Background and Resources

[Everyman]

Thomas wrote: "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 Romance

From a review in the Independent:..."

Egad.

My son loved Tintin (that was about 20 years ago). I never could see the appeal, personally. But if I had known that he used Clavdia, well ...

[[deleted user]]

I am posting this here rather than in the Tea Room, because it seems to me that the writer's concerns in this piece are relevant to some of our discussion about the style and form of MM.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...

Teaser: "Today, even so-called literary fiction has to some extent become its own genre, with conventions that often seem as familiar as the tropes of horror or romance. I think a deep interest in form and telling, in the technology of a story, marks the difference between literary fiction and literature."

[Lily]

I promised Eman I would attempt to post some excerpts from "'Linke Leute von rechts' -- Thomas Mann’s Naphta and the Ideological Confluence of Radical Right and Radical Left in the Early Years of the Weimar Republic" by Anthony Greville, so here goes one.

Please forgive any failures at proofreading, especially the German, but if you call them to my attention, I will come back and attempt to correct them. This excerpt deals with the initial character Pastor Bunge who morphed in Naphta. Since there may be a spoiler here about Naphta's eventual fate, open with caution if concerned.

(view spoiler)[

The genesis of Naphta must be examined next. As Mann’s drafts, plans, and work notes for Der Zauberberg are almost all lost, we have to rely on his diaries for 1918-1921 and his letters to reconstruct the genesis and development of the figure of Naphta; and these bear out the pattern of a simple opposition of right and left, Bunge and Settembrini, giving way to a combination of the two extremes against the moderate center: Naphta and Settembrini. Mann wrote on August 3, 1915 to Paul Amann of his original plan for a story “worin ein junger Mensch…durch die geistigen Gegensätze von Humanität and Romantik, Fortschritt and Reaktion, Gesundheit und Krankheit geführt wird,” 28 and it is easy to recognize Settembrini and Bunge when he describes Hans Castorp placed “zwischen einen italienischen Literaten, Humanisten, Rhetor und Fortschrittsmann and einen etwas anrüchigen Mystiker, Reaktionär und Advokaten der Anti-Vernunft.” 29 A Protestant pastor would be associated both with the Wilhelmine political establishment and with the reactionary, mystical “anti-politics” Mann and Naphta attribute to Protestantism (613): a conventional German conservative.

This not to deny that much of Bunge, of the anti-liberal, “unpolitical” conservatism of the Betrachtungen has gone into Naphta. But Bunge was no longer adequate for Mann’s purposes in the radicalized, polarized political situation of the new Weimar Republic. Scattered references to Bunge appear in the postwar diaries, but already in 1919 he looked “veraltet” 30 {obsolete, out-of-date} to his author. He was duly replaced by a figure who could combine the two totalitarian mass movements, fascism and Bolshevism, Mann saw sweeping Europe:

Der anti-liberale Rückschlag is mehr als klar, er ist kraß. Er äußert sich politisch in der überdrußvollen Abkehr von Demokratic un Parlamentarismus, in einer mit finsteren Brauen vollzogenen Wendung zur Diktatur und zum Terror. Der Faschismus Italiens ist das genaue Gegenstück zum russischen Bolschewismus. 31

{30 This reference to Bunge is in T197 (entry for April 14, 1919). Other references in the diaries …[last named is June 5, 1921.]}

{31 From “Goethe and Tolstoi,” GW 9:166}

The character of Naphta springs from the ideological conditions and conflicts of the postwar years. That Mann borrowed certain external features from Georg Lukács, whom he met in January 1922, is known. But one can still accept his repeated assurances that there was no single model for Naphta; that the character grew out of the contemporary ideological climate: “Aber da Meiste [von der Figur] ist ‘sus der Luft gegriffen.’ Sie war ja voll davon.” 32 Naphta’s Jewish origins—his name comes from the Hebrew word “Naphtali” meaning “struggle” or “fight,” as well as being close to the inflammable chemical naphtha—also correspond to his ideological significance….

{32 Letter to Sagave of February 18, 1952, DüD 583. [Lengthy note goes on to describe other figures known to Mann.]}
(hide spoiler)]

Source: Thomas Mann's The "Magic Mountain": A Casebook, edited by Hans Rudolph Vaget

[Lily]

http://books.google.com/books?id=8pb2...

Chapter 20: "The Ideological Struggle for the German Soul in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain" by Gabriel Ricci.

I haven't read it; found it while looking for something else and decided to note it here for possible future look-see.

[Lily]

An article I found particularly interesting for its exploration of imperial and erotic issues in M.M.:

"Distant Oil Rigs and Other Erections" by Kenneth Weisinger, Professor Emeritus (deceased) Berkeley, German and Comparative Literature.

Appears in A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain edited by Stephen Dowd

The article does presume knowledge of the entire M.M. (i.e., spoiler alert).

However, the following excerpts and comments should not go beyond the Peeperkorn chapters (i.e., next week's reading).

(view spoiler)[
"Geographic signification as code for political and psychological allegory is only one of a legion of strategies for referentiality employed by Thomas Mann in his monument to overdetermination, The Magic Mountain, but it is certainly one of the most important."

"...So, just as we are presented with a world that seems mythic while myth is discredited as a way of knowing, so, too, the world is filled with sexual signs, the reading of which is simultaneously encouraged and frustrated by a comic discrediting of the dominant mode of understanding such symbols. How are we to interpret this?"

"Furthermore, the novel is perverse in its tendency to dwell at numbing lengths on issues that seem to be irrelevant red herrings or philosophical tail-chasing, such as the debates between N and S about the nature of culture or the long disquisitions on the nature of time. (This is not to say that these debates are not highly entertaining.)..."

Daghestan, location of C.C. husband, is in the Caucasus region and site of rich oil reserves -- significant to the ability to conduct war. Europe was marked by continuously shifting alliances in this period.

Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero for Our Times can be linked to both Castorp and the Caucasus.

"The quest for colonies and for the raw materials they could provide are also figured in the novel--most explicitly in the figure of Mynheer Peeperkorn...."

There are references here to the competition with Britain, including the building of a German navy. We remember the English-titled book Ocean Steamships that H.C. was reading at his arrival -- another source, confirmed here, indicated such a "textbook" would have been English, not German, at that point in time, a point not so obvious to us reading the text in English.

There is much more in this fascinating commentary. So far, I have not identified an online source.

(hide spoiler)]

[Lily]

Zeke wrote: "...Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor?..."

The book I cite @155 above has an essay by Sontag telling of her and a friend's visit as teenagers in the home of Thomas Mann in California. They had both idolized his writing and the friend simply called Mann's home. It is a cute story, but she gives strange and unnecessary lie to herself in her final paragraph: "I never told anyone of the meeting. Over the years I have kept it a secret..."

[Sue]

Thanks Lily! I found a bit more re Ricci's writing about Thomas Mann/Ideological Struggle for the German Soul. Not quite sure how to add "view spoiler" post..so hopefully this is alright (source http://law.wisc.edu/ils/weimarabstrac...

RICCI, Gabriel R. / "The Ideological Struggle for the German Soul in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain" Thomas Mann planned and wrote The Magic Mountain over twelve tumultuous years which spanned the First World War and a social revolution which ended the Wilhelmine Empire and launched the Weimar Republic (1912-1924). Over these same years Mann would experience a personal transformation that would dislodge a "non-political" chauvinism and replace it with a political consciousness that would make him a public critic of the emerging Right. His personal transformation is echoed in the exchange of ideas in Magic Mountain that would pit liberal humanism against a theocratic totalitarianism. These positions are represented by the characters of Luigi Settembrini and Leo Naptha respectively. The object of their intellectual attention is the protagonist Hans Castorp, who is also referred to as the Engineer, a symbolic label which refers to the belief that societal amelioration and progress keep pace with technological advances.
The exchange between Settembrini and Naptha was partially fueled by the conflict between Mann and his brother who was a Francophile, but it is supposed that Naptha's character was based on Georg Lukacs and Settembrini on the real Luigi Settembrini, a Risorgimento figure who believed that literature was identical with the soul of a nation and was in opposition to medieval mysticism which ignored reality, freedom and the autonomy of reason in favor of the preeminence of faith. As a Jewish Jesuit, Naptha argues for a form of theocratic totalitarianism that is bolstered by a rabid scholasticism. As heir to the romanticism and ideals of the French Revolution, Settembrini exalts the individual and the perfectibility of humanity. Settembrini refers to Naptha as the princeps scholasticorum and Naptha dismisses Settembrini as a mere carbonara (a charcoal burner or the Italian form of freemason). This paper examines the fiery exchange and the name calling between Naptha and Settembrini in light of the rise of Pan-Germanism and the cultural roots of Nazi ideology.

[Lily]

Sue wrote: " Not quite sure how to add "view spoiler" post...."

Glad the info on Ricci was helpful, Sue. Given where we are in the reading, I don't see what I would consider "spoiler" in what you post, but I am known to be less sensitive on the topic than many.

But, if you want to insert a spoiler, you can surround it with these:

< spoiler > < /spoiler >

Just delete the spaces at the beginning and end within the brackets.

Another way to recall how to handle is to click on (some html is ok) in the upper right corner when entering a comment.

Hope that helps.

[Sue]

Thank you, Lily! That is helpful info indeed! Yes, I was perhaps overly cautious as at times I am less clear as to what was precisely spoiled (in other's hidden "spoilers")..ha! So maybe I too am "less sensitive on the topic"!
It appears your referenced article by Ricci may be read via:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/101616949/T...

[[deleted user]]

Struck by these two small things in Lily's "Spoiler"--neither of which is a spoiler itself.

MM is referred to as Mann's "monument to overdetermination."

Also, Daghestan, location of C.C. husband, is in the Caucasus region and site of rich oil reserves -- significant to the ability to conduct war. Europe was marked by continuously shifting alliances in this period.

Daghestan, readers will recall, is the homeland of the Boston Marathon bombers. Small world.

[Thorwald]

Daghestan ... the Caucasus:

Whereas Peeperkorn comes from the flattest of all flat lands, the Caucasus is traditionally considered as the highest of all high mountains (only in modern times we learned that the Himalaya is higher).

That is the reason why we speak of a "Caucasian race": The (pseudo-scientific!) idea was that after the Deluge the water sank slowly, so the highest mountains were inhabitated first, i.e. the origin of human beings (of course white ones, how can you dare to doubt /irony off) can only be the Caucasus!

Ah well, and then we learned the Himalaya is higher ...

Does anyboday wonder that Himmler sent an expedition to Tibet (!) in order to find out more on the origins of the "Aryan race"? The longer I think on the craziness of leading National Socialists the less I can understand how they ever could be taken seriously.

[Lily]

More Davos and area pictures:

http://www.schatzalp.ch/go.cfm?cam -- webcams

http://www.schatzalp.ch/download/Wint... -- top left picture suggests to me the winter wonderland aspects of the "Snow" section.

http://www.schatzalp.ch/download/Davo...

http://www.schatzalp.ch/download/Davo...

http://www.schatzalp.ch/p.cfm?s=webca... -- see list of additional pictures below the one featured.

I realized now that this "error" on the wiki page external references misled me several weeks ago: "The 'Zauberberg' in Davos still exists (The sanatorium was converted into a hotel in 1954.)" Needs clarification, but I am not one who knows how to reach anyone who works on wiki pages.

[Lily]

http://www.communitywalk.com/magic_mo...

Fascinating map and linked photos related to MM and Mann. Various perspectives as one explores this. Shows where Naphta studied to become priest; where Claudia's husband was, Mann's homes,....

[Lily]

Zeke wrote: "Struck by these two small things in Lily's "Spoiler"--neither of which is a spoiler itself.

MM is referred to as Mann's "monument to overdetermination."

Also, Daghestan, location of C.C. husband,..."

Yes, the "overdetermination" aspects keep hitting me in the face, from number seven to the names of characters to the integration of mythology (K&B - R&R, Dioscuri,...) to folktale illusions to Dante and Goethe connections....

Thx for the Daghestan "catch." I had missed that. The original article to which I referred goes into considerable detail about the region, the oil reserves, the strategic importance, and even a Zoroaster site that may have had an "eternal flame," leading to a comment about the relationship of Claudia and her husband. Talk about overdetermination! ;-)

[Lily]

Lost a post on Mynheer Peeperkorn that I intended to move from elsewhere and apparently did not save here! Bah humbug. Will see if I can at least partially reconstruct.

First, I have found surprisingly little in the criticism I have perused on M.P. Perhaps one of the more thorough summaries is the one in the spoiler below from the Wiki article on M.M., but I distrust it -- Mann doesn't seem to create his characters based upon entirely a single source.

(view spoiler)[

Mynheer Peeperkorn, Clawdia Chauchat's new lover, enters the Berghof scenery rather late; but he is certainly one of the most-dominating persons of the novel. His behavior and personality, with its flavour of importance, combined with obvious awkwardness and the strange ability never to complete a statement, is reminiscent of certain figures in former novellas of the author (e.g., Herr Klöterjahn in Tristan) – figures, which are, on the one hand, admired because of their vital energy, and, on the other hand, condemned because of their naïveté. In total, this person represents the grotesqueness of a Dionysian character. The Greek god Dionysus is also important in Nietzschean philosophy, whose The Birth of Tragedy is the source of the title The Magic Mountain.[2]

Peepercorn ends by suicide, also performed in a strange manner.

By Mynheer Peeperkorn the author of the novel simultaneously personalizes his rival, the influential German poet Gerhart Hauptmann, and even certain properties of Goethe (with whom Hauptmann often was compared). (hide spoiler)]

Gerhart Hauptmann - excerpts from Wiki article:

(Not really a) (view spoiler)[

"Gerhart Hauptmann (15 November 1862 – 6 June 1946) was a German dramatist and novelist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912."

"Under Wilhelm II Hauptmann enjoyed the reputation of a radical writer, on the side of the poor and outcasts. During the Weimar Republic (1918–33) he enjoyed the status of the literary figurehead of the new order, and was even considered for the post of state president. Under Hitler he kept his distance from the regime, but never publicly criticized it. This, and the fact that (unlike many other writers and academics) he stayed in Germany, was strongly held against him after the war. A collected edition of his works appeared in the 1960s, and stimulated new studies of his work (e.g. those by Peter Sprengel), but the tide of critical and public opinion remained negative. A few of his plays are still revived from time to time, but otherwise he is neglected.

"Thomas Mann met Hauptmann at an Alpine resort and wrote to his brother, 'I hobnob every evening with Hauptmann, who is a really good fellow.' He used Hauptmann as the model (especially physically) for the character Mynheer Peeperkorn in The Magic Mountain. [2]" (hide spoiler)]

Much of the criticism of any literature is often in its native language. (I remember my frustration sometimes when reading War and Peace.) I wonder if the more scholarly research on Mann's genesis of M.P. just isn't available in English or I simply haven't found it.

[Lily]

Definite spoiler warning on this one, since the group here discusses all of M.M.:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/127037

I list it now because a) it has some interesting allusions re: M. Peeperkorn (view spoiler)[ e.g., Christ Pantocrator, wounded king in "The Fisher King," Man of Sorrows (which Thomas called to our attention in the discussion threads) (hide spoiler)] and b) it has a number of links to music that is referred to in the text.

[Lily]

I just did some checking on myself re Tolstoy and seances, since I compared Mann's description to his. I still haven't found one in War and Peace, but I did find the famous one in Anna Karenina. The following link is a SPOILER for anyone who hasn't read AK, but it has an interesting discussion on Tolstoy's attitudes towards the occult. It from the book The Secret Life of Genius: How 24 Great Men and Women Were Touched by Spiritual Worlds by John Chambers.

See pages 141ff: http://books.google.com/books?id=L46P...

I sense that both Mann and Tolstoy had healthy intellectual skepticism, despite their ability to incorporate the popularity, interest, and even acceptance into their novels.

[Lily]

hermetic
1 sometimes capitalized a : of or relating to the mystical and alchemical writings or teachings of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom b : relating to or characterized by occultism, alchemy, magic, or whatever is obscure and mysterious : recondite

2 [so called from the belief that Hermes Trismegistus invented a magic seal to keep vessels airtight] a : impervious to air : airtight b : impervious to external influence

3 : of or relating to a herm : hermaean
Origin of HERMETIC

New Latin hermeticus, from Hermet-, Hermes Trismegistus Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom, fabled author of a number of mystical, philosophical, and alchemistic writings, from Greek Hermēt-, Hermēs trismegistos, literally, thrice-great Hermes (with whom the Greeks identified Thoth) + Latin -icus -ic, -ical

First Known Use: 1605 (sense 1)

“Hermetic.” Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. 2013.. Web. 14 Jun. 2013.

I'm wondering which one of these meanings to apply to Mann's final sentences. I would have assumed the second one related to Hermes Trismegistus, if not the linkage of the first to "magic."

[Thomas]

There's something of all three definitions in the novel. There's even a herm of the classical variety in Behren's coffee mill. (Webster is somewhat bashful in definition three. It should mention that a herm was a phallic statue dedicated to Hermes. Interesting though that the coffee mill was the gift of an Egyptian princess.)

But I think the primary meaning must be the second -- the Mountain is isolated from the rest of the world, and that is what makes it "magic." For a while at least.

[Sue]

Thank you, Lily for the definition of "hermetic". It was one of those words I wondered about yet did not look up so I appreciate that you did and relayed it on to us! Interesting!

[Lily]

Sue wrote: "Thank you, Lily for the definition of "hermetic". ..."

And for Thomas's insights! Thx, Sue.

[Lily]

One last(?) link on MM, this a review from the Modernism Lab at Yale.

DO NOT OPEN IF CONCERNED ABOUT SPOILERS!

http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wi...

I was looking for some comments I read weeks ago about curricula -- and didn't find again -- when I came across this and read it through. Another voice, no more or less than the many we have enjoyed these past months.