Chris Via > Recent Status Updates

The scene wherein Raskolnikov forces Sonya to read the story of Lazarus is among one of the most powerful scenes I've ever read. And the subsequent scene between R and Porfiry P is cleverly crafted and among the most nail-biting of verbals exchanges in literature.

"...our lives are one long effort to resist the unknown, the real present in which we live, which is the unknown in the midst of coming into being." (94)

What great characters! Roddy's vacillations of madness and lucidity are beautiful depicted. The dynamic between personalities--the mother, the sister, the brother, and the writer friend--are as enjoyable, if not more so, than any Dickens novel.

It's Hamsun, Firefox--Hamsun, I say!

The lucid madness as synthesized via Raskolnikov's internal monologue preempts the portrayal of a similar psychological narrative by Knut Hamson in his novel HUNGER. Dostoyevsky deftly plays out the central conflict at the end of Part One.

The auto-correction Firefox imposed on the character Raskolnikov in my previous status update is very disturbing.

Dostoyevsky is painting a beautiful case study of determinism vs. chance vs. fatalism, with the series of events and domino pieces leading up to Kalashnikov's premeditated crime!

Harkening back 50 years from Tolle's The Power of Now, let's see what Watts has to say on this prescient topic.

After reading his mother's exhaustive letter, Raskolnikov's eyes and mind craved air and space. There are already many tropes of cramped confinements, suffocating spaces, and so on.

"It's these details that ruin everything always."

I think I'm going to re-read this section where the gramophone was introduced into the sanatorium. Interestingly, just before this introduction, the narrators (we) transitioned the time of the novel with the trope of a curtain and other operatic devices.

Well, I'm rounding the end of the first selection in The Year of the Tome. The introduction of yet another archetype, Mynheer Peeperkorn, has made for an interesting diversion. Mann has deftly painted an array of living characters that one seems to know in reality.

And now I come to the final chapter of this opus. Deep breath. Here we go.

For a while, this turned into a precursor of an Umberto Eco novel, what with its dive into religious history.

And now our Hans has decided to seek serenity at heights even further than the sanatorium.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any more erudite, we introduce this Jesuit and a section devoted to theological rumination! I need to gather my bearings, take a deep breath, pump the brakes, and then continue on patiently and slowly for this last chunk of Mann's hefty novel of ideas.

Interesting development with Hans's uncle visiting, beginning to follow the same pattern as Hans, and then quickly retreating back to the "flatland" without a word. Seems everyone who comes to the "magic mountain" (known for its healing properties) is found to be already suffering ailment.

In usual fashion with novels, the middle section is getting very dense, exaggerated no doubt by the intellectual saturation of the Italian Settembrini, a new character referred to as Herr Naphta, and the cousins. I admit that it was a chore to read through their discussions on economy, religion, education, politics, and so on; but in the section titled "On The City of God," a revelation struck: intellect vs. death.

The section "Dance of the Dead" (or danse macabre, as it's called), is one of the best so far. Now, Castorp is (vainly?) becoming a humanist in the wake of Sttembrini's intellectualism, and, aided by Joachim (the stoic rationalist), they have begin a sort of crusade for the dying.

Despite Hans's mental initial denial of the oncoming sickness, he has succumbed to the ailment and joined the "others" (of whom he is now a part). It's interesting to see how he has shifted from the adaptation mechanism of denial to intellectualization, as he picks the doctor's brain about biological/physiological/chemical matters and orders a bunch of dense scientific books to read through the winter.

There are many parallels to Alan Watts's THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY.

The episode wherein Hans takes a walk alone, becomes fatigued, gets a bloody nose, and sinks into a remembrance of the young fellow in his third-form school days--this is a very poignant episode.

This session with MM was a bit tough, although my mind was a bit muddled to begin with. I need to go back and reread "Excursus of Time" and other parts that my eyes brushed but my mind discarded. Other than that, I am enjoying the contrasts of characters with this Italian intellectual Settembrini! And it seems young Hans is slowly but surely succumbing to sickness, however hard he is groping toward denial.

Wow: powerful, potent language! I can't believe I'm just now getting around to Neruda.

It took me about 40 pages or so to get into the rhythm and cadence of this H. T. Lowe-Porter translation, but it is perfectly dense and ornate now, and Mann's irony is shining through.

Slowly and steadily I shall read this as my first book of 2014.