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blueyorkie 's review for:
O Jogo das Contas de Vidro
by Hermann Hesse
The Glass Bead Game (1943) is the ultimate work of Hermann Hesse, who took nearly ten years to complete. Perhaps this is why a large part of the novel escaped me. Too much. Too esoteric. Reading the Glass Beads Game was a torment as this book is so wordy and repetitive.
However, I got attached to this real false biography of Joseph Valet, a talented student, then a distinguished member of the Order of Castalia, a fictitious intellectual elite whose goal is to learn universal knowledge. This spirit of synthesis of science expresses through the game of glass beads, in which the participants combine music, mathematics, poetry, and philosophy.
The author takes up the themes developed in these previous novels: Self-realization, the opposition between Nature and Culture, sensuality, and spirituality (p.172). Hindu and Nietzschean philosophy, the myth of the eternal return (p.420). The emptiness of intellectual work for those who dedicate their existence to austere studies.
The book ends with three short stories that Joseph Valet would have written. This fact is the part that I preferred; the reader will find their ancient philosophical tales in the manner of Siddharta.
Obviously, behind its complexity, the game of glass beads hides multiple messages and, above all, an uncompromising critique of twentieth-century society, its wars, its ignorance, and its loss of values at a time of the rise of totalitarianism.
However, I got attached to this real false biography of Joseph Valet, a talented student, then a distinguished member of the Order of Castalia, a fictitious intellectual elite whose goal is to learn universal knowledge. This spirit of synthesis of science expresses through the game of glass beads, in which the participants combine music, mathematics, poetry, and philosophy.
The author takes up the themes developed in these previous novels: Self-realization, the opposition between Nature and Culture, sensuality, and spirituality (p.172). Hindu and Nietzschean philosophy, the myth of the eternal return (p.420). The emptiness of intellectual work for those who dedicate their existence to austere studies.
The book ends with three short stories that Joseph Valet would have written. This fact is the part that I preferred; the reader will find their ancient philosophical tales in the manner of Siddharta.
Obviously, behind its complexity, the game of glass beads hides multiple messages and, above all, an uncompromising critique of twentieth-century society, its wars, its ignorance, and its loss of values at a time of the rise of totalitarianism.