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La montaña mágica

Thomas Mann,

Mario Verdaguer (Translator)

4.09 · Rating details · 39,693 ratings · 2,328 reviews

El protagonista de la novela, Hans Castorp, un joven de 22 años, estudiante de ingeniería y de familia adinerada, va a visitar a su primo al hospital de tuberculosos de Davos, en Suiza. Su estancia, originariamente planeada para tres semanas, se extiende hasta convertirse en una estadía de siete años. Pronto comprende que la lógica que rige en el hospital, situado a 1.530 ...more

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Paperback, 974 pages

Published April 1st 2004 by Edhasa (first published 1924)

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Jan 02, 2014 Kalliope rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

THE POLKA MACABRE of the SEVEN STEPS

It is dusk, and we are on a slim boat, similar to a black gondola and approach an isolated island. As I can make out better the shapes, I realize I have seen this before. The image in front of my eyes is like a black and white version of Arnold Bocklin’s painting and now I am transported to his Isle of the Dead. There is deep silence. I can only hear the very faint stirring of the water as the boat slides over it. Well no, there is also a faint melody which be ...more

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Jul 10, 2013 Jason rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, reviewed, dead-tree-edition, groupthink

I am in a good mood today!

Which should be readily apparent, because if I were not, this book would probably have received only two stars from me—not as a reflection of its literary quality per se, but rather as a reflection of my own reaction to it.

Here is what happened yesterday: I finished this book and tossed it forcefully onto the coffee table next to me in what may be seen as a transparent attempt to attract attention to myself (which is something I tend to do often) and sure enough someone I am in a good mood today!

Which should be readily apparent, because if I were not, this book would probably have received only two stars from me—not as a reflection of its literary quality per se, but rather as a reflection of my own reaction to it.

Here is what happened yesterday: I finished this book and tossed it forcefully onto the coffee table next to me in what may be seen as a transparent attempt to attract attention to myself (which is something I tend to do often) and sure enough someone picked it up, read its title, and asked me what it was about, providing me with a wonderful opportunity to roll my eyes dramatically (another move with which I am somewhat familiar) and ask, “Do you realllllly want to know?” I explained that it was about this aimless young gentleman who decides to kill some time before starting a new job by visiting his cousin in a tuberculosis sanatorium high up in the Swiss Alps, but who begins to exhibit symptoms of ill health himself and whose visit becomes lengthened by increasing bouts of time until his initial 3-week stay has been stretched out to a full seven years, and that this book was about his experiences in that sanatorium over the course of those seven years. By this point, my enquirer’s eyes were wide with interest and I was astounded. In explaining the premise of a book that has actually kind of bored me, have I inadvertently extolled its virtues? Is this book perhaps more interesting than I am giving it credit for? The short answer to that is, NO! This exchange with my enquirer has merely revealed what I think is the essence of The Magic Mountain—it is a place that appears interesting, a place a reader might wish to visit on account of that appearance, but once there it is a place that traps the reader for seven long years and berates him with its endless philosophical musings and its explorations of moral ideologies, and only upon being finally discharged does the reader discover his eyes are bleeding from all the fork stabbing.

Now I have gone ahead and made it all sound so horrible. The truth is, this book is very well written. It has a lot to say about the cyclical nature of time and humanity’s fruitless attempts to anchor itself against its continuous passing. It speaks of the mysteries of biology and brilliantly relates the starting point of life to an unexplained (and unstoppable) illness. It presents death as merely an extension of life as opposed to its diametric opposite and eerily makes the reader feel comfortable with it. And it exemplifies the importance of spiritual health to providing fulfillment for a life that is by most accounts cursory and meaningless. But at the end of the day, it is a book for the brain, and as much as that may be adequate for some, I need a book with a heart and soul. I need a book with characters I can relate to and empathize with, and unfortunately this book had none of that. So, to the extent that I “enjoyed” my visit to this sanatorium, it is not a place to which I would consider returning any time soon. ...more

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Oct 07, 2010 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 1001-book, german, european, literature, classics, 20th-century

(706 From 1001 Books) - Der Zauberberg = The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann

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.

The narrative opens in the decade before World War I. It introduces the protagonist, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family.

Following the early death of his parents, Castorp has been brought up by his grandfather and later, by a m (706 From 1001 Books) - Der Zauberberg = The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann

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.

The narrative opens in the decade before World War I. It introduces the protagonist, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family.

Following the early death of his parents, Castorp has been brought up by his grandfather and later, by a maternal uncle named James Tienappel.

Castorp is in his early 20's, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his home town. Before beginning work, he 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, Castorp leaves his familiar life and obligations, in what he later learns to call "the flatlands", to visit the rarefied mountain air and introspective small world of the sanatorium. ....

کوه جادو - توماس مان (نگاه) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهاردهم ماه می سال 2010میلادی

عنوان: کوه جادو؛ نویسنده: توماس مان؛ مترجم: حسن نکوروح؛ در دو جلد؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، نگاه، 1368؛ در 1016ص؛ چاپ بعدی 1388؛ شابک 9789643514358؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان آلمانی - سده 20م

با خوانش رمان «كوه جادو»، خوانشگر کمی هم به رمان «مرگ در ونيز» همین نویسنده، یادش بخیر باد میگوید؛ در هر دو رمان، مسافرانى هستند كه خود را رودرروی خویشتن خویش میبینند؛ چشم در چشم راستی دوخته، میخواهند با سده ی نوزدهم میلادی، خداحافظی كنند؛ رمان «کوه جادو»، شاهکاری ادبی، از دوران «وایمار (نام نظام حکومتی آلمان طی سالهای 1919میلادی تا 1933میلادی) است؛ جایزه ی نوبلی که «توماس مان» در سال 1929میلادی گرفتند، بیشتر مرهون رمان «خانواده ی بودنبروک» بود؛

در رمان «كوه جادو»، «هانس کاستورپ»، جوان بورژوا زاده‌ ای است، که برای گذران چند روزه، نزد پسرخاله ی خود «یوآخیم» می‌رود، که در آسایشگاه «شاتس آلپ»، در «داووس» تحت درمان است؛ همین که «کاستورپ»، در معرض فضای مرگ‌ آلودِ آسایشگاه، قرار می‌گیرد، احساس می‌کند یا می‌پندارد، که خود نیز بیمار است، و هفت سال در آنجا می‌ماند، تا زمانیکه، جنگ جهانی در سال 1914میلادی، او را از رؤیا بیرون می‌کشد، و با خشونت به میدان‌های نبردِ جنگِ جهانیِ نخست می‌برد

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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Jun 27, 2012 Megha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews

Imagine hiking up a steep mountain. You are not quite winning the game of hide & seek with the Sun and it has got its fiery eyes firmly on you. Your legs are chewing your ears off with incessant grumbling. With each step you take, a wish to flop down right there grows stronger. One of these steps carries you to a spot where a spectacular vista suddenly opens up before you. For the briefest moment, the scene in front of you consumes not only your vision, but your consciousness. It is only in the
Imagine hiking up a steep mountain. You are not quite winning the game of hide & seek with the Sun and it has got its fiery eyes firmly on you. Your legs are chewing your ears off with incessant grumbling. With each step you take, a wish to flop down right there grows stronger. One of these steps carries you to a spot where a spectacular vista suddenly opens up before you. For the briefest moment, the scene in front of you consumes not only your vision, but your consciousness. It is only in the next moment that it registers that the arduous climb is over and you know it was a worthwhile endeavor.

The Magic Mountain is one such hike. No other book has made such heavy demands on my patience (not even Tommy Ruggles' Gravity's Rainbow, I think). The Magic Mountain is incredibly dense and often slow going. But then there are places where the narrative sprouts wings and soars. Not to say that I didn't like the other bits of the book, but it was these few outstanding chapters that confirmed that effort vs. reward dynamic was in my favor.
It is certainly not a book with a high degree of obfuscation. Mann doesn't make it any more difficult than it needs to be. He narrates and explains everything with a lot of patience and wisdom.

The book description refers to The Magic Mountain as a dizzingly rich novel of ideas and that's exactly what it is. It is a highly erudite read all the way through comprising of many a intellectual discussions and debates. One of the frequently occurring themes in the book is the philosophy of time. The subjective nature of time is explicated in great detail. In fact, the book itself has an onomatopoeic quality, in that the narrative seems to move slow when time is not passing swiftly for Hans Castorp, and its picks up the pace when Hans feels that time is flying by.

Some of the other themes include life, death, illness, love, humanism, progress, modernism, irrationality of society, effect of war and then some. Did I say it was dense? Many of the characters are representational of one idea or another. The character of the protagonist, however, goes through a wonderful growth during the course of the novel. His character development, both spiritually and intellectually, is certainly one of the highlights. It may look like this book has a very serious disposition, but really there is plenty of humor and irony in the way Mann writes.

You may have seen some other reviewers mentioning the transcendent chapter Snow. I can't go without mentioning it as well. It is by far the best thing about the book. A beautiful, sublime piece of writing. Hans Castorp comes out transformed by the experience, and so does the reader. While other reviewers don't mention it, Danse Macabre was fascinating as well. For people living in a sanatorium, death takes on a very urgent position. Danse Macabre, literally meaning Dance of Death, looks into that very abyss.

Thomas Mann said that The Magic Mountain should be read twice. I have read through once, but I can't say I have twirled all the ideas around on my fingers and looked at them from all the sides. I do want to re-read it some day. For my next dose of ideas, I will perhaps be knocking at Musil's door. ...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Some novels are like low hills… And some are like high mountains…

Love stands opposed to death – it alone, and not reason, is stronger than death. Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts.

The sanatorium is a powerful metaphor of civilisation – there is everything: love and hate, hope and despair, life and death, wisdom and stupidity, profanity and religion, science and ignorance, metaphysics and mysticism.

…our interest in death and illness is nothing but a way of expressing an interest in

...more

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May 06, 2015 Warwick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, switzerland, bildungsroman, graubuenden, first-world-war

You’re faced with a daunting task when you try to talk about The Magic Mountain – there are so many threads that to pull on one seems unfair to the others. For some it’s a meditation on time, for others it’s the foundational ‘sick-lit’ masterpiece; it’s an allegory of pre-First World War Europe, say one group of supporters; not at all, argue others, it’s a parody of the Bildungsroman tradition.

And yet despite the profusion of themes and ideas, this is a supremely contained book. ‘Insular’ you mi ...more

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Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, nobel-lit, novels, favorites, german-20th-c

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain: "An ordinary young man was on his way from his hometown Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the canton of Graubünden. It was the height of summer, and he planned to stay for three weeks."

Here we are introduced to Hans Castorp (one of my all-time favorite bumbling protagonists) with a load of telling adjectives. Mann insists that he is a young man (although he will act like an old man in many ways) and ordinary (and we will see that this was probably a fatal flaw in being t ...more

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Oct 07, 2009 Lance Greenfield rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: dnf

At the risk of being labelled a Philistine, I declare that this book is one of the most insufferably boring tomes that has ever made it onto my bedside table. I admit that I only struggled my way through the first 170 pages, but that was enough to convince me that I should not waste any more minutes of my precious life wading through any more of this drivel.

I know, I have also been chastised for criticising modern art in the same way. Tracey Emin's "Unmade Bed" and Thomas Mann's "The Magic Moun At the risk of being labelled a Philistine, I declare that this book is one of the most insufferably boring tomes that has ever made it onto my bedside table. I admit that I only struggled my way through the first 170 pages, but that was enough to convince me that I should not waste any more minutes of my precious life wading through any more of this drivel.

I know, I have also been chastised for criticising modern art in the same way. Tracey Emin's "Unmade Bed" and Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" will just have to live in the pile of junk that I fail to understand.

I realise that I am in the minority, as most reviewers and professors of literature believe this to be a masterpiece, and probably the best book to come out of Germany in the twentieth century. Then again, Hans Christian Anderson's boy who recognised the nakedness of his Emperor as those around him admired the splendour and wonderful colours of their leader's new clothes, was also in the minority.

Perhaps, then, I shouldn't feel too bad about my opinion of this amazing piece of creative writing. It may also explain why English literature was the only `O' Level that I failed, despite having been a prolific reader all of my life. It just happened that the books that were chosen for my studies for those exams also bored me to tears.

Following some comments on this review, I have added these notes (27/9/09).

I have always been a prolific reader, sometimes having up to five books on the go simultaneously. I read most novels at the rate of 80-100 pages per day. With The Magic Mountain, I found that I had been reading a few pages at a time for well over a month, and had only waded through 170. There is so much description attached to the narrative that all that had happened by this stage was that the main character had arrived at the sanatorium, met his old friend and most of the patients. It had also come to light that he really wasn't there for his own medical benefit. He isn't really ill. Rather that he was there for a bit of a rest, and escape from the drudge of life in Hamburg with his guardian, and to be with his best mate. If the descriptions were interesting, and succeeded in conjuring up a wonderful picture in my mind, I wouldn't feel quite so bad about it.

Encouraged by some of the other reviews, I revisited the book, and read the passage describing Hans's adventure in the snow, as that was said to be the best part of the book. I remained unimpressed.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed this book more if my German language were up to the standard required to read the original, but I doubt it. I am not alone in my disillusionment. Several of my friends and family, some of them professors and schoolteachers, share my views, and I have yet to meet anyone who has survived to reach the end. It is obvious that there are many who have read, re-read, and thoroughly enjoyed The Magic Mountain. I am happy for them and I rejoice that the world is full of variety, particularly of taste. Wouldn't life be dull without that?! ...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Samadrita rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: european-literature, germany, nobel-laureates, adoration, 1001-and-more, humour-of-the-dignified-kind, timeless-classics, behemoth, group-reads

Imagine being stuck in a place where all sense of time is lost in the web of inactivity, a place which enables people to lead a life devoid of any greater purpose and only focused on recuperation from a queer illness, a place almost hermetically sealed and self-controlled, successfully keeping the repercussions of wars and diplomatic feuds between nations at bay. Imagine being rid of all your earthly woes of finding means of survival and all the elements that stand as pillars supporting the norm Imagine being stuck in a place where all sense of time is lost in the web of inactivity, a place which enables people to lead a life devoid of any greater purpose and only focused on recuperation from a queer illness, a place almost hermetically sealed and self-controlled, successfully keeping the repercussions of wars and diplomatic feuds between nations at bay. Imagine being rid of all your earthly woes of finding means of survival and all the elements that stand as pillars supporting the normative structure of life during a sojourn in a special, secluded place. Imagine a miniature diorama of a society thriving on its own, divorced from society at large.
If you haven't been successful in imagining a real life scenario fitting aforementioned descriptions, do not despair. You can always discover this specially constructed safe haven in a certain fictional sanatorium in the Swiss Alps where our protagonist Hans Castorp languishes for seven whole years.

The experience of reading this book is akin to a painstaking hike up a dangerously steep slope. (Excuse the overused analogy but it happens to be quite apt)
There are long dry stretches requiring ritualistic finding of one footing after the next, ensuring that as a reader you do not slip and tumble headfirst into the gaping chasm of incomprehension. And then there are the moments of perfect clarity when snippets of Mann's wisdom filter in like errant rays of sunshine through the drear of many tedious descriptions of long walks and repetitive conversations, making the long and difficult climb seem worth it all of a sudden.

"But he who knows the body, who knows life, also knows death. Except that's not the whole thing - but merely a beginning, pedagogically speaking. You have to hold it up to the other half, to its opposite. Because our interest in death and illness is nothing but a way of expressing an interest in life..."

The summit of this "magic mountain" becomes the location of a metaphorical watch tower from where the spectacle of our collective civilizational march is viewed, dissected and analyzed with precision. The quirky patients inhabiting the sanatorium become mere proxies for some nations or disparate points of view, their inter-relationships often symbolic of some deeper ideological conflict woven intricately into the fabric of existence.
But despite the sheer brilliance of this premise, there's something off about this book. Something that prevented me from according that final star.
Even if this remains a lengthy and eruditely presented discussion on Europe's inner contradictions, its juxtaposition of progress in all spheres of life and violence brewing under the veneer of that sanctimonious progress, as a work of literature it is somehow imperfect and rough around the edges. Since I was often tempted to believe it would have worked better as a nonfictional philosophical discourse. It's sort of like what my eloquent friend Dolors says - 'The book lacks a soul.' How succinctly put. (Read her well-argued review here)

The characters are employed as mere mouthpieces, never resembling well-drawn sketches of actual people with their own stories. The situations and backdrops are mere contrivances specifically begotten to tout ideas on life and death. It's as if the whole narrative is an elaborate ruse developed to convey Mann's thoughts on the state of Europe prior to the First World War. During my moments of exasperation with the book I was able to recall a few of Nabokov's thoughts in his article on Lolita-

"...All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann."

Clearly a jibe at TMM if I have ever seen one.
Not that I agree with Nabokov's opinion on TMM being topical trash but it surely gives rise to the suspicion that if you strip the book of all its allegorical significance, almost nothing substantial remains. And with the turn of the last page, it leaves the reader with a sense of indescribable dissatisfaction about having just finished a journey neither very rewarding nor enjoyable.

Maybe a re-read some time years later on in life will restore the elusive star. Maybe it will not.

Originally posted on:- 31st October, 2013 ...more

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Apr 01, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mann, reviews, reviews-5-stars, read-2013

Socratic Dialogues

"The Magic Mountain" is a sequel to “Death in Venice”.

Just as Plato’s Socratic Dialogues were the foundation of the novella, they guide the narrative of "TMM", a "Bildungsroman" that is concerned with the education of the protagonist, Hans Castorp, during the seven year period from ages 23 to 30.

Castorp doesn’t so much learn or grow by his physical actions. The character development is intellectual, a development which is equally apparent in both the author and the reader.

Becau ...more

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Aug 11, 2013 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: mann-and-related, translated-from-german, metamorphosis, treasured-reading-experience

Reviewed in December, 2013

I love when the themes of two books I happen to be reading overlap. And when those themes also reflect aspects of my own life experience, I feel a wonderful convergence, an exchange of awareness at an almost physical level as if the the space between the pages where the authors ideas are laid out and my reading of their pages has become porous and a continual flow happens between all three, an exchange not unlike the one that happens in the deepest tissues of the respir ...more

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Apr 10, 2020 Lisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nobels, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, thomas-mann

RIP, 19th century!

What a journey it has been, following the slow death of a culture choking on tuberculosis before erupting in a communal suicide. While I was reading the last pages, my son played Schubert's song on the piano - the one that Hans Castorp sang on the muddy trails of world war insanity after seven years of slow motion tragedy.

Where the Zauberberg ends, Remarque's Im Westen nichts Neues takes up the thread and tells the sequel. And then Solzhenitsyn tells the sequel of the sequel ...more

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Feb 20, 2008 Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: shattering, worldly-lit, fictions-of-the-big-it, loose-baggy-monsters

If you give this book a chance, and some long quiet hours with your full attention, you will be in the midst of incredible richness.

Wise, erudite, deeply engaged but titanically remote, grand, magisterial, ironic, cosmopolitan, comic in a sly gently mocking way.

They don't write 'em like this anymore. the title is onomatpoeic. The book itself is mountainous....some of the deepest philosophical prophecy on what the 20th Century was, and would become. The characters are allegorical, true, but the c ...more

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Jan 19, 2017 Edward rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nobel-winners, favorites, 2017, literary-fiction

To read The Magic Mountain is to be wholly immersed in Hans Castorp’s little world, to really take part as Hans and his companions grapple with mankind’s dichotomies: life vs death, action vs intellect, reason vs emotion, naturalism vs mysticism, East vs West, god vs man, and, perhaps above all, love, that singular epitomic contradiction, that wonderful celebration of life, that raison d'être, which capriciously wields the power both to exult and to desolate.

The book’s characters - the wild and ...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Lee Klein rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In 1997, in Jamaica Plain, Boston, ~4 am, mid-June, after a college friend's band that was blowing up at the time played the Middle East and everyone afterwards came back to our place, I remember a coolish girl on our porch saying to me something like "Oh, you like to read? I bet you like boring shit like The Magic Mountain." I don't remember my response but since then whenever I've thought of this book I've flashed to that scene and her assumption that only pretentious little fuckers read books In 1997, in Jamaica Plain, Boston, ~4 am, mid-June, after a college friend's band that was blowing up at the time played the Middle East and everyone afterwards came back to our place, I remember a coolish girl on our porch saying to me something like "Oh, you like to read? I bet you like boring shit like The Magic Mountain." I don't remember my response but since then whenever I've thought of this book I've flashed to that scene and her assumption that only pretentious little fuckers read books like this. Now, if I time-traveled back to Boston that night (the sun was just barely up, actually -- early summer dawn comes around 4 am) I'd change her mind about me and The Magic Mountain with enthusiastic description of how the book was boring at times, sure, totally intentionally boring at times, I'd say, but shit it's most certainly not. Sure, it's so slow at first it seems like a chore, but I think in fact it's also a mountainous testament to the importance of writerly/readerly patience, more than it's a "magical" read. It didn't get going for me until 330 freaking pages in (706 total). Turns out Mann ain't Musil* -- he's more like a superintellectual Stendhal or, at his best, matches the vivid prose and encompassing scope of Tolstoy. Formally steady pre-modernist approach: no real structural or extended language-y experimentation (other than a 17-page essay on the connection between cellular structure and galaxies). Content-wise, every page seems infused with intellectual talk -- it's explicitly hyper-thematic, a novel of ideas in which the major conflicts are theoretical, a novel that climaxes with a confounding blizzard of argument between opposing intellectuals ("Operationes Spirtuales," p 432-460) followed by a sublime chapter ("Snow," p 460-489) in which the main dude Hans sets out for some solo skiing and gets lost in an actual blizzard of wind-driven snow that gives way to abstractions and hallucinations, like how conflicting theories about Progress or Spirit or the necessity of terror or humaneness are manifested in reality -- first, escalating into real physical conflict between the two intellectual adversaries (the humanist Settembrini and the protofascist Naphta) and then later on real physical conflict among nations driven to war by ideas: "What? Ideas, simply because they were rigorous, led inexorably to bestial deeds, to a settlement by physical struggle?" Overall, I'd award three stars for maybe 600 total pages of this and nine stars for another scattered 106 pages, mostly during three parts: 1) the Mardi Gras bit ("Danse Macabre") in which italicized English indicates French is spoken, 2) the aforementioned chapter called "Snow" and much of the chapter before it that introduces Naphta's horrific backstory (note: freaking Naphta doesn't appear until page 367 -- try getting away with that these days, writer friends -- also, reviews on here mentioning a certain Herr Naphta helped me make it through the first 300+ pages since it was clear that a major character was yet to appear), and 3) the riveting final 20 pages or so (really gets going on page 686 - won't give things away). All in all, things seem intentionally shaped like an arduous ascent in itself. It's a novel that knows it's arduous, trying to induce irregular, elastic experiences of time in readers similiar to those of the characters (time is one of the novel's major themes; its elaboration/presentation here kicks the crap outta -- ahem, ahem -- recent pulitizer winners** also concerned with time). It's a novel that tries to induce a confounded sense in readers, too, erring on the side of a sort of highly managed confusion intermixed with occasional passages of extreme clarity (eg, at one point there's a description of moments when the sides of mountains all around can be seen through temporary openings in the clouds). It's structured like an upwardly undulating slope that ends sort of in open air. The language is always accessible but it's rarely propelled by a narrative engine running on high-viscosity plot. For the most part, the plot involves questions like: Will Hans get sick? Will Hans stay long? Will Hans get the girl he likes? Will Settembrini or Naptha win the struggle for Hans' burgeoning intellectual soul? Will Hans get sicker and die and or freakin' leave this jawn, healthy or not? It's sort of like Paradise Lost, where their sickness (moist spots) and their actual/theoretical removal from the flatlands is their innocence, and Hans over the course of his time on the mountain must awake from his stuporous dream-life where he plays king while expertly wrapped in blankets and waxes about the stars and weighs various philosophies including one involving the supremacy of emotions over the intellect (imagined Pepperkorn in the film played by none other than Don Quixote). Thought about handing out four stars (ye olde 4.5 rounded down) but that seemed more about my restlessness not always dealing with the novel's requirements of audacious readerly patience, not to mention its somewhat underdrawn minor characters, the semi-hokey thing about Hans's unrequited love for a semi-Asiatic pretty boy in grade school he revisits with an alluring lady with similarly slanty eyes and pale skin. Not really a book with many favorable female characters other than one sort of protoliberated object of Hans' lust known for slamming doors. In general, felt like a month-long vacation somewhere I often wanted to leave that nevertheless offered dramatic experiences and vistas and insight. Now I'm glad to be home -- I really look forward to reading a few quicker, easier, shorter books in a row -- but also I feel like the effort was totally rewarded, especially in the last twenty pages. I'd recommend the experience of this book to anyone with ample patience or, better yet, anyone interested in trying to slowly but surely overcome their readerly ADD; everyone else, make sure to read the chapter called "Snow," just under thirty of the finest/most vivid pages I can remember reading in my life here in the flatlands, pages I'm sure to read many more times. Anyway, a major mess-with-me-not weapon to wield against those who argue against the presence of ideas in fiction. Highly recommended to pretentious little fuckers everywhere, of any age over 30 (if younger, I'd wait to read it).

(A note on names -- Naptha's name seems to relate to naphtha: "Naphtha normally refers to a number of flammable liquid mixtures of hydrocarbons . . . It is a broad term covering among the lightest and most volatile fractions of the liquid hydrocarbons in petroleum. Naphtha is a colorless to reddish-brown volatile aromatic liquid, very similar to gasoline." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naphtha)

* The Man Without Qualities Vol. 1: A Sort of Introduction and Pseudo Reality Prevails by Robert Musil is different in tone, particularly, and for me was more enjoyable/superior throughout, more open and humorous, and somehow also seemed much less dense.

** Recent Pulitzer winners concerned with "time": A Visit from the Goon Squad; Tinkers
...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Aubrey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star, books-are-the-best-invention, nobel-prize-people, german, ever-on, to-re-read, think-twice, translated, r-2011, reviewed

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a contestant for the spot of my absolute favorite novel. The judgment is only being withheld due to the fact that I currently don't have a review for Of Human Bondage, so no accurate comparison can be made as of yet. However. It must be said that if the previous book gave me hope for the human condition, this one explosively revitalized my admiration for the human ideal.

Few people write like this nowadays. Most don't appreciate their world and its myriad ideas and o Ladies and gentlemen, we have a contestant for the spot of my absolute favorite novel. The judgment is only being withheld due to the fact that I currently don't have a review for Of Human Bondage, so no accurate comparison can be made as of yet. However. It must be said that if the previous book gave me hope for the human condition, this one explosively revitalized my admiration for the human ideal.

Few people write like this nowadays. Most don't appreciate their world and its myriad ideas and opinions, the sheer amount of conflicting diatribes created by the force of the human brain. If they do, rarely do they make the effort to take on this overwhelming amount of information and distill it down into a message for the future. There's no snapshot of the world at hand that is absolutely gorgeous in what it conveys to the reader, both in quantity and in quality. In light of that, I now have an answer for the which-book-would-you-take-on-a-deserted-island question, as I know for a fact that I could reread this book every day till the day I die, and I'd never not find something new to contemplate and stand in awe of.

This is the well-to-do of Europe before the Great War, living off of old money in a state of pure contentment that, were it not for sheer boredom, would accomplish next to nothing. It is this boredom, this monster titled 'Stupor' referenced in the pages, that forces our man Hans Castorp to distract himself in shifting fashions that model the ever changing obsessions of the continent, from science to political discourse to religious rantings to mystical meanderings. The institution goes through throes of obsession that closely model the 'flatland' from which its denizens came; so too does the violent undercurrent that begins to overwhelm Europe resemble the ever increasing ferocity between those who were formerly combatants solely in the intellectual realm.

The question must be posed: would Hans have ever returned to the world outside of institutional walls, had the War never occurred? Boredom may be a tiresome thing, but would it have been enough to convince him to leave the nest, where time is compartmentalized, stretched, and finally completely ignored into oblivion? Or would he have hung around till his own death, when his excuse for staying finally takes his life, and he is removed from reality in as quiet and unobtrusive a fashion as his ill comrades had been before him? Now, take that question, and apply it to Europe as a whole. What do you see? There's a question for the ages, if ever there was one.

And to tie in to the other wonderful side to the coin: of course the book can't detail absolutely everything worth passing down, but it offers much food for thought, thereby giving the tools required to take on the questions it leaves open-ended in its wake. (view spoiler)I could go on. But I will save space for further re-readings, when the fervor is once again fresh and I have more immediate recollection under my belt to spout out. One last thing: books like these are why I read as much as I do. You find a gem like this, and you can't go back. ...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Dolors rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Seekers of the controversial currents of thought in the Nineteenth Century

Recommended to Dolors by: Thomas Mann

Shelves: read-before-2011, read-in-2013

Impressions on my first reading of "The Magic Mountain" in 2009. Before GR

I finished this over-long book and I can only say I am not prepared to read it again, even if Thomas Mann himself asked me in person.
A complex book, philosophy, history and politics all mixed up with symbolism and irony. The author plays with the perception of time and the reader loses touch with reality. A swayed main character, too much of vain discourse and little sense.
I won't deny the singularity of the work, but I ...more

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Aug 09, 2013 Roy Lotz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: novels-novellas-short-stories, highly-recommended-favorites, germanophilia

Ah yes, irony! Beware of the irony that flourishes here, my good engineer.

In my freshman year of college, I took a literature course to fulfill a core curriculum requirement: Sexuality in Literature. It was a great class; we read Plato’s Symposium, Sappho’s poetry, the Song of Solomon, Sade, and Sacher-Masoch. But of all the great books we made our way through that semester, the one that most stuck with me was Mann’s collection of short fiction, which included Death in Venice.

I was a negl ...more

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May 08, 2013 Geoff rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, infinite-books

~~~

“The Hamlet of Europe now looks upon millions of ghosts” Paul Valery wrote. Elsinore is everywhere. “The time is out of joint” spoke Hamlet. And he gazed at laughing skulls and procrastinated and made colloquies with ghosts within the walls his cliffside castle. Hans Castorp also waits, lingers, decides not to decide, dallies with whether it is better to be or not to be, listens to his attendant spirits, weighs skulls in the palm of his hand while time pulses around him on great heights. But ~~~

“The Hamlet of Europe now looks upon millions of ghosts” Paul Valery wrote. Elsinore is everywhere. “The time is out of joint” spoke Hamlet. And he gazed at laughing skulls and procrastinated and made colloquies with ghosts within the walls his cliffside castle. Hans Castorp also waits, lingers, decides not to decide, dallies with whether it is better to be or not to be, listens to his attendant spirits, weighs skulls in the palm of his hand while time pulses around him on great heights. But The Magic Mountain isn’t only Hamlet, it is also Bottom’s dream across a long midsummer night, and the enchantment of somnambulistic illusions. It is a winter’s tale, too. 1,001 Alpen Nächte. And Wagner’s Ring Cycle, which might flow out in waves on this purified mountain air from a coffin-shaped black cabinet with an inset gramophone, over which our hero holds his head in his hands for nights on end. And the record spins, and the needle traces its eternal groove as the opera unfolds to its finis- Time’s straight line is elastic at all points and so folds into a circle on which the needle hums as it reads its grainy text and moves toward its center, only to be lifted and turned, reset by some unseen hand or shade of hand- and so the cycle, the opera, the aria, the story resumes its inward path on waves of sorrowful music. Does the needle know, as it moves along its course, where it might be, temporally, narratively, in our opera? Or does it lose itself by being bound within and not outside of this this strange method of capturing and reading Time? Yet we measure this boundless sea of Time as if each wave was not retreating from us and coming at us simultaneously, and so was not ungraspable- by the shore of Time sand is collected and placed into a glass funnel, it is pulled down through the hourglass by gravity and in the bottom bell of the hourglass a mountain slowly takes shape.

But “the time is out of joint”, and we might find that as we come to feel ever more confident in our watches and hourglasses, the bell tower in the center of town and the winding face at the train station, to our astonishment we may look up one evening into the dome of sky and see both the sun and moon sharing our heaven, a dual claim on our sensibilities, the sky both studded with stars and washed with daylight’s pallid glow. Fantastical things occur to people when the time is out of joint. And those living within the flux and flex of timeless time also become fantastic, phantasmal. Illness takes hold. Great stupor and great petulance infect our population at these heights. For we’ve climbed above the world to look down into that bottom bell of the hourglass, where the sands of time are forming this mountain in miniature, this sickly dreaming, encapsulated world which grows and grows as time accumulates, grows and grows until it covers all of Elsinore, all of Europe, all the world. As if Time were a lung in a chest opened for us to watch, on an x-ray machine perhaps, as it expands and contracts- we are aware that each expansion and contraction is a kind of counting down for the biological organism- but for the breather, what good would counting breaths do, but become another way of ticking out individuated moments moving us closer to the final great cataclysm? And for our Hans Castorp, our cipher for the haunted and harried epoch through which he chose to dwell outside of time - do we blame him for so long posing the question of “to be or not to be?” - when the terrible answer to that question was inexorably approaching, like an avenging angel, all the time anyway?

An infinite book, this “time novel”. It could be nothing else, if it were to be a time novel.
...more

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Nov 13, 2014 Maru Kun rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: the-past-ww1, p-nobel-lit, 20th-century-lit, w-mann-thomas, m-modernism, c-switzerland, c-germany, my-best-of-best, my-top-ten, exemplary-work-of-ideas

‘The Magic Mountain' was first published in 1924 and has as its hero the Everyman figure of Hans Castorp, whom Wikipedia tells us can be interpreted as Mann’s symbol for the Weimer Republic that was formed just five years earlier.

1924 was also a year when the body-politic was beginning to show some early signs of illness, of dark forces within its interior beginning to stir. And, just like that of Hans Castorp when he entered the Berghotel Sanatorium Schatzalp which is the stage for the events o ...more

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Dec 11, 2014 Alex rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: rth-lifetime, favorite-reviews, 2015

Wimps in the Mist

Time is not a constant, said Einstein in 1916, and his fellow German Thomas Mann was like whoa. Eight years later he finished Magic Mountain, which proves that time is relative by making the experience of reading it last fucking forever.

Here is the "plot": Young Hans Castorp has found that he doesn't enjoy having a job, or anything else about life, so when he ambles up a mountain to visit his consumptive cousin Joachim who does nothing but sit around wrapped in a blanket all day Wimps in the Mist

Time is not a constant, said Einstein in 1916, and his fellow German Thomas Mann was like whoa. Eight years later he finished Magic Mountain, which proves that time is relative by making the experience of reading it last fucking forever.

Here is the "plot": Young Hans Castorp has found that he doesn't enjoy having a job, or anything else about life, so when he ambles up a mountain to visit his consumptive cousin Joachim who does nothing but sit around wrapped in a blanket all day, he decides to stay. "This is the life!" he says. "I'm sick too! Wrap me up!"

Castorp is a nincompoop - that's the narrator's word, or I suppose the translator's - and the high points of his action in this 700-page book consist of borrowing a pencil and getting lost. He exists to listen to the debate Mann is really interested in: between humanism, represented by Settembrini, and fascism, represented by Naphta. The debate may seem academic but it has dire repercussions for your life, because reading it will make you so bored.

These two bloviating asshats stand for the two sides in World War I, and the nicest thing you can say about this book is that it didn't go over super well with Nazis. They treated Mann with kid gloves for a while - he won the Nobel Prize in 1929, after all - but he would eventually have his German citizenship revoked. He spent the rest of his life in Switzerland and America.

He was an interesting dude: bisexual and atheist, both of which are themes explored in this novel, not in an interesting way. Castorp's love interest Clavdia Chauchat - literally "hot pussy" - is, Orlandoish, the resexed reincarnation of Castorp's youthful male love interest Pribislav. Both of them will loan Castorp what may be the same pencil, which is as interesting as a pencil can be, which is not at all.

As for God, Settembrini represents science and Naptha, the bad guy, represents religion: "It seems to me you have to be clear about these two intellectual directions, or dispositions...the religious and the free-thinking," Castorp says. But Mann doesn't want you to actually take sides.

They carried everything to extremes, these two...and squabbled fiercely over the most extreme choices, whereas it seemed to him that what one might, in a spirit of conciliation, declare truly human or humane had to lie somewhere in the middle of this intolerant contentiousness, somewhere between rhetorical humanism and illiterate barbarism.

His point is that any philosophy taken to extreme is false; he advocates compromise and restraint.

Anyway, the point is that Thomas Mann was interesting but his book isn't. It's so fucking boring. There are no characters and there is no plot. There are talking heads with names, but they exist only to blather at each other. Almost nothing happens. Time stretches endlessly around you as you slog through page upon page of talking and talking. You look up and an hour has passed, but you're only four pages further on. What happened to all those minutes? Will you ever get them back? Will you emerge from reading this book like Rip Van Winkle, your child grown, your spouse dead? "There is nothing 'actual' about time," says Hans Castorp. "If it seems long to you, then it is long, and if it seems to pass quickly, then it's short. But how long or short it is in actuality, no one knows." All I know is that it was very, very long while I read this book.

tl;dr too long; don't read ...more

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Feb 03, 2017 T.D. Whittle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews

I am not going to review this book in any serious or analytical way. It's been reviewed by many clever readers already, over several generations and sprawling continents. It hardly needs my support. I am just going to offer my entirely subjective comments about what a great and thoroughly enjoyable read it is.

The plot should be familiar to Western readers by now, as this classic is a century old and much discussed in literary circles. However, in case you missed out, here's the synopsis from Goo I am not going to review this book in any serious or analytical way. It's been reviewed by many clever readers already, over several generations and sprawling continents. It hardly needs my support. I am just going to offer my entirely subjective comments about what a great and thoroughly enjoyable read it is.

The plot should be familiar to Western readers by now, as this classic is a century old and much discussed in literary circles. However, in case you missed out, here's the synopsis from Goodreads:

In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness, as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension, and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.

It took me ages to finish because I kept setting it aside to think about it and to write on colourful sticky notes, which now make my book twice as thick as it already was. I did not want to rush through my reading, so I allowed The Magic Mountain its own space in my life, reading it only when I could give it my full attention for several hours at a stretch, to the exclusion of everything else. In honour of the "cure"and to get a feel for Hans's setting, I often spent this time on our front balcony overlooking our garden and the gentle hills that make up our town. Alas, there were no great snows or high peaks, but it has its own kind of curative peace, nonetheless.

It was necessary for me to stop reading from time to time, in order to ponder important questions, such as whether I am Team Naphta or Team Settembrini. Just kidding! There is only one right choice, of course, and I was always on side with the passionate Humanist, despite his dogmatism and (at times) overbearing manner. While I felt sad for Naphta's final solution, it was rather inevitable, and I have to admit to enormous relief that our fictional Italian ideologue survived the ordeal.

This has to be the best Modern novel I've read. I love that Mann took on the entire Western world and all of our human concerns -- personal, social, existential, political, natural, theological, and artistic -- as the basis for his book. I love that he chose one rather impressionable but not overly impressive young man to be our un-heroic hero. Having said that, I must add that I believe that I thought more highly of Hans than Hans thought of himself, or perhaps than Mann thought of him. I did not find Hans to be such an ordinary young man at all, at least not by today's standards. Perhaps young European men were typically much cleverer and more personally restrained during that era, than our average young man today? I doubt it, though.

It's fair to say that Hans is easily swayed by stronger personalities than his own. Because of this proclivity, he remains vulnerable and vacillating in his own philosophies as one who stands for nothing and so might fall for anything. Hans is not strong enough in himself to withstand peer pressure, even when he is appalled by the undertakings of those peers. Against his own better judgment, he participates in activities that are, by his own account, distasteful and sometimes dangerous and illegal (i.e. a degrading seance and an insane duel).

And yet, I admired his sense of friendship and the way that he reflected on things, trying hard to make right choices. Mann really turns the coming-of-age tale on its head, though, as in the end, one expects Hans to be wiser, stronger, and more decisive in himself. In fact, what happens is that news of the war crashes through the protective walls of the Berghof, awakening Hans from his seven-year "enchantment" and propelling him off to battle, along with thousands of other young men.

That Hans would join the war, whatever his thoughts and feelings on it (which we never know), was inevitable, too. As Settembrini says, explaining the necessity of the duel to Hans, "Whoever is unable to offer his person, his arm, his blood, in service of the ideal, is unworthy of it; however intellectualized, it is the duty of a man to remain a man" (p.700). So, in one of the finest and most subtle ironic twists I've read, ever, Hans's "salvation" from suspended animation at the Berghof comes by way, not of his healing, or his education by learned minds, or his experience in love and death and illness (all of which make up his life-but-not-life existence) but by an external inescapable catastrophe. Once again, Hans does not act upon life but reacts to it. It chooses him, as it chooses all his able-bodied peers. But of course, what we readers suspect is that it is most likely not life, but death which has chosen Hans, which has swept him off his mountain top and into its arms. We never know for sure.

This novel is subtle and yet also straightforward, with a plot that is simple to follow and yet also complex and multi-layered. It's hilarious and serious and sometimes goes on and on about topics that make you question your devotion as a reader (i.e. pages and pages on the history and practice of Freemasonry). I marvel at how any writer could write characters like these, who are each representing a particular worldview and high-flung ideals, and yet who come across as real people rather than allegorical stand-ins for human beings. When we take our leave of each of the august personages who haunt the Berghof, we feel the loss of a relationship that mattered to us. That was my experience, anyway, as I said goodbye to Joachim, to Peeperkorn, to Claudia, and then, finally, to Settembrini and Hans himself.

It's fascinating and a bit sad to realise that many of the big topics the Europeans were grappling with a hundred years ago are still relevant today, and not only the existential ones: most especially, humanism versus radicalism. Clearly, we haven't resolved this yet, and it seems only to be getting worse if we judge by recent events.

I will re-read The Magic Mountain because I feel there is much to learn from it and that a second reading is not only desirable but also necessary to even begin to grasp it all. Also, I will no doubt be missing my friends at the Berghof by then. ...more

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Apr 07, 2016 Elie F rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: german-austrian, socialism, favorites, to-reread

The lure of death Edited Sep 2019

One of my all time favorites. The magic mountain symbolizes a community detached from the flatland, the normal values, duties, history, time, indulging in its physical closeness to and spiritual longing for sickness and death. Hans Castorp, after entering into this fatigued, detached, and self-perpetuating community, became increasingly obsessed with the romanticism of sickness and death, which he considered noble. Mann not only associated sickness death with dec The lure of death Edited Sep 2019

One of my all time favorites. The magic mountain symbolizes a community detached from the flatland, the normal values, duties, history, time, indulging in its physical closeness to and spiritual longing for sickness and death. Hans Castorp, after entering into this fatigued, detached, and self-perpetuating community, became increasingly obsessed with the romanticism of sickness and death, which he considered noble. Mann not only associated sickness death with decay, sensuality and love ("all love is only disease transformed"), but also with undisciplined pursuit of knowledge, a theme also explored in Death in Venice.

The death of Hans' cousin Joachim Ziemssen (who symbolizes duty and asserts that opinions don't matter as long as one is a decent chap) in the incredibly touching chapter A Soldier, And Brave, marked a turning point for Hans' fascination with death, revealed to him the moral seriousness of death and the strength of piety and duty against death ("For two things were unmistakable: first, that Joachim was approaching death in full consciousness, and second, that he consented to his state, and was in harmony with himself.") In the chapter Snow, Hans made a choice between life and death, declaring that "For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts. And with this—I awake." Only what is life-worthy is love-worthy, and is honorable. The irony is that soon after he returned from the destructive snowstorm to the comfortable sanatorium, Hans forgot all about the thoughts he had in the snow.

Hans Castorp finally returned to the flatland after 7 years of out-of-time sleep, to redeem respect for duty/tradition/mediocrity, and to eventually die in the Great War, perish in the universal feast of death with the same consciousness and harmony that Joachim had. There is a sense that this mediocre fate suits Hans Castorp well, whom Mann also characterizes as mediocre, "though in an entirely honorable sense."

The Magic Mountain is like a encyclopedia for the divisive forces on European continent before WWI (romanticism vs. rationalism, conservative vs. liberal, etc.) What I especially love about it is that those binary oppositions are not clear-cut, and other themes permeate them, enrich them, and eventually shatter them. Mann reveals to us that both sides are pedagogues, and the quarrels are nothing but a battle of noise. The novel ends with a question mark: "Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that love one day shall mount?" A timeless masterpiece! ...more

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Jan 21, 2014 Adam Dalva rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

A winter book - one of the strangest experiences I've had reading. It is a slow go without ever being remarkably difficult. I could never (except for the ending, which does ramp up) manage more than 50 pages in a day. And yet, as I became familiar with Mann's cadence and goals, there was a dizzy pleasure to it. This is the second piece of writing ever that has made me miss a subway stop - the first was "A Supposedly Fun Thing" - and, bizarrely enough, the precipitating moment was Hans Castorp as A winter book - one of the strangest experiences I've had reading. It is a slow go without ever being remarkably difficult. I could never (except for the ending, which does ramp up) manage more than 50 pages in a day. And yet, as I became familiar with Mann's cadence and goals, there was a dizzy pleasure to it. This is the second piece of writing ever that has made me miss a subway stop - the first was "A Supposedly Fun Thing" - and, bizarrely enough, the precipitating moment was Hans Castorp asking Claudia if he could borrow her pencil. That was the entire, exhilarating scene, made special by context, by familiarity with the characters (in this instance, acting out of character), by the way everything in this book becomes super-charged.

The lesson is one of Relativism, which reminds me so much of Pnin's charming speech about Anna Karenina. Literature always works on a sort of odd exponential decay w/r/t time, but I have never read something that was so conscious about it. Roughly, the first week takes as long as the first month takes as long as the first year takes as long as five years, and the narration giddily points it out all the time. We feel all this time pass (it's somewhat related to the experience of time seeming to go faster as we age), and so the simplest acts, like pencil-borrowing or switching tables at breakfast, are magnified. The time frame allows Mann to modulate the setting and cast - it seems like something that could have gone on forever. The ending is brilliant, despite being an easy out.

This relativism applies to characters too, most noticeably to Settembrini, the most annoying good character I've encountered so far, a joyful monologuer, an Italian secular humanist. Mann eventually somehow conjures an even more loathsome counterpoint, a Hegelian (I think) Jesuit, and they debate. Oh do they debate. 15 pages in a stretch at one point, with two extreme sides of an argument, and whereas before Settembrini seemed like a blowhard, he becomes delightful and empathetic merely by the contrast. Now, these scenes, I sometimes wanted to hate, to skip, but I read all of them under the spell of the book. More delightful is Hans himself, who gains mastery of speech, of self, of perspective over the course of the narrative. It's the classic bildungsroman idea taken to an extreme - we grow up with him, and we tolerate his "ordinaryness," love it even, and enjoy his flaws.

Oh, it's really romantic too. Like, achingly so.

Two points
1: It might not sound like it, but the book is hilarious, both for character beats and for meta humor.
2: I think you could posit an argument that despite the early publication date this is one of those missing links between the Modernists and the Post-Modernists. It's in the former school, but the intentional boredom and the narrator felt really beyond the time to me.

For all this talk, it's a book of moments: Hans's great skiing misadventure, his flashback to his youthful gay crush, Claudia banging the door open, Joachim (an all-timer of a character) saying "Hans" only once, Settembrini's nicknames, the Director's painting of Claudia, the night of carnival, the waterfall, snowflakes, flowers, dancing. The way the book functions, the time it takes, invests these scenes with joy. There are missteps, huge ones (oh boy could I have done without the ghost stuff), and the thing requires a ton of patience, but it is worth it. ...more

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Apr 08, 2015 E. G. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, germany-prussia, 4-star, translated, thomas-mann, own

Introduction
Foreword
Translator's Note

--The Magic Mountain

The Making of 'The Magic Mountain' ...more

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Nov 29, 2007 Thomas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I just finished Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, tr. John Woods), and without a doubt it is among the five best works of literature that I have ever read. Covering more than 700 densely-packed pages, it is not for the light of heart, but provides ample reward for the tenacious reader. Published in 1924 and winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, The Magic Mountain should reside on your shelf next to The Brothers Karamazov, The Persian Letters, The Sorrows of Young Werthe I just finished Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, tr. John Woods), and without a doubt it is among the five best works of literature that I have ever read. Covering more than 700 densely-packed pages, it is not for the light of heart, but provides ample reward for the tenacious reader. Published in 1924 and winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, The Magic Mountain should reside on your shelf next to The Brothers Karamazov, The Persian Letters, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and East of Eden.

Part of why I found this novel so delightful was that I could closely relate to the ordeal of the protagonist, Hans Castorp, who as a young man finds himself unexpectedly confined to a hospital. In his case, he makes a trip to a sanatorium high in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin. The patients are all receiving treatment for tuberculosis, and since most have been there for quite a long time, he finds himself in a very different culture than the "flatlands" from which he came. Just before leaving, Castorp asks for a physical exam to determine the cause of a fever which was plaguing him during his stay. But to his disappointment, the doctor finds that he has a mild case of tuberculosis himself! Our poor hero will be staying on for much longer than three weeks he had planned, and not as a guest, but as a patient.

One of the most interesting themes in the novel is the treatment of time. Far up in the mountains, completely removed from the normal iterations of daily life, time takes on a different dimension. Each day is strictly regimented to best facilitate the recovery of patients. The residents move from bedroom, to dining hall, to outdoor "rest cure," and back, in an utterly predictable manner. Far from what one might expect, this apparent tedium does not cause time to slow down, but rather speed up, since each day is nearly indiscernible from all others. Thus, Hans Castcorp learns, his original three week stay is hardly worth mentioning: up here, a month is the smallest measurable unit of time.

Besides our hero, there are two other outstanding characters: Settembrini, a boisterous Italian literary humanist, and Naphta, a sharp-tonged communist Jesuit. Castorp takes on the role of student when listening to the rhetorical fireworks of these bombastic speakers. These three men, along with a cast of other patients with tuberculosis, fill hundreds of pages of fascinating narrative and dialog. Put it on your Christmas list now! ...more

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Jul 11, 2013 Kim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There were times when I wondered if I’d ever finish this book. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but reading a novel driven by ideas rather by plot or character has its challenges. Particularly if, like me, you do most of your reading at night, in between getting into bed and switching off the light. This is not the kind of novel which can be read, digested and disposed of quickly. It demands concentration, patience and perseverance – qualities in which I am frequently lacking at the end of a day
There were times when I wondered if I’d ever finish this book. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but reading a novel driven by ideas rather by plot or character has its challenges. Particularly if, like me, you do most of your reading at night, in between getting into bed and switching off the light. This is not the kind of novel which can be read, digested and disposed of quickly. It demands concentration, patience and perseverance – qualities in which I am frequently lacking at the end of a day at work.

But persevere I did, alongside the novel’s central protagonist Hans Castorp, as he lived seven long years in a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Alps, exploring love, history, philosophy, music, religion and the meaning of life and death in an environment symbolic of pre-World War I Europe. I say seven long years because that’s usually how they appeared to me as I worked my way through a chapter every few nights for more than two months, but to Hans Castorp those years appeared much shorter: the passage of time and how it varies according to circumstances is a central theme of the work.

This is a novel in which little happens in terms of conventional (or even unconventional) plot and character development. What in most other novels would be digressions are its point. Whether that appeals will depend in large part on what you want to get from reading fiction. If it’s relaxation and entertainment, then chances are this is not the novel for you, even though it contains plenty of irony and some sly humour. If you want an intellectual challenge and don’t mind feeling some level of frustration (in my case the frustration was at least in part knowing that I’d be getting more out of the work if I knew more to start with), then it may well be worthwhile.

I feel like I’ve climbed a mountain and then descended into the valleys. It wasn’t always magic, but it has given me a sense of achievement. And as I read the last few pages, in awe of Mann’s brilliance, I offered up a prayer of thanks to the literary gods that I hadn’t abandoned the journey. The view from the end made the difficult bits worthwhile.

I read this novel with the Thomas Mann Group, lurking rather than actively discussing, but ever grateful for the insight of group members.
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Aug 04, 2013 Lawyer rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Those with patience and perseverance

Recommended to Lawyer by: The Thomas Mann Group

Shelves: 20th-century, absolutism, 2013, world-war-one, death, sexuality, war, humanism, freedom, dark-humor

The Magic Mountain: Thomas Mann's Ambiguous Bildungsroman

Ah, Thomas Mann, you have held me captive from a hot summer's day in August until I have begun to see the first hints of color tinging the leaves with a hue that will lead to their fall and ultimate decay. You have occupied my thoughts during long days and nights. I do not know whether to bless you or curse you, for I recognize how precious time is. At times the tick of the clock sounds ominous.

At its most basic level Mann tells us of the ...more

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Sep 27, 2020 Chrissie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: life-stages, philo-psychol, classics, switzerland, medical, italy, long, humor, politics, adventure

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann is a coming-of-age story. It is also a commentary on and depiction of life at a Swiss Alpine sanatorium for consumptives, of European society before the First World War and of human behavior as a whole. T. Mann had personal knowledge of life at a sanatorium. In 1912, his wife, ailing from a lung complication, spent several months at Dr. Friedrich Jessen’s Waldsanatorium in Davos Switzerland. There, he visited her. It was at this time he began writing the book, o ...more

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Jul 21, 2019 Dan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: le-monde-100-books-of-the-century

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

Seven years Hans Castorp remained amongst those up here. Partisans of the decimal system might prefer a round number, though seven is a good handy figure in its way, picturesque, with a savour of the mythical; one might even say that it is more filling to the spirit than a dull academic half-dozen. Our hero had sat at all seven of the tables in the dining-room, at each about a year, the last being the “bad” Russian table.

This famous novel takes place at the Ber The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

Seven years Hans Castorp remained amongst those up here. Partisans of the decimal system might prefer a round number, though seven is a good handy figure in its way, picturesque, with a savour of the mythical; one might even say that it is more filling to the spirit than a dull academic half-dozen. Our hero had sat at all seven of the tables in the dining-room, at each about a year, the last being the “bad” Russian table.

This famous novel takes place at the Berghof House, a tuberculosis sanatorium, high up in the mountains amidst the fresh air of the Swiss Alps and nestled in a forest of firs replete with waterfalls. The timeframe is the period immediately preceding WW1. The story operates on two levels.

The basic plot follows Hans Castorp, a man of some limited means. When Hans visits his cousin at the sanatorium he decides to stay a few weeks enjoying the mountains. However he fatefully contracts the disease and becomes a patient. We learn of the detailed life of the patients and doctors who come to know each other in their sequestered surroundings. There is a fair amount of philosophical banter and puffery exchanged amongst the erudite patients, Hans is considered a petit bourgeoisie amongst the wealthier and international clientele and he is acutely aware of his social status. As the novel progresses, many of the patients succumb to the disease. In some cases the deaths are grizzly, there are cases of patients taking their own lives while in other cases the patients pass peacefully. Despite the somber surroundings, they take many carriage and sleigh rides into the hills. Hans finds love with another patient and that object of his desire, Frau Chauchat, is also liked by many other men.

On the meta-level there is a parallelism between the patients terminally ill conditions and their relationships vis a vis the collapse of Europe that led to WW1. Mann began the book in 1912 when his wife fell ill from TB and he finished the book in 1924 after the war was over.

Although I think Death in Venice by Thomas Mann is the author’s better story, Magic Mountain is a powerful novel and the characters slowly grew on me. I was especially drawn to the bickering and how the characters seemed to irritate one another creating the drama within the drama of a serious illness. The wounded feelings even lead to a tragic duel near the end. The read however is a little slow-going in spots because the entire novel, and it is quite lengthy, takes place at the Sanatorium.

4.5 stars. I’ve never read a novel that deals with tuberculosis so thoroughly. At the turn of the century, consumption or the Great White Plague, as TB was called, killed more than one hundred thousand people each year in the U.S. and even more in Europe. Many of those who managed to survive the disease had life long complications. A vaccine was finally developed in the 1940’s but was not widely distributed until the 1950’s. ...more

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Thomas Mann

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Serbian: Tomas Man

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate in 1929, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psycholo ...more