[In the following essay, Durrani examines the fictional province of Castalia, which functions as the setting of Das Glasperlenspiel.]

Even the most vociferous admirers of Hesse's last novel, Das Glasperlenspiel, may be forgiven for failing to form a favourable impression of the ‘pedagogic province of Castalia, where much of the novel is located. The author, scrupulously screening his identity behind the mask of an anonymous narrator, is far from generous in his comments on its history and organization. Its principal qualities must be inferred from a narrative which is not structured in such a way as to acquaint the reader with any practical details about which he may desire clarification. The introduction to the novel is concerned with the origins of the Glass Bead Game, and the ensuing twelve chapters recount the meteoric career of Josef Knecht and the legend of his untimely death; his posthumous writings are at best very oblique appraisals of a life lived within Castalia. Title and subtitle of the novel draw attention towards the Game and the person of Josef Knecht, and yet no interpretation of the novel could succeed in the absence of a thorough investigation of the political framework within which the Game is cultivated and the man employed. From the time of the novel's appearance in 1943, two views have been heard on this subject; according to the one, Castalia is a ‘utopian’ state, while according to the other, it is a symbol of decline and decadence. The first reviews in the leading Swiss journals contradict each other on this point: Robert Faesi (Neue Schweizer Rundschau) describes Castalia as ‘eine Provinz des Friedens’ where ‘die Söhne des Geistes sind wohl aufgehoben, wenn sie sich auch des weltlichen Wohllebens um der inneren Freiheit und äußeren Geborgenheit willen enthalten müssen’. In sum, the new world created by Hesse is ‘Nicht schlechter, eher um ein paar Grade besser als das unsere’.¹ R. J. Humm (Die Weltwoche) is more cautious:

Kastalien ist ein Kloster von Drachen, von letzten, müden Geistesheroen. Sie züngeln nicht mehr durch die Materie der Menschheit. Sie haben sich abgesondert. Sie sind kaum mehr schöpferisch. Zwischen Geist und Welt hat sich ein tiefer Abgrund aufgetan. Hesse zeichnet uns lächelnd das betrübliche Bild einer Spätzeit, in welcher der Geist, von der Welt gar zu hart angefaßt, sich in eine schöne Klausur zurückzieht, nur noch spielt, nur noch Höflichkeiten und Formen hergibt, die Welt nicht mehr anregt, nicht mehr befruchtet.

The new state awakens memories of social and political repression:

ihr staatlich-gesellschaftliches Gefüge dürfte eine viel größere Ähnlichkeit mit einem ägyptischen oder chinesischen Beamten-, Mandarinen- oder Priesterstaat haben als mit dem freisinnig-demokratischen Staatswesen von heute.²

Hesse himself gives us scant assistance in resolving this dilemma. Both points of view are reflected in the text, where the optimism voiced by the narrator contrasts sharply with the arguments which Knecht advances to justify his premature departure from the inward-looking world of Waldzell. In a novel where much space is devoted to the notion of polarity, to the yin and the yang, and to man's synthesizing aspirations, the reader may well form the opinion that Castalia possesses positive and negative qualities to an approximately equal extent, and leave the matter at that. Theodore Ziolkowski has advanced his own elegant solution, which entails a distinction between three separate Castalias: the fruitful Castalia as originally established as a bulwark against mediocrity, the restrictive organization into which it later develops and from which Knecht is obliged to flee, and a third Castalia, which is that of the narrator, ‘tempered by the criticisms made by Knecht during his lifetime’:

The novel actually depicts, implicitly or explicitly, three visions of Castalia: the utopian spiritual realm portrayed in the introduction and only there; the Alexandrine republic of aestheticism, sharply attacked by Knecht and the narrator alike in the text of the novel; and finally a more balanced synthesis of life and spirit represented by the narrator himself. It is necessary to make sharp distinctions between these three stages.³

Tempting though the hypothesis of a three-dimensional Castalia may seem, it is simply not borne out by what we read in the novel. The introduction is not concerned with the state of Castalia as an ideal, but merely with the evolution of the Game; nor is there much evidence that lessons have been learned by the narrator or by his contemporaries from the Magister's demise. The very fact that the same institutions which cramped Knecht are still in existence, and in receipt of quasi-religious veneration, shows that little if anything has changed since his time. That Castalia has failed to become an ‘open’ society in the interim is evidenced by the continued existence of ‘secret archives’ to which even our biographer is denied access (311). Far from ‘representing’ a revitalized Castalia, the anonymous historian must acknowledge that his labours are ‘einigermaßen im Widerspruch zu den herrschenden Gesetzen und Bräuchen’ of the province (8)—he himself is at best a tolerated outsider whose work may or may not receive the approval of the authorities.

There is a further reason why we should beware of accepting the chronicler's Castalia as an ideal. The Game is already in a state of decline during Knecht's lifetime, the annual festivals are getting shorter and shorter (220), and the Magister knows that most people regard the ritual as an empty ceremony, ‘als leere Zeremonie, als unlebendig, als altmodisch, als zopfisches Relikt der Vergangenheit’ (253). Like Knecht, Hesse believed in the cycle of history, the ‘gyres’ by which the ‘ancient lineaments are blotted out’.⁴ Many of Knecht's poems underline the inevitability of change; life is a flux, man is as clay, kneaded but never fired, never struck into a permanent form (‘Klage’, 472). ‘Stufen’, cited by him on the eve of his departure from Waldzell, is an outcry against the notion of stability:

Der Weltgeist will nicht fesseln uns und engen,
Er will uns Stuf' um Stufe heben, weiten.
Kaum sind wir heimisch einem Lebenskreise
Und traulich eingewohnt, so droht Erschlaffen,
Nur wer bereit zu Aufbruch ist und Reise,
Mag lähmender Gewöhnung sich entraffen.

(484)

In the most pessimistic of these poems, the elegiac lamentation ‘Der letzte Glasperlenspieler’, Knecht foresees the destruction of Castalia, its culture superseded by war and plague, as the redundant beads roll off into the sands, and ivy and bees claim possession of the ruins in which the last Magister Ludi awaits his death (476). Castalia is already condemned to decay, and any temporary respite gained from Knecht's exemplary action is no more than a stay of execution. The rebuilding of a better Castalia is not the subject of the novel, nor is it desirable; Hesse's own ‘organic’ appraisal of civilization, as sketched out, for example, in the short story “Die Stadt,” requires the last flowering of the intellect to be followed by a complete return to Nature (Gesammelte Schriften, IV, 490-96).

Castalia, by contrast, survives. Its ideology, its political structure, and its most prized achievement, the Game, remain unimpaired by the strictures of Knecht's circular letter and the example of his abdication. He has not even become the hero of a counter-culture, his rebellious deed has simply been amalgamated into the history of the province, where mere lip-service is paid to its stimulating effect. The continuing, unimpaired buoyancy of Castalia demonstrates its duplicity; the fossilized ‘Alexandrine’ republic has successfully transmuted the real Josef Knecht into a legend which has been put to use to ensure its continued survival. The final chapter, presented to us by a narrator who realizes that ‘nothing is known of [Knecht's] demise’, and who does not seem to mind that he is merely regurgitating a ‘pious fable’ (47), does not inspire confidence in the prowess of Castalia's historians. It seems rather that, just as the medieval church availed itself of professional hagiographers to write the lives of the saints in the most edifying manner, this biography was compiled with the interests of Castalia in mind.

It is perhaps for this reason that literary criticism has been slow to come to grips with the shortcomings of Castalia as a social and political entity. Also, Hesse himself did much to deter critics from probing into this question, by confronting them with favourable assessments on its role as a custodian of spiritual values. The most quoted of these was made in 1955 to the critic Rudolf Pannwitz:

Ich mußte, der grinsenden Gegenwart zum Trotz, das Reich des Geistes und der Seele als existent und unüberwindlich sichtbar machen. So wurde meine Dichtung zur Utopie, das Bild wurde in die Zukunft projiziert, die üble Gegenwart in eine überstandene Vergangenheit gebannt.

(M, I, 296)

In this and many similar formulations, the term ‘utopia’ has loomed large, and given rise to the expectation that there must be something inherently admirable about the society in which the novel is set. Even when voicing reservations about certain aspects of Castalia, Hesse shrinks back from outright condemnation:

[Es hat] mich sehr gefreut, daß Sie die Struktur meiner Utopie so richtig erkannt und es so gut formuliert haben: sie zeigt lediglich eine Möglichkeit des geistigen Lebens, einen platonischen Traum, nicht ein für ewig gültig zu haltendes Ideal, sondern eine mögliche, sich ihrer Relativität aber bewußte Welt.

Den inneren Sinn und Wert dieser Welt stellt der jüngere Josef Knecht und der Ordensmeister dar, während der spätere Knecht, historisch vorgeschult, den Gedanken der Relativität und Vergänglichkeit auch der idealsten Welt verkörpert.

(M, I, 232)

Exegetes of the novel have therefore been understandably reluctant to depart from ‘utopian’ readings in which Castalia figures as ‘a splendid possibility’ threatened only by ‘the fallibility of man and the atrophy of time’—thus Joseph Mileck, claiming that Hesse believed in a Castalia-like lay monasticism, and confidently accepting, as Ziolkowski had done, the ‘better tomorrow of 2400’.⁵ Other critics have spoken of Hesse's ‘futuristic idealism’,⁶ they have seen Castalia as an antithesis to the barbarism of National Socialist Germany,⁷ or, more circumspectly, have viewed it as embodying the valuable as well as the destructive concomitants of the German ideology:

Castalia is, then, a realm which allows for ‘freedom and universality’ in answer to the constrictions of everyday social practicalities. But at the same time, it is a world dangerously determined to insulate itself from actualities; it is an ivory tower, an elite province which will not acknowledge its own embeddedness in history as the given dimension of human being and activity. In this novel Hesse offers an affectionate, yet deeply critical, examination of a familiar pattern in German thinking.⁸

The question to which we must now address ourselves concerns the presumptive virtues of this republic of scholars. Of its location we know little, of its dimensions nothing. It is suggested that many countries throughout the world contain similar provinces within their frontiers (‘in manchem Lande der Erde’ (286), ‘in unserem Lande wie in so manchen anderen’ (387)), whose function is pedagogical; whether they are organized in precisely the same manner as the central European one described by Hesse is, again, an open question. This Castalia, at any rate, seems to offer its inhabitants, and the outside world, upon whom the celibate members of the Order are totally dependent, five distinct benefits: first, it claims to have suppressed the age of the Feuilleton; secondly, its members are engaged in the loving preservation of the cultures of the past; thirdly, worldly ambitions, the pursuit of wealth and fame, are discouraged; fourthly, education is its highest goal; and fifthly, a sober and meditative life-style is the norm throughout the province.

Commendable though these various aims may be, it does not require a great effort to recognize that Castalia has, in every one of these areas, failed to put its avowed ideals into practice. In some cases, the medicine seems to be no better than the disease it was intended to cure. True, ‘das feuilletonistische Zeitalter’, as it is derisively apostrophized and scathingly castigated by Plinius Ziegenhalß/Hermann Hesse,⁹ is an age of frivolous and benighted dilettantism, in which the reader will discern many of the foibles of present-day pseudo-scholarship. ‘Friedrich Nietzsche und die Frauenmode von 1870’, ‘Die Rolle des Schoßhundes im Leben großer Kurtisanen’, and ‘Die Lieblingsspeisen des Komponisten Rossini’ are titles of discursive contributions which, by no great stretch of the imagination, we can envisage in the ‘colour supplements’ of today. A world in which famous chemists or pianists are invited to speak about politics, where actors, sportsmen, pilots, and poets express their opinions in the media on the pros and cons of bachelorhood or on the causes of financial catastrophes (18) is the world of the ‘chat show’ and the star-studded panel game. But what does Hesse put in its place? ‘An der völligen Überwindung des Feuilletons … hatte das Glasperlenspiel großen Anteil’, we are informed (33), and yet the research undertaken in Castalia is idiosyncratic to the point of sheer crankishness: ‘die Aussprache des Lateins an den Hochschulen des südlichen Italien gegen Ende des zwölften Jahrhunderts’, a translation of all ancient Egyptian texts into Greek and Sanskrit, a comparison of Goethe's and Spinoza's horoscopes, accompanied by very pretty multi-coloured geometric sketches (65, 148). When a scholar of the calibre of Chattus Calvensis II, described with remarkable restraint as ‘etwas wunderlich’, dies while working on one such project, no one is able to continue his work (65), perhaps because no one has read it; our ostensibly pro-Castalian narrator is not above using the word ‘vergeuden’ when speaking of a scholar who is prepared to spend his entire life trying to decipher a single ancient inscription (66). Anything goes, it would seem, as long as the scholar remains morally upright: ‘[es gibt viele], welche ihr Leben lang die entlegensten und oft fast närrischen Studien betreiben, und niemand stört sie darin, solange nur nicht ihre Sitten entarten’ (75 f.). That a scholar's activities should be sanctioned or vetoed on the basis of his private morality is as much of an injustice as the amateurism of the Feuilleton; the designation of such labours as ‘oft fast närrisch’ does little to inspire confidence in the Castalian ideal.

There are, in fact, at least three compelling reasons for regarding the defeat of feuilletonism with less than whole-hearted enthusiasm. First, in the course of his diatribe against the dilettante, Ziegenhalß delivers a sweeping attack on many manifestations of modern life that were harmless to the point of being acceptable to Hesse himself; along with the politically interested concert pianists, he condemns crossword puzzles, motor cars, and Nobel prizes (19 f., 33). Now the crossword puzzle is not so very different from the game of chess, derided by Shaw as ‘a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time’, and yet we are told that the Glass Bead Game itself has certain affinities with chess (131).¹⁰ Hesse himself accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946 and acquired a motor car in 1948, which should show that the disgruntled Ziegenhalß was more far-reaching in his vituperations than his creator.¹¹ Secondly, as we have seen, something of the spirit of the Feuilleton lives on, albeit in disguise, within the hallowed institutions of Castalia. The Magister Musicae has occasion to complain that it has not really been overcome (‘da grünte es schon wieder und trieb Knospen’ (81)), and Plinio makes the same point more forcefully when he claims ‘das Glasperlenspiel sei ein Rückfall in die feuilletonistische Epoche, ein bloßes verantwortungsloses Spielen mit den Buchstaben’ (99 f.). He is never explicitly refuted. The narrator, too, must admit that outsiders have no alternative but to regard Castalia's concerns as ‘luxuriöse Spielereien’ (65). Thirdly, even if we accept that the rejection of feuilletonism is potentially beneficial for mankind, we cannot do so without acknowledging that it is in no sense the main problem facing twentieth-century society—at the time Hesse was writing, it was Fascism rather than feuilletonism that was threatening Europe. True, towards the end of the book, Knecht speaks of ‘das “kriegerische Jahrhundert”’ (386), establishing a link between dilettantism and militarism, but again, this has not been neutralized by the achievements of Castalian scholarship—one of the many arguments of the ‘Rundschreiben’ is that hostilities may flare up at any moment, regardless of the humanistic outlook of the pedagogic province (391 f.).

Turning now to the ideology of the province, and especially to the care and attention with which the creative work of past cultures is garnered there as in a vast treasure-house, it is not difficult to see even this superficially commendable activity in a negative light. For Castalia has become a mere repository of learning, while its inmates have become incapable of, or must be forcibly restrained from, themselves undertaking any creative labour. The narrator speaks of his epoch as ‘wesentlich unschöpferisch’ (46), and Knecht fears that Castalia's fate will be ‘schießlich in einer glänzenden, aber mehr und mehr zur Unfruchtbarkeit verurteilten Abspaltung vom Ganzen des Lebens zu verkommen’ (300). What is most significant is that the increasing cultural barrenness of the province is less the result of an intrinsic decadence than a self-inflicted penalty; such is the official scepticism in regard to the value of the individual that the true Castalian thinks of poetry as ‘impossible, laughable, and prohibited’. The conventional attitude to the making of poems is tantamount to a criminalization of individual creativity:

Denn wenn schon im allgemeinen Kastalien auf das Hervorbringen von Kunstwerken Verzicht geleistet hat (auch musikalisches Produzieren kennt und duldet man dort nur in der Form von stilistisch streng gebundenen Kompositionsübungen), so galt Gedichtemachen gar für das denkbar Unmöglichste, Lächerlichste, Verpönteste.

(110 f.)

It is hard to see this embargo in a positive light, for example, as a survival of the platonic contention that poets mislead the masses; it remains unmotivated, except by the general hostility towards expressions of individualism, and is inevitably reminiscent of the cultural policies of the totalitarian state.¹²

The further one delves into the book, the more difficult it becomes to find in Castalia values and accomplishments worthy of credit. It is beyond doubt, though, that in the Magister Musicae Hesse has created a good, almost a saintly figure. In his serenity, his goodwill towards Knecht, and his unpretentious devotion to art, he appeals to the reader as an emblem of all that is best in the province. But although he may be above criticism as a human being, it is equally true that he is naively optimistic about the organization to which he belongs, and blind to its defects. Before Knecht is old enough to form his own opinions, the Music Master encourages him to reject the outside world. With what is described as a ‘beinahe listiges Lächeln’ (74), this man instructs his young protégé in the merits of Castalia as opposed to life outside, where whoever pursues the so-called ‘freie Berufe’

… wird damit aber ein Sklave niedriger Mächte, er hängt vom Erfolg, vom Geld, von seinem Ehrgeiz, seiner Ruhmsucht, vom Gefallen ab, das die Menschen an ihm finden oder nicht finden.

(75)

What astonishes us about this contention is its naivety. The narrative will make it abundantly clear that Ehrgeiz, Ruhmsucht, and Gefallen are very much in evidence in Castalia, where they account for considerably more than the fruits of pure scholarship in the distribution of high offices. Why else would Bertram be hounded out of Waldzell by a Machiavellian clique of players? ‘Though these men are the hierarchy's finest members, trained in and imbued with a most rigorous morality and spirituality, they nevertheless do not shy away from what amounts to an act of collective murder’, says one critic of this episode.¹³ Why else would Knecht himself have to suffer so many trials at the hands of the merciless Repetenten after he has assumed office (244-48)? He, too, is a living example of Ehrgeiz, a ‘Herrennatur’ (156), ‘beinahe ein Charmeur’ (199), who enjoys making others aware of his power (161). Tegularius, in many ways a typical product of the system (‘Erzkastalier’, 294), is given to fits of intense jealousy (‘mit heftiger Eifersucht’, 365) and displays arrogance (Pater Jakobus describes him as ‘überzüchtet’, ‘schwächlich’, and ‘etwas hochmütig’, 214). As for the alleged absence of Gefallen in the province, the Music Master need look no further than his own relationship with Knecht to discover how much favouritism can achieve within the province. Terms like ‘Schützling’ (241), ‘Vorzugsschüler’ (206), and ‘Lieblingsschüler’ (56) are words that abound in this book and endow the Castalian system with the unsavoury aura of nepotism. The Magister Musicae, known, incidentally, in his earlier days as ‘der große Gerneklein’ (271), perhaps on account of his somewhat suspect modesty, does Knecht a disservice by drawing a veil over Castalia's faults. He may not be fully aware of its duplicity, for, as the narrator remarks of the ‘aristocratic’ inner circle at Waldzell, ‘man war ehrgeizig, ohne es zu zeigen’ (141), but he is clearly in league with the highest authorities, as Knecht notes with some surprise (189). His display of displeasure at the ‘diplomatic’ nature of Knecht's enforced service to Castalia comes as a belated warning (192).

The unparalleled educational system, of which much is made in the early pages of the book, also proves disappointing when examined in practice; we are left with an impression of austere schools whose interests regularly conflict with those of the pupils' parents (45, 61), where sinister men like headmaster Zbinden hold sway, where boys are addressed with the cynical condescension of pedagogues whose last resort is to remind their pupils that they have no chance of being cited in ‘das goldene Buch’, the famous catalogue of distinguished scholars which is promptly christened ‘Streberkatalog’ by the inventive little dunces (56 f.). Knecht himself has occasion to regret the departure of several classmates who, despite their other good qualities, were unceremoniously ‘sent down’ by the headmaster of Eschholz: ‘… jener Otto, zum Beispiel, der so wunderbare lateinische Juxverse machen konnte, oder unser Charlemagne, der so lang unter Wasser hat schwimmen können, und die anderen’ (77). The most telling indictment of Castalia's schools occurs when the narrator himself expresses surprise at the fact that Knecht apparently managed to survive his secondary education without visible damage (‘erstaunlicherweise aber nicht erkennbar geschädigt’ (122)).

Similarly, many of the by-products of the system are shown to have deleterious consequences for those entrusted to it. The average pupil at Eschholz tends to be sexually retarded and shy (93), and although we are assured that Castalia knows not the prudery of earlier generations, the circumstances in which contact is made with the opposite sex are bizarre and improbable; few societies on earth would regard marriage as ‘little more than a curiosity’ (117) without the severe doctrinal pressures of the type applied by the defenders of monasticism. Knecht's latent anti-feminism is most clearly evidenced in the fictional biography ‘Indischer Lebenslauf’, where Pravati is blamed for Dasa's misfortunes (‘Verführt von Pravatis Schönheit, bestrickt vom Weib und angesteckt von ihrem Ehrgeiz, hatte er den Weg verlassen, auf welchem allein die Freiheit und der Friede gewonnen wird’ (605)). The place of women is taken, to a large extent, by involvements with boys and other men, in which no less a reader than Thomas Mann has discerned elements of homosexuality.¹⁴ Petrus worships the Music Master, Anton is strongly attracted to Knecht, who himself responds with love both to the Music Master and to Tito. But the experience is rarely presented as beneficial. Petrus goes to pieces after the death of his idol (‘übergeschnappt’ (308)), whereupon he is threatened with enforced hospitalization, possibly as a prelude to some worse punishment—there seems to be no other accepted way of dealing with emotional problems in Castalia. When at Mariafels, Knecht becomes aware of the ‘schwärmerische … Jünglings- und Schülerliebe’ that the novice Anton feels towards him, and resolves to be ‘doppelt zurückhaltend’ in dealing with him, remembering ‘das strenge Keuschheitsgebot, unter welchem man hier stand’ (170); the implication is that less circumspection would have been called for in Castalia. Like Petrus and Tegularius, Anton is a Schwärmer whose emotionalism is somewhat at variance with the austere principles of the organization he has joined.

The emphasis Castalians place on meditation also has drawbacks. What should serve as a means of achieving self-knowledge is all too often abused as an easy way of disposing of crises and unwanted emotions. Plinio makes this observation when he opens his heart to Knecht in the chapter ‘Ein Gespräch’ (‘Das Triebleben ist meditativ gebändigt …’ (341)); the result is a kind of self-castration (341, cf. 99). Meditation is recommended and used as a cure-all by members of the Order. The Music Master impresses the advantages of regular exercises on the young Knecht when the first doubts about the Order are beginning to stir in his mind; failure to meditate is a ‘sin of omission’ (108 f.). The material for such exercises is taken not so much from religious, philosophical, or poetic sources as from the rule-book of the Order (‘… vorher hatte Knecht einen Satz der Ordensregel als Aufgabe für eine Meditationsübung bekommen’ (151)), highlighting the self-interest of the organization. The ridiculous extremes to which the practice can be taken are nicely illustrated by Alexander's sudden recourse to ‘Notübungen’, necessitated by the news of Knecht's apostasy:

Der Ordensleiter schloß die Augen und schien nicht mehr zuzuhören, Knecht erkannte, daß er jene Notübung vollziehe, mit deren Hilfe die Ordensleute in Fällen von plötzlicher Gefahr und Bedrohung sich der Selbstbeherrschung und inneren Ruhe zu versichern versuchen …

(424)

This desperate response to Knecht's reasoned request to leave the Order is deliberately presented in the manner of a caricature. What should be a means of achieving inner harmony is abused, by the Castalian authorities, as a last-ditch method of suppressing genuine feelings. Meditation has become a substitute for experience; Alexander performs his ‘Notübung’ as another man might light a cigarette or pour himself a drink.

The Bead Game itself, allegedly the focus of much of Castalia's activity, partakes of a similar ambiguity. Even when it is spoken of as a marvellous achievement, the reader will wonder where precisely its fascination lies. We are told that it was accompanied by ‘eine büßerisch-fanatische Hingabe an den Geist’ (34) and that it can be thought of as an infinitely complex game of chess (131), but when it comes to describing the social context in which it is played, the narrator's eulogies simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Knecht's first game as Magister Ludi is concerned with the symbolism of the Chinese house, which is built in accordance with rules relating to the points of the compass, the calendar, and the symbolism and style of the garden. These ‘rules’ were deduced by Knecht from the Book of Changes, the ‘I Ging’, as we are specifically informed (265). Previously, however, it had been carefully noted that there was an almost universal lack of interest in, indeed antipathy towards, this very book among the teachers of the Game in Waldzell (‘ein Gebiet …, von dem man im Lehrhaus wenig wissen wollte’ (133)). The only person in Castalia who has a thorough knowledge of the book, to the extent of living according to its wisdom, refuses to attend the game, sending Knecht an obscure ‘ancient verse about a goldfish’, half as an apology, half as an insult (268 f.). We may safely assume that when Knecht finally presides over his first ludus sollemnis, ‘Ruhe, Kraft und Würde ausstrahlend’ (285), when the ciphers of the game are broadcast throughout the land, no one other than Knecht, Tegularius, and the Älterer Bruder (who is not listening) will be in a position to make head or tail of the proceedings.¹⁵

This is only one of the grounds on which the Game as an institution is open to criticism. The atmosphere of intrigue and scarcely veiled hostility that surrounded the previous year's solemn festival, during which and because of which the incumbent Magister Ludi dies, is another revealing symptom of Castalia's failure to harness the dark forces of bitterness and envy within its own members. The circumstances in which Thomas's deputy, Bertram, ‘dieser unbescholtene, aber nicht oder doch zur Zeit nicht mehr beliebte Mann’ (226), is driven out of Waldzell by a subversive ‘elite’ who play their own power-game simultaneously with the Bead Game, which continues ‘in korrekter Form’ (229), remind us of the politically-motivated Putsch rather than of the scholar's utopia of the preface. That Knecht should, in consequence of these clandestine goings-on, feel no more than ‘eine gewisse Enttäuschung seiner hochgespannten Erwartung’ (222) testifies to his naivety in political matters and to the success of the elite in covering up their activities. In effect, it is not difficult to see Knecht being used as a political tool, not only when he is sent to Mariafels, but even in his election as Magister Ludi, where the Chief of Police, who was well pleased with the service he had rendered Castalia in the past (216 f.), plays a major part in his nomination (233, 235).

It can no longer be denied that a close examination of Castalia and its institutions at work compels us to consider the possibility that it is in no sense a utopia, but that much of the novel contains material that could be construed as a satire of the modern police state. Whether or not this was part of the original conception of the work remains difficult to determine, but we now know for certain that earlier versions of the introductory chapter contained hard-hitting attacks on some of the basic manifestations of German Fascism, which make it seem probable that political polemics were an important part of the original constellation of ideas out of which the novel arose.¹⁶ This theory is best tested by giving further consideration to those features of life in Castalia that are most closely reminiscent of totalitarianism.

It is immediately evident that in this quasi-autonomous political entity all personal relationships are governed by stringently-applied rules and conventions. A well-defined hierarchy exists, within which a pecking-order of rituals determines who may associate with whom, and on what basis. The exact forms of address have been prescribed for every occasion. Thus the use of the familiar pronoun du, traditionally a mark of friendship, is forbidden when addressing a superior in the hierarchy, no matter how intense the relationship. The Music Master makes this point when inviting Knecht to use the familiar form after his resignation: ‘Ich konnte dir das nicht anbieten, solange ich im Amt war’ (151). Conversely, Tegularius is obliged to drop the affectionate tone on Knecht's advancement; the Magister Ludi must be addressed as Ihr and Ehrwürdiger in private as well as in public (261). There is a comic episode when Ferromonte forgets the rules (‘einem anderen als dir—verzeiht, als Euch, Domine—’ (280)), which neatly illustrates their falseness. Knecht's sudden hostility towards his friend and helper Tegularius, and the ‘merkwürdige Ruhe und Kälte’ (235) that come over him when he hears of his election, show a warm, personal relationship being vitiated by the assumption of a high office. By the end of his career, talking down to young people has become second nature to Knecht; Tito has to remind him that, in the outside world at least, the du form cannot be used indiscriminately (371).

The extent to which people are used and manipulated by the state is worrying. Knecht is packed off to Mariafels for two years with no option of refusing. He comes back with a foreboding that his next mission will result in what he resentfully describes as ‘auf die Dauer in den diplomatischen Dienst abgeschoben zu werden’ (199). The proliferation of terms endowed with overt political associations, such as ‘Abgeschobenwerden’ (199), ‘Kaltstellung’ (225), and ‘Bonzen’ (234), enhances the impression of a powerful diplomatic organization, as do the ubiquitous references to an ever-watchful ‘Behörde’, the all-embracing ‘Erziehungsbehörde’, with its ‘Kanzleien’ (226, 419).¹⁷ It is here, we feel, that the real power lies. The ‘Erziehungsbehörde’ recruits the best brains for service within its ranks (45), and supervises important rituals like ‘die seelische Hygiene der Meditationsübungen’ (115). It is the ‘Kanzlei der Erziehungsbehörde’ that reprimands Knecht for his overimaginative third ‘Lebenslauf’ (120); what the Order demands above all else is ‘Bindung’ (151). Throughout his life, Knecht finds the duties it imposes upon him burdensome (‘eine Last’, 313); he resents the impersonal style in which all its documents are couched (406), and must deprecate its inflexibility, as evidenced by Alexander's laconic ‘Mein Standpunkt hat sich natürlich nicht geändert, ich bin Mitglied der Behörde und der Ordensleitung’ (431).

Doctrinaire rigidity is by no means the worst of its qualities. Constant surveillance, and frequent recourse to espionage, are well established traditions in the province. Knecht's visit to Mariafels is nothing short of a carefully-planned attempt to infiltrate the Church, as all parties recognize. It necessitates the vetting and briefing of Knecht over a period of three weeks by the unappealing Monsieur Dubois, the Chief of Police (157), whose first impressions of Knecht had been unfavourable (193). His instructions are transparent:

[du wirst] vermutlich im Kreis dieser ehrwürdigen Herren und ihrer Gäste auch politische Gespräche hören und politische Stimmungen verspüren. Wenn du mich davon gelegentlich benachrichtigen wolltest, wäre ich dankbar dafür.

(159)

There follows a heavy-handed avowal that Knecht must not think of himself as a spy. Later, he is commended for his observations rather than for his bead-games (183, 187), and eventually it is admitted that the game is merely a cover for a more vital diplomatic task:

Und dein Auftrag ist, du sollst ins Benediktinerstift zurückkehren, sollst wie bisher dort leben, Studien treiben, einen harmlosen Glasperlenspielkurs abhalten und sollst all dein Augenmerk und deine Sorgfalt daran wenden, den Pater Jakobus langsam für uns zu gewinnen.

(197)

All this may be compatible with the legitimate interests of the state, but a more sinister note is struck when Castalia is seen to subject its own agents to surveillance. Returning from Mariafels, Knecht becomes aware of the fact that he himself is now being observed (‘[er konnte] wohl merken, daß er von oben beobachtet werde’ (194)), and after he has become Magister Ludi, he is allocated an official ‘Einpeitscher und Kontrolleur’ to watch over his daily activities hour by hour (246). Later, when his doubts about his career become known to his colleagues, an elderly man, described as a ‘Beobachter’ and ‘Späher’, appears in Waldzell with the specific function of reporting on Knecht to the Ordensleitung (406). This is the last event recorded by the narrator before the avowedly fictitious Legende, and provides an ominous conclusion to the verifiable portion of his account; we are entitled to speculate whether, given the political sensitivity of the organization and the vindictiveness of its ‘elite’, Knecht did not meet his end, like Bertram, in some remote mountain spot, while a fanciful but constructive Legende was later put about. The narrator, after all, has had to confess ‘Uns steht das Geheimarchiv der Erziehungsbehörde nicht zur Verfügung’ (311); no doubt, there are reasons for this secrecy. Ironically, our informant makes no attempt to reconcile what he knows of the secret archives with his reassuring contention that Castalia is ‘im Grunde ganz demokratisch angelegt’ (231).¹⁸

In fact, we soon notice that, contrary to the narrator's soothing assurances, rules and conventions of the most cramping kind govern all forms of life within the province. We may sympathize with the embargo on private travel by junior pupils at Eschholz (76 f.), but when the 24-year-old graduate is ‘laconically’ forbidden to visit Plinio at home by a special committee set up to deal with such evidently unusual requests, we feel that an injustice has been done, the more so as no explanation is offered (113). Ten years later, Knecht is ‘ordered’ rather than invited to appear before Thomas von der Trave (147), granted a token three days' leave prior to his two-year mission (151), and only much later awarded the coveted identity card reserved for officials (194). All journeys require an official permit (‘Reiseschein’ (309)), and police registration (‘Meldepflicht’) is the rule, but one that may be waived on a discretionary basis (194). Alcohol is apparently forbidden (183) and a bed-time hour is prescribed, which Knecht cannot easily ignore, not even as Magister Ludi (210, 413). The impression is that these rules are followed blindly; many of them have not been revised or even examined for decades (429).

Another disturbing feature of life in the province is the general lack of sincerity which, we feel, is engendered by this excessive regimentation. The teachers of the Game are given to teasing their pupils and seem delighted when they have tricked them into making mistakes (123 f.). Members of the Order regularly resort to ironic mannerisms when communicating with one another; Knecht has much to say about this typically Castalian development, and it seems that few conversations between officials are devoid of lavish flattery and ironically-pointed observations. It is something he misses in Mariafels, where only Pater Jakobus has mastered the art:

Er sprach mit vollkommenem Ernst, aber die leise Stimme und das alte kluge Gesicht gaben seinen überhöflichen Worten jene wunderbar zwischen Ernst und Ironie, Devotion und leisem Spott, Pathos und Spielerei schillernde Vieldeutigkeit, wie man sie etwa beim Höflichkeits- und Geduldspiel endloser Verneigungen bei der Begrüßung zwischen zwei Heiligen oder zwei Kirchenfürsten empfinden mag. Diese ihm von den Chinesen her so wohlbekannte Mischung aus Überlegenheit und Spott, aus Weisheit und eigensinnigem Zeremoniell war für Josef Knecht ein Labsal.

(173)

That this ‘Chinese’ inscrutability is a questionable asset is soon to be made obvious; Jakobus comments on the resulting ambivalence when he says, ‘bei euch Kastaliern weiß man ja, wenn ihr irgend etwas tut, niemals, ob ihr damit eine Höflichkeit oder eine Verspottung, eine Ehrung oder eine Belehrung beabsichtigt’ (188), and Knecht will eventually have occasion to regret the ‘spöttische Höflichkeit’ (234) with which he is greeted when he returns to Waldzell. Again, Castalia's serenely smiling mask conceals her true face. Thomas von der Trave, modelled on Thomas Mann, is a master of the technique of dissembling (188, 223), and the ruling convention is to display more sarcastic politeness to one's adversaries, the more serious the issue at stake (311 f.). A practical demonstration of this principle is given during the final altercation with Alexander, where despite the underlying ‘Hauch von Schärfe’ in the voice of the President, euphemistic expressions like ‘die verehrte Behörde’ and ‘Eure goldenen Worte’ are traded between the two antagonists (420-23).

It is my contention that this excessive use of irony arises not so much from artistic hypersensitivity as from the constant threat of surveillance and intrigue, which is plainly conducive to an atmosphere of mistrust, so that Castalians, like citizens of absolutist régimes the world over, must express themselves with considerable circumspection (at Mariafels, only Pater Jakobus, the most ‘political’ figure at the monastery, has developed this facility, which he is reluctant to use). The cultivation of irony is thus an inevitable development in the province, where it provides a useful defence mechanism against conspiracies and denunciations of the type that were fatal for Bertram.

But irony is not the only such reaction that can be discerned behind the pleasing exterior of the organization. The ‘Erzkastalier’ Fritz Tegularius typifies some of the tensions that result from his virtual enslavement to an institution which cannot view his ‘individualism’ other than as a character defect: ‘Was man seine Krankheit nannte, war schießlich vorweigend ein Laster, eine Unbotmäßigkeit, ein Charakterfehler, nämlich eine im tiefsten unhierarchische, völlig individualistische Gesinnung und Lebensführung’ (294). We recognize that his many problems and his incipient neurosis follow on from the basic fact that Castalian society is hostile to the individual; the words with which the narrator condemns him could have come straight out of the records of a psychiatric hospital in a totalitarian state: ‘… er war im Grunde unheilbar, denn er wollte gar nicht geheilt sein, er gab nichts auf Harmonie und Einordnung, er liebte nichts als seine Freiheit’ (295). The positive side of this repression, which necessitates secret archives, espionage, a general ban on poetry, and disapproval of biographical compilations, is the much-vaunted ‘ideal of anonymity’ (8), but it remains an elusive ideal from which Castalian reality is separated by a very wide gulf. Here, as we have seen, favouritism and personality cults thrive: the Magister Ludi is acknowledged as ‘beinahe eine Gottheit’ (43), and the deceased quickly become the subject of fanciful legends (‘fromme Dichtung’ (47), ‘Legenden und Deutungen übergenug’ (285); see also 228).

If Castalia's significance were to provide the modern reader with a utopia, the true heroes of the novel would be its most faithful representatives: Thomas, Alexander, Dubois—the loyal servants of the system. In fact, these are the least admirable personalities. Instead, we respect the dissenting Älterer Bruder for living according to his ideal rather than idolizing it as an empty Game, and we pity Castalia's many victims: Tegularius, Petrus, Bertram, and ultimately Knecht himself. It is perhaps not easy to see why, if the Game and its social framework are so forbidding, Knecht and many others should be drawn towards this institution. Hesse was, after all, a life-long opponent of regimentation, who achieved what Knecht belatedly attempts when he absconded from the school at Maulbronn. But things are less straightforward for his fictional character; Knecht has no home to which he could return, no opening in the outside world (143 f.), and apparently no right of appeal when his name is placed on the list of candidates to be admitted to the Order (150). Plinio, too, returns to Castalia less because of any intrinsic merits which it may possess than because he is disillusioned with the contentious nature of life outside the province.

The years these men spend in Castalia are of questionable value. Knecht's name highlights this ambiguity; we can see him as an obedient servant and as a captive serf. What is beyond dispute is that they are restrained from fulfilling their own potential, never allowed to grow up, because those to whom their education and welfare are entrusted persist in treating them as children, talking down to them with the assistance of well-worn formulaic conventions and subjecting them to a multitude of petty restrictions. It is perhaps for this reason that Knecht feels strongly drawn to young children (313 f., 439); he himself has remained a child at heart, and there is something at once touching and pathetic about his resolve simply to ‘walk away’ from the mighty Order, humming the marching songs of his youth to himself as he goes into an uncertain exile (450).

The ‘utopian’ readings of Castalia which have persisted for so long owe much to Hesse's repeated assurances that his novel embodied a positive response to the evils of the grinsende Gegenwart. What can, however, be demonstrated beyond dispute, is that he was convinced that the collectivist ideal, as cherished by supporters of Fascism and Communism alike, was doomed. The problem of communal, collectivized living is singled out as the central issue facing his generation, in the following comment:

Ich habe im Laufe der letzten Jahre eingesehen, daß es mir nie möglich sein wird, meinen Glauben und mein Bekenntnis anders auszusprechen als in den Gleichnissen der Dichtung, die direkte Lehre ist nicht mein Gebiet.

Dies hängt damit zusammen, daß ich zu dem wichtigsten Problem des geistigen Lebens von heute eigentlich nichts beizutragen habe, zum Problem des Gemeinschafts- und Kollektivlebens. Die Welt und Jugend strebt heute unbeirrbar und unaufhaltsam zum Kollektiven, ist ja oft auch, auf faschistischer wie kommunistischer Seite, mit einer sehr rohen und geistesfeindlichen Art von Gemeinschaft zufrieden.

To this, Hesse has his own simple and characteristic answer:

Umgekehrt war ich lebenslänglich ein Einzelner, und habe meine Einordnung ins Ganze des geistigen Lebens mehr in der Vergangenheit und Geschichte suchen müssen, als im aktuellen Leben, ich war vollkommen unfähig, mich irgendeiner der primitiven Formen von Gemeinschaft auch nur versuchsweise anzuschließen, und desto mehr auf die Auseinandersetzung mit den Religionen und Philosophien der Vergangenheit angewiesen, um schließlich doch den Glauben zu gewinnen, daß auch ich trotz meines Einzelgängertums mit dem Ganzen der Menschheit innig zusammenhänge.¹⁹

There is therefore an obvious contradiction between the assurance that the novel enshrines a utopia and Hesse's reluctance to support the notion of a community of the type on which the Glass Bead Game must rely, and it is on this contradiction that many interpretations of the novel have come to grief. Some critics have held that there is an inherent flaw in the work, a result of the over-long period of gestation during which Hesse's efforts to complete the book were subject to continuous interruptions; his attitude changed, during this eleven-year period, from enthusiasm to scepticism about the Castalian ideal. The original foreword, with its blatant, yet highly witty, attack on Litzke/Hitler, had to be rewritten, as did the conclusion, in which there was to have been a confrontation between Knecht and a ‘Führer der Diktatur’; the general opinion is that the novel has suffered as a result of these revisions.²⁰ My contention, however, is that it has gained considerably in the process. The original plan would have been too simplistic: Knecht and Castalia versus the bad world outside. By showing us a Castalia not merely shot through with human fallibility, but embodying a veritable blueprint for the police state, Hesse has created a world of Kleistian ambivalence in which the sublime and the heinous are so closely interlinked as to be inseparable; however we choose to read the ending, it is made abundantly clear that Knecht cannot, as he naively hopes, separate the positive legacy of Castalia from the oppressive framework on which its achievements are contingent. The intellect and the creative faculty are liable, as we have seen, to express themselves in bizarre, unproductive forms, which owe more to man's innate ambition and unquenchable thirst for power than to his lofty aspirations. So, in his maturest work, Hesse saw himself obliged to display man's spiritual potential, exemplified by the Game as a repository of world culture, against a distressing background of authoritarianism and political manoeuvrings. As we read the book, we gradually come to realize that Castalia needs the Game to give it an acceptable raison d'être, but also, since culture presupposes social organization, that the Game needs Castalia.

Das Glasperlenspiel is thus ‘utopian’ only in its unique grasp of the paradox that the intellectual and social levels on which we live are fundamentally irreconcilable. It does not portray the future, but the all-too-familiar present. It does not hold up Castalia or the Game as it is played there as ideals, but has some affinities with the ‘negative utopia’ in the manner of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. But also, albeit with the diminished realism characteristic of much German fiction, it warns against entrenchment and extremism; Josef Knecht may thus take his place beside the many other ‘unheroic heroes’ of the twentieth-century German novel of whom the same is true. Like Franz Biberkopf (Berlin Alexanderplatz), he believes that the simple formula of personal integrity will save him from a world where he is at the mercy of people more unscrupulous than himself; like Josef K. (Der Prozeß), he delays too long in resisting his self-imposed jailors; like Adrian Leverkühn (Doktor Faustus), he over-emphasizes artistic virtuosity at the expense of the normal development of the senses; and like Oskar Matzerath (Die Blechtrommel), he allows a morally and politically immature world to infect him with the germs of its own infantilism.

The true ‘utopia’ must be inferred despite the forbidding complexity of the novel and its strange distortion of reality: the knowledge that we are, as yet, not truly at home either in the world of the spirit or in that of the senses, and that no civilization will succeed unless equal provision is made for self-expression in both spheres; or, in Knecht's words, ‘Wir sollen nicht aus der Vita activa in die Vita contemplativa fliehen, noch umgekehrt, sondern zwischen beiden wechselnd unterwegs sein, in beiden zuhause sein, an beiden teilhaben’ (257).

Notes

1. M II, 7-9; Robert Faesi, ‘Hermann Hesses Glasperlenspiel’, Neue Schweizer Rundschau, no. 7 (1943), reprinted in M II, 7-25. The following abbreviations are used in the text and notes: numbers in round brackets refer to the pagination of Das Glasperlenspiel, suhrkamp taschenbuch 79 (Frankfurt a.M., 1973); add 72 to arrive at the pagination of Gesammelte Schriften, 7 vols (Berlin and Frankfurt a.M., 1957), vol. VI. M I and M II refer to the two-volume Materialien zu Hermann Hesse ‘Das Glasperlenspiel’, edited by Volker Michels, suhrkamp taschenbuch 80 and 108 (Frankfurt a.M., 1973-74).

2. M II, 26 f.: Robert Jakob Humm, ‘Hermann Hesses Glasperlenspiel’, Die Weltwoche (10 December 1943), reprinted M II, 25-29. Hesse's immediate response to these two reviews was to praise Faesi (‘daß Sie die Struktur meiner Utopie so richtig erkannt haben’, M I, 232; see below, p. 657), and to reject Humm's reading altogether (M I, 235 f.), although he was later to remark of Faesi's piece, ‘sie leidet daran, daß sie das Ganze allzu eng und nüchtern als Utopie ansieht’ (M I, 245).

3. Theodore Ziolkowski, The Novels of Hermann Hesse: A Study in Theme and Structure (Princeton, 1965), pp. 302 f.

4. W. B. Yeats, Collected Poems (London, 1965), p. 337.

5. Joseph Mileck, Hermann Hesse: Life and Art (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 285, 268, 307.

6. Roger C. Norton, Hermann Hesse's Futuristic Idealism: ‘The Glass Bead Game’ and its Predecessors (Berne, 1973).

7. Rudolf Koester, Hermann Hesse (Stuttgart, 1975), p. 61.

8. Martin Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse (Princeton, 1978), p. 141.

9. See Mileck, p. 277, for the reason why Hesse chose this ‘characteristically facetious’ pseudonym.

10. George Bernard Shaw, The Irrational Knot, Chapter 14. In the earliest-known version of the introduction to Das Glasperlenspiel, the Game is invented by one Oberrechnungsrat R. Klaiber, ‘um seiner Frau das Bridge zu ersetzen’, and it evolves as an increasingly complex form of the card game ‘happy families’ (‘Dichter-Quartett’). The glass beads are used for scoring. That this humble ‘Literatur- und Kunstspiel’ should one day suppress genuine art is here presented as a questionable development. See M I, 305-13.

11. The car was driven by his wife Ninon; Ralph Freedman, Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis (London, 1979), p. 387. It must also be remembered that Hesse was himself a prolific contributor to the Feuilletons of German and Swiss newspapers, where some of his most important work appeared. See Volker Michels, Herman Hesse: Leben und Werk in Bild (Frankfurt a.M., 1977), p. 108.

12. Hesse, by contrast, regarded art as a defence against tyranny: ‘Die Kunst gehört zu den Funktionen der Menschheit, die dafür sorgen, daß Menschlichkeit und Wahrheit fortbestehen, daß nicht die ganze Welt und das ganze Menschenleben in Haß und Partei, in lauter Hitlers und Stalins zerfällt’ (M I, 177). Castalia's propensity towards despotism may thus be seen as a result of the suppression of true creativity within the province.

13. Erhard Friedrichsmeyer, ‘The Bertram Episode in Hesse's Glass Bead Game’, GR, 49 (1974), 284.

14. M I, 243: ‘Der Schluß, Knechts Tod, zart homoerotisch’. Hesse justified the absence of women in the novel in various ways: it was the work of an old man for whom women were remote and mysterious (M I, 255); Knecht may have had six mistresses or none (M I, 201); it was up to a female author to invent a feminist counterpart to Castalia (M I, 288).

15. See Stephan C. Bandy, ‘Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel: In Search of Joseph Knecht’, MLQ, 33 (1972), 305, for the ‘ludicrous’ aspects of the ludus.

16. Two of the earlier drafts of this chapter are reprinted in M I, 9-31 and 305-13. The political satire is analysed by G. W. Field, ‘On the Genesis of the Glasperlenspiel’, GQ, 41 (1968), 673-88.

17. While he was writing the novel, Hesse tended to use the term Behörde disparagingly in his letters. See M I, 188 (Behörde versus the author), 191 (Behörde versus Menschlichkeit), 199 (Behörde intervenes too much in cultural and artistic matters), and 281 (his manuscript is rejected by a Behörde). It is worth remembering that Hesse was reading Kafka with enthusiasm in 1935 (M I, 109); the term ‘Kanzleien’ immediately recalls the stuffy offices of Der Prozeß.

18. Hesse himself must have forgotten about this ‘Geheimarchiv’ when he wrote to Siegfried Unseld, ‘Diesem Biographen steht alles zur Verfügung, was Kastalien besitzt, die mündliche und schriftliche Tradition, die Archive’ (M I, 285). The implications of the narrator's irony are beyond the scope of the present paper; for a detailed discussion of this question, see Osman Durrani, ‘“Cosmic Laughter” or The Importance of Being Ironical: Reflections on the Role of the Narrator of Hermann Hesse's Glasperlenspiel’, GLL, 34 (1980/81), 398-408.

19. Letter to G. Rutishauser, 10 December 1935 (M I, 135).

20. Ziolkowski, p. 294; Mark Boulby, Hermann Hesse: His Mind and Art (Ithaca, 1967), p. 262.

A shortened version of this paper was given to a meeting of the Conference of University Teachers of German in Great Britain and Ireland at Queen Mary College, London, in April 1982.