The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain is a German novel by Thomas Mann published in November 1924. Since then, it has been republished in many editions and translated into numerous languages.
Background
Mann began developing his first ideas for The Magic Mountain in 1912. He initially intended it to be a novella that would revisit aspects of his earlier work Death in Venice in a more humorous manner. The newer work reflected his experiences and impressions from a period when his wife, who was suffering from a respiratory disease, resided at Dr. Waldsanatorium in Davos, Switzerland. In numerous letters to him, she described everyday life in the sanatorium. During a three-week visit in May and June of 1912, Mann obtained firsthand impressions and became acquainted with the doctors and patients. According to an afterword later included in the English translation of the novel, this stay had inspired the opening chapter, "Arrival".The beginning of World War I disrupted his work on the book. Like many other Germans, Mann supported the German Empire. During what he described as a state of "sympathy with death" and as part of the intellectual military service that he regarded as his duty, he wrote the essays "Gedanken im Kriege", "Gute Feldpost", and "Friedrich und die große Koalition".
In response to anti-war intellectuals, Mann wrote a book-length essay, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, which was published in 1918. His position, however, was challenged by other intellectuals, such as his older brother, Heinrich Mann, who, unlike Thomas, did not support the German state. Heinrich was the author of the satirical novel Der Untertan and the essay "Zola", which defended the idea of Germany's inevitable defeat as the path to democratization. The end of the war led Thomas Mann to rethink his position. In 1919, Thomas Mann changed the tone of the novel that would become The Magic Mountain to reflect the realities of war rather than its romanticized depiction and included conflicts between the characters, drawing on his relationship with Heinrich.
Mann later took an interest in studying European bourgeois society. He explored the sources of the destructive nature displayed by much of civilized humanity and speculated about questions related to personal attitudes toward life, health, illness, sexuality, and mortality. His political stance during this period shifted from opposition to the Weimar Republic to support for it. Mann eventually published The Magic Mountain through the publisher S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin.
Plot summary
The narrative opens in 1904, a decade before World War I. The protagonist, Hans Castorp, was the only child of a Hamburg merchant family; following the early death of his parents, Castorp was raised by his grandfather and later by his great-uncle, Tienappel. At the beginning of the novel Castorp was in his early twenties and about to take up a shipbuilding career in his hometown of Hamburg. Before beginning work, he undertakes a journey to visit his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is seeking a cure for his tuberculosis in The Berghof, a sanatorium in Davos, high in the Swiss Alps. In the opening chapter, Castorp leaves his familiar life and obligations, in what he later calls "the flatlands", to visit the rarefied mountain air and introspective small world of the sanatorium.Castorp repeatedly postpones his plans to leave the sanatorium as his health deteriorates. What at first appears to be a minor bronchial infection with a slight fever is later diagnosed by the sanatorium's chief doctor and director, Hofrat Behrens, as symptoms of tuberculosis. Castorp is persuaded by Behrens to stay until his health improves.
During his extended stay, Castorp meets various characters, representing a microcosm of pre-war Europe. These include Lodovico Settembrini, an Italian humanist, encyclopaedist, and student of Giosuè Carducci; Leo Naphta, a Jewish Jesuit who favors communist totalitarianism; Mynheer Pieter Peeperkorn, a Dionysian Dutchman; and Castorp's romantic interest, Madame Claudia Chauchat.
Castorp eventually remains at the sanatorium for seven years. As the novel concludes, World War I breaks out, and Castorp volunteers for military service. The novel concludes with the suggestion that he may not survive the battlefield.
Literary influence and criticism
Scholars have interpreted The Magic Mountain as both a classic example of the European Bildungsroman—a "novel of education" or "novel of formation"—and as a satire of this genre. Many formal characteristics of the Bildungsroman are present: the protagonist begins in a state of immaturity and, after leaving his home environment, is exposed to art, culture, politics, human vulnerability, and love.The novel explores themes such as the experience of time, music, nationalism, sociology, and changes in the natural world. Through Castorp's stay in the rarefied atmosphere of "The Magic Mountain", the narrative provides a panoramic view of pre-World War I European civilization and the underlying tensions of the era.
The novel explores the subjective experience of serious illness and the gradual process of medical institutionalization and the irrational forces within the human psyche, reflecting the contemporary rise of Freudian psychoanalysis. These themes relate to the development of Castorp's character over the period covered by the novel. In his discussion of the work, written in English and published in The Atlantic in January 1953, Mann states that "what came to understand is that one must go through the deep experience of sickness and death to arrive at a higher sanity and health...".
Mann also acknowledged his debt to the skeptical insights of Friedrich Nietzsche concerning modern humanity, from which he drew when creating conversations between the characters. Throughout the book, the author employs the discussions among Settembrini, Naphta, and the medical staff to introduce the young Castorp to a wide spectrum of competing ideologies in response to the Age of Enlightenment. While a classical Bildungsroman would conclude with Castorp having become a mature member of society, with his worldview and greater self-knowledge, The Magic Mountain ends with Castorp becoming one of millions of anonymous conscripts under fire on a World War I battlefield.
Major themes
Connection to ''Death in Venice''
Mann wrote that he originally planned The Magic Mountain as a novella, a humorous, ironic, satirical follow-up to Death in Venice, which he had completed in 1912. The atmosphere was derived from the "mixture of death and amusement" that Mann had encountered while visiting his wife in a Swiss sanatorium. He intended to transfer to a comedic plane the fascination with death and triumph of ecstatic disorder over a life devoted to order, which he had explored in Death in Venice.The atmosphere and the protagonist's trajectory in The Magic Mountain differ from those in the earlier novella. Whereas the protagonist of the novella was the mature and acclaimed author Gustav von Aschenbach, the central figure in The Magic Mountain is a callow young engineer at the outset of an anticipated career. The alluring Polish adolescent Tadzio in the novella corresponds to the "Asiatic-flabby" Russian Madame Chauchat. The setting also shifted from the densely populated island city on the Adriatic coast to an alpine, quasi-resort-like sanatorium prized for its health-restoring properties.
Illness and death
The Berghof patients suffer from various forms of tuberculosis, which dictates their daily routines, thoughts, and conversations as members of the "Half-Lung Club". The disease ends fatally for many of the patients, such as the Catholic girl, Barbara Hujus, whose fear of death is heightened in Chapter 3 during a harrowing Viaticum scene, and cousin Ziemssen, who dies like an ancient hero. The dialogues between Settembrini and Naphta examine life and death from a metaphysical perspective. In addition to deaths from illness, two characters commit suicide. Ultimately, Castorp leaves to fight in World War I, where his likely death is implied.In the above-mentioned comment, Mann writes:
What Castorp learns to fathom is that all higher health must have passed through illness and death... As Castorp once said to Madame Chauchat, there are two ways to life: One is the common, direct, and brave. The other is bad, leading through death, and that is the genius way. This concept of illness and death, as a necessary passage to knowledge, health, and life, makes The Magic Mountain into a novel of initiation.
Time
The treatment of time is a major narrative and philosophical concern in the novel. The novel's structure reflects this through its asymmetrical handling of chronology: by detailing the initial year of Castorp's stay in the first half of the novel, while the latter half compresses the remaining six years.Mann addresses time both as a narrative device and a philosophical concept. Chapter VII, titled "By the Ocean of Time," opens with the narrator directly questioning the possibility of narrating time itself. The characters frequently discuss theories of time perception, debating whether time passes more quickly or slowly depending on circumstances and routine.
Contemporary philosophical discussions of time, particularly Henri Bergson's concepts of duration and subjective time experience, informed Mann's approach. This influence is evident in the novel's exploration of how time appears to accelerate or decelerate based on the characters' experiences in the sanatorium setting.
The novel follows a chronological structure with a non-linear pace. While the first five chapters describe Castorp's initial year in detail, the subsequent six years are condensed into the final two chapters. This structural asymmetry is often interpreted as a reflection of the protagonist's subjective perception of time and the monotony of his environment.
This structure reflects the protagonist's thoughts. Throughout the book, the characters discuss the philosophy of time and debate whether "interest and novelty dispel or shorten the content of time, while monotony and emptiness hinder its passage." The characters also reflect on the problems of narration and time, about the correspondence between the length of a narrative and the duration of the events it describes.
Mann also meditates upon the interrelationship between the experience of time and space; of time seeming to pass more slowly when one does not move in space. This aspect of the novel mirrors contemporary philosophical and scientific debates which are embodied in Heidegger's writings and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, in which space and time are inseparable. In essence, Castorp's subtly transformed perspective on the "flat-lands" corresponds to a movement in time.