“I should like to cite an example to illustrate T.’s brilliance as a Glass Bead Game player. During the early days of my friendship with him, when both of us were already finding little more to learn by way of technique in our courses, he once — it was a moment of unusual trust — allowed me to look at several games he had composed. I saw at a glance that they were brilliantly devised and somehow novel and original in style, asked to borrow the sketches for study, and discovered that these Game compositions were true literary productions, so amazing and singular that I feel I should speak of them here. These Games were little dramas, in structure almost pure monologues, reflecting the imperiled but brilliant life of the author’s mind like a perfect self-portrait. The various themes and groups of themes on which the Games were based, and their sequences and confrontations, were brilliantly conceived, dialectically orchestrated and counterpoised. But beyond that, the synthesis and harmonization of the opposing voices was not carried to the ultimate conclusion in the usual classical manner; rather, this harmonization underwent a whole series of refractions, of splintering into overtones, and paused each time, as if wearied and despairing, just on the point of dissolution, finally fading out in questioning and doubt. As a result, those Games possessed a stirring chromatics, of a kind never before ventured, as far as I know. Moreover, the Games as a whole expressed a tragic doubt and renunciation; they became figurative statements of the dubiousness of all intellectual endeavor. At the same time, in their intellectual structure as well as in their calligraphic technique and perfection, they were so extraordinarily beautiful that they brought tears to one’s eyes. Each of these Games moved with such gravity and sincerity toward solution, only at the last so nobly to forgo the attempt at solution, that it was like a perfect elegy upon the transitoriness inherent in all beautiful things and the ultimate dubiety immanent in all soaring flights of the intellect.
“Item: I would recommend Tegularius, if he should outlive me or my term in office, as an extremely fine, precious, but imperiled treasure. He should be granted maximum freedom; he should be consulted on all important questions concerning the Game. But students should never be placed in his sole guidance.”
In the course of the years this remarkable man had become Knecht’s true friend. He admired Knecht’s capacity for leadership as well as his mind, and showed a touching devotion toward him. In fact, much of what we know about Knecht has been handed down by Tegularius. In the innermost circle of younger Glass Bead Game players he was perhaps the only one who did not envy his friend for the important assignment he had received, and the only one for whom Knecht’s absence for an indefinite time meant an almost unbearable anguish and sense of loss.
