Classics and the Western Canon discussion
The Magic Mountain
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Week 10.3 -- The Thunderbolt and the Work as a Whole
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Thomas wrote: "But my second reading was much different than the first. I was really enchanted by the book the first time around. I'm not as fond of it now"Ah, that's a pity that a second reading wasn't as enchanting as the first, Thomas. I found a simple beauty in almost letting it wash over and absorb me. The manner in which he goes into precise detail made me feel like I was one of the residents remote and detached from the life down below. Which I think matches up with what you found significant in the passage of time, how three weeks becomes seven years, and even in the composition of the work, what was intended as a short companion piece becomes hundreds of pages of text.
I wondered at some points whether it was going to be merely a device for presenting philosophical arguments, but there were certain plot points such as the duel and the final scene of Hans Castorp disappearing into the battlefields of WWI that I found quite moving.
Now, at the end of our time on the Magic Mountain, I thank you all for the great experience to see a book with many eyes - especially with this book it was worth a lot! Recently, I started to read Dante's Divine Comedy and will have a look from time to time to your old threads on this ... and after this, it will be Dan-Brown-time!
Everyman wrote: "Whether or not HC was at any point genuinely ill, he clearly hasn't been for awhile. Even Dr. B has stopped even pretending he is ill. But he is so totally institutionalized by now that he is "no..."Another long-winded "comment" from me—I don't often get to the internet at the moment, so no now I am going to make the most of it. And I feel compelled to put at least some of what I feel about MM into words.
I don't think it is an overstatement to say that this book contributed hugely to my life, but other associated things have also added weight to its "clout". This was the second time I have read the book, and I have really enjoyed the related discussions and comments of this group. Also several other books and writers have contributed to my understanding of MM this second time around. e.g. I read Ulysses just before it—also for the second time—and so I was ready for the Joycean irony in MM. Like Ulysses, MM draws on just about all literary and life experience one happens to have, and more, and I have been inspired by these books to take new directions with my reading. Since my first reading of MM I have read much more by and about Nietzsche, and as a consequaence, have also found out much more about Goethe and his Faust. I wonder now that I made any sense at all out of my first reading of MM—as I have said before, my attraction to the book was based mainly on the Snow chapter, but also I did not understand the pace of events and the catastrophic ending as much as I wanted, and this also drew me back. I still don't understand it all, but so much is clearer after the second read.
For me the main theme of this book was HC's personal development. In this respect the novel is a bildungsroman, or a sort of morality play. Looked at this way, HC is a mythic hero in the same way as Leopold Bloom is a sort of distorted Ulysses. We follow him on his journey as he meets many strange beings and has many unforeseen adventures before he disappears from our view at the end of the book.
Nietzsche wrote the following about the character of Goethe which I think is relevant to HC's personal development and the themes of MM:
... what he wanted was totality; he fought the mutual extraneousness of reason, senses, feeling and will ... he disciplined himself into wholeness, he created himself... Goethe conceived a human being who would be strong, highly educated, skillful in all bodily matters, self-controlled, reverent towards himself, and who might dare to afford the whole wealth and range of being natural, being strong enough for such freedom; the man of tolerance, not from weakness but from strength, because he knows how to use to his advantage even that from which the average nature would perish; the man for whom there is no longer anything that is forbidden, unless it be weakness, whether called vice or virtue. Such a spirit, who has become free, stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathsome, and that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole—he does not negate any more. Such a faith, however, is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysus.
This passage seems to describe the personal development of "our hero" HC. Of course, HC's development is not an exact embodiment of it, but it is as much of it as one might expect from someone of HC's "honourable mediocrity".
HC is explicitly a sort of everyman: his "(entirely honourable) mediocrity" is repeatedly mentioned. He is also "amiably self-effacing" and has an "exceedingly easy manner" (Peeperkorn episode). But what makes him interesting as an allegorical character (I was going to say inspirational, but he is too mediocre to be really inspirational) is that he shows such impulsive inquisitiveness in seeking answers to the problems of life, the way he takes on the attitude of placet experiri. The ultimate aim of this process is to make a transition from youth to maturity, to become a master of himself. For me the standout characters of the book (apart from HC) are Settembrini, Naphta, and Pieperkorn. Claudia Chauchat is, perhaps not secondary, rather an independent issue.
The essence of this adventure has a dialectic form. HC meets Setembrini, who enlivens his interest in philosophical questions; then he meets Naphta, who negates S, and in doing so reveals himself and Settembrini as two sides of a dialectic whose synthesis results in what was for me a quite shattering episode about the duel at the end of the book. By virtue of his contact with N, HC understands that to say yes to life also means saying yes to death. HC "outgrows" the N-S vortex, thanks to his contact with the charismatic Pieperkorn. From P he learns that not everything can or must be described or explained and that the role of unthinking feeling in sublimating conflicting subconscious drives cannot be underestimated. The light-dark, life-death dialectic represented by N and S can only be transcended in a moment of pure feeling. Neither side can provide a total answer of itself, although the action that results from the synthesis of these two complementary principles will come down on either one side or the other—just which may not be clear without sufficient hindsight. Because of the human limitations of one's insight, one cannot assume that just because one has a well thought-out plan that it is necessarily good or right. The point is that at the moment of pure action there is no longer any thought, since one's attention is held thoroughly captive by the action. However, P has gone too far down this path. In advocating feeling at the expense of thought, his thinking has become flaccid, he loses the thread of his thoughts. He is a sensualist rather like Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment, although he is not evil or repulsive, and he shares the same fate. I wonder a lot about why P met his end the way he did, and I can only suggest that he did it out of world-weariness. Despite preaching about tobacco desensitizing one to the feelings associated with each moment, he could not get out of the habit of "regaling himself" and became desensitized to the very feeling he was seeking. The point of placet experiri is that one must think through the experiment first in order to come to some conclusion and develop oneself—without the preparatory thought the feeling, without a fully conscious participation in the world, life is just an animal response to stimulus and it will never develop into anything more than that. I think that HC's dream in the snow represents his internalization of this dialectic mode of developing consciousness. Likewise, in this dream there is an inevitable evil at the centre of things that is somehow coincident with the simultaneous presence of the beautiful and the good. In his dream, HC's unconscious makes sense of this.
By the last episodes of the book, HC is apprehending the world much more independently. He has served his apprenticeship. In "Fullness of Harmony" HC overcomes the last barrier to his overcoming of himself. As a result of his "playing king", the systematic daydreaming he does during his rest cures, he has matured into an "intuitive critic of this world, of [the] image of it, of his love for it—[it] had made him capable, that is, of observing all three with the scruples of conscience". This means that he has become ready to see in Schubert's Lindenbaum a distillation of the "organic wholeness" of life that can only be called magical. All his spiritual investigations, his experiments, his labyrinthine intellectual labour is sublimated in a single piece of music, made possible by the magic of recording. In this chapter we get a wonderful sense of the almost Promethean novelty of musical recordings—I think it is still too early to recognise the magnitude of the changes in our artistic sensibilities brought about by technology, which were heralded by the invention of the gramophone. I think there is one sentence in the whole of MM that embodies the whole book: "It was truly worth dying for, this song of enchantment". Armed with this song, HC can leave the sanatorium and take on the flatlands. It reminds and reassures him that he can live in the mundane present without betraying all the more exalted ideas he has learned while "playing king", in the leisure time his life at the sanatorium afforded him. This is the extent to which MM is a bildungsroman. HC starts off "mediocre, but in an entirely honourable sense", a "callow youth". By the end of the book, he has, in Nietzsche's words, "become free, and stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, having faith that only the particular is loathsome, and that in the whole all redeems and affirms itself…" I think it is rather distinctive of Thomas Mann the author that this seemingly almost minor or innocuous process he recognizes as being the progress of life itself—as containing within it all the great themes of humanity in the cosmos.
That is what I took from MM this (second) time I read it, but there is still so much more to this book, and I think about it a lot, every day, despite finishing it weeks ago. Compared to Goethe's Faust, it is maybe something of an "opening act" or introduction, but I feel so fortunate to live in a world where there is something like The Magic Mountain— it could just as easily have not been there?!— and I am looking forward to reading again one day.
Clari wrote: "I found a simple beauty in almost letting it wash over and absorb me. The manner in which he goes into precise detail made me feel like I was one of the residents remote and detached from the life down below. "I also liked the precise detail, almost a sort of literary pointalism, at least during the first half of the book, which I read ahead of the group read and thus was able to read slowly and ponderingly. But then the group caught up with where I was (my eyes are still troubling me for reading, especially "real" books where I can't enlarge the text as I can with ebooks, so I can only read so long at a time until my eyes give out, but it's better than Milton), at which time I had to read more quickly, and began to find the excessive detail getting in the way of understanding what was going on. But I do agree with you that it was enjoyable while it could be enjoyed.
Peter wrote: "..."Great analysis, and thorough! I really think your precision can help to understand better. Thank you.
The Dionysian aspect of Goethe can be supported by the realization that Goethe was not a philosopher but a poet. This is, what I always did *not* like, I am admiring Goethe only for - hm? - 90%, not 100%, because "faith" sounds always so dangerous, and it fits well!
Also Thomas Mann was not a philosopher, but a poet, an author of novels, so beware ... said Plato :-)
I fully agree with your analysis of Mynherr Peeperkorn, too. You expressed it better than I did, so far: Peeperkorn has surely no evil intentions, yes, and taking feelings into account has surely to be part of the whole. But Peeperkorn exaggerated by far, you are fully right. In my own words, I would say: Peeperkorn has no evil intentions, he *is* just evil by very one-sided exaggeration.
Additional thought: The latter could be said of Naphta, too, I think, but can it be said of Settembrini? IMHO not. Settembrini may exaggerate his point of view, too, but I could not see that he exaggerated to a dangerous extent.
Alas, I too enjoyed this second read with so many different perspectives/ great minds. "Magic Mountain" is the perfect book to have joined in with this excellent group upon a second read! Not all books are worth a second read, but this one was especially so with "with [the addition of] many eyes" as Thorwald said. Twas my first time with a book group (online or off) so apologies for my "newbie" ways.I see that this group has already read "Don Quixote" and as I am going to read that (the complete version; I have read the condensed version prior) along with my daughter (when she has time; she is a busy sort but she wants to read it "with" me!), I will also confer with your prior discussion regarding the same as I know there are great and helpful minds in this group!
Peter wrote @ 54: "..."Great post Peter, I agree with much of what you say - in so far as you didn't escape me on your mystic wings. In the penultimate section HC seems indeed to settle for reason plus music, which reminds us of Goethe. Sometimes one has to travel far to find the way back home. In the meantime however, HC is changed. Maybe not that much (do we ever?), but he is now able to turn the light on. No mean thing. Still, I can't share your enthusiasm, and I will try to explain why (not).
First a few minor crumbs that remained on my table, they may or may not be of some importance:
* The contrast between the suicides of Peeperkorn and Naphta: one premeditated, carefully planned and executed, the other a muddy affair, allowing different interpretations.
* If Peeperkorn were Dionysos, he would (be) resurrect(ed), as is appropriate for all living nature. Theories on the other hand don't die, Settembrini survives.
* The war (this must be important): in the end it is not the mountain but the plain that decides on HC's fate. He will probably end as cannon fodder for the mad kaiser, which he seems to realise and accept with a certain fatalism.
And now my 'final' feelings. First, Mann's language was a revelation - I never realised that German could be so clear and (yes) concise. I am happy to have read the original and it was not difficult at all (the language, that is). Next, some of the MM inhabitants are first rate (Peeperkorn, Chauchat, Behrens), there is a whole bunch of amusing minor figures and many really great stories and situations (HC's cultivation of the dying, HC and Behrens discussing Chauchat's portrait). Moreover, the book is so rich that one can doubtlessly reread it more than once, making new discoveries all the time.
Like you, I am still occupied by the MM, weeks after finishing it. What more could one want? Still, while I can imagine picking it up again one day, that won't be soon. Not because of the more or less objective flaws of the book. Sure the structure of the MM shows its long gestation (imagine to be Mann's editor!), and as a 'novel of ideas' the book suffers from an overload of 'philosophy' at the expense of the 'characters and situations'. Great artists are seldom great as political analysts, and Mann proves no exception to this rule. But the qualities of the novel are such that it easily survives even the silly Naphta-Settembrini conversations.
As one critique said: Mann believed that his novel was saved from the fate of being classified as a sterile novel of ideas by its narrative art. Instinctively, one might say, Mann knew that no novel could survive purely as 'a product of intellect and criticism'. Instinctively, Mann created immortal characters - who managed to override the tedious pages in which Mann was spinning wool about time and human destiny. In fact, one could almost say that the work succeeds despite the author's lapses, when he became uncertain as to its purpose and asked himself if it was to be a romance, or a comedy, or a black comedy.*
However, there is another problem that bothers me more. It's the main character, HC himself. He may be understood (either/or) as Everyman, as just Mann, or as Germany in its fruitless quest for a third way. But whatever one chooses, HC remains at heart an unremarkable fellow. When in the end he marches off to oblivion one hardly cares. One feels that like his author he was too often just smart. I am in no way a fan of activist authors, but Mann's irony becomes annoying when one can hear the sound of jackboots on the march.
* http://www.mmisi.org/ma/44_04/brantin...
Clari wrote: "Ah, that's a pity that a second reading wasn't as enchanting as the first, Thomas. I found a simple beauty in almost letting it wash over and absorb me. The manner in which he goes into precise detail made me feel like I was one of the residents remote and detached from the life down below. ."Sue wrote: "I think the first time around I let the "music" take me away, if you will. The enchantment and other worldliness...the ethereal isolation with its altered reality where sickness is a talent and social drama and solitude are juxtaposed."
I notice that you both express a similar feeling about the book, and it makes perfect sense to me. I think this is what Thomas Mann intended, that the book should sweep the reader away like a grand symphony sweeps away a listener.
The philosophy in the novel is, I think, a diversion. The arguments are superficial and inconsistent, and the symbolism is for effect. I kept trying to make sense of the arguments, and follow the symbols to a logical conclusion, but there is none. The characters in the novel are not philosophers -- they're actors on a stage. The passion behind the arguments is what matters, the drama and the music, not the substance of the argument.
Trying to find "meaning" in this novel was a frustrating exercise. I really like the book still, but I liked it better when I read it uncritically. But I had to read it critically in order to understand that... So maybe now I'm ready to read it the right way, the right way for me anyway. But not right now. :/
Thomas wrote: "The philosophy in the novel is, I think, a diversion. The arguments are superficial and inconsistent, and the symbolism is for effect."I would not go as far as that, for me you *can* figure out the arguments of Naphta and Settembrini (if you want to invest a lot of time!) ... but this is indeed not the most important!
The most important in case of Naptha and Settembrini is that they talk! They exchange arguments. They differ in opinions yet they talk.
And this talk stops when Mynheer Peeperkorn enters the stage. At this point the details of the talk are indeed not so important, much more important is the opposition talk vs. non-talk.
Still pondering the significance of
The Magic Mountain
to my reading oeuvre and probably will for weeks to come, then always from time to time. At the moment, it is perhaps too simply metaphorical to me -- a "magic mountain" symbolized by and symbolizing the grand nature of this planet, a "sanatorium" where many an "everyman" or "everywoman" chooses to live as pleasant a life as possible, interchangeability ill and healthy, subject to diverse dialogues and events, as well as flatteries, passions, even death, and a flatland where commerce, politics, war, environmental usages, and the various pursuits of humankind play out their mighty courses. The magic mountain can protect its favored inhabitants only so long -- even its pampered citizens must face the consequences of their neglect and self-indulgence.No, MM is not so simple minded in scope or intent. While even as a parody, much grander in design and reach, it still disappointed this reader on several counts. I may not be able to articulate my why's, but somehow I understand that MM often is no longer a centerpiece inclusion in studies of the Western Canon. But, maybe that is a Peeperkorn view, rather than a reasoned one from the likes of SorN. :-( I have no doubt MM is a book worthy of the second read Mann requested of those who had opened its pages and traversed its journey. Whether I do or not will be largely a factor of the meanderings of time, reminiscent of how Mann laid its unanticipated vagaries out in MM.
I can't find the post, but at one point someone suggested that the book is a bit fractured or in need of editing because it was such a big project written over such a long period of time. I was thinking about this again the other day, and I don't buy it. I can't imagine Mann spending years and years working on this novel and then sending it out into the world before it was edited to his satisfaction. I found that the novel rambled quite a bit (particularly in the S. and N. passages) and shifted focus at times without apparent reason and, as someone else noted, even Mann's position seemed to evolve, all of which would seem at first appearance to be issues of poor editing. Then I come back to the fact that it seems at heart to be an experimental novel and perhaps that was part of the point, to watch the author's/storyteller's position shift over time. In any case, like Lily, I was underwhelmed. I am willing to freely admit that this could be in great part due to a lack of cultural and historical knowledge needed for context. But still...
Kathy wrote: "...In any case, like Lily, I was underwhelmed...."LOL! Kathy, I might have said "overwhelmed" -- and that was part of the problem -- clarity of intent or purpose eventually felt muddled. But maybe that is always part of the message of late modernism.
I just added what may be my last link for the background resources. It is a review from the Modernism Lab at Yale. No more or less useful than the comments here, but perhaps of interest as yet another voice.
Kathy @62 may find this quote interesting.
"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." (Thomas Mann)
"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." (Thomas Mann)
Zeke wrote: "Kathy @62 may find this quote interesting. "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." (Thomas Mann)"
I'm not so sure the gut issues are the writing so much as they are the characters,... Although I suppose the two are inseparable.
Lily, thanks for the review from the Modernism Lab at Yale. I noted the following therefrom in particular: "Yet, exceeding the limits of mere satire, Thomas Mann himself calls his work a novel about the general seductive forces of dissolution and death, which also corresponds to the allusion in the title." Sorry to keep referencing Thomas Mann's "Making of Magic Mountain" but I tend to harken to the author's own words for determining his intentions in MM. Therein he speaks of the lure of dissolution (as found in the sanatorium) (i.e. isolated communities?) as especially dangerous to the young. As we have earlier discussed, TM's scope broadened over time/ in light of WWI. I am certainly not one to ferret out TM's ultimate purpose/intent beyond TM's perception of European thinking of that time, the issues of time, and the lure of dissolution in all of this. I do take note that TM writes in "Making of Magic Mountain" that he himself is instructed by critics regarding his writing.."to learn from them about my past works and go back to them in my mind" and concludes "I am most grateful to you for having so kindly recalled me to myself". Alas.....
Sue -- sometimes with a great book, I like to take what I call the "Homer approach" -- i.e., that I know little about the author on which I can depend. The text must speak for itself.And, I do play back and forth between the two approaches and can love to probe who the author was and why write this and what impact on what was written.
Zeke wrote: "Kathy @62 may find this quote interesting. "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." (Thomas Mann)"
I might say, "A writer is someone willing to confront the difficulties of writing more than other people."
Lily wrote: "Kathy wrote: "...In any case, like Lily, I was underwhelmed...."LOL! Kathy, I might have said "overwhelmed" --
I guess I was using "underwhelmed" as a synonym for "disappointed." Maybe not entirely accurate! :)
Sorry for reviving an apparently old post and for my English but I just finished The Magic Mountain and would love to develop this a bit"And now, the book as a whole. What do people make of it? What was Mann all about? What are we to take from it? Has it, as Rufus Fears says great books should do, changed your life? And if so, how?"
I've read quite a few articles about TMM and several political and historical interpretations, but in the end choose to think of it as a glorious (I liked it a lot) and classical "knight tale", an ode to an "otium" mindset (otium in a philosophical, roman sense) as opposed to the rude and practical 20th century.
I see nothing patriotic about HC's choice- his motivations are phlegmatic and the war itself is a new "pedagog worth to be listened". He goes to war to experiment it, he is dragged to it in a same way he was dragged before to natural science, ski, music, photography and so on. From a historical standpoint, the first half of the century was full of such "childs spoiled by life", they fought in the spanish civil war, enlisted in peace corps and were enthusiastic about the possibility of being close to the new and exciting theories and doctrines, the life itself.
I have a strange relationship with TMM, it took me 2 whole years to finish it and I read dozens of other books in the middle. Never happened to me before, I'm a very fast reader, but with TMM just had to take my time and grow with HC, read the book in a wonderful chaise lounge, pause, read other titles, get back to it an so on.
A once in a lifetime experience for sure.
P.S. By the way, I can almost see HC in the train with german volunteers described in "The Good Soldier Švejk" by Jaroslav Hašek
Nicolas wrote: "Sorry for reviving an apparently old post and for my English but I just finished The Magic Mountain and would love to develop this a bit"And now, the book as a whole. What do people make of it? W..."
Nice comments. I also found MM requiring very slow reading. It was so filled with details and ideas.
Nicolas wrote: "Sorry for reviving an apparently old post and for my English but I just finished The Magic Mountain and would love to develop this a bit"And now, the book as a whole. What do people make of it? W..."
Thanks Nicolas for raising this issue again about the meaning of The Magic Mountain as a whole. Since I'm a slow reader anyway, I found I didn't need to change my style for it. But your experience seems to perfectly reflect one of the themes of the book: the relativity and elusiveness of time. At the Berghof, long and short lose all meaning.
For my part, I did some detailed thinking about what the book meant to me. My goal was to boil the meaning down to a single sentence. I finally came up with one that encapsulates it for me. I have a long version and a short one, so here's the short one:
"True aliveness is born when you recognize that your own impending death shadows the current moment and every moment."
In a nutshell, that's my takeaway from The Magic Mountain. With much richness around that, of course.
I noticed a new group the other day for those who would like to continue their rest cures: The Thomas Mann Group. It looks like they will be starting MM on August 12. Don't forget your blue henry!http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1...
Lol, Thomas (re "don't forget your blue henry!"). Yes, MM is a different sort of read but definitely memorable. It is one indeed that calls for ponderation. I like your nutshell takeaway, Nicholas.
I think the first time around I let the "music" take me away, if you will. The enchantment and other worldliness...the ethereal isolation with its altered reality where sickness is a talent and social drama and solitude are juxtaposed. The jest may be in part that the sanatorium is where people, even healthy visitors, are diagnosed almost right away and where perhaps the sanatorium is, itself, an infector. There are inter alia: crescendos and decrescendos, staccattos ( perhaps S and N lecturing HC), dolce, dolore and leitmotivs...with a dramatic ending. Boom!
Now the second time around was a different experience, where perhaps I flowed with the "music" less but studied and examined it more. Enchantment may dissipate upon such close scrutiny but in exchange, comes greater understanding...to ponder what things may or may not represent, etc.. Our discussion of the same has been most intriguing and illuminating. Thus each reading had its own virtues...the first perhaps a bit based upon emotion (akin to listening to music), the second more reason..aha! There is that dichotomy again!
I have seen Marlowe's Dr. Faustus at the Globe but have not read Goethe's Faust..but alas am somewhat familiar... like Don Quixote, and so many tales of questers...TM himself agreed that HC "is a searcher after the Holy Grail" (TM, "The Making of the Magic Mountain"). I have read that TM wished "Snow" to be at the end of the book but that would have made it a different book so kept it where it was.....but that is the chapter wherein HC divines great truths. TM writes what HC divines in the Snow chapter: " If he does not find the Grail, yet he divines it, in his deathly dream, before he is snatched downwards from his heights into the European catastrophe. It is the idea of the human being, the conception of a future humanity that has passed through and survived the profoundest knowledge of disease and death. The Grail is a mystery, but humanity is a mystery too. For man himself is a mystery, and all humanity rests upon reverence before the mystery that is man". (TM, "The Making of Magic Mountain"). I need to ponder this a bit.