The Thomas Mann Group discussion
TMM Discussion Threads
>
* Week 2 -- August 19 - 25. Read from “One Word too Many” p. 81, until Chapter 4 “Table Talk” (Tischgespräche) p. 158.
message 1:
by
Kalliope
(new)
Jul 15, 2013 08:15AM
Mod
reply
|
flag
Mod
With the last two, read almos in parallel, I found myself confusing the hotel and the sanatorium.
Kalliope wrote: "Having read BB and DiV recently, it strikes me how in these three works, a given "place" acquires so much importance. In BB it was the house, a private space, but both in DiV and TMM it is a publi..."I've been thinking about "place" too, why the enclosed world of the sanatorium is so intriguing and kind of hypnotic, and I've found myself vaguely philosophising, in a Hans kind of way, about how people used to love boarding-school type novels, the allure of a story set in a reduced but complete world set apart from the real world, but, like Hans, I haven't really come to any conclusion, just sort of thinking in circles but...I'm sure some Settembrini in our group will put me right...
Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Having read BB and DiV recently, it strikes me how in these three works, a given "place" acquires so much importance. In BB it was the house, a private space, but both in DiV and ..."I'll join your ponderings about the "place". It has been a long, long time timse since I read BB, but setting DiV in Venice (I know... stating the obvious here) and TMM in a mountain resort, I was wondering if TM had been working on perfecting that fairy tale setting.
I mean Venice is an island (or rather group of islands), even though it is connected with numerous bridges, and the sanatorium is on a mountain.
For me, the ideas of island and mountain settings are quite close to the "land, far, far away".
I'll be looking out for how much interaction there is between the sanatorium and the surrounding community. So far, it seems quite remote (or far far away?).
Mod
That is very true, place understood as a larger setting. It would be Lübeck, or the Alps or Venice.
I had been thinking in a more restricted way, in an architectural place, such as the family house, the hotel and the sanatorium.
But both are there.
Kalliope wrote: "Ulrike wrote: "Fionnuala wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Having read BB and DiV recently, it strikes me how in these three works, a given "place" acquires so much importance. In BB it was the house, a pr..."Oh, I agree. The more specific settings (house, hotel, sanatorium) are just as important. Both the wider and more specific settings were chosen with a point. I would almost see the house, hotel, sanatorium as sub-ordinates to the wider settings (if you like, an extreme consistency of TMM between sentence structure and setting).
I'm sure someone mentioned Settembrini's joke about living life horizontally last week, although I can't find the post now - does the joke come over in English? I'm never very sure where I have picked up these expressions, but anyway, Les Grandes Horizontales - I'm sure you all know what is meant by that - and Settembrini calls the patients Horizontales. Sorry if I'm stating the bleeding obvious.Maybe you have versions with notes? I found the game that was strictly forbidden to them, on pain of expulsion, the most injurious thing possible, as a version of ludo???? Is this the narrator being heavily ironic?
And that lunch, it makes me feel ill just reading about it. I had to laugh at what the girl who normally only eats yoghourt was now eating: Crême d'orge, which sounds a whole lot better than barley soup. Slimy, no wonder she only took a few spoonfuls.
To anyone who's reading this in the native German, do the residents of the sanatorium really take their temperature in Fahrenheit? I'd be surprised if they did, and yet I don't know that I like Celsius being translated to Fahrenheit.
·Karen· wrote: "I'm sure someone mentioned Settembrini's joke about living life horizontally last week, although I can't find the post now - does the joke come over in English? I'm never very sure where I have pic..."I mentioned it over on the Proust discussion, Karen, but not for its humour, more for the rapport with Proust during the last years, living life lying down, writing all those horizontal lines from a horizontal position.
But yes, I get that Settembrini might have been making other allusions, as we will no doubt soon hear.
Jason wrote: "To anyone who's reading this in the native German, do the residents of the sanatorium really take their temperature in Fahrenheit? I'd be surprised if they did, and yet I don't know that I like Cel..."No, no, they're giving the figures as 36.9, 37. I think they'd be dead if that were fahrenheit.
Mod
I should read it in German. That short quote makes more sense to me, Karen.
I'd prefer the translation to have kept it in C.
Kalliope wrote: " That short quote makes more sense to me, Karen."Ha! Yes, I don't suppose that figures up in the nineties make much sense to you!
Jason wrote: "I'd prefer the translation to have kept it in C."Jason -- why? That is, of course, illustrative of the kinds of decisions translators must make -- again and again. But I know instantly that 96.x degree Fahrenheit is in the normal temperature range. I don't carry that same information in Celsius, so personally I appreciate the translator doing that work for us.
But is there something about the significance of the size of the variation? Or the type of the thermometer? Or that the setting is a country that would have used Celsius?
Mod
Ha! Yes, I don't suppose that figures up in the nineties make much sense to you!"
I have lived years in Fahrenheit countries, but those numbers never meant anything...
Maybe it's because I work in C that I'm more aware of it, but knowing this is a sanatorium in Europe, whenever F degrees are mentioned, it makes me aware that something's been "changed" and it's jolting (to me) for some reason.
Fionnuala wrote: "I've been thinking about "place" too, why the enclosed world of the sanatorium is so intriguing and kind of hypnotic, ..."This is where I want to know German history better, but I keep wondering if the Weimar Republic, too, is being alluded to as a system somehow isolated from "reality." And I am ignorant enough on this history, that I may not even be exploring an appropriate possible analogy ... so "help." Perhaps if there is any analogy, it is with the imperialist government that preceded WWI.
The fairy tale setting comment has me thinking. Is it a fairy tale setting or a neutered fairy tale setting? In other words, is it a presentation what people think they want, but showing that it really shouldn't be wanted?
Mod
This is where I want to know German history better, but..."
Green Troll is currently reading Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy.. Hopefully she sees this and can post some comments.
I think she has given some updates that had references to TM.
Lily wrote: "This is where I want to know German history better, but..."Lily, I'm sure you're right to be thinking more of the German Empire than the Weimar Republic.(view spoiler).
I'm thinking though that there is much more of a pan-European feel to this, there are so many nationalities at the sanatorium, and it's in the most neutral country in Europe too, I just think we are going to see ideas come to life that were washing around the whole of Europe, not just the rather Prussian, rather militarized, disciplined Empire. Maybe Joachim is a representative of that particular current.
My reading so far (I've not got far) is that the Empire was a nervy system, unsure of itself and its place within Europe and easy to take offence or see slights where perhaps none were intended. A nervous kind autocratic 'democracy' that was trying to cope with huge shifts in society, and worried about insurrection, about subversion. But that is true of most of Europe at that time. A lot of countries felt themselves 'on the edge', I think.
What I'm getting very strongly (almost a bit much) is that this is an upside down world, liminal as Kris said. HC is tired all day and can't sleep at night, the days are as empty of activity as possible, and his dreams are far more full of incident. Just the same sort of upside-down world of carneval and chiarivaris, topsy turvy. Ill people who have gargantuan appetites. A place of sickness where people like Ottilie want to stay forever - has HC already died and reached some kind of limbo?
·Karen· wrote: "Lily, I'm sure you're right to be thinking more of the German Empire than the Weimar Republic...."Logically, that seems right. Yet, if Mann was in any way writing a political warning or wake-up call....
Mod
I'm thin..."
I agree with the overall European setting... Even the two tables of Russians made me think of the two conflicting trends in Russian culture and conception of itself. The proWestern and the trend that insisted on the Russianness of their country and heritage.
Lily wrote: "This is where I want to know German history better, but I keep wondering if the Weimar Republic, too, is being alluded to as a system somehow isolated from "reality." And I am ignorant enough on this history, that I may not even be exploring an appropriate possible analogy ... so "help." Perhaps if there is any analogy, it is with the imperialist government that preceded WWI. "I'm with Karen, the relationship between the sanatorium and the patients strikes me as analogous with the Second Empire and invention of enemies to , TB is discovered in Castor - trapping him in this modern venusberg as the Kulturkampf against catholicism or socialists as reichsfiende trapped Germany in the habits of thought and patterns of thinking desired by the Imperial regime - this is very strongly a novel written during the Weimar Republic looking back on the Empire
Jan-Maat wrote: "Lily wrote: "This is where I want to know German history better, but I keep wondering if the Weimar Republic, too, is being alluded to as a system somehow isolated from "reality." And I am ignorant..." I get that, too, it takes place in Switzerland before the Great War, but comments constantly on Weimar Germany after 1919. For one thing the influx of Russians did start before WWI, but it was afterwards that they had such an impact on Germany (even military collusion after Rapallo) which makes me wonder why Joachim is studying Russian.
One more thing: in the intro, in a brief aside, Mann states that he wants the story to be entertaining. He was not an academic. He wanted to connect with a popular audience. And he did. He sold hundreds of thousands of copies in an impoverished and humiliated country after WWI. There were elements in his work that the audience in inter-war Germany could relate to: Wagnerian themes, German fairy tale motifs etc. So why does an American in the 21st century, who doesn't like Wagner (like me), want to marinate in his prose. Maybe it's the finely observed details that are universal. Hans arrives more or less healthy, but fits into the sanatorium culture and develops a fever and symptoms that fit into the Berghof world. I visit my parents in an assisted living facility, and people tell me I am older than some of the residents....same kind of insular world that draws you in. The universal is in the details.
Lily wrote: "Logically, that seems right. Yet, if Mann was in any way writing a political warning or wake-up call..."I'm not sure that we can assume that Thomas Mann, at this time in his life, saw any need for a writer to make explicit political statements. Heinrich did, he wrote satirical social criticism, attacking the grand bourgeois, attacking the fetishization of the money principle. Heinrich wrote a utopian piece Die kleine Stadt against Wilhelmine autocratic society, and when Heinrich wrote his essay about Zola, in which he attacked Chauvinism and Militarism, the two brothers fell out completely. Thomas left off writing TMM during the war and worked on Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen. Kommentar, which is generally seen as a deeply conservative criticism of what he sees as 'activism', an anti-expressionistic book. (I had a look at buying it but it's so expensive! I'll need to check the library).
However he is, of necessity, writing out of his time, and I feel he's conducting a kind of experiment.
For one thing, there was a huge amount of debate washing around about social determinism and gender roles within and without the family and conflicts between authoritarian fathers and rebellious sons, and the conflict between convention and freedom, the individual and the state machine.
So on one hand the sanatorium is a space out of time, out of all those social roles, here the people either belong to the sick or the doctors. Obviously they still are defined by their roles, but here they are not acting in them, they have been taken away from family and society.
And then the other point, I think, is that Thomas Mann, at this time, seems to find it hard to conceive of the intellectual, artistic, philosophical life in any other way than as a kind of degeneration, a sickness in contrast to the healthy, robust, active life of a fully paid up member of society. The question is, whether he sees this as negative. We'll see where this goes, but it seems to me it's necessary for his protagonists to give up their vitality, their active role in society in order for them to enjoy the kind of forced leisure and ennui of this institution that will allow them to examine their inner life, the world of thought and ideas. I'm interested to see where this journey takes us.
Great background information. Thanks Karen!
I found a different edition:Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man There's a paperback version in German too, without the commentary, so maybe....
Oh and of course, having just said I don't know if we can assume that TM is making explicitly political statements, I've now just read the passage where Settembrini complains of the authorities keeping them all in the cold, because of their principles, the iron conventions that cannot be broken, Settembrini is mocking although HC speaks of these principles with the correct amount of religiosity and subordination. The authorities don't want to soften the patients. So, yes, I'm with Jan-Maat that we might see the whole of the set-up here as a mirror of the Wilhelmine Empire, ruled by autocrats, discipline and rigid conventions. A cold place to be.
Yes, Settembrini and his provocative opinions are present in the narrative for a good reason - he's like the conscience of the entire sanatorium, alive and kicking in spite of the laziness and luxury that tend to hypnotise the rest of them into a stupor. But Joachim also seems set apart - I'm not sure yet what his purpose is going to be. There will be others too who will hopefully wake from the stupor and create the necessary tension to keep us all awake - all the talk of rest cures makes me want to wrap up in a blanket on a balcony in Switzerland and just contemplate the mountain tops.
Ulrike wrote: "Great background information. Thanks Karen!"Oh yes, that was fantastic.
Mod
Just one comment on TM's political stand. When the Nazis made a show of burning unwelcome books, those by Heinrich and by Klaus, Thomas' son, were included in the pyre. They did not burn those by Thomas Mann. May be he was too popular, as Elena indicates above, or may be his political leanings were not clear to them.
TM did not make a clear public declaration against the Nazi regime until February 1936, when he sent a letter for publication to the Neuer Zürcher Zeitung. This he did after the insistence of his two eldest children, in particular thanks to Erika. This is presented in the Die Manns: Ein Jahrhundertroman
Mod
Anyway. I was this morning in the Prado Museum and when I came upon this painting by Bosch, I immediately thought: "The Magic Mountain Doctors...!!!"
and a detail..
Title is The Cure of Folly...
"Creepy" is the perfect word for the doctors, both for their TB cures, lying in the cold for hours each day, and for the dissection of the soul...mostly for their absolute certainty about their cures. The painting captures that certainty perfectly. The very notion that low air pressure was somehow healthy was rejected by the sensible Tennappel. Doctor's don't come off very well in MM. (And dentists are murderous in Buddenbrooks.)
Mod
That is exactly, it, the "certainty" that becomes the Folly.
And Bosch's doctor is particularly fitting for Krokowski's "dissections".
I see Mann's skepticism in his view of politics, just as in his view of doctors. For politics there isn't much to go on in MM so far, but at one point he describes Hans as a blank page, someone who could become either a conservative/traditionalist like his uncle, or a leftist radical like Morten in Buddenbrooks. Neither choice is depicted as especially "correct." I see the narrator so far as an "I am a camera" type...twenty years later in the US, TM was hounded by the American right for being a communist (pretty funny!) while the American left viewed him with suspicion for being a German patriot of sorts. But his books sold by the boatload anyway. Even in a rather primitive translation, his powers of observation engaged the public ...and amazingly still do...
That doctor looks like the tin man from yellow brick road.
Mod
His powers of observation are, so far, what is most attractive to me so early on in the novel.
Mod
I think Frank Baum was inspired by Bosch... That was a symbol from the Middle Ages...
Hans is reflecting on the word 'love', being repeated so frequently by Krowkowski, this slippery syllable with its lingual and labial consonants and scanty vowel in the middle. In the original, I presume he's talking about the word 'Liebe', which has lingual and labial consonants (unlike 'love', but of course the translator could hardly redesign the word 'love' to fit the description) but I wondered about the 'scanty vowel' in the middle. Is 'i' not a vowel in German?Looking for other German words for love, I found 'schatz', the 'love of one's life'. Is Frau Chauchat's name a play on that idea perhaps?
Mod
I am glad I am not a translator.
Fionnuala wrote: "Hans is reflecting on the word 'love', being repeated so frequently by Krowkowski, this slippery syllable with its lingual and labial consonants and scanty vowel in the middle. In the original, I p..."The original mentions that it is one and a half syllables - hardly possible to carry that over of course. The 'e' at the end of Liebe is weak, the sound that is rendered in the phonetic alphabet with an upside down 'e'.
Mod
Not long after he did actually pull the trigger. This happened around the 1920s.
I will post the name of this friend later on.
·Karen· wrote: "The original mentions that it is one and a half syllables - hardly possible to carry that over of course. The 'e' at the end of Liebe is weak, the sound that is rendered in the phonetic alphabet with an upside down 'e'. .."That's interesting that the translator reduced the description to one syllable to suit the English love. And the idea of slippery? Is that in the original? And the scanty vowel in the middle, is that just referring to the English word, 'love'?
Sometimes I get so stuck on details. I think I'm a lot like Hans....
Mod
I want to find out what they've done with the Spanish translation.
Mod
.. a little rotating drum in which you placed a strip of cinematographic film and then looked through an opening on one side to wath a miller wrestle with a chimney sweep, a schoolmaster paddle a pupil,....or a farmer and his wife dance a rustic waltz.
Mod
.. a little rotating drum in which you placed a strip of cinematographic film and then looked through an op..."
The friend of Erika and Klaus who played around with a gun was Ricki Hallgarten and he committed suicide in 1932. So, the scene with Herr Albin became premonitory.
Here is Ricki on the right with Klaus on the left:
He also illustrated Erika's first book for children Stoffel fliegt übers Meer
Kalliope wrote: "In the room with games they have a sort of inverted "lanterne magique"..., as in Proust... a little rotating drum in which you placed a strip of cinematographic film and then looked through an op..."
Yes, I thought of Proust's lanterne magique too.
Interesting photo. What is Klaus holding?
Mod
.. a little rotating drum in which you placed a strip of cinematographic film and then loo..."
No idea what is he holding.. I first thought that they were holding hands, but not so.
Death is always hovering around the Manns... in fiction and in real life...
The Thomas Mann Group
Books mentioned in this topic
Die Manns: Ein Jahrhundertroman (other topics)Die Manns: Ein Jahrhundertroman (other topics)
Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (other topics)
Die kleine Stadt (other topics)
Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen. Kommentar (other topics)
More...
