The Magic Mountain
Encyclopedia
The Magic Mountain is a novel
by Thomas Mann
, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature
.
Mann started writing what was to become The Magic Mountain in 1912. It began as a much shorter narrative, which revisited in a comic manner aspects of Death in Venice
, a novella
that he was then preparing for publication. The newer work reflected his experiences and impressions during a period when his wife, who was suffering from a lung complaint, was confined to Dr Friedrich Jessen's Waldsanatorium
in Davos
, Switzerland
for several months. In May and June 1912 he paid her a visit and became acquainted with the team of doctors who were treating her in this cosmopolitan institution. According to Mann, in the afterword that was later included in the English translation, this stay became the foundation of the opening chapter (Arrival) of the completed novel.
The outbreak of the First World War interrupted work on the book. The conflict and its aftermath led the author to undertake a major re-examination of European bourgeois society, including the sources of the willful, perverse destructiveness displayed by much of civilised humanity. He was also drawn to speculate about more general questions surrounding personal attitudes to life, health, illness, sexuality and mortality. Given this, Mann felt compelled to radically revise and expand the pre-war text before completing it in 1924. Der Zauberberg was eventually published in two volumes by S. Fischer Verlag
in Berlin
.
Mann's vast composition is erudite, subtle, ambitious, but, most of all, ambiguous; since its original publication it has been subject to a variety of critical assessments. For example, the book blends a scrupulous realism
with deeper symbol
ic undertones. Given this complexity, each reader is obliged to weigh up the artistic significance of the pattern of events set out within the narrative; a task made more difficult by the author's Olympian irony. Mann himself was well aware of his book's elusiveness, but offered few clues about approaches to the text. He later compared it to a symphonic work, orchestrated with a number of themes and, in a playful commentary on the problems of interpretation, recommended that those who wished to understand it should read it through twice.
. We are introduced to the central protagonist of the story, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family who, following the early death of his parents, has been brought up by his grandfather and subsequently by an uncle named James Tienappel. We encounter him when he is in his early 20s, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his home town. Just before beginning this professional career Castorp undertakes a journey to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is seeking a cure in a sanatorium
in Davos
, high up in the Swiss Alps
. In the opening chapter, Hans is symbolically transported away from the familiar life and mundane obligations he has known, in what he later learns to call "the flatlands", to the rarefied mountain air and introspective little world of the sanatorium.
Castorp's departure from the sanatorium is repeatedly delayed by his failing health. What at first appears to be a minor bronchial infection with slight fever
is diagnosed by the sanatorium's chief doctor and director, HofratHofrat (literally, court advisor) is a honorific title given by monarchs or, as in this case, their family members to people of merits. It is not his title as director of the sanatorium, which is Director. However, the novel mirrors the then German custom to call Hofräte by their honorific rather than their functional title. The most recent English translator of Magic Mountain, Woods, uses Director as a translation. Behrens, as symptoms of tuberculosis
. Hans is persuaded by Behrens to stay until his health improves.
During his extended stay, Castorp meets and learns from a variety of characters, who together represent a microcosm of pre-war Europe. These include the secular humanist and encyclopedist Lodovico Settembrini (a student of Giosuè Carducci
), the totalitarian Jew
-turned-Jesuit Leo Naphta, the dionysian Dutch Mynheer Peeperkorn, and his romantic interest Madame Clavdia Chauchat.
In the end, Castorp remains in the morbid atmosphere of the sanatorium for seven years. At the conclusion of the novel, the war begins, Castorp volunteers for the military, and his possible, or probable, demise upon the battlefield is portended.
– a "novel of education" or "novel of formation" – and as a sly parody
of this genre. Many formal elements of this type of fiction are present: like the protagonist of a typical bildungsroman, the immature Castorp leaves his home and learns about art, culture, politics, human frailty and love. Also embedded within this vast novel are extended reflections on the experience of time, music, nationalism, sociological issues and changes in the natural world. Hans Castorp’s stay in the rarefied air of The Magic Mountain thus provides him with a panoramic view of pre-war European civilisation and its discontents.
Thomas Mann’s description of the subjective experience of serious illness and the gradual process of medical institutionalisation are of interest in themselves, as are his allusions to the irrational forces within the human psyche at a time when Freudian psychoanalysis was becoming prominent. These themes relate to the development of Castorp's character over the time span covered by the novel, a point that the author himself underlined. In his discussion of the work, written in English, published in the Atlantic in 1953 Mann states that "what [Hans] came to understand is that one must go through the deep experience of sickness and death to arrive at a higher sanity and health . . . ."
At the core of this complex work is an encyclopaedic survey of the ideas and debates associated with modernity
. Mann acknowledged his debt to the skeptical insights of Friedrich Nietzsche
concerning modern humanity and embodied this in the novel in the arguments between the characters. Throughout the book the author employs the discussion with and between Settembrini, Naphta and the medical staff to introduce the impressionable Castorp to a wide spectrum of competing ideologies about responses to the Age of Enlightenment
. However, whereas the classical bildungsroman would conclude by having "formed" Castorp into a mature member of society, with his own world view and greater self-knowledge, The Magic Mountain ends as it has to for "life's delicate child" as a simultaneously anonymous and communal conscript, one of millions, under fire on some battlefield of World War I.
; a humorous, ironic, satirical (and satyric) pendant to Death in Venice
, which he had completed in 1912. The atmosphere was to derive from the "mixture of death and amusement" that Mann had encountered whilst visiting his wife in a Swiss sanatorium. This fascination with death, the triumph of ecstatic disorder over a life devoted to order, which he had explored in Death in Venice was supposed to be transferred to a comedic plane.
Thus, The Magic Mountain contains many contrasts and parallels with the earlier novel. The established author Gustav von Aschenbach is matched to a young, callow engineer at the start of a humdrum career. The erotic allure of the beautiful Polish boy Tadzio corresponds to the Asiatic-flabby ("asiatisch-schlaff") Russian Madame Chauchat. The setting itself has shifted both geographically and symbolically; switching from the flooded and diseased Italian coastlands to an alpine resort famed for its health-giving properties, with the threat of a fatal cholera infection in Venice becoming the sanatorium's promise of a respite from, or a cure for, tuberculosis.
-scene, and cousin Ziemssen who leaves this world like an ancient hero. The dialogues between Settembrini and Naphta discuss the theme of life and death from a metaphysical perspective. Besides the deaths from fatal illness, two characters commit suicide, and finally Castorp goes off to fight in World War I
, and it is implied that he will be killed on the battlefield.
In the above-mentioned comment Mann writes:
, a leitmotif
that recurs throughout the book. Thus Chapter VII, entitled "By the Ocean of Time", opens with the narrator asking rhetorically, "Can one tell – that is to say, narrate – time, time itself, as such, for its own sake?" Mann's authorial (and ironic) response to the question posed is, "That would surely be an absurd undertaking...", before going on to compare storytelling to the act of music making, with both described as being alike in that they can," ...only present themselves as a flowing, as a succession in time, as one thing after another..." .
The Magic Mountain, in essence, embodies the author's meditations on the tempo
of experience.
The narrative is ordered chronologically but it accelerates throughout the novel, so that the first five chapters relate only the first of Castorp’s seven years at the sanatorium in great detail; the remaining six years, marked by monotony and routine, are described in the last two chapters. This asymmetry corresponds to Castorp’s own skewed perception of the passage of time.
This structure reflects the protagonists’ thoughts. Throughout the book, they discuss the philosophy of time
, and debate whether "interest and novelty dispel or shorten the content of time, while monotony and emptiness hinder its passage". The characters also reflect on the problems of narration and time, about the correspondence between the length of a narrative and the duration of the events it describes.
Mann also meditates upon the interrelationship between the experience of time and space; of time seeming to pass more slowly when one doesn't move in space. This aspect of the novel mirrors contemporary philosophical and scientific debates which are embodied in Heidegger's
writings and Einstein's theory of relativity
, in which space and time are inseparable. In essence, Castorp's subtly transformed perspective on the "flat-lands" corresponds to a movement in time.
The first part of the novel culminates and ends in the sanatorium's Carnival
feast. There, in a grotesque scene named after Walpurgis Night
, the setting is transformed into the Blocksberg, where according to German tradition witches and wizards meet in obscene revelry; also described in Goethe's Faust I. At this event, Castorp finally woos Madame Chauchat; their subtle conversation is almost wholly performed in French.
Another topos
of German literature is the Venus Mountain (Venusberg) that also appears in Richard Wagner
's opera Tannhäuser
. This mountain is a "hellish paradise," a place of lust and abandon, where Time flows differently: the visitor loses all sense of time, and though he thinks his stay only lasts a few hours, when he finally leaves the mountain, seven years have passed. Also Castorp, who originally planned to stay for three weeks, leaves the Berghof only after seven years.
In general, the inhabitants of the Berghof spend their days in a mythical, distant atmosphere, full of references to fairy tales and sagas: The x-ray laboratory in the cellar represents the Hades
of Greek mythology, where Medical Director Behrens acts as the judge and punisher Rhadamanthys and where Castorp is but a fleeting visitor, like Odysseus
. Behrens compares the cousins to Castor and Pollux, Settembrini compares himself to Prometheus
. Frau Stöhr mentions Sisyphus
and Tantalus
, albeit confusedly.
The culmination point of the second part of the novel is perhaps the – still "episodic"
– chapter on Hans Castorp's blizzard dream (in the novel simply called "Snow"), where the protagonist gets into a sudden blizzard
, beginning a death-bound sleep, dreaming at first of beautiful meadows with blossoms and of lovable young people at a southern seaside; then of a scene reminiscent mainly of a grotesque event in Goethe's Faust I ("the witches' kitchen" , again in Goethe's "Blocksberg chapter"); and finally ending with a dream of extreme cruelty – the slaughtering of a child by two witches, priests of a classic temple. According to Thomas Mann's interpretation in the text, this represents the original, but deathly-destructive force of nature itself.
Of course, finally Hans Castorp awakens in due time, escapes from the blizzard, and returns to the "Berghof". But rethinking his dreams he concludes for the moment that "because of charity and love, man should never allow death to rule one's thoughts." Hans Castorp soon forgets this sentence, so for him the blizzard-event remains a pure interlude. But for Thomas Mann himself the sentence (which throughout the whole novel is the only one in italics) remains important, and so he states it, for personal consequences and for his readers.
References to Grimm's Fairy Tales
abound. The opulent meals are compared to the magically self-laying table of Table, Donkey, and Stick, Frau Engelhardt's persevering quest to learn the first name of Madame Chauchat mirrors the queen in Rumpelstiltskin. Castorp shares his first name with Clever Hans, but perhaps also his naïveté; although the ending is not explicit, but most readers will infer Castorp dies on the battlefield.
As to the magical number seven: Castorp spends seven years at the Berghof, the central Walpurgis Night scene happens after seven months, both cousins have seven letters in their last name, the dining hall has seven tables, the digits of Castorp's room number (34) add up to seven, Settembrini's name includes seven in Italian, Joachim keeps a thermometer in his mouth for seven minutes, and Mynheer Peeperkorn announces his suicide in a group of seven. Joachim dies at seven o'clock. Even Castorp's parents die when he is seven.
In fact, music plays a major role throughout Thomas Mann's work (as in many novels of the poet, already in the Buddenbrooks
, but notably in Doktor Faustus
): in The Magic Mountain, the recently perfected grammophone allows the Berghof people to listen to, e.g., Aida's final duet with Radames from Verdi's opera, and to Schubert's multi-valent song "Der Lindenbaum" from the Winterreise
, both full of mourning feelings in the view of death; the latter hints an invitation to suicide. Hans Castorp engages himself deeply in such performances. With the last-mentioned song of Franz Schubert
on his lips, our protagonist is told to vanish on the battlefields of World War I . (This end of the novel is at the same time of parodistic character, concerning the romantic "love for death", see e.g. Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
. It may also contain some amount of self-irony, since the song is sometimes considered as typical for prewar Germany, whereas the novel was published during the Weimar republic
, which Thomas Mann now strongly defended.)
There´s also some elements that suggests Debussy´s symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
as the orchestral piece in which Hans Castorp fantasizes about being a faun.
In any case one can speak of Thomas Mann's novel as "music in words".
in the tradition of Parzival
. However, he remains pale and mediocre, representing a German bourgeois that is torn between conflicting influences – capable of the highest humanistic ideals, yet at the same time prone to both stubborn philistinism
and radical ideologies. As usual, Mann chooses his protagonist's name carefully: Hans is a generic German first name, almost anonymous, but also refers to the fairy tale figure of Hans im Glück and the apostle St. John
(Johannes in German), the favourite disciple of Jesus, who beholds the Revelation
(Offenbarung des Johannes in German). Castorp is the name of a prominent historic figure, Hinrich Castorp of Mann's hometown, Lübeck
. The "torp
" is Danish, not unexpected on the German north coast.
In a way, Hans Castorp can be seen as the incorporation of the young Weimar Republic
: Both humanism and radicalism, represented by Settembrini and Naphta, try to win his favour, but Castorp is unable to decide. His body temperature is a subtle metaphor for his lack of clarity: Following Schiller’s theory of fever, Castorp’s temperature is always 37.6°C, which is neither healthy nor ill, but an interstage. Furthermore the outside temperature in Castorp's residence is out of balance: it is either too warm or too cold and tends to extremes (e.g. snow in August), but never normal.
, of Humanism
, democracy
, tolerance
and human rights
. He often finds Castorp literally in the dark and switches on the light before their conversations. He compares himself to Prometheus
of Greek mythology, who brought of fire and enlightenment to Man. His own mentor Giosuè Carducci
has even written a hymn to another lightbringer: to Lucifer
, "la forza vindice della ragione." His ethics are those of bourgeois values and labour. He tries to counter Castorp's morbid fascination with death and disease, warns him against the ill Madame Chauchat, and tries to demonstrate a positive outlook on life.
His antagonist Naphta describes him as "Zivilisationsliterat". Mann originally constructed Settembrini as a caricature of the liberal-democratic novelist, represented for example by his own brother Heinrich Mann
. However, while the novel was written, Mann himself became an outspoken supporter of the Weimar Republic
, which may explain why Settembrini, especially in the later chapters, becomes the authorial voice.
Settembrini's physical characteristics are reminiscent of the Italian composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo.
, anarchism
, and communism
. With brilliant intelligence he aims to unmask Settembrini's values and ethics and leads them ad absurdum, "as if to prove that the Sun revolves around Earth."
In Mann's original draft, Naphta was not planned but was added later, while the Weimar Republic was threatened by radical ideologies from all sides, eventually leading to its failure. Hans Castorp famously tries to classify Naphta politically and comes to the conclusion that he was just as revolutionary as Settembrini – not in liberal, but in a conservative way. So he decides that Naphta was a Revolutionär der Erhaltung (revolutionist of conservation). This apparent oxymoron
alludes to a heterogeneous movement of right wing intellectuals called the Conservative Revolution. The term, probably first adopted by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
, was repeatedly used by Mann and is meant to be revolutionary in a reactionary sense: The movement was highly nationalistic and not only fought against the ideals of left-wing socialism, liberalism and enlightenment, but it also detested the lost Empire’s dull conservatism
of the petty bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. The movement was somewhat elusive, flirting with every radicalism against established views. Thus, Naphta himself is conceived as a living contradiction in terms: An ex-Jewish Jesuit, anti-capitalist, hostile to modernity, freedom, individuality and progress, anarchic and theocratic.
mythos and in the nymphs in Wagner's Venus Mountain. Chauchat's feline characteristics are noted often, her last name is derived from the French chaud chat (Eng., hot cat), and her first name includes the English claw. (Her name may also be a reference to the Chauchat
machine gun
,
a French weapon that saw significant use by the French and American forces during World War I
.)
Clawdia Chauchat leaves the Berghof for some time, but she returns with an impressive companion, Mynheer Peeperkorn, who suffers from a tropical disease.
) – figures, which are, on the one hand, admired because of their vital energy, and, on the other hand, condemned because of their naivete. In total, this person represents the grotesqueness of a Dionysian character. The Greek god Dionysus is also important in Nietzschean philosophy
, whose The Birth of Tragedy
is the source of the title The Magic Mountain.
Peepercorn ends by suicide, also performed in a strange manner.
By Mynheer Peeperkorn the author of the novel simultaneously personalizes his rival, the influential German poet Gerhart Hauptmann
, and even certain properties of Goethe (with whom Hauptmann often was compared).
", the twin brothers of the Greek mythology. And in fact, there is some affinity between the two cousins, both in their love to Russian women (Clavdia Chauchat in the case of Hans Castorp, the female co-patient "Marusja" in the case of Joachim Ziemssen), and also in their ideals. But, in contrast to Hans Castorp, who is an assertive person on the Berghof scene, Joachim Ziemssen is rather shy, known to stand somehow outside of the community. He tries to escape from what he, unspokenly, feels to be a morbid atmosphere. After long discussions with his cousin, and in spite of being warned by Dr. Behrens, he returns to the "flatlands", where he fulfills his military duties for some time. But after a while, forced by deterioration of his lungs, he returns to the Berghof. It is, however, too late for a successful treatment of his illness, and he dies in the sanitarium. His death is described in a moving chapter of the novel, with the title "As a soldier, and a good one" ["(Ich sterbe) als Soldat und brav"], again a well-known citation from Goethe's Faust.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature
German literature
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...
.
Mann started writing what was to become The Magic Mountain in 1912. It began as a much shorter narrative, which revisited in a comic manner aspects of Death in Venice
Death in Venice
The novella Death in Venice was written by the German author Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1913 as Der Tod in Venedig. The plot of the work presents a great writer suffering writer's block who visits Venice and is liberated and uplifted, then increasingly obsessed, by the sight of a...
, a novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
that he was then preparing for publication. The newer work reflected his experiences and impressions during a period when his wife, who was suffering from a lung complaint, was confined to Dr Friedrich Jessen's Waldsanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
in Davos
Davos
Davos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of 11,248 . Davos is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
for several months. In May and June 1912 he paid her a visit and became acquainted with the team of doctors who were treating her in this cosmopolitan institution. According to Mann, in the afterword that was later included in the English translation, this stay became the foundation of the opening chapter (Arrival) of the completed novel.
The outbreak of the First World War interrupted work on the book. The conflict and its aftermath led the author to undertake a major re-examination of European bourgeois society, including the sources of the willful, perverse destructiveness displayed by much of civilised humanity. He was also drawn to speculate about more general questions surrounding personal attitudes to life, health, illness, sexuality and mortality. Given this, Mann felt compelled to radically revise and expand the pre-war text before completing it in 1924. Der Zauberberg was eventually published in two volumes by S. Fischer Verlag
S. Fischer Verlag
The German publishing house S. Fischer Verlag was founded in 1886 by Samuel Fischer in Berlin and is a leading German address for literary publications and fiction.Originally, it was renowned for naturalism literature...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
Mann's vast composition is erudite, subtle, ambitious, but, most of all, ambiguous; since its original publication it has been subject to a variety of critical assessments. For example, the book blends a scrupulous realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
with deeper symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ic undertones. Given this complexity, each reader is obliged to weigh up the artistic significance of the pattern of events set out within the narrative; a task made more difficult by the author's Olympian irony. Mann himself was well aware of his book's elusiveness, but offered few clues about approaches to the text. He later compared it to a symphonic work, orchestrated with a number of themes and, in a playful commentary on the problems of interpretation, recommended that those who wished to understand it should read it through twice.
Plot summary
The narrative opens in the decade before World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. We are introduced to the central protagonist of the story, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family who, following the early death of his parents, has been brought up by his grandfather and subsequently by an uncle named James Tienappel. We encounter him when he is in his early 20s, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his home town. Just before beginning this professional career Castorp undertakes a journey to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is seeking a cure in a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
in Davos
Davos
Davos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of 11,248 . Davos is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
, high up in the Swiss Alps
Swiss Alps
The Swiss Alps are the portion of the Alps mountain range that lies within Switzerland. Because of their central position within the entire Alpine range, they are also known as the Central Alps....
. In the opening chapter, Hans is symbolically transported away from the familiar life and mundane obligations he has known, in what he later learns to call "the flatlands", to the rarefied mountain air and introspective little world of the sanatorium.
Castorp's departure from the sanatorium is repeatedly delayed by his failing health. What at first appears to be a minor bronchial infection with slight fever
Fever
Fever is a common medical sign characterized by an elevation of temperature above the normal range of due to an increase in the body temperature regulatory set-point. This increase in set-point triggers increased muscle tone and shivering.As a person's temperature increases, there is, in...
is diagnosed by the sanatorium's chief doctor and director, HofratHofrat (literally, court advisor) is a honorific title given by monarchs or, as in this case, their family members to people of merits. It is not his title as director of the sanatorium, which is Director. However, the novel mirrors the then German custom to call Hofräte by their honorific rather than their functional title. The most recent English translator of Magic Mountain, Woods, uses Director as a translation. Behrens, as symptoms of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. Hans is persuaded by Behrens to stay until his health improves.
During his extended stay, Castorp meets and learns from a variety of characters, who together represent a microcosm of pre-war Europe. These include the secular humanist and encyclopedist Lodovico Settembrini (a student of Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Alessandro Michele Carducci was an Italian poet and teacher. He was very influential and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906 he became the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.-Biography:...
), the totalitarian Jew
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
-turned-Jesuit Leo Naphta, the dionysian Dutch Mynheer Peeperkorn, and his romantic interest Madame Clavdia Chauchat.
In the end, Castorp remains in the morbid atmosphere of the sanatorium for seven years. At the conclusion of the novel, the war begins, Castorp volunteers for the military, and his possible, or probable, demise upon the battlefield is portended.
Literary significance and criticism
The Magic Mountain can be read both as a classic example of the European bildungsromanBildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
– a "novel of education" or "novel of formation" – and as a sly parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of this genre. Many formal elements of this type of fiction are present: like the protagonist of a typical bildungsroman, the immature Castorp leaves his home and learns about art, culture, politics, human frailty and love. Also embedded within this vast novel are extended reflections on the experience of time, music, nationalism, sociological issues and changes in the natural world. Hans Castorp’s stay in the rarefied air of The Magic Mountain thus provides him with a panoramic view of pre-war European civilisation and its discontents.
Thomas Mann’s description of the subjective experience of serious illness and the gradual process of medical institutionalisation are of interest in themselves, as are his allusions to the irrational forces within the human psyche at a time when Freudian psychoanalysis was becoming prominent. These themes relate to the development of Castorp's character over the time span covered by the novel, a point that the author himself underlined. In his discussion of the work, written in English, published in the Atlantic in 1953 Mann states that "what [Hans] came to understand is that one must go through the deep experience of sickness and death to arrive at a higher sanity and health . . . ."
At the core of this complex work is an encyclopaedic survey of the ideas and debates associated with modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
. Mann acknowledged his debt to the skeptical insights of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
concerning modern humanity and embodied this in the novel in the arguments between the characters. Throughout the book the author employs the discussion with and between Settembrini, Naphta and the medical staff to introduce the impressionable Castorp to a wide spectrum of competing ideologies about responses to the Age of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. However, whereas the classical bildungsroman would conclude by having "formed" Castorp into a mature member of society, with his own world view and greater self-knowledge, The Magic Mountain ends as it has to for "life's delicate child" as a simultaneously anonymous and communal conscript, one of millions, under fire on some battlefield of World War I.
Connection to Death in Venice
According to the author, he originally planned the The Magic Mountain as a novellaNovella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
; a humorous, ironic, satirical (and satyric) pendant to Death in Venice
Death in Venice
The novella Death in Venice was written by the German author Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1913 as Der Tod in Venedig. The plot of the work presents a great writer suffering writer's block who visits Venice and is liberated and uplifted, then increasingly obsessed, by the sight of a...
, which he had completed in 1912. The atmosphere was to derive from the "mixture of death and amusement" that Mann had encountered whilst visiting his wife in a Swiss sanatorium. This fascination with death, the triumph of ecstatic disorder over a life devoted to order, which he had explored in Death in Venice was supposed to be transferred to a comedic plane.
Thus, The Magic Mountain contains many contrasts and parallels with the earlier novel. The established author Gustav von Aschenbach is matched to a young, callow engineer at the start of a humdrum career. The erotic allure of the beautiful Polish boy Tadzio corresponds to the Asiatic-flabby ("asiatisch-schlaff") Russian Madame Chauchat. The setting itself has shifted both geographically and symbolically; switching from the flooded and diseased Italian coastlands to an alpine resort famed for its health-giving properties, with the threat of a fatal cholera infection in Venice becoming the sanatorium's promise of a respite from, or a cure for, tuberculosis.
Illness and death
The Berghof patients suffer from some form of tuberculosis, which rules the daily routines, thoughts, and conversations of the "Half-a-lung club". The disease ends fatally for many of the patients, such as the Catholic girl Barbara Hujus whose fear of death is heightened in a harrowing ViaticumViaticum
Viaticum is a term used especially in the Roman Catholic Church for the Eucharist administered, with or without anointing of the sick, to a person who is dying, and is thus a part of the last rites...
-scene, and cousin Ziemssen who leaves this world like an ancient hero. The dialogues between Settembrini and Naphta discuss the theme of life and death from a metaphysical perspective. Besides the deaths from fatal illness, two characters commit suicide, and finally Castorp goes off to fight in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and it is implied that he will be killed on the battlefield.
In the above-mentioned comment Mann writes:
- "What Castorp learns to fathom is that all higher health must have passed through illness and death. [...]. As Hans Castorp once says to Madame Chauchat, there are two ways to life: One is the common, direct, and brave. The other is bad, leading through death, and that is the genius way. This concept of illness and death, as a necessary passage to knowledge, health, and life, makes The Magic Mountain into a novel of initiation."
Time
Closely connected to the themes of life and death is the subjective nature of timeTime
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
, a leitmotif
Leitmotif
A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...
that recurs throughout the book. Thus Chapter VII, entitled "By the Ocean of Time", opens with the narrator asking rhetorically, "Can one tell – that is to say, narrate – time, time itself, as such, for its own sake?" Mann's authorial (and ironic) response to the question posed is, "That would surely be an absurd undertaking...", before going on to compare storytelling to the act of music making, with both described as being alike in that they can," ...only present themselves as a flowing, as a succession in time, as one thing after another..." .
The Magic Mountain, in essence, embodies the author's meditations on the tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
of experience.
The narrative is ordered chronologically but it accelerates throughout the novel, so that the first five chapters relate only the first of Castorp’s seven years at the sanatorium in great detail; the remaining six years, marked by monotony and routine, are described in the last two chapters. This asymmetry corresponds to Castorp’s own skewed perception of the passage of time.
This structure reflects the protagonists’ thoughts. Throughout the book, they discuss the philosophy of time
Philosophy of space and time
Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology, and character of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a...
, and debate whether "interest and novelty dispel or shorten the content of time, while monotony and emptiness hinder its passage". The characters also reflect on the problems of narration and time, about the correspondence between the length of a narrative and the duration of the events it describes.
Mann also meditates upon the interrelationship between the experience of time and space; of time seeming to pass more slowly when one doesn't move in space. This aspect of the novel mirrors contemporary philosophical and scientific debates which are embodied in Heidegger's
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
writings and Einstein's theory of relativity
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
, in which space and time are inseparable. In essence, Castorp's subtly transformed perspective on the "flat-lands" corresponds to a movement in time.
Magic and mountains
The titular reference to mountain reappears in many layers. The Berghof sanatorium lies on a mountain not only geographically, but also figuratively, a reclusive, separate world. The mountain also represents the opposite of Castorp's home, the sober, business-like and (for Joachim Ziemssen) mortal "flatland."The first part of the novel culminates and ends in the sanatorium's Carnival
Carnival
Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...
feast. There, in a grotesque scene named after Walpurgis Night
Walpurgis Night
Walpurgis Night is a traditional spring festival on 30 April or 1 May in large parts of Central and Northern Europe. It is often celebrated with dancing and with bonfires. It is exactly six months from All Hallows' Eve.-Name:...
, the setting is transformed into the Blocksberg, where according to German tradition witches and wizards meet in obscene revelry; also described in Goethe's Faust I. At this event, Castorp finally woos Madame Chauchat; their subtle conversation is almost wholly performed in French.
Another topos
Literary topos
Topos , in Latin locus , referred in the context of classical Greek rhetoric to a standardised method of constructing or treating an argument. See topos in classical rhetoric...
of German literature is the Venus Mountain (Venusberg) that also appears in Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's opera Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
. This mountain is a "hellish paradise," a place of lust and abandon, where Time flows differently: the visitor loses all sense of time, and though he thinks his stay only lasts a few hours, when he finally leaves the mountain, seven years have passed. Also Castorp, who originally planned to stay for three weeks, leaves the Berghof only after seven years.
In general, the inhabitants of the Berghof spend their days in a mythical, distant atmosphere, full of references to fairy tales and sagas: The x-ray laboratory in the cellar represents the Hades
Hades
Hades , Hadēs, originally , Haidēs or , Aidēs , meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.In Greek mythology, Hades...
of Greek mythology, where Medical Director Behrens acts as the judge and punisher Rhadamanthys and where Castorp is but a fleeting visitor, like Odysseus
Odysseus
Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
. Behrens compares the cousins to Castor and Pollux, Settembrini compares himself to Prometheus
Prometheus
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...
. Frau Stöhr mentions Sisyphus
Sisyphus
In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity...
and Tantalus
Tantalus
Tantalus was the ruler of an ancient western Anatolian city called either after his name, as "Tantalís", "the city of Tantalus", or as "Sipylus", in reference to Mount Sipylus, at the foot of which his city was located and whose ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the...
, albeit confusedly.
The culmination point of the second part of the novel is perhaps the – still "episodic"
Episodic memory
Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events that can be explicitly stated. Semantic and episodic memory together make up the category of declarative memory, which is one of the two major divisions in memory...
– chapter on Hans Castorp's blizzard dream (in the novel simply called "Snow"), where the protagonist gets into a sudden blizzard
Blizzard
A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong winds. By definition, the difference between blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have winds in excess of with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 meters or ¼ mile or...
, beginning a death-bound sleep, dreaming at first of beautiful meadows with blossoms and of lovable young people at a southern seaside; then of a scene reminiscent mainly of a grotesque event in Goethe's Faust I ("the witches' kitchen" , again in Goethe's "Blocksberg chapter"); and finally ending with a dream of extreme cruelty – the slaughtering of a child by two witches, priests of a classic temple. According to Thomas Mann's interpretation in the text, this represents the original, but deathly-destructive force of nature itself.
Of course, finally Hans Castorp awakens in due time, escapes from the blizzard, and returns to the "Berghof". But rethinking his dreams he concludes for the moment that "because of charity and love, man should never allow death to rule one's thoughts." Hans Castorp soon forgets this sentence, so for him the blizzard-event remains a pure interlude. But for Thomas Mann himself the sentence (which throughout the whole novel is the only one in italics) remains important, and so he states it, for personal consequences and for his readers.
References to Grimm's Fairy Tales
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Children's and Household Tales is a collection of German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimms' Fairy Tales .-Composition:...
abound. The opulent meals are compared to the magically self-laying table of Table, Donkey, and Stick, Frau Engelhardt's persevering quest to learn the first name of Madame Chauchat mirrors the queen in Rumpelstiltskin. Castorp shares his first name with Clever Hans, but perhaps also his naïveté; although the ending is not explicit, but most readers will infer Castorp dies on the battlefield.
As to the magical number seven: Castorp spends seven years at the Berghof, the central Walpurgis Night scene happens after seven months, both cousins have seven letters in their last name, the dining hall has seven tables, the digits of Castorp's room number (34) add up to seven, Settembrini's name includes seven in Italian, Joachim keeps a thermometer in his mouth for seven minutes, and Mynheer Peeperkorn announces his suicide in a group of seven. Joachim dies at seven o'clock. Even Castorp's parents die when he is seven.
Music
- "Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon him much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply soothing, narcotic effect, tempting him to doze."
- "There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect." (Herr Settembrini, ch. 4)
In fact, music plays a major role throughout Thomas Mann's work (as in many novels of the poet, already in the Buddenbrooks
Buddenbrooks
Buddenbrooks was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty-six years old. The publication of the 2nd edition in 1903 confirmed that Buddenbrooks was a major literary success in Germany....
, but notably in Doktor Faustus
Doktor Faustus
Doctor Faustus is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, begun in 1943 and published in 1947 as Doktor Faustus. Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde Doctor Faustus (in German, Doktor Faustus) is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, begun in 1943 and...
): in The Magic Mountain, the recently perfected grammophone allows the Berghof people to listen to, e.g., Aida's final duet with Radames from Verdi's opera, and to Schubert's multi-valent song "Der Lindenbaum" from the Winterreise
Winterreise
Winterreise is a song cycle for voice and piano by Franz Schubert , a setting of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is the second of Schubert's two great song cycles on Müller's poems, the earlier being Die schöne Müllerin...
, both full of mourning feelings in the view of death; the latter hints an invitation to suicide. Hans Castorp engages himself deeply in such performances. With the last-mentioned song of Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
on his lips, our protagonist is told to vanish on the battlefields of World War I . (This end of the novel is at the same time of parodistic character, concerning the romantic "love for death", see e.g. Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
. It may also contain some amount of self-irony, since the song is sometimes considered as typical for prewar Germany, whereas the novel was published during the Weimar republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, which Thomas Mann now strongly defended.)
There´s also some elements that suggests Debussy´s symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune , commonly known by its English title Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration...
as the orchestral piece in which Hans Castorp fantasizes about being a faun.
In any case one can speak of Thomas Mann's novel as "music in words".
Allegorical characters
Mann uses the novel's main characters to introduce Castorp to the ideas and ideologies of his time. The author observed that the characters are all "exponents, representatives, and messengers of intellectual districts, principles, and worlds," hoping that he had not made them mere wandering allegories.Castorp
According to the author, the protagonist is a questing knight, the "pure fool" looking for the Holy GrailHoly Grail
The Holy Grail is a sacred object figuring in literature and certain Christian traditions, most often identified with the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and said to possess miraculous powers...
in the tradition of Parzival
Parzival
Parzival is a major medieval German romance by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the Middle High German language. The poem, commonly dated to the first quarter of the 13th century, is itself largely based on Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, the Story of the Grail and mainly centers on the Arthurian...
. However, he remains pale and mediocre, representing a German bourgeois that is torn between conflicting influences – capable of the highest humanistic ideals, yet at the same time prone to both stubborn philistinism
Philistinism
Philistinism is a derogatory term used to a particular attitude or set of values perceived as despising or undervaluing art, beauty, spirituality, or intellectualism. A person with this attitude is referred to as a Philistine and may also be considered materialistic, favoring conventional social...
and radical ideologies. As usual, Mann chooses his protagonist's name carefully: Hans is a generic German first name, almost anonymous, but also refers to the fairy tale figure of Hans im Glück and the apostle St. John
John the Apostle
John the Apostle, John the Apostle, John the Apostle, (Aramaic Yoħanna, (c. 6 - c. 100) was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of James, another of the Twelve Apostles...
(Johannes in German), the favourite disciple of Jesus, who beholds the Revelation
Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament. The title came into usage from the first word of the book in Koine Greek: apokalupsis, meaning "unveiling" or "revelation"...
(Offenbarung des Johannes in German). Castorp is the name of a prominent historic figure, Hinrich Castorp of Mann's hometown, Lübeck
Lübeck
The Hanseatic City of Lübeck is the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany, and one of the major ports of Germany. It was for several centuries the "capital" of the Hanseatic League and, because of its Brick Gothic architectural heritage, is listed by UNESCO as a World...
. The "torp
Torp
In Scandinavian languages torp means a small dwelling, such as a cottage, with a small leased farm area cultivated by its inhabitants, similar to a croft....
" is Danish, not unexpected on the German north coast.
In a way, Hans Castorp can be seen as the incorporation of the young Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
: Both humanism and radicalism, represented by Settembrini and Naphta, try to win his favour, but Castorp is unable to decide. His body temperature is a subtle metaphor for his lack of clarity: Following Schiller’s theory of fever, Castorp’s temperature is always 37.6°C, which is neither healthy nor ill, but an interstage. Furthermore the outside temperature in Castorp's residence is out of balance: it is either too warm or too cold and tends to extremes (e.g. snow in August), but never normal.
Settembrini: Humanism
Settembrini represents the active and positive ideal of the EnlightenmentAge of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, of Humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
, democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, tolerance
Toleration
Toleration is "the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves. One can meaningfully speak of tolerating, ie of allowing or permitting, only if one is in a position to disallow”. It has also been defined as "to bear or endure" or "to nourish, sustain or preserve"...
and human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
. He often finds Castorp literally in the dark and switches on the light before their conversations. He compares himself to Prometheus
Prometheus
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...
of Greek mythology, who brought of fire and enlightenment to Man. His own mentor Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Alessandro Michele Carducci was an Italian poet and teacher. He was very influential and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906 he became the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.-Biography:...
has even written a hymn to another lightbringer: to Lucifer
Lucifer
Traditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
, "la forza vindice della ragione." His ethics are those of bourgeois values and labour. He tries to counter Castorp's morbid fascination with death and disease, warns him against the ill Madame Chauchat, and tries to demonstrate a positive outlook on life.
His antagonist Naphta describes him as "Zivilisationsliterat". Mann originally constructed Settembrini as a caricature of the liberal-democratic novelist, represented for example by his own brother Heinrich Mann
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...
. However, while the novel was written, Mann himself became an outspoken supporter of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, which may explain why Settembrini, especially in the later chapters, becomes the authorial voice.
Settembrini's physical characteristics are reminiscent of the Italian composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo.
Naphta: Radicalism
Settembrini's antagonist Naphta represents the forces of decay, of radicalism and extremism. His perspective combines several heterogeneous radical aspects that include fascismFascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, and communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. With brilliant intelligence he aims to unmask Settembrini's values and ethics and leads them ad absurdum, "as if to prove that the Sun revolves around Earth."
In Mann's original draft, Naphta was not planned but was added later, while the Weimar Republic was threatened by radical ideologies from all sides, eventually leading to its failure. Hans Castorp famously tries to classify Naphta politically and comes to the conclusion that he was just as revolutionary as Settembrini – not in liberal, but in a conservative way. So he decides that Naphta was a Revolutionär der Erhaltung (revolutionist of conservation). This apparent oxymoron
Oxymoron
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms...
alludes to a heterogeneous movement of right wing intellectuals called the Conservative Revolution. The term, probably first adopted by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal ; , was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist.-Early life:...
, was repeatedly used by Mann and is meant to be revolutionary in a reactionary sense: The movement was highly nationalistic and not only fought against the ideals of left-wing socialism, liberalism and enlightenment, but it also detested the lost Empire’s dull conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
of the petty bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. The movement was somewhat elusive, flirting with every radicalism against established views. Thus, Naphta himself is conceived as a living contradiction in terms: An ex-Jewish Jesuit, anti-capitalist, hostile to modernity, freedom, individuality and progress, anarchic and theocratic.
Chauchat: Love and temptation
Clawdia Chauchat represents erotic temptation, lust, and love, all in a degenerate, morbid, "Asiatic-flabby" form. She is one of the major reasons for Castorp's extended stay on the magic mountain. The female promise of sensual pleasure as hindrance to male zest for action imitates the themes from the CirceCirce
In Greek mythology, Circe is a minor goddess of magic , described in Homer's Odyssey as "The loveliest of all immortals", living on the island of Aeaea, famous for her part in the adventures of Odysseus.By most accounts, Circe was the daughter of Helios, the god of the sun, and Perse, an Oceanid...
mythos and in the nymphs in Wagner's Venus Mountain. Chauchat's feline characteristics are noted often, her last name is derived from the French chaud chat (Eng., hot cat), and her first name includes the English claw. (Her name may also be a reference to the Chauchat
Chauchat
The Chauchat , was the standard light machine gun of the French Army during World War I. Under the leadership of General Joseph Joffre, it was commissioned into the French Army in 1916. It was also widely used by the US Army in 1917-1918 and by six other nations: Belgium, Greece, Poland, Russia,...
machine gun
Machine gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....
,
a French weapon that saw significant use by the French and American forces during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.)
Clawdia Chauchat leaves the Berghof for some time, but she returns with an impressive companion, Mynheer Peeperkorn, who suffers from a tropical disease.
Peeperkorn: The Dionysian principle
Mynheer Peeperkorn, Clawdia Chauchat's new lover, enters the Berghof scenery rather late; but he is certainly one of the most-dominating persons of the novel. His behaviour and personality, with its flavour of importance, combined with obvious awkwardness and the strange ability never to complete a statement, is reminiscent of certain figures in former novellas of the author (e.g., Herr Klöterjahn in TristanTristan
Tristan is one of the main characters of the Tristan and Iseult story, a Cornish hero and one of the Knights of the Round Table featuring in the Matter of Britain...
) – figures, which are, on the one hand, admired because of their vital energy, and, on the other hand, condemned because of their naivete. In total, this person represents the grotesqueness of a Dionysian character. The Greek god Dionysus is also important in Nietzschean philosophy
Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche developed his philosophy during the late 19th century amid growing criticism of G. W. F. Hegel's philosophic system.Nietzsche owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung and admitted that Schopenhauer was...
, whose The Birth of Tragedy
The Birth of Tragedy
The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music is a 19th-century work of dramatic theory by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It was reissued in 1886 as The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism ...
is the source of the title The Magic Mountain.
Peepercorn ends by suicide, also performed in a strange manner.
By Mynheer Peeperkorn the author of the novel simultaneously personalizes his rival, the influential German poet Gerhart Hauptmann
Gerhart Hauptmann
Gerhart Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.-Life and work:...
, and even certain properties of Goethe (with whom Hauptmann often was compared).
Ziemssen: Duty
Joachim Ziemssen, Hans Castorp's cousin, is described as a young person representing the ideals of loyalty and faithfulness as an officer. As already mentioned, Dr. Behrens alludes to the pair as "Castor(p) and PolluxCastor and Pollux
In Greek and Roman mythology, Castor and Pollux or Polydeuces were twin brothers, together known as the Dioscuri . Their mother was Leda, but Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, king of Sparta, and Pollux the divine son of Zeus, who visited Leda in the guise of a swan...
", the twin brothers of the Greek mythology. And in fact, there is some affinity between the two cousins, both in their love to Russian women (Clavdia Chauchat in the case of Hans Castorp, the female co-patient "Marusja" in the case of Joachim Ziemssen), and also in their ideals. But, in contrast to Hans Castorp, who is an assertive person on the Berghof scene, Joachim Ziemssen is rather shy, known to stand somehow outside of the community. He tries to escape from what he, unspokenly, feels to be a morbid atmosphere. After long discussions with his cousin, and in spite of being warned by Dr. Behrens, he returns to the "flatlands", where he fulfills his military duties for some time. But after a while, forced by deterioration of his lungs, he returns to the Berghof. It is, however, too late for a successful treatment of his illness, and he dies in the sanitarium. His death is described in a moving chapter of the novel, with the title "As a soldier, and a good one" ["(Ich sterbe) als Soldat und brav"], again a well-known citation from Goethe's Faust.
Translations into English
- The Magic Mountain, translated into English by H T Lowe-PorterH. T. Lowe-PorterHelen Tracy Lowe-Porter was an American translator, most celebrated for her translations of the works of Thomas Mann....
with an afterword by the author, 1927, Secker and Warburg, SBN 436-27237-2 - The Magic Mountain, a new translation into English by John E. WoodsJohn E. WoodsJohn E. Woods is a translator who specializes in translating German literature, since about 1978. His work includes much of the fictional prose of Arno Schmidt and the works of contemporary authors such as Ingo Schulze and Christoph Ransmayr...
,1996, ISBN 0-679-77287-1. This won the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's PrizeHelen and Kurt Wolff Translator's PrizeHelen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize is an annual literary prize honoring an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the USA the previous year. The translator of the winning translation receives $10,000.00 and a stay at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin...
in 1996.
Literary criticism
- Dowden, Stephen (2002) A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, Camden House, ISBN 1-57113-248-1
- Bloom, HaroldHarold BloomHarold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
, ed. (1986) The Magic Mountain: Modern Critical Interpretations, Chelsea House, ISBN 0-87754-902-8 - Heller, ErichErich HellerErich Heller was a British essayist, known particularly for his critical studies in German-language philosophy and literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.- Biography :...
(1958) The Ironic German: A Study of Thomas Mann, Boston and Toronto, Little, Brown and Co. - Jesi, Furio (1979), "Venusberg – Hexenberg – Zauberberg", in Materiali mitologici. Mito e antropologia nella cultura mitteleuropea, Einaudi, Torino 2001 (pp. 224–52)
- Lukács, Georg (1965) Essays on Thomas Mann, Translated by Stanley Mitchell, New York, Grosset and Dunlap
- Reed, T J (1974) Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition, Oxford University Press
- Robertson, Ritchie (2001) The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann (Cambridge Companions to Literature Series), Cambridge University Press
- Travers, Martin (1992) Thomas Mann, Modern Novelists Series, Macmillan
- Weigand, Hermann J (1971) Thomas Mann's Novel "Der Zauberberg": A Study, New York, AMS Press
External links
- A review of the novel from a medical perspective (Retrieved via the Internet Archive.)
- A study guide for the novel (Retrieved via the Internet Archive.)
- The 'Zauberberg' in Davos still exists (The sanatorium was converted into a hotel in 1954.)
- Magic Mountain Map