The Thomas Mann Group discussion
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The Magic Mountain
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* Week 1 -- August 12 - 18. Read from Chapter 1, "Arrival" (Ankunft) p.3, until Chapter 3 "One Word too Many" p.81
I was also just reading in a book by Matthew Bruccoli about Fitzgerald's conception of Switzerland as "a resort country whose atmosphere drew the moral and physical invalids of the world," which I think Mann would agree with. The sanitarium is this bizarre mix of brutality (and DEATH) and pampering, extreme lassitude -- sort of like the island of the lotos-eaters, but with hospital corners.
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And a liminal space as well -- all those legends and fables using mountains as places of magic, where the normal rules are suspended.
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Yeah, and Mann r..."
Great comment here, Moira -- I especially love your ideas about Mann's deep sense of irony. And for him, the stakes (for Germany, Europe, the West) were so high when he was writing TMM that I think it must have brought out that tension re. his protagonists even more that usual.
Kris wrote: "And a liminal space as well -- all those legends and fables using mountains as places of magic, where the normal rules are suspended. "Oh, yes! Totally fairytale. I'm starting to think this is keyed to fairy tales the way DIV was keyed to myths, since they were originally paired....
Kris wrote: "I especially love your ideas about Mann's deep sense of irony.Imagine if DFW had ever read Mann, his bandana would have been blown right off his head --
And for him, the stakes (for Germany, Europe, the West) were so high when he was writing TMM that I think it must have brought out that tension re. his protagonists even more that usual. "
Oh, yeah, that kind of pre-War lassitude and moral blankness.
I also personally can't get over Hans drinking his porter (port?) in the morning, no wonder he's just sort of pleasantly buzzed and out of it all the time. (I can't even drink orange juice in the morning, for Godsakes. Anything other than coffee, NEIN.) Reminds me of my Hungarian immigrant grandfather who would toss down a shot of slivovitz every morning //full-body shudder
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You can read BB later on an look through the Threads, Moira, and also add new comments.
We plan to leave gaps of time between the novels.
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Good to be aware of this from the beginning. Thanks Kris.. Certainly certain themes or Leitmotivs seem to have been a life-long preocuppation of Mann, and that I can already tell after BB and DiV.
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Also agree, "Mittelmässig" for me means "average" which is a neutral word, while "mediocre" includes a negative value judgment.
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Both objects embodying tradition, heritage and family.
Moira, Kris, Kalli, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the "Mittelmässigkeit". I think you're right, Mann doesn't mean to use it in a negative or judgmental way. I'll subscribe to "average" as a description of Hans. It makes more sense to me now to look at it this way as it fits better with the description of Hans as a specimen of his generation.
Moira wrote: "I also personally can't get over Hans drinking his porter (port?) in the morning, no wonder he's just sort of pleasantly buzzed and out of it all the time. (I can't even drink orange juice in the m..."Porter is a strong (mostly dark) beer. So, still not your regular breakfast item, I guess. ;-)
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I had a question about that portion where Joachim talks about a 'Good Russian table' and a 'Bad Russian table' in the dining hall (pg 40). Is this Mann's idea of a Bourgeois-Proletariat joke?P.S.:- A big thank you to whoever edited the description. Someone had obviously written a review instead of a synopsis.
Kalliope wrote: "I think the custom of drinking some types of alcohol from early in the day was a great deal more widespread than it is now in the Western world. It was considered an invigorating drink, sort of eq..."You're quite right of course. Attitudes to alcohol have changed somewhat over the last 100 years. In most work places I know even a pint at lunch time is not acceptable now, where it used to be very common place only a few years ago.
I guess this makes it even more astounding that Joachim should have such a "modern" attitude towards smoking.
Btw, this has been on my mind since Diane mentioned yesterday that Joachim's conversation with Hans took place at a time when the damaging effects of smoking were not generally known.
(Also, I am on a business trip with colleagues at the moment in a place where people still smoke in bars. Even though the smoking ban is fairly recent in the UK, it just seems so unreal that this used to be commonplace (in the UK).)
To come back to the 'mittelmässigkeit' concept, I was beginning to see Hans as a kind of Everyman of his time until the bottom of page 36 when I thought Mann lifted him out of the general and gave him a very particular characteristic, more significant than loving a certain brand of cigarette or preferring butter which comes in little fluted shapes, his awareness that life contains a lot of ambiguity, that nothing can be proven to be exactly this or that. That characteristic reminded me of Christian from Buddenbooks and he could never be described as 'mediocre' or even 'average'. Hans also shares some characteristics with Tom Buddenbrook, his love of fine clothes, and with Hanno, the solemnity in the face of death, even noticing the smell associated with death as Hanno did, and the teeth of course,
Oh, and dark beers are rich in iron and used to be prescribed by doctors for invalids.
Kris wrote: "Ask and you shall receive -- discussion thread for Death in Venice: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... Have at it!"YESSSSS. OH THANK YOU.
Kalliope wrote: "I think the custom of drinking some types of alcohol from early in the day was a great deal more widespread than it is now in the Western world. It was considered an invigorating drink, sort of eq..."Oh yeah, totally -- hell, there are stories from Victorian lit of children working in the mills getting mugs of beer at a break, altho I think the stuff was pretty weak. I'm just so grumpy in the morning I can't imagine anything other than coffee, altho now I'm remembering Bach's coffee cantata where it's such a dangerous substance -- context is all!
Fionnuala wrote: "To come back to the 'mittelmässigkeit' concept, I was beginning to see Hans as a kind of Everyman of his time until the bottom of page 36 when I thought Mann lifted him out of the general and gave ..."I liked that too! altho per Mann, it has a kind of nasty sting: 'Hans Castorp loved music with all his heart, its effect being much like that of the porter he drank with his morning snack -- profoundly calming, numbing, and 'doze'-inducing -- and he listened now with pleasure, his head tilted to one side, moth open, eyes slightly bloodshot....' For a writer with such emphasis on dignity, he rarely lets characters have any (which I guess is the point. Hah).
But I think you're totally right it's a positive quality -- like his undeveloped artistic talent -- and I think it's the beginning of one of those leitmotivs (sp) Kris alerted us to, the power of music and its role in the novel. I thiink that's the very first time it's mentioned at all, too.
Oh, and dark beers are rich in iron and used to be prescribed by doctors for invalids.
//turns green I think my problem here is I've never liked beer, ever. -- I think Zelda Fitzgerald mentions in one of her letters being required to drink six glasses of whole milk in a sanitarium, which of course doesn't seem so odd to us today with dairy subsidies....
I was also struck with the idea of the prior generations listed on the baptismal bowl and parallels to the book in Buddenbrooks. Likewise the set up of the casket in the home, the overwhelming perfume of flowers which can't quite mask the smell of death.
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I liked that too! altho per Mann, it has a kind of nasty sting: 'Hans Castorp loved music with all his heart, its effect being much like that of the porter he drank with his morning snack -- profoundly calming, numbing, and 'doze'-inducing -- and he listened now with pleasure, his head tilted to one side, moth open, eyes slightly bloodshot....' For a writer with such emphasis on dignity, he rarely lets characters have any (which I guess is the point. Hah).
But I think you're totally right it's a positive quality -- like his undeveloped artistic talent -- and I think it's the beginning of one of those leitmotivs (sp) Kris alerted us to, the power of music and its role in the novel. I thiink that's the very first time it's mentioned at all, too.
That passage stood out to me too. I think it's a great idea to trace Hans' relationship with music throughout TMM, to see how it evolves.
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Agree, Sue, see my comment #112.
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P.S...."
Good question on what is meant by the two different Russian tables.. but I doubt one is the Proletarian. These Sanatoriums were very expensive and really only available for the wealthy.. Equivalent to living in a high class hotel for months..
I was taking it more as more or less refined and behaved... but other people may have other ideas.
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I was taking it more as more or less refined and behaved... but other people may have other ideas. "
I took it that way too, Kall and Samadrita. It seems like an extension of the contrast between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
Sue wrote: "Likewise the set up of the casket in the home, the overwhelming perfume of flowers which can't quite mask the smell of death."I admit I kinda lost it when I read about the fly crawling on the grandfather and the old tearful manservant batting it away but sort of absently like he didn't want to acknowledge why it was really there. UGH. (Almost as good as the casket being carried quietly out while everyone's at dinner....)
Moira wrote: "Sue wrote: "Likewise the set up of the casket in the home, the overwhelming perfume of flowers which can't quite mask the smell of death."I admit I kinda lost it when I read about the fly crawlin..."
The presence of death in the house is a matter-of-fact detail so unlike the present day. The detail of the fly was ....difficult to describe. But it certainly does confirm grandfather is dead, is no longer bothered by things of this world.
Sue wrote: "But it certainly does confirm grandfather is dead, is no longer bothered by things of this world. "Yeah, plus he's laid out in the dining-room. Augh.
Kalliope wrote: "Also agree, "Mittelmässig" for me means "average" which is a neutral word, while "mediocre" includes a negative value judgment. "Yes, for me too and going back to the foreword the narrator states that we will come to see Hans as being 'perfectly ordinary' which to me means that there are no stand out qualities -- neither good or bad. But even though he may be average it's still his individual experience although shared by others.
Ulrike wrote: "Anyways, given the different translation, my understanding of Mann's proposed notion is that the closer to a point of change the story is set, the more in the past the story seems to be."I agree and find that to be true. The more distant from the present and closer to the 'before' or the rift is what gives a story a folktale-ish feeling mainly because the narrator is more dependent on memory and maybe less so on fact.
I also get then sense of a folk tale mood from the very beginning...and a bit of a late night ghost story with a modern ironic twist---Hans is assigned a room with a bed where a young woman just died two days before...but it is OK, the room was thoroughly fumigated....
Hans is amused or bemused by Dr, Krokowski's "Seelenzergliederung" --- is that a dig at Freud's psychoanalysis?
Elena wrote: "Hans is amused or bemused by Dr, Krokowski's "Seelenzergliederung" --- is that a dig at Freud's psychoanalysis?"Is that "dissecting the psyche"? HA, that's hilarious. Some things about the translation are bothering me -- the "spiffing!" and "capital!" and so on. I wish I knew whether those were sort of based on the German, or if the translator's being weirdly archaic.
Moira wrote: "Elena wrote: "Hans is amused or bemused by Dr, Krokowski's "Seelenzergliederung" --- is that a dig at Freud's psychoanalysis?"Is that "dissecting the psyche"? HA, that's hilarious. Some things ab..."
To me "spiffing!" and "capital!" sound more British than anything. If I hear "capital!" I immediately think of Jane Austen and Dickens.
Do you have a location on where they are used?
Ulrike wrote: "Do you have a location on where they are used? "Here's a few places that struck me as really clumsy. I'm using the Vintage paperback edition:
Hans: "The hair and the nails keep on growing, and for that matter, in terms of the chemistry and physics, or so I've heard, it's a regular hustle and bustle there inside." p 69 (this all the moreso because Joachim goes on about how whacky a term "hustle and bustle" is)
"But then what he said about human dignity, afterwards, it sounded so spiffing, like formal oratory." p 62
"'Tweet!' she whistles at me -- what a harum-scarum! What absolute devil-may-care.'" p 50
"He had held the customs of his forefathers and their old institutions in far higher regard than any expansion of the harbor at breakneck speed or the godless tomfooleries of a great city" p 23
"'She calls it a stirletto -- isn't that capital!'" p 15
"'Yes, it's top-notch, your having come'" p 14
"'Fumingated, that's spiffing'" p 11
It's annoying to read people trashing Porter when I keep tripping over the OH I SAY OLD FELLOW HOW TOPPING word choices. They mainly seem to be used when Hans talks, and like "psychic dissection" I get the feeling the translator is trying to take something colloquially German and (badly) rendering it in equivalent English. Everyone sounds super-British, and it's super-annoying because this translation is supposed to be so up-to-date and fresh and elegant and pithy and non-archaic and whatever.
(and this should probably go in the translations thread, apologies, mods!)
(also I'm not trying to do the line-by-line comparisons between different translations and the original I enjoyed doing with DiV, because I think attempting that with MM would probably kill me, and if that didn't, my GoodReads flist would)
Yeah, I'm reading the Vintage edition too and agree that Han's manner of speech sometimes sounds stilted but I thought that maybe he was just putting on airs. It really only stands out in the dialogue and not the narrative so perhaps characterization...
Kalliope wrote: "Samadrita wrote: "I had a question about that portion where Joachim talks about a 'Good Russian table' and a 'Bad Russian table' in the dining hall (pg 40). Is this Mann's idea of a Bourgeois-Prole..."Thank you much for the clarifications, Kall and Kris. The contrast between Apollonian and Dionysian seems reasonable in this instance. I guess I'll have to take Mann's sayings literally sometimes.
Mikki wrote: "Yeah, I'm reading the Vintage edition too and agree that Han's manner of speech sometimes sounds stilted but I thought that maybe he was just putting on airs. It really only stands out in the dialo..."Yeah, maybe it's Woods' way of trying to replicate his Hamburg origins, or something. I just find it annoying because it keeps pushing me out of the story.
Moira wrote: "Ulrike wrote: "Do you have a location on where they are used? "Here's a few places that struck me as really clumsy. I'm using the Vintage paperback edition:
Hans: "The hair and the nails keep o..."
Oh, I see! This is the Woods edition you are talking about? I was reading the Porter Lowe translation, which uses similar slang, and assumed it is just a symptom of the fact that Porter-Lowe lived in Oxford (though American-born) and that the book was translated in 1927? I do suspect people spoke that way then, especially the upper classes, and this is perhaps to try and render in English what would have been the slang used by their German equivalents?
But yeah, one would have expected the Woods edition to perhaps sound a bit more ... but then, on the other hand, how does one translate the slang of another language, it must be hard. I suppose more direct translation could be attempted, but would that have worked? Not sure.
Traveller wrote: "Oh, I see! This is the Woods edition you are talking about?YEAH
I do suspect people spoke that way then, especially the upper classes, and this is perhaps to try and render in English what would have been the slang used by their German equivalents?
That's what I was thinking, but....it seems really off in this new translation, especially one that's been praised for being much more up-to-date, supposedly, than good old Helen's.
But yeah, one would have expected the Woods edition to perhaps sound a bit more ... but then, on the other hand, how does one translate the slang of another language, it must be hard. I suppose more direct translation could be attempted, but would that have worked? Not sure. "
Yeah, it's difficult, I'm just grumpy because I have a translation from 1995 and it's got "Twiddle-twaddle!" in it (and that's a nurse, not Hans). Surely, surely, there must have been some better twentieth-century English equivalent of whatever that was.
also 'hustle and bustle' made A RETURN APPEARANCE, man, I was not happy. I'm guessing it's some kind of German rhyming phrase -- maybe like 'tohu-vohu' in Hebrew? But hustle and bustle?
If these phrases were updated to our time, wouldn't it somehow change the essence of the person that is being described? Is there really comparable modern slang? For me this slang conjures up a time and place even if it is a bit awkward to read.
Sue wrote: "If these phrases were updated to our time, wouldn't it somehow change the essence of the person that is being described? Is there really comparable modern slang? For me this slang conjures up a tim..."Sue -- you hit upon one of the perennial challenges of translation. Let enough time pass, and it can happen even within a language -- consider Beowulf, Chaucer, even Shakespeare. You touch on one of the reasons some prefer Victorian translations of some of the great Russian novels, regardless of more faithfulness to the original in other aspects, especially by P&V.
Sue wrote: "...The presence of death in the house is a matter-of-fact detail so unlike the present day. The detail of the fly was ....difficult to describe. But it certainly does confirm grandfather is dead, is no longer bothered by things of this world...."This section of MM reminds me of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych -- and probably writing by at least one Irish author (Joyce?...) for which the specifics would take searching. I am old enough and come from a part of the country such that I recall one funeral as a young girl where the coffin was in the home. It is one of those memories readily retrievable these many years later. I suspect fewer and fewer will have such and passages like these will become the reminder of those practices.
Kalliope wrote: "Kris wrote: "I think you're right about that, Moira. Mediocre seems just a tad bit too negative in this context. I think the median is closer to how Hans comes across to me, too."Also agree, "Mit..."
This conversation on "mediocre", which bothered me too on my original reading of MM, led me to ask what words Mann himself used when he spoke in English about his Hans Castorp. The afterward or "Making of MM," basically delivered in a speech at Princeton, speaks of "simple minded hero":
"Death in Venice portrays the fascination of the death idea, the triumph of drunken disorder over the forces of a life consecrated to rule and discipline. In The Magic Mountain the same theme was to be humorously treated. There was to be a simple-minded hero, in conflict between bourgeois decorum and macabre adventure." (Note the Dionysian versus Apollonian leitmotivs -- by the way, I hope readers will continue to identify what they consider to be leitmotivs -- I didn't necessary recognize them.)
"You will remember that my Hans is really a simple-minded hero, the young scion of good Hamburg society, and an indifferent engineer."
"...The Quester of the Grail legend, at the beginning of his wanderings, is often called a fool, a great fool, a guileless fool. That corresponds to the naïveté and simplicity of my hero. It is as though a dim awareness of the traditional had made me insist on this quality of his...."
'Yes, certainly the German reader recognized himself in the simple-minded but shrewd young hero of the novel."
For more, see p486ff here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/31583019/Th... (Warning: some consider spoilers to exist in this speech.)
So is the narrator using the royal 'we', or is he trying to include the reader in his assessment of Hans? On pages 49-51 in my edition, when Hans is being described as Mr Normal For His Time and Class, then the narrator uses 'we' ".. wir darauf denken, alles zu sagen, was für ihn einnehmen könnte, aber wir beurteilen ihn ohne Überschwang..."
"Wir haben hier nicht nur von des jungen Mannes innerem Verhalten während seiner Schulzeit, sondern auch von den daraufflogenden Jahren gesprochen..."
Sounds like he's making himself more important - a whole committee of narrators who have decided on this line, not just one opinion.
Note: given reading the novel in English translation, one of the details that largely escaped me is that Hans's train reading (and seemingly remaining his primary TBR throughout his stay), Ocean Steamships, has an English title, i.e., was published in English. Elsewhere, I have run into related statements which I have not verified, such as that Britain had the superior ship/naval technology at that time (prior to WWI) and that militarily and economically Germany saw need to grow its sea-going capabilities.
More sevens: Settembrini - Tada!And the mercury cigar has to stay in the mouth for SEVEN minutes, precisely. Why? Two or three minutes is enough to get a reading.
I'm thinking too that it's maybe significant that Joachim is a military man, at least we do get reminded of it often enough. As a foil to Hans, who's more of a softy. Joachim had studied law for a while to please his family, but the urge to become a soldier was irresistible. Behrens emphasises his warrior qualities (Myrmidon), but contrasts them with the talent for being sick, which must therefore be a kind of surrender.
Are we seeing the beginnings of this surrender with Hans? He has to ape the routine of the sick - I'm reminded of a quote of Kurt Vonnegut's - we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Magic Mountain (other topics)The Death of Ivan Ilych (other topics)
The Great Illusion (other topics)
The World of Yesterday (other topics)
Yeah, and Mann really is sort of teasing about it -- I won't call him mediocre! I'll just heavily imply that he is! -- well no, maybe he isn't! -- but then he says, for Hans, work is something that stands in the way of his nice cigar -- his little bodily indulgences (which for Mann, is pretty judgmental). I think at least part of it is Mann is condemning his society, the nice, comfortable, established bourgeois/well-off people (and he loved being part of that: there were stories about the Manns' servants holding their fur coats in the theatre lobbies for them, before the war). So he's needling them, saying -- here's this representative of your society, and he's a nice enough guy, but basically a silly thoughtless fop. Hans is sort of amoral, rather than anything immoral -- a blank page. AN UNDEVELOPED X-RAY, IF YOU WILL.
I think personally Mann's sense of irony is so deep that he's always for and against his own protagonists -- that was fully on show in Death in Venice (which I can't shut up about!), where he made you feel terrible sympathy for Gustav and yet showed him as this completely pathetic lost creature, even disgusting, grotesque, absurd. (But he rescued him at the last minute. By finishing him off. Very Thomas.)
I still like Joachim better. But probably only because Joachim has been stuck there six months and is already sick, and I wasn't dragged through a long story about his baptismal bowl.