Classics and the Western Canon discussion
The Magic Mountain
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Background and Resources
Lily wrote: "Has any one here had access to and used either of these companion books:Thomas Mann's The "Magic Mountain": A Casebook
by Hans Rudolph Vaget."
I have taken a brief look at this one. It is composed of several essays that zero in on particular aspects of the novel -- pretty academic stuff, at first glance anyway. I haven't read any of the essays in full because I'd like to finish the novel first, but there is one on music in the MM that I think I'll read later on.
Lily wrote @87/88: "Have we posted this link of the present hotel based on the sanitarium, ..."But this is sanatorium Schatzalp, the one that transports its bodies by bob-sleigh. The Berghof is made up by Mann. Partly based, I read, on the International Sanatorium Philippi (I posted a picture in 1.3, #19), partly on the Waldsanatorium, where Katia Mann stayed.
Wendel wrote: "Lily wrote @87/88: "Have we posted this link of the present hotel based on the sanitarium, ..."But this is sanatorium Schatzalp, the one that transports its bodies by bob-sleigh. The Berghof is m..."
Wendel -- Thanks for the correction. I misunderstood some links and some text. Mea culpa. (This architecture did fit my image of Berghof.)
I really had not realized the extent to which there were multiple sanatoriums at Davos. I just am browsing through the pictures again from the link in your message @23 (http://blauerheinrich.jimdo.com/tuber... -- additional art along with the "blue Peter" or "blue Henry" link you included in the current discussion) and @msg30: ( http://www.tma.ethz.ch/assets/Uploads... )A favor, Wendel -- on page 27 of that document, would you provide us a translation of the caption? I think it is relating the doctor in the picture to Behrens in MM, but the exact words are escaping me. (It is easier to ask you than to rewrite into a translation program, so bitte?)
The translation would be something like: Head doctor of the Wald Sanatorium during its first two decades was Prof. Dr. Friedrich Jessen (1865-1935), born in Schleswig-Holstein. Mann used some of his characteristics for Dr. Behrens.
Re Behrens: "..his hair already quite white; his neck stuck out, his large, goggling bloodshot blue eyes were swimming in tears; he had a snub nose, and a close-trimmed little moustache, which made a crooked line because his upper lip was drawn upon one side." (L-P p. 45). At least as to the hair and very likely the eyes (perhaps even nose and mustache), the described physical characteristics of Behrens do seem similar to those seen in the photo of "Dr. Friedrich Jessen". One can't discern the color of his cheeks though via the b/w photo..... could they be purple? However, one can only imagine the shared other characteristics (e.g. personality).
Lily wrote: "Has any one here had access to and used either of these companion books:Thomas Mann's The "Magic Mountain": A Casebook
by Hans Rudolph Vaget
A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (Stud..."
I have the Companion, had planned to read in parallel with MM, but have been too busy actually reading MM to be able to do more than glance into it, so can't offer much information, other than to say that it hasn't been so compelling as to divert me from MM itself yet.
I also have Hermann Weigand's The Magic Mountain: A Study of Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (the "add book/author" doesn't give me a link) which I had to get on the second hand market, which I wish I had more time to read into, but with my limited physical book reading time (went to the eye doctor yesterday, no change, waiting for an appointment this summer with the doc who actually did my surgeries to get his opinion) haven't been able to spend the time with it that I wish I could.
But from what little I've read in both of them, I haven't yet found any ideas that are dramatically moe exciting than what this group is producing here.
Wendel wrote: "The translation would be something like: Head doctor of the Wald Sanatorium during its first two decades was Prof. Dr. Friedrich Jessen (1865-1935), born in Schleswig-Holstein. Mann used some of hi..."Thanks for this. Very interesting.
@108 Everyman wrote: "But from what little I've read in both of them, I haven't yet found any ideas that are dramatically more exciting than what this group is producing here. ..."Thanks for the additional source and for your feedback, Eman, and to others who have commented on background sources!
Wendel wrote: "The translation would be something like: Head doctor of the Wald Sanatorium during its first two decades was Prof. Dr. Friedrich Jessen (1865-1935), born in Schleswig-Holstein. Mann used some of his characteristics for Dr. Behrens...."Thank you, Wendel!
For those who never made notes in the first place, or are (like me) getting tired of doing so: http://www.macumbeira.com/search/labe...
Wendel wrote: "For those who never made notes in the first place, or are (like me) getting tired of doing so: http://www.macumbeira.com/search/labe..."The first thing I notice is the photo of the twin peaks, Castor and Pollux, the names of the twins of Gemini, and from whom some speculate Mann created the name of our hero -- mostly mortal, a bit divine?
"Their mother was Leda, but Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, and Pollux the divine son of Zeus...When Castor was killed, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini. The pair was regarded as the patrons of sailors, to whom they appeared as St. Elmo's fire, and were also associated with horsemanship...."
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_t...
Bold added.
Mann explores time from multiple perspectives. We have seen subjective time (one's personal sense of the speed at which time is passing), a day's rhythms, the seasons, holiday cycles, ... The one that surprised me a bit to find was liturgical time: Advent, Christmas through Epiphany, Lent through Easter and Pentecost,.... For those attending Christian services regularly in certain denominations, those may assume a particular rhythm for marking out the progression of the yearly cycle -- and a schema for contemplating birth, repentance, death, and redemption. Since the actual timing is fairly complicated, let me just provide this link and graphical representation here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgic...
Coming up soon will be (view spoiler)
Lily wrote: "The one that surprised me a bit to find was liturgical time: Advent, Christmas through Epiphany, Lent through Easter and Pentecost,...."This could be without deeper intention, the Christian holidays are not unknown in Germany and structure the year, and you never see the cousins go to church or the like. I would rather say the opposite: For 1924 this sanatorium is surprisingly free of religion - the cousins never meet a priest. They do no fasting. There is no sunday mass (but music!). No religious schooling for the young but Krokowski's discourses *smile*.
On the other hand: Already Goethe in his Faust made ample use of Christian symbolism, so if Thomas Mann talks of Christian holidays and symbols it is possible that an allusion is wanted, but beyond the religious meaning.
The liturgical time almost seemed to be something Mann played against as much as he did along with -- which is beginning to seem very in character. With out going back and double checking this morning, I believe there is a death in Advent, usually a time of birth if used symbolically. MM so far is markedly free of "birth" for a novel of this scope, except the rebirth of the earth in the spring. It struck me that it was time to make some notes of the various ways Mann presents time -- I have the sense he built a little check list as he wrote??!
Some of this may seem like prating, some like considerable insight. Many may prefer to leave reading -- or not -- until they finish MM, although I see no spoilers per se here."THOMAS MANN'S 'WORK ON MYTH': THE USES OF THE PAST"
http://www.lsu.edu/artsci/groups/voeg...
Lily wrote: "I believe there is a death in Advent, usually a time of birth if used symbolically. MM so far is markedly free of "birth" for a novel of this scope, except the rebirth of the earth in the spring."Advent is more a time of waiting and preparation than a time of birth. There is surely plenty of waiting here! And preparation, but perhaps more for death than for birth... Along those lines, I found it interesting that Joachim is referred to as a "one-year-old" at the beginning of Walpurgis Night, as if he were born when he arrived at the sanatorium.
Kathy wrote: "Advent is more a time of waiting and preparation than a time of birth...."You're right, Kathy. I guess I have come to associate Advent with those last weeks just before giving birth -- a time of such expectancy and impending joy, but definitely anticipation.
Actually, Mann struck me as somewhat strange in his handling of time between the end of "Research" and the beginning of "Danse Macabe." I've been unable to figure out the literary and symbolic games he seems to be playing. He ends "Research" with Hans kissed by the image of life, then immediately opens "Danse Macabe" with the death of the Austrian horseman (sometime before the New Year, but after Christmas Eve. So the death I remembered was actually in the period of Epiphany.) But then Mann jumps time back to Christmas and the festivities surrounding it. Two paragraphs later, the reader is transported back to a good six weeks before the holiday. But then a few pages later we return to the death of the Austrian. (Do we ever know his name? Is it Fritz Rotbein? His widow seems not ever dignified by designation as Frau xxx, although we learn his body will be transferred to Kärnten?)
Next we move into Hans's ministering to the ill and dying phase.
Now that we approach the Settembrini-Naphta debate, it is of greatest interest that Thomas Mann became member of the Unitarian Church while he was in the USA, and was very convinced of it. We have to keep in mind: This was after he wrote MM.I searched an English source for this but except single sentences stating the mere fact I found nothing. Maybe you can help yourself with Google Translator?
http://www.welt.de/kultur/literarisch...
Some core sentences: "... his believe in a liberal and cosmopolitan America, ... Therefore, the U.S. is not just any nation, but stood for a post-national cosmopolitanism of a world political task. ...
Detering determines the position of Thomas Mann in the spectrum of Unitarian thought in the United States and concludes that the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, sought a new "humanist religion", while Mann represented a new "Christian humanism". The author emphasized the Christianity of his humanism and so was the earlier direction of Unitarianism closer than the newer ones."
The book:
http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-amerikan...
Since a key theme of MM is "time," I'll put the link to this review of
Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe
by Lee Smolin here rather than in our tea room.The review is by the author of a favorite book of mine, Einstein's Dreams. Alan Lightman is himself a physicist.
"In one of the more fanciful conceptions of nature, the British physicist and philosopher Julian Barbour proposed that the world is just a 'heap of moments,' each an instant of frozen time. There is no order to the moments, no sequence, no cause-and-effect relationship. We exist only from moment to moment. If we experience time passing, it’s because this particular moment has memories of another moment woven into it...."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/boo...
Plato on time:"... Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image of eternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity; and this image we call time. For there were no days and nights and months and years before the heaven was created, but when he constructed the heaven he created them also. They are all parts of time, and the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for we say that he "was," he "is," he "will be," but the truth is that "is" alone is properly attributed to him, and that "was" and "will be" only to be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions, but that which is immovably the same cannot become older or younger by time ..."
http://forums.philosophyforums.com/th...
Lily wrote: "Since a key theme of MM is "time," ..."I agree that time is a key theme, but I'm not sure what Mann has to say about it other than that while mathematically it is regular, in human terms it is wildly irregular and plays havoc with any attempt we make to regularize it.
Everyman wrote: "Lily wrote: "Since a key theme of MM is "time," ..."I agree that time is a key theme, but I'm not sure what Mann has to say about it other than that while mathematically it is regular, in human t..."
I'm starting to think that Mann is using time as a narrative device, rather than saying anything in particular about it. The repetitions of themes and motifs in philosophical discussions that outline the same polarities but never come to any conclusions, and the way that conversations play against each other like counterpoint -- it seems very musical to me. Time as a subject is one of those motifs, coming back again and again.
Thomas wrote: I'm starting to think that Mann is using time as a narrative device, rather than saying anything in particular about it. "I like that idea. Need to think more about it, but initially I like it.
Thomas wrote: "I'm starting to think that Mann is using time as a narrative device, rather than saying anything in particular about it. "A good novel does not live only from its core message but also from certain ingrediences, not necessary, but nice and spicy. I just like the time considerations.
The only connection to the core message were the words about a past which felt long ago, which in truth was only some years ago. Turned from past to future this could result in a warning: Be careful, things can change quicker than you expect! But this is only another helpless guess where Thomas Mann indeed leaves us in the dark ...
... I started to question the quality of the novel under the perspective of interpretability. Without a sufficient level of interpretability, I cannot see the value.
Thorwald -- if you would, tell us a bit more about what you mean by "interpretability."I agree with the comments here that a not a lot about time itself is revealed. But mm was written just as theories about time, space, and relativity were current intellectual topics.
(I think I have mentioned before Durrell's playing with time and space in his novels, much later, ~1960, with his The Alexandria Quartet .)
I also like Thomas' idea that time, itself, is a narrative device in the novel. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Mann says it needs to be read twice to comprehend it; just as a single hearing is never enough to absorb even a moderately complex piece of music.
So we have time as experienced in different ways, and at different times, by the characters.
We have the time it takes Mann to tell the story. And, as I recall, he had things to say about this in the prologue.
We have our reading time--and tempo.
We have time on the mountain, as distinguished from time on the flatlands.
We have historical time,as specific events are unfolding which may --or may not-- intrude on the mountain.
So we have time as experienced in different ways, and at different times, by the characters.
We have the time it takes Mann to tell the story. And, as I recall, he had things to say about this in the prologue.
We have our reading time--and tempo.
We have time on the mountain, as distinguished from time on the flatlands.
We have historical time,as specific events are unfolding which may --or may not-- intrude on the mountain.
(home) Someone had posted regarding Schiller's Don Carlos earlier. I read that " he was especially taken with Don Carlos, recallng, 'how shall I ever forget the first passion for language kindled in me by the glorious verse when I was a boy of fifteen?'"
Mmm. It wasn't just something Mann or Dr. K. made up-- at that time, it was thought that tuberculosis was frustrated passion or too much passion.
Page 96 http://books.google.com/books?id=5vLc...
Page 96 http://books.google.com/books?id=5vLc...
Thorwald wrote: "A good novel does not live only from its core message but also from certain ingrediences, not necessary, but nice and spicy. I just like the time considerations. "Oh, I agree. I like the time comments too. In a way, even if they don't have great significance on their own (which maybe they do and I just haven't seen it yet) they provide a regular thread tying the sections to each other, a unifying motif that helps shape the story.
The Cambridge Companion arrived at the library. Mostly essays.
From T. J. Reed: "Mann and history":
After the war, Mann's political thinking was in turmoil and he had to write MM differently.
"The coming of the war in 1914 force-fed the planned short work with topical meanings. Those deeper truths would now be the ones Germany was, in Mann's view, fighting for. The Mountain would be the moral and cultural high ground where the views of an Italian liberal, akin to brother Heinrich's views, would be answered by a German pastor.
Clearly the ending must now be the outbreak of war. Since Germany at that early stage seemed to be winning, this would have been historic confirmation of the rightness of the Mountain and its lessons" (9).
Mann did a lot of thinking.
From T. J. Reed: "Mann and history":
After the war, Mann's political thinking was in turmoil and he had to write MM differently.
"The coming of the war in 1914 force-fed the planned short work with topical meanings. Those deeper truths would now be the ones Germany was, in Mann's view, fighting for. The Mountain would be the moral and cultural high ground where the views of an Italian liberal, akin to brother Heinrich's views, would be answered by a German pastor.
Clearly the ending must now be the outbreak of war. Since Germany at that early stage seemed to be winning, this would have been historic confirmation of the rightness of the Mountain and its lessons" (9).
Mann did a lot of thinking.
Quotations from Thomas Mann, which may, or may not, provide perspective to MM:http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/aut...
Letters of Thomas Mann -- I am not sure if you can access this w/o a NYT subscription, so let me know:http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/...
From a 1995 NYT review of a biography of Thomas Mann:THOMAS MANN A Biography By Ronald Hayman Illustrated. 672 pages. Scribner. $35.
"Contemporary readers of Thomas Mann tend to focus on his dexterous use of myth and symbolism: turning an Alpine sanitarium [sic] into a metaphor for pre-World War I Europe in 'The Magic Mountain"' for instance, and turning the Faustian career of a composer into a parable for Germany's embrace of Nazism in 'Doktor Faustus.' Yet his work was always deeply autobiographical, as the continuing publication of his diaries has recently made clear. And this impulse is vividly underscored by Ronald Hayman's magisterial new biography, a biography that not only explicates the many intimate correspondences between Mann and his own heroes but that also demonstrates just how minutely the overarching themes of his work -- art, death and illness -- remained rooted in his own emotional and familial conflicts."
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/24/boo...
Lily wrote: "Quotations from Thomas Mann, which may, or may not, provide perspective to MM:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/aut..."
These are interesting. The problem I have with collections of quotations out of context is that it is impossible to know if the thought represents the author's opinion or an opinion he has given to one of his characters. For an author writing novels about competing ideas, this is a special problem.
By the way, this happens with Shakespeare all the time. It can be fun to listen to politicians quote Shakespeare totally out of context and know that they (or some speechwriter) just pulled the quote from a collection.
There is even a name for this: the Polonius fallacy. In Hamlet it is at least possible that he doesn't believe a word of his "To thine own self be true" advice to Laertes. He certainly doesn't live it himself. Yet, the speech is frequently cited at high school graduations and the like.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/aut..."
These are interesting. The problem I have with collections of quotations out of context is that it is impossible to know if the thought represents the author's opinion or an opinion he has given to one of his characters. For an author writing novels about competing ideas, this is a special problem.
By the way, this happens with Shakespeare all the time. It can be fun to listen to politicians quote Shakespeare totally out of context and know that they (or some speechwriter) just pulled the quote from a collection.
There is even a name for this: the Polonius fallacy. In Hamlet it is at least possible that he doesn't believe a word of his "To thine own self be true" advice to Laertes. He certainly doesn't live it himself. Yet, the speech is frequently cited at high school graduations and the like.
From a NYT review of a biography of Heinrich Mann:"As Juers states, Thomas’s 'aesthetic, and his experience of sensuality, lay in attenuation,' his favorite word being Sehnsucht, 'longing.' Contrariwise, 'Heinrich would indulge, engaging all his senses in the art of living, producing his work in hot flushes of creativity,' work that Thomas thought 'altogether too excessive, and too often shamelessly erotic.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/boo...
Zeke wrote: "The problem I have with collections of quotations out of context is that it is impossible to know if the thought represents the author's opinion or..."Zeke -- Part of the reason I included "or may not" in my opening comment. Thanks for yours!
Lily--Just to be certain, I hope you didn't think I was criticizing. I found the quotes interesting.
Also, regarding the "may or may not" aspect. Sometimes an author intentionally takes both sides. A favorite of mine from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: "Do I contradict myself? /Very well, then I contradict myself,/ (I am large-- I contain multitudes.)"
Also, regarding the "may or may not" aspect. Sometimes an author intentionally takes both sides. A favorite of mine from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass: "Do I contradict myself? /Very well, then I contradict myself,/ (I am large-- I contain multitudes.)"
Zeke wrote: "There is even a name for this: the Polonius fallacy. In Hamlet it is at least possible that he doesn't believe a word of his "To thine own self be true" advice to Laertes. He certainly doesn't live it himself. As an assignment for a high school Shakespeare class we had to choose a short speech to memorize and deliver in front of the class. I chose this one... "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" seemed like sage advice to me. The teacher found my choice amusing, and my explanation even more so. It took several years for me to understand why.
I read recently that the human brain does not reach full maturity until the age of 25. Indeed.
Zeke wrote: "Lily--Just to be certain, I hope you didn't think I was criticizing. I found the quotes interesting..."No, I didn't take it as criticism at all, Zeke, although probably came back seemingly a little defensively -- didn't intend that either.
Incidentally, the Polonius fallacy I believe lent perspective to something I read in the past 24 hours, but doubt I could re-find right now for the life of me. But, as I recall, it was a reference to Polonius that went right over my head, but I didn't take the time to attempt to trace. I think "Polonius fallacy" would have been applicable.
Addendum to last msg: I had just been reading MM and had been struck by how the discussion seemed to be on both sides of a coin. I began to feel as if I was in the midst of what I, rightly or wrongly, characterize as one of the differences between modernism and post-modernism, with the latter being more open to acceptance and truth of simultaneous contradiction and paradox.
Zeke wrote: "There is even a name for this: the Polonius fallacy. In Hamlet it is at least possible that he doesn't believe a word of his "To thine own self be true" advice to Laertes. He certainly doesn't live it himself. Yet, the speech is frequently cited at high school graduations and the like. "...which raises the question of how much the author's intent even matters. If I think "This above all, to thine ownself be true" is sound advice, it doesn't much matter whether Shakespeare did or not.
In a commentary on MM the critic wrote that the first 25 pages deal with Hans Castorp's childhood and early youth...and that the entire rest of the book is but commentary on those 25 pages.
A historical tidbit for which I haven't decided whether it is relevant or not: "In the 1890s, European powers feared the dwindling of sources of raw materials....Naval power on a global scale was increasingly seen as the key to international dominance."I have had the sense Hans Castorp's link to ocean liners was more commercial than naval/military. Still, I now found MM's little lip service to ocean faring rather intriguing in the context of what was happening among the nations.
Source: "Europe and Western Civilization in the Modern Age," Lecture 19, Thomas Childers.
Just finished reading
Death in Venice
this morning. (It is short.) Not clear yet how it will influence my reading of MM, but am quite certain it will -- if nothing else, the prevalence of the theme of death. But what about death, will require more reflection. (At the moment, doesn't seem much like Tolstoy's
The Death of Ivan Ilych
or Joyce's
Dubliners
and certainly not Night of Stone.)
Two books reviewed in the NYT today on background to WWI may be of interest:
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
by Christopher Munro Clark
July 1914: Countdown to War
by Sean McMeekinNYT Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/boo...
Lukács's later literary criticism includes the well-known essay "Kafka or Thomas Mann?", in which Lukács argues for the work of Thomas Mann as a superior attempt to deal with the condition of modernity, while he criticises Franz Kafka's brand of modernism. Lukács was steadfastly opposed to the formal innovations of modernist writers like Kafka, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett, preferring the traditional aesthetic of realism. He famously argued for the revolutionary character of the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Honoré de Balzac. Lukács felt that both authors' nostalgic, pro-aristocratic politics allowed them accurate and critical stances because of their opposition (albeit reactionary) to the rising bourgeoisie. This view was expressed in his later book The Historical Novel, as well as in his 1938 essay "Realism in the Balance".Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C3%B6... Bold added.
I believe I saw a clip awhile ago about Yale professor removing Mann from his syllabus and replacing him with Kafka. Now I want to find again that clip -- don't know if I can. May be related to the McCarthy years here in the U.S.?
@100 Lily wrote: "Has any one here had access to and used either of these companion books:Thomas Mann's The "Magic Mountain": A Casebook by Hans Rudolph Vaget
A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain by Stephen D. Dowden..."
Am finding both of these quite worthwhile, along with the Cambridge Companion. Have all three in hand at the moment.
I expect this is either hilarious or awful, or maybe both, but at the very least it shows the far reach of The Magic Mountain: Tintin in the New World: A RomanceFrom a review in the Independent:
Tintin, who at the beginning of the novel is glimpsed lolling bored and two-dimensional at Marlinspike, still teetotal and fiercely virtuous, is dispatched by his creator to encounter lust, love, loss and his own dark potentialities, apparently in Macchu Picchu, actually in the hitherto unexplored land of solid prose. In which country he encounters four characters from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, as heavyweight a crew as any he's ever had to deal with in his cartoon strips. It is one of them, Clavdia Chauchat, who 'slowly draws down Tintin's boxer shorts, leaving them heaped about his ankles'.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
The Secret Life of Genius: How 24 Great Men and Women Were Touched by Spiritual Worlds (other topics)A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (other topics)
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain: A Casebook (other topics)
Tintin in the New World (other topics)
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain: A Casebook (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Christopher Clark (other topics)Sean McMeekin (other topics)
Sophie Scholl (other topics)
Heinrich von Kleist (other topics)
Hermann Kurzke (other topics)
d..."
I haven't, Lily, but they look interesting. Yesterday I put in an interlibrary loan request for the Cambridge Companion. Since we're halfway through and it takes about 2-6 weeks for the request to arrive, I thought now would be a good time.
You know, I will probably read this only once in my lifetime. Now that I've put in the time struggling with it, I would like to learn, too, what those who have studied it deeply saw that I didn't see--especially as I am reading a translation....and I am not familiar with German culture.