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The Magic Mountain
This is where it starts getting really good. This is where I start reading even slower, a section at a time and usually twice. There’s just so much going on in these conversations. So much to try and make sense of.
But first I should note that Hans’s scientific inquiries have increased to include botany. He is now collecting and carefully identifying the flowers that have finally appeared with the melting of the snow. He’s added more books and a good magnifying glass to his possessions as his self-education progresses further and further.
There is also a long passage in praise of the Chaldeans and the study of astronomy and the constellations. And, of course, he again is drawn to the closed loop of the solar year -- how season follows season until the series repeats again. How the summer solstice is both the high-point of summer and the beginning of autumn as the days start to get shorter and shorter.
P441 Hans, after describing how primitive tribes celebrate “Midsummer Night” with fires and dancing,
“...They do it out of constructive despair, if you want to put it that way, in honor of the practical joke of the circle, of eternity that has no permanent direction, but in which everything keeps coming back.”
P442 “I don’t want to put it that way.” Joachim muttered, “please don’t lay the blame on me. Those are awfully grand notions you’re playing with when you’re lying there of an evening.”
“Yes, I wont deny it -- you keep yourself busy with more practical matters, with your Russian grammar. You should soon be fluent, my man, and that can only be to your great advantage -- if there should be a war, which God forbid.”
“Forbid? You’re talking like a civilian. War is necessary. Without war the world would soon go to rot, as Moltke said.”
“Yes, it has that tendency. I’ll grant you that much.”...
...
(Because I can't help myself, this is my excuse to mention that Molke's son, also a Helmuth, was, arguably, the person who lost the Great War for Germany. The Schlieffen Plan was designed to concentrate German forces in the West until France could be driven out of the war. The Younger Molke altered the plan by shifted considerable forces to the East to protect Prussia from the Russians. This turned out to be a great success vs the Russians, but resulted in the German's being too weak in the West to overwhelm France and Britain before they were able to fully mobilize their strength. The result was the stalemate on the Western Front that lasted until 1918.)
At this point they run into Settembrini with “someone else.” It is clear that Settembrini doesn’t want to introduce them, but they all but force his hand and the four men continue their walk together. The someone else, of course is Naphta, Settembrini’s opposite. The Jesuit to his Mason, as we shall soon discover.
P443 [Naphta] Tilting his head to point at the Italian, he said with a drawl, “Just listen to our rationalist here, our Voltairian, He’s praising nature [the air in the Alps] because even in her fertile phase she does not confuse us with mystic damps, but provides classical austerity. And yet, what is the latin word for moisture?”
P444 “Humor,” Settembrini cried back over his left shoulder, “and the humor in our professor’s observations about nature can be found in the fact that, like Saint Catherine of Sienna, he sees the wounds of Christ in the markings of a red cowslip.”
Naphta countered, “That would be more witty than humorous. But ‘tis said we must bring our spirits to bear upon nature. And she sorely needs it.”
“Nature,” Settembrini said, lowering his voice... “certainly has no need of your spirit. It is itself spirit.”
“Doesn’t your monism bore you?”
“Ah, so you admit that it is solely for the sake of your own amusement that you divide the world into two hostile camps, sundering God and nature.”
“I find it interesting you would use the term ‘amusement’ for what I have in mind when I speak of Spirit and the Passion.”
“To think that someone like you, who uses such grand words for such shameless purposes, can accuse me of demagoguery.”
“And so you still believe that Spirit is shameless, do you? But it cannot help being what it is: dualistic. Antithesis, dualism -- that is the motivating, passionate, dialectical, spiritual principle. To see the world divided into hostile camps, that is Spirit. All monism is boring. Solet Aristotle quaerere pugnam.” ['Aristotle has a habit of seeking a fight.']
“Aristotle? Aristotle shifted the reality of universal ideas to the individual. And that is pantheism.”
“False. If you posit substantial character in the individual, that is, if you transfer the essence of things from the universal to the particular, as Thomas and Bonaventure did, being true Aristotelians, you have then removed the world from its unity with the highest idea, it becomes something outside God, and so God becomes transcendent. That is classic medievalism, my dear sir.”
“ ‘Classic medievalism,’ now isn't that a delicious phrase.”
“I beg your pardon, but I grant the term ‘classic’ its place where it is applicable, that is, whenever an idea has achieved its apogee. Antiquity was not always classic. I have observed an aversion on your part to . . . to the absolute, to the broader application of categories. You do not want Spirit to be an absolute. You want Spirit to be democratic progress.”
Since a book is a work of creation and the author its creator, reading these exchanges between Settembrini and Naphta reminds me of reading Homer’s account of the Trojan war, where you have to always ask on whose side the gods are on. I’ve never read where Mann claimed Naphta spoke for him, on the contrary, but you do have to wonder. Even with something as minor as the meaning of "classic" Naphta is in the right.
And, of course, Mann here is creating exactly the sort of dualism Settembrini is arguing against. Monism would, in a novel, be boring indeed. Though, do we get a synthesis to go with our abundant antithesis? If so, it will come from Hans -- and probably in Snow.
P445 Settembrini: “I hope we are agreed in our conviction that Spirit, however absolute it may be, can never become the advocate of reactionary forces.”
“Nevertheless, it is always the advocate of freedom.”
“Nevertheless? Freedom is the law of brotherly love, not of nihilism and malice.”
“Both of which you apparently fear.”
...
[Settembrini is filling Naphta in on the cousins,] ...And he spoke of Joachim’s general disgust and plans to depart -- and made sure to add that one would doubtless be doing the engineer a disservice if one did not ascribe to him the same impatience to return to his work.
P446 Naphta made a wry face and said, “The gentlemen have an eloquent advocate. Far be it from me to doubt that he has aptly interpreted your thoughts and wishes. Work, work -- beg your pardon, but he is about to chide me as an enemy of mankind, an inimicus humanae naturae, ['an enemy of human nature'] for daring to recall a time when his fanfare to labor would not have achieved its accustomed effect -- a time, that is, when the opposite of his ideal was held in incomparably higher esteem. Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, taught about a ladder of perfection unlike anything Herr Lodovico has ever conceived in his wildest dreams. Would you like to hear about it? His lowest rung was found at the ‘treadmill,’ the second in the ‘plowed field,’ the third and most praiseworthy, however -- now don’t listen to this part, Settembrini -- was ‘a bed of rest.’ The treadmill is the symbol of life in the world -- not badly chosen, I must say. The plowed field represents the soul of worldly man, where preachers and spiritual teachers labor -- already a more honorable level. The bed, however --”
“Enough! We know!” Settembrini cried. “Gentlemen, he will now describe for you the purpose and use of the libertine’s couch.”
“I did not know you were such a prude, Lodovico. After all, I’ve seen you wink at the girls. Where’s your pagan open-mindedness? The bed, then, is the place where lover and beloved cohabit, a symbol of contemplative retreat from the world and its creatures for the purpose of cohabitation with God.”
“Phooey! Andate, andate!” the Italian demurred, almost in a whimper. Everyone laughed. But then Settembrini continued with dignity, “Ah, no, I am a European, an Occidental. Your ladder is pure Orient. The East despises action. Lao-tzu teaches that doing nothing is more beneficial than anything between heaven and earth, that if humankind were to stop all activity, perfect peace and happiness would reign on earth. There’s cohabitation for you.”
“You don’t say. And Western mysticism? And quietism? Among whose adherents one may include Fénelon, who taught that every act is flawed, since the will to act is an affront to God, who alone can will to act. I need only mention Molinos’s propositions. It seems to me that the spiritual possibility of finding salvation in repose is widespread throughout all mankind.”
P447 [Hans,] ...”Contemplation, retreat -- there’s something to it, sounds quite plausible. One could say that we live at a rather high level of retreat from the world up here. At five thousand feet, we recline in our lounge chairs... and look down on the world and its creatures and think things over. [A working definition of regieren, "taking stock," or "playing king."] To tell the truth, now that I stop and think about it, my bed -- and by that I mean my lounge chair, you understand -- has proved very beneficial over the last ten months, made me think more about things than I ever did in all my years down in the flatlands, I can’t deny that”
[Settembrini,] “My good engineer... How often have I told you that a man must know who he is and think thoughts befitting him. A man of the West, despite all other propositions, has only one concern: reason, analysis, deeds, progress -- not the idle couch of a monk!”
It’s curious what Mann is doing here, with Settembrini. He’s arguing for a pure middle class view of the world where only this world matters. He pushes this to absurd lengths in refusing poor Hans the option of any kind of contemplation at all. He’s throwing Socrates out with the bathwater. Not that Settembrini should be an advocate for Socrates -- who was, after all, found guilty by the Athenian people and executed for not being middle class enough for his times. But Settembrini does advocate reason without allowing any time for reasoning. Settembrini represents a faulty thesis here, really a straw man, in rhetorical terms.
Now for the antithesis, Naphta had been listening. He looked back and said, “Monks! We have monks to thank for what culture there is on European soil. We have them to thank that Germany, France, and Italy aren’t covered with primeval forests and swamps, but provide us with grain, fruit, and wine. Monks, my dear sir, certainly performed hard work.” [This is mostly true, though also overstated. And I would have mentioned the Low Countries before Italy in this regard. Also, the monasteries were adept at this kind of endeavor because they were already well financed. And the proceeds from developing land went to supporting the Church, which had a habit of living rather well. Also, it should be mentioned that this reclamation of land was only necessary following the rise of the bourgeoisie. Before that there was no need for more land because the population was stable. It was only with the rise of commerce that population rose and more land (and more money) was needed. This seems a good time to start making links to my other blog coverage of A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne: The return of commerce and the formation of the bourgeoisie in 11th century Europe HERE; I can't find where he talks about the development of marginal lands by the monasteries following the rise in population that resulted from the spread of cities.]
“Ebbe -- so you see!”
“Please hear me out. The work of the religious orders was not an end in itself, that is, a narcotic. Nor was its purpose to improve the world or achieve commercial advantage. It was a purely ascetic exercise, a part of the discipline of penitence, a means of salvation. It afforded protection against the flesh, served to mortify the senses. Such work -- permit me to point out -- was of a totally asocial nature. It was pure, unadulterated religious egoism.” [While also contributing to the wealth of the Church, Pirenne]
P448 “I’m much obliged to you for the explanation and am happy to see that the blessings of labor can stand the test, even against the will of man.”
“Against his intention, yes indeed. What we observe here is nothing less than the difference between what is utilitarian and what is humane.”
“What I observe, with some annoyance, is that you are once again dividing the world in two.”
Could he be more of a straw man?
“I regret having aroused your displeasure, but one must differentiate and systematize things in order that the idea of the homo Dei may be kept free of all impurities. ['Seizing hold of the homo dei (or "human god") represents the highest aim of "playing king." Hovering somewhere between the terrestrial and mystical realms' -SOURCE] You Italians invented money changing and banking -- may God forgive you. But the English invented economic social theory, [HERE?] and humanity’s guardian angel will never forgive then that.”
“Ah, but that same guardian angel was alive and working among the great economists of that island. You wanted to say something, my good engineer?”
...”You must look favorably, then, on my cousin’s profession, Herr Naphta, and sympathize with his impatience to take it up... There is something devilishly earnest about it all, something ‘ascetic,’ if you will... and one must always reckon that one will have to deal with death, just as ultimately, the clergy must deal with it as well...
...
P449 “...No, what I mean is that the work of the professional soldier, that is, his military service -- and it is called service -- is done for no commercial advantage whatever and has no relation to any ‘economic social theory,’ as you call it...”
“There is no point in your going on, my good engineer,”... “From an intellectual standpoint, the soldier’s life is simply not worth discussing... it is a life of pure form, without any content whatever... I shall be quite willing to talk about soldiers when I find out what it is they’re fighting for.”
“The simple fact that they do fight,” Naphta retorted, “remains an obvious characteristic of the profession... it does remove them to a sphere beyond the ken of any bourgeois affirmation of life.”
“What you like to call the ‘bourgeois affirmation of life,’ “ Herr Settembrini replied... “will always be found ready to advocate ideals of reason and morality and to impress them on young wavering minds by whatever means available.”
P450 Silence ensued...
[They talk contemporary foreign affairs. Settembrini,] “Shame, shame, my dear sir. You should not mock humankind’s longing for social perfection. Any nation that thwarts such endeavors will undoubtedly find itself the object of moral ostracism.”
“What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.”
“You are an advocate of pan-Germanism, then, are you?”
Naphta shrugged his shoulders... He disdained to answer.
Settembrini rendered his opinion: “What you’ve said is, in any case, cynical. You are determined to interpret democracy’s noble endeavors to assert itself internationally as mere political cunning.”
“You want me to see such efforts as idealism or even some sort of religiosity, is that it? They are nothing but the last, feeble twitches of what little instinct for self-preservation a doomed international system still has. The catastrophe will, indeed must, follow -- is coming toward us from all directions, in all guises... Edward [the UK] can’t help steering Russian expansionism toward Europe, reawakening sleeping rivalries between Saint Petersburg and Vienna.”
...
P452 “Democracy... has more to hope for from the Kremlin than from the Hofburg, and it is a disgrace that the land of Luther and Gutenberg --”
...
[Still Settembrini,] “One believes war is inevitable, if one does not loathe it sufficiently.”
“Such loathing is a leap in logic if it does not begin with the nation-state.”
“The nation-state is the principle that guides this world’s affairs -- though you wish to ascribe that to the Devil. But once you make nations free and equal, defend the small and weak from oppression, establish justice, fix national borders --”
“The Brenner Pass as the border, I know. The liquidation of Austria. If only I knew how you intend to accomplish all that without war.”
“And I would be only too glad to know when you ever heard me condemn a war of national liberation.”
“But didn’t I just hear --”
Hans jumps in to repeat Settembrini’s “if not on the feet of doves, then on the pinions of eagles” line, to Naphta’s amusement.
...
“Voltaire himself affirmed wars that spread civilization...”
...And then there’s the Republic of the World. I shall refrain from inquiring what becomes of the principle of motion and rebellion once happiness and confederation have been established. For in that moment, rebellion becomes a crime.”
“You know very well... that the human progress of which I speak is conceived as infinite.”
“All motion, however, is circular,” Hans Castorp said. “In both space and time, as we learn from the laws of periodicity and the conservation of mass...”
“You should not brood and dream, my good engineer,”... “but steadfastly trust those instincts of your years and race that compel you to action. You also need to pair your scientific learning with the idea of progress... and you can take solace in the precepts of our eighteenth century, which taught that man was originally good, happy, and perfect, that it is only through social errors that he has been perverted and ruined, and that by working critically to rebuild society he shall become good, happy, and perfect again.”
How wonderful this review of social ideas is. And how strange that we normally ignore it. Even if we go to the trouble of studying the history of ideas, we rarely then take the time to actually compare and judge them, as Mann is doing here.
P454 “What Herr Settembrini neglects to add,” Naphta broke in, “is that the Rousseauian idyll is merely a rationalist’s bastardization of the Church’s doctrine of man’s original sinless, stateless condition, of his primal direct relationship to God as a child of God, to which condition he will return. Once earthly forms have dissolved, the reestablishment of the City of God will take place where earth and heaven, the natural and the supernatural, meet -- salvation is transcendent. As for your capitalist world republic, dear doctor, it is quite curious to hear you speak of ‘instinct’ in that context. Instinct is certainly on the side of the nation-state, for God has implanted in man natural instincts that have caused the world’s peoples to separate into various nations. War -- “
“War,” Settembrini exclaimed, “even war, my dear sir, has on occasion been forced to serve progress -- as you yourself must grant me, if you will recall certain events from your own favorite epoch, by which I mean the Crusades. Those wars on behalf of civilization served mightily to enhance economic and commercial relations between peoples and united Western man under the banner of a single idea.” [Pirenne: Europe goes crusading in the 13th century HERE; The Crusade and its consequences HERE. ]
“You are suddenly very tolerant of that idea. And so, might I courteously remind you that, although the Crusades did stimulate international commerce, they did anything but bring about international reconciliation. On the contrary, they taught peoples to differentiate themselves one from the other and fostered the growth of the concept of the nation-state.”
Naphta is in the right here. Again. See HERE.
P455 “Quite true, at least in regard to a given people’s relation to their clergy. Yes, it was during that period when a sense of national honor began to solidify against hierarchical pretension.”
Actually, that came later -- to the extent that it came at all. What Naphta means is the rise of the State -- the Kings -- as opposed to the Church and the lesser princes.
“And yet, what you call hierarchical pretension is actually nothing less than the idea of unifying mankind under the banner of the Spirit.”
“We know that spirit -- thanks, but no thanks.”
“It is clear that your nationalist mania loathes the world conquering cosmopolitanism of the Church. If only I knew how you reconcile that with your loathing of war. Your repristination of antiquity’s cult of the state surely makes you a champion of a positive interpretation of Law, and as such --”
...
[Still Naphta,] ...”your international law is once again merely a Rousseauian bastardization of the ius divinum, which has nothing to do with either nature or reason, but is based upon revelation.”
...”What I honor as natural and international law, you may go right ahead and call ius divinum. The main thing is that above the positive law of nation-states there arises a universal law with a higher jurisdiction, which allows disputed questions between parties to be settled by courts of arbitration.”
“Courts of arbitration -- the very idea! A bourgeois court of arbitration that decides questions of life and death, ascertains God’s will, and ordains the course of history. Fine, that takes care of the dove’s feet. But what about the pinions of eagles?”
The “law” in the West is primarily bourgeois law, developed so that the bourgeoisie could control their cities and granted in return for the funding the princes were in desperate need of once the money economy revived with the Crusades.
Thanks to having recently read A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne, I’m now aware how much this is a stealth course in Western Civilization. If only Mann could have incorporated hyperlinks to the relevant documents. See the rise of cities and the bourgeoisie in the 11th and 12th centuries, HERE; the economic revolution in those centuries HERE;
“Bourgeois civilization --”
“Nonsense, the bourgeoisie doesn’t know what it wants. They scream about doing something to halt the decline of the birthrate, demand that the costs of raising and educating children be reduced -- and all the while we’re suffocating in the throngs, and every profession is so overcrowded that the brawl over a few scraps of bread will soon eclipse all previous wars. Open spaces and green cities! Toughen the nation’s youth! But why toughen them if civilization and progress demand there be no more war? War would take care of all those problems, and provide the solutions. Toughen our youth and at the same time combat the decline in the birthrate.”
P456 “You’re joking -- and not even trying to be serious. Our conversation is at an end, and just in time. We’re home,”...
In a surprising burst of cordiality, Naphta... [said] “Do come visit us... I enjoy exchanging views with young people, am perhaps not totally lacking in my own pedagogic tradition. Our Master of the Lodge” -- he pointed at Settembrini -- “may wish to claim that all pedagogic proclivities... belong to bourgeois humanism -- but one must take issue with him there...”
P458 [Hans about Settembrini to his cousin,] “I do believe he’s afraid of some things Naphta is not afraid of, you see, and that his freedom and courage are somewhat namby-pamby concepts. Do you think he has enough courage ‘to lose himself or to let himself be ruined’?”
“What are you speaking French for?”
“Oh, just because. The atmosphere is so international. I don’t know who ought to like that more -- Settembrini with his bourgeois world republic, or Naphta with his hierarchical cosmopolitanism. I was paying attention, you see, but none of it was clear. Instead, the more they talked the more confused I got.”
...
...”it upsets me to see such confusion -- what with the one preaching about an international world republic and loathing war on principle, but at the same time so patriotic that the Brenner Pass is the only possible border and he’s willing to fight a civilizing war over it; and the other claiming the nation-state is the Devil’s own work and gushing about the unification of all mankind, only to turn around and defend the law of natural instincts and make fun of peace conferences... You [Joachim] say our job is to get healthier, not more clever. But the two must be compatible, damn it. And if you don’t believe that, then you’re dividing the world in two -- which is always a great mistake, let me tell you.”
Hans hasn’t completely recovered from Walpurgis night.
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