The Magic Mountain

A friend of mine from my undergraduate days describes having read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain out of a desire to see what gives it its prestige as a literary masterpiece of the twentieth century. I have to fess up to the same motivation. I’d read Death in Venice some time ago, probably first after having seen Luchiano Visconti’s gorgeous and compelling (and largely faithful) film adaptation of the work in the 1970s at the Bijou Theatre at the University of Iowa. (Wonderful for its offerings, not its accommodations.) But with a long trip planned through Europe and knowing that audio versions get me going into more imposing works, and in part because we’d be traveling through Switzerland and Germany, I decided to make Mann’s big book my project. Now having completed the work, like my friend, I was both impressed and somewhat puzzled by it. That is, it’s an extremely long book (over 1000 pages & many hours of listening, even at an accelerated play rate!). And while it focuses on the enigmatic young man Hans Catsdorp, it lacks a dramatic arc. But perhaps that’s a part of the artistic plan of the work: Catsdorp, who at first only plans a short visit to his cousin at the sanitorium high in the Swiss Alps, eventually finds himself a patient there in what proves to be a very other-worldly environment. Time as the ordinarily perceived passage of time, as well as a formative concept of daily life, becomes warped up in this not-so-heavenly realm. (Paul Ricoeur, in Volume 2 of his Time and Narrative makes useful and interesting observations about the nature of time revealed and discussed in this book.) However, this is not to say that nothing happens in this book. There are a variety of fascinating characters and very engaging scenes: the downhill ski by Hans in a snowstorm; Castorp’s infatuation with the enigmatic Claudia Chauchet; Han’s medical interests; the arguments (at quite an elevated level) of Settenbrini and Naphta and then their penultimate encounter; and the seance, among others that allow Mann to exhibit his gifts as a writer. Thus, this nether-world realm serves as host to a variety of encounters and insights involving a variety of characters. The lack of an arc doesn’t entail a lack of dramatic scenes. And, the book ends with a couple of shocking events that leave the reader pondering. This is one of those books that demands further reading (again, I agree with my friend on this point). It does prove to be a “magic” mountain, but is the magic for good or evil? Can we thrive in such a realm? Visit, and judge for yourself.

A masterpiece set in place and time, populated by the protagonist Han Castorp and a cast of characters living disease (tuberculosis) and surrounded by death in a sanitarium in Davos—the magic mountain. What kind of fantasy life does one weave in such isolation? Philosophical, profound, and long.

The Magic Mountain traces the seven-year sojourn of Hans Castorp at the Swiss mountain sanatorium called the Berghof. He is not very ill but stays because he has a fever. He is visiting his cousin Joachim who later dies of tuberculosis. He falls in love with Frau Chauchat who does not return his passion and leaves only to return with an older man Peeperkorn who dies from malaria. The Berghof has retained two physicians Behrens and Krukowski. The former treats Hans and discusses the state of medicine before antibiotics. The latter is a psychoanalyst, who indulges in a seance fraud which Hans exposes dramatically. Hans encounters Setembrini and Naptha who engage in several debates on rationalism versus spiritualism. The debate ends tragically. There is a lot of discussion about time and space. It is not clear if Mann was aware of Einstein's theories of space time and relativity which were promulgated at the time this book was written. I leave it to you to discover Han's fate as WWI intrudes on the residents of the Berghof

The book has some interesting philosophical discussions and characters. It is much too long, as plotless pages drag one on and on.

When Joyce wrote, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” he could easily have been thinking of The Magic Mountain. Set in an Alpine sanatorium, Thomas Mann’s characters are supposed to symbolize the cultural sickness endemic in Europe before the First World War. One of the first things to notice is that the residents don’t want to be well. They live lives of ease, first-class meals and hypochondriac obsession. After some time at the sanitarium they no longer feel at home in the world of work, marriage and responsibility. The sanatarium’s goal is not so much to make them well as to make their new life as pleasant as possible. The next point is that the sanitarium itself makes people sick. All patients are confined to bed rest for three weeks upon admittance; they quickly lose whatever strength they had before arrival. Then they are subjected to endless x-rays all with the idea of identifying the root cause of their malignancy. For Mann, it is not only the priests who try to convince men of their sickness, as Nietzsche argued, but men of medicine as well. The residents then spend their time endlessly debating the relationship between body and the spirit, democracy and absolutism and religion and atheism; as of course Europe also did at the turn of the twentieth century. The great pride in Western Civilization that resonated so strongly throughout pre-war Europe is here seen as a sickness that infects those who come under its influence. Mann might almost agree with Gandhi that Western Civilization would be a good idea. It’s a compelling account, especially for those versed in late nineteenth century thought. Whether it’s a true account of the causes of the war or a correct diagnosis of cultural illness is of course left to the judgment of each reader. But as a artistic rendering of a 1920s weltanschauung it stands with the other great works of the Lost Generation. Whether read as an allegory, secular prophecy or just high literature, The Magic Mountain is worth reading; particularly by all interested in the history of civilization.

The Magic Mountain is an enchanting novel by German novelist and short story writer, Thomas Mann (1875-1955), who received the 1929 Nobel Prize for Literature. This tour de force novel relates the story of Hans Castorp, a young engineer who goes to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Switzerland, The Berghof, "The Magic Mountain." Hans' last name Castorp perhaps alludes to the mythic twin Roman gods Castor and Pollux engendered in the close relationship between Hans and his cousin Joachim. It turns out that The Berghof becomes a comfortable and dreamlike, totally enchanting place for Hans Castorp who finds himself unable to cut short his visit and return home to face the world as a young engineer. Instead, he becomes enamored of a charming aristocratic Russian lady, Madame Clavdia Chauchat, and the Magic Mountain itself. Moreover, it soon becomes obvious that Hans may also be infected with the tubercle bacillus, increasing the complexity of his situation and providing him with a valid reason to stay on the Magic Mountain. Castorp stays at the Berghof for seven years and only leaves to join the German army with the advent of World War I. The novel provides a vehicle for Mann to discuss the advances and mysteries in medicine -- for example, the use of x-rays, which had only been discovered in 1895 by the physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, and Sigmund Freud's development of psychoanalysis and his theory of the unconscious. The novel also serves as a medium to describe complex personal inter-relationships and social interactions in society at large, and even more profoundly, the toll of diseases and human suffering, ultimately death and dying, as metaphors for man's existence, journey and final exit on this planet. Simply, this is one of the best and greatest books of all times, and the Franklin Library edition is a collector's choice. Recommended without reservations with 5 stars. Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D. is an Associate Editor in Chief and World Affairs Editor of Surgical Neurology International (SNI). He is the author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (1995) and Cuba in Revolution -- Escape From a Lost Paradise (2002).

I return to this novel again and again. It's a touchstone of the 20th century, one of the grand European intellectual novels that pose huge questions in terms of human beings in particular situations. The protagonist, Hans Castorp, is Mann's bourgeois Everyman, and it's wonderful haw a powerhouse intellectual like Mann can create a sympathetic but also mediocre hero who stumbles through a series of awakenings (and drowsings) on top of a mountain. But I'm making the book sound ponderous and pompous, and it's far too ironic and too seductive to be limited in that way. I came back to it because I was longing for a good long read. (Okay, not everyone's object of yearning.) The Magic Mountain is also very much of its era. It was exactly luxurious institutions like the Berghof, along with those big hotel-spas in which the rich lived as they moved indolently over the face of Europe, that became impossible after WW I. But as the Settembrini-Naphta debates make very clear, the pleasures of unearned wealth and of relative peace are more passionate than Enlightenment values can address. Given the luxury, the lassitude and the license granted by tuberculosis and its promise of an early death, sexual, aesthetic and even mystical concerns become prominent. Mann gives us a great wallow in the Dionysian and doesn't, I think, endorse the life lit by reason unequivocally, although he's more skeptical about attaching value to a moribund leisure class. Which is only to say that I'm finding The Magic Mountain unexpectedly relevant for thinking about the One Per Cent and the rest of us on the flatlands.

Reviewing the audiobook, narrated by Wilfred Morgan. I can't prove this, but I think this reading voice is AI. There are gaps of a few seconds in the middle of sentences. There are large sections that are in French, and this narrator reads it as if it is English, as if it has no knowledge that it is not reading English but, rather, French. It is laughable. Yet, it is excellent AI. This must be why it is so much less expensive than the real narrator. When I tested them, I thought I preferred this voice (the AI voice, deep and resonant) to the real voice (kind of choking on his words and gasping for breath). Ironic.