The Glass Bead Game: from Post-Tonal to Post-Modern
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* • 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 © Copyright Yves Saint-Cyr 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44699-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44699-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. 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.