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The Magic Mountain
Eternal soup...
Sick time. I think this description of bedrest time worked better in the past. I haven’t experienced anything like that since I was a child, maybe with the measles or the chicken pox. I have a very vague recollection of days spent in a darkened bedroom when I was under eight. I take the description here mostly on faith, not really wishing my memory of those times was better than it is.
There’s been only one time since childhood when I haven’t left my house for a week due to illness. (And even then I wasn’t in bed all the time. Which is good since I lack staff to bring me soup.)
P222 Have I already mentioned my surprise that Hans can understand the native speakers as well as he seems to? From a friend in Basel, I have heard that Germans have a very hard time with the local dialects. Is this perhaps because Hans also is familiar with Plattdeutsch? You would think he would mention that if it were the case.
Time and death (no surprise there) and the cruelty of bourgeois life. It is a little jarring -- though completely justifiable -- that the socialist has to urge on the young bourgeois patrician. Today, at our first book club meeting on TMM, I spoke of the coming duel between our humanist Erasmus (Settembrini) and our spokesman for the Reformation (I may have mentioned Luther and Calvin). But, really Naphta is more of the Counter Reformation -- except that Mann must have made him Jewish for a reason. I think he does speak to that religious fervor that was the origin of the Hussites and the Anabaptists. But Pirenne's dichotomy of Renaissance vs Reformation is so tempting.
Just as Hans silences Settembrini here with a few questions about the state of Settembrini’s own health -- as much as he doubts the trustworthiness of Behrens, here he sits on the Magic Mountain -- I feel that Naphta would be silenced by the very secular reality of the Catholic world order that the Reformation confronted.
“My God, I see it!”
Frauleine Engelhart ('angelic strength'): p246 Clavdia’s profile was one of softest, sweetest youth -- though it was, of course, a most interesting profile as well, not that of some healthy little goose...
Encyclopedia
Naphta isn’t even introduced yet and already we have a good intellectual debate. And one that touches on both Voltaire and Goethe -- which means so much of European intellectual history.
p287 Settembrini: "...Ah, you prefer oriental metaphors. Quite understandable. Asia is devouring us. Tartar faces in every direction you look... Genghis Khan," he said, "lone wolves on dusky steppes, snow and schnapps, whips and knouts, Schlusselburg prison and Holy Orthodoxy. They ought to erect a statue of Pallas Athena here in the lobby -- as a kind of self-defense..."
Settembrini's argument about the conflict between the west and the east has been reminding me of something I ran into not too long ago, and, to my amazement I actually found it in my other blog, thoughtfully indexed under "Occident vs Orient." I think I can just paste the whole passage here:
p117 We finally learn our hero's name, Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, historian, of Landeck, Tyrol. Here's the Wiki entry on the actual person with this name. And that's where I found this, quote from Fallmerayer,
For nearly eighteen aeons [Äonen], all history has been the result of the struggle between two basic elements, split apart by a divine power from the very beginning: a flexible life-process on the one side, and a formless, undeveloped stasis on the other. The symbol of the former is eternal Rome, with the entire Occident lying behind her; the symbol of the latter is Constantinople, with the ossified Orient.... That the Slavs might be one of the two world-factors, or if one prefers, the shadow of the shining image of European humanity, and therefore that the constitution of the earth might not admit philosophical reconstruction without their assent, is the great scholarly heresy of our time.[15]
Doesn't that suggest Settembreni's position? Here's something else from Wiki "...in November 1850, the Munich Professor Johann Nepomuk von Ringseis delivered an 'explosive' lecture at a public session of the Bavarian Academy, where he denounced the arrival in Bavaria of a 'philosophical Left' [Fallmerayer], marked by liberalism and irreligiosity, that viewed all religion as a 'pathological condition....'"
Later we are told that,
He is remembered as "a co-founder of Byzantine studies, as discoverer of the divisive Greek theory, as a prophet of the world-historical opposition between Occident and Orient, and finally as a brilliant essayist."[40]
Fallmerayer's account of the split between "Occident" and "Orient" hinged on his interpretation of the Russian Empire, which he perceived as a powerful blend of Slavic ethnic characteristics, Byzantine political philosophy, and Orthodox theology. Although he initially perceived this constellation with admiration, and viewed Russia as the potential savior of Europe from Napoleon, his view changed in the mid-1840s, perhaps as a result of his encounter with Fyodor Tyutchev, and he soon came to see Russia as the major threat to Western Europe. By the late 1840s he was convinced that Russia would conquer Constantinople and the Balkans, and perhaps the further Slavic lands of the Habsburg and Prussian Empires. In the mid-1850s he was overjoyed by the success of the European/Ottoman coalition in the Crimean War.[56]
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Vertigo by W.G. Sebald
For nearly eighteen aeons [Äonen], all history has been the result of the struggle between two basic elements, split apart by a divine power from the very beginning: a flexible life-process on the one side, and a formless, undeveloped stasis on the other. The symbol of the former is eternal Rome, with the entire Occident lying behind her; the symbol of the latter is Constantinople, with the ossified Orient.... That the Slavs might be one of the two world-factors, or if one prefers, the shadow of the shining image of European humanity, and therefore that the constitution of the earth might not admit philosophical reconstruction without their assent, is the great scholarly heresy of our time.[15]
Doesn't that suggest Settembreni's position? Here's something else from Wiki "...in November 1850, the Munich Professor Johann Nepomuk von Ringseis delivered an 'explosive' lecture at a public session of the Bavarian Academy, where he denounced the arrival in Bavaria of a 'philosophical Left' [Fallmerayer], marked by liberalism and irreligiosity, that viewed all religion as a 'pathological condition....'"
Later we are told that,
He is remembered as "a co-founder of Byzantine studies, as discoverer of the divisive Greek theory, as a prophet of the world-historical opposition between Occident and Orient, and finally as a brilliant essayist."[40]
Fallmerayer's account of the split between "Occident" and "Orient" hinged on his interpretation of the Russian Empire, which he perceived as a powerful blend of Slavic ethnic characteristics, Byzantine political philosophy, and Orthodox theology. Although he initially perceived this constellation with admiration, and viewed Russia as the potential savior of Europe from Napoleon, his view changed in the mid-1840s, perhaps as a result of his encounter with Fyodor Tyutchev, and he soon came to see Russia as the major threat to Western Europe. By the late 1840s he was convinced that Russia would conquer Constantinople and the Balkans, and perhaps the further Slavic lands of the Habsburg and Prussian Empires. In the mid-1850s he was overjoyed by the success of the European/Ottoman coalition in the Crimean War.[56]
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p297 Settembrini: "...Do you know about the Lisbon earthquake?"
"No . . . an earthquake? I've not been reading the newpapers here . . ."
"You misunderstand me... the natural phenomenon of which I speak is not a current event; it took place, incidentally, some one hundred and fifty years ago."
"Oh, yes! Wait a moment -- right! I read somewhere that Goethe said something in his bedroom one night to his valet --"
"Oh -- I don't wish to talk about that," Settembrini broke in, closing his eyes and waving one little brown hand in the air.
"Besides, you're getting your catastrophes mixed up. You're thinking of the earthquake in Messina. I'm talking about the one that ravaged Lisbon in the year 1755."
p298 "Beg your pardon."
"Well, it was Voltaire who rose up against it."
"What do you mean 'rose up'? What did he do?"
"He rebelled, that's what. He would not accept this stroke of fate, the brutal fact of it. He refused to submit to it. He protested in the name of the mind and reason against this scandalous offense of nature, which destroyed three-quarters of a flourishing city and took thousands of human lives... Voltaire's position was that of a true descendant of those ancient Gauls who shot their arrows against heaven. You see, my good engineer, there you behold the mind's enmity toward nature, its proud mistrust of her, its greathearted insistence on the right to criticize her and her evil, irrational power. Because she is a power, and it is servile to accept her, to reconcile oneself to her -- that is to reconcile oneself to her inwardly. There you see the kind of humanism that absolutely does not become ensnared in contradictions, that is in no way guilty of a retreat into Christian toadying, even though it resolves to see in the body the evil force, the antagonist... One must respect and defend it [the body], when it serves the cause of emancipation and beauty, of freedom of the senses, of happiness and desire. one must despise it insofar as it is the principle of gravity and inertia opposing the flow toward the light, insofar as it represents the principle of disease and death, insofar as its quintessence is a matter of perversity, of corruption, of lust and disgrace."
A passage to recall when we come to "Snow" in the next chapter.
Voltaire and the Earthquake in Lisbon
Voltaire certainly rejects the notion that we live in the best of all possible worlds, as directed by God and the Port Royal crowd, but does he reject nature? Cultivating your garden, as demonstrated by both Candide and Voltaire himself, is embracing nature, though rejecting man to a large extent.
Here's a section from my other blog about Voltaire and the Lisbon earthquake:
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"Gestation: Candide Assembling Itself" - Hayden MasonReading page 100 got me interested in the history of Portugal during Voltaire's life and I ran into the very interesting account of the life of Sebastião de Melo (Count of Oeiras after 1759.) He's certainly a mixed bag. On the one hand he seems to be almost a puppet of Voltaire, and yet also an autocrat. Now I'm curious what Voltaire had to say about him.
p100 ...He tells Elie Bertrand (another of the Genevan clergy)... that the myth of the Fall of Man... is more reasonable in human terms than the Optimism of Leibniz and Pope, which beneath the disguise of a consoling name simply removes all hope: 'if all is well, how do the Leibnizians admit of a better?'... It is the fatalistic quality of Optimism that is so cruel, for it invites man to acquiesce and therefore give up all striving for improvement... To Thieriot he makes a touching confession that he is writing about the sufferings of his fellow-men out of pure altruism, for 'I am so happy that I am ashamed of it' (D6875, 27 May {1756}).
I admit that it is something of a problem, if you believe in God, that life can smash you like a bug at any time. And not just you but entire ant hills of people, like Lisbon. But then again, from a devoutly religious position This Life is nothing special in any case. The victims of Lisbon just meet their maker a little quicker and in a large party.
In part of that paragraph I didn't quote, Mason shows that Voltaire quickly moved from Lisbon to the greater evil of war. (I was going to say that the 18th century was a good time to consider war, but then what century isn't?) So Voltaire quickly returns to the evil in man, where I think his opposition to the Optimists is on a surer footing.
p105 Pennsylvania is the model for Eldorado?!
p108 Unless Candide were virtually finished before Voltaire's visit to Schwetzingen, which appears unlikely, one must view it as written not simply in a state of ambivalent feelings about Paris and Geneva nor as a work of detached irony by a happy man but as a composition of someone who was once more plunged into despairing gloom. When he returned to Geneva he received definitive news from d'Argental that Mme. de Pompadour had declared him persona non grata at Court. Besterman rightly notes: 'it is from this moment that can be dated his spiritual severance from his fatherland'...
p109 ...Voltaire is disheartened by the decline of French prestige and influence in the world. Concern is often expressed about cultural and military affairs together... since the battle of Rossbach 'everything has been in decline in our armies, as in the fine arts in Paris'... The philosophe has long been persuaded that belles-lettre in France were degenerating and that the French were living on past credit...
...He has taken a new decision, to renounce urban life... [after buying his estates at Tournay and Ferney] 'I do not know of any situation preferable to mine'... and that he can now cultivate his garden in tranquility....
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Goethe and the Earthquake in Messina
A quick search on this topic turned up something a little interesting now, but very interesting for the last chapter. This is from "The Word: A Monthly Magazine Devoted To Philosophy - Science - Religion - Eastern Thought - Occultism - Theosophy and the The Brotherhood of Humanity" Volume 3, April 1906 - September 1906.
p94 Goethe was a freethinker like Kant and Schopenhauer, but he never was one of those narrow-minded materialists who allow free-thinking only in order to prove that matter and force "is the creative power for every existing thing"; that the soul of man is a nursery tale, and that it is a waste of time to attach importance to the claims of occultism.
...
... Goethe himself was certainly a very sensitive man and easily influenced by everything, especially by natural disturbances. As, for instance, by the terrible earthquake which destroyed Messina in 1783, and which Goethe must have felt or divined, although he was at the time in Weimar. On the morning of that day he told his valet: "This is a very important moment, for there is either now somewhere an earthquake, or we will have one very soon." Several weeks later came the news to Weimar which corroborated Goethe's presentment. (I. 69 Discourses with Eckermann.)
The following conversation between Goethe and Eckermann, his secretary, shows that the great poet believed in the occult power of the soul which we now call telepathy. Eckermann tells Goethe of a remarkable dream which he had, and Goethe answers:
"We all are surrounded by an atmosphere which we do not know, but which seems to be in connection with our spirit. It is certain that in special cases, our soul is able to transcend the physical boundaries and to receive a presentment or even a definite picture of future events -- a soul is able to impress another soul by the thought alone...."
And there are more stories of this sort. Very similar, come to think of it, to the stories in Autobiography of a Yogi.
Mann in Love
I was going to go with Castorp in Love, but I want to mention von Aschenbach from Death In Venice as well. The obsessive love in In Search of Lost Time, both Swann for Odette and Marcel for Albertine, is all puppies and rainbows compared with Hans and Clavdia or von Aschenbach and Tadzio. Mostly this is because Mann’s infatuation is just so internal. Though I can’t dismiss it entirely as I recognize so much of it.
And it’s worth noting, given the self-revealing nature of this kind of love, that Mann got a good deal of grief from his wife’s family after Death in Venice came out. (Ha.) And here he is doing something very similar again. You have to wonder if Mann isn’t getting the same thrill here as Hans as he reveals his secret passion. Even though he follows Proust this time, and gender-bends Pribislav into Clavdia, he still lets us see Pribislav.
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