SOURCE: Durrani, Osman. “‘Cosmic Laughter’ or the Importance of Being Ironical: Reflections on the Narrator of Hermann Hesse's Glasperlenspiel.” German Life and Letters 34, no. 4 (July 1981): 398-408.

In the following essay, Durrani reviews some of the conflicting interpretations of Das Glasperlenspiel and considers Hesse's use of irony in the novel.

The reputation for obscurity which Das Glasperlenspiel has acquired among lay readers and professional critics alike derives to no small extent from the fact that the author's text is communicated through an intermediary narrator, who seems intent on hiding his identity behind a smoke-screen of empty verbosity. We do not know his name, his age, or the position he holds within the hierarchy of Castalia; there is no reliable information that might enable us to establish the date of his biography relative to Knecht's demise, or his motives in compiling it—does he perhaps hope to have his work...