The Thomas Mann Group discussion
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The Magic Mountain
TMM Discussion Threads
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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
Elena wrote: "I think it's great that you are reviving the discussion....I'd say the past in question is not pre World War I so much as prior to the Prussian takeover of culture that began in 1870 and was pretty..."Thank you Elena! The reason that I thought it might be WWI is because the narrator in the introduction references a military event referred to as "the great war" ("die Welt vor dem grossen Kriege"). I thought it was reasonable to assume that this must be WWI, especially from the point of view of Mann himself, who started the novel before commencement of the conflict and finished it after it ended.
From the intro, I would not be surprised if the story was set in the 7 years leading up to WWI, but I dont want to spoil it for me and jump ahead. Still, in the introduction the narrator mentions the concept of "time", which is then further developed in the novel, and says that the property of a story as being in the past is heightened by how close to an insurmountable temporal barrier it is set. Would be great if the story ended just with the breakout of WWI, as that would neatly explain the points made in the introduction.
That notwithstanding, your point is of course valid. The foundation of the Reich in 1871 is clearly another incisive moment in time that changed geo-political dynamics fundamentally.
Mark, you are obviously psychic...and that's all I have to say about that.And: (spoiler alert--kind of) far, far on in the novel, a character you possibly have not yet met, Naptha, says of the age they live in: "What our age needs, what it demands, what it will create for itself, is--terror."
And on that chilling note...
Elizabeth - looks to me as if I was right... :-) Well, the title of the last chapter is a clue, so I guess I had a very moderate sneak preview. What Naptha said reminds me of something Mann said in an essay once, where he talks about ennoblement through war. I think I love him as a writer, but dont like him much as a person... :-)
Mark Hebwood wrote: "Elizabeth - looks to me as if I was right... :-) Well, the title of the last chapter is a clue, so I guess I had a very moderate sneak preview. What Naptha said reminds me of something Mann said in..."Why not?
Mark Hebwood wrote: "What Naptha said reminds me of something Mann said in an essay once, where he talks about ennoblement through war. I think I love him as a writer, but dont like him much as a person..."Can you remember the essay title? I ask because, although Mann supported the Kaiser Wilhelm II during WWI, he changed his political views and became a strong supporter of the Weimar Republic towards, opposed the rise of national socialism and made important anti-nazi speeches before and during WWII.
After reading his biography (by Klaus Schröter), I could not find good evidence of him being a dislikable person, at least based on political or ideological grounds. That is why I was intrigued by your commentary.
Joao wrote: "Mark Hebwood wrote: "What Naptha said reminds me of something Mann said in an essay once, where he talks about ennoblement through war. I think I love him as a writer, but dont like him much as a p..."Joao, thank you for your comment. As a general caveat, I bow to deeper knowledge of Thomas Mann as a person that others may have. I have only just started to discover him as a writer and certainly have no claim on any in-depth knowledge of Thomas Mann the person.
My comment also does not represent a final verdict, more a suspicion that I may not like him as a person. I believe the idea of war as ennoblement was expressed in an essay on war, it may have been "Gedanken zum Kriege", or perhaps in the long study "Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen". In these documents, Thomas Mann appears to support WW1 with an anti-bourgeois sentiment that views mercantile society as intellectually shallow. Later, however, he supported the Weimar Republic, in what seems to be a U-turn from the principles he laid down in the "Betrachtungen". Of course, people can change their mind... but the two positions appear irreconcilable, and I wonder whether his support of the Republic was honestly felt.
Still, a wide field, and certainly one which I would have to research in more depth before I can say that I have a solid justification for a personal view on Thomas Mann...
Joao wrote: "Mark Hebwood wrote: "What Naptha said reminds me of something Mann said in an essay once, where he talks about ennoblement through war. I think I love him as a writer, but dont like him much as a p..."..Duh...of course, the title. And it made me think of something else: Hans Castorp's idea of sickness ennobling a person...and how certain patients at the Hofrat erode that belief.
yes, "ennoblement through sickness" has certainly been a theme so far. I guess the idea is that a person might attain psychological strength through suffering, and the same idea would support Mann's statement of ennoblement in war (if I could pinpoint the source). I must say, though, that I find the concept decidedly odd. Maybe there is an even wider concept here that a person may grow by living through difficult life stages, something that is part of the Stoic philosophy and also reflected in the Christian idea that God is testing people. I would need to research in a bit more depth whether this idea lived more prominently in 19th century thought than it does today.
"If the medicine is bitter you know it's good for you." "Suffering builds character." "It has to be the best, it costs the most." All of the above courtesy of our Puritan ancestors. On the opposite side is Elie Wiesel who says "Suffering gives one no prerogatives, except the duty to end suffering."
I think Mann, his essay on war notwithstanding, is making
the point that suffering and sickness do not improve a person's character at all. Look at the various characters in TMM: drunks, fools, nitwits, adulterers, all riddled with a consuming vanity.
In this regard, it may be worth remembering that the portion written before the war, which I believe is the first part of the book, was originally intended to be a a revisiting of Death in Venice in comic form. I don't know how much Mann rewrote the early chapters but I've always taken them to be intended to be satiric and ironic.
BTW, I recently reread TMM and wish I had had all of your thoughts at the time I was reading it. I'm really enjoying the discussion here.
James wrote: "BTW, I recently reread TMM and wish I had had all of your thoughts at the time I was reading it. I'm really enjoying the discussion here."Read it again! C.S.Lewis says that no one can consider himself a reader if he only reads a work once, and I totally agree. I've read TMM many times and it always repays!
Yikes! It looks like I'll have to read Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen at some point. In Buddenbrooks Mann knew something was amiss. From what I've heard about Betrachtungen, he was initially in favor of Germany's involvement in World War I, like many authors, and in disagreement with his leftist brother. By the time he finished Magic Mountain, Hans Castorp's probable fate in military action is heartbreaking, certainly nothing to celebrate. Later Mann's opposition to Hitler was loud and clear, and in Dr. Faustus he looks for the roots of this Unheil. As a deeply conservative and patriotic German, his opposition to Hitler carried a lot of conviction. No knee jerk reaction here. He was persuasive in his lecture tours to places most German intellectuals wouldn't go, like Tulsa. He worked hard to get an audience with Roosevelt to lobby for American entry into the war against Hitler. What surprises me is the American backlash against Mann after the war from the McCarthy crowd. It was every bit as vicious as the attacks on Brecht and other leftists. Maybe more so. Intellectuals like Sidney Hook trashed him. Maybe Mann's so-called unpolitical conservatism was more radical. An "unpolitical" writer sometimes sees things others miss.
Elizabeth wrote: "James wrote: "BTW, I recently reread TMM and wish I had had all of your thoughts at the time I was reading it. I'm really enjoying the discussion here."Read it again! C.S.Lewis says that no one ca..."
If CS Lewis is right, I havent read a single book. Very depressing.. :-)
From what I've heard about Betrachtungen, he was initially in favor of Germany's involvement in World War I... He was indeed, and his view was imbued with an odd pathos, something that I would call Wagnerian grandeur. Also later, he may have been a vociferous critic of National Socialism, but I detect a similar romantic tinge in his view of Adolf Hitler himself. In his essay Bruder Hitler, he seems to have viewed Hitler as a "failed artist". Well - Mann's views appear to have been quite complex, multi-layered, and (at least seemingly so) contradictory. Still, as I said, I am just discovering Mann as a writer and person. I am certainly no expert, but I must admit I am confused.
Oh, no! Now I have to read Bruder Hitler! Been avoiding that... I do think TM's inner contradictions actually helped him connect with a vastly larger audience than his more consistently left-wing brother. I suspect TM indirectly helped Germany rebuilt its identity after the WWII. Experts (Ian Buruma) say there is no Japanese equivalent to Dr. Faustus to explore the startling inner contractions of their culture. The US has no Dr. Faustus to explore the contradictions still festering from the Civil War era. Anyway, you've sent me back to the library....that's always a good thing...
Mark Hebwood wrote: "As a general caveat, I bow to deeper knowledge of Thomas Mann as a person that others may have. I have only just started to discover him as a writer and certainly have no claim on any in-depth knowledge of Thomas Mann the person.My comment also does not represent a final verdict, more a suspicion that I may not like him as a person."
Mark, I was not trying to refute your opinion and mine was not a rhetorical question. I certainly am not an expert on TM, just an interested reader and admirer of his works. That is why I would like to understand better is ideas.
My actual standing point, based on what I have read so far, is the same as the one expressed in message 264, by Elena. But there still are many essays by TM that I have not read and the problem is quite intricate. I am, however, taking important clues from the discussion.
Elizabeth wrote: "James wrote: "BTW, I recently reread TMM and wish I had had all of your thoughts at the time I was reading it. I'm really enjoying the discussion here."Read it again! C.S.Lewis says that no one can consider himself a reader if he only reads a work once, and I totally agree. I've read TMM many times and it always repays!"
At some time, TM was asked to give some advice on how to read MM. He addressed the issue in one conference, I think, in Princeton:
“I believe that the peculiar construction of the book, it’s composition, results in heightened and deepened pleasure for the reader if he goes through it a second time – just as one must be acquainted with a piece of music to enjoy it properly. Musical composition – I have already mentioned in connection with earlier works that the novel has always been for me a symphony, a work of counterpoint – a thematic fabric in which ideas play the part of musical motifs. This technique is applied to The Magic Mountain in the most complex and all-pervasive way. On that account you have my presumptuous suggestion to read it twice. Only then can one penetrate the associational musical complex of ideas. When the reader knows his thematic material, then he is in a position to interpret the symbolic and allusive formulae both forwards and backwards”.
Thanks for the wonderful quote! It's not presumptuous, just factual...the book is complicated...I read TMM first in my 20s, then later in my 60s....it was two different books as they say...the leitmotif effects and counterpoint were much more obvious in the second much slower reading...What amazes me is the huge response to such a complex book when it first came out, hundreds of thousands of readers, and it's continuing resonance many years and several wars later...that is shelf life...
My recent read was my second as well and it was because Mann had said that it had to be read twice. Having done so I can say he was absolutely right. First time I loved it as a book of ideas. Second time it became one of my very favorite books.
The analogy to music is totally apt. Remember a song, a pop song maybe, that you love...don't you enjoy hearing it again? The ability to endure repetition is the key to the question: What is Art?
Elena wrote: "Oh, no! Now I have to read Bruder Hitler! Been avoiding that... I do think TM's inner contradictions actually helped him connect with a vastly larger audience than his more consistently left-wing b...":-) Bruder Hitler is only 10 pages long or so. An easy read.
I must say I am struggling with the book so far. I am perhaps a third of a way in and I still dont know what I am reading, what the novel is, or wants to be. So far, I can say this: - I love Mann's prose. I find it delightful to inhabit his fictional worlds, in this case the sanatorium for respiratory disease in Davos.
- But I don't know why I am inhabiting it. People say this is a novel of ideas. But I still have to encounter a single idea that feels worth thinking about. The story is set (as Elizabeth helped me to confirm) 7 years before WWI. Basically, this is still the 19th century in terms of its traditions in history, philosophy, and politics. So I would expect a discussion of socialism, colonialism and the nation state in politics, of utilitarianism and existentialism in philosophy, of the tension between Darwin's theory of evolution and religion. But I am not getting any of that. What I am getting is a discussion about the psychological nature of sickness. So far, that seems to be the only thought that might pass as an idea, abstruse though it is (or seems to me, at least)
- Of course, it might be satire. The senselessness of the medical procedures that appear to exhaust themselves in lying down on a deckchair in rain or sunshine, the obsession with measuring the patient's temperature without ever allowing the results to customise a medical treatment to a patient, the clinic's boisterous head who appears to do nothing but dispense jovial advice to eat well while his patients either die or get well, entirely independently of the medical "care" administered, the perception of the medical staff that it is somehow an achievement to be sick, and a shortcoming not to be... All these points mesh together to give the story an overall absurd feel, and yet, they are so subtle that it takes a long time for them to assert themselves in the mind of the (this) reader.
- the nature of time is clearly a theme in the novel. The narrator starts this off in the introduction, and after the first three weeks of narrated time explicitly comments on the relationship between narrated time and narrative time. Mann skillfully controls the flow of both, and the speed of the story is actually controlled by the change in the relationship between the two components. Just this morning I drew a chart, in which I plotted what I call "narrated speed" - this is number of narrated events divided by narrated time - on the y-axis and what I call "time adjustment" - this is the quotient of narrated time and narrative time and hence a measure of narrative time dilation and contraction - on the x-axis. The result is very interesting, and I am sure the narrator of the story must have done something similar him- or herself. But while I had fun doing this, and thinking about the relationship of these components in a novel, again I am left in a rather bemused state. What is the point of going on and on about the psychological feel of time? Unless, of course, it is the length of the treatment itself, and its apparent lack of correlation with medical improvement, which is in focus. That would again be a satirical point, and perhaps explain why the boss of the actual sanatorium in which Thomas Mann was a guest visiting his wife, tried to sue Mann after reading Magic Mountain.
I think I might read MM as a subtle satire until I may have reason to think otherwise...
Very interesting discussion. I'll have to catch up on this. Hi, Kal!
Time? Yes. As the train is taking Hans Castorp up, up, up...it is also taking him out..out...out of normal time. Time goes (at least to Herr Settimbrini) at a terrifyingly quick pace at the sanatorium. Re sanatorium; at that time there were no antibiotics in existence; complete rest and overfeeding was the ONLY treatment for tuberculosis. But you're right; the Hofrat doesn't do jack...
Also: there is a kind of microcosmic Europe there. I mean: is there a "Bad German" or "Bad French" or "Bad English" table? Of course not. When Settimbrini refers contemptuously to "Parthians and Scythians"--he means Russkies.
Mark, don't get discouraged, I certainly found MM much more challenging than BB...Settembrini drove me nuts, but I think he's based on Heinrich, who drove Thomas nuts...there are small pleasures to savor like the Baumkuchen that Naphta lovingly serves up, the snowstorm is terrifying, the waterfall is wonderful...and the satire as you say rewards patience... no editor of course would permit such writing today, and yet the old copies I buy give the "tirage" as hundreds of thousands of copies sold in hundreds of editions....
Elena wrote: "Mark, don't get discouraged, I certainly found MM much more challenging than BB...Settembrini drove me nuts, but I think he's based on Heinrich, who drove Thomas nuts...there are small pleasures to..."Elena, dont get me wrong, I am not getting discouraged - I love reading it. It is just that I dont know what I am reading, and what the point of the book is. I am guessing it is a satirical take on the practices of healing lung disease, and the social dynamics that develop in a secluded sanatorium.
But, dare I say it, so far it strikes me as lacking the philosophical depth that people are ascribing to it. I dont think it is a novel of ideas - there are no ideas!
And also, and I know I am about to commit sacrilege, I think Thomas made a few mistakes. There is a scene where Castorp is on his balcony and looks down into the garden from the first floor. He sees a woman dressed in black, with her face covered ("Tous les deux") and yet the narrator says that Castorp was able to see a furrow on her forehead. There are two other incidents like this, and one where he just saved himself (or perhaps the editor). That feels sloppy, and I must say I was shocked to find these little errors in the writing of a literary giant of Mann's standing.
Just a few things, Elena, because you shared your specific thoughts: I love Settembrini, but I know exactly why he drove you bonkers. But you know, I love the characters he developed. Settembrini, Castorp's relationship with Chauchat, the Hofrat. Actually, I could do with a few more - many of the others remain only sketched out so far.
What I was meaning to ask you - you are buying old copies of the book? Delightful! Are you a collector? Do you have a first edition?
I sometimes buy old copies, there are lots circulating for cheap in Germany. Not pricey first editions, wish I could afford..Just to think people read MM in Fraktur....often interesting ads and announcements, also bookplates, and underlinings...and just a certain aura that people held and read these very volumes in times even more difficult than ours...my favorite is Manolescu's Fuerst der Diebe, said to be the model for TM's Felix Krull. My copy has a small fine embossed coat of arms, probably the reader's, like a real Fuerst...you now regret asking! I could go on....
I do not regret anything... I love books, and if I had time enough to learn about the topic of book collecting, I could be tempted... I also thought about binding my favourite books in a leather of my choice, with a logo of my design. But in the end, I just ended up buying paperbacks. :-)
Elizabeth wrote: "Time? Yes. As the train is taking Hans Castorp up, up, up...it is also taking him out..out...out of normal time. Time goes (at least to Herr Settimbrini) at a terrifyingly quick pace at the sanator..."Elizabeth, thanks for your point on the absence of antibiotics. I did not mean to imply that the treatment was somehow lacking in quality or failing against a benchmark available elsewhere. But the way in which the narrator describes the proceedings has something distinctly satirical about it. Patients are described as lying outside in the cold, even in the rain. Yes, they are wrapped up tight, maybe, but simple common sense would dictate that it is not a good thing to lie around and breathe in cold wet air if you have a respiratory disease.
The narrator suggests that the doctors in Davos have a theory that the air stays dry, even in the rain, and this discussion feels absurd and establishes the satirical feel of the scene.
Still, even common sense cannot have been developed much, as the doctors have no issue allowing Hans Castorp to smoke tonnes of cigars while he is in their care (around 3 a day, actually, you can estimate that from information given in the text). Perhaps that is another satirical point, or perhaps medical awareness at the time really did lack common sense. Did it not strike anybody on the medical staff as odd that the only treatment was seen to be exposure to clean air, and despite that patients were allowed to expose their lungs to an agent that was obviously NOT clean air (cigar smoke) even though an awareness of the health threats of smoking was not yet developed at the time?
Scenes like these are the reason why I think this is first and foremost a satirical novel, a lighthearted take on the social and medical dynamics in the sanatoriums of the day. Literary critics have suggested that the novel is a parody of the German Bildungsroman, and so far it indeed feels like that. But I have so far not found any evidence that it is a novel of ideas, as other critics have suggested.
Re smoking. People had no idea, no idea in this world. None at all, odd as that may seem. A contemporary reader of Mann wouldn't have blinked at it. Example: I had an elderly neighbor who suffered dreadfully from asthma. In his youth, the dr. prescribed "medicated cigarettes." Medicated with God knows what, but cigarettes all the same. For asthma. Cigarettes. Also lack of common sense seems to be a thread that goes through the entire novel...
I agree with you completely. My take is that Mann was having a lot of fun with the pseudo-science along with the pseudo-philosophy in MM. He was an Autodidakt, never took his Abitur, and probably was annoyed by pompous doctors. Think of the revenge he took on dentists in BB. The spa culture was full of pseudo-medicine, somehow the waters made you well. And the TB hospitals had some of that weird science about pure air, also lower air pressure at high altitudes somehow being gentler on the lungs. A lot of people just wanted an excuse for an easy escape in a beautiful place with lots of required rest, lots of good food, and lots of company away from the cares and commitments of the flatlands...I'm sure he saw through his wife Katya's doctors...as to the great ideas, there's the scene where Pieperkorn makes a grand speech that no one can hear because of the roar from the waterfall, but it doesn't matter because he never makes any sense anyway...Mann is having fun...
The hypocrisy of doctors and smoking is a big topic! The UCSF medical archives have a website just on this. People, not just doctors, knew on some level that smoking was "a dirty habit," but they rationalized that knowledge away. Mann was fascinated by such contorted thinking...I believe he himself was addicted to tobacco and eventually had lung surgery (I'll look that up)... with the passages on smoking it's not clear to me how much is deliberate satire and how much is just a seismographic reading of the times...
Thank you guys, for your excellent responses. To me, the difficulty in deciding to which extent the novel is satirical is this: I would need to know what might have struck a contemporary as absurd, and disregard the medical knowledge we have today. Elena, you are making some excellent points about medical attitudes of the time, and yes, some of it sounds silly today, but did it sound silly then? Only those attitudes that did would have been possible targets for satire. For example, we know now that smoking is lethal in the long run, and as Elizabeth pointed out, nobody had any idea back then. But would it have looked odd to a contemporary that patients in a lung critic were allowed to smoke (even though it was regarded as a harmless habit)? If so, Mann may have had a go at the spa-culture of his day through his narrator, if not, this aspect may only seem satirical to us. I have a feeling he is taking the mickey at least a bit, though, when his narrator says that Hans Castorp ordered 500 cigars to keep going, having smoked 300 in the 7 weeks leading up to that point in the novel. 800? Seriously? That's 3 a day!
Elena, your point on doctors is well made, I think. When I read your post, I remembered the family doctor of the Buddenbrooks, whose only remedy against any sort of illness was a few slices of rich bread and a drink (I forgot the specifics).
And finally, when I question that it is a novel of ideas, as some have claimed, I am thinking of philosophical novels such as Candide. It is certainly not that. Big ideas, such as they are, are either delivered with great pomp and gusto by Settembrini, or get quickly lost in Castorp's muddled thinking. I havent met Pieperkorn yet - looking forward to it!
Mynheer Peeperkorn is a trip, Mark. Wait and see...Cigarettes. No, nobody got it, it seems. Watching the classic movie channel, those old blackandwhites, EVERYBODY is smoking, and I mean everybody. How many times do the characters pause for effect, and light one up?
Just thought of one reason why. My mom, an RN, once remarked that "internal medicine was a closed door until the (19)60s." That was when CT/CAT scans were beginning to be developed. In her 80s, she had ultrasound for gallstones, and was delighted! "There were my insides, right on television!" And then sighed..."If we'd only had something like that." You see, you really cannot tell a lot from an X-ray. So maybe that is a partial explanation of the blindness to the link...
ha - yes. By the way, I am not surprised HC developed a lung disease. I got my calculation wrong (dont know why, it's not exactly difficult), but if he smoked 300 cigars in 7 weeks, he must have smoked up to 6 a day. SIX! Blimey. HC must have been a walking chimney and basically smoke whenever he was not eating. :-)
Jeffrey Meyers: "The postwar period brought a series of crises and deaths. In April 1946, while completing Doctor Faustus, Mann miraculously survived a life-threatening lung cancer operation in Chicago, which tested his characteristic “sympathy with death.” Like the patients he’d described in The Magic Mountain, he had a pneumothorax procedure and, after a rib and two-thirds of his lung were removed, joined the Half-Lung Club. He was allowed to smoke after he recovered and (like Hans Castorp) soon resumed his daily quota of cigars." Another biographer says TM smoked 12 cigarettes and 2 cigars a day.
Elizabeth wrote: "Mynheer Peeperkorn is a trip, Mark. Wait and see...Cigarettes. No, nobody got it, it seems. Watching the classic movie channel, those old blackandwhites, EVERYBODY is smoking, and I mean everybod...""Lung cancer was once a very rare disease, so rare that doctors took special notice when confronted with a case, thinking it a once-in-a-lifetime oddity. Mechanisation and mass marketing towards the end of the 19th century popularised the cigarette habit, however, causing a global lung cancer epidemic. Cigarettes were recognised as the cause of the epidemic in the 1940s and 1950s, with the confluence of studies from epidemiology, animal experiments, cellular pathology and chemical analytics. Cigarette manufacturers disputed this evidence, as part of an orchestrated conspiracy to salvage cigarette sales. Propagandising the public proved successful, judging from secret tobacco industry measurements of the impact of denialist propaganda. As late as 1960 only one-third of all US doctors believed that the case against cigarettes had been established"
I checked the biographies, and TM smoked 12 cigarettes and 2 cigars a day. He had lung cancer surgery during his US exile and half his lung was removed, rather like TB surgery in MM. The link between tobacco and lung cancer was scientifically demonstrated by the 1940s, but self-delusion and heavy industry propaganda obfuscated the link and many doctors did not acknowledge the connection until the lawsuits in the 1990s opened the tobacco company archives.
Hugely interesting, Elena. Thanks for these quotes. Somehow I never thought about the history of smoking in the West - I sort of assumed it had always been going on. My point on HC has another angle, however. The narrator did not portray him as constantly smoking, which he must have been on ~ 6 cigars a day. Sure, we know that he loved his Maria Mancini cigars, and often we hear that he smoked one while walking, or sitting chatting with his cousin.
I find Mann's prose highly evocative. After a few paragraphs, if I am in the right mood and nobody disturbs me, the words almost disappear and I am transported into the moment of the fiction. And my "feel" of HC is that he is a dedicated smoker, but not an addicted one. Indeed I would have thought about 2 a day, pretty much like I now know Thomas Mann did himself.
So Mann's numbers feel wrong, and that is a little inconsistency that grates a bit. It is not the only time that he gets something slightly wrong, if you all forgive me the impudence to say so. In a writer of lesser standing, these small "errors", if that is what they are, would not show up as much of an issue. But in MM, these little things stand out for me. Not that it matters much - I am just surprised.
TM's pretty accurate compared with Tolstoy who has a 12 month pregnancy in War and Peace...
Ha ha really? I didn't know he was compared with Tolstoy in this way. Nor that Tolstoy slipped up like that. Funny. :-)It also reminded me that W+P is on my reading list for this year. Oh dear. This is the year of the hefty tomes for me...
Elena...you noticed! So few people ever have! Yes, the "little princess" is described as being in an "interesting condition" in July, 1805...since she is dressed Empire style, it's hard to tell if there's a baby bump..but she's got to be at least 3 months, right? and her child is born (with suitable drama) 8 or 9 months after that. I'd go look it up except we're having new carpet put down & many of my books are boxed up, God knows where...You'd think a writer who engendered 13 children would be more accurate re pregnancy...
Also...in the first few pages of the novel, old Prince Bolkonsky is called "Count."
Many of them do it; in Act I of "Othello" Iago describes Cassio as having a wife; but for the rest of the play he seems to be single.
On to ciggies. Mark, you're right; the tobacco industry had (and has to this day) an incredibly powerful lobby in Washington. However: I live in a legendary tobacco state; when I drive to the next county to visit cousins, where vast tobacco fields were on both sides of the highway, it's now: organic veggies; horse farms; orchards, etc. A good sign...
Is anyone ready to talk about Naptha yet? And is it Settimbrini, or perhaps Mann himself, who seems bigotedly ignorant about the Church? One gets the feeling Mann was raised in a Protestant and very anti-Catholic home.
Ha ha - excellent timing. I just met the "man", so to speak, and just sat in on a conversation between him and Settembrini. Presumably this is the first time in the novel that I witnessed an intellectual exchange that had some depth. Interestingly, this serves to highlight Hans Castorp's characterisation as somebody who is averagely intelligent, but aspires to an intellectual depth that is beyond him. At one point, Settembrini slaps him down when he offers an "opinion" and tells him to educate himself by listening, but not by contributing. As to the issues in question, I am neutral - it is a work of literature, not philosophy, so the clash between Naphta's Christian communism and S's republican liberalism has a function in the fabric of the story, but not beyond. Interestingly, the conversations between Naphta and S are the first glimpses of what's going on in the outside world. My guess is these chats will increase in frequency as we are hurtling towards the onset of WW1, and the end of our monastic existence in the sanatorium.
Hans C. Overachievers always like to hang out with people smarter than they are...I like your description of N's and S's philosophies.
:-) thanks, Elizabeth. I do not think HC is portrayed as an overachiever though. The very second word in the novel proper is "plain": "Ein einfacher junger Mensch... / A plain young man" (my emphasis; my translation). This expression re-occurs at least once, in the context of HC reading manically about medicine: "... die Lider waren ihm ueber die einfachen blauen Augen gefallen / his plain blue eyes fell shut..." (my translation). He also never seems to understand anything he reads, but starts using technical expressions he encountered, or parrots phrases he heard from Settembrini. Early on, he is described to have failed his exams a few times.So we have a guy here who doesn't like the exertion of work very much, and yet he is no brilliant intellect so would need to work hard to achieve something in life. All the easier does he give in to the invitation of the Hofrat to stay in the sanatorium, and use his illness - real or imagined - as an excuse to idle his life away. Still, he is sufficiently educated to like the lifestyle of a gentleman, and just intelligent enough to aspire to intellectual depth. Hence, he seeks to contribute to conversations with S as his equal, but the points he makes come over like those a precocious child would make who's allowed to sit at the table with the adults. When he declares his love to Mme Chauchat, in one of the most brilliant scenes I have encountered so far, his monologue is farcical in its convoluted ramblings and pseudo-philosophical depth.
A great character, HC. Actually, so far I love all the key characters in the novel, I love HC, S., the Hofrat, and I know I am going to like Naphta.
I agree with you and your analysis Mark, I don't think HC is an overachiever. He's just gone with the flow throughout his life and frankly doesn't strike me as overly bright.As to Naphta, I don't think you are supposed to "like" him (I certainly did not) but he is interesting.
Somewhere--?--Hans remarks that he: only feels completely well when he is doing nothing.
The Thomas Mann Group
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)
Thanks, Elizabeth, I had forgotten about Carducci...these days I'm revisiting the old culture clash, I feel like TM was a seismograph and recorded some things without realizing the significance of it all...