“This private association of mine is a precious possession I would not willingly give up. But the fact that two sensual experiences leap up every time I think, ‘spring is coming’ — that fact is my own personal affair. It can be communicated, certainly, as I have communicated it to you just now. But it cannot be transmitted. I can make you understand my association, but I cannot so affect a single one of you that my private association will become a valid symbol for you in your turn, a mechanism which infallibly reacts on call and always follows the same course.”
One of Knecht’s fellow pupils, who later rose to the rank of First Archivist of the Glass Bead Game, maintained that Knecht on the whole had been a merry boy, though without a trace of boisterousness. When playing music he would sometimes have a wonderfully rapt, blissful expression. He was rarely seen in an excited or passionate mood, except at the rhythmic ball game, which he loved. But there were times when this friendly, healthy boy attracted attention, and gave rise to mockery or anxiety. This happened when pupils were dismissed, a fairly frequent occurrence in the lower classes of the elite schools. The first time a classmate was missing from classes and games, did not return next day, and word went around that he was not sick but dismissed, had already departed and would not be returning, Knecht was more than subdued. For days on end he seemed to be distraught.
Years later he himself commented on this matter: “Every time a pupil was sent back from Eschholz and left us, I felt as if someone had died. If I had been asked the reason for my sorrow, I would have said that I felt pity for the poor fellow who had spoiled his future by frivolity and laziness, and that there was also an element of anxiety in my feeling, fear that this might possibly happen to me some day. Only after I had experienced the same thing many times, and basically no longer believed that the same fate could overtake me as well, did I begin to see somewhat more deeply into the matter. I then no longer felt the expulsion of an electus merely as a misfortune and punishment. I came to realize that the dismissed boys in a good many cases were quite glad to be returning home. I felt that it was no longer solely a matter of judgment and punishment, but that the ‘world’ out there, from which we electi had all come once upon a time, had not abruptly ceased to exist as it had seemed to me. Rather, for a good many among us it remained a great and attractive reality which tempted and ultimately recalled these boys. And perhaps it was that not only for individuals, but for all of us; perhaps it was by no means only the weaker and inferior souls upon whom the remote world exerted so strong an attraction. Possibly the apparent relapse they had suffered was not a fall and a cause for suffering, but a leap forward and a positive act. Perhaps we who were so good about remaining in Eschholz were in fact the weaklings and the cowards.”
As we shall see, these thoughts were to return to him, and very forcefully.
Every encounter with the Music Master was a great joy to him. The Master came to Eschholz once every two or three months at least to supervise the music classes. He also frequently stayed a few days as the guest of one of the teachers who was a close friend. Once he personally conducted the final rehearsals for the performance of a vesper by Monteverdi. But above all he kept an eye on the more talented of the music pupils, and Knecht was among the honored recipients of his paternal friendship. Every so often he would sit at the piano with Joseph in one of the practice rooms and go through the works of his favorite composers with him, or else play over a classical example from one of the old handbooks on the theory of composition. “To construct a canon with the Music Master, or to hear him develop a badly constructed one to its absurd logical conclusion, frequently had about it a solemnity, or I might also say, a gaiety, like nothing else in the world. Sometimes one could scarcely contain one’s tears, and sometimes one could not stop laughing. One emerged from a private music lesson with him as from a bath or a massage.”
Knecht’s schooldays at Eschholz at last drew to a close. Along with a dozen or so other pupils of his level he was to be transferred to a school on the next stage or level. The principal delivered the usual speech to these candidates, describing once again the significance and the rules of the Castalian schools and more or less sketching for the graduates, in the name of the Order, the path they would be traveling, at the end of which they would be qualified to enter the Order themselves. This solemn address was part of the program for a day of ceremonies and festivities during which teachers and fellow pupils alike treat the graduates like guests. On such days there are always carefully prepared performances — this time it was a great seventeenth-century cantata — and the Music Master had come in order to hear it.
After the principal’s address, while everyone was on the way to the bravely bedecked dining hall, Knecht approached the Master with a question. “The principal,” he said, “told us how things are outside of Castalia, in the ordinary schools and colleges. He said that the students at the universities study for the ‘free’ professions. If I understood him rightly, these are professions we do not even have here in Castalia. What is the meaning of that? Why are just those professions called ‘free’? And why should we Castalians be excluded from them?”
The Magister Musicae drew the young man aside and stood with him under one of the giant trees. An almost sly smile puckered the skin around his eyes into little wrinkles as he replied: “Your name is Knecht,[1] my friend, and perhaps for that reason the word ‘free’ is so alluring for you. But do not take it too seriously in this case. When the non-Castalians speak of the free professions, the word may sound very serious and even inspiring. But when we use it, we intend it ironically. Freedom exists in those professions only to the extent that the student chooses the profession himself. That produces an appearance of freedom, although in most cases the choice is made less by the student than by his family, and many a father would sooner bite off his tongue than really allow his son free choice. But perhaps that is a slander; let us drop this objection. Let us say that the freedom exists, but it is limited to the one unique act of choosing the profession. Afterward all freedom is over. When he begins his studies at the university, the doctor, lawyer, or engineer is forced into an extremely rigid curriculum which ends with a series of examinations. If he passes them, he receives his license and can thereafter pursue his profession in seeming freedom. But in doing so he becomes the slave of base powers; he is dependent on success, on money, on his ambition, his hunger for fame, on whether or not people like him. He must submit to elections, must earn money, must take part in the ruthless competition of castes, families, political parties, newspapers. In return he has the freedom to become successful and well-to-do, and to be hated by the unsuccessful, or vice versa. For the elite pupil and later member of the Order, everything is the other way around. He does not ‘choose’ any profession. He does not imagine that he is a better judge of his own talents than are his teachers. He accepts the place and the function within the hierarchy that his superiors choose for him — if, that is, the matter is not reversed and the qualities, gifts, and faults of the pupil compel the teachers to send him to one place or another. In the midst of this seeming unfreedom every electus enjoys the greatest imaginable freedom after his early courses. Whereas the man in the ‘free’ professions must submit to a narrow and rigid course of studies with rigid examinations in order to train for his future career, the electus, as soon as he begins studying independently, enjoys so much freedom that there are many who all their lives choose the most abstruse and frequently almost foolish studies, and may continue without hindrance as long as their conduct does not degenerate. The natural teacher is employed as teacher, the natural educator as educator, the natural translator as translator; each, as if of his own accord, finds his way to the place in which he can serve, and in serving be free. Moreover, for the rest of his life he is saved from that ‘freedom’ of career which means such terrible slavery. He knows nothing of the struggle for money, fame, rank; he recognizes no parties, no dichotomy between the individual and the office, between what is private and what is public; he feels no dependence upon success. Now do you see, my son, that when we speak of the free professions, the word ‘free’ is meant rather humorously.”