Jump to Introduction & Chronology
Jump back to Previous: TMM - Danse Macabre
The Magic Mountain
Walpurgis Night
At last! I would skip this section, but for those few, those readers really engaged in the Hans & Clavdia “romance,” this is the exciting climax. Oh, those poor people.
P382 A few days passed, and young Hans Castorp had now spent seven months up here, whereas Joachim, who already had five months to his credit when his cousin first arrived, could now look back on twelve months, one round year -- round in the cosmic sense, as well, for in the time since the small, sturdy locomotive had dropped him off up here, the earth had returned to its starting point, having completed one orbit around the sun...
Well... yes and no. And this may be another area where the science of the time, astrophysics in this instance, was lacking. I don’t really know. But since Mann has brought up the “cosmic sense” I feel it’s only right for me to run it into the ground.
It’s true that the earth has returned to the same point in its orbit that it had occupied a year before. But it would be very wrong to imagine that this was the same point in space, for our star -- the Sun -- is, at every moment, dragging the whole complex of the solar system along with it as it orbits around the galactic center. (See HERE.) And, of course, our galaxy itself is not immobile but involved in a gravity inspired dance with Andromeda and the Magellanic Clouds. (Not to even get into the inherent expansion of the universe.) None of that was known when this book was published. Still, the earth has spiraled forward one year of the Sun’s orbit of the supermassive black hole (or black holes) that hold our galaxy together. And over that time the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies have moved a small distance toward their eventual collision. Alas, that spectacular event will not fall within the seven years covered by this book.
...It was carnival time. Mardi Gras was upon them, and Hans Castorp inquired of the one-year-old what that was like up here.
P383 “Magnifique!” responded Settembrini, who had happened to meet the cousins on their morning constitutional. “Splendid!” he said. “As rollicking as in the Prater. You’ll see, my good engineer. And now the dance is taken up, we play gallants most dashing,” he quoted, and went on shooting a volley of taut, satirical words accompanying his satire with deft gestures of arm, head, and shoulder... “The program includes various danses macabres. Unfortunately a certain number of last year’s participants won’t be able to appear this time, because the party is over at half past nine.”
“You mean . . . oh, I see now -- how, marvelous!” Hans Castorp laughed...
P384 ...Already at breakfast on Mardi Gras morning... the dining hall was filled with the rattling and tootling of all sorts of toy instruments... And by evening both in the dining hall and the social rooms the festivities continued to grow until at one point . . . [I would remind the reader that that ellipsis was Mann's while mine are "..."] At this juncture we alone know to what these carnival festivities eventually led, thanks to Hans Castorp’s enterprising spirit. But we are not about to let our knowledge of what happened disrupt the deliberate pace of our narrative; instead, we shall give time the honor it is due and not rush into things -- perhaps we shall even draw these events out a bit, for we share with young Hans Castorp the same moral scruples that for so long had kept him from precipitating such events.
...
A note to Hans from Settembrini,
But bear in mind, the mountain’s mad with spells tonight,
And should a will-o’-wisp decide your way to light,
Beware -- its lead may prove deceptive.
I believe this is Mephisto talking to Faust while they are on Der Zauberberg on Walpurgisnacht... Not quite, but close. The following is from Goethe’s Faust Part One (right after Faust has seduced and abandoned Gretchen, I should note)
------------------------
XXI
Walpurgis-Night
Mephisto and Faust are mid conversation,
Mephistopheles
I notice no such thing, I vow!
’Tis winter still within my body:
Upon my path I wish for frost and snow.
How sadly rises, incomplete and ruddy,
The moon’s lone disk, with its belated glow,
And lights so dimly, that, as one advances,
At every step one strikes a rock or tree!
Let us, then, use a Jack-o’-lantern’s glances:
I see one yonder, burning merrily.
Ho, there! my friend! I’ll levy thine attendance:
Why waste so vainly thy resplendence?
Be kind enough to light us up the steep!
Will-O’-The–Wisp
My reverence, I hope, will me enable
To curb my temperament unstable;
For zigzag courses we are wont to keep.
Mephistopheles
Indeed? he’d like mankind to imitate!
Now, in the Devil’s name, go straight,
Or I’ll blow out his being’s flickering spark!
Will-O’-The–Wisp
You are the master of the house, I mark,
And I shall try to serve you nicely.
But then, reflect: the mountain’s magic-mad to-day,
And if a will-o’-the-wisp must guide you on the way,
You mustn’t take things too precisely.
------------------------
...
P389 [Settembrini, of course, while Hans is captivated by Clavdia in her Mardi Gras finery,] “Look closer now, my lad!” Hans Castorp heard Herr Settembrini say, as if from some great distance -- his eyes were following her as she now left the dining hall by way of the glass door. “‘Tis Lilith.”
“Who?” Hans Castorp asked.
The question delighted the man of literature. He replied, “The first wife Adam had. You’d best beware . . .”
...
Goethe’s Faust, again,
FAUST
Who's that, pray?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Mark her well! That's Lilith.
FAUST
Who?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Adam's first wife. Of her rich locks beware!
That charm in which she's parallel'd by few;
When in its toils a youth she doth ensnare,
He will not soon escape, I promise you.
-------------
...
“According to Hebrew traditions... [Adam was married twice.] Lilith then became a wraith who haunts young men by night -- her beautiful hair makes her particularly dangerous.”
P390 “Why, how disgusting! A wraith with beautiful hair. You simply can’t stomach things like that, can you? And so here you come and turn the lights back on, so to speak, so you can set young men back on the right path -- isn’t that what you’re up to, Lodovico?” Hans Castorp said giddily. He had drunk quite a bit of burgundy and champagne.
...”You will please use forms of address appropriate to the educated West. No first names. Formal pronouns, if you please. What you are trying to do there doesn’t suit you at all.”
“But why not? It’s Mari Gras! It’s common practice on an evening like this.”
“Yes, just to add a little uncivil excitement to things. For people to use informal pronouns or first names when they have no real reason to do so is a repulsively barbaric practice, a slovenly game, a way of playing with the givens of civilization and human progress, against both it is directed -- shamelessly, insolently directed. Please, do not presume that in calling you ‘my lad,’ I was addressing you in that fashion. I was merely quoting a passage from the masterpiece of your national literature. I was speaking poetically, as it were.”
Mann makes a great deal of the use of formal and informal pronouns, even more so in Doctor Faustus. Not an easy thing to translate into English. I suspect Settembrini, or should I say at this point, Lodovico, would not care much for English on that basis alone.
Hans, wine emboldened, has quite a long speech here summing up the relationship of the two men and winding up with this,
...”Forgive me, then, and don’t think badly of me. To your health, Lodovico -- I wish you long life. I empty my glass in honor of your literary efforts to eradicate human suffering!” he concluded, and throwing his head back, he downed his burgundy and champagne in two great gulps. “And now let’s go join the others.”
P392 “My good engineer, whatever has got into you?” the Italian asked, his eyes full of amazement, rising to leave the table as well. “Those sound like words of farewell.”
“No -- why should it be a farewell?” Hans Castorp said, ducking the issue, not just in a metaphorical sense with his words, but also physically, swinging his upper body around in a wide curve and taking the arm of Fraulein Engelhart, who had come to fetch them...
Eventually, inevitably, Hans seeks a pencil from Clavdia,
p396 ...She rummaged in her leather handbag, peered down into it, first pulled out a handkerchief, from which she then extracted a silver pencil-holder, a slight, fragile trinket, never intended for serious use. That pencil long ago, the first one, had been more straightforward, handier.
I apologize for this filthy language, but I’m only quoting the text.
Oh dear...
“Voila,” she said and picked the little pencil up by the tip, holding it between thumb and forefinger and waggling it back and forth...
P397 “A poor thing, but thine own,” he said, brow to brow with her, gazing down at the pencil...
“Oh, and you are witty, too,” she replied with a brief smile, raising her head now and letting him take the pencil... (Though God only knew how he had managed to be witty -- with apparently not a drop of blood left in his head.)
...
I’m not going to attempt to capture all of this exchange, but there are a few tidbits that have interest beyond Walpurgis night.
P398 Clavdia speaking of Joachim: “He is a very rigid, very respectable, very ‘German’ young man.” [The italics here indicate that the text is translated from the French in the original.]
“Rigid? Respectable?” he repeated. “I understand French better than I speak it. What you mean to say is that he’s pedantic. Do you consider us Germans pedantic -- us other Germans?”
“We are talking about your cousin. But it’s true, you are all a little bourgeois. You love order more than liberty, all Europe knows that.”
If I only had a nickle for every child of the bourgeoisie who used "bourgeois" in a pejorative sense...
“Love . . . love. What is it exactly? The word lacks definition. What one man has, the other loves, as the German proverb puts it, Hans Castorp contended. “I have been giving freedom some thought of late,” he continued. “That is, I heard the word mentioned so often, that I started thinking about it. I’ll tell you in French what it is I’ve been thinking. What all Europe refers to as liberty is, perhaps, something rather pedantic, rather bourgeois in comparison to our need for order -- that’s the point!”
P399 “You don’t say! How amusing. Was it really your cousin who got you thinking such strange things?”
“No, he is truly a good soul, his is a simple temperament, not prone to dangers, you understand. But he is not a bourgeois, he is a military man.”
...
P400 ...”Let’s sit here and watch, as if in a dream. It is like a dream for me, you know for me to be sitting here like this -- like an especially deep dream, for a man must sleep very heavily to dream like this. What I’m trying to say is: it is a dream I know well, have dreamed for a long time, yes, eternally, sitting here with you as I am now. Behold -- eternity.”
“A poet!” she said. “A bourgeois, a humanist, and a poet -- behold, Germany all rolled into one, just as it should be!”
“I’m afraid we are not at all, not in the least, as we should be,” he replied. “Not in any way. We are perhaps life’s problem children, that’s all.” [At first I thought by “we” he meant he and Clavdia, but I think he means Germans.]
...
After Clavdia let’s loose the first thunderbolt, that she is leaving the next day,
p402 “So you will be coming back?”
“That’s an open question. Or rather, the real question is when. As for me, you know, I love freedom above all else -- especially the freedom to choose my place of residence. I can hardly expect you to understand what it means to be obsessed with independence. It’s in the blood, perhaps.“
“And your husband in Daghestan consents to -- your liberty?”
“It is my illness that allows me liberty. [It would be tempting to think that Mann could here be addressing the status of women at a time when suffrage was a topic in some nations and the status of women in general was even worse than it is today. Alas, I can’t think of anything I’ve read by Mann that suggests any interest at all in women. They are mostly used symbolically, and here I believe Clavdia represents Finn/Slavic Russia. There’s a great deal more about what it means to be German in Doctor Faustus, but what interests me with all that and with the history of the 20th century also in the can, is that, psychologically, both the Germans and Russians are fixated on their exposed status -- their being surrounded on all sides by enemies. The history of the Soviet Union in the 20th century could be explained in terms of the International aspect of socialism, but it can also be explained in terms of nationalistic paranoia and the long history of Russia having been assaulted by Mongols and Turks and Germans for centuries. And the case of Germany in both the 19th and 20th century is even clearer. The Nazi’s added a particularly racial aspect to this, but Bismarck was no less paranoid. And, living in the shadow of Napoleon and the French Revolution, it’s not like there was no basis for this paranoia. And what people mean by “bourgeois” is always interesting. I would guess that Clavdia -- after Dostoevsky -- means that the Germans are more concerned with money and the display of wealth, of demonstrating that you are a sound member of the middle class. Hans, with reference to Joachim, refutes this by asserting the superior German sense of honor and duty. And “liberty” or “freedom” would certainly seem to be individualistic bourgeois values. So there’s a good deal of the pot calling the kettle black here.] You see, this is now my third time here. I’ve been here a year now. I may well return. But you will be far from here long before that.”
“Do you think so, Clavdia?”
“And my first name, too! You certainly do take the customs of carnival very seriously!”
...
P403 [Clavdia about Joachim,] “Poor devil. He is, in fact, more ill than he knows. Your friend the Italian, by the way, is not doing very much better.”
P404 “He says so himself. But my cousin -- is that true? You frighten me.”
“It is quite possible that he will die if he tries to be a soldier on the plains.”
...
[Hans,] ... “Let me ask you something else. From time to time a Russian gentleman who lives in town comes to visit you. Who is he? What is his purpose in coming?” [Stalker red flag waves in the air.]
“You’re enormously skilled in espionage, I must say. All right -- I’ll give you an answer. Yes, he is an ailing compatriot, a friend. I made his acquaintance at another resort, some years ago. Our relationship? We have tea together, we smoke two or three papyrosy, we gossip, we philosophize, we talk about man, God, life, morality, a thousand things. And with that my tale is ended. Are you satisfied?”
It’s at this point in the book that I always have the sense we may have been following the wrong protagonist this whole time.
“About morality as well! And what discoveries have you in fact made about morality, for example?”
“Morality? It interests you, does it? All right -- it seems to us that one ought not to search for morality in virtue, which is to say in reason, in discipline, in good behavior, in respectability -- but in just the opposite, I would say: in sin, in abandoning oneself to danger, to whatever can harm us, destroy us. It seems to us that it is more moral to lose oneself and let oneself be ruined than to save oneself. The great moralists have never been especially virtuous, but rather adventurers in evil, in vice, great sinners who teach us as Christians how to stoop to misery. You must find that all very repugnant.”
The overlap between The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus grows as I read this for the first time since reading the latter work for the first time.
[Clavdia, ] “...our carnival festivities are over.”... “You know the consequences, monsieur.”
But hans Castorp rejected this... “Never, Clavdia. Never will I address you formally, never in life or in death, if I may put it that way, and surely I may. That form of address, as cultivated in the West and in civilized society, seems terribly bourgeois and pedantic to me. Why, indeed, use such forms? Formality is the same thing as pedantry! All those things you have established in regard to morality, you and your ailing compatriot -- do you seriously suppose they surprise me? What sort of dolt do you take me for? So then tell me, what do you think of me?”
“That is a subject requiring little thought. You are a decent, simple fellow from a good family, with handsome manners, a docile pupil to his teachers, who will soon return to the flatlands in order to forget completely that he ever spoke in a dream here and to help repay his great and powerful fatherland with honest labor on the wharves. And there you have your own intimate photograph, taken with no apparatus at all. You do find it a good likeness, I hope?”
...
At this point he proclaims his love for her... and manages to slide Pribislav in there, too, though Clavdia, oddly, seems to overlook that.
p407 ... “I don’t care, I don’t care about Carducci and the republic of eloquence and human progress over time, because I love you!”
She softly stroked the short-cropped hair at the back of his head with one hand. “My little bourgeois!” she said. “My handsome bourgeois with the little moist spot. Is it true that you love me so much?”
We are almost at the end now and I would so like to fade out here. Alas, the next paragraph, while perhaps a new low in love making (unless you’ve already read Doctor Faustus where love/sin smitten Adrian goes so far as to address the poor girl with a different name so that, as I recall, the reader never does learn her proper name), is important for the “novel of ideas” aspect of TMM. And so we must delve in,
... “Ah, love, you know. The body, love, death, are simply one and the same. Because the body is sickness and depravity, it is what produces death, yes, both of them, love and death, are carnal, and that is the source of their terror and great magic! But death, you see, is on the one hand something so disreputable, so impudent that it makes us blush with shame; and on the other it is a most solemn and majestic force -- something much more lofty than a life spent laughing, earning money, and stuffing one’s belly -- much more venerable than progress chattering away the ages -- because it is history and nobility and piety, the eternal and the sacred, something that makes you remove your hat and walk on tiptoe. In the same way, the body, and love of the body, too, are indecent and disagreeable; the body’s surface blushes and turns pale because it is afraid and ashamed of itself. But at the same time it is a great and divine glory, a miraculous image of organic life, a holy miracle of form and beauty, and love of it, of the human body, is likewise an extremely humanistic affair and an educating force greater than all the pedagogy in the world! Ah, ravishing organic beauty, not done in oils or stone, but made of living and corruptible matter, full of the feverish secret of life and decay! Consider the marvelous symmetry of the human frame, the shoulders and the hips and the breasts as they blossom at each side of the chest, and the ribs arranged in pairs, and the naval set amid the supple belly, and the dark sexual organs between the thighs!... What an immense festival of caresses lies in those delicious zones of the human body! A festival of death with no weeping afterward!... oh, my human image made of water and protein, destined for the contours of the grave, let me perish, my lips against yours!”
...
She said, “You are indeed a gallant suitor, one who knows how to woo in a very profound, German fashion.”
...
“Adieu, my Carnival Prince! I can predict that you’ll see a nasty rise in your fever chart this evening.”
... Over her shoulder she said softly, “Don’t forget to return my pencil.”
And she left.
To paraphrase Shakespeare,
Was ever woman in this manor wooed?
Was ever woman in this manor won?
And to think, that piker Faust required Mephisto-supplied jewelry to woo Gretchen.
Here’s something about Friedrick Nietsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra I just ran into on Medium HERE,
--------------------
The conditions that activate Zarathustra’s convalescence — his capacity for pursuing “the great health” — might include, for example, the metaphysical inheritances of millennia as they are operative in contemporary moral discourses and political institutions. In any event “[t]he energy of health betrays itself in the case of illness in the abrupt resistance against the contagious element.” “What is inherited” over the millennia first given direction by Socrates “is not sickness but sickliness: the lack of strength to resist the danger of infections, etc. the broken resistance; morally speaking, resignation and meekness in the face of the enemy.” A degree of good health is necessary for warding off the most extreme symptoms of this sickliness in order to identify the proper social remedy against decadence and to acquire the will to implement it. Taking these measures may be controversial, because good health is complicated when “all signs of the Übermenschlichen appear as illness or madness in human beings.”
A couple days after finding the above, I ran into another piece on Medium where the author set up Nietzsche’s Ubermensch as an evil, Ayn Randean totem that he then proceeded to attack mercilessly. On the one hand, I’m pleased to see old Crazy Fritz still getting so much attention. On the other hand, it’s depressing to still see “opinion makers” misunderstanding his concepts so badly. Though it’s also true that German thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger are largely to blame for being so hard to understand/easy to misinterpret. I would blame their translators, except that Germans seem as bad as anyone else when it comes to this misinterpreting.
There’s a process in stars where, as they collapse into denser and denser cores, their constituent parts smash together until you end up with nothing but a mass of neutrons, A neutron star. I’m imagining a similar process that would lead to the ultimate German philosophy where all the words would be compressed into one long, book length word. Perfect. Yet perfectly indecipherable.
Jump to Next: The Sorrows of Young Werther
No comments:
Post a Comment