In the idyllic poem "Hours in the garden" (1936), which he wrote during the composition of the novel, Hesse speaks of "a game of thoughts called the glass bead game" that he practiced while burning leaves in the garden. As the ashes filter through the grate, he says, "I hear music and see men of the past and future. I see wise men and poets and scholars and artists harmoniously building the hundred-gated cathedral of mind."
And thus I come to be moved by a poem I do not know, cannot find anywhere here, can't google, and will probably not find for years. Yet, I find something irresistibly beautiful about the contrasting images: dried up leaves burning, rising up in blue smoke, their ashes filtering through a grate; while the mind rolls shiny glass beads of thoughts.
And I sincerely hope that the poem, when I at last find it, won't be like many other literary works to which I have been led by later commentary or review and which turn out less interesting than the commentary was to begin with.
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