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The Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann
Everyman's Library 2005 (originally published 1924)
Everyman's Library 2005 (originally published 1924)
My book club decided to tackle The Magic Mountain. It had become a joke the way I kept bringing the book up in every imaginable context. I'm still not sure how it will go over, but I'm glad to finally be blogging TMM.
The book I'm just now wrapping up on my other blog, Bloggity-Blog, is A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne. To my surprise, this has turned out to be the most helpful book for understanding TMM. I really should have blogged it here, but it wasn't until I was near the end and started the section on the Renaissance (Settembrini) and the Reformation (Naphta) that I realized the connection. You can follow the book title link above to get to the beginning of my coverage of the book, though, as I said, the relevant part is at the end (HERE).
The books, besides the Pirenne, that I would now recommend to people interested in TMM are already here -- Doctor Faustus and The Brothers Karamazov. I think all three of these titles are better than Goethe's Faust (The Norton Critical Edition) and The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche, though, of course those books are also worth reading.
And so, at last, we get to the point...
I don’t think I’d ever really noticed how the length of the chapters expands to reflect the changing sense of time. Chapter 1 is 17 pages; chapter 2 is 21 pages; chapter 3 is 64 pages; chapter 4 is 107 pages. And that’s just his original 3 week visit. Chapter 5 is 191; chapter 6 is 231; and chapter 7 (also the number of years) is 213 -- but truncated by the "thunderbolt."
Since "I had Never Really Noticed" is bound to become a theme, let's go with "IHNRN" as an abbreviation.
Even in this first chapter we see that Hans is quick to set aside his copy of Ocean Steamships. In fact he’s already set it aside by the time we first see him. And in the restaurant we note the first of the other residents, not counting his cousin, the unnamed lady who sets a precedent by spending her entire life in the world of the sanatoriums.
Chapter 2
The Baptismal Bowl
Such an overture of death, I had forgotten that all aspects of his fascination with death are revealed here at the funeral of his grandfather. I wonder if he wrote this later. Maybe even after the rest of the book.
At the Tienappels'
And the overture continues in the second section with Hans’s dreaminess and indecisiveness when it came to his choosing a trade. I would almost bet money Mann wrote this last. Though it could also have been his starting outline.
And the overture continues in the second section with Hans’s dreaminess and indecisiveness when it came to his choosing a trade. I would almost bet money Mann wrote this last. Though it could also have been his starting outline.
And the description of his approach to deciding on a career does sound almost like quantum (Copenhagen Interpretation) superposition. Nothing is determined in advance, it’s all a matter of probability and fate until the wave function collapses.
I do like the light, almost humorous, tone taken by the narrator. We are not going to take our young hero too seriously. I guess there's no getting around TMM being a Bildungsroman. And skimming that Wiki entry, I couldn't help jumping over to Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Goethe. Why has no one mentioned that as a book to read? Now I wonder how much Wilhelm and Hans are alike, though I suspect Thomas Mann may also be the model for student Hans -- though, intellectually, Adrian Leverkühn (in Doctor Faustus) is closer to young Mann. Perhaps Hans is the laid-back student the adult Mann now imagines he could have been.
And don't I recall a reference to Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, perhaps a musical reference? toward the end of TMM. Maybe I need to read some Goethe novels.
And I do like this picture of the world of what Henri Pirenne has taught me to call the patricians of the bourgeoisie. The centuries of bourgeois stability and rectitude; yet with a foot still in the Low German world of the common man. Plattdeutsch or Low German.
Chapter 3
Satana
IHNRN we get our Erasmus even before our first spell on our new chair.
P66 - Minos and Rhadamanthus
P67 - Carducci
P68 - Settembrini: about shipbuilding “... I am a humanist, a homo humanus, and understand nothing of such ingenious matters, however sincere my deep respect for them. But I can well imagine that the theoretical side of your profession demands a clear and keen mind and its practice no less than the whole man -- is that not so?”P69 “It certainly is, yes, I can agree with you unconditionally there,” ... “Its demands are colossal nowadays -- one dare not be all too aware of just how exacting or one might truly lose all heart. No, it is no fun. And when one’s constitution is not all that strong -- I am here only as a guest, true, but my constitution’s not exactly the strongest, and I would be lying were I to claim that work suits me splendidly. Indeed it rather wears me down, I must say. Actually, I only feel really healthy when I am doing nothing at all.”
...
P70 - [After Hans has complained about his cigar and been informed that Behrens is also a cigar smoker] Settembrini: ...“A devil of a fellow, our Rhadamanthus. And truly ‘always merry’ -- though at times it’s a little forced. He tends to melancholy. His vice is not good for him -- but otherwise, it would be no vice -- tobacco only makes him melancholy. Which is why our venerable head nurse has taken charge of his supply and allows him only a small daily ration...”
What is the significance of tobacco here? Something I should try to pay attention to this time through. Surely it’s not Freudian?
P71 - “What a windbag,” Hans Castorp thought, and did not change his mind when Settembrini... returned to casting aspersions. His primary object was Director Behrens -- he sneered at the size of the man’s feet and lingered over his title of Hofrat, which had been bestowed on him by a prince suffering from tuberculosis of the brain...
[After talking about the head nurse, Adriatica von Myendonks] Hans: “Ha ha ha. What a sarcastic man you are, Herr Settembrini.”
“Sarcastic? You mean malicious. Yes, I am a little malicious,” ... “My great worry is that I have been condemned to waste my malice on such miserable objects... In my eyes it is the brightest sword that reason has against the powers of darkness and ugliness. Malice, sir, is the spirit of criticism, and criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment.” And all of a sudden he began to speak about Petrarch, whom he called the “Father of Modernity.”
...
Clarity of Mind
P75 - [Joachim is taking his temperature] Hans: “And how long does that take?” ... Joachim raised seven fingers.
“Seven minutes must be up by now.”
Joachim shook his head. After a while he took the thermometer out of his mouth, looked at it, and said, “Yes, when you pay close attention to it -- time, I mean -- it goes very slowly. I truly like measuring my temperature four times a day, because it makes you notice what one minute, or even seven, actually means -- especially since the seven days of a week hang so dreadfully heavy on your hands here.”
P76 Hans: ...”There is nothing ‘actual’ about time. If it seems long to you, then it is long, and if it seems to pass quickly then it’s short. But how long or how short it is in actuality, no one knows.” He was not at all used to philosophizing, and yet felt some urge to do so.
Joachim contested this. “Why is that? No. We do measure it. We have clocks and calendars, and when a month has passed, then it has passed -- for you for me and everyone.”
“But wait,” ... “You said that a minute is as long as it seems to you while you’re measuring your temperature, correct?”
“A minute is as long as . . . it lasts, as long as it takes a second hand to complete a circle.”
“But how long that takes can vary greatly -- according to how we feel it! And in point of fact . . . I repeat, in point of fact,” ... “that’s a matter of motion, of motion in space, correct? Wait, hear me out! And so we measure time with space. But that is the same thing as trying to measure space with time -- the way uneducated people do. It’s twenty hours from Hamburg to Davos -- true, by train. But on foot, how far is it then? And in our minds -- not even a second!”
“Listen here,” Joachim said, “what’s wrong with you? I think being up here with us is getting to you.”
“Just be quiet... So then, what is time?” ... “Will you please tell me that? We perceive space with our senses, with vision and touch. But what is the organ for our sense of time? ... You see, you’re stuck. But how are we ever going to measure something about which, precisely speaking, we know nothing at all -- cannot list a single one of its properties. We say time passes. Fine, let it pass... But in order to measure it . . . no, wait! In order for it to be measurable, it would have to flow evenly, but where is it written that it does that? It doesn’t do that for our conscious minds, we simply assume it does, just for the sake of convenience. And so all our measurements are merely conventions, if you please.”
...
P77 - Hans: “And I’ll go now,” ... “My head is full of all kinds of ideas about time -- a whole complex of thoughts, let me tell you. But I don’t want to get you worked up over them, not when your temperature is already too high. I’ll keep it all in mind, and we can talk about it later then, after second breakfast perhaps...”
[Hans’s first time in his chair] ...it was terribly pleasant just to lie there, Hans Castorp discovered at once to his delight -- he could not remember ever having used a more comfortable lounge chair... attached to a string and slipped into an embroidered linen case was a roll for your neck, neither too firm nor too soft, and it simply worked wonders. Hans Castorp propped one elbow on the broad, smooth surface of the chair arm, and lay there blinking, not even bothering to entertain himself with Ocean Steamships...
P78 - ...he went on dreaming. It was already ten o’clock when he lay down. An hour passed. It was an ordinary hour, neither long nor short...
“Well, that felt marvelous just lying there. What sort of chairs are those? If they’re for sale up here, I’ll take one with me back to Hamburg, they’re simply heavenly...
And this is why this book so appeals to me. The whole idea of laying about in comfy chairs, with lovely scenery to look at, and good food, while doing philosophy. What could be better?
Now, to “time.” While Mann is writing this in the teens and twenties, the cousins are still back in 1907. Einstein published his Special theory of Relativity in 1905 and his General theory in 1916. Would a slacker student of engineering have picked up any hint of what was still just Relativity? Seems unlikely. And of course Einstein was not talking about the perception of time. Both cousins would have been surprised by the objective relativity of time that Einstein was discovering.
To Hans’s point, I keep running into articles about how professional athletes and other people in high stress moments experience time quite differently. It would be only a slight exaggeration to describe this as the Matrix effect (meaning the cinematic slow-motion technique, not the phantasm machine idea). For that matter, I just the other day watched a video speculating about why time seems to pass quicker as you age.
Meanwhile, time can also be seen as the greatest offering of the Berghof. At least for Hans, it is giving him time to think... or to do “nothing at all,” as he himself claimed makes him feel the healthiest.
Now, to “time.” While Mann is writing this in the teens and twenties, the cousins are still back in 1907. Einstein published his Special theory of Relativity in 1905 and his General theory in 1916. Would a slacker student of engineering have picked up any hint of what was still just Relativity? Seems unlikely. And of course Einstein was not talking about the perception of time. Both cousins would have been surprised by the objective relativity of time that Einstein was discovering.
To Hans’s point, I keep running into articles about how professional athletes and other people in high stress moments experience time quite differently. It would be only a slight exaggeration to describe this as the Matrix effect (meaning the cinematic slow-motion technique, not the phantasm machine idea). For that matter, I just the other day watched a video speculating about why time seems to pass quicker as you age.
Meanwhile, time can also be seen as the greatest offering of the Berghof. At least for Hans, it is giving him time to think... or to do “nothing at all,” as he himself claimed makes him feel the healthiest.
Herr Albin
P94 ...That comparison taken from life at school had made an impression on him, [Hans] because he had been held back in his sophomore year, and he could recall the somewhat ignominious, but humorous and pleasantly untidy state of affairs that he had enjoyed in the last quarter, once he had given up even trying and was able to laugh “at the whole thing.”... On the whole, however, it seemed to him that although honor had its advantages, so, too, did disgrace, and that indeed the advantages of the latter were almost boundless. He tried putting himself in Herr Albin’s shoes and imagined how it must be when one is finally free of all the pressures honor brings and one can endlessly enjoy the unbounded advantages of disgrace -- and the young man was terrified by a sense of dissolute sweetness that set his heart pounding even faster for a while.
P94 ...That comparison taken from life at school had made an impression on him, [Hans] because he had been held back in his sophomore year, and he could recall the somewhat ignominious, but humorous and pleasantly untidy state of affairs that he had enjoyed in the last quarter, once he had given up even trying and was able to laugh “at the whole thing.”... On the whole, however, it seemed to him that although honor had its advantages, so, too, did disgrace, and that indeed the advantages of the latter were almost boundless. He tried putting himself in Herr Albin’s shoes and imagined how it must be when one is finally free of all the pressures honor brings and one can endlessly enjoy the unbounded advantages of disgrace -- and the young man was terrified by a sense of dissolute sweetness that set his heart pounding even faster for a while.
I'm going to stop here and finish Chapter 3 next time.
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