60).

While this statement certainly seems to describe Knecht's career, Knecht himself is not Das Glasperlenspiers most overtly Romantic character. The narrator-biographer, whose voice is arguably more dominant than any other, assumes a critical attitude that precisely conforms to Frye's description of Romantic theories of poetry. The narrator's hagiographic rhetoric, like that of the Romantic critic, is clearly that of personal greatness. "The Romantic poet," Frye argues, "finds it much easier than his predecessors to be at once individual in content and attitude and continuous in form" (Anatomy 60).

Congruently, Knecht's biographer presents his subject simultaneously as an individual and as an archetypal figure whose passage into legend and fiction is entirely justified by continuity of form.

Lastly comes the ironic fifth mode characteristic of late nineteenth- and twentieth- century fiction. It is only now that we come to the mode that corresponds to the era in which Das Glasperlenspiel was actually written. Frye argues that the writer/poet in the ironic age "makes the minimum claim for his personality and the maximum for his art"

(Anatomy 61); and by hiding behind his fictional biographer, Hesse achieves something of this aesthetic. In this mode, Knecht's awakenings can be read as the kind of "pure but transient vision" or "aesthetic or timeless moment" that Frye identifies as the central episodic theme of the ironic age, a theme that Knecht's biographer describes as a process of "Erwachen" 'awakening' - although, as Frye notes, in German philosophy this state of Saint-Cyr 89 epiphany is usually referred to as the Augenblick, the moment (Anatomy 61). Nietzsche, who is represented by Tegularius, belongs to this mode, as does Mallarme, whose

"doctrine of the avoidance of direct statement" seems to correspond to Das

GlasperlenspieFs somewhat unfair reputation as a difficult novel whose real meaning hides "behind an ironically baffling exterior" (Anatomy 61).

In the ironic mode, "critical theories of the essential discontinuity of poetry" serve to rationalise a paradoxical technique in which poetry becomes at once encyclopaedic and fragmentary (Anatomy 61). This tension between continuity and discontinuity is in fact more in keeping with the novel that Hesse originally wanted to write - a trans-temporal biography of a man who lives in different eras of human history. The inclusion of

Knecht's alternate "lives" at the end of the novel is the only vestige of this plan that remains in the final version. Nevertheless, it is enough to preserve the sense of temporal discontinuity that Hesse originally had in mind, a fragmentation that the archetypal qualities of Knecht's character was to re-integrate into a cohesive, encyclopaedic whole.

Frye points out that each mode has a tendency to recapitulate some of the standards of its modal "grandfather" (i.e., the mode that preceded its immediate predecessor). Thus, the high mimetic recapitulates the mythical, the low mimetic recapitulates romance, and the ironic recapitulates the high mimetic. As Frye illustrates, the shift to the ironic signalled the beginning of an anti-Romantic revolt that began around the turn of the last century. This revolt was characterised by a sense of nostalgia for the aristocratic, a sentiment that resulted in the recapitulation of high mimetic archetypes. "The sense of the poet as courtier," Frye argues, "of poetry as the service of a prince, of the supreme importance of the symposium or elite group, are among the high Saint-Cyr 90 mimetic conceptions reflected in twentieth-century literature" (Anatomy 63). From this perspective too, Das Glasperlenspiel seems to conform precisely to the theoretical parameters of the fifth mode, as defined by Frye.

Finally, we come to the hypothetical "sixth mode," which, as discussed above, engenders a cyclical return to the first mode, conferring on Frye's schema a circularity that parallels that of the Circle of Fifths. Cyclical theories of history, the idea of a return to the oracular, are tendencies that Frye identifies as typical of the ironic mode (Anatomy

62). At a later stage of development, these theories lead to a "widespread interest in sacramental philosophy and dogmatic theology" (Anatomy 65). This later development is obviously already quite advanced in Castalian society, whose ascetic monasticism and rigid doctrinal code betray a certain regressive, medieval tendency. However, when filtered through the narrator's perspective (that is, through his relentless, obsequious idealisation of Joseph Knecht), Hesse's portrayal of Castalia takes on an ironic tone that undercuts - or, rather, underscores - the novel's mythical gravitas.

Das Glasperlenspiel as Comedic Counterpoint

So far, I have attempted to demonstrate that all five of Frye's historical modes (or six, counting its circularity) are simultaneously present in Hesse's novel. If some of these modes seem to spill over into each other or overlap, it is important to remember that this is because each of Frye's modes "is partial and imperfect, and that is the reason both for the existence of the others and for their co-existence within the same work" (Words with

Power 4). Nevertheless, based on the above modal analysis, Das Glasperlenspiel's home key - its tonic - can be identified as the ironic mode, while its next most closely related Saint-Cyr 91 key - its dominant - is the high mimetic. As the narrative modulates through the stages of Knecht's life, all three of the other modes appear; however, the novel as a whole is rooted in irony - more specifically, it is rooted in ironic comedy (as opposed to ironic tragedy, which Frye discusses separately). This sense of humour is often missed by readers and critics who mistake Hesse's novel for a serious, ponderous, and highly intellectual tragedy, a mistake that has contributed to its reputation as a heavy, difficult novel. This may in part be due to the novel's dominant being mistaken for its tonic; for the sounding of the high mimetic, clearly discernable in Castalia's courtly, aristocratic

society, has the potential to distract from the novel's underlying, ironic tonality.

Not only is Hesse laughing at himself and at the intellectual traditions he satirises, but he is also fulfilling what Frye identifies as comedy's most defining characteristic: the tearing down or defeat of an absurd social construct. "The humour in comedy," Frye

writes, "is [...] intimately connected with the theme of the absurd or irrational law that

the action of the comedy moves toward breaking. [...] [It] may take the form of a sham

Utopia, a society of ritual bondage constructed by an act of humorous or pedantic will"

(Anatomy 169). Knecht's revolutionary resignation from the post of Magister Ludi

ultimately identifies Castalia and its Order as a sham Utopia or, at the very least, as a

society that is doomed eventually to degenerate into one.

As he does with all the other modes, Frye breaks the ironic (in this case, ironic

comedy) into six phases. In the first, most ironic phase of comedy, the humorous society

triumphs (Anatomy 177), as it nominally does in Das Glasperlenspiel. Despite the seed

of doubt planted by Knecht, the Board of Educators clings to its Castalian dream,

stubbornly unmoved by his Circular Letter. Just as the Castalian dream blends into a Saint-Cyr 92

Faustian one, "[we] notice in ironic comedy that the demonic world is never far away"

(Anatomy 178). Knecht's death can also be regarded as what Frye refers to as die "point

of ritual death," a feature that is as unmistakable in the first phase of comedy "as a stretto

in a fugue, which it somewhat resembles" (Anatomy 179).

Comedy in the second phase is one "in which the hero does not transform a

humorous society but simply escapes or runs away from it, leaving its structure as it was before" (Anatomy 180). Das Glasperlenspiel is suggestive of this phase to the extent that it is both a quixotic comedy, as well as a comedy of exile. Despite his untimely death

and the rejection of his Circular Letter, one cannot really say that Knecht has been

"defeated" by his society, as a hero in the first phase would be. Rather, he turns his back

on the quixotic ideals of the Game and the impossible task of reforming the Order in

favour of an entirely exilic solution.

The third phase of comedy is concerned with the architecture of the new society

that is to replace the old (Anatomy 180). Certainly, Knecht's actions at the end of his

career point the way towards this new society, even if he knows he will never live to see

it. Just as Moses leads the Israelites to a promised land that he himself is fated never to

enter, so too does Knecht play the role of prophet, the enlightened leader who points the

way out of the sham Utopia, thus bringing about its eventual downfall and reformation.

According to Frye, this phase of comedy is often characterised by father/son conflicts and

Oedipal relationships (Anatomy 180). Young Tito's antagonistic relationship with his

father and his stifling relationship with his mother are, respectively, suggestive of these

two types of intergenerational dysfunction. Saint-Cyr 93

Fourth phase comedies tend to move from the real world into an innocent world

of romance; their action, therefore, often takes place on two different social planes, one of which is idealised (Anatomy 181-182). Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream,

for example, is typical of the fourth phase, in that, it "begins in a world represented as a normal world, moves into the green world, goes into a metamorphosis there in which the

comic resolution is achieved, and returns to the normal world" (Anatomy 182). Knecht's path through life, generally speaking, follows this pattern, although perhaps not as overtly

as Shakespeare's play: his life starts in the "normal" outside world, men passes into the

idealised Castalian world of ritual, then returns to the outside word armed with the

answer to the society's problem.

Knecht's counter-factual autobiography "Indischer Lebenslauf' is a clearer, more

succinct representation - or, again, recapitulation - of Das Glasperlenspiel's fourth phase

overtones. In it, we see that this idealised society (what Frye calls the green world) is

analogous to "the dream world that we create out of our own desires," a world that

"collides with the stumbling and blinded follies of the world of experience" (Anatomy

183). Like his Castalian counterpart, Dasa emerges from his dream world armed with a

new insight: that all unhappiness is born of the collision between our desires and our

experiences. In his dream world - within which "viele Jahre voll von Erlebnissen

schrumpften in Augenblicke zusammen" (568) '[many] charged years had shrunk to

moments' (517) - Dasa experiences a lifetime of pleasure and pain, fulfillment and

desire; when he awakes and finds that this lifetime-within-a-lifetime was nothing but a

dream, he realises that all of life is "Traum, Blendwerk, Maya" (568) 'dream, illusion, Saint-Cyr 94

Maya' (518). This is essentially what Knecht comes to realise about the Glass Bead

Game: "Spiel und Schein war es, Schaum und Traum, Maya war es, das ganze schone und grausige, entzuckende und verweifelte Bilderspiel des Lebens, mit seinen brennenden Wonnen, seinen brennenden Schmerzen" (568) 'It was all a game and a sham, all foam and dream. It was all Maya, the whole lovely and frightful, delicious and desperate kaleidoscope of life, with its searing delights, its searing griefs' (518).

The even more romantic world of comedy in the fifth phase is "less Utopian and more Arcadian, less festive and more pensive, where the comic ending is less a matter of the way the plot turns out than of the perspective of the audience" (Anatomy 184), a description that seems evocative of the Castalian Order. However, Das Glasperlenspiel is a novel that ultimately straddles the boundary between the fifth and sixth phases of comedy. On the one hand, Castalia is a fifth phase society, a "settled order which has been there from the beginning, an order which takes on an increasingly religious cast and seems to be drawing away from human experience altogether" (Anatomy 185). On die other hand, Knecht's resignation gestures towards a sixth phase society, one whose

"collapse and disintegration" (Anatomy 185) is presaged by Knecht's Circular Letter. In the twilight world of the sixth phase, there is an increased emphasis on the occult and the marvellous, on a detachment from everyday existence, and on what Frye calls an

"oracular solemnity" (Anatomy 185), all of which are distinctly Castalian traits. It is a

26 According to Barthes, in Hindu philosophy the concept of Maya stands not only for the world of appearances, but also for "le principe qui fait que toutes les choses sont classees, mesure'es par l'homme, non par la nature; des que surgit une opposition (l'Opposition), il y a Maya: le reseau des formes (les objets) est Maya (le brahmane ne nie pas le Maya, il n'oppose pas l'Un au Multiple, il n'est point moniste - car reunir est aussi Maya; ce qu'il cherche, c'est la fin de l'opposition, la peremption de la mesure; son projet n'est pas de se deporter hors de toute classe, mais hors de la classification elle-meme)" (204-205). As the ultimate classification and measuring (i.e., encoding) of nature, the Glass Bead Game is thus the ultimate incarnation of Maya; Knecht's final awakening and subsequent exile from Castalia are therefore analogous to Dasa's literal awakening from his life-dream and subsequent enlightenment. Saint-Cyr 95 society that has grown up, matured, aged, and is now ripe for annihilation. This is why the last phase of comedy tends to evoke "myths closely connected psychologically with a return to the womb" (Anatomy 186). Given Hesse's fascination with the writings of Carl

Jung, the lake into which Knecht sinks at the end can be read, as we have seen, as a symbol of what Jung calls "the maternal depth, the mother of every living thing" (5:389).

Not only is Das Glasperlenspiel a work of modal counterpoint in the key of irony, one that plays on all five of Frye's modes, but it is also specifically a work of comedic counterpoint, one that plays on all six phases of ironic comedy. As Frye writes of Dante,

Hesse straddles "the porous osmotic wall between the oracular and the funny" (Late

Notebooks 15). When read as a work of comedic counterpoint, the novel can serve as an illustration of Frye's theory of modes and phases to the same extent that the theory of modes and phases can serve as a template for analysing the novel. There is, however, one anachronistic inconsistency that arises when fugal imagery is used to establish common ground between Frye and Hesse. Given that both of these authors are arguably twentieth-century modernists, why should the musical analogies used to relate mem to each other be based exclusively on the musical traditions of their modal grandfather,

Bach? Both Frye and Hesse lived and wrote in the age of irony, not the age of the high mimetic; therefore, the fugue of the eighteenth century, while metaphorically appropriate in the dominant key, becomes rather anachronistic in the tonic. Since Frye himself stresses that the musical analysis of literature should always be based on forms of musical expression that are contemporary with the literature in question (Anatomy 262), it makes sense to turn to twentieth-century music when analysing the musicality of twentieth- century fiction. Saint-Cyr 96

When he is discussing the structure of literature (opsis), Frye's musical analogies are almost exclusively drawn from eighteenth-century counterpoint, namely, the fugue of the High Baroque. However, while Hesse's similar choice of imagery facilitates the

Frygian modal analysis of Das Glasperlenspiel, perhaps a more contemporary choice of contrapuntal imagery (such as Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique) might serve as a more effective analogy. For when Frye is discussing the sound of twentieth-century literature (its melos), his choice of musical imagery is suggestive of post-Romantic, atonal experimentation.

Frye and Schoenberg

It is true that, while Frye followed the development of twentieth-century music and found it interesting, it was never close to his heart the way twentieth-century literature was (Beckwith, personal interview). However, since Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone music was a response to the Neoclassicism of the late Romantics, its development is congruent (not to mention contemporary) with the shift away from

Romantic style that Frye associates with Modernist literature. Ezra Pound's credo was to

"make it new" - and this is certainly what Schoenberg was trying to do when he broke with his Brahmsian roots and began experimenting with atonality and serialism.

Twelve-tone composition is based on a set (or series) of twelve pitches, chosen by the composer, called the Prime Row [Figure 3]. If none of the twelve pitches in the

Prime Row is repeated, the number of possible series is 479,001,600, twenty-four of

which are chromatic scales (Seaton 362). Once the prime row has been constructed, it is

subjected to three of the main canonic permutations of the High Baroque [Figure 4]: Saint-Cyr 97

retrograde (R0), inversion (Io), and retrograde inversion (Rio). Each variation is then subjected to twelve transpositions. When the Prime Row, its three principle variations, and all of their transpositions are written out in relation to each other, the result is a

Matrix of Row Forms [Figure 5] that the composer then uses to facilitate the composition process. All the transpositions are numbered according to the interval of semitones between pitch zero (in this case, E) and the first pitch of the transposed series. The Prime

Row represents the musical "idea" of the composition (just as the theme does in a Bach fugue); and the matrix lays out for the composer all of the different ways in which the elements of the idea can be related to each other.

Like Frye, Schoenberg had a profound understanding of and respect for the works of the classical masters; however, he recognised that, since dissonant pitches are not outside of, but simply more distant from the overtone series of the tonic, they are just as much a part of "natural" harmonics as the more consonant pitches.27 In reference to literary dissonance, Frye would most likely have agreed with Schoenberg's Style and

Idea (hereinafter Style), in which the latter writes that "the question whether dissonances or consonances should be used, and to what extent, is not a question of beauty, but only a question of comprehensibility" (101). In fact, Frye argues that the more beautiful and mellifluous the melos of literature, the more un-musical it actually is. According to Frye,

An individual note (a fundamental) is not simple but complex, being made up of harmonics that resonate on other pitches; these other pitches, contained within the harmonic structure of the fundamental, are called overtones. Taking the note C as the tonic, its first overtone is the octave, then comes the fifth (G), the dominant, then comes the perfect fourth above that (C again), then in the next octave comes the third (E), and beyond, deeper in the harmonics of the note, come more distantly related pitches whose intervals get smaller and smaller the further they get from the tonic. In The Path to the New Music, Schoenberg's student Anton Webern makes the point that the most closely related overtone pitches above and below the fundamental constitute a "parallelogram of forces" (13) whose axis of symmetry is the tonic. The fifths above and below C are G and F; and the first differentiated overtones of these three notes are, respectively, G/E, D/B, and C/A. Contained within this group of closely related overtone pitches, therefore, are all seven notes of the diatonic scale; consonance and dissonance are thus different in degree rather than in kind (16). Saint-Cyr 98

there are two ways of using the word "musical" in reference to the sound of literature:

one is sentimental, the other is technical. Sentimentally, it refers to language that

"sounds nice." This kind of musicality, however, in both poetry and prose, usually denotes the literature that is "most remote from actual music" (Anatomy 255, 267).

Technical use of the word, on the other hand, refers not to beauty, harmony, and consonance but to tension, harshness, and dissonance. "It is more likely to be the harsh,

rugged, dissonant poem," Frye argues, "that will show in poetry the tension and the

driving accented impetus of music," the "sense of fulfilled expectation" (Anatomy 256,

258). Thus, truly musical poetry is full of "sharp barking accents, crabbed and obscure

language, mouthfuls of consonants, and long lumbering polysyllables" (Anatomy 256).

In prose, the authors Frye associates most closely with a post-Romantic, dissonant melos

are Proust, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce, as well as some earlier authors who

anticipated this development, such as Milton and Sterne (Anatomy 266-267).

In terms of structure, Schoenberg's own definition of the three main principles of

counterpoint highlights all of the same concepts that Frye identifies with literary

counterpoint: (1) the theme, which represents the musical idea, is a point of departure; (2)

this theme contains within itself all of its potential variations; and (3) the unfolding of the

variations is what produces the form of the piece (Style 290). Furthermore, since

Schoenberg derived the structure of twelve-tone music from the principles of

counterpoint and canon form, as a structural analogy to Frye's theory of modes it should

theoretically work just as well as a Bach fugue. Both Frye and Schoenberg long for a

comprehensive theory of form in their respective disciplines. Moreover, just as Frye

looks to music for analogies when discussing language, so does Schoenberg look to Saint-Cyr 99 language when discussing music, claiming that the inter-connection of musical ideas can best be understood by "applying grammatical concepts directly to music" (Style 287).

Figuratively speaking, they both reach out to each other's respective disciplines in search of analogies that would allow them to model the structural principles of an artistic process whose boundaries are essentially porous.

Schoenberg's theory of form, like Frye's, draws on centripetal and centrifugal imagery, although not in quite the same way. For Schoenberg, a musical theme's

"centrifugal tendency" (Style 61) is based on its capacity to develop outward from a central idea to its derivatives and variations while, for Frye, the centrifugal is that which is referential. However, despite their different uses of these terms, it is clear that their views on the relationship between the mimetic and the self-contained are in total accord.

In Style and Idea. Schoenberg writes that "the outward correspondence between music and text, as exhibited in declamation, tempo and dynamics, has but little to do with the inward correspondence, and belongs to the same stage of primitive imitation of nature as

the copying of a model" (145). In contrast to the aesthetics of referentiality or mimesis

(what Frye would call centrifugalism), Frye and Schoenberg both believe in Vart pour

I'art, art for its own sake. Just as Frye states that poetic images do not point to anything

but, rather, point only "to each other" (Anatomy 80-81), so is Schoenberg's twelve-tone

music based on a series of pitch classes related "only to each other" (Style 208).

In Das Glasperlenspiel, Hesse too makes thinly veiled references to twentieth-

century music (although he does not identify Schoenberg or twelve-tone composition

specifically). Early on in the novel, the narrator tells us that the Musikwissenschaft

(musical science) that arose shortly after 1900 had a profound impact on the development Saint-Cyr 100 of the Glass Bead Game (25). This reference to the emergence of post-tonal experimentation becomes more overt when he goes on to explain that the Castalian Order has forsworn the "Kult der Vorherrschaft des Harmonischen und der rein sinnlichen

Dynamik im Musizieren" 'the cult of the supremacy of harmony and of purely sensuous

OR dynamics in music,' a cult that, he reminds us, dominated music for two hundred years after Beethoven and early Romanticism (26). However, it is not simply the development of the Game's pre-history that Hesse manages to relate to post-tonal experimentation.

Through Knecht's description of Tegularius' Glass Bead Game compositions, Hesse clearly seeks to associate the latter's Game technique with chromatic, unresolved music that is as original as it is daringly modern:

.. .sondern es wurde auch die Synthese und Harmonisierung der gegensatzlichen

Stimmen nicht in der ublichen, der klassischen Weise aufs Letzte gebracht,

vielmehr erlitt diese Harmonisierung eine ganze Reihe von Brechungen und blieb

jedesmal, wie ermudet und verzweifelt, vor der Auflosung stehen und verklang in

Frage und Zweifel. Es bekamen jene Spiele dadurch nicht nur eine aufregende

und meines Wissens bisher nie gewagte Chromatik [...]. (145)

But beyond that, the synthesis and harmonization of the opposing voices was not

carried to the ultimate conclusion in the usual classical manner; rather, this

harmonization underwent a whole series of refractions, of splintering into

overtones, and paused each time, as if wearied and despairing, just to the point of

dissolution, finally fading out in questioning and doubt. As a result, those Games

possessed a stirring chromatics, of a kind never before ventured, as far as I know.

(131-132)

28 My translation. Saint-Cyr 101

Knecht's references to harmonies that undergo "eine ganze Reihe von Brechungen" is suggestive of the refractions of the Prime Row generated by the matrix of row forms.

Just as Tegularius' Games splinter into overtones, so does twelve-tone music explore the more distantly related pitches in the chromatic scale by liberating them from the tyranny of triadic harmonies. In short, the questioning of traditional classicism and the never before ventured chromaticism of Tegularius' ludic style are expressive of the same musical ideas and ideals that Schoenberg and his disciples were trying to develop in the first half of the twentieth century.

According to Schoenberg, twelve-tone composition is based on the thesis that the vertical axis in music (whatever sounds together) is just as expressive of the musical idea as the horizontal axis (whatever sounds sequentially) (Style 207). This thesis exactly corresponds to Frye's description of how opsis and melos function in literature: the role of the former is simultaneous containment; the role of the latter is sequential impetus. In the Anatomy of Criticism, Frye argues that opsis regulates the form and theme of literature, while melos regulates its content and narrative - in other words, the theme is the narrative in stasis and the narrative is the theme in motion (83). Despite the fact that polyphonic music, in and of itself, expands along both the horizontal and vertical axes,

Frye turns to the plastic arts for analogies to help him illustrate the simultaneity of opsis, leaving melos to stand exclusively for me sequential. When a work of literature disappears, as he puts it, into music and painting, it comes back with a different, more experimental, rhythm; thus, Frye's interdisciplinary association of literature, music, and painting brings up yet another striking parallel with Schoenberg's musicological discourse: for Frye, experimental language tends towards music and painting (Anatomy Saint-Cyr 102

275), while for Schoenberg experimental music tends towards language (Style 287-288) and painting (Style 144-145, 351-352).

For Frye, the distinction between the sequential and the simultaneous serves as the basis for his understanding of how the musical and the pictorial function in literature.

The aesthetics of content and narrative, the melos of literature, are expressive of a subconscious tendency that Frye nick-names "babble," a tendency that functions as the driving force behind sound-associations such as rhymes, assonance, alliteration, and puns

(Anatomy 275-278). In its most radical incarnation, babble or melos becomes the charm,

"the hypnotic incantation" whose sense of "magical compulsion" can be recognised in lullabies and work songs (Anatomy 278, 280). By contrast, the aesthetics of form and theme, the opsis of literature, are expressive of a sub-conscious tendency that Frye nick­ names "doodle," a tendency that functions as the driving force behind the "elaborateness of conventional forms" in poetry and the increasing tendency of fiction "to address the ear through the eye" (Anatomy 278). In its most radical incarnation, doodle or opsis becomes the riddle, the "fusion of sensation and reflection" whose sense of "magical imprisonment" can be recognised in hieroglyphics, ideograms, and visual patterns such as those of shape-poems and poems with complex or obscure rhyme schemes (such as the sestina) that can only be seen on the page (as opposed to heard when the poem is read out loud) (Anatomy 280, 278). While it should be noted that, in practice, babble and doodle

(the charm and the riddle) are "hardly separable" from each other (Anatomy 278), in theory the distinction can be very useful, not only in literary studies, but in musicology as well. Saint-Cyr 103

Just as Frye notes the parallels between modern literature and abstraction, expressionism, and cubism in painting (Anatomy 135), so too does Schoenberg state that

Wassily Kandinsky, for instance, expresses himself "as only a musician can" (Style 144-

45). In the Anatomy of Criticism, Frye's examples of self-contained pictorial structure include e.e. cummings' shape poetry (278), as well as comic strips, cartoons, posters, and emblematic forms (274), to which he could also have added Massin and Apollinaire's picture poetry, as Roland Barthes does (L'obvie et l'obtus 97). In prose, Frye cites the later novels of Henry James as being composed of "containing sentences" that generate a simultaneous pattern (Anatomy 267, Frye's emphasis). Schoenberg, for his part, believed that musical notation should express as little as possible with letters and words, and as much as possible with signs and pictures (Style 351) [Figure 6]. Here in Canada, R.

Murray Schafer's "Epitaph for Moonlight" [Figure 7] is a good example of the more recent development of pictographic musical notation.

In serial composition the sense of musical space (that is, the sense of the music's geometric shape) is often characterised by symmetries and patterns that resemble those found in palindromes and sestinas. For example, the Prime Row of Anton Webern's

Symphony, Opus 21 is called a "symmetrical row" because the intervals that separate the pitches in the series are palindromic: the number of semitones that make up the intervals between the pitches [A, F#, G, Ab, E, F, B, Bb, D, C#, C, Eb] are, respectively,

3/1/1/4/1/6/1/4/1/1/3. This palindromic interval structure (with six at its centre) is reinforced at the beginning of the second movement when Webern writes out the rows Ig and RJ_8 (another symmetry) using a palindromic rhythm structure whose axis of Saint-Cyr 104

symmetry occurs in bar six [Figure 8], mirroring the fact that the sixth is the Prime Row's

intervallic axis of symmetry.

Like poems in which the "elaborateness of conventional forms" (Anatomy 278) cannot be perceived when the poem is read out loud, Webern's use of symmetrical rows

could never be heard by a listening audience, no matter how musically literate - they can

only be seen when the printed score is visually inspected. Similarly, when the Music

Master plays an Italian theme and its variations for a young Joseph Knecht, illustrating how the intervals form an axis of symmetry, he instructs Joseph "auf nichts andres zu

achten als auf die Figur" (76) 'to focus his mind entirely on the figure' (65) which the music is creating.

Opsis

The image of the Game as a symmetrical figure subjected to a series of refractions

is echoed in Knecht's poem, "Ein Traum" 'A Dream,' in which he characterises the Glass

Bead Game as a "Kaleidoskop sinnbildlicher Figuren" 'kaleidoscope of symbolic

figures'29 (446), an image that further reinforces the Game's visual and geometric

dimensions. Within this kaleidoscope, the relationship between colours functions

musically:

Der Farben und der Tone Sinn-Entsprechung.

Nachweis, wie jeder Farb' und Farbenbrechung

Als Antwort eine Tonart zugehbre. (444)

The interrelationships of hue and sound:

Proof that for every colour may be found

29 My translation. Saint-Cyr 105

In music a proper corresponding key. (404)

Although, as discussed in chapter one, this idea is identified earlier on in the novel as the

Feustelsche Theorie (jokingly named after Max Bucherer's wife, Els Feustel), it bears a distinct resemblance both to Arcimbolo's "methode colorimetrique de transcription musicale" (Barthes 122) and to Paul Klee's theory of colour, which he called his "Canon of Totality" (Diichting 46). In his 1930 watercolour "Polyphonically Enclosed White"

[Figure 9], Klee lays out his Canon of Totality in an angular spiral whose recursively overlapping shades of colour centripetally close in on an absent centre represented by the colour white. His "overlapping of the light colour values results in a rich scale of subtle tones" (Diichting 48) whose structure bears a striking resemblance to M.C. Escher's famous 1956 lithograph, "Print Gallery" [Figure 10]. It is a pattern that recurs in many of

Klee's other paintings, such as his 1934 oil on canvas "Blossoming" [Figure 11], which unfolds centrifugally from a central nexus of colour much in the same way that a fractal equation can be represented visually as an expanding pattern of coloured pixel-patterns.

Just as Frye agues that "a book, like a keyboard, is a mechanical device for

bringing an entire artistic structure under the interpretive control of a single person"

(Anatomy 248), Klee refers to the row of colours in his paint box as a "keyboard of

colours" (Diichting 17), a metaphor that allows us to conceive of a specific subset of

colours as a fugue theme or, in keeping with a musical form more contemporary with

Klee's time at the Bauhaus, as a Prime Row of pitch values in a serial composition.

Similarly, in paintings such as "In the Bright Oval" (1925 oil on cardboard) and

"Radiating" (1927 oil on canvas), Klee's fellow Bauhaus alumnus Wassily Kandinsky

lays out a miniature "matrix of colour values" in the upper or lower corner of the canvas, Saint-Cyr 106 in which all of the painting's colours are arranged in a rectangular grid [Figure 12]. In fact, Kandinsky openly acknowledges Schoenberg's twelve-tone music as one of his most significant inspirations;30 and although Klee was wary of twentieth-century music,31 the sense in which his "row of colours" can be thought of as either a Prime Row or a fugue subject, underlies the manner in which painting, like music, can develop the central

"idea" through variation and permutation. Duchting argues that, for Klee, the polyphonic fugue represents the importance of clearly articulated structure and variation of themes

(14). For example, in his 1921 watercolour "Fugue in Red" [Figure 13] Klee uses recapitulation and variation of colour and shape to express a temporal progression.

Klee's use of graphic symbols - from elements of musical notation to letters and words to runes and abstract symbols - transforms his drawings and paintings into spaces within which different kinds of pattern making come together and merge centripetally, in a semiographie particuliere that Barthes calls "l'ecriture illisible" (201). For example,

"In Bach's Style" (1919 watercolour and oil) uses images reminiscent of a musical score, including a fermata in the upper left corner; "Drawing with the Fermata" (1918 pen and ink) demonstrates "the ease with which musical notation can be translated into fantastic hieroglyphs" (Duchting 29); and "Once Emerged From the Grey of Night" (1918 watercolour) transforms one of Klee's poems into a tapestry of interlocking colours and shapes. In Klee's artwork, form and content collapse into a single ontology, as various systems of notation are transformed into visual images that echo both the abstraction and the emotional intensity of musical sound. Even some of his paintings with no specific

30 Schoenberg, for his part, had read and admired Kandinsky's book On the Spiritual in Art (Stvlel44-45). 31 Paul Klee's attitude towards Schoenberg's music was actually much closer to Theodor Adorno's, as can be inferred from his 1909 watercolour "Pianist in Distress - A Satire: Caricature of Modern Music," in which a contorted pianist is depicted as being literally bound to the piano through a complex apparatus. Saint-Cyr 107 musical or linguistic symbols, such as "Rose Garden" (1920 oil and ink on paper) and

"Camel (in Rhythmic Landscape with Trees)" (1920 oil and Indian ink on chalk undercoat) [Figure 14], are clearly influenced by the way notes look when they are drawn on a staff, a visual pattern that, as discussed in chapter one, also closely resembles that of the abacus. Like the poem or the mathematical postulate, "le tableau n'est ni un objet reel ni un objet imaginaire" (Barthes 140).

One of the paintings from this period that is most evocative of the Game language is perhaps Kandinsky's "Fifteen" (1938 gouache and tempera on paper), in which fifteen black and white squares (three rows of five) are filled with strange, almost alien symbols that seem to contain a cryptic meaning [Figure 15]. Starting from the upper, left hand square and counting left to right, it seems clear that symbols one, seven, eight, nine, ten, and thirteen are distantly related to the Latin and Arabic alphabets. Symbol fourteen, on the other hand, resembles musical notation. Symbol twelve also resembles musical notation; however, it seems to be written on a staff that expands along three separate axes. These axes, in turn, are in the process of being interconnected like an asymmetrical spider web. Some of the symbols, such as one, two, four, five, ten, and thirteen, look like living creatures, perhaps micro-organisms; and others, such as eight and nine look like formal exercises in geometry. If one were to use symbols such as these to compose a

Glass Bead Game, it is easy to imagine that the finished Game might look like

Kandinsky's "An Intimate Celebration" (1942 mixed media on cardboard) or his "Serious

Joke" (1930 oil on cardboard) [Figure 16].

Frye places "the purely verbal emphasis of cantillation" at the centre of the lyric precisely because allows poetry to amalgamate the musical and the pictorial (Anatomy Saint-Cyr 108

274). "The poem," he argues in the second essay, "presents a flow of sounds

approximating music on one side, and an integrated pattern of imagery approximating the pictorial on the other" (Anatomy 78). However, "the pictorial boundary of the lyric" is

approached most closely when "the pictorial shape of the subject is suggested in the

shape of the lines of the poem" (Anatomy 274) - in other words, when the layout of the poem begins to resemble a painting or drawing. While Frye claims that the pictorial

would have had a greater presence in Western literature if our writing had remained more

hieroglyphic (Anatomy 275), he also argues that the associative diagram (or "doodle")

constitutes a fundamental link between rhetoric and logic by functioning as "the

expression of the conceptual by the spatial" (Anatomy 335). In this sense, all pattern-

making involves "some kind of graphic formula" because all forms of division,

categorisation, and organisation have "some kind of geometrical basis" (Anatomy 336).

By the same token, linguistic and musical structures can also be understood

mathematically. This is why Frye and Schoenberg, in addition both to their respective

use of musical and linguistic analogies and to their common use of visual-spatial

analogies, also turn to mathematical metaphors. It is with mis third point of contact

between them that I now conclude this discussion of Frye and Schoenberg as figurative

Glass Bead Game Players.

Frye, Schoenberg, and the Mathematics of the Glass Bead Game

Not only are Frye and Schoenberg both concerned with the ternary relationship of

language, music, and painting, but they also both link their respective disciplines to

mathematics. Frye's literary algebra is based on the principle that, since literary symbols Saint-Cyr 109 and constructs are neither true nor false, but hypothetical, then "[the] poet, like the mathematician, depends, not on descriptive truth, but on conformity to his hypothetical postulates" (Anatomy 76). Moreover, these literary postulates, like mathematical ones, are equally at home in both applied and pure contexts (Anatomy 351). Literary symbols can be either simple (signs and motifs) or complex (archetypes), and are put together to form literary structures just as, in mathematics, simple and complex variables are put together to form algebraic equations (Anatomy 123). Archetypes, he argues, are complex variables in the sense that they are made up of associative clusters that contain large numbers of learned associations (Anatomy 102). In Schoenberg's musical algebra, the corresponding notion of a complex variable is contained within the concept that a

"musical idea" is made up of terms that represent "the sum total of a great number of qualities" - in other words, music, he argues, "must operate by putting together complexes whose familiarity is taken for granted, so that other complexes of the same kind can follow, in the expectation that with all their reciprocal relationships, similarities, differences, and so on, they will be so grasped as to be linked in logical succession"

(Style 104). In a polymorphous canon, the theme (idea) and its variations can be put

together in innumerable ways, just as, in algebra, Diophantine equations have many

solutions (Style 290).

Early on in Das Glasperlenspiel, the Game's pre-history is described as having a

close relationship with mathematics. The narrator tells us that "besonders die

Mathematiker betrieben [das Glasperlenspiel] mit einer zugleich asketischen und

sportsmannischen Virtuositat und formalen Strenge" (32) 'Mathematicians in particular

played [the Glass Bead Game] with a virtuosity and formal strictness at once athletic and Saint-Cyr 110 ascetic' (24). In the Game's primordial stages of development, what had started as an elaborate game of musical quotation and improvisation passed from the musical to the mathematical seminaries of Europe. The spirit of musical improvisation, however, was preserved, allowing players to exchange and elaborate mathematical sequences in the same way that jazz musicians develop a series of variations on a theme by tossing solos back and forth:

.. .war das Spiel so weit entwickelt, daB es in besonderen Zeichen und

Abbreviaturen mathematische Vorgange auszudrucken vermochte; die Spieler

bedienten einander, sie gegenseitig entwickelnd, mit diesen abstrakten Formeln,

spielten einander Entwicklungsreihen und Moglichkeiten ihrer Wissenschaft vor.

(31)

.. .the Game was so far developed that it was capable of expressing mathematical

processes by special symbols and abbreviations. The players, mutually

elaborating these processes, threw these abstract formulas at one another,

displaying the sequences and possibilities of their science. (23)

Once the Game evolves into its modern form, however, its mathematical principles

develop from simple, homophonic themes and algebraic equations into contrapuntal,

polyphonic themes and infinitely recursive equations. Not surprisingly, the paradoxical

nature of the mathematical concepts that underlie the Glass Bead Game are just as

prominent in Frye and Schoenberg's discourse as they are in Hesse's fiction. In fact,

Barthes explicitly associates Schoenberg's two most famous students, Anton Webern and

Alban Berg, with "un art paradoxal" whose plurality is innumerable (161). Saint-Cyr 111

The Mathematics of the Glass Bead Game: a) Infinity

Among the mathematical references contained within Das Glasperlenspiel, one of the earliest is Nicholas of Cues (or Cusa), also known as Cusanus, a fifteenth-century

Roman Catholic cardinal who wrote extensively on mathematics, science, and theological philosophy. Nicholas of Cusa was interested in geometry and logic. In particular, he developed theories of infinity that were based on the study of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. In the first few pages of the novel, the narrator tells us:

Auch seine [Nikolaus von Kues] Freude an der Mathematik und seine Fahigkeit

und Freude, Figuren und Axiome der euklidischen Geometrie auf theologisch-

philosophische Begriffe als verdeutlichende Gleichnisse anzuwenden, scheinen

der Mentalitat des Spieles sehr nahe zu stehen [...]. (15)

His [Nicholas of Cues] pleasure in mathematics also, and his delight and skill in

using constructions and axioms of Euclidean geometry as similes to clarify

theological and philosophical concepts, likewise appear to be very close to the

mentality of the Game. (8)

The best known example of Nicholas' mathematical theology comes from his first

treatise, "De docta ignorantia." Nicholas writes that "the intellect is to truth as an

inscribed polygon is to the inscribing circle" (qtd. in Hopkins 52). This statement is

based on the work of Greek mathematician Eudoxus (408-355 BC), who defined the

process of "squaring the circle" as follows: inscribe a circle within a regular, n-sided

polygon; inside the circle, inscribe another n-sided polygon. As the number of sides, n,

grows larger, both polygons will approach the shape of the circle without actually Saint-Cyr 112 reaching it. In order for the area of the polygons to equal the actual area of the circle, n would have to be equal to infinity.

As Chamberlin discusses in "Mathematics and Modernism," it was Ferdinand von

Lindemann who proved in 1880 that Pi is transcendental, or in other words, that it is not the root of any algebraic equation with rational coefficients (235). The construction of a square of area equal to that of a given circle is impossible. In Nicholas of Cusa's writing,

"squaring the circle" therefore becomes an illustration of how one can approach truth and divinity while never actually reaching them. This mathematical metaphor is the basis of

Cusa's argument that man's knowledge of the universe must by definition remain incomplete. In addition to Eudoxus, Nicholas may also have been influenced by Dante

Alighieri who, a century earlier, had already suggested that the search for the divine is equal to the task of squaring the circle. In Dante's Divina Commedia, the Pilgrim seeks

in vain to comprehend the centre of his spiral journey, declaring that, "[q]ual e '1

geometra che tutto s'affige per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova, pensando, quel principio

ond' elli indige, tal era io a quella vista nova" 'As the geometer intently seeks to square

the circle, but he cannot reach, through thought on thought, the principle he needs, so I

searched that strange sight' (Paradiso 33:133-136).

Instead of a geocentric or heliocentric universe of finite space, Nicholas of Cues

postulated a centre-less universe of infinite space. His astronomical insights and

intuitions (which anticipated Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler) led him to construct a

model in which "the world machine will have [...] its center everywhere and its

circumference nowhere, for its circumference and center is God, who is everywhere and Saint-Cyr 113

nowhere"32 (Cusa 161). The path that Castalia demands of Joseph Knecht is one that

leads him deeper and deeper into the equivalent of Borges' infinite Library of Babel.

Indeed, Knecht's poem "Ein Traum" describes a dream in which he finds himself inside

"die Bucherei des Paradieses." Within this paradisiacal library, he discovers a book entitled "Zur Zirkelquadratur der letzte Schritt" (444) 'The Squaring of the Circle - Final

Stage' (404). Thus, like Borges, Nicholas of Cusa, and Dante, Hesse identifies the infinitely recursive aesthetic of centripetal movement - movement that spirals in on an inaccessible centre - as the ultimate expression of the quest for the divine.

In the Anatomy's introduction, Frye writes that the literary critic "is in the

position of a mathematician who has to deal with numbers so large that it would keep him

scribbling digits until the next ice age even to write them out in their conventional form

as integers" (16). This is because, like music, literature is a source of limitless potential

meaning, and would continue to be even if no new works of literature were ever again

written (Anatomy 17). Barthes likewise argues that the symbolic capacity of a poetic

form "n'a de valeur que si elle permet a la forme de 'partir' dans un tres grand nombre de

directions et de manifester ainsi en puissance le cheminement infini du symbole..." (117,

Barthes' emphasis). Thus, since a centripetal structure of meaning can in fact be made to

mean an indefinite number of things, Frye argues in the Anatomy's conclusion that the

goal of ethical criticism must be "transvaluation" (341, 348). What he means by this

term is the capacity to compare, at least to some extent, one set of social values with the

32 Both Giordano Bruno in the sixteenth century and Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth re-stated this idea, almost verbatim (Molloy 88-89). It is also paraphrased by Jorge Luis Borges in his short story "The Library of Babel" when he describes his infinite library as "una esfera cuyo centra cabal es cualquier hex&gono, cuya circunferencia es inaccesible" (Ficciones 86) 'a sphere whose exact centre is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible' (Labyrinths 52), as it is by Frye in the Anatomy when he writes that "the center of the literary universe is whatever poem we happen to be reading" (121). Saint-Cyr 114 infinite possibilities of culture, a capacity that, on a literary level, allows for the comparison of one meaning with the infinite potential meanings that lie nascent within language itself. "One who possesses such a standard of transvaluation," he concludes, "is in a state of intellectual freedom" (Anatomy 348). In music, even a single interval of two tones can likewise be heard as any number of chords, depending on what other pitches are added.33 "Yet," writes Schoenberg, "the further such tones are brought into relation and contrast with each other and with rhythm, the greater is the number of possible solutions to the problem, and the more complex are the demands made on the carrying out of the musical idea" (Style 269). Just as language represents no single truth, but has the capacity to express any number of them (Anatomy 354), so too can a single interval be used to construct any number of chords.

Infinity, as a mathematical concept, has historically served as a handy metaphor for describing the inexhaustible potentiality both of God's imagination (as witnessed in

Creation) and of humanity's imagination (as witnessed in Art). In keeping with this historical tradition, one of the ways in which Frye and Schoenberg attempt to equate

literature and music is by pointing out that, like mathematics, both have the capacity to

express the inexpressible through irrationals and transcendentals. Frye compares

irrationals (such as, for example, the square root of two) to prepositions in verbal

language (Anatomy 351), while French philosopher and musicologist Raymond Court

associates Schoenberg's music with non-Euclidean geometry (Court 32).

Transcendentals (such as Pi) share with literature and music the capacity both to

represent infinity and to manipulate hypothetically infinite series, the way calculus does

33 For example, G and B become a G-major chord when D is added; however, they become an E-minor chord when E is added, a C-major-7* chord when E and C are added, etc. Saint-Cyr 115 or the way Cantor does in set-theory. Like an infinite series in mathematics, a poetic symbol can never be made into "un signifie dernier" because it is always "le signifiant d'un autre signifiant" (Barthes 117). According to Frye, set-theory can be used to help us understand how time is handled in a narrative, or how recursive or self-referential narratives can swallow their own tails. In his 1891 theorem, "The Non-Denumerability of the Continuum," Cantor demonstrates a way of putting sets containing infinite numbers of objects into correspondence with each other; likewise, Chamberlin reiterates

Frye's argument that what we do when we work with sets "is very similar to what we do when we tell a story and put ten years into a day (as Homer did) or a day into a novel (as

James Joyce did)" (If This Is Your Land 166). In music, the form that comes closest to swallowing its own tail is, of course, canon form.

However, in order to grasp how Frye and Schoenberg's references to the mathematics of recursion and self-referentiality liken them to Glass Bead Game players, one must situate Hesse's fictional Game within the context of the historical development of modern mathematics. Das Glasperlenspiel, as a work of comedic counterpoint in the key of irony, is representative of Frye's understanding of the shift from the Romantic mode of the nineteenth century to the ironic mode of the twentieth. Congruently, when

the modern Game (as opposed to its primordial incarnations) is understood in purely

mathematical terms, it begins to resemble some of the most influential trends in the

development of early twentieth-century mathematics. Saint-Cyr 116

The Mathematics of the Glass Bead Game: b) Godel Numbering

In the early twentieth century, meta-mathematics (or meta-logic) attempted to establish once and for all the fundamental nature of the reasoning that unites all mathematical systems. The problem, according to Hofstadter, was that "[s]ince mathematical reasoning had always been done in 'natural language' [...], there was always a lot of possible ambiguity. [...] It seemed reasonable and even important to

establish a single uniform notation in which all mathematical work could be done [...].

This would require a complete codification of the universally accepted modes of human reasoning..." (GEB 23). This is precisely what Bertrand Russell and Alfred North

Whitehead were attempting with their opus Principia Mathematica. They were

attempting to develop an hierarchical object language through which paradoxes could be eliminated from mathematics. However, since codification is a mechanism that

facilitates self-reference, the only way to avoid paradoxes is to impose an artificial

linguistic hierarchy within which the object language can only be referred to by a meta­

language, the meta-language by a meta-meta-language, and so on. This infinite regress

is not only cumbersome, but also exacerbates the paradoxical tension between finite and

infinite systems. In a 1931 paper entitled "On Formally Undecidable Propositions in

Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I," mathematician Kurt Godel proved once

and for all that what Russell and Whitehead were trying to accomplish was impossible.

Godel's paper introduced what has come to be known as the Incompleteness

Theorem (GEB 17). Simply put, Godel's accomplishment was to translate the

Epimenides paradox into mathematical terms. Epimenides, who was from Crete,

immortalised the concept of the self-referential paradox by stating: "All Cretans are Saint-Cyr 117 liars." Hofstadter paraphrases the Incompleteness Theorem, originally written in the language of mathematics,34 as: "All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions" (GEB 17). The similarity may not be apparent at first; however, if the Epimenides paradox is rephrased as "this statement is false," then the

Godelian equivalent becomes "this statement of number theory does not have any proof

(GEB 18). Just as the Epimenides paradox's self-referentiality is based on a linguistic statement about language, so is the Incompleteness Theorem's self-referentiality based on a mathematical statement about mathematics.

At the limits of their respective mathematical analogies, Frye and Schoenberg's theories both gesture towards paradox and self-referentiality. In the Anatomy of

Criticism. Frye notes that the beauty of perfect form has long been a target for self- referential satire, from Cervantes' Don Ouijote to Jonathan Swift's Tale of a Tub to

Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (233-234). In the same vein, Schoenberg attempts to

create self-referential satire in his music by parodying forms from the Western tonal

tradition and by hiding acrostic messages in his scores the way J.S. Bach does at the end

of The Art of the Fugue. Creating self-reference in mathematics, however, is not as easy

as creating it in literature and music. In set theory, this type of paradox can be generated

by postulating a "set of all sets," a set that logically must contain itself. However, the

problem, as Hofstadter phrases it, is that a "statement of number theory is not about a

statement of number theory; it just is a statement of number theory" (GEB 18,

Hofstadter's emphasis). Godel's insight was the realisation that mathematical self-

reference could only be achieved if numbers could somehow stand for statements. In

34 To every ^consistent recursive class Kofformulae there correspond recursive class-signs r, such that neither v Gen r nor Neg (v Gen r) belongs to Fig (x) (where v is the free variable of r) (qtd. in GEB 17). Saint-Cyr 118 other words, constructing a statement of number theory about a statement of number theory depends on the mechanism of codification. He therefore conceived of a code in which numbers could stand for symbols or sequences of symbols. The code that he developed has come to be known as "Godel Numbering," an isomorphic system of representation that opens the door to self-reference and, thus, to paradox. Appropriately enough, Hesse's first reference to codification in Das Glasperlenspiel is based on a citation from the works of Nicholas of Cues:

.. .zwei Jahrhunderte friiher finden wir bei Nikolaus von Kues Satze aus derselben

Atmosphare, wie etwa diese: »[...] Ferner miBt aber der Geist auch symbolisch,

durch Vergleich, wie wenn er sich der Zahl und der geometrischen Figuren

bedient und sich auf sie als Gleichnisse bezieht«. (8)

.. .two centuries earlier we find [the Glass Bead Game] in Nicholas of Cues

sentences of the same tenor, such as this: '[...] But furthermore the mind also

measures symbolically, by comparison, as when it employs numerals and

geometric figures and equates other things with them.' (8)

The Glass Bead Game can be understood as a highly complex yet elegant example of

Godel Numbering. When a member of the Castalian Order plays a Glass Bead Game, he

is attempting to compose an equation made up of cultural values and variables; he does

this by creating cultural motifs made up of patterns whose constituent elements are

themselves cultural motifs. These constituent motifs are incorporated into the Game

through a process of codification - the Game language.

It is here, however, that Godel's concept of incompleteness comes into play. Just

as the truth of the statement "this statement is false" is impossible to ascertain, so is a Saint-Cyr 119 statement of number theory about a statement of number theory impossible to prove. In other words, a true statement about a given axiomatic system cannot be proved by using elements of that system; doing so would be like trying to pull oneself up by ones' own bootstraps. As Hofstadter puts it, "[t]he fact that truth transcends theoremhood, in any given formal system, is called the 'incompleteness' of that system" (GEB 86). Escher's

"Print Gallery" [see Figure 10] is an excellent visual representation of the incompleteness principle. The picture is a recursive hierarchical system, in that, the painting contains the town, the town contains the gallery, and the gallery contains the painting. Escher was forced to leave the centre of the picture blank - incomplete - because there is no internally consistent way of representing it. Like the Pilgrim's vision at the end of

Dante's Paradiso, Escher's "Print Gallery" spirals in on an absent centre. Hesse could not explicitly describe the Game for the same reason that Escher could not draw the centre of "Print Gallery" - they are both impossible to represent.

From a Godelian perspective, the ideal that the Castalians try to achieve through

the Glass Bead Game is analogous to what Russell and Whitehead attempt to achieve in

Principia Mathematica: both are attempting to approach the unapproachable. Knecht

himself touches on the notion that Glass Bead Game players spend their lives reaching

for an absent centre when, in the first stanza of his poem "Doch heimlich dursten wir..."

'But Secretly We Thirst,' he writes:

Anmutig, geistig, arabeskenzart

Scheint unser Leben sich wie das von Feen

In sanften Tanzen um das Nichts zu drehen,

Dem wir geopfert Sein und Gegenwart. (440) Saint-Cyr 120

Graceful as a dancer's arabesque and bow,

Our lives appear serene and without stress,

A gentle dance around pure nothingness

To which we sacrifice the here and now. (399)

The Game's incompleteness is ultimately revealed by Knecht's concern over its limits - its inability to create statements of cultural relevance and its inability to have a pedagogical impact on society. As the narrator explains in the introduction, the origins of the Glass Bead Game, and of Castalia itself, are intimately bound to the social and cultural revolution that ended the Age of Feuilletonism (Hesse's ironic jab at twentieth- century media and celebrity culture). Unfortunately, Castalia eventually became so elitist and its fields of study so esoteric that it estranged itself from the very society it was meant to revolutionise. The Glass Bead Game, which was originally intended to universalise culture and art, ended up having the opposite effect. What was at first an

expression of universality ultimately becomes an expression of arcane specialisation and

intellectual elitism. As discussed in chapter two, Knecht's concern over Castalia's

increasing social irrelevance becomes so heart-felt that he ends up resigning his post as

Magister Ludi and leaving Castalia altogether. Like Principia Mathematica, the Glass

Bead Game succumbs to the recursive dynamic of the Epimenides paradox: the one and

only thing that it cannot universalise, integrate, and rationalise is itself.

On a more fundamental level, Das Glasperlenspiel takes on the characteristics of

the Epimenides paradox - of the statement "this statement is false" - every time the

narrator undermines the authority of his biographical text by calling into question its Saint-Cyr 121 veracity. He first does this by reminding the reader that historical writing itself must by definition always contain an element of fiction:

Freilich wissen wir ja das Verborgene nicht und wollen nicht vergessen, daB

Geschichte schreiben, auch wenn es noch so nuchtern und mit noch so gutem

Willen zur Sachlichkeit getan wird, immer Dichtung bleibt und ihre dritte

Dimension die Fiktion ist. (44)

Granted, there is always much that is hidden, and we must not forget that the

writing of history - however dryly it is done and however sincere the desire for

objectivity - remains literature. History's third dimension is always fiction. (37)

Throughout the novel, this sentiment is reinforced by the fact that the biographer's text portrays Knecht as the quintessence of the perfect Castalian. This canonization results in an almost inhuman biographical portrait, totally devoid of flaws, mistakes, or weakness of character. It is with more than a little irony that die narrator tells us:

Es ware namlich einem Autor, der die Lebensbeschreibung eines kastalischen

Magisters ganz nur im Sinne eines Heiligenlebens ad maiorem gloriam Castaliae

zu schreiben fur erlaubt hielte, durch nicht schwer gemacht, den Bericht von Josef

Knechts Magisterjahren [...] ganz als eine glorifizierende Aufzahlung von

Verdiensten, Pflichterfiillungen und Erfolgen zu gestalten. (266)

As a matter of fact, a biographer who thought it proper to deal with the life of a

Castalian Magister entirely in the spirit of hagiography, ad maiorem gloriam

Castaliae, would not find it at all difficult to describe Joseph Knecht's years as

Magister [...] entirely as a glorious list of achievements, duties performed, and

successes. (242) Saint-Cyr 122

In addition, the narrator displays an almost omniscient knowledge of Knecht's most private moments and conversations, even going so far as to narrate the contents his thoughts and feelings. At times, he makes token references to his sources (written correspondence, recorded interviews, official records, etc.); however, these references often seem like more of an afterthought and do not fully account for the depth and detail

of the narrator's knowledge. The biographer's adulation as well as his omniscience combine to create the impression that Knecht's supposedly historical biography is in fact covered by a thick veneer of fictionalisation. The narrator even admits repeatedly that

the last part of Knecht's biography, the section that describes the days preceding his

death, is an outright work of fiction. Near the beginning of his text, he warns that "iiber den letzten Teil dieses Lebens beinahe alle wirklich verbiirgten Nachrichten fehlen"

'about the last part of his life, almost all real, authenticated information is missing' (45).

Then, as he approaches the end of the biography, he again reminds the reader that,

although he would prefer his account of Knecht's last days to be "wahrhaftig" 'true,' it is

not really "eine Geschichte" 'a history' at all, but "eine Legende" 'a legend' which has

been pieced together from "echten Nachrichten" 'genuine information' and "bloBen

Geriichten" 'mere rumours' (291). As if this were not enough, the narrator goes even

further by actually disclaiming authorship of the book's last chapter. Pompously

referring to himself in the plural, he states, "Wir verzichten darauf, eine eigene

Darstellung von des Magisters letzten Tagen zu geben" (377) 'We forbear to present our

own account of the Magister's last days' (341), preferring instead to conclude his

biography with a fictional, anonymous story that may or may not have been written by

some of Knecht's favourite students.

35 My translation. Saint-Cyr 123

Every time Hesse's narrator explicitly undercuts his own narrative authority, he effectively re-casts himself from the role of historian into that of propagandist. Like the

Epimenides paradox, it is as if the narrator is stating simultaneously "Knecht's biography is historical" and "Knecht's biography is fictional." This contradictory device has been used many times in literature, the most famous and paradigmatic example perhaps being

Cervantes' Don Quijote, a text that is presented as Cervantes' rewriting of a Spanish translation of an Arabic account (by Cid Hamete Benengeli) of the "real" feats of Don

Quijote (which is not the hero's real name). Just as Epimenides states that all Cretans are

liars, so does Cervantes state that all Arabs are liars, an accusation that Benengeli seems

to confirm when he declares, "I swear, as a Catholic Christian" (504). In short, the self-

contradictory nature of Knecht's biography imports the Epimenides paradox into the heart of Castalia, just as Godel's Incompleteness Theorem imported the Epimenides paradox into the heart of Principia Mathematica.

In the absence of a real Game language resembling Godel Numbering, Hesse

naturally turns to music, pictographies, and mathematics for sources of metaphorical

imagery that can give the reader an idea of what the Game is actually like. It is in the

context of these three analogies that the discourses of Frye and Schoenberg can be said to

come closest to Hesse's conception of the Game. When Frye uses musical, pictographic,

and mathematical analogies, and when Schoenberg uses linguistic, pictographic, and

mathematical analogies, they do so in an effort to elucidate (on an abstract, theoretical

level) the systems of organisation that underlie artistic and creative pattern-making. The

Glass Bead Game is simply a more unified and formalised imagining of these same

systems of organisation. In other words, the metaphorical tools that Frye and Schoenberg Saint-Cyr 124 use to discuss the structural principles that govern their respective fields are the same ones that Hesse uses to describe the structural principles of the Glass Bead Game. When

Frye and Schoenberg encourage their readers to think of literature and music as sequences of artistic or cultural equations rooted in infinity and recursion, they are essentially encouraging us to think of the writing of literature and music (or, on a broader level, of the creative process itself) as the playing of a Glass Bead Game - and, more importantly, to think of the art of literary and musical criticism just as a Castalian lusor would construct, analyse, or disassemble a Game pattern. Thus, when Knecht retraces the pattern of the Third Course Game (as discussed in chapter one) by translating each of its phrases back into music, mathematics, Chinese, etc., he must in fact employ the same kinds of analytical strategies that Frye and Schoenberg argue should be employed in the study of literature and music.

All hypothetical structures are by definition based on the paradoxical "is/is not" of metaphor itself-just as Designori describes Knecht as a trickster god (329), Chamberlin would likely describe him as a "god of the hinge," a god of metaphor who inhabits a

metaphorical world. As Frye argues, "the metaphor turns its back on ordinary descriptive

meaning, and presents a structure which literally is ironic and paradoxical" (Anatomy

123). When a metaphor states that "A is B," two assertions are being made

simultaneously: first, that A and B are identical and, second, that they are different.

Using examples from the Old Testament, Frye eloquently discusses this contradiction in

his essay "The Koine of Myth," published in Myth and Metaphor; in this essay, he argues

that a metaphor is neither logical nor illogical, but rather that it is "counterlogical" (7-8).

36 This is a term that Chamberlin borrows from Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World, in which Hyde uses it to describe to the Greek god Hermes (If This Is Your Land 146,163). Saint-Cyr 125

Thus, for Frye, freedom is indelibly linked to our ability to conceive of the hypothetical, counterlogical possibilities that lie nascent within all hypothetical verbal structures.

The Mathematics of the Glass Bead Game: c) The Possible Worlds of Recursion

Frye describes the world of metaphor as "infinite and boundless hypothesis" and, a few pages later, characterises poetry as "the imitation of infinite social action and infinite human thought" (Anatomy 120,125). This multiplicity of infinite possibilities forms the basis of all creativity and is thus essential to the development of consciousness itself. This is why Frye characterises our ability to conceive of alternative possibilities, of worlds that do not exist, as the keystone of human freedom. For the poet, "[the] work of imagination presents us with [...] the vision of a decisive act of spiritual freedom, the vision of the recreation of man" (Anatomy 94).

Not only are Knecht's counterfactual autobiographies the remnants of the other possible worlds that Hesse originally wanted to weave into a single, trans-temporal novel, but they also serve to connect Castalia with its fictional predecessor, Per Steppenwolf's

Magic Theatre. Just as Harry Haller learns that his seemingly dual persona is in fact

made up of not one, not two, but a multiplicity of masks, so must each Castalian student

"lernte seine eigene Person als Maske, als vergangliches Kleid einer Entelechie

betrachten" 'learn to regard his own persona as a mask, as the transitory garment of an

entelechy'37 (112). The realisation of this potential multiplicity is, in fact, identified as

My translation. Saint-Cyr 126 life's most important goal in the fictional Latin quotation that precedes the entire novel.38

In the quotation, one Albertus Secundus declares:

.. .nichts entzieht sich der Darstellung durch Worte so sehr und nichts ist doch

notwendiger, den Menschen vor Augen zu stellen, als gewisse Dinge, deren

Existenz weder beweisbar noch wahrscheinlich ist, welche aber eben dadurch, daB

fromme und gewissenhafte Menschen sie gewissermaBen als seiende Dinge

behandeln, dem Sein und der Moglichkeit des Geborenwerdens um einen Schritt

naher gefuhrt werden. (7)

Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things

whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious

and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to

existence and to the possibility of being born. (2)

It is this capacity that allows us to recognise that "aller Schopfung Moglichkeiten" 'all

Creation's possibilities'39 (441) are simultaneously contained within the potential signification of all linguistic structures. In Hesse's world, this potential signification is organised according to recursive principles.

As Hofstadter playfully puts it: "(Stories inside stories, movies inside movies, paintings inside paintings, Russian dolls inside Russian dolls (even parenthetical comments inside parenthetical comments) - these are just a few of the charms of recursion)" (GEB 127). Congruently, not only is Castalia "ein Weltchen in der Welt"

(385) 'a tiny world within the greater' (349), but it is also "ein kleiner Staat fur sich, und

38 Hesse originally wrote this passage in German, then had it translated into Latin by his friend Franz Schall; the name Albertus Secundus is a reference to the Swabian mystic, Albertus Magnus (Mileck, Life and Art 278). 39 My translation. Saint-Cyr 127

[der] Vicus Lusorum ein Stadtchen innerhalb des Staates" (233) 'a small state in itself,

and [the] Vicus Lusorum a miniature state within the state' (213). The social structure of

Hesse's world, however, is not the only example of recursion in the novel, for Das

Glasperlenspiel' s narrative structure is itself made up of recursive figures, nested one

inside the other: Hesse's work contains Knecht's anonymous biographer; the biographer's work contains the mythologisation of Knecht's life; and Knecht's work contains the biographies of his alternate selves who, in turn, recapitulate the pattern of

Knecht's life in microcosmic, allegorical form.

Virtuous and Sinister Spirals

The Anatomy of Criticism's tentative conclusion is based on the idea that

languages create their own universes of meaning which, in turn, represent different ways

of imagining the same universe; however, Frye points out that when we try to model the

unity of this higher-order, meta-linguistic universe, we always seem to fall back on verbal

constructs whose metaphorical and mythical outlines lead us back into the realm of

literature and art (354). As if in reference to Borges' labyrinth of readers, Frye argues

that whenever we use metaphysics, theology, history, or law to unite earth with heaven,

we end up attempting to re-build the Tower of Babel, we "discover that after all we can't

By way of analogy, Jorge Luis Borges' short fiction contains some of the clearest literary examples of recursive paradox in the twentieth-century Western canon. Moreover, he explores this theme from every conceivable perspective. In Borges' fiction, just as multiple authors can produce a labyrinth of recursive intertexts ("Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"), a labyrinth of meaning within a single text ("Pierre Menard, Author of the Quijote"), or an authorless biblio-labyrinth of readers ("The Library of Babel"), so too can a single book by a single author in and of itself produce a labyrinth of possible worlds ("The Garden of Forking Paths"). Like Das Glasperlenspiel. "The Garden of Forking Paths" is made up of recursive figures. According to the premise, the story consists of a work by Borges that contains a transcription of an oral statement given by a Chinese professor of English at a German university about a Chinese spy working in England on behalf of the German Reich. Like Harry Haller in die Magic Theatre and like Knecht in his counter-factual incarnations, the spy in "The Garden of Forking Patiis" glimpses the plurality of his own persona within an artistic, metaphorical space - a novel whose converging paths of possible worlds contain all of his alternate lives and choices. Saint-Cyr 128 quite make it, and that what we have in the meantime is a plurality of languages"

(Anatomy 354). According to Frye, the Tower of Babel is an ironic spiral ascent that leads spiritually and metaphysically downwards; it is an image that he associates with the

"sinister spiral" of the City of Dis, which is an inversion of the temple (or ziggurat) whose virtuous, ascending steps are represented by archetypes such as Jacob's Ladder

(Anatomy 150, 203-204). In Castalia, the sinister spiral path is that taken by Faustian spirits determined to take "the shortest way up the fair mountain" (Inferno 2:120) through a hubristic combination of dilettantism and ambition. As the narrator notes, "Faust selber ist ja der Prototyp des genialen Dilettantismus und seiner Tragik" (108) 'Faust himself, after all, was the prototype of brilliant amateurishness and its consequent tragedy" (97).

In contrast to those with "faustischen Naturen" 'Faustian natures,' true Castalians strive through meditation, education, and enlightenment to experience the "paradiesische

Freiheit" 'paradisiacal freedom' of the virtuous spiral (108, 110). However, Knecht realises that the Faustian trap, the lure of the Tower of Babel, is never very far away from the Castalian dream:

Wir lieben die Wissenschaften, ein jeder die seine, und wissen doch, dafi die

Hingabe an eine Wissenschaft einen Mann nicht unbedingt vor Eigennutz, Laster

und Lacherlichkeit zu schutzen vermag, die Geschichte ist voll von Beispielen,

die Figur des Doktor Faust ist die literarische Popularisierung dieser Gefahr. [...]

Bei uns ist die Meditation, die vielfach gestufte Yoga-Praxis, mit der wir das Tier

in uns und den in jeder Wissenschaft hausenden Diabolus zu bannen suchen.

Nun, ihr wiBt so gut wie ich, daB auch das Glasperlenspiel seinen Diabolus in sich

stecken hat, daB es zur leeren Virtuositat, zum SelbstgenuB kunstlerhafter Saint-Cyr 129

Eitelkeit, zur Streberei, zum Erwerb von Macht iiber andere und damit zum

MiBbrauch dieser Macht fuhren kann. (237-238)

We love the sciences and scholarly disciplines, each his own, and yet we know

that devotion to a discipline does not necessarily preserve a man from selfishness,

vice, and absurdity. History is full of examples of that, and folklore has given us

the figure of Doctor Faust to represent this danger. [...] Among us we use

meditation, the fine gradations of yoga technique, in our efforts to exorcise the

beast within us and the diabolus dwelling in every branch of knowledge. Now

you know as well as I that the Glass Bead Game also has its hidden diabolus, that

it can lead to empty virtuosity, to artistic vanity, to self-advancement, to the

seeking of power over others and then to the abuse of that power. (216-217)

In archetypal terms, the choice faced by brilliant young electi, therefore, is between hubris (Faustian ambition, the Tower of Babel, sinister spirals) and salvation (Mount

Purgatory, Jacob's Ladder, virtuous spirals). In order to make the right choice, however, one must be able to distinguish between the childish and the childlike, a distinction that

Plinio Designori, for instance, fails to make after his departure from Castalia.

Moreover, Castalia itself (as well as the Glass Bead Game) ultimately proves to be more hubristic than divine. Not only does Knecht remind the Board of Educators in his Circular Letter that Castalia arose out of "babylonische Zeiten" 'Babylonian times,' but he also refers to it as a "Prachtbau" 'magnificent edifice' that is "beinahe allzu prachtvollen" 'almost too splendid' (361). Frye's description of fire imagery in the

Anagogic Phase helps to illustrate the apocalyptic nature of the Castalian ideal: Saint-Cyr 130

The identification of the city with fire explains why the city of God in the

Apocalypse is presented as a glowing mass of gold and precious stones, each

stone presumably burning with a hard gem-like flame. [...] The symbolism of

alchemy is apocalyptic symbolism of the same type: the center of nature, the gold

and jewels hidden in the earth, is eventually to be united to its circumference in

the sun, moon, and stars of the heavens; the center of the spiritual world, the soul

of man, is united to its circumference in God. (Anatomy 146, Frye's emphasis)

The glass beads upon which the Game was originally based can be thought of as the

Castalian equivalent of the precious stones that Frye associates with apocalyptic, alchemical imagery. Faust, as an archetypal alchemist, is thus torn between virtuous and sinister spirals, as is Joseph Knecht. Whether Faust's path leads to salvation or damnation, however, depends on which version of the Faust legend one reads. In Hesse's version, the narrator tells us that, throughout his life, Knecht was perpetually seeking what Frye would call the point of epiphany, "the point at which the undisplaced apocalyptic world and the cyclical world of nature come into alignment" (Anatomy 203); each of Knecht's "awakenings" is a step along the path towards this goal. According to

Barthes, all artists are Faustian, in that, they are torn between creation and destruction:

"Faust est encore le heros eponyme de cette race d'artistes: leur savoir est apocalyptique: ils menent de front 1'exploration du faire et la destruction catastrophique du produit"

(211). Archetypically speaking, Knecht is seeking the type of spiral connection between heaven (or the sun) and earth that Frye argues is symbolised by images such as ladders of arrows, ropes pecked in two by mischievous birds, Jack's beanstalk, Rapunzel's hair, Saint-Cyr 131

Jacob's ladder, mountain-top epiphanies such as the Transfiguration, and the mountain vision of the distant Promised Land (see Anatomy 203-204).

Knecht's real point of epiphany, however, comes not at the top of Castalia's highest ivory tower, but on top of the mountain at Belpunt, where his physical death - his literal passage from one world into the next - is marked, just as Frye would say it should be, by the dual archetypes of fire and water: Tito's ritualistic dance to greet the sun and

Knecht's descent into the icy lake. Frye associates the point of epiphany, "the dramatic apocalypse or separation of the divine and the demonic," with the transition from the

Dionysian masque (which in its Jungian aspect comes very close to the image of the

Magic Theatre) to the birth of tragedy, the point at which the demonic revelry of the satyr-play is brought into line with the divinity of the Apollonian (Anatomy 292). The apocalyptic division between the demonic (which is a tragic archetype) and the divine

(which is a comedic archetype) thus parallels the division between the Magic Theatre and

Castalia (or as we shall see in the next chapter, the division between Thomas Mann's

Doktor Faustus and Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel).

Conclusion

Just as there is no such thing as a truly universal language, so does Frye admit the lack of a coherent and systematic comprehension in literary criticism. "What critics now have," he argues, "is a mystery-religion without a gospel, and they are initiates who can communicate, or quarrel, only with one another" (Anatomy 14). It is ironic that this passage should evoke the image of the Order, since it is precisely the successful development of such a universal system that ultimately results in the Castalian mystery- Saint-Cyr 132 religion of the Glass Bead Game, within which initiates communicate only with one another. "If archetypes are communicable symbols, and there is a center of archetypes,"

Frye reasons, "we should expect to find, at that center, a group of universal symbols"

(Anatomy 118). However, by "universal symbols" Frye does not mean that there is an

"archetypal code book," such as the Game language or Game Archives, that has been memorised by all human cultures around the world; rather, he means that the common ground (as Chamberlin would put it) shared by archetypal symbols gives them "a communicable power which is potentially unlimited" (Anatomy 118). It is this power, rather than any specific set or subset of symbols, that Frye considers to be truly universal.

The symbols of the Game language, therefore, resemble not so much Frye's conception of universal archetypes as what he calls "universal ideograms":

[The] ideogrammatic middle ground between two languages, or between two

personal structures of meaning in the same language, must itself be a symbolic

structure, not simply a bilingual dictionary. Hence the ideogram is neither purely

grammatical nor purely logical: it is both at once, and rhetorical as well, for, like

rhetoric, it brings an audience into being, and reinforces the language of

consciousness with that of association. (Anatomy 333-334, Frye's emphasis)

On a fundamental level, the ideogram is a metaphorical identification of two different things, one that associates them to each other while at the same time preserving their respective forms. Thus, while the symbols of the Game language differ from purely hypothetical metaphors (such as those found in poetry), "the mental leap of metaphor away from the simple 'this means that' sign" (Anatomy 334) is present within the Glass

Bead Game's semantic structure. The Game language is not made up of universal Saint-Cyr 133 archetypes, but of universal ideograms which are imbued with the potentially infinite power that dwells in the common ground shared by all cultures and societies. Like

Chinese writing, the Game language collapses two semiotic gestures: borrowing Barthes' terminology, these two gestures can be definied as "le geste qui est au fond de l'ideogramme comme une sorte de trace figurative evaporee, et le geste du peintre, du calligraphe, qui fait mouvoir le pinceau selon son corps" (144).

The ease with which literature seems able to position itself between all of its neighbouring disciplines - its interdisciplinary motility - goes to the heart of Frye's critical agenda. From Frye's perspective, saying that art and science meet at infinity is just another way of saying that art and science meet within literature. However, if we wish to work towards Frye's ideal of an autonomous language of criticism capable of modeling human creativity and cognition, then the non-deterministic appropriation of centripetally recursive forms like twelve-tone music and Godel Numbering may help us to rationalise the irrationalism of the human imagination. Moreover, if such a language is ever developed, like the Glass Bead Game, it may ultimately have to be made up of ideograms. However, only when the study of literature anchors itself in the playfulness of centripetal movement can literary theory hope to develop an autonomous, ideogrammatic language that will allow literature truly to become "the central division of the humanities" (Anatomy 12). Human pattern-making, the act of signifying, oscillates as it spirals through a process of construction and dismemberment, information and entropy, a process in which the fixity of referential meaning is self-reflexively undermined by the unrealised desire to seek the centre. Frye's cultural envelope is ultimately a play-space within which our systems of pattern-making - be they literary, Saint-Cyr 134 musical, pictographic, or mathematical - spiral around an unattainable centre in a gesture that is as paradoxical as it is infinite. The game that Frye would have us play within this play-space, for all intents and purposes, is the Glass Bead Game. Saint-Cyr 135

Chapter Four:

Faustian Dissonances

Introduction

As Theodore Ziolkowski notes in his Foreword to the 1969 edition of Das

Galsperlenspiel (published in the United States under the title Magister Ludi). Thomas

Mann read an advance copy of his friend Hermann Hesse's final novel in 1943, while living in California (v). Mann, who at the time was hard at work on Doktor Faustus, was immediately struck by what Ziolkowski calls the "conspicuous parallels" between Das

Glasperlenspiel and his own novel (v).41 In both works, the life of a gifted genius is chronicled by an admiring narrator whose tone often rings with a subtle irony (although, for Mann's narrator, this irony may not be deliberate). Like Joseph Knecht, Adrian

Leverkuhn begins his life immersed in the arithmetic of counterpoint, a form of musical alchemy he ends up carrying to incandescence by elevating it to a terrifying power never before achieved. Just as I argue in the previous chapter that Hesse's Spiel der Spiele can be implicitly related to the permutations of twelve-tone composition, so does Thomas

Mann explicitly associate Leverkuhn's music with Arnold Schoenberg's Matrix of Row

Forms. Most significantly, however, Knecht and Leverkuhn are both divided Faustian figures.

41 In 1934, Mann wrote to Hesse that everything the latter had told him about the writing of the "self- sufficient dream" that was to become Das Glasperlenspiel left him "with a mixture of envy, curiosity, and concern" (H/M Correspondence 30). Three years later, in an article commemorating Hesse's sixtieth birthday, Mann writes that Hesse is the member of his literary generation to whom he feels closest, even claiming that he could not read the Introduction to Das Glasperlenspiel without feeling as though it was a piece of himself (H/M Correspondence 71). After reading the finished novel, Mann wrote to Hesse in 1945 that one of his feelings was consternation at the "resemblance and kinship between us" (H/M Correspondence 92-93). Of the relationship between Das Glasperlenspiel and his own nascent Doktor Faustus, Mann writes: "Nothing more different can be imagined, yet the similarity is striking - as happens between brothers"; he signs the letter "Thomas von der Trave" (H/M Correspondence 93). Saint-Cyr 136

The origins of the Faust legend are not entirely clear. Many scholars have suggested that there may have been an historical Faust on whom the legend was originally based - namely, one Johannes (or Georg) Faust who lived from circa 1480 to

1540/41 (Smeed 1-2); in the context of the European folkloric tradition, the characterisation of the Faust figure as a scholar, a man of letters and books, was influenced, not only by the name's association with the humanist philosophers, but also by its association with Gutenberg's business partner, Johann Fust, who later pushed

Gutenberg out of the printing business (which may explain why Gassarus' Historiarum et

Chronicorum totius Mundi Epitome credits "Johannes Faustus" with the discovery of printing) (Brough 10-11).42 The historical Faust is, in any case, almost always characterised as a peripatetic scholar (Brough 10), just like Joseph Knecht (or, more overtly, like Knecht's early-Christian counterpart, Josephus Famulus). By the end of the sixteenth century there were several folk tales in circulation throughout Europe with a hero named "Johannes Faust." Fables that were previously told about other magicians began to be told about Faust, leading to an exponential multiplication of the character that introduced myriad variations into the development of the legend. Marlowe's landmark play Doctor Faustus (which itself had a powerful impact on the oral and written folkloric tradition) was primarily based on the legend's portrayal in the Volksbuch. condensed and translated into English in 1592 by P.F. Gent (Ball 9).

These hypotheses are complicated by texts such as the Dictionary of Christian Biography, which alone lists thirty-seven different Fausts, from the fourth century to the middle ages, including bishops, monks, martyrs, heretics, doctors, philosophers, and Roman administrators; as Neil Brough points out, many of these Fausts were granted commemoration days by the Roman Church and would therefore have been known in the pre-Reformation German Church (9). Many fifteenth- and sixteenth-century humanists also took their professional names from figures who lived in this period. As a result, "Faust" became a common family name in Germany; and the latinization of scholarly titles led to variations such as Fust and Faustus. Saint-Cyr 137

By the eighteenth century, Faust had become a stock character. As Peter Werres

notes (1-2), in The Decline of the West Oswald Spengler claims that everything that the

West has contributed to the history of civilisation (from art to morality to science to politics) is Faustian culture; in other words, he claims that Faustian aspiration underlies

all of the creative activities and personalities of post-medieval Western civilisation (see

Spengler 377-428). It can at the very least be claimed that, as Werres puts it, "the figure

of Dr. Faustus is by now generally considered one of the archetypal manifestations of modern Western experience and has, beyond that, come to symbolise humankind's quest

for ever greater knowledge and understanding" (2). The unlocking of science and art's

deepest mysteries, the prize for which Faust sells his soul, has come to represent man's

longing for ultimate knowledge.

The shift in the perception of the Faust figure, from negative to positive, relates to

changing representations of Faust's pact with the devil. The pact, which for Marlowe

was a step on the road to Hell, was for Goethe a wager between God and the Devil,

Romanticized to allow for the possibility of redemption. For the Nazis, Faust's

aspirations represented the cultural, spiritual, and political aspirations of the German

Volk, as well as its promise of salvation. Hitler himself declared that: "Der deutsche

Soldat hat seinen Faust im Rucksack" (qtd. in Werres 2), while Rosenberg called it the

"greatest hymn to human activity" (Race and Race History 147). For Thomas Mann, the

pact is clandestine: it represents the chains that remain hidden until they have become too

strong for us to break on our own. Whether Faust's motivation be a desire for wealth,

knowledge, youth, or musical genius, he is a figure torn between Heaven and Hell, youth

and old age, ice and fire. As a man with a divided soul who grasps at divine secrets, he Saint-Cyr 138 has been used as a metaphor for the human condition by artists and ideologues alike for centuries.

Given Hesse and Mann's concurrent yet independent use of the Faust figure, as well as their parallel use of musical metaphors based on counterpoint and experimental harmonics, Mann's Doktor Faustus may seem like the best and most obvious example of a real Glass Bead Game - or, more specifically, of a Glass Bead Game in the form of a novel. Even the historical and political overtones of the two novels resonate with each other. Knecht and Leverkuhn's compositions are simultaneously demonic and fascistic: as we saw in chapter two, Knecht's service to the Glass Bead Game is demonic in that it represents St. Christopher's penultimate service to Satan, while the Castalian Order's rigidity and elitism can be read as fascistic; congruently, Mann's narrator, Serenus

Zeitblom,43 tells the reader that the last years of Leverkuhn's life (during which he wrote his most demonic composition, The Lamentation of Dr. Faustus) belong to "dem

Heraufsteigen und Umsichgreifen dessen an, was sich dann des Landes bemachtigte und

nun in Blut und Flammen untergeht" (Doktor Faustus 732) 'the ascent and spread of that

usurping power now perishing in blood and flames' (Doctor Faustus 507) - in other

words, to the ascent and spread of Nazism. Indeed, the fact that Magister Knecht's

predecessor, Thomas von der Trave, is a character a clef who stands for Thomas Mann,

suggests that Hesse himself saw his friend and contemporary as a real-life Glass Bead

Game player.

However, as I will demonstrate, Mann's use of Arnold Schoenberg's music as a

metaphor for the problem of genius that lies nascent at the heart of fascism is, at best,

43 Zeitblom's name stands for Zeit Blume, "time flower" or "flower of the times." 44 Unless otherwise indicated, all English quotations of Mann's Doktor Faustus are taken from John E. Woods' 1997 translation (see Works Cited and Consulted). Saint-Cyr 139 problematic and, at worst, intellectually dishonest. This is because reading Leverkuhn's music as a form of Glass Bead Game does not simply involve a comparative analysis of

Doktor Faustus and Das Glasperlenspiel. but a ternary analysis of the complex relationship between the two novels and the musicological discourse of Theodor Adorno.

For, while Leverkuhn's description of his own twelve-tone technique is taken almost verbatim from Schoenberg's theoretical writing,45 its spiritual and moral interpretation is based exclusively on Adorno's highly polemic and, at times, antagonistic portrayal of twelve-tone music. Adorno's hostility towards Schoenberg comes through in Mann's novel whenever Leverkuhn talks of eradicating the composer's freedom or Serenus

Zeitblom expresses his antipathy towards Nazism and the war. Indeed, when Zeitblom remarks that Leverkuhn's twelve-tone sytem "wiirde wohl unvermeidlich eine arge

Verdtirftigung und Stagnation der Musik erzeugen" (298) 'would inevitably result in an awful impoverishment and stagnation of music' (206), he seems merely to be parroting

Adorno's personal dislike of Schoenberg's later serial experimentations.

In Style and Idea, Schoenberg writes that "Thomas Mann's Adrian Leverkiihn does not know the essentials of composing with twelve-tones" because all that he knows

"Ich frage mich," says Leverkuhn, "wozu ich so lange unter Kretzschmar die alten kontrapunktischen Praktken geiibt und soviel Notenpapier mit Umkehrungsfugen, Krebsen und Umkehrungen des Krebses vollgeschrieben habe. Nun also, alldas ware zur sinnreichen Modifizierung des Zwolftonewortes nutzbar zu machen. AuBer als Grundreihe konnte es so Verwendung finden, daB jedes seiner Intervalle durch das in der Gegenrichtung ersetzt wird. Ferner konnte mann die Gestalt mit dem letzten Ton beginnen und mit dem ersten schlieBen lassen, dann auch diese Form wieder in sich umkehren. Da hast du vier Modi, die sich ihrerseits auf alle zwolf verschiedenen Ausgangstone der chromatischen Skala transponieren lassen, sodaB die Reihe also in achtundvierzig verschiedenen Formen fur eine Komposition zur Verfiigung steht" (299) 'I ask myself,' says Leverkuhn, 'why I practiced those old contrapuntal devices for so long under Kretzschmar, filling all that music paper with inverted fugues, crab canons, and inverted crab canons. Well, you see, it can all now be put to use for ingenious modification of the twelve-tone word. Besides building the basic row, a word could be stated with each interval replaced by its inversion. One could, moreover, begin the figure with its final note and end on its first, and then invert it in this form as well. There you have four modes, each of which, moreover, could then be transposed to all twelve different roots of the chromatic scale, so that the sequence is now available to the composition in forty-eight different forms' (206). Saint-Cyr 140

about it "has been told him by Mr. Adorno" (386). This caustic remark is indicative of

the contradictions and tensions that Mann imported into his novel when he transformed

Adorno's personal hostility towards Schoenberg's music into a collective metaphor for

German fascism. Thus, for the literary critic and historian, Doktor Faustus is a fascinating example of how interdisciplinary appropriation can have a profound and often

ambiguous impact on literary analysis. Mann and Adorno's famous collaboration is well documented; however, its intersection with Schoenberg's discourse opens up a whole range of purely interdisciplinary complications that can only be addressed by an analysis based on comparative musicology. When these complications are considered in the

context of the preceding musicological interpretation of Das Glasperlenspiel, the task of

equating Leverkuhn's music (and, by extension, Mann's novel) with the Glass Bead

Game suddenly becomes much more difficult.

Hesse's Faust

Das Glasperlenspiel's Faustian overtones are more nuanced than those of Mann's

Doktor Faustus. In addition to his role as a Faust figure, Knecht eventually takes on

Mephistophelian characteristics when he develops into a trickster god, not unlike

Chamberlin's metaphorical expansion of Lewis Hyde's "god of the hinge" (If This Is

Your Land 146, 163). Opposite Knecht, the trickster god, it is the divided Plinio

Designori who becomes Faust, his post-Castalian career in politics having driven him

into a schizophrenic neurosis that recalls Harry Haller's perpetual state of lycanthropic

exile. Plinio describes his old friend's power as being based on Zauberei (magic) and

Schelmerei (roguishness): "Er war ein viel groBerer Schelm, als seine Leute ahnten, voll Saint-Cyr 141

Spiel, voll Witz, voll Durchtriebenheit, voll SpaB am Zaubern, am Sichverstellen, am iiberraschenden Verschwinden und Auftauchen" (329-330) 'He was an arch-rogue, far more than his own underlings realized, full of playfulness, wit, slyness, delighting in magician's tricks, in guises, in surprising disappearances and appearances' (299).

Moreover, the Glass Bead Game itself is overtly characterised as a branch of magic (28), while the Music Master's role as a Zaubermann (sorcerer) seems to complement Thomas von der Trave's abbreviations for the alchemical significance of the zodiac and his study of alchemy as a secret language (55, 196).

The magic practiced by these sorcerers, however, is not entirely congruent with

Adrian Leverkuhn's demonic compositions. The latter's genius is bent on subjecting an existing tonal language (music) to the constraints of a fascistic system designed to destroy artistic freedom, conquer nature, and mock the divine. The Glass Bead Game, on the other hand, is purely semiotic: it does not determine content, style, tone, or even any

specific set of aesthetic principles. Rather, the Game is designed to put all of human

culture at the disposal of the player, through the isomorphic codification of the Game

language. While the universalizing ambition at work in this process may contain

Faustian resonances (in that, it represents a desire for total knowledge), its moral and

spiritual impact is shaped by the temperment of the individual player. At its most

fundamental level, the Glass Bead Game is no more or less than the centre or soul of

language itself - of the linguistic impulse that underlies the reading of all signs. In

Knecht's poem "Buchstaben" 'Alphabets,' the magic signs of writing become ravens'

footprints in the snow, me world they create merely an ephemeral manifestation of "diese Saint-Cyr 142

Un-Welt, dieser Zaubertand" 'this anti-world, this magic trinket [or bauble]'46 (441). Just as Chamberlin identifies the tracking of animals as a form of semiotics in "Doing Things with Words: Putting Performance on the Page," Knecht's counterfactual autobiography,

"Der Regenmacher," identifies reading with the sniffing of "Tierspur" 'animal spoor'

(460) and the signs of the natural world as the "Vorahnung von Zahl und Schrift,

Bannung des Unendlichen und Tausendgestaltigen ins Einfache, ins System, in den

Begriff' (476) 'foreshadowing of numbers and writing, the reduction of infinitudes and multiplicities to simplicity, to system, to concept' (435). This purely semiotic conception of the Castalian dream is more in keeping with Gassarus' characterisation of Faust as the inventor of printing than it is with either Marlowe or Goethe's Fausts, let alone Mann's.

Despite the hubristic nature of the Glass Bead Game, despite the fact that "es zur leeren Virtuositat, zum SelbstgenuB kunstlerhafter Eitelkeit, zur Streberei, zum Erwerb von Macht iiber andere und damit zum Mifibrauch dieser Macht ftihren kann" (238) 'it can lead to empty virtuosity, to artistic vanity, to self-advancement, to the seeking of power over others and then to the abuse of that power' (217), the true Castalian Faust is the dilettante, the lazy and undisciplined dabbler. This is why every electus' period of free study is preceded by years of meditation exercises and yoga, disciplines that help

minimise the risk that members of the Order will revert to the "ungeziigelten

Dilettantismus" 'untrammeled dilettantism' of twentieth-century academia( 108). For

Thomas Mann and Theodor Adorno, the hidden diabolus of Faust's pact with the Devil

lies in the fascistic alchemy born of Leverkuhn's musical genius, while, for Hermann

Hesse, it dwells in "jeder Wissenschaft" 'every science' (Das Glasperlenspiel 237).

Thus, in Castalia, the Mephistophelian temptation is not so much to unlock the secrets of

46 My translation. Saint-Cyr 143 a forbidden science, but to transform any given branch of knowledge into a pompous symbolic game without fully understanding the concepts behind the symbols. For the

Castalian Faust, pride comes before Heiterkeit, ego before art.

Even though Adrian Leverkiihn dabbles in theology, philosophy, and mathematics before devoting himself to composing, neither his deep knowledge of musicology nor his fervent pursual of his Faustian prize could reasonably be described as dilettantish; rather, he is engaged in what, as we shall see, Michel Tournier might call a malign inversion of the Castalian dream. Leverkiihn's music represents what Frye describes as a "sinister spiral" (Anatomy 150), while the sublime Alchimie of the Glass Bead Game is more in keeping with Dante the Pilgrim's "Sichannahern an den liber alien Bildern und Vielheiten in sich einigen Geist, also an Gott" (Das Glasperlenspiel 39) 'approach to that Mind which beyond all images and multiplicities is one within itself - in other words, to God'

(Magister Ludi 30). Like Dante's final, centripetal pilgrimage in the Paradiso, Glass

Bead Game players struggle in vain to seek "im riesigen Netz der Zusammenhange einen

Mittelpunkt" (464) 'a center in the vast net of associations' (425) - a centre from which all can be known and seen. The Music Master may be a Zaubermann; however, he is

also "ein Erzengel aus dem obersten der Himmel" (55) '[an] archangel from the highest

spheres of heaven' (46) who teaches Knecht the fundamental principles of what is essentially a lingua sacra (118).

The mocking aspect of Leverkiihn's compositions lies in the musical inversion of

Heaven and Hell: the dissonant, most atonal passages represent the divine, while the most

lyrical and sentimental passages stand for the temptations of the demonic (572-574).

Here, again, a superficial similarity with Das Glasperlenspiel seems to arise, in that, Saint-Cyr 144

Knecht identifies war and propaganda as the respective inversions of Castalian life and the Glass Bead Game. Leverkiihn's fascistic inversion of Heaven and Hell would therefore appear to correspond ironically to the moral architecture of Hesse's twenty- fifth-century society. This correspondence, however, relies upon a dubious presumption concerning the morality of harmonics - or, more specifically, the moralistic evaluation of the relationship between assonance and dissonance. For Mann's retelling of the Faust legend is dependant on the simplistic perception of the most tonal intervals (such as those based on triadic harmonies: first/third/fifth) as "good," while more dissonant intervals are condemned as "evil." If this presumption were applied, for instance, to the "gewagte

Chromatik" 'daring chromatics' of Fritz Tegularius' ludic style (Das Glasperlenspiel

145), the reader would be forced to denounce his Games as diabolical, something that is never suggested by either Knecht or his biographer.47 As discussed in the previous chapter, the Castalian Order itself is said to have forsworn the "Kult der Vorherrschaft des Harmonischen" 'cult of the supremacy of harmony' and the "rein sinnlichen

Dynamik im Musizieren" 'purely sensuous dynamics in music' that dominated the

Romantic period after Beethoven (26). In Castalia, the "morality" of music cannot therefore be said to correspond to its degree of assonance or dissonance.

The spirit of Leverkiihn's demonic music is represented in Das Glasperlenspiel; however, it has little to do with Knecht's, Tegularius', or even Thomas von der Trave's

Glass Bead Games. Rather, what Leverkuhn composes in Mann's novel is what Hesse's

narrator would call the "Musik des Untergangs" 'music of decline' (22), that legendary

47 Interestingly, Hesse wrote to Mann in 1947 that Leverkiihn's music reminded him of Tegularius' Glass Bead Games (H/M Correspondence 124), which, by implication, means that Hesse's conception of experimental chromaticism is at least indirectly related to Schoenberg's music. It is the spiritual (or moral) resonanaces of Leverkiihn's work - as opposed to its technical details - that are at odds with the aesthetics of the Glass Bead Game. Saint-Cyr 145

Chinese music whose "verbotenen, teuflischen und dem Himmel entfremdeten Tonarten"

(26-27) 'forbidden, diabolic, [and] heaven-offending keys' (19) herald the decline and fall of the sovereign. In its political dimension, this music belongs to the reign of tyrants such as Giae, Jou Sin, and, by extension, Adolf Hitler; and although we are told that diabolical keys such as the Tsing Shang and the Tsing Tse strive for "neuen und seltsamen Klangwirkungen" 'new and rare tonal effects,' it is the music of decline's style

- variously described as rauschende, aufgeregt, grimmig, sentimental, and traurig

(thunderous, excited, fierce, sentimental, and sad) - that truly sounds the death knell of

"verfallenden Staaten" 'decaying states' (27-28; 19-20). Thus, while the

"Klangwirkungen" 'tonal effects' of Tegularius' Games and the music of decline both contain "gewagte Chromatik" 'daring chomatics,' the hidden diabolus of the latter lies in the decaying society's collective neurosis, of which it is simply an acoustic expression.

Unlike Hesse's portrayal of harmonics, Mann's is informed and coloured by his collaboration with Theodor Adorno. This is why the history of their relationship is so inseperable from the analysis of Mann's use of musical symbolism. Adorno, who was almost thirty years younger than Mann and Schoenberg, idealised the former and was rebellious towards the latter, a polemical attitude that ended up having a profound impact

on the musical-cum-political imagery of Doktor Faustus.

This Is my Mann

In the summer of 1921, when Theodor Adorno was eighteen years old and

Thomas Mann was forty-six, Adorno happened to glimpse the famous novelist walking in Saint-Cyr 146 the town of Kampen. The young musician was instantly star-struck. As he wrote to

Mann over twenty years later:

I followed on behind you for a good way, unnoticed, as you walked, and imagined

what it would be like if you were to turn and speak to me. That you have indeed

truly spoken to me now, after twenty years, is a moment of realized Utopia that is

rarely vouchsafed to any human being. (Theodor W. Adorno and Thomas Mann:

Correspondence. 1943-1955 10; hereinafter ATM Correspondence)

In the spring of 1943, Adorno finally realised his life-long dream when he met Thomas

Mann in California, at the home of philosopher and sociologist Max Horkheimer.48 In

July, Adorno gave him a manuscript copy of his then unpublished Philosophy of Modern

Music, the first part of which deals specifically with the works of Arnold Schoenberg.

After reading the text, Mann immediately read Adorno's article, "Schoenberg and

Progress." It is at this point, while he was working on chapter seven of Doktor Faustus, that he famously wrote of Adorno, "Das ist mein Mann" 'This is my man' - a quote that he later included in his Story of a Novel: The Genesis of Doctor Faustus (Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus 42).

There then occurred a period of exchanges and creative consultations, both in person and through correspondence, that lasted until the novel's completion, although their personal correspondence continued until just two weeks before Thomas Mann's death on August 12th, 1955, at the age of eighty. Adorno's contributions to Doktor

48 Max Horkheimer is regarded as one of the founders of the Frankfurt School. It was most likely he and his wife Maidon who introduced Mann and Adorno to each other, since the earliest clear evidence of personal contact is in a letter that Adorno wrote to his family on March 29*, in which he mentions spending the evening "at Max's with a couple of celebrities including Thomas Mann accompanied by his gracious wife" (qtd. in A/M Correspondence 4). It seems that Adorno still felt a measure of the same awe that he had felt when he chanced upon the novelist in Kampen over twenty years earlier at the age of eighteen. Saint-Cyr 147

Faustus are extensive, and even include detailed descriptions of Leverkuhn's fictional works that he wrote after Mann asked the musicologist how he would compose the music if he were in league with the devil (A/M Correspondence 13-14). Even more influential were the passages and ideas that Mann essentially lifted from the Schoenberg section of the Philosophy of Modern Music, passages that Mann used to describe Leverkuhn's demonic twelve-tone music and to flesh out his dialogue with the Devil in chapter twenty-five. Consider the following suggestion to Mann from his correspondance with

Adorno: "Adrian says: I wanted to compose not a sonata, but a novel. This tendency towards 'prose' finds its most extreme expression in Adrian's most esoteric work, his

String Quartet" (Adorno, A/M Correspondence 122). In the finished novel, this passage becomes:

«Ich habe», sagte Adrian zu mir, «keine Sonate schreiben wollen, sondern einen

Roman. »

Diese Tendenz zur musikalischen «Prosa» kommt auf ihre Hohe in dem

Streichquartett, Leverkiihns esoterischstem Werk vielleicht, das dem

Ensemblestuck auf dem Fufie folgte. (694)

"I did not wish to write a sonata," Adrian said to me, "but a novel."

This tendency toward 'prose' reaches its height in the String Quartet,

perhaps Leverkuhn's most esoteric work, which followed on the heels of the

ensemble piece. (478)

Even through Nicholas Walker's translation of the Adorno/Mann correspondence,

Adorno's hand is clearly discernable in the narrative. Saint-Cyr 148

Even before the start of his collaboration with Mann, Adorno was already cultivating the idea that Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique represents a kind of musical alchemy. In the Philosophy of Modern Music (hereinafter PMM), he writes that

Schoenberg and Webern's later works seek to create an alchemical union of Bach's polyphonic fugal structure and Beethoven's homophonic sonata form (54). Moreover, he argues that Schoenberg's theories result in "[a] system by which music dominates nature"

(PMM 64); this system, in turn, reflects the Faustian longing "to 'grasp' and to place all sounds into an order, and to reduce the magic essence of music to human logic" (PMM

65). Adorno perceives the Matrix of Row Forms - which, in Schoenberg's own writings, is treated merely as a pre-composition tool - as a "number game" that exercises a force which "borders on astrology" and whose excessive rationality "approaches superstition per se in that it is a closed system" (PMM 66). Thus, in a lecture on the elemental in music, a young Adrian Leverkiihn listens to Kretzschmar speak of "die Neigung der

Musik, ins Elementare zuriickzutauchen und sich selbst in ihren Grundanfangen zu bewundern" (102-103) 'music's tendency to plunge back into the elemental and admire itself in its earliest beginnings' (70), an image that also betrays Sigmund Freud's influence on Adorno. It is difficult not to think of Freud's Totem und Tabu when one reads in Adorno that atonality's origins contain aspects of barbarism, that Schoenberg's music is hostile to culture because of its connection to the primitive undercurrent that flows beneath the surface of civilised society; indeed, it was the primitivism of

Schoenberg's music that, according to Adorno, shocked audiences more than its complexity (PMM 40-41). Saint-Cyr 149

Mann wanted to write an allegory about how modernism sells its soul to the Devil in exchange for a progressive wizardry whose genius, in the end, reverts into fascism; therefore, Adorno's branding of Schoenberg's radically modern music as a form of

Faustian and totalitarian mysticism must have leapt off the page as the perfect image for his novel. For Adorno's analysis of twelve-tone music concludes that its ambition is to dominate nature and destroy the composer's freedom. Although at odds with

Schoenberg's own theoretical writings, this conclusion fit perfectly with what Thomas

Mann wanted to say about the problem of genius and the socio-political decline of Nazi

Germany.

Adorno's Totalitarian Interpretation of Schoenberg

Adorno's analysis of twelve-tone music is based on his perception that the Matrix of Row Forms is essentially a deterministic formula that tells the composer what to write.

This is like mistaking the laying out of paints on an artist's palette for the act of painting, an image that Adorno himself employs when he states that twelve-tone technique "can be more correctly compared to the arrangement of colors on a palette than to the actual painting of a picture" (PMM 61). Ironically, however, it is he who is conflating the arrangement of the palette with the act of painting. Rather than treating the matrix as an aide to pre-composition, he treats it as the actual process of composition, and thus arrives at the seemingly logical conclusion that twelve-tone music is not composition at all.

What he either does not realise (or does not acknowledge) is that Schoenberg never intended the matrix to be anything more than a beginner's tool. In fact, he imagined a Saint-Cyr 150 time when it would no longer be necessary and composers would be able to use the twelve-tone method as naturalistically as a language (Beckwith).

When composing, Schoenberg would often force himself to forget all his theories and did not begin until he had rid his soul of them; moreover, he felt it necessary to warn others against an excessive preoccupation with orthodoxy (Court 37). Adorno nevertheless develops the notion that twelve-tone music does not allow for any "free notes" (PMM 62), an idea that Adrian Leverktihn repeats verbatim. In short, Adorno seems to be under the impression that the matrix's permutations and transpositions of the

Prime Row strictly determine the development of the musical idea. Schoenberg's music thus contains "no trace of convention which guarantees any freedom of play"; rather, he perceives the conventions of twelve-tone music as a source of "omnipresent construction" that has a "uniquely determined systematic character" (PMM 41, 60,61).

Schoenberg's technique, he tells us, "enchains music by liberating it. The subject dominates music through the rationality of the system, only in order to succumb to the rational system itself; this constructivist quality, he concludes, "cripples the imagination" by repressing the artist's creativity (PMM 68). What he describes as

Schoenberg's "total organization" is actually, he argues, an attempt to re-establish the sense of unity that music lost when it was liberated from the demands of tonality, an attempt that fails miserably due to its re-enslavement of music (PMM 69). "The truly great moments in late Schoenberg," he declares, "have been attained despite the twelve- tone technique" (PMM 69), not because of it.

Before a 1932 lecture, Anton Webern was asked how free invention is possible when one has to adhere to the order of the Prime Row (Path to the New Music 55). He Saint-Cyr 151 answered that Bach's Art of the Fugue adheres to a single theme (New Music 55), yet no one would call it un-free. In fact, "Fugue No. 24" of the first volume of the Well-

Tempered Clavier begins with a Dux in which all twelve tones appear; this is why

Schoenberg jokingly called Bach the first twelve-tone composer (Style 117, 393).

Furthermore, the method need not be strictly applied. Alban Berg's 1935 Violin

Concerto, for instance, features series that allow for triads, seventh chords, and musical quotes from folk songs and from Bach (Seaton 365). In his Suite for Piano, Schoenberg constructs a Prime Row that is made up of semitones and tri-tones (because they are the least tonal); however, he uses the row to create sounds that are as old as Monteverdi by shifting the piece between one diminished seventh chord and another (Beckwith). "In his tendency to conceal the working-out in the phenomenon itself," Adorno accuses,

"Schoenberg carries an old impulse of all bourgeois music to its logical conclusion"

(PMM 61). The reality is actually the reverse, in that, Schoenberg/oregrownJ^ the working-out of his musical idea. In fact, Schoenberg often experimented first by trial and error, then stated the set that he felt epitomised the musical idea that he was trying to communicate (Beckwith). As he writes in Style and Idea: "One has to follow the basic set; but, nevertheless, one composes as freely as before" (224).

Adorno translates his musicological discourse into the language of politics by labelling Schoenberg as a "totalitarian" composer. The unity of Richard Wagner's

Gesamtkunstwerk, Adorno argues, "is broken up into disparate entities in Schoenberg's compositions" (PMM 45); on a musical level, Adorno associates this dismemberment with Schoenberg's period of "free atonality" and, on a political level, he associates it with the plurality of the Weimar Republic. Quoting from Oswald Spengler's The Decline of Saint-Cyr 152 the West, he then attempts to demonstrate that the domination of the parliamentary process is based on the same ideal as Schoenberg's music (PMM 65-66). Spengler, who dismisses all music after Wagner as "impotence and falsehood" (293), would doubtless have labelled Schoenberg's music "Faustian," along with the rest of twentieth-century arts and sciences.49 It is little wonder that Adrono carried this politicized interpretation of

Schoenberg's music to its ultimate conclusion by associating the development of free atonality into twelve-tone technique with the development of parliamentary fragmentation into fascistic unity. Of course, political domination is only one dimension of Doktor Faustus' musical imagery; however, it can at least be argued that the passages in the novel that openly invite the reader to draw parallels between Adrian Leverkiihn's work and the socio-political development of the Third Reich are clear transpositions of

Adorno's mis-labelling of Schoenberg's music as totalitarian.

All of these Adornian ideas were transplanted directly into Mann's novel, such that Adorno's influence can be recognised in almost all of Doktor Faustus' major themes and images. In a 1945 letter to Adorno, Mann himself discusses "the bold and thievish character of my borrowings" (ATM Correspondence 12). He uses words like

In The Decline of the West. Spengler argues that the ethics of modern science (including dynamics, atomic theory, relativity, physics, and even hypothesis-driven methodology itself) are the ethics of a Faust whose mytho-poetic loneliness and isolation infect his entire society and culture (see 377-428). Significantly, Spengler seems to anticipate Hesse's Glass Bead Game when he claims that the last task of this historical Faustian spirit will be to write "a morphology of the exact sciences, which shall discover how all laws, concepts and theories inwardly hang together as forms and what they have meant as such in the life-course of the Faustian Culture. The re-treatment of theoretical physics, of chemistry, of mathematics as a sum of symbols - this will be the definitive conquest of the mechanical world-aspect by an intuitive, once more religious, world-outlook, a last master-effort of physiognomic to break down even systematic and to absorb it, as expression and symbol, into its own domain. [...] The issue will be a fusion of the form- worlds, which will present on the one hand a system of numbers, functional in nature and reduced to ground-formulae, and on the other a small group of theories, denominators to those numerators, which in the end will be seen to be myths of the springtime under modern veils, reducible therefore [...] to picturable and physiognomically significant characters that are the fundamentals" (425, Spengler's emphasis). In theoretical physics, this elusive ideal is generally referred to as a Grand Unification Theory; in arts and culture, it is the Glass Bead Game. Saint-Cyr 153

"appropriating" and "filched" to describe "the brazen [...] way in which I have raided parts of your writings on the philosophy of music" (A/M Correspondence 12). It is important to note, however, that it is Adorno's work, and not Schoenberg's, that Mann admits to having "filched." It is mis mediating influence that, in the final analysis, prevents Mann's novel from being approached as a true Glass Bead Game.

Schoenberg Strikes Back

Schoenberg's initial reaction to Mann's novel seems to have been the feeling that his music had been stolen. In Febuary of 1948, Schoenberg sent Mann an article from a fictional encyclopaedia for the year 1988 (A/M Correspondence 29). The facetious article, which of course Schoenberg had written himself, presents Thomas Mann as a composer-turned-writer who originally invented twelve-tone music, only to have the credit stolen by a composer named Schoenberg; it is only through the fictional character of Adrian Leverkiihn, the article explains, that the artist is able to re-claim his intellectual property as his own (A/M Correspondence 29). In response, Mann assured the composer that a post-script would be added to the novel; however, when the post-script appeared, rather than distinguishing Leverkiihn's fictional music from real twelve-tone composition, it only served to re-enforce Schoenberg's association with the novel. This may be why, in an open letter to the Saturday Review of Literature (A/M Correspondence

30), Schoenberg seems to transfer his focus from Mann's initial failure to credit him to the Adornian mis-representation of his music that was being popularised by the novel. In his open letter, Schoenberg writes, "[Thomas Mann's] informer [...] Herr Wiesengrund-

Adorno [is] quite capable of providing Herr Mann with a reasonably precise description Saint-Cyr 154 of everything which one layman - the writer - requires in order to convince another layman - the reader - that he really understands what is at issue here" (qtd. in A/M

Correspondence 30-31). Interestingly, however, Thomas Mann's equally public reply made no reference to Adorno's contributions to the novel, and merely continued to defend Doktor Faustus against the charge of plagiarism (A/M Correspondence 31).

Schoenberg was aware that Mann's novel was, quite literally, portraying him as

"the Satan of modern music" (Style 42). Adorno, on the other hand, was aware that his own association with the novel was prompting some critics (such as Hans Mayer) to cast him into the role of Satan, a suggestion that Mann called "absurd in the extreme" (A/M

Correspondence 57). So upon hearing that Mann was working on a book about the genesis of Doktor Fausts, Adorno sent him an enthusiastic letter in which he writes:

Although [the Philosophy of Modern Music! presents [Schoenberg]

unambiguously as the greatest living composer,50 it also argues that this [...]

contribution to music also threatens [...] to revert to something dark and

mythological. [...] Perhaps it will not seem too immodest if I could ask you to lay

greater emphasis upon my intellectual and imaginative contribution to

Leverkiihn's oeuvre and his aesthetic outlook than upon the provision of purely

material information in this connection. It is with the greatest excitement that I

anticipate this ascent to immortality by the back door which your 'Story of a

Novel' will vouchsafe me. (A/M Correspondence 25)

This passage suggests that Adorno strongly desired the reading public to know that the association between Faustian totalitarianism and Schoenbergian twelve-tone music - an

50 This comment seems somewhat unfair, considering that Adorno's portrayal of Schoenberg in the Philosophy of Modern Music is nothing if not amiguous, shifting freely from dignified respect to polemic criticism to open hostility. Saint-Cyr 155 association upon which the architecture of Adrian Leverkiihn's character is largely built - was his idea. Thus, all would know that he was not merely an "informer," as Schoenberg had sarcastically called him.

One can imagine how Adorno must have felt: since the Schoenberg section his

Philosophy of Modern Music was completed in 1941, two years before he and Mann began collaborating, it is clear that the link between mystical, totalitarian imagery and twelve-tone technique had been forged in Adorno's mind and in his unpublished writings long before it was novelised by Thomas Mann (or "versified," as Mann liked to put it); and yet it was Schoenberg's name, not Adorno's, that graced the last page of Doktor

Faustus in all editions published as of 1948.51 Furthermore, it was an association that

Schoenberg did not even desire. Schoenberg could not reconcile himself to what he believed was a fundamental misrepresentation of his work. Like Adorno, he must have realised that the public acknowledgement of the link between Adrian Leverkiihn's music and his own would forevermore establish him in the public's imagination as a demonic, totalitarian composer. Being labelled "totalitarian" by Adorno, in and of itself, might not have proved quite as infuriating to Schoenberg, if it had not been preceded by the publication of Doktor Faustus. After all, Adorno tends to label many artists to whom he has some objection as "totalitarian" - including, for instance, Bertold Brecht. Besides,

"Es scheint nicht iiberflussig, den Leser zu verstandigen, daB die im 22. Kapitel dargestellte Kompositionsart, Zwolfton- oder Reihentechnik genannt, in Wahrheit das geistige Eigentum eines zeitgenossischen Komponisten und Theoretikers, Arnold Schoenbergs, ist und von mir in bestimmtem ideellem Zusammenhang auf eine frei erfundene Musikerpersonlichkeit, den tragischen Helden meines Romans, ubertragen wurde. Uberhaupt sind die musiktheoretischen Teile des Buches in manchen Einzelheiten der Schoenberg'schen Harmonielehre verpflichtet" (1967 edition, 511) 'It does not seem superfluous to inform the reader that the method of composition presented in Chapter XXII, known as the twelve-tone or row technique, is in truth the intellectual property of a contemporary composer and theoretician, Arnold Schoenberg, and that I have transferred it within a certain imaginary context to the person of an entirely fictitious musician, the tragic hero of my novel. And in general, those parts of this book dealing with music theory are indebted in many details to Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony' (535). Saint-Cyr 156 although well-known in academic circles, Adorno's dense, intellectual text, laden with obscure technical jargon, would not have had nearly so wide an audience as a highly anticipated novel by a famous author. To go down in literary and musical history as a totalitarian German artist was not the sort of immortality (to use Adorno's word) that

Schoenberg could ever have desired. Indeed, any literary analysis of Doktor Faustus that relies merely on a superficial treatment of twentieth-century musicology is destined to perpetuate a strictly Adornian interpretation of Schoenberg's legacy.

In chapter thirty-three, Serenus Zeitblom wonders: "Fehlte denn viel, daB [der

Nazis] Lust, das Geistige zu zertreten [...] auch das Werk des Helden dieser Blatter,

Adrian Leverkuhns, zum Opfer gefallen ware? Hatte nicht ihr Sieg und die historische

Vollmacht, diese Welt nach ihrem scheufilichen Gutdiinken einzurichten, sein Werk um

Leben und Unterblichkeit gebracht?" (520-521) 'Would it have taken much for the works of [Adrian Leverkuhn] to have fallen victim to [the Nazis'] lust for trampling under the things of the mind [...]? Would not their victory and its historical mandate to shape the world according to their vile ambition have slain his work and robbed it of immortality?'

(358). One cannot help feeling this passage to be rather disingenuous, seeing as Adrian's music (which is to say, Schoenberg's music) was trampled under and slain by the Nazis during their time in power. Not only was Schoenberg Jewish, but his music was denounced as "degenerate" by the Nazis and, like Mann and Adorno themselves, he exiled himself from Germany and eventually became an American citizen. By using this same music as a metaphor for the very powers that oppressed it, Thomas Mann may have been mounting what felt to be a deeply ironic attack on fascism. However, one can also Saint-Cyr 157 imagine Schoenberg's outrage at seeing his music made to stand for the political and cultural philosophies of those who had persecuted him.

In Schoenberg's own writings on political and social issues, he rails against the usurping of art by the profane, simple-minded, and highly destructive socio-political movement that he felt was consuming his nation. "It has become a habit of late," he writes in Style and Idea, "to qualify aesthetic and artistic subjects in terms borrowed from the jargon of politics" (249). As Schoenberg explains, according to a fascist interpretation, the Prime Row represents the leader or Fiihrer, who dispenses power, assigns a function to every tone, and delegates authority to all the transpositions and permutations in the matrix (Style 250). Most members of the Nazi political and cultural establishment, on the other hand, denounced twelve-tone composition as communist rather than fascist due to the perception that, in the absence of a tonic or dominant, each of the twelve-tones is independent and equal52 (Style 249). In contrast to both of these views, Schoenberg vehemently asserts that his music "has nothing in common with [...] the bolshevik, fascist, nor any other totalitarian brand" (Style 250). It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that the "Nazification" of his legacy is the real reason why Schoenberg objected to Doktor Faustus. This would certainly explain why he was not placated by

Thomas Mann's post-script and was never able to bring himself to participate in a public reconciliation.

Congruently, the first complete production of Leverkiihn's Apocalipsis cumfiguris in Frankfurt is greeted by protests and accusations of "Kultur-Bolschewismus" (592) 'cultural Bolshevism' (409). Saint-Cyr 158

Conclusion

There is a fundamental congruency between Peter Kivy's concept of "music alone" and Northrop Frye's concept of centripetalism. According to Frye's theory of symbolism, referential signs that "point to" the outside world animate language's centrifugal tendencies, while non-mimetic motifs that "point inward" to the centre of a purely hypothetical structure animate language's centripetal tendencies. Even though all meaningful symbolic structures display both of these tendencies, generally speaking art is more inclined to the centripetal:

...the work of art must be its own object: it cannot be ultimately descriptive of

something, and can never be ultimately related to any other system of phenomena,

standards, values, or final causes. All such external relations form part of the

"intentional fallacy." Poetry is a vehicle for morality, truth, and beauty, but the

poet does not aim at these things, but only at inner verbal strength. The poet qua

poet intends only to write a poem, and as a rule it is not the artist, but the ego of

the artist, who turns away from this proper work to go and chase these other

seductive marshlights. (Anatomy 113-114)

This passage brings us back to the Castalian definition of the Faustian impulse; for it is only Faust the dilettante, Knecht tells us, who is seduced by the marshlights of the ego, resulting in an "intentional fallacy" that seeks to reduce art to an external system based on moral, philosophical, or aesthetic ideology. Thus, according to a Frygian interpretation of Das Glasperlenspiel. the Faust figure is one who, due to a lack of innner strength, egotistically indulges in centrifugal games designed to impress or preach. In opposition to this impulse, the true spirit of the Glass Bead Game is not merely Saint-Cyr 159 centripetal, but radically centripetal, as it stands for a movement towards the centre of language itself.

Ironically, Adorno himself unwittingly identifies Schoenberg's music as quintessentially Castalian when he associates twelve-tone composition with what Frye calls centripetal meaning; the association, however, is far from complimentary. "The radically alienated and absolute work of art," Adorno says of Schoenberg's New Music,

"in its blindness, relates tautologically only to itself. Its symbolic nucleus is the realm of art. And thus this work of art becomes hollow" (PMM 46). Schoenberg's compositional intentions, he concludes, are imbedded "in an emptiness which extends into the innermost cells of the work of art" (PMM 67). This conclusion is diametrically opposed to Frye's theory of symbolism. According to Frye, the decline of referentiality or mimesis - in other words, the decline of centrifugal meaning - produces what the poets of the symbolisme movement53 called "pure poetry" (Anatomy 80), while for Adorno it produces works that are "blind," "hollow," and "empty." Just as Adorno criticises

Schoenberg's music for relating "only to itself," so does Frye praise the critic who recognises that "the poetic symbol means primarily itself in relation to the poem"

(Anatomy 80).

Adorno rejects Roland Barthes' idea that a work of art is a closed system (Court

10); therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that he would have dismissed Peter Kivy's concept of "music alone," as well as Frye's entire theory of symbolism, as mystical and totalitarian. According to Adorno, a closed system that refers only to itself cannot distinguish between what is essential and what is coincidental, resulting in an unnatural

53 The poets identified by Frye as most representative of this movement are Mallarme, Rimbaud, ValeYy, Rilke, Pound, and Eliot (Anatomy 80). Saint-Cyr 160 construction that "maintains in all its moments the same distance from a central point. In so doing, the conventions of form, which had once regulated the proximity and distance from a central point, lose their meaning" (PMM 59). For Frye, on the other hand, the absent centre (what Adorno defines as hollowness) is art's most essential characteristic.

Thus, the literary experience is about moving into or towards "the still centre of the order of words" (Anatomy 117), like Dante at the end of the Paradiso. This is precisely why he argues that it is the "presence of incommunicable experience in the centre of criticism" that defines criticism as an art (Anatomy 27-28). Far from impoverishing art, as Adorno claims, centripetal movement that spirals in on an absent centre is what allows the rigidity of the stricdy referential to be subjected to the liberating ambiguity of free-play.

Adorno's discourse is distinctly anti-Castalian; and, while this attitude helps to illustrate the affinity between the Glass Bead Game and twelve-tone composition, it also drives a wedge between Das Glasperlenspiel and Doktor Faustus. If it had not been for

Mann and Adorno's collaboration, who can say what form Leverkuhn's music would have taken? Moreover, if Mann had appropriated twelve-tone composition by going straight to the primary source, as opposed to relying on Adorno's analysis, one can speculate that Doktor Faustus might have come to be regarded as the best example of a real-life Glass Bead Game in all of twentieth-century literature. Unfortunately, however, thanks to Adorno's egotistical attempt to write himself into Mann's novel at

Schoenberg's expense, we will have to look to other authors in order to locate Hesse's true heir.

As Mann wrote to Adorno, "I have always been adept at literary music-making

[...] and I have tried to transfer the musical technique of interweaving motifs to the Saint-Cyr 161 structure of the novel. rDoctor Fausts is] a novel that at times even aspires to become [...] a novel about music itself (A/M Correspondence 12). The literary analysis of Doktor

Faustus is therefore compelled to draw on musicology. From an Adornian perspective,

Thomas Mann's musical imagery functions in perfect counterpoint with his political imagery; from a Schoenbergian perspective, however, his musical imagery becomes highly problematic, throwing his carefully constructed, literary counterpoint into disarray.

Thus, the novel's contradictions are inseparable from those of twentieth-century musicological discourse. In order to understand the interdisciplinary implications of

Doktor Faustus, one must understand the dialectical relationship, not simply between

Mann and Schoenberg, nor even between Mann and Adorno, but between Schoenberg and Adorno, once again proving Northrop Frye's assertion that literature is the central division of the humanities (Anatomy 12). Saint-Cyr 162

Chapter Five;

Michel Tournier, Le Roi des Perles de Verre

Introduction

In Le roi des aulnes - as in Per Steppenwolf - the psychic plurality of the central character functions as a cultural, political, and historical allegory that is as ambiguous as it is mythological. Tournier's central character, Abel Tiffauges, like Harry Haller, is a lycanthropic man-beast trapped in an oscillation between Alpha and Omega. As in the room in the Magic Theatre marked "Wunder der Steppenwolfdressur" 'Marvellous

Taming of the Steppenwolf (Der Steppenwolf 231), the act of carrying or being carried, of dominating or being dominated, becomes an allegorical expression of the political and cultural neuroses ripping apart all of Europe. Like Haller, Tiffauges, the hybrid monster, is then refracted into multiple mythical figures whose voices join together to create a polyphonic synthesis of fiction, history, and myth, the likes of which Hesse would likely have applauded. For when Harry Haller and the Magic Theatre are read as embryonic precursors of Joseph Knecht and the Glass Bead Game, the deep affinity between Hesse's vision and Tournier's is set into striking relief.

In an essay on Das Glasperlenspiel, Tournier wrote that Hesse belongs to "cette extraordinaire generation [...] qui parait n'etre nee au XIXe siecle que pour mieux couvrir de son ombre et de sa lumiere tout le XXe siecle" (Le vol du vampire 274). Hesse's work was a major source of inspiration for Tournier; he even lived in a house that, sixty years previously, had been inhabited by Hesse, claiming that the house's atmosphere had remained imbued with an extraordinary magic (Vol 276). In his 1970 novel Le roi des Saint-Cyr 163 aulnes, for which he was awarded the Prix Goncourt, Tournier succeeds in capturing the spirit of Hesse's final masterpiece. However, in order to read Le roi des aulnes as a Glass

Bead Game, it is necessary to develop and apply the concept of literary counterpoint as suggested in chapter three. Moreover, when the images in Tournier's novel, along with the transpositions of all their canonic permutations, are seen as a decryption matrix or grille de dechiffrement, their structure is not unlike the Matrix of Row Forms developed by Arnold Schoenberg. Thus, by means of what Tiffauges would call a benign inversion,

Tournier succeeds in rescuing Schoenberg from the fascistic/demonic prison in which

Theodor Adorno (via Thomas Mann) had attempted to place him, as discussed in the previous chapter.

In Le roi des aulnes (hereinafter Roi), every major motif, once established, creates a chain-reaction that leads to its recapitulation and permutation within a new context in a subsequent chapter. This contrapuntal structure serves as an organizing principle that allows Tournier to bring a sense of order to the multiple mythological motifs out of which the novel's tapestry has been woven. Claude Levi-Strauss, whose lectures at the

Musee de 1'Homme Tournier attended (Altes 155), likewise uses a musical metaphor to describe the structural function of mythology: "[La] musique remplit un role comparable a celui de la mythologie. Mythe code en sons au lieu de mots, l'oeuvre musicale fournit une grille de dechiffrement, une matrice de rapports qui filtre et organise 1'experience vecue, se substitue a elle et procure 1'illusion bienfaisante que des contradictions peuvent etre surmontees et des difficultes resolues" (L'homme nu 589-590). In Le roi des aulnes,

Tiffauges' biography is likewise organised into a matrice de rapports, a matrix of Saint-Cyr 164 relationships that overtly mythologizes his lived experience as well as the momentous historical events in which he is swept up.

Before attempting to express this matrix of relationships as a form of Glass Bead

Game based on Schoenbergian serial-composition, I will first explore some of the points of contact between Joseph Knecht's biography and that of Abel Tiffauges. Not only are they both Faustian figures, but they also both achieve enlightenment and redemption by transforming themselves into living allegories of St. Christopher. Like his Castalian counterpart, Tiffauges' life seems to be more allegorical than human, more mythological than historical. It is made up of signs and motifs of which the central character seems to be completely aware and with which he plays, like an astrologer casting a horoscope or an alchemist preparing a magical brew.

Semiotic Child's Play

The reader need not go any further than the second entry of Tiffauges' diary - his left-handed Ecrits sinistres - to be told quite explicitly: "Tout est signe" (15). Tournier's three principal ogres - Nestor, Goring, and Tiffauges - struggle to read or interpret these signs just as young eleci struggle with the Game language in their beginner courses.

When Nestor, the Ogre of St. Christopher College, comments on the semiotic function of the schoolyard, his description is evocative of the role played by the Glass Bead Game in

Castalian philosophy and society:

Une cour de recreation, dit-il, c'est un espace clos qui laisse assez de jeu pour

autoriser les jeux. Ce jeu est la page blanche ou les jeux viennent s'inscrire

comme autant de signes qui restent a dechiffrer. Mais la densite de 1'atmosphere Saint-Cyr 165

est inversement proportionnelle a l'espace qui l'enferme. II faudrait voir ce qui se

passerait si les murs se rapprochaient. Alors l'ecriture se resserrerait. En serait-

elle plus lisible? A la limite on assisterait a des phenomenes de condensation.

(76)

At the limit of this principle, the ultimate condensation gives rise to the ultimate symbolic language - what Hesse defines as the Game language. Tiffauges lives in a "monde seme d'hieroglyphes dont je n'ai pas la cle"54 (152) and, like Knecht, he will have to pursue a preordained, spiral path to enlightenment before the images and symbols of his life come together into a coherent pattern of meaning. However, what Tiffauges perhaps does not learn as quickly or easily as Knecht is that what he seeks is not a key at all, but a decryption matrix. It is only after learning about the symbolic language of heraldry from

Count von Kaltenborn in Part V that Tiffauges finally comprehends the polyphonic interconnectedness of the signs around him:

...je comprends mieux maintenant la difference entre la cle qui ne nous livre qu'un

sens particulier de l'essence, et la grille qui en prend totalement possession, et

In Mann's Faustus. the Castalian decoding of hieroglyphs is practised by Jonathan Leverkiihn, Adrian's father, when he attempts to decypher the markings on certain spiral shells and mussels: "Die Charaktere, wie mit dem Pinsel gezogen, gingen gegen den Rand hin in reine Strich-Omamentik uber, hatten aber auf dem groBeren Teil der gewolbten Flache in ihrer sorgfaltigen Kompliziertheit das entschiedenste Ansehen von Verstandigungsmalen. Meiner Erinnerung nach zeigten sie starke Ahnlichkeit mit friih-orientalischen Schriftarten, etwa dem alt-aramaischen Duktus..." (29) 'The characters, as if drawn with a brush, blended into purely decorative lines toward the edge, but over large sections of the curved surface their meticulous complexity gave every appearance of intending to communicate something. As I recall, they displayed a strong resemblance to early Oriental scripts, much like the stroke of Old Aramaic...' (20). As Jonathan tells Adrian and Serenus: "die Natur diese Chiffern, zu denen uns der Schliissel fehlt, der bloBen Zier wegen auf die Schale ihres Geschopfes gemalt haben sollte, redet mir niemand ein. Zier und Bedeutung liefen stets nebeneinander her, auch die alten Schriften dienten dem Schmuck und zugleich der Mitteilung. [...] DaB es eine unzugangliche Mitteilung ist, in diesen Widerspruch sich zu versenken, ist auch GenuB" (30) 'the idea that nature has painted this code, for which we lack the key, purely for ornament's sake on the shell of one of her creatures - no one can convince me of that. Ornament and meaning have always run side by side, and the ancient scripts served simultaneously for decoration and communication. [...] For the message to be inaccessible, and for one to immerse oneself in that contradiction - that also has its pleasure' (20). Saint-Cyr 166

l'offre illuminee a notre intuition. Difference d'ordre phorique, puisque la cle est

portee par son essence - comme la serrure porte sa cle -, tandis que c'est la grille

qui porte son essence, comme les barreaux de fer incandescents portent le corps

du martyr. Reste a comprendre maintenant le passage de la cle a la grille que le

Kommandeur a defini comme l'inversion maligne operant le passage du crucifere

au crucifie. (495-496, Tournier's emphasis)

This passage plays on the multiple meanings of the word grille in French: in addition to

"grid" and "grill," grille can also refer to a process of decoding (as in Levi-Strauss'

"grille de dechiffrement") as well as an interpretation based on ideology (as in "grille de lecture").

It is as an amateur photographer that Tiffauges first begins to manipulate images in the manner or style of a Glass Bead Game player. As if echoing Northrop Frye,

Tiffauges tells us that the artist at play is centrifugal, whereas the photographer is centripetal (168). What Tiffauges means is that the artist exteriorises his own subjective vision of the world, while the photographer interiorises the objective world by trapping it on film, a distinction that Roland Barthes also makes when he claims that in photography

"il n'y a jamais d'art, mais toujours du sens" (17, Barthes' emphasis). As Barthes argues, "l'imposition d'un sens second au message photographique [...] s'elabore aux differents niveaux de production de la photographie [...]: elle est en somme une mise en code de l'analogue photographique..." (14). Thus, like the Glass Bead Game, photography promotes the real to the level of the dream, it transforms a real object into its corresponding myth; the shutter is the narrow door through which Tiffauges' eleci, who are called upon to become gods and "possessed" heroes, enter his interior panmeon (Roi Saint-Cyr 167

169).55 Like the Castalians, Tiffauges uses a finite system capable of infinite expression in order to explore the limitless possibilities of reality. Once translated into the infinite language of his own personal mythology by means of the photographic process, the chaotic and unpredictable world can be brought under control and tamed:

...le nombre fini de mes negatifs est justement equilibre par la possibilite que j'ai

de tirer de chacun d'eux un nombre infini d'images positives. L'infini empirique

ramene d'abord au fini de ma collection redevient un infini possible, mais cette

fois il ne se deploie qu'a travers moi seul. Par la photographie, l'infini sauvage

devient un infini domestique. (177)

Tiffauges seeks to domesticate reality by transforming it into signs that can be played with in complete freedom and safety. This process is conceptually congruent not only with the Glass Bead Game, but also with Frye's definition of centripetal symbolism.

Even when he is forced to leave the safety of his darkroom for the dangers of the battlefield, Tiffauges persists in filtering his experiences through the lens of his private mythology. When he is assigned to a communications unit, he discovers that the principle of codification has followed him: "Des son premier contact avec l'alphabet morse, il ressentit distinctement, et pour la premiere fois depuis de longues annees, le declic interieur qui avait empoisonne son enfance et son adolescence..." (211). The decoding of war, however, proves to be more difficult than he had imagined. Tiffauges' desire to breathe life into the symbols that permeate his world is similar to the one that motivates Joseph Knecht to resign from the post of Magister Ludi. As Father Jacobus teaches Knecht in chapter five of Das Glasperlenspiel, when symbolic structures rise to

55 As stated in the introduction, French quotations are the only ones I am not offering in English translation; however, where they do occur, such as here, all translations of Le roi des aulnes are my own. Saint-Cyr 168 the level of pure abstractions, divorced from the blood and sweat of history, they lose their power and become what Plinio Designori calls "unblutige Spiele" 'bloodless games.' As Tiffauges quickly comes to realise, deprived of flesh and bone,

.. .la guerre n'etait qu'un affrontement de chiffres et de signes, une pure melde

audio-visuelle sans autre risque que des obscurites ou des erreurs d'interpretation.

Personne n'etait mieux prepare apparemment que [Tiffauges] a ces problemes de

reception, de dechiffrement et d'emission. Pourtant ils lui demeuraient etrangers,

car, depourvus de 1'element vivant, chaleureux et sanguin qui etait pour lui

comme la signature de l'etre, ils flottaient dans une sphere abstraite,

contemplative et gratuite. n attendait avec confiance et patience cette union du

signe et de la chair qui etait pour lui la fin derniere des choses, et singulierement

de cette guerre. (215-216)

Similarly, Father Jacobus tells Knecht that the Castalians do not understand the raw bestiality of humanity: all they know is their pretty semiotic Game, while remaining ignorant of and even hostile to politics, current events, and history. Tiffauges enters the turbulent events of World War II much as a Castalian would - "in einer politischen

Unschuld und Ahnungslosigkeit" (193) 'in a state of political innocence and naivete'

(174), with only a pale and rigidly schematic notion of the historical conditions which had led to the war. For both Tiffauges and Knecht, enlightenment can only be achieved when the symbols that guide them have been transformed into flesh, a process that culminates in their re-enactment of the legend of St. Christopher by swimming a child across a body of water. As we shall see, like Alphonse Albuquerque, both Tiffauges and

Knecht drown while performing this ritualistic metamorphosis. Saint-Cyr 169

Just as Plinio Designori accuses the Castalians of being "kiinstlich in einer ewigen

Kindheit Zuriickgehaltene" (315) 'artificially confined to an eternal childhood' (286), so does Tiffauges come to regard war as a game that allows adults to become children.

However, the tragedy, he tells us, "c'est que cette regression est manquee. [...] Le serieux meurtrier de l'adulte a pris la place de la gravite ludique de 1'enfant dont il est le singe, c'est-a-dire l'image inversee" (455-456, Tournier's emphasis). Ludic gravitas, to borrow

Tournier's term, is a distinctly Castalian trait, the one most epitomised by Joseph Knecht.

Moreover, Knecht's Circular Letter clearly identifies war (and its corresponding aesthetic expression, propaganda) as the antithesis of Castalian philosophy, a polar opposition that corresponds to Tiffauges' perspective on the malign inversion of child's play taking place at the napola in Part V. Within the world of Kaltenborn, this relationship is further complicated by the placing of adult toys in the hands of children, a transposition that robs children of the omnipotence of play by means of yet another malign inversion:

...la phorie qui definit l'ideal de la relation entre adulte et enfant s'instaure

monstrueusement entre l'enfant et le jouet adulte. Le jouet n'est plus porte par

1'enfant - traine, pousse, culbute\ roule, comme le veut sa vocation d'objet fictif,

livre aux petites mains destructrices de l'enfant. C'est l'enfant qui est porte par le

jouet - englouti dans le char, enferme dans l'habitacle de 1'avion, prisonnier de la

tourelle pivotante des mitrailleuses couplees. [...] [C'est] le bouleversement de la

phorie par Uinversion maligne. [...] La nouvelle figure qui resulte de cette

conjonction est done une sorte deparaphorie [...]. (456-457, Tournier's emphasis)

In his Circular Letter, Knecht makes an ominous prediction that emphasises the effect of war and propaganda on children: "Es wird alsdann auch ohne Zweifel sofort eine Saint-Cyr 170 kriegerische Ideologic in Schwung kommen und namentlich die Jugend ergreifen, eine

Schlagwort-Weltanschauung..." (363) 'Undoubtedly a bellicose ideology will burgeon.

The rash of propaganda will affect youth in particular' (329). In fact, his description of the Age of Wars (the first half of the twentieth century) seems to describe perfectly the activities of the napola at Kaltenborn: "So wie die Kirchenglocken zum GuB von

Kanonenrohren, wie die noch unreife Schuljugend zum Nachfiillen der dezimierten

Truppen, so sollte der Geist als Kriegsmittel beschlagnahmt und verbraucht werden"

(365) 'Just as the church bells were being melted down for cannon, as hapless schoolboys were drawn on to fill the ranks of the decimated troops, so Mind itself was to be harnessed and consumed as one of the materials of war" (331). Tiffauges' obsession with children and the worlds they inhabit corresponds to Joseph Knecht's vocation to teach only the youngest of pupils. However, the pedagogical experiences of Tournier's character prove to be an inversion of Knecht's career: Knecht is a teacher of children, while Tiffauges is fated to learn from them.

Tiffauges' exotic and exilic journey is marked by a series of apprenticeships and master/disciple relationships which, like Knecht, he will end up simultaneously recapitulating and inverting. Just as Knecht receives his first lessons from the Buddha­ like Music Master, so is Tiffauges' first master an incarnation of Eastern wisdom:

"[Nestor] se posa sur le trone et ressembla aussitot a un sage hindou, a un bouddha meditatif et bienveillant" (95). As a POW, Tiffauges is taken "Ex Oriente Lux" (250) - he is, like so many of Hesse's characters, one of the Journeyers to the East. The land around the Moorhof POW camp is described as "[une] grande fuite vers Test qui devait mener jusqu'en Siberie, et qui l'aspirait comme un gouffre de lumiere pale" (256). Saint-Cyr 171

Throughout the novel, the dark land with which Tiffauges falls in love is referred to not simply as Prussia, but as Oriental Prussia. Like Castalia, this world is an exotic mixture of Arcadian imagery and Eastern mysticism, from Nestor's Buddhist meditations, to roller-skating children who resemble a statue of Terpsichore dancing with a nymph in an

Arcadian setting, to Kaltenborn's Dionysian Christmas rituals, to Raufeisen's nostalgia for "la grande et pure foret allemande avec ses sources et ses nymphes" (95, 171, 411,

418).

Not only is Tiffauges' Oriental Prussia an exotic land, but it is also an overtly semiotic land, composed of black signs on a white page. When Tiffauges is allowed to climb to the top of a guard tower in the POW camp, he looks out upon fields of white rye cut by sombre pines, steel-black pools encircled by clear sand, charcoal bogs sprinkled with silver tree trunks, swamps reflecting the milky clouds and surrounded by the dark fleece of the alders, fields of black wheat alternating with white flax - '"Un pays noir et blanc,' pensa Tiffauges. 'Peu de gris, peu de couleurs, une page blanche couverte de signes noirs'" (262). A short time later, outside his cabin in the woods, Tiffauges follows the tracks of animals in the snow as if he were reading "[une] delicate stenographic sur la grande page blanche" (278), a description that recalls the semiotic tracking of animals in both Knecht's poem "Buchstaben" and his counter-factual autobiography "Der

Regenmacher" (Das Glasperlenspiel 441, 460, 476), as discussed in the previous chapter.

Like Knecht, Tiffauges' task is to read the text written on the pages of the world around him, to decode its deeper allegorical meaning:

...son 'ceil fatidique' [...] etait la mieux appropriee a la lecture des lignes du

destin. [...] II savait maintenant ce qu'il etait venu chercher si loin vers le nord-est: Saint-Cyr 172

sous la lumiere hyperboreenne froide et penetrante tous les symboles brillaient

d'un eclat inegale. [...] [L]'Allemagne continentale [...] etait le pays du dessin

appuye, simplifie, stylise, facilement lu et retenu. [...] [Pour] Tiffauges dont le ciel

cloute d'allegories et d'hieroglyphes retentissait sans cesse de voix indistinctes et

de cris enigmatiques, FAllemagne se devoilait comme une terre promise, comme

lepays des essences pures. [...] Et voici qu'il avait la revelation que la Prusse-

Orientale tout entiere etait une constellation d'allegories, et qu'il lui appartenait

de se glisser en chacune d'elles, non seulement comme une cle dans une serrure,

mais comme une flamme dans un lampion. Car il n'avait pas seulement vocation

de dechiffrer les essences, mais aussi de les exalter, de porter toutes leurs vertus a

incandescence. II allait livrer cette terre a une interpretation tiffaugeenne, et en

meme temps, il l'eleverait a une puissance superieure, encore jamais atteinte.

(279-283, Tournier's emphasis)

At the napola, under the tutelage of Count von Kaltenborn, Tiffauges learns that the black and white of the Prussian landscape are also reflected in its national colours, which allude to the black-and-white coats of the Teutonic Knights (402). The Count then stresses that,

"au noir et au blanc des Teutoniques, il ne faut pas manquer d'ajouter le rouge des Porte-

Glaive.56 n symbolise tout ce qu'il y a de vivant dans ces sables et ces tourbieres dont vous parliez" (403). It is as if Count Kaltenborn is reminding Tiffauges that the black and white of his semiotic landscape is nothing if it is not imbued with and animated by

56 Established in 1204 by Albert I of Livonia, "l'Ordre du Christ, sous le nom d'Ordre des Chevaliers- Porte-Glaive ou Ensiferes, parce qu'ils portaient sur leurs manteaux blancs deux glaives de gueules en forme de croix de Saint-Andre, la pointe en bas," were an order of warrior monks who merged into the Order of the Teutonic Knights in 1237, following a defeat at the hands of the Lithuanians the year before (de Salles 14, 31). Count von Kaltenborn, whose family is descended from this order, seems to hold a Romantic view of the Porte-Glaive as young, novice monks - in other words, as children. Saint-Cyr 173 the young blood of children. Although not quite as literally, this is the same lesson that

Knecht learns and attempts to pass on before his death. After having served the highest master he could find, the Glass Bead Game, after exalting it and carrying all of its virtues to incandescence, after elevating it to a superior power never before achieved, Knecht discovers that there is no task more sacred than swimming a child across the water.

As Joseph Knecht rises in the Castalian Order, he must contend with the paradox that every step up the ladder results in less freedom. As the Music Master reminds him,

Castalians serve in freedom, while people on the outside are free to be slaves. For Abel

Tiffauges, a similar paradox obtains; however, the pattern is inverted: the deeper

Tiffauges penetrates into captivity, the greater his freedom. The process begins when he disembarks from the train as a newly captured soldier and sees the Prussian landscape for the first time: "Parce que sa vue s'etendait a l'infini de tous cotes, galopant parmi les brumes, planant au-dessus des bruyeres et des miroirs d'eau, il eut un sentiment de liberie qu'il n'avait jamais connu auparavant. II sourit malgre lui de ce paradoxe..." (253).

Then, once he and his fellow prisoners have arrived at the POW camp at Moorhof,

Tiffauges finds himself once again struck by the same feeling of freedom that he experienced getting off the train: "Tout semblait avoir ete fait pour que la plaine fut sans cesse immediatement presente aux habitants du camp. [...] Les clotures de fils de fer etaient des murs transparents. Les miradors semblaient inviter a fouiller 1'horizon" (255).

Tiffauges immediately falls in love with his new home-in-exile. He feels a deep connection to the land and knows full well that "il en etait prisonnier, et il se devait de la servir de tout son corps, de tout son cceur" (263). However, he also has an intuition that this period of service is only probationary and that, soon, he will become the master Saint-Cyr 174 rather than the slave. Like Knecht, he is fated to rise to a terrifying pinnacle of mastery before exiling himself once again. Even while still an inmate at the POW camp,

Tiffauges discovers that he can easily slip away without being missed. It is during one of these excursions that Tiffauges comes across the cabin in the woods that so reminds him of Nestor's favourite book, Le piege d'or. When Tiffauges spends the night in his cabin and returns to camp the next day only to find that his absence went unnoticed, he sees it as "une nouvelle etape dans l'etrange evolution liberatrice qui se poursuivait au sein de sa captivite" (271).

This liberating evolution is a path marked by incandescent signs that will lead

Tiffauges out of captivity and into the service of ever higher masters; and, like Knecht's allegorical journey, it is a spiral path that takes him through a series of awakenings. Long before setting foot in Germany, Tiffauges recognises that his choice of profession

(mechanic) is both a recapitulation and transcendence of his father's: "Le hassard avait ainsi voulu que j'exerce un mdtier analogue a celui de mon pere, mais a un niveau plus eleve [...]" (108). He is quick to warn us, however, that this elevation should not be seen as evidence of social ambition. In reality, he goes through life like a sleepwalker, "revant sans cesse d'un eveil, d'une rupture qui me liberera et me permettra d'etre enfin moi- meme" (108). When Tiffauges is exiled, first from civilian society and then from France itself, he sees his path as linear: "Personne n'avait autant que lui la conscience de son destin, un destin rectiligne, imperturbable, inflexible qui ordonnait a ses seules fins les evenements mondiaux les plus grandioses" (249). Then later, at Kaltenborn, he becomes

immersed in a circular world, in which the turn of the seasons marks the rituals and pageantry that animate the historicized mythology of Nazism itself: Saint-Cyr 175

Visiblement, la trajectoire du temps est ici - non pas rectiligne - mais circulaire.

[...] C'est done le regne sans partage de l'eternel retour - en quoi l'image du

carrousel est pleinement justifiee. L'hitlerisme est refractaire a toute idee de

progres, de creation, de decouverte et d'invention d'un avenir vierge. Sa vertu

n'est pas de rupture, mais de restauration: culte de la race, des ancetres, du sang,

des morts, de la terre [...]. (413-414, Tournier's emphasis)

As in Das Glasperlenspiel. the amalgamation of these two movements - the linear and the circular - results in a spiral progression. Even before becoming fully conscious of the eternal circularity of life at Kaltenborn, Tiffauges senses intuitively that the oracular value of every single stage through which he is progressing linearly "ne serait pleinement attestee que si, tout en etant depassee et transcendee, elle se trouvait en m§me temps conservee dans 1'etape suivante" (408), a definition of spiral movement that exactly corresponds to Roland Barthes' (see chapter two, Introduction).57 As is the case with all of Tiffauges' semiotic insights, this intuition does not come into focus until the signs have become flesh-and-blood. For it is only when he notices the similarity between the hair patterns of the children at Kaltenborn and that of the deer at Rominten that Tiffauges finally recognises the importance of the spiral: "Observant la tonte des enfants, j'ai remarque que [...] les cheveux semblent disposes en spiral a partir d'un centre situe exactement au sommet de 1'occiput. [...] Je me suis souvenu alors du pelage du cerf [...].

According to Barthes' discourse on the semiotic significance of the spiral, the writing of Tiffauges' left- handed diary can itself be associated with the cursive movement of a retour dans la difference: "[la spirale] a besoin, pour exister, d'un mouvement, qui est celui de la main: dans l'ecriture, la syntax, fondatrice de tout sens, est essentiellement la pesee du muscle [...]; sans ce poids qui avance [...], le trait pictural (ou graphique) reste bete [...]. Le sens corporel de la spiral repetee, c'est que la main ne quitte jamais le papier jusqu'a ce qu'une certaine jouissance soit extenuee..." (199-200, Barthes' emphasis). Saint-Cyr 176

II y avait ce meme phenomene de tourbillons, soit centrifuges, soit centripetes [...]"

(500).

Whether understood in terms of Frye's centripetalism (an anti-mimetic movement towards the centre of meaning) or in terms of Schoenberg's centrifugalism (an outward movement from a central pattern to its permutations), counterpoint is intimately related to the geometrical shape of the spiral. As discussed previously, twelve-tone composition employs the same canonic permutations as the fugue of the High Baroque. It is for this reason that both Das Glasperlenspiel and Le roi des aulnes, when approached as examples of literary counterpoint, can also be read as serial compositions more evocative of early twentieth-century post-tonality than of Bach's divine clockwork, as Tournier suggests in Le vent paraclet.

Le roi des aulnes as Twentieth-Century Counterpoint

By Tournier's own admission, Le roi des aulnes is patterned after the fugue. He writes that, for the novelist, "[la musique] peut constituer un modele et devenir la cible d'une ambition infiniment lointaine, mais peut-Stre pas inaccessible" (Petites proses 227).

Although Tournier himself never mastered an instrument, most of his immediate family, including his father, sister, and two brothers, were musicians and worked in the music industry (Petites proses 225). This family history, as well as his life-long love of music as a listener, prompted him to write that music "est partie integrante de ma vie. Elle s'incorpore d'une facon ou d'une autre a tout ce que je suis, pense, ecris" (Petites proses

225). Like Frye, Tournier recognises that one of the principle functions of the musical dynamic is to create a hunger in the listener, an anticipation of and burning need for what Saint-Cyr 177 is to come; this is how music creates a continuous narrative progression in which "tout decoule necessairement de ce qui precede" (Petites proses 228). If, in music, there is a deus, claimed Tournier, then it is in machina (Petites proses 228).

Tournier takes as his model Bach's The Art of the Fugue, which he calls the richest, most rigorous, and most touching musical work ever conceived by a human mind

(Le vent paraclet 128). Le roi des aulnes is made up of interrelated yet distinct motifs that are recapitulated and recombined over the course of the novel. Thus, a motif introduced in the first section of the novel may resurface in subsequent sections, creating a series of modulations and variations that cycle back to the tonic by the end. Tiffauges' hunt for photographs of children in Part I is reflected in his hunt for pigeons in Part II, his hunt for deer in Part IV, and his hunt for real children in Part V. Characters are also reincarnated according to this fugal progression: Nestor (the Ogre of St. Christopher

College) becomes Goring (the Ogre of Rominten) who becomes Hitler (the Ogre of

Rastenburg) who becomes Tiffauges (the Ogre of Kaltenborn) who recapitulates the tonic by becoming an allegory of St. Christopher. The impaling of Tiffauges' three favourite children at Kaltenborn corresponds to the skewering of his three favourite carrier pigeons in Part II (the two red pigeons correspond to the twins, Hai'o and Haro, and the white to

Lothar). Ephraim corresponds to the tiny black pigeon that he nurses back to health. As

Tournier explained, "[c]haque ligne [...] appelle imperativement d'autres lignes qui viendront plus tard, parfois a la fin de la derniere page du recit" (Petites proses 228).

Altes argues that myth itself, like the fugue, is structured according to a "jeu combinatoire" (155) made up of variations on a theme. It is a pattern to which Tiffauges Saint-Cyr 178 seems to be particularly sensitive; upon finding out that Martine has three sisters, he declares:

Comme je voudrais connaitre ces autres versions de Martine - a quatre ans, a neuf

ans, a seize ans - comme un theme musical repris par des instruments et a des

octaves differents! Je retrouve la mon etrange incapacite a m'enfermer dans une

individualite, mon irrepressible inclination a rechercher, a partir d'une formule

unique, des variations, une repetition sans monotonie. (182-183)

What kind of sound, however, does Tournier's contrapuntal music make? One way of answering this question is to examine more closely the novel's auditory descriptions - or rather, die descriptions of the novel's most prominent soundscapes. The first is described in the adventure novel that so fascinates Nestor and Abel as children, Le piege d'or. In the story, we are told that the savage cry of the wolf is sometimes answered by the music of the heavens, that strange and fantastic harmony which the aurora borealis sounds to announce its rise (63). It is not until years later, as an adult, that

Tiffauges hears this strange and fantastic music once more. One day, as he is passing by a schoolyard,58 he hears a cry that pierces his soul:

C'&ait une note gutturale, d'une purete incomparable, longtemps soutenue,

comme un appel venu du plus profond du corps, puis s'achevant dans une serie de

modulations ensemble joyeuses et pathetiques. Etonnante impression de rigueur

et de plenitude, d'equilibre et de debordement! [...] J'avais encore dans Poreille

ce cri cristal enrichi de toutes les harmoniques de la chair, [...] ce miracle sonore

[...]. (155)

58 The school's name, Sainte-Croix, recalls the St. Andrew's Cross worn by the Porte-Glaive, thus foreshadowing the napola at Kaltenborn. Saint-Cyr 179

Not only does the cry stir a memory in him of St. Christopher College, but it also covers up and erases the sounds of the other children at play. In contrast to this crystalline cry,

Tiffauges describes the more ordinary sounds as "la musique multiple et tonique des jeux et des combats enfantins" (156), thus implying that the harmonics of the cry go beyond the merely tonal. He then sets out to record the sounds of the schoolyard day after day, so he can listen to and study them at home. He characterises these sounds as a vast choir, full of irregular silences and exclamations, organ points and mezza voce reprises, delicate trills and piercing pizzicato; each recording he makes from his parked Hotchkiss is like a symphony that he strives to memorize, the way one might learn the melody of a

Beethoven quartet or an etude by Chopin (156-157).

Tiffauges comes to realise that the crystalline cry he heard on that first day, with its supernatural harmonics of the flesh, is more than the particular manifestation of a vocally gifted child. It is the very essence of childhood in acoustic form. As such, it transcends the ordinary, every-day tonality of the schoolyard. The music that Tiffauges attempts to capture and study is more than atonal or post-tonal - it is meta-tonal; and, in order to appreciate it fully, he knows that he must acquire an ear for this "culture musicale d'un genre nouveau" (157), this New Music. When he finally succeeds in capturing "un grand classique du genre" on his tape recorder, he describes it as a pure instrumental symphony that slides towards dramatic action, in other words, towards the oratorio (164). As Tiffauges takes us through this strange piece of music, movement by movement, its development is eerily evocative of an experimental, post-tonal composition: the. prelude is a triumphant geyser of sound that absorbs all others, a homogeneous chorus that then splinters into a thousand little cries. A sudden organ point Saint-Cyr 180

is followed by another burst of sound; but, this time, the little cries have become words, a

murmuring whose dominant consists of an acoustic anxiety, recapitulated thousands of times and reflected along different facets. The piece climaxes in a single, shouted insult:

"SALAUD!" It then culminates in multiple conversations that dissolve into a great fulmination, full of flashes and whinings. Finally, the ringing of the school bell

annihilates the last strains of the piece, leaving only the pitter-patter of rubber boots on trampled earth (164-165).

It is not until his stay at Rominten that Tiffauges again encounters this strange meta-tonal music. After the hunt one evening, the plaintive sounding of the hunting horns stirs echoes of the savage music of his childhood:

Les cors reprirent alors leur chant brumeux et rauque pour saluer la fin de cette

journee, et Tiffauges, dissimule dans l'ombre du cloitre de bois, cherchait en lui

les souvenirs qu'eveillait cette musique sauvage et plaintive. II se retrouvait dans

le preau de Saint-Christophe a l'ecoute d'une rumeur de mort profonde et

desesperee, puis a Neuilly dans sa vieille Hotchkiss s'acharnant a capter un

certain cri qu'il avait entendu par hasard, qu'il n'avait jamais pu retrouver depuis,

mais qui l'avait perce comme d'un coup de lance. II y avait des harmoniques

dans la sonnerie de ce soir qui avaient une affinite indiscutable avec lui [...]. (325)

The crystalline cry that originally caused Tiffauges to be "cloue sur place" (155) is said

here to have pierced him like a lance, descriptions that both seem to foreshadow the death

of Lothar and the twins in Part VI. Tiffauges anticipates this correspondence himself

when he associates the sounds of Kaltenborn's Jungmannen at play with his surreptitious

tape-recordings and childhood memories from Part I: "Je me laisse bercer par cette Saint-Cyr 181 symphonie de cris, d'appels et d'exclamations qui monte vers moi comme un encens sonore, et qui, par-dela mes experiences de Neuilly, me transporte jusqu'au college Saint-

Christophe" (505). It is not until the end of novel, during the attack on the napola in Part

VI, that Tiffauges finally hears the music of his life for the first time in its purest, clearest, and most distilled form. Tying together the howling of the wolf from Le Piege d'or, the crystalline cry of the schoolyard, the skewering of his three prize pigeons, and the hunting and killing of deer, the death-cry of Lothar and the twins being impaled functions as the acoustic expression of Tiffauges' allegorical life.59 Even before he sees what has happened to the three Jungmannen, the sound of the cry heralds the arrival of

Tiffauges' final awakening and transformation in the Astrophore:

C'est alors que le cri s'eleva. Tiffauges le reconnut aussitdt, et il sut qu'il

l'entendait pour la premiere fois dans son absolue purete. Cette longue plainte

gutturale et modulee, pleine d'harmoniques, certains d'une etrange allegresse,

d'autres exhaltant la plus intolerable douleur, elle n'avait cesse de retentir depuis

son enfance souffreteuse dans les couloirs glaces de Saint-Christophe jusqu'au

fond de la foret de Rominten ou elle saluait la mort des grands cerfs. (574-575,

Tournier's emphasis)

Far from the well-ordered tonality of the fugue of the High Baroque, Tournier's counterpoint is full of bizarre harmonics, some strangely light, others exalting the most intolerable pain. The soundscape of Tiffauges' life is dissonant, experimental, and, above all, modern. As for the structure of his life, it too can be characterised as experimental: rather man conforming to the tonality of literary conventions (or the conventions of

59 Thomas Mann's version of this cry is the glissando that Leverkuhn uses to represent humanity's "Urstande [...] Heulens" 'primordial howl' upon the opening of the seventh seal (572; 394), an image that parallels the Apocalyptic overtones of the Russian army's attack on Kaltenborn. Saint-Cyr 182 literary tonality), it is composed of refractions and permutations of a musical idea in which the elements of the idea are related only to each other.

When the images that make up Tiffauges' first three Ecrits sinistres are laid out sequentially, they constitute the Prime Row of Tournier's literary composition. In and of itself, this Prime Row is his musical idea; it contains the pitch-values out of which all of the novel's themes are constructed. This is what makes Schoenberg's Matrix of Row

Forms so conceptually useful when attempting to model Tiffauges' grille de dechiffrement.

Tournier's Prime Row

In a serial composition, the first pitch of the Prime Row (the top left corner of the

Matrix of Row Forms) is referred to as Pitch Zero, or P0. Each subsequent note in the row is then numbered according to its distance from Po. For example, if Pitch Zero is C, and the next two notes in the row are E and G, then the row is [Po, P4, P7] because E and

G are four and seven semitones away from C, respectively. When attempting to apply this kind of notation to a novel, however, the numbering of the Prime Row must be based on a corresponding conception of literary intervals, that is, a conception of literary tones and semitones.

Tournier lays out the Prime Row of Le roi des aulnes in the first three of

Tiffauges' Ecrits sinistres, starting with the sounding of Po in the novel's opening line,

"Tu es un ogre" (13), and concluding with its recapitulation nine pages later: "Tu n'es pas un amant, tu es un ogre" (22). Including the recapitulation, Tournier's Prime Row is made up of six pitch-values, specific images that, when put together, make up the central Saint-Cyr 183 idea of the novel and that, when considered individually, can be seen to run throughout the novel contrapuntally. Admittedly, since the work in question is not actually a piece of music, the numbering of the Prime Row must remain essentially arbitrary.

Nevertheless, for the purposes of clarity and simplicity, I have chosen to express the intervals of Tournier's Prime Row as ascending semitones. Not only does this choice reflect the figurative chromaticism of the novel, but it also parallels Tiffauges and

Knecht's ambition to serve ever higher masters.

Expressed as a single phrase, the Prime Row of Le roi des aulnes can thus be stated as follows: The Ogre (P0), a mechanic named Abel Tiffauges (Pi), sits by the light of the Mobil Gas Pegasus (P2), which casts its light on his ambidextrous hands (P3), with which he will write a story that begins when Rachel (P4) leaves him because he is not a lover, but an Ogre (P5). Rachel's use of the word "ogre" immediately triggers an association in Tiffauges' mind with his childhood friend, Nestor (22); this association, which constitutes the next "moment in time" after the novel's opening line, acts as a catalyst for the first Ogre Variation. Technically, then, Le roi des aulnes is not a twelve- tone composition, but a six-tone composition, in which the sixth pitch is a recapitulation

of the first.

Each figurative pitch-value serves as the basis for a series of transpositions.

When these transpositions are juxtaposed, they form a conceptual matrix that could

potentially function as Tiffauges' elusive grille de dechiffrement. Because this grid does

not exist as such within the novel itself, in order to perceive its structure it is necessary to

isolate and define the fundamental pitches that make up the Prime Row, then follow the

course of their respective transpositions and permutations throughout the novel. Saint-Cyr 184

Po: The Ogre

A stated above, Pitch Zero is established in the novel's opening line: "Tu es un ogre" (13). As soon as this pitch has sounded, Tournier immediately explores some of its overtones. Just as the most closely related overtones of a given fundamental contain all seven notes of the diatonic scale (Webern, Path 13), so do the overtones of the ogre contain the development of Tiffauges' vocation ogresse in microcosm. Stressing the immortality of the ogre as an eternal archetype, Tournier quickly establishes this image as belonging to an Apocalyptic myth in Frye's sense of the term.60 In other words, the image of the ogre runs from Genesis - "Or moi, j'etais la deja [quand] la terre n'etait encore qu'une boule de feu tournoyant dans un ciel d'helium" (13) - to the figurative

Armageddon of Kaltenborn in Part VI, during which Tiffauges' phoric ecstasy carries him into "un ciel noir qu'ebranlait de seconde en seconde la pulsation des canons de

1'Apocalypse" (539). Like the dragon of the apocalypse, the ogre is "the beast that was, and is not, and yet is" (Frye, Anatomy 149).

Tiffauges tells us that, throughout its apocalyptic existence, the ogre has always been the quintessential "other," the ultimate incarnation of "otherness." This role is reflected in the etymology of the word monstre, which can be linked to the French verb montrer, "to show" (or "to point to," as in montrer du doigt). A monster is thus one who is pointed to, "[un] etre exhibe" (Roi 14), someone who does not conform to his or her

society. This overtone will sound again in the image of the hybrid monster (P2) and in

that of the racial and cultural other, embodied in the Prime Row by Tiffauges' lover

60 The "imaginative limit of desire," Frye writes, "is infinite, eternal, and hence apocalyptic," a term he uses to denote "the imaginative conception of the whole of nature [i.e., creation] as the content of an infinite and eternal living body" (Anatomy 119, see also 141-142). Saint-Cyr 185

Rachel (P4). Rachel's natural fertility, however, is a benign inversion of Po's final overtone: the image of sterility. Like mules and six-footed calves, cross-breeds and monsters are not biologically viable. Tournier recapitulates this image again and again, in Tiffauges' compulsion to "adopt" children, in his shrunken genitals, and in the name of the castle which houses the napola.61

Pi: Abel Tiffauges, Garagiste, Place de la Porte-des-Ternes

The last paragraph of Tiffauges' first Ecrit sinistre is separated from the rest of the entry by an ellipsis (15). This break demarcates the transition from P0 (the Ogre) to

Pi (Abel Tiffauges' self-introduction); the ellipsis can therefore be read as the Prime

Row's first interval. In addition to introducing the central character, this paragraph also establishes Tiffauges as a mechanic who runs a garage. Although not specifically mentioned by name yet, the image of St. Christopher is already nascent in Pi, in that he is the patron saint of motorists. The importance of St. Christopher as Tiffauges' alter-ego is thus foreshadowed by his profession. In addition, Nestor's subsequent feminization of

"Abel" into "Mabel"62 (62), transforms Tiffauges in an androgynous figure whose name recalls the Mobil sign (P2).

Tiffauges' first name and surname, taken together, constitute a single "Glass

Bead," an individual point or note that functions as a complex of complexes. The allusion to Cain's brother in the Bible relates to Tiffauges' role as a victim of betrayal and persecution - or, historically, of the nomad's murder at the hands of sedentary populations (Roi 56-57). Ultimately, this role allows Tiffauges to become a

61 "Kaltenborn" can be read as "cold born" or "stillborn." 62 The nick-name Mabel can also be read as "ma belle," which contributes to the pre-adolescent homoerotic overtones of Nestor and Tiffauges' relationship. Saint-Cyr 186 personification of the scapegoat rationale that fuelled the Nazis' Final Solution, the transformation of cultural and racial "otherness" into a form of monstrosity:

H lui restait encore a apprendre que les deux peuples sur lesquels s'acharnaient les

S.S., et dont ils poursuivaient l'extinction, etaient les peuples juif et gitan. Ainsi,

il retrouvait ici poussee a son paroxysme la haine millenaire des races sedentaires

contre les races nomades. Juifs et gitans, peuples errants, fils d'Abel, ces freres

dont il se sentait solidaire par le coeur et par l'ame, tombaient en masse a

Auschwitz sous les coups d'un Cain botte, casque et scientifiquement organise.

La deduction tiffaugeenne des camps de la mort etait achevee. (560)

Tournier overtly links the biblical murder of Abel to the racist discourse of Alfred

Rosenberg by quoting Jehovah's words to Cain: "Maintenant tu seras maudit de la terre qui a ouvert sa bouche pour recevoir de ta main le sang de ton frere" (433). Both

Rosenberg's volkisch "blood and land" propaganda63 and Cain's story suggest to

Tiffauges that "[le] sang vient de la terre, et y retourne. La terre doit 6tre arrosee de sang, elle l'appelle, elle le veut. JJ la benit et la feconde!" (432). Tiffauges, who claims to have Arab and Gypsy blood (25), thus stands for the murder victim whose blood is to fertilise the German soil.

Tiffauges' surname, like his first, also functions as a complex of intertexts. The name of his horse, Barbe-Blue, recalls Charles Perrault's fairy tail of the same name, in which an ogre murders and butchers his young wives. Perrault based the Blue Beard character on the real-life ogre Gilles de Rais, whose castle was actually called Tiffauges

(Pezechkian-Weinberg 22). Tournier thus transforms his protagonist into a character a clef by associating him with both fictional and historical murderers. The nick-names by

63 See Rosenberg, Blut und Ehre: Ein Kampf fur deutsche Wiedereeburt. Saint-Cyr 187 which he is called deepen and complicate his surname even further. As a child, Nestor sometimes calls him "petit Fauges" (60), a diminutive that comes close both to petit faune and petit fauve. At Kaltenborn, the psychopathic raciologue Dr. Otto Blattchen re- christens him "Tiefauge" - in other words, tief (deep) Auge (eye), meaning "l'ceil profond, l'oeil enfonce dans l'orbite"; when he is angry, however, he sometimes makes fun of Tiffauges' myopia by adding an extra consonant to make "Triefauge," meaning

"sick-eye" or "bleary/watery eye" (406-407).64

iV The Hybrid Mythological Animal

Just as Mann associates Leverkuhn with Andersen's Little Mermaid, so does

Tournier associate Tiffauges with various hybrid mythological creatures. Immediately following Tiffauges' self-introduction in Pi, he looks out the window and sees an electric sign for Mobil Gas. Not only does the sign (a red Pegasus on a white field) relate to

Tiffauges' profession as a mechanic, but it also foreshadows the importance of heraldry later in the novel. Most importantly, however, the Mobil Gas Pegasus is what establishes the image of the mythical, hybrid animal. Tiffauges - whose totem animal, as we shall see, is the horse - identifies himself as a Pegasus when he tells us that, after the heavens have rained fire down on the heads of the Cains of the world, "je deploierai les grandes ailes que je tenais cachees sous ma defroque de garagiste..." (58). As Barthes argues in

L'obvie et l'obtus, the image of the monster "e'est essentiellement ce qui transgresse la separation des regnes, mele l'animal et le vegetal, l'animal et l'humain; [...] e'est la metamorphose, qui fait basculer d'un ordre dans un autre; [...] e'est la transmigration [...]

From the German verb triefen (to be dripping wet or watery). Saint-Cyr 188 representant des animaux fantastiques dont le corps etait fait 'd'une mosaique des formes humaines et animales entrelacees...'" (137-138, Barthes' emphasis).

As the prominence of horse imagery in the novel suggests, the two most significant soundings of P2 in Tiffauges' world are the Pegasus and the Centaur. His first encounter with a centaur occurs at St. Christopher College in Part I, in the form of the schoolyard bully Pelsenaire, whose leather belt, made of a saddle strap, and shoes that spark on the pavement give him a distinctly equine aura:

Une bonne part de son prestige tenait a un ceinturon de cuir d'une largeur inouie -

j'ai appris plus tard qu'il avait ete taille dans une sous-ventriere de cheval - qu'il

portait sur son tablier noir et dont boucle d'acier ne comptait pas moins de trois

ardillons. [...] [L]orsqu'il s'avancait entre les groupes, les pouces passe dans son

ceinturon, il faisait sonner d'admirables godillots cloutes qui pouvaient dans les

grandes occasions arracher des gerbes d'etincelles aux paves de granit de la cour.

(25)

To punish Tiffauges for tattooing "A T pour la vie" instead of "A toi pour la vie" on his thigh,5 Pelsenaire forces Tiffauges to eat grass in the schoolyard, effectively transforming him into a horse like himself. Upon arriving at Rominten in Part rv,

Tiffauges is assigned the job of putting down old and sick horses, a task he quickly comes to regard as a form of figurative suicide: "[II] avait vite detecte l'affinite profonde qui le liait au cheval, animal phorique par excellence, et qui conferait un trait suicidaire a ces tueries" (312). When he is finally given his own horse, Barbe-Blue, he embraces his equine identity, equating his (and, by extension, Nestor's) desire to achieve perfection in

65 Although Tiffauges tries to convince Pelsenaire that "A T" is an accepted abbreviation both of "A toi" and "athee," the older boy comes to believe that it stands for "Abel Tiffauges" (27-28). Saint-Cyr 189 the act of defecation with the image of the centaur: "C'est le sens du Centaure qui nous montre l'homme charnellement fondu dans 1'Ange Anal, la croupe du cavalier ne faisant plus qu'une avec celle de la bete, et moulant dans la joie ses pommes d'or parfumees"

(353, Tournier's emphasis). This is why Tiffauges derives such great joy from riding

Barbe-Blue, "ce frere geant qu'il sentait vivre entre ses cuisses, et qui le haussait au- dessus de la terre et des hommes" (355). At first, caring for Barbe-Blue reminds him of caring for his pigeons; however, he recalls that the pigeons were like his children, while

Barbe-Blue is more like an extension of himself (348). Like Tiffauges, Barbe-Blue is a demi-sang, a half-breed (347); and, together, they form a single, hybrid beast. The uselessness of the hybrid's genitals is evident not only in Nestor, "un enfant monstrueux

[avec] un sexe minuscule" (22, 95), but also in Tiffauges' own "sexe d'enfant impubere," which prompts a doctor at the recruitment office to label him a "microgenitomorphe"

(110). In Part I, Rachel tells him that he has the anatomy of a beast of burden, or rather of "un mulet, puis-qu'on dit que les mulets sont steriles" (114).

Alongside the horse, Tournier places the werewolf, a hybrid mythological creature that recalls Hesse's Per Steppenwolf. It is Nestor who first tells the young

Tiffauges that, one day, the latter's milk teeth will be replaced by wolf's teeth (62).

Nestor seems to realise that Tiffauges is destined to grow up into an incarnation of Bram, the werewolf-like hero of Le piege d'or. Bram is described as a colossal savage, a Metis mix of English, Indian, and Inuit, "l'homme-bete" who runs with wolves (63). Tiffauges' vocation ogresse thus connects him to a fairy-tale tradition such as that recorded by the

Brothers Grimm, in which the ogre most often takes the form of the wolf. Tiffauges' deepest desires, which he is not to fulfil until his tenure at Kaltenborn, reveal the lupine Saint-Cyr 190 ancestry that he shares with Harry Haller, the Wolf of the Steppes: "Lasse de courir les steppes glacees, je reve de vergers clos ou les plus beux fruits s'offriraient d'eux-memes a ma main, je reve de vastes troupeaux dociles et disponibles, enfermes dans des etables tiedes et fumantes ou il ferait bon de dormir avec eux l'hiver..." (185). In other words,

Tiffauges dreams of being the wolf in the fold. As Bouloumie puts it, "l'ogre s'apparente a la nature animale. Ne serait-il pas une sorte de grand carnissier comme le loup, lie comme lui a la foret, solitaire et affame?" (58).

Tiffauges enjoys shining his shoes because he minks of himself as a four-legged animal: "Mes mains aiment les chaussures. C'est en verite qu'elles se consolent mal de n'etre pas des pieds..." (80). As if to act out this fantasy, he even goes to see a veterinarian instead of a regular doctor (193-194), thus imbuing his anthropomorphic fantasies with a sense of medical validation. Eventually, Tiffauges comes to feel uncomfortable in enclosed domestic settings designed for human beings; when visiting the home of a German farmer close to the POW camp, he senses the degree to which the war, his captivity, and his own nature have transformed him into an animal: "Un loup, un ours, fourvoyes dans une chambre a coucher auraient sans doute eprouve cette angoisse"

(279). In his cabin in the woods (which he names "Canada" after the wilderness of Le piege d'or). Tiffauges encounters an enormous stag.66 The description of this gentle beast is clearly evocative both of Tiffauges' physiognomy and his mythological identification with the ogre:

L'elan [...] recula et disparut dans la nuit, silhouette gauche et pesante dont la

disgrace et l'esseulement serraient le cceur. [...] [II] s'agissait d'une bete a demi

66 He later learns from the Oberforstmeister that the stag is named Unhold (monster, fiend), a name that also implies "le sorcier, le diable" (285). Saint-Cyr 191

fabuleuse, qui paraissait sortir des grandes forSts hercyniennes de la prehistoire.

II demeura eveille jusqu'au petit jour, ramene' par cette visite a l'etrange

conviction qu'il avait toujours eue de posseder des origines immemoriales, une

racine en quelque sorte qui plongeait au plus profond de la nuit des temps. (276)

Like Tiffauges, not only is the stag "a la fois imposant et pitoyable," but it is also blind:

Tiffauges remarqua alors que deux taies blanches recouvraient ses petits yeux.

L'elan du Canada etait aveugle. Des lors Tiffauges comprit ce comportement

quemandeur, cette allure gauche, cette lenteur somnambulique, et, a cause de sa

terrible myopie, il se sentit proche du geant tenebreux. (277)

At the end of the novel, when Tiffauges loses his glasses, his total blindness completes his anthropomorphic correspondence to the stag. However, even before this metamorphosis is achieved, Tiffauges' affinity with animals is evident. As soon as he begins to work with the Oberforstmeister in Rominten, he is greeted by the region's diverse animals, almost as if they are paying homage to him (306). It is his orally fixated dominion over the animal kingdom (which, from Tiffauges' point of view, includes human children) that is the source of his ogre-like power.

P3: Inverting Alpha and Omega: Retrogression, Inversion, and Retrograde-Inversion

The next pitch in the Prime Row, P3, sounds when the light from the Mobil Gas sign falls on Tiffauges' hands (15). This is when we learn that he is ambidextrous, that he can easily invert left and right.67 In short, P3 is the principle of inversion (or retrogression) symbolised by Tiffauges' ambidexterity. Moreover, the fact that his Ecrits

In canon form, the inversion of left and right is a retrogression, a distinction that Tiffauges does not always make. Instead, he often refers to both left/right and top/bottom reversals as inversions. Saint-Cyr 192 sinistres are written with his left hand (as their title suggests), identifies Tiffauges' text as an expression of his dark side: ".. .ma main gauche trace fermement des caracteres acheves, d'un graphisme etrange, etranger, un peu grimacant, depourvu de toute ressemblance avec mon ecriture habituelle, celle de ma main droite" (17).

Not only is his left hand "sinister," but is also promulgates the truth (17). This is why, much later in the novel, Tiffauges longs to take over Blattchen's domain "pour le gauchir a sa maniere..." (392). Not surprisingly, Tiffauges believes that children under the age of seven are all left-handed (53), a belief that may spring from his experiences with Nestor, who had the habit of drawing with his left hand while holding Tiffauges' left hand in his right (55). Tiffauges' divided Faustian soul is thus expressed by his two handwritings, "l'une adroite, aimable, sociale, commerciale, refletant le personnage masque que je feins d'etre aux yeux de la societe, 1'autre sinistre, dedormee par toutes les gaucheries du genie, pleine d'eclairs et de cris, habitee en un mot par 1'esprit de Nestor"

(55, Tournier's emphasis), a division that parallels Harry Haller's schizophrenic split into man and wolf. The exile that results from this division is not only social, but linguistic: as Barthes argues in L'obvie et l'obtus, "[la] langue francaise est droitiere: ce qui marche en vacillant, ce qui fait des detours, ce qui est maladroit, embarrasse, elle le nomme gauche, et de ce gauche, notion morale, jugement, condamnation, elle a fait un terme physique, de pure denotation, remplacant abusivement le vieux mot 'senestre'";

Tiffauges' new-found handwriting, "en produisant une ecriture qui semble gauche (ou gauchere)," therefore "derange la morale du corps: morale des plus archaiques, puis- qu'elle assimile l'«anomalie» a une deficience, et la deficience a une faute" (150,

Barthes' emphasis). Saint-Cyr 193

It is Nestor who first tells Tiffauges that, "[il] faudrait reunir d'un trait alpha et omega" (63); then later, he muses that "[il] doit y avoir un signe absolu alpha-omega.

Mais ou le trouver?" (92). Tiffauges spends his entire life looking for this absolute sign, only to transform himself into that which he seeks by swimming Ephrai'm across the bog.

However, his obsession with inverting alpha and omega begins in his childhood; it is the source of his lifelong coprophilia, which functions as an expression of his fascination with the fertilising effect of omegan principles. When Nestor hears the father-superior of

St. Christopher College read a sermon about fifteenth-century Portuguese conquistador

Alphonse Albuquerque, he is so enamoured with the text that he steals it. He then naively attempts to invert this alpha-text, so to speak, by using it as toilet paper.

Naturally, the task of wiping Nestor falls to the young Tiffauges (97). As an adult,

Tiffauges explores this scatalogical inversion of alpha even further by washing his hair in the toilet, an act he calls "shampooing-chiottes" (74-75). He soon discovers, however, that the misuse of Nestor's powers only results in misfortune: when he prays to Nestor to give him a winning lottery ticket, the winning number ends up being the exact reverse of his (105).

This is what Tiffauges comes to regard as a malign inversion, a transformation whereby the abuse of symbols and of their power results in their reversal. The various roles that benign and malign inversions play in Tiffauges' moral universe can all be read as transpositions and variations of P3. Even the ultimate symbols of Good and Evil, God and Satan, are merely ambidextrous inversions of left and right, with a vertical axis of symmetry: Saint-Cyr 194

L'inversion benigne [...] consiste a retablir le sens des valeurs que 1'inversion

maligne a precedemment retourne. Satan, maitre du monde, aide par ses cohortes

de gouvernants, magistrats, prelats, generaux et policiers presente un miroir a la

face de Dieu. Et par son operation, la droite devient gauche, la gauche devient

droite, le bien est appele mal et le mal est appele bien. (123)

Inversion along the horizontal axis - the reversal of top and bottom - is likewise an expression of P3; however, it carries even more significance for Tiffauges because of its phoric nature. "Phoria" ("la phorie") is a term that Tiffauges derives from the Greek phoros (or Latin phorus) meaning "bearer" or "bearing" (132):

Ce poids, je m'en suis charge, et alors: Euphorie! [...] II y a eu qui donne l'idee

de bien, de bonheur, de joie calme et equilibree. Et puis phorie qui derive de

(popsoo, porter. L'euphorique est celui qui se porte lui-mSme avec bonheur, qui se

porte bien. Mais il serait encore plus litteral de dire qu'il porte simplement avec

bonheur. [...] [C]ette idee fondamentale de portage, de phorie, elle se trouve aussi

dans le nom meme de Christophe, le geant Porte-Christ, de m6me qu'elle etait

illustree par la legende d'Albuquerque, de meme encore qu'elle s'incarne a

nouveau dans ces automobiles auxquelles je consacre en renficlant le meilleur de

moi-meme, mais qui n'en sont pas moins dans leur trivialite l'instrument porteur

d'homme, anthropophore, phorique par excellence. (132-133, Tournier's

emphasis)

The transformation of a bearer into one who is born (or vice versa) is the most powerful kind of inversion in Tiffauges' world and, when it is benign, results in a euphoric ecstasy: Saint-Cyr 195

.. .c'est par un sentiment de legerete, d'allegement, de joie ailee que mon 'extase

phorique' se definit le mieux. Une maniere de levitation provoquee par une

pesanteur aggravee! Etonnant paradoxe! Le mot inversion se presente aussitot

sous ma plume. El y a eu en quelque sorte changement de signer le plus est

devenu moins, et reciproquement. Inversion benigne, benefique, divine [...].

(133, Tournier's emphasis)

At the end of the father-superior's sermon on St. Christopher and Alphonse Albuquerque, he reminds the students of St. Christopher College that they must always think of themselves as carriers of children:

Parce que vous etes tous places ici sous le signe de Chistophe, il faut que

desormais et toute votre vie vous sachiez traverser le mal en vous abritant sous un

manteau d'innocence. Que vous vous appeliez Pierre, Paul ou Jacques, souvenez-

vous toujours que vous vous appelez aussi Portenfant: Pierre Portenfant, Paul

Portenfant, Jacques Portenfant. Et alors lestes de cette charge sacree, vous

traverserez les fleuves et les tempetes, comme aussi bien les flammes du peche.

(89-90)

Tiffauges generalises the redemption of Christopher by associating it with the sacrament of baptism itself: "Je saisis pour la premiere fois le sens tiffaugeen du sacrement du bapteme: un petit manage phorique entre un adulte et un enfant" (174). His immersion in water on the novel's last page, like Knecht's, can therefore be read as a figurative baptism, an image whose malign inversion can be seen in Adrian Leverkiihn's aborted attempt to drown himself following the death of his young nephew Nepomuk. Saint-Cyr 196

Every archetypal carrier in the novel can be read as a recapitulation of

Christopher-Albuquerque. The androgynous Adam who preceded Eve is a child-carrier

(132), as is professor Keil's mummified Germanic Jesus, whom Keil nicknames "Le Roi des Aulnes" (294) after Goethe's poem Erlkonig.6* Atlas, the "uranophore" and

"astrophore" (136), is the classical Greek figure whom Tiffauges suspects early on he must try to emulate by walking on the earth with his head in the stars (136).

Mythologically, then, the phoric figures he encounters throughout his life are variations on the theme of Atlas the Astrophore, their respective young charges transformed into astral recapitulations of the Christ-child. At the Louvre, Tiffauges and his young companion, Etienne, emulate marble statues of archetypal child-carriers. As if to emphasise his protagonist's allegorical role, Tournier casts him in stone, trapping him inside the statue of an icon or a saint. Tiffauges tells Rachel that the depression in his chest was caused by being punched by Nestor's guardian angel: "Un poing plus dur et plus lourd que le marbre" (114). This punch, which Tiffauges christens "Yangelique"

(115), seems to transform him partially into stone, like a Golem:

.. .un certain jour de mon enfance, une baguette magique m'a touche dont l'effet

est de metamorphoser partiellement les 6tre de chair en statues de marbre. Et

depuis, je vais par le monde mi-chair, mi-pierre, c'est-a-dire avec un cceur, une

main droite et un sourire avenants, mais aussi en moi quelque chose de dur,

d'impitoyable et de glace sur quoi se brisera inexorablement tout l'humain qui s'y

heurtera. (127)

68 In Germanic mythology, the Erl-king (Erlkonig) is a giant or goblin who lures children away to the land of death; his name, which literally means "alder-king," is an eighteenth-century mistranslation of the Danish ellerkonge (king of the elves) (Concise Oxford English Dictionary 484). In Goetfie's poem (Selected Poetry 42-45; qtd. in Roi 583-584), a father on horse-back tries in vain to save his young son's soul from being carried off by the Erl-king. Saint-Cyr 197

As if living out this fantasy, Tiffauges and Etienne copy several phoric statues: Herakles

Pedephore ("Hercule Portenfant"), a statue of Heracles carrying his son Telephus on his left arm; VHermes de Praxitele, a statue of Hermes carrying the child Bacchus; a satyr carrying Dionysus, with Etienne in the role of the child-god "[qui] serrait mes joues entre ses cuisses nues et crasseuses"; and, finally, Hector carrying his wounded little brother

Troilus upside down on his back like a sack (142-143). It is no surprise that, upon seeing a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, Tiffauges identifies with the statue of Don

Giovanni's father: "Je sais maintenant ce que sera ma fin: elle sera la victoire definitive de l'homme de pierre qui est en moi sur ce qui me reste de chair et de sang. Elle s'accomplira la nuit ou mon destin ayant pris totalement possession de moi, mon dernier cri, mon dernier soupir viendra mourir sur des levres de pierre" (151).69 Tournier's man of stone can no more escape his phoric destiny than a Golem can disobey the Rabbi who animated it (in this case, Ephrai'm). Both his body and his soul are made for carrying:

Mes mains sont faites pour porter, justement, pour soulever, pour emporter. [...]

Des mains phorique, quoi! Et pas seulement des mains, mais tout un corps, a

commencer par ma taille demesuree, mon dos de porte-faix, ma force

herculeenne, toutes choses aux-quelles repond le corps leger et petit des enfants.

Ma grandeur et leur petitesse, ce sont deux pieces parfaitement ajustees par la

nature. Tout cela preVu, voulu, agence de tout eternite, et done venerable,

adorable. (504)

The figure from classical mythology who best personifies phoric inversion is, as we have seen, the god Atlas, who holds up the sky like a mountain. On his shoulders,

69 Like the Erl-king and Hermes, Mozart's statue is a terrifying phoric figure, in that, it carries off Don Giovanni's soul to the land of the dead. Saint-Cyr 198

Atlas carries the stars and the moon, the constellations and the Milky Way, the nebulae, the comets, suns in fusion (Roi 135). Similarly, when Tiffauges picks up a wounded roller skater, his shoulders "touchent le del" and his head "est environnee d'archanges musiciens qui chante [sa] gloire" (173). Later in the novel, when he first comes upon castle Kaltenborn, he discovers that the base of the tower is being held up by a stone carving of Atlas, a figure he feels has been placed there just for him (361). According to

Tiffauges, the malign inversion of this phoric hero is played out in the ubiquitous misrepresentation of Atlas as a figure who holds up the earth, rather than the sky. When the original image is inverted, he tells us that "[au] lieu de l'infini bleu et or qui le couronnait et le benissait a la fois, on le charge du globe terrestre, bloc de boue opaque qui lui ploie la nuque et lui oblitere la vue" (136). Turning Atlas on his head thus transforms him from an Astrophore (a star-bearer) into a figure whose head is stuck in mud and filth, like Tiffauges administering one of his "shampooing-chiottes."

It is in the darkroom that Tiffauges first begins to play with inversion and retrogression like a Glass Bead Game player. When manipulating negatives, he finds that the most striking reversal is that of black and white:

La richesse des nuances et des details, la profondeur des tons, la luminosite

nocturne qui eclaire 1'image negative, tout cela ne serait rien encore sans

l'etrangete qui nait de l'inversion des valeurs. [...] [C]e perpetuel dementi a nos

habitudes visuelles semblent intoduire dans un monde inverse, mais un monde

d'images et done sans vraie malignite, toujours redressable a volonte, e'est-a-dire

exactement reversible. (175, Tournier's emphasis) Saint-Cyr 199

This inversion of black and white presages the black-and-white aesthetic of Prussia discussed above, an aesthetic Tiffauges associates with typographic signs on a white page. It is a contrast that he sees all around him, as if the natural world were merely a photographic negative: "Inversion spectaculaire du noir au blanc, en accord avec ce paysage sans nuances. Ainsi le nuage de plomb n'etait qu'un sac de plummes! Quel est le cosmologue grec qui a parle de 'la secrete noirceur de la neige'?"70 (410). When developing film in the darkroom, however, "il n'y a pas que la metamorphose du noir et blanc et sa reciproque. II y a aussi la possibility en retournant le negatif dans le porte-vue de mettre la gauche a droite et la droite a gauche" (176). To this retrogressive reversal along the vertical axis can be added a top/bottom inversion along the horizontal axis, like the upside-down image viewed by the photographer just prior to snapping a picture with an old-fashioned camera (176).

According to Tiffauges' view of social conflict, P3 is recapitulated every time one group is persecuted by another. For example, he argues that the persecution of love and sexuality by what he calls the cult of evil gives rise to one of the most classic and murderous of all malign inversions: Puritanism (124-125). Purity in this sense is the malign inversion of innocence - innocence is love of the spirit, smiling acceptance of heavenly and earthly food, ignorance of the infernal dichotomisation of purity and impurity; by contrast, Puritanism is horror of life, hatred of man, the morbid passion of the nobody - he who is saddled by the demon of purity, whether religious, political, or

It was the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras (ca. 500-428 BC) who wrote of the blackness of snow when attempting to illustrate the unity and inseparability of opposites, which the weakness of our senses prevents us from perceiving (Reesor 32). Like Socrates, Anaxagoras was eventually brought to trial in Athens on the charge of impiety and atheism (Frye, Words with Power 32). Saint-Cyr 200 racial, sows ruin and death all around him (125). This social expression of malign inversion, however, is nothing compared to the cult of evil he is to encounter in Germany.

As Tiffauges is exposed to Nazi ideology later in the novel, he comes to suspect that Nazism is the quintessential inversion of all his hungers and aspirations (430). In other words, Nazism is die malign inversion of phoria, whereas its benign inversion is reflected in figures such as Atlas, St. Christopher, and Alphonse Albuquerque. It is

Stefan Raufeisen, the napola's commander, who enacts the literal inversion of phoria, what Tiffauges calls 'Tacte anti-phorique," by ordering Kaltenborn's assembled students to lie down in the courtyard so he can walk on them like a human carpet (549, Tournier's emphasis). In the end, Tiffauges discovers that the ultimate malign inversion of his ideal

Arcadian world is Auschwitz. As he learns from Ephraim, the entire world of Kaltenborn is reflected in the concentration camp, including Tiffauges' cabin in the woods,

"Canada," which at Auschwitz takes the form of the room where all of the possessions of murdered inmates are kept. In Ephraim's tale, Tiffauges recognises a monstrous analogy which he defines as an infernal "contre-semblence" (558, Tournier's emphasis), a

Faustian inversion whose malignancy is woven into the fabric of his life:

Abreuve d'horreur, Tiffauges voyait ainsi s'edifier impitoyablement, a travers les

longues confessions d'Ephrai'm, une Cite infernale qui repondait pierre par pierre

a la Cite phorique dont il avait reve a Kaltenborn. Le Canada, le tissage des

cheveux, les appels, les chiens dobermans, les recherches sur la gemellite et les

densite atmospheriques, et surtout, surtout les fausses salles de douche, toutes ses Saint-Cyr 201

inventions, toutes ses d&ouvertes se refletaient dans l'horrible miroir, inversees et

portees a une incandescence d'enfer.71 (560)

Auschwitz is an omegan city par excellence; it is the Anus Mundi, the anus of the world, where alpha is crushed under the oppressive weight of omega, the grand metropolis of abjection, suffering, and death (Roi 554). Moreover, it is not simply his dream of a phoric Arcadia that Tiffauges sees reflected and inverted in Ephraim's terrible story - it is also himself.

Over the course of his allegorical journey, Tiffauges encounters reflections of himself, or doppelgdngers, some of whom represent malign inversions, while others are benign. Throughout Part I, Tiffauges makes numerous references to a German murderer named Eugene Weidmann (see 151, 155, 164, 184, 185, 190-193), whose trial he is following in the newspapers. Not only do Tiffauges and Weidmann share the same weight and height, birthday, and facility with the left hand, but they also resemble each other physically. As he is told: "Mais, monsieur Tiffauges, c'est qu'il vous ressemble!

Ma parole, on dirait votre frere! Mais c'est vous, monsieur Tiffauges, c'est tout a fait vous!" (190). Weidmann is, in fact, a malign inversion of Tiffauges. Later, in Germany, he encounters yet another twin: a mummified body pulled out of a bog (290-297). This ancient doppelgdnger, its eyes covered with a bandage on which a star has been fixed

(292), foreshadows Tiffauges' death and transformation into the Astrophore at the end of the novel. Just as professor Keil is waxing rhapsodic about the cultural significance of

71 In the context of Frye's discourse, this vision of Hell would be congruent with Dante's, which Frye describes as "a concentration camp with jailers," in contrast to the more Castalian view of Hell found in Milton, which Frye describes as "a tyranny, dictatorship, rule of the elect" (Late Notebooks 316). Tournier's infernal portrayal of Auschwitz as the Anus Mundi thus corresponds to Frye's argument that "the apocalyptic separation of heaven and hell is the ultimate shit: [...] Hell is a place of shit from Dante to Pound" (Late Notebooks 93). In Words with Power. Frye restates this idea a little less colourfully when he argues that excretion "is the metaphorical kernel of the ultimate separation of heaven and hell..." (262). Saint-Cyr 202 the find by quoting Goethe's Erlkonig,72 a worker from the excavation site comes in to tell him that a second, smaller body has been discovered alongside the larger one. Thus, the anthropological discovery signals another inversion: just as the mummified bodies are pulled out of the bog, Tiffauges and Ephraim are fated to sink into it. It is not until quite late in the novel, however, that Tiffauges makes a connection between Goethe's poem and the story of Christopher-Albuquerque (469), in which the legend of St. Christopher carrying the Christ-child across the river is recapitulated in the story of a drowning

Conquistador who achieves redemption by holding a child above the water.

Tiffauges' obsession with his two twins, Weidmann and the mummified bog-man, are but specific manifestations of his fascination with twins in general. As he tells us, la gemellite is a force that, through the capriciousness of nature, delivers to a being "tous les secrets de l'intimite d'un autre Stre en faisant de lui son alter ego" (445, Tournier's emphasis). It is a phenomenon that Tiffauges first sees in the two red pigeons he collects in Part n, and which he encounters again at Kaltenborn, where the red birds are recapitulated as Haro and Hai'o, the red-headed twins. Here, we see that the photographic sounding of P3, in which Tiffauges reverses left and right by flipping the negative, is transposed into living flesh; for Haro and Hai'o are not ordinary twins, but mirror twins:

J'avais note depuis longtemps que si Ton divise un enfant en deux moities selon

un plan vertical passant notamment par 1'arete du nez, la moitie gauche et la

moitie droite, pour semblables qu'elles soient en gros, n'en presentent pas moins

d'innombrables petites divergences. [...] Or voici la merveille qui marquera ce

jour d'une pierre blanche: il est indiscutable que la moitie gauche de Haro

72 "Wer reitet so spat durch Nacht und Wind?/Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind" 'Qui chevauche si tard la nuit et le vent?/C'est le pere avec son enfant' (Goethe, Selected Poetry 42; qtd. in Ro| 295). Saint-Cyr 203

correspond a la moitie droite de Haio, de meme que sa moitie droite reproduit

exactement la moitie gauche de son frere. Ce sont des jumeaux-mirroirs

superposables face a face, et non face a dos comme les autres. J'ai toujours porte

le plus grand interet aux operations d'inversion, de permutation, de superposition,

dont la photographie notamment m'avait fourni une illustration privilegiee, mais

dans le domaine de l'iniaginaire. Voici que je retrouve inscrit en pleine chair

d'enfant ce theme qui n'a cesse de me hanter! (451-452, Tournier's emphasis)

This theme is recapitulated yet again near die end of the novel when Ephrai'm tells

Tiffauges about the infamous Dr. Mengele's fascination with twins (559), a correspondence that further reinforces the portrayal of Auschwitz as the malign inversion of Kaltenborn. In short, a malign inversion occurs every time an omega is placed on top of an alpha, in the dominant position. This is why the inversion of St. Christopher transforms the gentle, phoric ogre into die masochistic "Cain botte" (560), under whose boots the Semitic peoples of Europe are being trampled. Long before Tiffauges learns the truth about his penultimate master,73 the malign inversion of omega manifests itself at

Rominten, in the form of the deer hunt on horse-back.

It is the Oberforstmeister who first tells Tiffauges about the retrogressive inversion of deer antler formations:

...1'Oberforstmeister lui expliqua qu'une blessure quelconque [...] ou une

malformation congenitale d'un testicule se traduit fatalement par quelque

faiblesse ou extravagance du bois du cote oppose. Ainsi, non seulement les bois

des cerfs n'etaient rien d'autre en somme que la floraison libre et triomphale des

testicules, mais, obeissant a 1'inversion qui accompagne classiquement les

73 As discussed in chapter two, St. Christopher's penultimate master was Satan. Saint-Cyr 204

symboles intensement charges de signification, 1'image exaltee qu'ils en

donnaient etait retournee, et comme refletee dans un miroir. (330-331, Tournier's

emphasis)

In Tiffauges' world, the deer, its antlers supported by its powerful neck and shoulders, comes to represent I'Ange Phallophore (331), the Phallus-bearer. As professor Essig explains to Goring and his entourage, "alors que la virilite genitale honteusement tapie au creux le plus bas et le plus recule du corps, tire la bete vers la terre, la ramure, son expression sublimee et erigee en plein ciel, l'enveloppe d'un rayonnement qui en impose mdme a l'ardeur aveugle des plus jeunes" (338). Tiffauges defines Essig's discourse as phallophorique (336) because it characterises antlers as inverted reflections of the phallus. The deer is thus the archetypal alpha animal. By contrast, the inversion of the deer - its corresponding omega - is Tiffauges' own totem animal, the horse. The horse is a photic animal whose powerful haunches and "perfection dans l'acte defecatoire" make of him the ultimate omega: "Tout le cheval est dans sa croupe, certes, et celle-ci fait de lui le Genie de la Defecation, I'Ange Anal, et d'Omega, la cle de son essence" (353). For

Tiffauges, the image of the centaur signifies "rhomme charnellement fondu dans I'Ange

Anal" (353), an identity connected to his coprophilia. The hunting of stags on horseback can therefore be read as:

...la persecution de I'Ange Phallophore par I'Ange Anal, le pourchas et la mise a

mort d'Alpha par Omega. Et Tiffauges s'emerveillait de retrouver une fois de

plus a l'ceuvre l'etonnante inversion qui dans ce jeu meurtrier faisait de la bete

fuyarde et fessue un principe agressif et exterminateur, et dans le roi des forets, a Saint-Cyr 205

la virilite epanouie en buisson capital, une proie forcee, pleurant vainement sa

merci. (353-354)

At this point, however, Tiffauges does not yet perceive the malignancy of this inversion as an expression of the malignancy of Nazism, of which Rominten and Kaltenborn are but idealised, microcosmic manifestations. Even when the hunt for deer in Part IV is transposed into the hunt for children in Part V, Tiffauges still does not recognise that his service to Nazism is progressively inverting him from a phoric ogre (such as Atlas, St.

Christopher, and Alphonse Albuquerque) into a sadistic one (such as Cain, Blue Beard, and Hitler). It is not until he rescues Ephraim and hears his story that Tiffauges finally awakens to the truth: that the next stage in the progression from Rominten to Kaltenborn leads directly to Auschwitz, where the malign inversion of alpha and omega is brought to its ultimate, infernal incarnation.

The concepts of inversion and phoria come together in the figure of St.

Christopher, whose name Tiffauges reads as "Christophore" - the Christ-bearer. "[Le]

Christophore et l'ogre sont," Degn argues, "le resultat d'un clivage de la meme figure, ce qui explique leur signification ambigue" (127). Tiffauges, however, is linked to St.

Christopher by more than just his size and by the fact that Christopher is the patron saint of motorists. Christopher's legend is reflected in Tiffauges' life-long Knechtschaft, his vocation as a phoric servant: his service to the Nazis parallels Christopher's service to

Satan, while Ephraim parallels Christ.

Tiffauges comes to embody St. Christopher by means of a benign inversion that spans his entire life. As a child at St. Christopher College, Tiffauges plays a game with

As we have seen, Joseph Knecht's service to Castalia and the Glass Bead Game also parallels Christopher's service to Satan, just as Tito Designori parallels Christ. Saint-Cyr 206 his friend Nestor and the other boys that consists of climbing up on each other's shoulders and trying to knock each other down. As he carries Tiffauges, Nestor loses his glasses and Tiffauges must guide him like a horse: "Je lui pris les oreilles et tentai de le diriger en tirent du cote ou je voulais qu'il allat, comme on fait le mors d'un cheval" (77).

At the end of the novel, when Tiffauges is escaping from the Russians' attack, he carries

Ephrai'm on his shoulders; but, like Nestor, he loses his thick glasses and must let

Ephrai'm guide him: "Cheval d'Israel, je vais te prendre par les oreilles, et te guider!"

(578). Tiffauges then swims Ephraim across a marsh and, halfway over, feels the child getting heavier: "Et a mesure que ses pied s'enfongaient davantage dans la landeche gorgee d'eau, il sentait l'enfant - si mince, si diaphane pourtant - peser sur lui comme une masse de plomb" (580). In the last line of the novel, as Tiffauges is sinking into the bog, he sees Ephraim turn into a star of David, turning slowly in the night sky. The act of carrying Ephraim signifies Tiffauges' benign inversion by turning him into the

Astrophore (581) - the Star-bearer.

St. Christopher's story represents Tiffauges' redemption, just as it does that of

Alphonse Albuquerque. According to the father-superior at St. Christopher College,

Albuquerque drowned himself by holding a child above the water in an effort to save his own soul. Tiffauges' final service to Ephrai'm constitutes exactly the same gesture: "se mettre sous la protection de l'enfant qu'ils protegeaient en meme temps, se sauver en sauvant, assumer un poids, charger [ses] epaules, mais un poids de lumiere, une charge d'innocence!" (89). The figure Tiffauges embodies (and inverts) over the course of his life is therefore not St. Christopher, but Christopher-Albuquerque, a mythical hybridization of two Christian legends. Saint-Cyr 207

P4: The Maternal Vocation of the Ogre (the Ogress)

The ultimate transformation of Tiffauges into Christopher-Albuquerque, the

Astrophore, signals the culmination of his life-long desire to serve as a child-bearer. As noted above, this maternal desire is symbolised in the Prime Row by the image of the ogress (P4), a figure whose first incarnation is Tiffauges' lover Rachel. In many ways,

Rachel is a female reflection of Tiffauges and thus represents a form of sexual inversion: she is slightly androgynous (18), a quality that gives her an air of hybridism; and, culturally, her exotic "otherness" is represented by her Jewish roots (19), her dark hair and skin (18), and her Mediterranean appearance (32). On a social level, this exoticized conception of the "other" is evocative of the "monstre/montrer" etymology in Po and is picked up again immediately following the sounding of the Prime Row when Tiffauges describes himself as Arab or Gypsy appearance (25).75 Like Harry Haller, Rachel is also associated with lupine imagery, specifically the wolf from Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin (20). Her body, which Tiffauges describes as maternal (32), embodies the ogress' amalgamation of ventre digestif and ventre maternel, a fusion that recalls mythological and folkloric figures such as Cronus and the wolf from the Grimms' "The

Wolf and the Seven Little Kids" - figures, in other words, whose stories symbolise the child being born of the mother, then devoured and re-born of the father.

Tiffauges and Rachel's mutual reflection of ogre's role suggests the question,

"Who is devouring whom?" She accuses him of devouring her flesh, while he thinks of

75 This is the same exoticism possessed by Thomas Mann's Esmeralda in Doktor Faustus. 76 Rachel's association with the stories of Daudet will later be echoed by references to other fairy tales such as those of Perrault, Carroll, and Busch (153), as well as Collodi's Pinocchio. in which Pinocchio's lycanthropic (or, rather, assanthropic) transformation into a donkey relates to Tiffauges' views on puberty (153-154). Saint-Cyr 208 her as having devoured his sexual power, leaving him impotent (21). This dynamic constitutes the basis of Tiffauges' code de la virilite, which he defines as "1'assimilation de l'amour a l'acte alimentaire," a form of figurative cannibalism that he points out is present in many religions, most notably with the Christian Eucharist (22).77 For

Tiffauges, the opposition (and mutual devouring) of the male and the female is also a form of sexual inversion, in that, he interprets sexual power as the opposite or inversion of the sexual act itself - Woman, he tells us, is power, while Man is act (22). According to Tiffauges' musings on the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, primordial Man

(understood as an hermaphroditic being) is created in God's image.78 God then removes

Adam's female sexual part (not a rib, per se, but from his torso - i.e., from his "womb") and fashions it into a separate being. Woman thus has no visible sexual parts because she is herself a sexual part. Children, in turn, are born of her. Tiffauges sees this recursive structure as resembling "ces poupees gigognes emboitees les unes dans les autres" (35).

His belief that the pedagogical separation of boys and girls is evil (158) can thus be traced back to his belief in this original cleaving of God's image into two sexes, a rupture

that the sexual act only temporarily reverses. Even Nestor sees his relationship with

Tiffauges (which at times takes on distinctly sexual overtones) as a form of insemination:

"J'ai plante toutes mes graines dans ce petit corps. 11 faudra que tu cherches un climat

favorable a leur floraison" (62). After the end of his relationship with Rachel, Tiffauges

sexualises his photography by perceiving his camera as a phallus and the snapping of a

77 Frye argues that, in the world of apocalyptic symbolism, the demonic parody of the Eucharist is cannibalism, an image related to the "ogre of folk tales, who enters literature as Polyphemus" (Anatomy 148), the cannibal Cyclops blinded by Odysseus. 78 Similarly, Frye believed that, archetypically speaking, "an originally male Adam makes no sense in the sequence of the myth..." (Late Notebooks 333, Frye's emphasis); like the Cabbalists, he therefore conceives of the primordial Adam as an androgynous figure (Late Notebooks 104). Saint-Cyr 209 photo as a form of ejaculation: "ma joie n'est vraiment complete que si mon rollei pendu en sautoir a mon cou est bien cale entre mes cuisses. Je me plais ainsi equipe d'un sexe enorme, gaine de cuir, dont l'oeil de Cyclope79 s'ouvre comme l'eclair quand je lui dit

'Regarde!' et se referme inexorablement sur ce qu'il a vu" (167). The dual signification of the camera as a phallus and as a "faucon diligent qui se jette sur sa proie" (167) once more associates the act of insemination with the act of devouring.

The first recapitulation of P4 is Martine, whose blond hair (166) identifies her as the opposite of the dark-haired Rachel. Martine is thus a malign inversion of Rachel. In contrast to Rachel's Semitic roots, Martine is described as a Madonna; and instead of devouring Tiffauges as Rachel does, she betrays him by falsely accusing him of devouring (i.e., molesting) her. While Tiffauges and Rachel are equally imbued with the

"otherness" of the monster, Martine ends up at the accusing end of the pointing finger that associates the monster with the verb montrer. ".. .le ciel est tombe sur ma tete quand je l'ai entendue crier 'Lui, lui, lui!' en me montrant du doigt" (196). This etymological connection is further evoked when a police inspector puts Tiffauges in front of a mirror,

saying "Regarde [...] la tete que tu va montrer aux jures! Une vraie tete d'assassin"

(199-200).

The second recapitulation of P4 (and, thus, the third ogress in the novel) is Frau

Nette, Kaltenborn's only female resident, whose physical description and deep

knowledge of plants and animals (385) clearly identify her as a fairy-tale witch. Like

Rachel, she is dark-haired and of Eastern origin (Slavic), a racial profile that Tiffauges

notes should have worked against her at Kaltenborn (384-385). Through her, we see that

The image of the camera as a Cyclops again evokes the monstrous figureo f Polyphemus who, like Tiffauges, is ultimately punished for his cannibalism by being blinded. Saint-Cyr 210

the malign inversion of P4 brought about by Martine has been inverted once more, back into a benign figure. Not only is Frau Nette responsible for the feeding of the children at

Kaltenborn, but it is also she who delivers to Tiffauges the true meaning of motherhood.

Upon reading of the disappearance and probable death of her son following the retaking of Kharkov by the Russian army, she turns to Tiffauges and says: "La vie et la mort, c'est la mSme chose. Celui qui hait ou craint la mort, hait ou craint la vie. Parce qu'elle est fontaine inepuisable de vie, la nature n'est qu'un grand cimetiere, un egorgeoir de tous les instants. [...] La femme qui porte l'enfant doit aussi porter son deuil" (386). To carry a child is to mourn a child; to carry life is to carry death. Like Anaxagoras' black snow and Adam's primordial hermaphroditism, Frau Nette's philosophy of motherhood is a unification of opposites. This is the ultimate development of P4, the paradoxical truth through which "ventre disgestif et ventre maternel peuvent etre assimiles dans le meme complexe..." (Bouloumie 102). The ogre eats death and gives birth to life; the Nazi eats life and gives birth to death. Life and death are indeed one and the same; however, their malign inversion gives rise to the domination of the former by the latter, a process that results in sterility rather than fecundity. What Frau Nette teaches Tiffauges is, in

Barthes' terms, that maternal utopianism "c'est de produire un seul affect: ni Eros, ni

Thanatos, mais Vie-Mort, d'une seule pensee, d'un seul geste" (152).

When Rachel repeats "Tu n'es pas un amant, tu es un ogre" (22), with that one phrase she brings Tournier's Prime Row from the sexual resonances of P4 back to the fundamental pitch of the novel: P0, the Ogre. If Le roi des aulnes were a musical composition, this repeated pitch would most likely be designated P12 - in other words, the same note an octave higher. However, since the intervals between the pitches in Saint-Cyr 211

Tournier's Prime Row are not semi-tones in a strictly musical sense, I have chosen to maintain the chronological order of my numbering system by designating it P5 (which in a musical composition would be a perfect fourth). This recapitulation signals the end of the Prime Row and the beginning of the novel's first ogre variation: Nestor. Designating the recapitulation of Po as P5 allows me to distinguish between the fundamental pitch of the novel, which is the ogre as an archetype, and its contrapuntal variations, which take the form of three specific ogres: Nestor of St. Christopher College, Goring of Rominten, and Tiffauges of Kaltenborn. P0 thus represents "l'antiquite vertigineuse" (13) of the ogre that haunts myths and folklore, while P5 represents "[le] spectre sanguin" (432) of the ogre that haunts living history.

P5: A Fugue of Ogres

The first variation of P5 is Tiffauges' childhood friend Nestor, the Ogre of St.

Christopher College. The young Tiffauges' desire to serve the highest ogre-master in the schoolyard leads him from the service of Pelsenaire the Centaur (the first transposition of

P2) into that of Nestor, whose monstrous size and appetite outrank Pelsenaire's dim- witted animalism. Moreover, it is Nestor who first forges the connection between his own vocation ogresse and the image of the college's patron saint. Shortly after hearing

Jacques de Voragine's version of the legend of St. Christopher from the father-superior

(69-72), Nestor draws a picture of the saint on which he puts his own face (72); it is shortly after this that Nestor, with Tiffauges on his shoulders, plays the phoric schoolyard game in which he loses his glasses (75-78), and which Tiffauges will end up recapitulating and inverting at the end of the novel. Saint-Cyr 212

In keeping with the maternal vocation of the ogre (P4), Nestor's power revolves around the rituals of eating, digesting, and defecating, which, taken together, represent a fertilising process. Tiffauges is surrounded by authority figures who have oral fixations.

Pelsenaire forces him to eat grass like a horse (29), then, after scraping his knee, forces

Tiffauges to lick the abrasion clean, the latter's lips on the lips of the wound (31). When this oral servitude causes Tiffauges to become ill, the school masters tell his father that the illness is the result of eating too many sweets (32). In class, Tiffauges feels that his soul "vomissait tout ce que [ses] maitres essayaient de lui faire ingurgiter dans l'ordre de la culture" (107). However, it is Nestor, with his "appetit hors du commun" (39) that drives him "a devorer, sans pain, ni boisson" (98), who truly represents the maternal vocation of the ogre, through which insemination becomes devouring, gestation becomes digestion, and birth becomes defecation. "La trilogie ingestion-digestion-defecation rythmait sa vie," Tiffauges tells us of his friend, "et ces trois operations etaient entourees du respect general" (40).

Nestor seems to be obsessed with the fecundity of omegan principles in particular, a fascination that prompts him to think of defecation as a mystical ritual that connects us to the earth: "Ce qui pique vers le sol," Nestor tells Tiffauges during one of their nocturnal visits to the communal bathroom at Saint Christopher College, "c'est omega qui semble rechercher le contact direct de la terre, comme si elle pouvait aider a l'acte en attirant par une sorte de magnetisme ce qui dans le corps lui ressemble le plus" (95).

Evoking the birthing process, Nestor characterises faeces as "cette terre animale que nous enfantons" (96), using a verb that Tiffauges will later recapitulate when referring to his Saint-Cyr 213 own excrement.80 After smelling his droppings, he invites Tiffauges to look at their shape, commenting on how they resemble medieval dungeons, towers, and walls (96).

As discussed above, Nestor's excretory rituals culminate in a transposition of P3, in which Tiffauges performs the sacred office of wiping Nestor with the pages of the father- superior's Christopher-Albuquerque sermon (97).

The second variation of P5, Hermann Goring, is a striking example of a real historical figure who takes on overtly mythical qualities in Tiffauges' world. A powerful field-marshal under Hitler, Goring was not only the president of Prussia and the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, but also the grand veneur of the Reich

(Reichsjdgermeister). Goring's grand hunting excursions, which consist of large-scale massacres of local fauna, take on mythical significance in the context of Tiffauges' allegorical journey. For instance, when Goring castrates the slain deer to keep the meat from souring, the action recalls Cronus' castration of Uranus. Through overt use of fairy­ tale imagery, Tournier transforms Goring into a folkloric figure. Goring's pet lion, Buby

(321), recalls fairy tales such as Perrault's "Chat Botte"; and the descriptions of

Rominten's buildings (the Jagdhaus and the Jdgerhof), with their roaring hearths, banquets of venison, and pirated treasures from across Europe, are suggestive of a fairy­ tale ogre's castle (308-309). When Goring learns that Professor Otto Essig has shot

Candelabra, Rominten's finest stag, he must wash his hands in jewels to calm himself

(345), a melodramatic gesture that emphasises his folkloric identity.

80 In his notes, Frye muses that "excretion is inevitably part of the eating process in symbolism, as it is in life" (Late Notebooks 93). The archetypal association of "the reproductive and excretory processes" thus symbolises "the pre-apocalyptic mixture of life and death" (Late Notebooks 93). As Frye observes, "the excremental vision (and the vision of sex as partly excretion) is now a normal part of most writers' equipment [...] and is inevitably a part of the axis mundi total pattern" (Late Notebooks 399). Frye's conception of the archetypal axis mundi is represented in Figure lb. Saint-Cyr 214

Goring is the head of "un culte a la fois amoureux, sacrificiel et alimentaire," whose esoteric theology is based on the identification and interpretation of antler formations, especially the evaluation of the "points" scored by the massacre (319).

Goring's vocation ogresse, like Nestor's, thus revolves around an oral fixation. When he shares a leg of boar with Buby, his pet lion, it is as if they are reflecting each other's bestiality: "Et ce fut un va-et-vient regulier de la piece de venerie entre les deux ogres qui se regardaient affectueusement en mastiquant des paquets de chair noire et musquee"

(322). As we have seen, the carnivorous world of Rominten is animated by the hunt, the ritualistic persecution of the alpha-stag (the Phallophoric Angel) by the omega-horse (the

Anal Angel). As a result, Nestor's three-act ritual - eating, digesting, and defecating - is expanded into a five-act ritual: "Forcer un cerf, le tuer, l'emasculer, manger sa chair, lui voler ses bois pour s'en glorifier comme d'un trophee, telle etait done la geste en cinq actes de l'ogre de Rominten, sacrificateur official de l'Ange Phallophore" (331). A few months later, Tiffauges discovers that this ritual actually contains a sixth act, more fundamental than all the others: Goring's "vocation coprologique" (331-334). Just as

Tiffauges sinks into the omegan mud of the bog in Part VI, so does Goring's six-part

inversion of omega take him to the limits of the ogre's coprophilia already established by

Nestor:

II y avait un domaine non negligeable ou le Reichsmarschall manifestait une

science et un don incomparables, c'etait dans la lecture des laissees du gibier.

S'agissant de dechiffrer tous les messages inscrits dans les dejections des betes, le

grand veneur faisait preuve d'une penetration et d'une experience dont on etait en

droit de se demander ou et quand il avait pu les acquerir, et si elles ne provenaient Saint-Cyr 215

pas simplement du fond meme de sa nature ogresse. (331-332, Tournier's

emphasis)

Not only does Goring's scientific examination of the droppings extend to tactile and olfactory analysis, but it also contains the suggestion of a gustatory inclination:

Le Reichsmarschall ne se faisait pas faute d'eprouver entre le pouce et l'index la

consistance de ses trouvailles, et meme de les approacher de son nez pour en

apprecier l'fige, car leur odeur devient aigre avec le temps. [...] Tiffauges ne

pouvait s'empecher de songer a Nestor et a ses seances de defecation nocturnes et

glosees, en voyant le gros homme, tout cliquetant de decorations, courir d'arbre

en arbre, de buisson en buisson avec des exclamations joyeuses, comme un enfant

le matin de Paques glanant des oeufs en chocolat dans son jardin. (333)

Tiffauges' servitude - his Knechtschaft - is thus contrapuntally recapitulated as Nestor's scatological inversion of the Christopher-Albuquerque sermon is transformed into

Goring's coprophagic domination of the Phallophoric Angel, the stag. Tiffauges' role as

"le serviteur et le secret eleve du deuxieme personnage du Reich, expert en phallologie et en coprologie" (334), therefore represents his initiation into the service of his penultimate master, Nazism, whose malign inversion of alpha and omega appeals to Tiffauges' ogre­ like nature.

For behind Hermann Goring, the Ogre of Rominten, lurks the figure of Adolf

Hitler, the Ogre of Rastenburg. The enrolment of children into the Hitler Youth (which occurred yearly on Hitler's birthday, April 20th), strikes Tiffauges as a sacrificial offering.

In Tiffauges' eyes, this offering identifies Hitler as the quintessential ogre: Saint-Cyr 216

...le grand veneur avec ses chasses et ses massacres, ses festins de venaison et sa

science coprologique et phallologique etait tombe a ses yeux au rang de petit ogre

folklorique et fictif, echappe a quelque conte de grand-mere. II etait eclipse par

l'autre, l'ogre de Rastenburg, qui exigeait de ses sujets, pour son anniversaire, ce

don exhaustif, cinq cent mille petites filles et cinq cent mille petits gar§ons de dix

ans, en tenue sacrificielle, c'est-a-dire tout nus, avec lesquels il petrissait sa chair

a canon.(369)

To be a real ogre, one must devour not just venison, but also children. This is the lesson that Tiffauges will learn from his penultimate master, into whose full service he enters at

Kaltenborn. The Ogre of Rastenburg functions not so much as a separate ogre variation, but as an extension and historical layering of the Ogre of Rominten.

The third and final ogre variation in Le roi des aulnes is Abel Tiffauges himself, the Ogre of Kaltenborn. However, Tournier begins the process of transforming Tiffauges into an ogre long before his protagonist sets foot in the napola. The first manifestation of

Tiffauges' ogrish nature is a sudden increase in appetite, a voraciousness whose provenance Tournier identifies syntactically: Nestor's "appetit hors du commun" (39) becomes Tiffauges' "appetit d'une exigence peu commune" (110). Seized by an urgent need to eat - "II fallait que je mange, immediatement, n'importe quoi, sans aucun delai"

(110) - he starts at the bakery, where he devours brioches and croissants. Still not satisfied, he then moves on to oysters, whose slimy little bodies he wishes to possess orally: "La volupte gloutonne avec laquelle j'enfongai mes dents dans la mucosite glauque, salee, iodee, d'une fraicheur d'embrun de ces petits corps qui s'abandonnent mous et amorphes a la possession orale des qu'on les a detaches de leur habitale nacre, Saint-Cyr 217

fut l'une des revelations de ma vocation ogresse" (111). Wishing to approach T ideal de

la erudite absolue" (111), he begins to eat raw, de-scaled sardines and bifieck tartare

made of horse meat. The latter dish approaches his ideal, both in its erudite and in its

equine significance; however, he dislikes the fact that the dish's seasoning (salt, pepper,

vinegar, garlic, onion, shallot, and capers) masks "la franche nudite" de la chair" (112).

He merefore begins to prepare it himself at home, by grinding horse filets purchased

directly from the butcher. Through this figurative cannibalism, he comes to understand his attraction to market stalls and meat hooks that expose the untamed and colossal nudity

of skinned beasts, blocks of crimson flesh, viscous and metallic livers, pink and spongy

breasts, the vermillion intimacy revealed by the enormous thighs of obscenely drawn-

and-quartered calves, and most of all that odour of cold grease and of congealed blood

that floats above the carnage (112). His thirst for non-pasteurised and non-homogenised

milk also reveals a desire to commune intimately with the authenticity of the stable,

where living, breathing animals are kept: "Moi, je veux un lait sur lequel flottent avec des

remugles d'etable un poil et un fdtu, signes d'authenticite" (113). Tiffauges perceives

this carnivorous compulsion as a form of love, even going so far as to suggest that he

would enjoy eating raw meat all the more if it came from an animal he himself had

raised, as opposed to anonymous meat from the butcher (112). This foreshadowing of

Tiffauges' devouring of his three favourite carrier pigeons in Part II represents the

infanticidal cannibalism that so defines the archetypal ogre, from Cronus to fairy-tale

giants and wolves. The ultimate permutation of the pigeons into real children in Part V is

also foreshadowed by the fact that Tiffauges' new-found appetite in Part I diminishes Saint-Cyr 218 once he starts photographing children, as if contact with children satisfies his hunger in a more subtle and spiritual fashion (183).

When Tiffauges snaps pictures of children in the schoolyard, he does so "avec la joie forte et coupable du chasseur qui tirerait les b&es d'un pare zoologique dans leurs cages" (152), thus anticipating the ritual of the hunt both at Rominten and at Kaltenborn,

"cette cage d'enfants-fauves" (382). The image of the camera as a hunting falcon (167) amalgamates the carrier pigeons and the hunting dogs with which Tiffauges will later work. As with the novel's later hunts, his photographic hunting in Part I is an attempt to possess that which is photographed, a practise that carries distinctly gluttonous overtones:

"C'est un mode de consommation auquel on recourt generalement faute de mieux, et il va de soi que si les beaux paysages pouvaient se manger, on les photographierait moins

souvant" (167-168). Moreover, the maternal overtones of P4 associate the alimentary process with insemination, thus transforming the camera into an overt phallic symbol.

Every day, Tiffauges "[se] lance a la chasse aux images, [son] rollei amoureusement cale

a sa place geniteuse" (169), until finally even his neighbours begin to notice both the

carnivorous and clandestine nature of his hobby:

Un jour que je revenais d'une quete particulierement fructueuse, balancant mon

rollei au bout de sa courroie, comme on laisse courir et gambader devant soi un

bon chien de chasse qui vient de faire merveille, et que je passais ivre d'amour et

de joie sous la fenetre des Ambroise, j'ai entendu ces mots:

- Voila M. Tiffauges qui revient du marche avec sa provision de chair

fraiche. II vamaintenant s'enfermer dans lenoir pour manger tout ca. II y a des

choses qu'on ne fait pas au grand jour, pas vrai? Saint-Cyr 219

C'etait Eugenie, et il y avait tout un orchestra de glockenspiel dans sa

voix. (180)

The instrumental description of Eugenie's voice once more creates the impression that

Tiffauges' life, or at least his perception of life, is made up of pitch-values that unfold like the development of a musical theme.

In Part II, "Les Pigeons du Rhin," Tiffauges' hunting and devouring of photographs are recapitulated by bis hunt for birds to add to the military's carrier-pigeon program. Due to their Hermetic role as winged messengers, Tiffauges sees these birds as

"des porte-signes vivants" (237), a phoric identity that corresponds to his Castalian belief that "[t]out est signe" (15). In anticipation of the racial hygiene that will inform his hunt for children in Part V, Tiffauges is ordered in Part II to scour the countryside for pigeons

"de bonne race," birds whose physiognomy conforms to a list of twenty specific characteristics ranging from bone structure to musculature to feathering (219). His ability to distinguish, even with his eyes closed, between different classifications of pigeon - "ouverts," "soudes," and "serres" (221) - presages Dr. Blattchen's racial classification of the boys at Kaltenborn. Thus, just as Tiffauges' hunt for pigeons in Part

II corresponds to his hunt for photographs of children in Part I, so does it parallel his hunt for real children in Part V:

Des lors on vit Tiffauges sillonner les champs et les bois, penetrer dans les cours

de ferme, affronter les taureaux et les molosses en liberie, reveiller les hameaux

assoupis, frapper aux portes des chaumieres, sonner aux grilles des demeures de

maitres, et toujours, une lettre a la main, il demandait a voir et a toucher les

pigeons qui lui avaient ete signales. (220) Saint-Cyr 220

Even the letter authorising him to take possession of local birds is recapitulated in Part V, where it will become a letter bearing the arms of Kaltenborn (444) authorising him to take possession of local children. Tiffauges himself makes the connection between his birds and children when his expeditions become "des chasses passionnees" in which he hunts, not for mere birds, but for "des petits etres cheris et convokes, ayant chacun une irremplagable personalite" (223).

In keeping with Blattchen's later discourse on racial and genetic purity, the three finest specimens discovered by Tiffauges in Part II turn out to be "des exemplaires de races pures et rares" bred by a geneticist (225). The two identical red pigeons, the geneticist's widow explains, are twins created through genetic modification by her late husband; and the silver pigeon, the beautiful "macot," represents his greatest achievement

(228-229). As we have seen, these three birds correspond directly to Tiffauges' three favourite students at the napola in Part V: the red-headed twins (Hai'o and Haro) and the elfin, fair-haired Lothar. The tiny black "pigeonneau a demi mort de faim et de froid"

(230) that Tiffauges nurses back to health stands for the small, dark-haired Ephrai'm, the

Jewish boy he finds in the forest. The impaling of Hai'o, Haro, and Lothar in Part VI is therefore a recapitulation of the brochetting of the red-feathered twins and the silver macot, whose "trois petits corps nus" (237) Tiffauges sees turning over the fire, just as

Tiffauges' saving of Ephraim at the end of the novel is a recapitulation of his release of the message-bearing noiraud upon being captured by the German army (242).

Tiffauges comes to regard the pigeons that he collects and cares for as his own children; however, when the Nazi invasion of France prevents his commanding officer from eating the three roasted pigeons, it is Tiffauges himself who ends up eating the Saint-Cyr 221 birds: "Les [...] rotis lui permirent [...] de nourrir son ame en la faisant intimement communier avec les seules creatures qu'il eut aimees depuis six mois" (243). Tournier's use of the word "communier" recapitulates the link between the ogre's cannibalistic infanticide and the Eucharist, an association that plays on the ogre's "double postulation vers Dieu et vers Satan" (Bouloumie 113). Inge Degn says of this scene that "[Tiffauges] associe cet acte de devoration a 1'amour et s'en tient a l'eucharistie, oii Ton retrouve une assimilation semblabe de l'amour a l'acte alimentaire" (103). The act of eating is a positive gesture mat unites ingestion, digestion, and defecation into a single fertilising process (Degn 125), just as it does for Nestor in the first variation of P5.

Tiffauges' own coprophilia, like Nestor's and Goring's, functions as an omegan principle that paradoxically stands for birth and life:

La seule consolation de la matinee est d'ordre fecal. Je fais inopinement et sans la

moindre bavure un etron superbe, si long qu'il faut qu'il s'incurve a ses

extremites pour tenir dans la cuvette. Je regarde attendri ce beau poupon dodu de

limon vivant que je viens d'enfanter, et je reprends gout a la vie. (144)

The recapitulation of the verb enfanter, used previously in this context by Nestor, transforms the process of defecation into a transposed sounding of P4, the ogre's (or ogress') maternal vocation. It is little wonder, therefore, that Tiffauges thinks of constipation as an evil force that transforms a human being into a bipedal sac of

excrement or a bust of human flesh on a faecal pedestal (144-145, 192). In Part III,

"Hyperboree," Tiffauges and his regiment are taken prisoner by the German army and

transported to Prussia to perform manual labour. The work assigned to the French POWs

consists of digging drainage ditches and dykes for the purposes of reclaiming swampland, Saint-Cyr 222 a form of labour that Tournier describes as the consummation of their marriage to "cette terre noire et gorgee d'eau" (256).81 Appropriately, Tiffauges' union with the black soil of Prussia is only consummated when he mixes the "soil" of his own body with that of his new home:

Toute cette terre noire et grasse qu'il remuait jour apres jour y etait peut-etre pour

quelque chose: depuis son arrivee au camp, et malgre la nourriture chiche et

mediocre, [Tiffauges] vivait dans une grande beatitude fecale. Chaque soir avant

le second couvre-feu [...] il se rendait aux feuillees pour un temps aussi prolonge

que possible qui etait peut-etre le meilleur moment de la journee et qui le ramenait

fortement a ses annees beauvaisiennes. Parenthese de solitude, de calme et de

recueillement dans l'acte defecatoire, accompli genereusement et sans effort

excessif, par un glissement regulier de l'etron dans le fourreau lubrifie des

muqueuses. [...] Sa reputation de travailleur acharne lui avait valu un fort

relachement de surveillance, et il n'etait pas rare qu'il fut laisse a lui-meme

plusieurs heures durant au bout d'un fosse en creusement. II avait tout loisir des

lors pour choisir le lieu propice ou quelques coups de beche et la mise en place de

deux planchettes qui ne le quittaient pas edifiaient l'autel sur lequel il consommait

son union intime et feconde avec la terre prussienne. (263-265)

Later, in Part IV, Tiffauges observes Barbe-Blue defecating and is struck by the beauty and perfection of his horse's excretory powers, which he describes in intimate, poetic detail:

81 These drainage excavations are evocative of Part II of Goethe's Faust: "Ein Sumpf zieht am Gebirge hin/Verpestet alles schon Errungene;/Den faulen Pfuhl auch abzuziehn,/Das letzte war das Hochsterrungene" 'A swamp, that stretches along the range of hills,/is spreading pestilence over all that we have achieved;/to drain that foul pool also,/this final achievement would be the consummation' (II:V:V:11559-11562). Saint-Cyr 223

[Tiffauges] vit la queue de Barbe-Blue se dresser, [...] decouvrant l'anus, bien

maronne, petit, saillant, dur, hermetiquement ferme et plisse en son centre,

comme une bourse a coulants. Et aussitot la bourse s'exteriorisa, avec la vitesse

d'un bouton de rose filme en accelere, se retourna comme un gant, deployant au-

dehors une corolle rose et humide, du centre de laquelle il vit eclore de balles de

crottin toutes neuves, admirablement moulees et vernissees, qui roulerent une a

une dans la paille sans se briser. (352-353)

This is die passage that signals the transformation of the horse into the Anal Angel, the

Phallophoric stag's omegan counterpart. However, as discussed above, Tiffauges does not yet appreciate the malignancy of Rominten's inversion of alpha and omega. Even when he witnesses "la metamorphose du cerf en enfant" (470) at Kaltenborn, he still does not understand the full significance of "[les] hieroglyphes traces sur [son] chemin" or

"[les] paroles confuses murmurees a [ses] oreilles" (16).

The instant Tiffauges enters Kaltenborn castle, he detects the unmistakable odour of children, just like the giant in "Jack and the Beanstalk" when he says "Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!" When it comes to children, Tiffauges "les sentait indiscutablement dans la qualite de l'atmosphere de la citadelle," an atmosphere that condenses in the form of a pair of boxing gloves on a chair, a policeman's hat hanging on a pole, a leather ball forgotten in a gutter, red clothes strewn on the green lawn (375-376). The ogre's olfactory prowess is most evident in Dr. Otto Blattchen, the director of the napola's Centre raciologique, who professes to Tiffauges that "chaque race a son odeur" and who tries to distinguish with his eyes closed "un Noir, un Jaune, un

Semite ou un Nordique aux crapoates alcalins et aux acides gras volatils que secretent Saint-Cyr 224 leurs glandes sudoripares et sebacees" (391). However, in the sacred ritual of ingestion/digestion/excretion established by Nestor and recapitulated by Goring, smell is but a prelude to and anticipation of the ogre's gastronomic fixation. Indeed, Blattchen awaits the arrival of new recruits "avec une impatience gourmande" (389).

Tiffauges quickly comes to regard the napola as "une machine a soumettre et a exalter tout ensemble la chair fraiche et innocente" (392). Moreover, he can see that this submission and exaltation are directly descended from the phallological theories of

Goring, Essig, and the Oberforstmeister, as well as the theories of the old equestrian,

Pressman "La coherence de son evolution, et, surtout, le bond en avant qu'il avait accompli en passant des cerfs et des chevaux aux enfants lui prouvaient assez qu'il marchait dans la voie de sa vocation" (392). Significantly, this is the point in the novel where Tiffauges resumes his Ecrits sinistres, which had been replaced by third-person narration at the end of Part I. In the first entry of his new journal, Tiffauges compares the ideology of the Volkskorper to a giant whale, in the belly of which individuals "sont deja agglutines, englues, en voie de dissolution. [Le] sue digestif du gros serpent vert parvient en effluves puissants jusqu'aux petits etres provisoirement libres encore" (393).

The napola at Kaltenborn is a microcosmic condensation of this same digestive process, an ideological devouring of children in which the image of the whale-leviathan (the aquatic counterpart of the biblical ox Behemoth) stands for that of the ogre. In Part VI,

as the tide of the war begins to turn on Nazi Germany, this ideological digestive process reaches its excretory stage: "On croit sentir l'odeur de terre humide et de pourriture vivante qui impregne le ventre bleme de la nation bouleversee" (533).

82 Tiffauges defines this ideology as "la metamorphose qui fait de plusieurs millions d'AUemands un seul grand etre somnambule et irresistible..." (393). Saint-Cyr 225

In keeping with his ambidextrous tendency to reverse images (P3), Tiffauges inverts his archetypal role from an eater of children into a. feeder of children: "[Tiffauges] ressentait ce role de pourvoyeur d'aliments, de pater nutritor, comme une tres savoureuse inversion de sa vocation ogresse" (378). It is in the role of pater nutritor that Tiffauges becomes a male reflection of Frau Nette, the napola's cook, just as his sexualised cannibalism of Rachel in Part I functions as a male reflection of the ogress' maternal vocation (P4). For Tiffauges' Faustian alchemy is not concerned with turning base metals into gold; rather, "[Tiffauges] se plaisait a songer que les quartiers de lard, les sacs de farine et les mottes de beurre qu'il serrait dans ses bras ou balangait sur son epaule

seraient bientot metamorphoses par une alchimie secrete en chansons, mouvements, chair

et excrements d'enfants" (378). By the end of the novel, shortly before the Russian army

attacks Kaltenborn, Tiffauges completes the inversion from devourer into feeder by

offering himself up as the main course: "Tous ces enfants bouillent dans un chaudron

geant avant d'etre manges, mais je m'y suis jete par amour, et je cuis avec eux" (516).

The steamy shower room that prompts this comment is an inversion of the gas chambers

disguised as showers at Auschwitz, a correspondence that eventually allows Tiffauges to

perceive the Nazi concentration camps as malign inversions of Kaltenborn.

Tiffauges' gradual metamorphosis into an archetypal ogre (Po) is completed when

Raufeisen entrusts him with the task of recruiting local boys to replenish the ranks of the

napola. Setting out on his blue-black horse (444) and preceded by a pack of eleven black

dobermans (459), Tiffauges thus succeeds in transposing his earlier hunts for

photographs, pigeons, and deer into a full-fledged hunt for children. This folkloric

transformation is marked by the circulation of a notice warning mothers in the Saint-Cyr 226 surrounding villages to beware the Ogre of Kaltenborn, who kidnaps children and spirits them away to his castle (460-461). As with his pigeons, "c'etait souvant les enfants auxquels pour une raison ou pour une autre [Tiffauges] attachait le plus de prix qui s'averaient le gibier le plus farouche" (445), as is die case with Hai'o, Haro, and Lothar, die anthropomorphic reincarnations of the twin red pigeons and the silver macot. Once captured and tamed, they become the prize of his collection. When Tiffauges sees die three boys performing a gymnastics exercise, he is struck by the beauty and elegance of their symmetry: "Tiffauges s'arreta devant le trio qui faisait la pyramid, Lotfiar dresse sur les mains, soutenu a droite par Halo, a gauche par Haro. [...] [L]'enfant aux cheveux blancs [etait] flanque des jumeaux-mirroirs [aux cheveux roux], si bien equilibree, si justement posee, si rigoureusement symetrique" (491). After observing mat the diree are always together, like the swords in the Kaltenborn coat-of-arms, Count Kaltenborn jokingly offers to make Tiffauges a knight attached to his house, with a blazon resembling that of Kaltenborn. Rattier than swords, the Count proposes that Tiffauges' emblem should be composed of "trois pages de gueule dresse en pal" (492, Tournier's emphasis). He then realises the heraldic significance of featuring pages - who, by definition, are apprenticed children - on a coat-of-arms:

En somme, si nous remontons aux origines, 1'animal-totem est un animal possede,

tue, mange, et, c'est ainsi d'ailleurs qu'il communique ses vertus au porteur de

l'embleme. [...] Alors, evoquer dans ses armes le sacrifice rituel d'un aigle ou

d'un lion, ou le meurtre d'un monstre comme le dragon ou le minotaure, ou

encore la maitrise d'un esclave noir ou d'un sauvage, c'est dans l'ordre. Mais un

guerrier, une femme, un enfant surtout! Voyez un peu, mon pauvre Tiffauges, Saint-Cyr 227

avec mes trois pages de gueule dresse en pal j'allais vous donner les armes d'un

ogre! (493, Tournier's emphasis)

The ritual sacrifice of a noble beast or even of a hybrid monster like Tiffauges is in order because it represents the hunting, killing, and eating of the totem animal's power. As

Northrop Frye argues, "the heraldic emblematic image is in a paradoxical and ironic relation to both narrative and meaning. As a unit of meaning, it arrests the narrative; as a unit of narrative, it perplexes meaning" (Anatomy 92). The physical embodiment of the ogre's coat-of-arms, achieved when Lothar and the twins are impaled on Kaltenborn's ceremonial swords (Roi 577-578),83 thus arrests Tournier's narrative while

simultaneously perplexing its meaning. Like the brochetted pigeons in Part II, the three children have been pierced "d'omega en alpha," with the central figure, Lothar, "empale tout droit," his teeth biting down on the point of the sword as it emerges from his mouth

(577). In a direct reversal of Ephrai'm's transformation into the astral Christ-child on the

last page of the novel, Hai'o, Haro, and Lothar's "etoiles s'etaient eteintes," their macabre

death-tableau a ternary reflection of the Crucifixion on Golgotha (578) that illustrates

how "in martyrdom the apocalyptic and the demonic images are superimposed" (Frye,

Late Notebooks 305).

The last mythical creature into which Tiffauges is transformed before assuming

his ultimate hagiological identity, is the biblical beast Behemoth. Inside their hiding

place at Kaltenborn, Tiffauges asks Ephrai'm why the boy calls him Behemoth; Ephraim

answers by reciting a passage from the Old Testament (Job 40:15-22, qtd. in Roi 567) in

which the Voice of God speaks from the heart of a whirlwind, telling Job of the ox-like

83 It is not clear precisely how the three boys come to be impaled on the lances, whether they fell from the balcony above or were gruesomely executed by the Russians. Saint-Cyr 228 beast, Behemoth. Like the archetypal ogre, Behemoth is primordial and his origin is associated with the creation of Adam (Job 40:15); like the horse, "his strength is in his loins" (Job 40:16); like the giant, he is of a monstrous size and is as strong as brass and iron (Job 40:17-18); like Tiffauges, he is surrounded by the beasts of the fields (Job

40:20); and, like the mummified bog-man (as well as Tiffauges at his death), "[he] lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens./The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about" (Job 40:21-22).84 In the

Apocryphal Book of Enoch (60:7-10), Behemoth is identified to Noah as male, in opposition to the female Leviathan, to whom Tiffauges alludes when he refers to the ideology of the Volkskorper as a "gros serpent vert" that dwells in the sea (393).

Behemoth and Leviathan thus represent the male and female incarnations of the primordial ogre [Po, P4].85 When Noah asks to be shown how these two gendered monsters were originally parted, an angel replies: "Thou son of man, herein thou dost seek to know what is hidden" (Enoch 60:9-10). Noah's curiosity about how male and female were originally separated, which he shares with Tiffauges, is representative of a yearning for forbidden knowledge that runs throughout the European folkloric tradition, from Faust's ambition to learn the secrets of alchemy to Blue Beard's wife's desire to open the locked door in her husband's castle. Through the modern alchemy of genetic manipulation, we learn that a German zoologist, Lutz Heck, has attempted to resurrect the

84 The last two verses of the passage, which Tournier does not quote, also seem to describe aspects of Tiffauges' vocation ogresse: "Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth./He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares" (Job 40:23-24). 8 According to Jewish liturgical scripture from the eleventh century, these two primordial monsters are fated to do battle at the end of the world, whereupon God will slay them and serve their meat at a great banquet for the righteous (Akdamus Millin 129-133). According to Frye, the eating of Leviathan (and, by extension, of Behemoth as well) represents the internalisation of the external environment, an image whose ultimate expression is "the disappearance of man into the body of God" (Late Notebooks 93; see also Words with Power, chapters 6 and 7). Saint-Cyr 229

aurochs (or urus), a species of giant primeval ox extinct since the seventeenth century

(316).86 At Rominten, when Tiffauges encounters a herd of these "bStes enormes, noires, velues comme des ours, bossues comme des bisons [...] d'un type evidemment prehistorique" (314), it is as if he is seeing a herd of Behemoths emerging from the mists of legend and myth.

Shortly after Ephraim recites the Behemoth passage from the Book of Job.

Kaltenborn's water supply runs low and, consequently, the taps run red with rust. When

Ephraim compares this phenomenon to the First Plague of Egypt, it becomes clear that his flight from Kaltenborn on the shoulders of his Behemoth is an exodus of epic and biblical proportions. "Oui, nous allons partir," says Ephraim as explosions shake the castle. "Les soldats de l'Eternel frappent de mort les aines des Egyptiens, mais ils protegeront notre fuite" (573). Tiffauges then carries Ephraim to safety on his shoulders, in an inverted recapitulation of the phoric schoolyard game he used to play with Nestor as

a child. Like Nestor, he loses his thick glasses and must advance "comme un aveugle"

(580)87 while Ephraim guides him: "Cheval d'Israel, je vais te prendre par les oreilles, et te guider!" (578). Tiffauges repeatedly refers to Ephraim as "l'enfant Port-Etoile" (550,

552, 565) because of the yellow Star of David on his tattered shirt. Ultimately, however,

it is Tiffauges who is destined to become the Astrophore, the Star-bearer. The ogre, the

werewolf, the centaur, the primordial Adam, Blue Beard, the Anal Angel, le Cheval

Lutz Heck, along with his brother Heinz (director of the Munich Zoological Garden), succeeded in creating a breed known today as Heck Cattle, a genetic approximation of the aurochs of ancient times (see Cis van Vuure, Retracing the Aurochs: History. Morphology and Ecology of an Extinct Wild Ox). 87 Goethe's Faust suffers the same fate: "Die Menschen sind im ganzen Leben blind,/Nun, Fauste, werde du's am Ende!" 'Most men are blind throughout their lives,/Now, Faust, you shall be blind at your life's end!' (II:V:IV: 11497-11498), as does the ogre-like Cyclops Polyphemus. This blindness can be also be related to Tiffauges' left-handedness, in that, "le 'gauche' (ou le 'gaucher')," as Barthes argues, "est une sorte d'aveugle: il ne voit pas bien la direction, la portde de ses gestes; sa main seule le guide, le desir de sa main..." (150). Saint-Cyr 230 d'Israel, Behemoth, Christopher-Albuquerque - Tiffauges is all of these; he is the phoric omega whose alpha is a shining star that represents innocence, divinity, and redemption, refracted through a mythological prism into an intertextual spectrum of allegorical figures.

The final sounding of P5 is achieved when Tiffauges fulfils the role of

Christopher-Albuquerque by carrying Ephraim across the water. It is at this point mat

Tiffauges' story, like Joseph Knecht's, passes into legend and becomes pure allegory. As

Tiffauges is crossing the bog, he feels Ephraim getting heavier and heavier, in an almost verbatim recapitulation of the father-superior's sermon, in which he describes how

"Penfant pesait sur lui comme une masse de plomb" (71): "Et a mesure que ses pieds s'enfoncaient davantage dans la landeche gorgee d'eau, il sentait l'enfant - si mince, si diaphane pourtant -peser sur lui comme une masse de plomb. [...] Quand il leva pour la derniere fois la tete vers Ephraim, il ne vit qu'une etoile d'or a six branches qui tournait lentement dans le ciel noir" (580-581, my emphasis). The metamorphosis of Ephrai'm into a six-pointed Star of David is the novel's final image. Everything that Tito

Designori signifies for Joseph Knecht, Ephraim signifies for Abel Tiffauges - he is hope for the future, redemption of hubris, the benign inversion of alpha and omega whereby the loftiest post (such as Magister Ludi or the Ogre of Kaltenborn) can only be

superseded by exile, by the paradoxical realisation that the highest master is in fact the lowliest. For within the hierarchy of the volkisch Arcadian world inhabited by Tiffauges,

Ephraim is certainly the lowest of the low. The fact that his benign inversion is

allegorised through the legend of a Christian saint, however, does not mute Ephraim's

Semitic resonance; rather, by highlighting the Christ-child's identity in the legend as that Saint-Cyr 231 of a Jewish child, Judaism's rightful place at the centre of Christianity (as opposed to its persecuted margins) is reaffirmed. For, as Frye comments in one of his later notebooks,

"'Christendom' is only a swollen Judea" (Late Notebooks 9). The allegory of Tiffauges and Ephrai'm is thus Judeo-Christian in the true sense of the term.

The novel's final image, a six-pointed Star of David turning slowly in the black sky, is multi-faceted. Like a Castalian "Glass Bead," it is a unitary symbol that functions as a complex-of-complexes, a motif that brings a cluster of associations together into a single point on the playing field of Tournier's Glass Bead Game. Just as the name "Abel

Tiffauges" (Pi) brings together multiple allegories (the biblical Abel, Gils de Rais, Blue

Beard), so does the six-pointed star contain layers of meaning: first and foremost, there is the historical resonance of the Star of David in the context of Nazi Germany, where it was used as a means of identifying those singled out for marginalisation, persecution, and extermination; then there is its significance as a Judeo-Christian religious symbol; and finally there are the mythological star- and child-bearers that populate the novel, including Atlas, Cronus, Heracles, Hermes, Hector, the primordial Adam, both the father and the king of the elves from Goethe's Erlkonig, and Christopher-Albuquerque.

The six points of the star are also numerologically significant. Le roi des aulnes is composed of six parts - "Ecrits sinistres d'Abel Tiffauges," "Les pigeons du Rhin,"

"Hyperboree," "L'Ogre de Rominten," "L'Ogre de Kaltenborn," and "L'Astrophore" - that represent the six stages of Tiffauges' Knechtschaft. Just as the Judeo-Christian God created the world in six days, Tournier thus creates his six-tone composition in six

88 The badge system consisted of either a triangle (red: political prisoner; green: criminal; blue: foreign labour; pink: homosexual; purple: religious dissenter; black: asocial element; brown: gypsy) or two superimposed triangles forming a Star of David (yellow/yellow: Jew; red/yellow: Jewish political prisoner; green/yellow: Jewish criminal; pink/yellow: Jewish homosexual; black/yellow: Aryan race-defier) (Kogon 45). Saint-Cyr 232 movements. As discussed above, the first three entries in Tiffauges' sinister journal represent the six tones of the novel's Prime Row: P0, Pi, P2, P3, P4, and P5. The transpositions and permutations of this row, in turn, make up Tournier's Matrix of Row

Forms, or what Tiffauges calls une grille de dechifrement, through which the novel's developing themes are refracted and organised. The novel contains six ogre-figures - three female ogresses [P4: Rachel, Martine, Frau Nette] and three male ogres [P5: Nestor,

Goring, Tiffauges]. Throughout the development of his maternal vocation, Tiffauges acquires six adoptive children: his three prize pigeons and their human counterparts,

Haio, Haro, and Lothar. When his human children are being taught how to fight the ogre of modern warfare, the tank,89 they must practise enumerating its six vulnerable points

(536). Hermann Goring's hunting ritual at Rominten is divided into six acts: the chase, the kill, castration, devouring, the stealing of the antlers, and coprology. Finally, the novel contains six pseudo-scientific alchemists, three of whom (Keil, Essig, and

Blattchen) are physically present in the narrative, while the other three (Unruh, Heck, and

Mengele) are referred to by other characters.

The role of these six Mephistophelian alchemists90 is not only to highlight the scientific dimension of Nazi philosophy and propaganda, but also to complement the

Faustian nature of Tiffauges' Castalian ambition - his desire, in other words, to unlock the secrets of the occult signs that mark his allegorical path through life. As it does for

Joseph Knecht, this ambition becomes Satanic when read in the context of the St.

89 The tank's ogrish nature is established when it is described as "une bete fabuleuse, d'une force redoutable, mais lente, bruyante, maladroite, myope et sourde" (536). 90 Similarly, in Doktor Faustus Thomas Mann's microcosm of Nazi scholarship takes the form of six academic pseudo-intellectuals - the Kridwiss circle, consisting of Professor Georg Volger, Dr. Egon Unruhe, Professor Gilgen Holzschuher, Helmut Institoris, Dr. Chaim Breisacher, and the poet Daniel Zur H6he (554-566). Saint-Cyr 233

Christopher legend because it represents Christopher's service to his penultimate master.

In the context of the Faust legend (especially Goethe's version), it represents Satan's attempt to lure the ambitious alchemist away from the light of salvation. Every time

Tiffauges encounters one of the novel's six men of science, he is likewise lured deeper and deeper into the forbidden alchemy of Nazi philosophy, an alchemy that seeks to transform aesthetics into genetics and mythology into history.

Faustian Alchemy: "Historicizing " Mythology vs. "Mythologizing " History

In Tiffauges' world, the mixing together of fact and fiction, reality and image, mythology and history, represents a form of Faustian alchemy. Faust's divided soul, which is doubly oriented towards God and Satan, thus becomes yet another allegorical expression of malign and benign inversion: the Nazi's historicizing of cultural mythology is Faustian in a diabolical, Mephistophelian sense, representing what Dante calls "the

shortest way up the fair mountain" (Inferno 2:120) or the sinister spiral that Northrop

Frye associates with the Tower of Babel and the city of Dis (Anatomy 150, 204, 206,

354); Tournier, on the other hand, reverses this process by mythologizing the historical

discourse of WWII, thus transforming the Nazis' sinister spiral into its virtuous

equivalent, which Frye associates with images such as Jacob's Ladder and Dante's

Mount Purgatory (Anatomy 150, 204). In Le roi des aulnes, the Nazi incarnations of

Faust's sinister, Mephistophelian ambition take the form of six modern-day alchemists

who seek to historify cultural mythology by subjecting it to the validation of a scientific

(or, in this case, pseudo-scientific) methodology and empirical authority. Saint-Cyr 234

Long before meeting any of these alchemists, Tiffauges' intermixing of reality and image is identified as Faustian. The photographic act, he tells us in Part I, is occult

(168), the dark-room a site of black magic:

II y a de la messe noire tout de meme dans les manipulations auxquelles on

soumet impunement cette emanation si personnelle d'autrui, son image, comme il

y a du tabernacle dans l'agrandisseur, de l'enfer dans la lumiere sanglante ou Ton

baigne, de l'alchimie dans les bacs de revelateur, d'arret et de fixage ou Ton jette

successivement les epreuves impressionnees. Et il n'est pas jusqu'aux odeurs de

bisulfite, d'hydroquinone, d'acide acetique et d'hyposulfite qui contribuent a

charger de malefices une atmosphere deja confinee. (175-176)

In Part II, Tiffauges' "communion" with the soil of Prussia is also identified as Faustian, in that, the drainage excavations carried out by the POWs (256-257) are evocative of the second part of Goethe's Faust (see fn 81); the Earthly Paradise that Faust tries to create by draining coastal swampland corresponds to the Arcadian Paradise that Tiffauges tries to create, first at his cabin, "Canada," then at Rominten, then at Kaltenborn. All of these stages of Tiffauges' life are marked by Faustian imagery: in the POW camp at Moorhof, one of the inmates, Phiphi, refers to German women as Gretchens (259); the blind stag

Unhold is reputed to be "le sorcier, le diable" (285); and upon entering Rominten with the

Oberforstmeister, "Tiffauges avait compris qu'il penetrait a Finterieur d'un cercle feerique sous la conduite d'un magicien subalterne" (306). When Hermann Goring arrives at Rominten, his Mercedes carries him "vers le feerique chalet ou un feu d'enfer flambait dans la cheminee monumentale" (313). Goring hates men with glasses (i.e., intellectuals), whom he associates with intelligence, study, speculation - in short, with Saint-Cyr 235

Jews (318), an attitude that parallels the Emperor's attitude towards Faust as an alchemical magician, one who possesses forbidden, occult knowledge.

The Faustian historicizing of mythology at work in Tournier's portrayal of

Nazism is physically incarnated by the novel's six professor-doctors. "Dans ce roman,"

Altes points out, "une quantite de Herr Professor [sic] apportent aux entreprises militaires et raciales nazies une orientation et une legitimation par leur 'theories,' dont la scientificite douteuse ne diminue en rien la force persuasive" (85). These six figures can be divided into three categories, each representing a different branch of Nazi pseudo- scientific discourse: anthropology, genetics, and their illegitimate offspring, eugenics.91

The novel's anthropologists (Keil and Essig) are primarily concerned with cultural alchemy, while the geneticists (Unhruh and Heck) concoct new species by mixing together the very building blocks of Creation. The third and most diabolical category, eugenics, is represented by Blattchen and Mengele.

Professor Keil, from the Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology in

Konigsberg, is an academic who comes to the school at Walkenau to lecture local officials about the cultural significance of the mummified body discovered in the nearby bog. In his opening remarks, professor Keil notes the corpse's aristocratic, Aryan features (291); he then goes on to discuss the body's stomach contents (which were revealed in the autopsy), an analysis that leads him to conclude that the individual's last

91 The race theories that eventually metastasised into early twentieth-century eugenics grew out of the work of nineteenth-century anthropologists and physiologists, such as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Francis Galton (Paul 22-39). In Mann's Kridwiss Circle, eugenics is represented by Dr. Chaim Breisacher, whose praise of racial hygiene is noted by Zeitblom (565-566). 92 In the Kridwiss circle, Nazi anthropology is represented by Dr. Unruhe's attempt to link "die Tiefschichten- und Versteinerungskunde [...] mit der Rechtfertigung und wissenschaftlichen Verifizierung uralten Sagengutes verband..." (555) 'the study of fossils and geological strata with a vindication and scientific confirmation of materials found in ancient sagas' (382). This theory of social fossils - or "sublimierten Darwinismus" (555) 'sublimated Darwinism' (382), as Zeitblom calls it - has its roots in late nineteenth-century anthropology. Saint-Cyr 236 meal was ritualistic (293). This leap produces an immediate comparison between the bog-man and Jesus Christ (294). Having thus "scientifically" established that the body is that of a Nordic/Germanic Jesus, Keil then describes how it was discovered in a grove of alders, prompting him to quote Goethe's poem Erlkonig (294-295), as discussed above.

When Keil christens the bog-man "Le Roi des Aulnes," he completes the transition from hasty anthropological premise to dogmatic cultural conclusion so characteristic of Alfred

Rosenberg's writings. Keil's paradoxical view of History is a perfect expression of the ideological historian's role as a prophet facing backwards: "plus nous avanc,ons dans le temps, plus le passe se rapproche de nous" (296).93

The next anthropologist encountered by Tiffauges is professor Otto Essig, "dont la recente these de doctorat sur La Mecanique symbolique a trovers Vhistoire de

Vancienne et de la nouvelle Germanie soutenue a l'universite de Gottingen avait ete remarquee par Alfred Rosenberg" (334). In the novel, Rosenberg obtains for his protege an invitation to Rominten, much to the repugnance of Goring, who, as we have seen, associates all intellectuals with Jews, especially those who wear glasses.94 Essig, however, is oblivious to this animosity and proceeds to lecture Goring and his assembled guests at length on the cultural and phallophoric significance of deer antlers. Indeed,

Essig's meticulous study of antler formations (335-336) is reminiscent of the secret arithmetic of alchemists and Glass Bead Game players: "Connaissant desormais le sens phallophorique des bois de cerf, Tiffauges s'emerveillait de cette arithmetique qui

93 It was Schlegel who first characterised the historian as "a prophet facing backwards" (Seyhan 64). Similarly, in 1851 Wagner wrote that all of the impulses that transport us to the future are physically incarnated by images from the past (Salmi 27). 94 At Kaltenborn, children who wear glasses are rejected a priori, an anti-intellectualism that is reinforced when, shortly after Tiffauges' arrival at the napola, all scientific and literary classes are cancelled (380, 381). Saint-Cyr 237 apportait precision et subtilite dans un domaine aussi secret" (336). In the next section of the novel, Tiffauges' study of the S.S.'s complex system of insignia (376-377) bears a strong resemblance to Essig's ranking of antler formations, a parallel suggested by the professor himself when he compares Goring's baton to antlers "qui serait une bien mediocre arme de combat, mais qui le rend physiquement intouchable par la dignite qu'il lui confere" (337).

The cultural alchemy practised by Keil and Essig is transposed into flesh-and- blood by the novel's two geneticists, neither of whom is physically present in the novel

(although the fruits of their labours certainly are). As discussed above, the late professor

Unruh (225-229) is the geneticist who created Tiffauges' three adoptive pigeons. This image of a genetic alchemist is then recapitulated near the beginning of Part IV in the person of Dr. Lutz Heck, the necromancer who raises the prehistoric aurochs from the dead (316). Between the two of them, these geneticists succeed in creating animals that incarnate, respectively, the alpha and omega of Tiffauges' phoric nature. The pigeons created by Unruh are carried off by Tiffauges, just as souls of children are carried off by the Erl-king; they are alpha to his omega, a relationship that is recapitulated and inverted by the role of the carrier pigeon as a bearer of messages.95 By contrast, the aurochs

(re)created by Lutz Heck are omegan, their mythological association with the giant ox

Behemoth anticipating Ephraim's recitation from the Book of Job. When the genetic manipulation of pigeons and cattle is transposed into that of human beings in Part V, the science of culture and the science of biology come together to form the racist doctrine of eugenics.

95 Similarly, Ephraim's identity as I'enfant Port-Etoile can be read as an inverted foreshadowing of his role as Tiffauges' "poids de lumiere" (89). Saint-Cyr 238

In the final variation on the theme of Herr Doktor, Nazi pseudo-science is brought to its ultimate, Faustian climax when Otto Essig metamorphs into Otto Blattchen, the director of Kaltenborn's Centre raciologique. Near the beginning of Part V, Blattchen's

Mephistophelian identity is established overtly: "Avec sa barbiche noire effilee, ses grands yeux de velours au-dessus desquels ses sourcils dessinee a l'encre de Chine se tordaient comme des serpents, son crane bistre, ce Mephisto en blouse blanche incarnait avec une rare purete la variete des S.S. de laboratoire" (386). In an effort to isolate and define the so-called Judeo-Bolshevik race, Blattchen tours concentration camps, bringing back to Kaltenborn five-hundred jars containing severed heads preserved in formaldehyde (387). His dream is to create a human equivalent of the goldfish Carassius auratus, the ultimate achievement of Chinese bioengineering, a race destined to dominate the earth as Homo Aureus (388). Like his fellow racist theoreticians, he believes that irregularities such as birthmarks are evidence of "l'empreinte du diable" (391), a eugenic recapitulation of the diagnostic principles used in many witchcraft trials of the Early

Modern era.96 Blattchen's racial analyses and typologies - "propres a entrer dans des formules algebriques" (391) - recall Essig's classification of deer antlers, the phallophoric symbolism that, like the insignia of the S.S., confers dignity and power; however, he also believes that this racial algebra is predicated on genetic determinism rather than environmental conditioning or education. In a categorical rejection of the cultural and historical symbolism espoused by the novel's anthropologists (as well as

Count von Kaltenborn), Blattchen argues that noble titles must give way to noble

96 This historical intertext can also be related to the writings of Alfred Rosenberg, in which he attempts to draw physiological (and, in some cases, phrenological) parallels between Jews and depictions of mythical figures such as the Nordic wolf-god Fenrir, the ecstatic Bacchantes, Medieval witches, Dantean demons, as well as satyrs and centaurs in general (see Race and Race History 45, 50-51, 63-66,126-130). Saint-Cyr 239 chromosomes (432), a claim he is eager to prove "scientifically" by the most gruesome means at his disposition. Thus, just as the figure of Hitler, the Ogre of Rastenburg, lurks behind that of Goring, so is Blattchen overshadowed by the figure of the infamous Dr.

Josef Mengele, the ultimate incarnation of the Nazi Faustian alchemist.

Through his contact with Nazism, Tiffauges is swept up into the gears of "[une] grande machine a faire l'histoire" (358). All around him, mythology is being transformed into history, aesthetics into genetics, literature into anthropology. It is a form of pseudo-intellectual discourse that Thomas Mann refers to in his Faustus when the only non-academic member of the Kridwiss Circle, the poet Daniel Zur Hohe, cites

Albert Sorel's 1908 Reflexions sur la violence, a book that predicts that parlementary politics will ultimately be replaced by "mythischen Fiktionen" (Doktor Faustus 560)

'mythic fictions' (Doctor Faustus 385):

Dieses war in der Tat die krasse und erregende Prophetie des Buches, dafi

populare oder vielmehr massengerechte Mythen fortan das Vehikel der

politischen Bewegung sein wiirden: Fabeln, Wahnbilder, Hirngespinste, die mit

Wahrheit, Vernunft, Wissenschaft uberhaupt nichts zu tun zu haben brauchten,

um dennoch schopferisch zu sein, Leben und Geschichte zu bestimmen und sich

damit als dynamische Realitaten zu erweisen. [Sorel vertritt, daB] jene diese zum

Ziel haben und daB zu kraftigen Abstrichen an Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, zum

sacrificium intellectus bereit sein miisse, wer der Gemeinschaft teilhaftig sein

wolle (560).

This was in fact the book's crude and intriguing prophecy: that henceforth popular

myths, or better, myths trimmed for the masses, would be the vehicle of political Saint-Cyr 240

action - fables, chimeras, phantasms that needed to have nothing whatever to do

with truth, reason, or science in order to be productive nonetheless, to determine

life and history, and thereby to prove themsleves dynamic realities. [Sorel argued

that] truth's goal was community, and that whoever wished to be part of the

community must be prepared to jettison major proportions of truth and science, to

make the sacrificium intellectus. (385-386)

When Tiffauges first enters Kaltenborn castle, he sees that "tous les murs parlaient et criaient en devises et en aphorismes, chantaient en drapeaux et oriflammes, comme si ce fut a eux seuls que fut devolue la faculte de penser. [...] Goethe et Hitler cohabitaient au- dessus de la porte de la salle des fetes" (374). In a direct quote from Hitler's 1935

Reichsparteitag address we learn that, like a Castalian electus, "le jeune Allemand s'elevera progressivement d'ecole en ecole" (qtd. in Roi 379) until, finally, the distinctions between education and indoctrination, between pedagogy and ideology, between science and aesthetics are obliterated once and for all. Frye argues that when ideology "is enforced or promoted to the extent of hysteria and fanaticism, the mythological basis of it comes out very clearly, but in a pathological form" (Words with

Power 25); it is this sense of pathological mythology that is created when cultural myths are historicized. In other words, when mythology "modulates into ideology and helps to form a social contract, it presents data asserted to be historical, actual events in the past, but presents them so selectively that we can hardly take them to be really historical"

(Words with Power 26).

Just as the seductiveness of Nazi propaganda is rooted in cultural myths, so does

Tournier turn the Nazis' own weapons against them. As Altes puts it, "l'esthetisation et Saint-Cyr 241 la mythification [...] ne sont guere une entorse a la 'convention referentielle,' dans la mesure oii le mythique et l'esthetique son considered comme une dimension essentielle de la seduction nazie" (185). It is important to note, however, that unlike the concealed or undeclared fictionalization at work in Nazi propaganda, Tournier's mythologization is overt, thus reminding the reader not to take the novel's content too literally (just as

Hesse's ironic tone reminds the reader not to take Das Glasperlenspiel too seriously).

This self-conscious mythologization releases Tournier from the constraints of strict realism while, at the same time, leaving the novel's authentic historical references intact.

Altes argues that "le roman de Tournier se sert d'un materiau historique, mais son art est de superposer aux contraintes de la referentialite une structure formelle, esthetique, qui impose a l'Histoire une signification propre" (182). Nazi ideology sought to historicize mythology, while Tournier transforms this malign inversion into a benign one by placing

mythological ambiguity (rather than pseudo-scientific dogmatism) in the ascendant. The

resulting mythologization of history can be read as the benign inversion of historical and

cultural propaganda.

The historicizing of cultural mythology was also a source of intense frustration for

Hermann Hesse; in his correspondence with Thomas Mann, he even refers to Alfred

Rosenberg as "the bitterest and wickedest enemy I ever had" (H/M Correspondence 105).

In a 1918 essay entitled "History," Hesse suggested that propagandistic historicism -

historification of cultural mythology - "was a hoax devised by grownups in order to

belittle us and keep us in our places" (If the War Goes On 62). He was brought up to

think of history as "remote and venerable, framed in books, and studied in school;

[history was] heroism, waving flags, generals on horseback, [...] miracles and deeds of Saint-Cyr 242 heroism [that were] genuinely 'historical' - quite different from yesterday and today" (If the War Goes On 61). By contrast, Tournier invests his treatment of history with myths and folktales that are, in his own words, "un milieu translucide, mais non transparent, comme une epaisseur glauque dans laquelle le lecteur voit se dessiner des figures qu'il ne parvient jamais a saisir tout a fait" (Le vol du vampire 40). Unlike propagandists,

Tournier uses myth and folktale to draw attention to the ambiguity of the historical narrative. This is why Altes suggests that, "comme le sens, l'ethique qui se degage du

froi des aulnesl reste profondement ambigue" (4).

As Bouloumie argues, "le mythe de l'ogre est tendu entre des forces contradictoires qui l'empechent d'etre une figure figee" (98), a tension mat allows

Tournier to use mythical ambiguity as a point of articulation between the novel's fictional

and historical content. History and fiction, like mathematics and music, can be thought of as a double helix. The parallel with genetics is significant, in that, the development of

an organism is not simply the deterministic result of genetic programming; rather,

biological development is the result of the complex interaction of genetic predisposition

and environmental conditioning, an interaction that can be as reciprocal as it is

unpredictable. The relationship between history and fiction must likewise be regarded as

dynamic rather than static. The historical novel, due to its double orientation towards the

real and the hypothetical, can provide a common time signature within which historical

and fictional melody lines can be developed contrapuntally, while modulating through

intertextual keys.

Traditionally, the historical novel has been regarded as a sub-category of literary

realism and naturalism (Bouloumie 179). This is because, within the bipolar relationship Saint-Cyr 243 between fiction and history, historical fiction is usually situated on the factual, as opposed to counter-factual, axis. In order to maintain the illusion of verisimilitude characteristic of the genre, historical fiction has traditionally submitted to the constraints of a referential aesthetic. As Bouloumie puts it, "[le] rapport entre monde possible evoque et monde reel est soumis a des contraintes fortes, qui recoupent et completent les contraintes du realisme..." (179). Accordingly, Tournier's novel is grounded in historical events. He himself said that he wanted to write in such a minutely realistic way that the text becomes hyper-realistic or surreal (Petit 38). As we have seen, Le roi des aulnes "met en scene avec force details authentiques des personnages historiques [...], des evenements [...], des lieux [...] ayant joue un role dans le deroulement de l'Histoire.

[...] Les documents authentiques, mentionnes en note par l'auteur, temoignent de son souci de referentialite" (Bouloumie 180). Woven into this realism, however, are threads of myth, folklore, and legend. To argue that the novel's fictional and historical threads simply run congruently would be an oversimplification of Tournier's achievement.

Rather, Le roi des aulnes' historical and fictional content sound together like the notes in a polyphonic composition or the symbols of a Glass Bead Game.

Conclusion

Realising they are in the grips of a Faustian pact, Knecht and Tiffauges transcend both Haller and Leverkiihn's experiences by transforming themselves from Fausts into St.

Christophers. Always seeking the highest master, the ultimate service, Knecht leaves

Castalia and Tiffauges leaves Kaltenborn, returning to the source of life to pass the light of their vocation on to the next generation. This legacy is the gift of storytelling, of Saint-Cyr 244 pattern-making, of composition; it is a gift born of the polyphony of their lives and the contrapuntal structure of their respective narratives.

Hesse believed "que le monde et sa verite sont en nous, qu'il ne font qu'un avec nous" (Senes and Senes 290). This link between society and the individual allowed

Hesse to distance himself from simplistic moralisations and from traditional distinctions between good and evil since, for the individual, moral subjectivity infuses ideological conflict with the ambiguity that collectivism seeks to eradicate: "Cette relation entre les maux du dehors et le mal dans l'individu [...] lui interdit ces projections du bien et du mal qui caracterisent l'optique des ideologies combattantes" (Beaujon 133). Hesse does not reject all modes of historical thought, only those that negate the individual's role in the formation of possible worlds; like Frye, he believed that the actuation of possible worlds by the individual is the only means by which humanity can open itself up to the infinite perspectives and identities that are its birthright (Beaujon 74). Just as Per

Steppenwolf's ambiguity turns on the plurality of Haller's personae, so do Tiffauges' multiple mythical identities exploit the ambiguity of plurality: "Des les premiere pages, la lecture est orientee vers differentes hypotheses generiques, auxquelle correspondent different 'mondes possibles.' Une lecture meme litterale ne peut eluder cette pluralite inscrite des le pacte de lecture initial, obligeant le lecteur a un saut interpretatif' (Altes

177). On a structural level, the ambiguous plurality of these multiple voices is animated by the same recursive fugal permutations that animate Schoenberg's serial compositions.

Tournier's Matrix of Row Forms acts as a gateway into possible worlds. Every time Haller opens a new door in the Magic Theatre or Knecht creates new patterns with the Game language, it is as if a new crossroads in the Garden of Forking Paths is being Saint-Cyr 245 opened up; and every time Tournier uses fiction to reflect history, the resulting

"conjuncion de un espejo y de una enciclopedia" (Ficciones 13) 'conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopaedia' (Labyrinths 3) refracts the historical narrative into myriad possible worlds that can be read as literary pitch-values. Tournier thus develops the "musical idea" of his six-tone composition by exploring the ways in which these pitch-values can be associated only with each other. The resulting music is experimental to be sure; at times, it is even disturbingly harsh and dissonant. Like the Glass Bead Game, it represents the counterpoint of the twentieth century, the strange New Music whose permutations and anxieties can be heard echoing throughout the ironic modality of the modern age. Saint-Cyr 246

Conclusion:

Ludic Legends

From an historiographic perspective, Das Glasperlenspiel and Le roi des aulnes both engage in a process not simply of re-writing, but of over-writing: Knecht's anonymous biographer adds a thick, ironic coat of veneer onto his subject's life, while

Tournier overtly mythologizes the historical narrative of WWII. For Barthes, this process of over-writing represents a palimpsestic oscillation between the legible and the illegible:

...ce qui est illisible n'est rien d'autre que ce qui a ete perdu: ecrire, perdre,

reecrire, installer le jeu infini du dessous et du dessus, rapprocher le signifiant, en

faire un geant, un monstre de presence, diminuer le signifie jusqu'a

1'imperceptible, desequilibrer le message, garder de la memoire sa forme, non son

contenu, accomplir l'impenetrable definitif, en un mot mettre toute l'ecriture, tout

l'art en palimpseste, et que ce palimpseste soit inepuisable, ce qui a ete ecrit

revenant sans cesse dans ce qui s'erit pour le rendre sur-lisible - c'est-a-dire

illisible. (201, Barthes' emphasis)

This train of thought is circular, in that, it begins and ends with the concept of illegibility.

The oscillatory process that Barthes describes is perhaps the most intimate connection of all between Hesse and Tournier's novels; for within the pages of Barthes' inexhaustible palimpsest - his Borgesian "Book of Sand" - the all-mighty signifier has become a Siva­ like giant, a monster that tramples the signified into illegibility, only to succumb in turn to another ogre-signifier who, like Vishnu, "aus goldenen Gottertraumen spielend eine Saint-Cyr 247 neue Welt werden lafit" (Das Glasperlenspiel 322) 'playfully makes a new world arise out of his golden dreams of gods' (Magister Ludi 292).

Tournier's palimpsestic mythologizing of history goes to the very heart of Frye's conception of myth as a form of storytelling that was "originally identical with history but [is] now distinguished from it. [A myth is] a story which is both historical and anti- historical [...]. In totality it's counterhistorical: it reverses the slithering movement of time and confronts" (Late Notebooks 3, Frye's emphasis). Later in the same notebook, he amends this observation: "The myth is neither historical nor anti-historical: it is counter-historical, creating a stasis in the movement of time. The metaphor similarly is counter-logical, creating a stasis in the movement of causality" (Late Notebooks 7). This principle is the basis of Frye's attempt to reach "a plane of metaphor beyond hypothesis"

- the plane, in other words, on which "literature passes through belief and anti-belief to counter-belief, or [...] a catharsis of belief' (Late Notebooks 8). Literature is thus

"founded on the metaphor that arrests logic and the myth that arrests history..." (Late

Notebooks 14). The thematic stasis generated by myth and metaphor, he concludes, can be distilled into the image of a "two-way ladder, which is really a double spiral" (Late

Notebooks 13), an archetype he had already touched on in previous works, such as the

Anatomy of Criticism.97 In Words witli Power, this image becomes the basis for Frye's conception of the axis mundi [see Figure lb], according to which the major archetypes of the Western literary tradition can be organised.

Frye argues that when literary criticism is cut off from its roots in mythology, it becomes "a sterile and quickly exhausted glass bead game" (Late Notebooks 716). By contrast, one can therefore infer that Frye might have defined literary criticism that is

97 See my discussion of "Virtuous and Sinister Spirals" in chapter three. Saint-Cyr 248 rooted in mythology as a fertile and infinite Glass Bead Game. As Joseph Knecht's ironic biography descends from the low mimetic, it begins in realism, then moves towards myth; Knecht's ultimate rejection of the Game (i.e., his conclusion that its ideals are fundamentally unachievable) thus sounds Hesse's cyclical return to the mythological

- the final stage, in other words, of his modulation through Frye's five modal "key signatures," a modulation that culminates in the hypothetical sixth mode: ironic myth or mythical irony. By creating an ironic myth whose contrapuntal structure is woven into the fabric of the historical narrative, Tournier reveals himself as Hermann Hesse's true successor; he is a Glass Bead Game master par excellence whose elegant sense of ludic gravitas delivers a destabilising infusion of paradox and ambiguity directly into the bloodstream of living history.

Before even starting Knecht's biography, the reader is explicitly told: "[N]ichts entzieht sich der Darstellung durch Worte so sehr und nichts ist doch notwendiger, den

Menschen vor Augen zu stellen, als gewisse Dinge, deren Existenz weder beweisbar noch wahrscheinlich ist" (7) 'Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable' (2). The spirit of this sentiment is alive in Tournier's work, such that the counter-factual motifs that run through the development of his ludic legends bring us "dem Sein und der Moglichkeit des

Geborenwerdens um einen Schritt naher gefuhrt werden" (7) 'a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born' (2). Tournier's mythologized history is an embryonic environment within which the educated imagination can gestate; it is a

"cultural envelope" whose centrifugal ties to twentieth-century history are always/already in the process of being subverted and deconstructed by the centripetal impetus of its Saint-Cyr 249 playful counterpoint. If Northrop Frye's ideal of an autonomous, ideogrammatic language of criticism capable of modeling cognition is ever achieved, it may end up resembling a grille de dechiffrement or a Schoenbergian Matrix of Row Forms. The legends composed out of this ludic language, however, have always been and will always be Glass Bead Games. Saint-Cyr 250

Appendix: Figures

P I.J

U H CO

04

Figure 1 Frye's "Theory of Symbols' Saint-Cyr 251

Literature

Plastic Arts

Figure la Frye's conception of literature as the centre of the Arts Saint-Cyr 252

Wisdom •• *- Prophecy

Figure lb Frye's axis mundi Saint-Cyr 253

Logos

Adonis Eros

Nomos Nous

Hermes Prometheus

Thanatos

V/ Knight's Tale Structure

A, Alchemical Structure

Prophet (oracle)

King Priest (commandmen i) / \ (parable)

lower king ( / lower priest (law) (counsel of prudence)

Lower Prophet (sacrifice) D institutional Christ o spiritual Christ

Figure lc Frye's "HEAP scheme" (upper) and his diagrammatic conception of the archetypal roles of the Messiah (lower) Saint-Cyr 254

* rn «*..-• r S *•*•

tir .. t> M-J;!W

1 ^ Sf-.ffttli It 111 ilMW

K,fc H/s KJ,r 51** ^r^-?-: b' S 4 * I"! miJi4r

I : •-. ,r .- ,s/»Sf-. I m* t mm'*

B *?a;-.' t ; Majttf **u |i; minor m 1.; m.(!'." \; ffnjyafr' 08 6 •- *5" OK

II'-. .Mjkjw OR

I. Mj~if

> • isisur

Figure 2 The Circle of Fifths Saint-Cyr 255

E F G a Ff D» G» D B C A

Figure 3 Prime Row for Schoenberg's Suite for Piano, Opus 25 Saint-Cyr 256

i Prime Row—*• E F G I a w WO! D B C j A f »• J R

O

«; ' o,

LLi •S.J. i r»' j—, ' A .

CA

i i

t !i t .=i t RI

Figure 4 Three principal permutations of the Prime Row (inversion, retrogression, and retrograde-inversion) for Schoenberg's Suite for Piano. Opus 25 Matrix of Row Forms for Schoenberg's Suite for Pianot Opus

T k !i In l,j .MO I, *8 is^ k F E 1 o a Ft w GI D 0 c A Bt Ro Fn Df j E Ft c F D G a A* B GI A : a D E Al Dt c F B Gt A & G G Gi At E A R B F D D§ C O

P 10 D D» F B E a Fl C A Al G Gt

p F P» Gi D C E A D» C a Al B

C O 0* A 0 8 fof At G GI F Fl

p2 in 0 A DJ 0 f Al E a D B C j p? j A Ai C PI B GI a G E F D Dl i i A B A* G c pi IX e a D

8 C D a a Al D§ A P C E F ! A* B | O G ; c A D <5*j F B W; E EL

Figure 5 pizzicato: arco: col lengo, bowed: col lengo, struck:

spiccato: \ con sordino: m rn senza sordino: m PR sul ponticello:

sul tasto: o>

Figure 6 Examples of Schoenberg's pictographic notation Saint-Cyr 259

Cohduc&r Coet

/** n"

Figure 7 Two excerpts from R. Murray Schafer's "Epitaph for Moonlight" Saint-Cyr 260

Thema Sehr ruhigJ'^sii t I 8 ? 8 » w n^_ IhftTTfi L J.' "*"j*:"' .I "'Y^Xlf'"^fliiJ'^™-?*"-!' '| "~1 f/y--*"--- •— • iM'"rj* *p ^— =5^ * £-*"~[p |\l'' fel ! "* i ""=— w»— IP VFP yf"'-^" |" •'•t^-^-j -*~ 1—•«—... | ,.;», ( * =

tthr zatt Figure 8 First eleven bars of the second movement of Webern's Symphony. OPUS 21 Saint-Cyr 261

r&$$.\

%•>,?• _„,/te^-4.^J^iltik-

Figure 9 Klee's "Polyphonically Enclosed White" (1930 watercolour) Saint-Cyr 262

aa^iCs** Figure 10 Escher's "Print Gallery" (1956 lithograph), with preliminary sketch (upper) Saint-Cyr 263

xm

™» .h^^^p •t-^j—SuiC

IHsplL

Figure 11 Klee's "Blossoming" (1934 oil on canvas) Saint-Cyr 264

Figure 12 Kandinsky's "In the Bright Oval" (1925 oil on cardboard) and "Radiating" (1927 oil on canvas) Saint-Cyr 265

j,%L;'.„CA).—j£kpe .i*u-£fi£L,

Figure 13 Klee's "Fugue in Red" (1921 watercolour) Saint-Cyr

Figure 14 Klee's "Rose Garden" (1920 oil and ink on paper) and "Camel (in Rhythmic Landscape with Trees)" (1920 oil and Indian ink on chalk undercoat) Saint-Cyr 267

y

"*<%[& •'*W.,

Figure 15 Kandinsky's "Fifteen" (1938 gouache and tempera on paper) Saint-Cyr

Figure 16 Kandinsky's "An Intimate Celebration" (1942 mixed media on cardboard) and "Serious Joke" (1930 oil on cardboard) Saint-Cyr 269

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