The secret archives of the Board of Educators are not at our disposal. What we know about Knecht’s demeanor at sessions of the Board, or how he voted, must therefore be deduced from his occasional remarks to friends. During his early days in office he tended to keep silent at such meetings, but although later on he spoke up, he seems to have done so only rarely, unless he himself had launched a motion. Mention is made of how quickly he learned the tone traditional at the summit of our hierarchy, and the gracefulness, ingenuity, and wit with which he used these forms. As is well known, the heads of our hierarchy, the Masters and directors of the Order, treat each other in a carefully sustained ceremonial style. Moreover, it has been their custom, or inclination, or secret ruling — since when, we cannot say — to employ more and more carefully polished and strict courtesies, the greater their differences of opinion and the larger the controversial question under discussion. Presumably this formality handed down from the past serves, along with any other functions it may have, primarily as a safety valve. The extremely courteous tone of the debates protects the persons engaged from yielding to passion and helps them preserve impeccable bearing; but in addition it upholds the dignity of the Order and of the high authorities themselves. It drapes them in the robes of ceremonial and conceals them behind veils of sanctity. Such no doubt is the rationale of this elaborate art of exchanging compliments, which the students often make fun of. Before Knecht’s time his predecessor, Magister Thomas von der Trave, had been a particularly admired master of this art. Knecht cannot really be called his successor in it, still less his imitator; rather, he was more a disciple of the Chinese, so that his mode of courtesy was less pointed and peppered with irony. But he too was considered among his colleagues unsurpassed in the art of courtesy.
NINE
A CONVERSATION
WE HAVE COME to that point in our study when we must focus our attention entirely upon the remarkable change of course which occupied the last years of the Master’s life and led to his bidding farewell to his office and the Province, his crossing into a different sphere of life, and his death. Although he administered his office with exemplary faithfulness up to the moment of his departure, and to his last day enjoyed the affectionate confidence of his pupils and colleagues, we shall not continue our description of his conduct of the office now that we see him already weary of it in his innermost soul, and turning toward other aims. He had already explored all the possibilities the office provided for the utilization of his energies and had reached the point at which great men must leave the path of tradition and obedient subordination and, trusting to supreme, indefinable powers, strike out on new, trackless courses where experience is no guide.
When he became conscious that this had happened, he dispassionately examined his situation and what might be done to change it. He had arrived, at an unusually early age, upon that summit which was all that a talented and ambitious Castalian could imagine as worth striving for. Yet neither ambition nor exertion had brought him there. He had neither tried for his high honor nor consciously adapted himself to it. It had come almost against his will, for an inconspicuous, independent scholar’s life free of official duties would have been much more in keeping with his own desires. He did not especially prize many of the benefits and powers that followed from his position. In fact, within a short time after he assumed office, he seemed already to have tired of some of these distinctions and privileges. In particular, he always regarded political and administrative work in the highest Board as a burden, although he gave himself to it with unfailing conscientiousness. Even the special, the characteristic and unique task of his position, the training of an elite group of perfected Glass Bead Game players, for all the joy it sometimes brought him, and despite the fact that this elite took great pride in their Magister, seems in the long run to have been more of a burden than a pleasure to him. What delighted him and truly satisfied him was teaching, and in this he discovered by experience that both his pleasure and his success were the greater, the younger his pupils were. Hence he felt it as a loss that his post brought to him only youths and adults instead of children.
There were, however, other considerations, experiences, and insights which caused him to take a critical view of his own work, and of a good many of the conditions in Waldzell; or at the least to consider his office as a great hindrance to the development of his finest and most fruitful abilities. Some of these matters are known to all of us; some we only surmise. Was Magister Knecht right in seeking freedom from the burden of his office, in his desire for less majestic but more intensive work? Was he right in his criticisms of the state of Castalia? Should he be regarded as a pioneer and bold militant, or as a kind of rebel, if not a deserter from the cause? We shall not go into these questions, for they have been discussed to excess. For a time the controversy over them divided the entire Province into two camps, and it has still not entirely subsided. Although we profess ourselves grateful admirers of the great Magister, we prefer not to take a position in this dispute; the necessary synthesis which will ultimately emerge from the conflict of opinions on Joseph Knecht’s personality and life has long since begun taking shape. We prefer neither to judge nor to convert, but rather to tell the history of our venerated Master’s last days with the greatest possible truthfulness. Properly speaking, however, it is not really history; we prefer to call it a legend, an account compounded of authentic information and mere rumors, exactly as they have flowed from various crystalline and cloudy sources to form a single stream among us, his posterity in the Province.
Joseph Knecht had already begun thinking of how he might find his way into fresher air when he unexpectedly came upon a figure out of his youth, whom he had in the meanwhile half forgotten. It was none other than Plinio Designori, scion of the old family that had served Castalia well in the distant past. The former guest pupil, now a man of influence, member of the Chamber of Deputies as well as a political writer, was paying an official call on the Supreme Board of the Province. Every few years elections were held for the government commission in charge of the Castalian budget, and Designori had become a member of this commission. The first time he appeared in this capacity at a session of the directorate of the Order in Hirsland, the Magister Ludi happened to be present. The encounter made a profound impression on him, and was to have certain consequences.
Some of our information about this meeting comes from Tegularius, some from Designori himself. For during this period in Knecht’s life, which is somewhat obscure to us, Designori became his friend again, and even his confidant.
At their first meeting after decades, the Speaker as usual introduced the new members of the budget commission to the Magisters. When Knecht heard Designori’s name, he felt somewhat stricken at not having immediately recognized the friend of his youth. But he was quick to rectify this by omitting the official bow and the set formula of greeting, and smilingly holding out his hand. Meanwhile he searched his friend’s features, trying to fathom the changes which had foiled recognition. During the session itself his glance frequently rested on the once-familiar face. Designori, incidentally, had addressed him by his title of Magister; Joseph had to ask him twice before he could be persuaded to return to the first-name basis of their boyhood.