In the present article, I dissect key elements of Hermann Hesse’s famous novel, the Glass Bead Game (Glasperlenspiel) in order to make them fertile for Cultural Psychology. I originate from the idea ...that the Glass Bead Game can be understood as a universal language that relies on open ideographs, thus signs that can be combined and structured for multiple purposes. Yet, this universal language is not solely a play; it has an educational drive to educate the mind and to help the individual reaching inner harmony. This play comes into being only when listening to the play of other people interacting with me and me meditating upon the multiple meaning making opportunities of it. I argue that such a perspective is in close accordance with the actual task of Cultural Psychology helping to unravel how people do relate to their environments and the impact that results from this ecological interaction. However, I appeal interested readers in trying to better institutionalize such a cultural psychological purpose of serving the individual in order for Cultural Psychology to be a sustainable and long-lasting science unlike the Glass Bead Game that became an end in itself.
All human beings are different. Unique. Something always remains to prove that everyone is irreplaceable. Centuries of books, crossing worlds, have been touching mankind in both clear and unsuspected ...ways. One thing we can say for sure: writers and readers cannot live apart. Those who traveled in time and lived in unbelievable places, coming right from the writer’s imagination, can easily be part of our lives. It is absolutely true that for a large variety of reasons, many times we feel such a perfect identification with some characters, that their existence becomes «real». Saint-John Perse, Italo Calvino, Roald Dahl, Nikos Kazantzákis and Victor Hugo, among uncountable names, gave us much of what we are today. But what do they search, undercovered, multiplying themselves in characters, some of them living forever in our memory? What do they look for? Is there a reason for their existence? What did Hermann Hesse and Romain Gary, for instance, think about happiness and love? Words, in our particular case written words, have been powerful enough to eliminate every obstacle, possessing our inner selves in ways far from consciousness. The reader becomes «the other». Inside and outside the book there are no differences. Who are we? Amazing, fantastic, terrifying, although nonexistent libraries, from more than a dozen novels, are the main theme of the present reflection. Because we believe that all words, all books, all libraries can be eternal – it depends on us wanting to become «the other» – there is no place for oblivion.
When Richard Strauss composed his Vier letzte Lieder (1948) he was 84 and psychologically exhausted by the sufferings of the war years and subsequent isolation. The four songs are not really a cycle ...and perhaps not even 'Lieder' in the traditional sense of the word (eminent musicologists prefer to call them Gesänge); however, they undoubtedly represent Strauss's farewell to life and art. Sunset, autumn and the approaching night which is first and foremost a leavetaking from life: on these themes, which connect together the three poems by Hermann Hesse and the fourth, Im Abendrot, by Joseph Eichendorff, Strauss resorts to a musical symbolism that trascends the borders of each Lied, and transforms coloraturas into idealised, rarefied arabesques. The systematic interweaving of instrumental and vocal singing also reaches such a degree of parity as to make the customary concept of accompaniment wholly inadequate and incongruous. On the one hand, Strauss takes up elements that had been dear to him since his youth, on the other, he rethinks and surpasses them by imagining a vocality that borders on abstraction: the words themselves become mere sound. In the Vier letzte Lieder there is a transparency of writing typical of the late style of the great composer in which the technical dominance is such that it goes unnoticed and becomes a spontaneous reinvention of a past that is irrevocably lost, but still alive in memory: so much so that all of the last Strauss seems to find a synthesis in these four truly 'last' pages of metamorphosis and farewell.
In the German translation history of the Daodejing, the version rendered by the renowned German sinologist, Richard Wilhelm, has vigorously propelled the study of Laozegetics in Germany and stands as ...a translation of historical and scholarly significance. Wilhelm complemented the concise main text through the use of diverse, precise, and appropriate paratexts, granting his translation both readability and academic rigor. This ensures the admiration of general readers and the recognition of professional scholars. Tailored to the linguistic preferences and educational levels of German readers, Wilhelm frequently employed highly recognizable theological, philosophical, and literary concepts within the German cultural system to elucidate the Daodejing. This translation strategy effectively satisfies the expectation horizon of target readers. In the paratexts, Wilhelm constructs a philosophical framework of Daoism, compares the thought of Confucianism and Daoism, and broadens the dialogue between Chinese philosophical thought and Western intellectual traditions, thereby bestowing upon the Daodejing a renewed vitality in the German-speaking world.
Hermann Hesses Roman Der Steppenwolf (1927) erzählt die Geschichte von Harry Haller, einem menschenfeindlichen "Wolf aus der Steppe", der von sich glaubt, die Seele eines eines Menschen und eines ...Wolfs zu haben. Eines Abends, als Haller die Straßen der Stadt durchwandert, sieht er eine Tür inmitten einer alten Steinmauer mit der Inschrift: Magisches Theater; Eintritt nicht für jedermann U+0336 nicht für jedermann (Hesse 1978: 37). Das „Magische Theater“ ist der Ort, an dem Haller schließlich sich selbst gegenübersteht und mit seiner inneren Aufruhr auseinandersetzt. Der folgende Auszug stammt aus dem Teil zum „Magischen Theater“ im Roman Der Steppenwolf. Haller sieht eine Tür mit der Inschrift: Anleitung zum Aufbau der Persönlichkeit – Erfolg garantiert (Hesse 1978: 208) und ein Schachspieler gibt ihm eine Lektion in Persönlichkeitsentwicklung, indem dieser zu Haller sagt: „Wie der Dichter aus einer Handvoll Figuren ein Drama schafft, so bauen wir aus den Figuren unsres zerlegten Ichs immerzu neue Gruppen, mit neuen Spielen und Spannungen, mit ewig neuen Situationen. Sehen Sie!“.
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