Week 3.1 -- through end of Chapter 4

[[deleted user]]

Thorwald wrote: "But listening is never bad..."

I want to say a firm "Yes." That's why I was so torn back-and-forth.

I'm thinking this morning that your were right, too. Hans Castrop, it seems, really does need to have his mind, his ideas opened or expanded, or at least he needs some self-examination...which he can't do without listening to differing views and values. Oh, yes, I agree with you there.

But how about this. This occurred to me this morning. (Ha ha. Maybe it came to me in my sleep through my unconscious, eh?) I do think listening----quite generally if not, perhaps, absolutely---is a good thing. So I was mulling over what you had posted: listen.

And there was a post by Rosemary. Week 1.1, Post #83:

Just a note on the disease [....] Sort of like we know now that some cancers are caused by a virus, but we don't necessarily know which ones those are...

So how about this? Remember how people used to go around saying that bad ideas were like a disease? (I used to hear that.)

So in Magic Mountain, maybe???, we could view the bad ideas that Hans Castorp and pre-WWI Europe were exposed to ... like a virus.

I'm not a medical person. But maybe??? rather along the same lines that children are strengthened against smallpox by exposing them to a small amount of smallpox...??

Maybe we could make a similar analogy here. That if HC had had a stronger conscience/a greater consciousness of himself, then he wouldn't have been so susceptible to a bad idea. (Assuming that maybe he's going to be.... I don't know.)

I do go back to Thorwald. HC could benefit from considering other ideas.

But...there's some saying, something like, "Good judgment [Ah! And it's judgment that HC is lacking!]... Good judgment comes from wisdom. And wisdom comes from experience, often bad experience." Something like that.

And HC growing up wasn't exposed [like to smallpox] to enough differing ideas. Not in some "safe" environment where the ideas could be discussed and where he could hear BOTH sides, or the positives and negatives of the ideas...so that HC could learn to make judgments.

Ah! I think Thorwald brought that up in his post, too. "Hans Castorp good-naturedly [not using his critical thinking skills] tood cognizance of Settembrini's point of view and tested it by his own inner experience."

This morning, it seems to me that THAT may be the problem. It's not Settembrini, perhaps, that I should be looking at---he's entitled to his opinions. But HC...HC hasn't had enough inner experience in these intellectual matters to make good judgments...he doesn't know which ideas may be equitant to a cancer or TB? And he hasn't built up any resistance. Otherwise the exposure wouldn't do him overmuch harm???

So...in effect...maybe he's going to be exposed to a strong strain of virus--or ideas. Let's hope he survives.

Could be?

[Thorwald]

Adelle wrote: "But HC...HC hasn't had enough inner experience in these intellectual matters to make good judgments...he doesn't know which ideas may be equitant to a cancer or TB? And he hasn't built up any resistance. Otherwise the exposure wouldn't do him overmuch harm???"

I like your thought! No reasonable man starts with the right ideas from the beginning ... but you have to start somewhere!

[Lily]

But our Hans Castorp is apparently not going to be building steamships in the foreseeable future. (So why was the book on steamships not in German?)

[Wendel]

I have been trying for a while now to put down my thoughts on Settembrini.
It is long (view spoiler)[.
Up to now Settembrini is a difficult character to pinpoint. Even HC, who is after all the moving (developing) target, does not cause comparable problems. The reason may be, to give you my conclusion right away, that Mann himself is not so sure about the Italian.

At the end of chapter4, it is surprising how little information we actually have on Settembrini. The only thing we never needed to doubt was his critical attitude. Already during their first interview Settembrini tells HC: 'I hope, Engineer, you have nothing against malice? In my eyes, it is reason’s keenest dart against the powers of darkness and ugliness. Malice, my dear sir, is the animating spirit of criticism; and criticism is the beginning of progress and enlightenment.”

That is no understatement, his comments are quite unsettling for the boys. HC finds Settembrini's way of speaking fascinating, but he also tries, in his dreams at least, to resist the influence of the socially inferior Italian (the organ grinder). At the same time he is flattered that the older man (not that much older though) takes his modest contributions to the discussions seriously, even if it means he has to learn to think before saying something.

Much of this double feeling I see mirrored in what Mann tells us in his 'authorial' digressions. Settembrini is clearly a windbag, enamoured by the flow of his own words. Just a bit too certain about his intellectual and moral superiority. Yet, Settembrini is also portrayed as someone with a sharp insight in what moves other people, and one of the few, maybe the only one, on the MM with real compassion.

There is more to him than just a talent to expose darkness&ugliness. In his rant against the 'ennobling effects of illness' we feel his personal frustration as an ill man. And at the same time a strong belief in the innate beauty and value of human existence. It is a perverse idea, says Settembrini, that we need to suffer. Suffering does not add anything, it just subtracts and degrades. An impressive argument, with which I think Mann agrees, even if it is obviously one-sided.

Even more radical is Settembrini's indictment of music. Music, he says, works only on our sentiments, it lacks precision. While words can sharpen our ideas and contribute towards a better world, music can only divert, or even opiate us. This time we may be sure that Mann does not agree. Settembrini's radical trust in human reason must be understood as naive, his depreciation of music superficial, his attitude tyrannical. The whole thing is shocking.

With a well known novel there is always a risk that we let our reading be shaped by information that does not originate with the author. We may have heard that Settembrini is supposed to represent the Enlightenment, and let this information influence our interpretation. However, the critical attitude and the ideal harmony of mind and body are indeed compatible with the ideas of the Enlightenment, if not exclusively. The same may even apply to Settembrini's trust in human reason, though his radicalism raises questions.

But more radical statements are in the offing! In 'Mounting Misgivings', Settembrini starts about his grandfather, a man uniting rebellion with patriotism. Much to the surprise of the young Germans, raised on the idea that the patriot is the one who obeys. Even more difficult for them to stomach is grandpa Settembrini's comparison of the July Revolution to the six days of creation. Or the related assumption that technology has a moral dimension: free man reshaping his world according to his own believes and possibilities.

But Settembrini is not an American, a practical man making the best of it. No, this is philosophy in action, and once again he trips over his own eloquence: 'For writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics. Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word ... —civilization!'

Settembrini's high-mindedness becomes even stranger when we hear his practical policy recommendations: Asiatic tyranny and superstition should be attacked wherever they are found, and there is no place where they are found as readily as in Vienna. So, Austria must be crushed and dismembered (but yes, that is exactly what the Allies did after the war!). Enlightenment politics? Let's wait and see how our novel develops.

There is one odd thing though, that needs our immediate attention. In the days of the MM a figure like Settembrini was already an anachronism. Every self respecting European radical would by then have embraced Marxism (with the exception of a few die hard anarchists). If we listen carefully we can hear some Marxist echo's in Settembrini's monologues (especially the value of hard work), but they lack the quasi-scientific Marxist toughness. Possibly Mann wanted to spare his readers that ordeal. But for some reason this antiquated revolutionary had precisely the qualities of the liberal bogeymen HC's grandfather feared most of all.

So Settembrini has considerable qualities, but he is also a bogeyman. Will this dubious figure be able to save HC from the dangers that are in the air? At the end of chapter 4 Mann re-uses the impressive image of HC on the lake in Holstein: 'looking with dazzled eyes from the glassy daylight of the western shore to the mist and moonbeams that wrapped the eastern heavens.' But this time it is not grandfather Castorp who darkens the Eastern horizon, nor even Asiatic Vienna. This time it is the elementary power of Madame Chauchat, Settembrini's real opponent (for now).
(hide spoiler)]

[[deleted user]]

Settembrini: "The only healthy and noble and indeed, let me expressly point out, the only religious way in which to regard death is to perceive and feel it as a constituent part of life, as life's holy prerequisite and not to separate it intellectually, to set it up in opposition to life, or, worse, to play it off against life in some disgusting fashion--for that is indeed the antithesis of a healthy, noble, reasonable and religious view...Death is to be honored as the cradle of life, the womb of renewal. Once separated from life it becomes grotesque, a wraith--or even worse."