This beautiful novel is an admirable attempt to synthesize what is the highest and noblest in human existence. If we analyze it carefully, we see that virtuosity, in its multiple faces, has been carefully distributed among the characters and the plot of the novel. A difficult task! and therefore worthy of the greatest appreciation. Structurally, the work is interesting for providing us with some very predictable lines and leaving some gaps in the story. This makes us reflect on the need for surprise when there is a harmonious whole expressing a deep and powerful message. In a narrative entirely steeped in this harmony, how much is to be gained by surprise? We notice in the work the honorable effort to give voice to the ineffable, to express through the simplicity and complexity of silence, music, and the starry sky, as if these elements needed no more than their own presence to tell us what they have to say. Joseph Knecht’s life ends in a scene of unforgettable symbolism: every detail contributes to the central message of the work. The radiant beauty of the landscape, the contrasts between youth and old age, instinct and rationality, health and disease, the simultaneously humble and courageous act of the schoolmaster who challenges and allows himself to be swallowed up by nature, all these, taken together, seem to tangent the complexity of life. For some reason, springs to mind the image of Hermann Hesse flying high, very high, in the same years when an army of authors was throwing literature into depravity…
Category: Notes
It Is Truly Amazing How Far Modern Psychiatry…
It is truly amazing how far modern psychiatry has come! It is almost as if a fresh start were necessary, a joint burning of all books and the complete abandonment of all classifications. A man exhibiting even the slightest inner conflict is already infallibly ill; there is no question about it. And there we are left wondering about the vexatious state in which science has placed itself. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the less a man thinks, the less thought influences his life, the healthier he is; in other words, the science of mind has set as a model of mental health the man whose mind does not act. There is something wonderful and unbelievable about this; it is undoubtedly a major achievement, and it never ceases to amaze. Discharge for the jolly fool, and therapy for the antisocial, the melancholic, the misanthropic, the gloomy, the lonely, and the silent! Therapy for those who cannot come home from work and smile while scratching their bellies in front of a television set! Therapy, and may the sick forever exchange philosophical works for coloring books!
One Cannot Help But Be Struck…
One cannot help but be struck by the nobility, by the beauty of an education led by a man of integrity and talent, since wonderful results can be derived from it. This is, however, of such rarity that those who come across a real example can only lose themselves in idealizations about how everything would be better if everyone had opportunities identical to those of a select few enlightened ones. And then confront it with the real world… but let the regrets remain for another day: those who honor this noble vocation deserve the highest recognition.
There Are Veiled Implications in the Personality…
There are veiled implications in the personality of the person who, through philosophy, reaches the rigidity of character of a Socrates, a Seneca, capable of facing their own death with serenity and indifference. The indifference of someone like this, in practice, cannot be understood by those who have not reached it, and this is why the discourse of such wise men tends to hurt. There is something unacceptably and frighteningly unnatural about this attitude, which only solidifies after the annihilation of a human dimension. May it be wisdom to shield oneself from the world, to be unaffected by any of its troubles; but this imperturbable marble, this materialization of passive pessimism, of not acting, not feeling, not wanting, and not suffering, although it achieves a victory of reason over instinct, simultaneously operates a human mutilation, and it is perhaps less painful, for those who cherish him and are around him, that he is never allowed to sing of such a victory.