The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse Page B

recall politely that the new boy of course couldn’t understand, naturally not, how could he be expected to!
    In any case, life at a boarding school was nothing new to Joseph. He fitted in without difficulty. For that matter, no important events of his years at Eschholz have been recorded. The terrible fire in the schoolhouse must have happened after his time. Portions of his scholastic record have been traced; they show that he occasionally had the highest marks in music and Latin, and somewhat above average in mathematics and Greek. Now and then there are entries about him in the “House Book,” such as “ingenium valde capax, studia non angusta, mores probantur” or “ingenium felix et profectuum avidissimum, moribus placet officiosis.” What punishments he received at Eschholz can no longer be determined; the disciplinary register was lost in the fire, along with so much else. There is the testimony of a fellow pupil that during the four years at Eschholz Knecht was punished only once (by being excluded from the weekly outing), and that his demerit had consisted in obstinately refusing to name a schoolmate who had done something against the rules. The anecdote sounds plausible. Knecht undoubtedly was always a good comrade and never servile toward his superiors. Nevertheless, it seems highly unlikely that this was actually his sole punishment in four years.
    Since our data on Knecht’s early period in the elite school are so sparse, we cite a passage from one of his later lectures on the Glass Bead Game. Knecht’s own manuscripts of these lectures for beginners are not available, it should be noted; he delivered them extemporaneously, and a pupil took them down in shorthand. At one point Knecht speaks about analogies and associations in the Glass Bead Game, and in regard to the latter distinguishes between “legitimate,” universally comprehensible associations and those that are “private” or subjective. He remarks: “To give you an example of private associations that do not forfeit their private value although they have no place in the Glass Bead Game, I shall tell you of one such association that goes back to my own schooldays. I was about fourteen years old, and it was the season when spring is already in the air, February or March. One afternoon a schoolmate invited me to go out with him to cut a few elder switches. He wanted to use them as pipes for a model water mill. We set out, and it must have been an unusually beautiful day in the world or in my own mind, for it has remained in my memory, and vouchsafed me a little experience. The ground was wet, but free of snow; strong green shoots were already breaking through on the edge of streams. Buds and the first opening catkins were already lending a tinge of color to the bare bushes, and the air was full of scent, a scent imbued with life and with contradictions. There were smells of damp soil, decaying leaves, and young growth; any moment one expected to smell the first violets although there were none yet.
    â€œWe came to the elder bushes. They had tiny buds, but no leaves, and as I cut off a twig, a powerful, bittersweet scent wafted toward me. It seemed to gather and multiply all the other smells of spring within itself. I was completely stunned by it; I smelled my knife, smelled my hand, smelled the elder twig. It was the sap that gave off so insistent and irresistible a fragrance. We did not talk about it, but my friend also thoughtfully smelled for a long time. The fragrance meant something to him also.
    â€œWell now, every experience has its element of magic. In this case the onset of spring, which had enthralled me as I walked over the wet, squishing meadows and smelled the soil and the buds, had now been concentrated into a sensual symbol by the fortissimo of that elder shrub’s fragrance. Possibly I would never have forgotten this scent even if the experience had remained isolated. Rather,