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''The Glass Bead Game'' () is the last full-length novel of the German author Hermann Hesse. It was begun in 1931 and published in Switzerland in 1943 after being rejected for publication in Germany due to Hesse's anti-Fascist views. A few years later, in 1946, Hesse went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In honoring him in its Award Ceremony Speech, the Swedish Academy said that the novel "occupies a special position" in Hesse's work.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 1946 – Hermann Hesse: Award Ceremony Speech )〕 "Glass Bead Game" is a literal translation of the German title, but the book has also been published under the title ''Magister Ludi'', Latin for "Master of the Game", which is an honorific title awarded to the book's central character. "Magister Ludi" can also be seen as a pun: ''lud-'' is a Latin stem meaning both "game" and "school". However, the title Magister Ludi is misleading, as it implies the book is a straightforward bildungsroman. In reality, the book touches on many different genres, and the bulk of the story is on one level a parody of the biography genre.〔Theodore Ziolkowski, Foreword to The Glass Bead Game, p. xix. Picador. ISBN 0-312-27849-7. Ziolkowski cites Thomas Mann's recognition of the source of the book's humor as "the parody of biography and the grave scholarly attitude."〕 ==Plot== ''The Glass Bead Game'' takes place at an unspecified date centuries into the future. Hesse suggested that he imagined the book's narrator writing around the start of the 25th century.〔Theodore Ziolkowski, Foreword to ''The Glass Bead Game'', p. xii. Owl Books. ISBN 0-8050-1246-X〕 The setting is a fictional province of central Europe called Castalia, which was reserved by political decision for the life of the mind; technology and economic life are kept to a strict minimum. Castalia is home to an austere order of intellectuals with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools for boys, and to cultivate and play the Glass Bead Game, whose exact nature remains elusive and whose devotees occupy a special school within Castalia known as Waldzell. The rules of the game are only alluded to—they are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. The game is essentially an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics. The novel is an example of a bildungsroman, following the life of a distinguished member of the Castalian Order, Joseph Knecht, whose surname means "servant" (and is cognate with the English word ''knight''). The plot chronicles Knecht's education as a youth, his decision to join the order, his mastery of the Game, and his advancement in the order's hierarchy to eventually become ''Magister Ludi'', the executive officer of the Castalian Order's game administrators. The beginning of the novel introduces the Music Master, the resident of Castalia who recruits Knecht as a young student and who is to have the most long-lasting and profound effect on Knecht throughout his life. At one point, as the Music Master nears death in his home at Monteport, Knecht obliquely refers to the Master's "sainthood". As a student, another meaningful friendship develops with Plinio Designori, a student from a politically influential family, who is studying in Castalia as a guest. Knecht develops many of his personal views about what larger good Castalia can achieve through vigorous debates with Designori, who views Castalia as an "ivory tower" with little to no impact on the outside world. Although educated within Castalia, Knecht's path to "Magister Ludi" is atypical for the order, as he spends a significant portion of his time after graduation outside the boundaries of the province. His first such venture, to the Bamboo Grove, results in his learning Chinese and becoming something of a disciple to Elder Brother, a recluse who had given up living within Castalia. Next, as part of an assignment to foster goodwill between the order and the Catholic Church, Knecht is sent on several "missions" to the Benedictine monastery of Mariafels, where he befriends the historian Father Jacobus – a relationship which also has profound personal impact for Knecht. As the novel progresses, Knecht begins to question his loyalty to the order; he gradually comes to doubt that the intellectually gifted have a right to withdraw from life's big problems. Knecht comes to see Castalia as a kind of ivory tower, an ethereal and protected community, devoted to pure intellectual pursuits but oblivious to the problems posed by life outside its borders. This conclusion precipitates a personal crisis, and, according to his personal views regarding spiritual awakening, Knecht does the unthinkable: he resigns as Magister Ludi and asks to leave the order, ostensibly to become of value and service to the larger culture. The heads of the order deny his request to leave, but Knecht departs Castalia anyway, initially taking a job as a tutor to his childhood friend Designori's energetic and strong-willed son, Tito. Only a few days later, the story ends abruptly with Knecht drowning in a mountain lake while attempting to follow Tito on a swim for which Knecht was unfit. The fictional narrator leaves off before the final sections of the book, remarking that the end of the story is beyond the scope of his biography. The concluding chapter, entitled "The Legend", is reportedly from a different biography. After this final chapter, several of Knecht's "posthumous" works are then presented. The first section contains Knecht's poetry from various periods of his life, followed by three short stories labeled "Three Lives". The stories are presented as exercises by Knecht imagining his life had he been born in another time and place. The first story tells of a pagan rainmaker named Knecht who lived "many thousands of years ago, when women ruled".〔Hermann Hesse. ''The Glass Bead Game''. Penguin. Hammondsworth 1975 p 416.〕 Eventually the shaman's powers to summon rain fail, and he offers himself as a sacrifice for the good of the tribe. The second story is of Josephus, an early Christian hermit who acquires a reputation for piety but is inwardly troubled by self-loathing and seeks a confessor, only to find that same penitent had been seeking him. The final story concerns the life of Dasa, a prince wrongfully usurped by his half brother as heir to a kingdom and disguised as a cowherd to save his life. While working with the herdsmen as a young boy, Dasa encounters a yogi in meditation in the forest. He wishes to experience the same tranquility as the yogi, but is unable to stay. He later leaves the herdsmen and marries a beautiful young woman, only to be cuckolded by his half brother (now the Rajah). In a cold fury, he kills his half brother and finds himself once again in the forest with the old yogi, who, through an experience of an alternate life, guides him on the spiritual path and out of the world of illusion (Maya). The three lives, together with that as Magister Ludi, oscillate between extroversion (rainmaker, Indian life – both get married) and introversion (father confessor, Magister Ludi) while developing the four basic psychic functions of analytical psychology: sensation (rainmaker), intuition (Indian life), feeling (father confessor), and thinking (Magister Ludi). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Glass Bead Game」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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