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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was going to abandon this midway, but then it gradually grew on me. It is an allegory of the period before World War 1- starting with meandering and langorous peacetime musings about science, art, romance, health vs sickness, compression and expansion of time based on social and personal circumstances, ideas of democracy vs absolutism, conservativism vs progressivim, science vs religion, rationalism vs romanticism etc and then accelerating into madness, intolerance and mayhem in the final last chapters leading to WW1.
Too slow-paced and not in the right headspace
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Spent 9-10 months with this book and I enjoyed almost every moment of it. Some character dialogue felt tedious only to the point of creating a shallow representative of a political ideology. Regardless, I fell in love with this book and even after spending so long with it I am going to miss it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Death, Suicide, Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief
Moderate: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Antisemitism, Toxic friendship
Minor: Stalking
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Val que és un premi Nobel, però acabar aquest llibre m'ha costat una barbaritat. Jo li hauria donat també el premi Totxo del segle. Presenta idees molt interessants, però no es pot negar que llegir-lo sencer representa un repte (i també una tortura, perquè m'he hagut d'aguantar les ganes d'abandonar-lo i de llegir altres llibres). Si us atreviu a llegir-lo, bona sort, la necessitareu
Immersion in The Magic Mountain has been like wandering through a maze, perpetually taking new directions, some seemingly more promising than others, only to be brought up short and diverted again. Hans Castorp, the protagonist, enthusiastically follows the different paths in the rarified ambience of a sanatorium in the years immediately before the first world war. This reader accompanied him somewhat reluctantly.
Apart from Hans himself, who is a rather dull ‘callow youth’, there are some splendid characters from the ardent humanist Settembrini to the spellbindingly charismatic Peeperkorn. The rendering of the latter’s speech is masterly:
“Ladies and gentlemen. Very well. Very well indeed. Very. Settled. But will you keep in mind, and – not for one moment – not one moment- lose sight of the fact- but no more. On this point not another word. What is incumbent upon me to say is not so much – it is in the first place simply this: it is our duty – we lie under a solemn – an inviolable – No! No, ladies and gentlemen! It was not thus – it was not thus that I – how mistaken to imagine that I – quite right, ladies and gentlemen! Set – tied. Let us drop the subject. I feel we understand each other, and now – to the point!”
As the narrator remarks:
He had said absolutely nothing. But look, manner, and gestures were so peremptory, perfervid, pregnant, that all, even Hans Castorp, were convinced they had heard something of high moment; or, if aware of the total lack of matter and sequence in the speech, certainly never missed it.
One is reminded of the presentation skills of another orator less benevolent than Herr Peeperkorn.
Both the setting in a tuberculosis sanatorium and Hans Castorp’s personal concerns make death a recurring concern from Hans’ visits to those patients whose last days see them restricted to their rooms; the escape of those who leave the sanatorium; Hans’ cousin Joachim’s passing and the gruesome end of the Jesuit Naphta. When, after seven years, Hans himself finally leaves the sanatorium, it is to fight in the war:
Twilight, rain, filth. Fiery glow of the overcast sky, ceaseless booming of heavy thunder; the moist air rent by a sharp singing whine, a raging, swelling howl as of some hound of hell, that ends its course in a splitting, a splintering and sprinkling, a crackling, a coruscation; by groans and shrieks, by trumpets blowing fit to burst, by the beat of a drum coming faster, faster.
The narrator leaves Hans on the battlefield admitting that his life prospects are poor but saying that he is not concerned to leave the question open as he has already told the part of Hans’ story that he considers important.
In the rarefied atmosphere of the sanatorium, time is another recurring theme meditated upon by Hans and the narrator:
For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are inextricably bound up with it, as inextricably as are bodies in space…But a narrative must have two kinds of time: first, its own, like music, actual time, conditioning its presentation and course; and second, the time of its content, which is relative, so extremely relative that the imaginary time of the narrative can either coincide nearly or completely with the actual, or musical, time, or can be a world away.
The seemingly interminable discussions between Settembrini and the Jesuit, Naphta tested the patience of this reader, yet much of what was discussed must be seen as important background to the period, bringing to the fore concerns of different factions. This is accentuated towards the close of the novel with the brutal fight between the anti-Semite Wiedemann and the Jew Sonnenschein. The atmosphere has built up to provide the backdrop to the conflict foreseen and feared by Settembrini.
Yet there are moments in the novel which seem eons away from any conflict as when Hans learns how to use skis and sets out on his own over the snow. There are many wonderful descriptions of the snowy environment and Hans‘ reflections in the solitude, such as this of the crystals:
Myriads of tiniest drops of water, which in freezing had darted together in symmetrical variation – parts, then, of some anorganic substance which was the source of protoplasm, of plant life, of the human body. And among these myriads of enchanting little stars, in their hidden splendour that was too small for man’s naked eye to see, there was not one like unto another; an endless inventiveness governed the development and unthinkable differentiation of one and the same basic scheme, the equilateral, equiangled hexagon. Yet each, in itself – this was the uncanny, the anti-organic, the life-denying character of them all – each of them was absolutely symmetrical, icily regular in form.
I came out of this maze of a novel somewhat bewildered and weary but definitely content to have persisted to the end. Mann himself, in an article on the making of the book, recommends reading it twice, promising the reader “a deeper enjoyment from the second reading” as, having grasped the thematic material in the first reading, it is then possible “to read the symbolic and allusive formulas both forwards and backwards.” I am not yet ready for a reread but appreciate that there is much more that can be extracted from this rich work.
Apart from Hans himself, who is a rather dull ‘callow youth’, there are some splendid characters from the ardent humanist Settembrini to the spellbindingly charismatic Peeperkorn. The rendering of the latter’s speech is masterly:
“Ladies and gentlemen. Very well. Very well indeed. Very. Settled. But will you keep in mind, and – not for one moment – not one moment- lose sight of the fact- but no more. On this point not another word. What is incumbent upon me to say is not so much – it is in the first place simply this: it is our duty – we lie under a solemn – an inviolable – No! No, ladies and gentlemen! It was not thus – it was not thus that I – how mistaken to imagine that I – quite right, ladies and gentlemen! Set – tied. Let us drop the subject. I feel we understand each other, and now – to the point!”
As the narrator remarks:
He had said absolutely nothing. But look, manner, and gestures were so peremptory, perfervid, pregnant, that all, even Hans Castorp, were convinced they had heard something of high moment; or, if aware of the total lack of matter and sequence in the speech, certainly never missed it.
One is reminded of the presentation skills of another orator less benevolent than Herr Peeperkorn.
Both the setting in a tuberculosis sanatorium and Hans Castorp’s personal concerns make death a recurring concern from Hans’ visits to those patients whose last days see them restricted to their rooms; the escape of those who leave the sanatorium; Hans’ cousin Joachim’s passing and the gruesome end of the Jesuit Naphta. When, after seven years, Hans himself finally leaves the sanatorium, it is to fight in the war:
Twilight, rain, filth. Fiery glow of the overcast sky, ceaseless booming of heavy thunder; the moist air rent by a sharp singing whine, a raging, swelling howl as of some hound of hell, that ends its course in a splitting, a splintering and sprinkling, a crackling, a coruscation; by groans and shrieks, by trumpets blowing fit to burst, by the beat of a drum coming faster, faster.
The narrator leaves Hans on the battlefield admitting that his life prospects are poor but saying that he is not concerned to leave the question open as he has already told the part of Hans’ story that he considers important.
In the rarefied atmosphere of the sanatorium, time is another recurring theme meditated upon by Hans and the narrator:
For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are inextricably bound up with it, as inextricably as are bodies in space…But a narrative must have two kinds of time: first, its own, like music, actual time, conditioning its presentation and course; and second, the time of its content, which is relative, so extremely relative that the imaginary time of the narrative can either coincide nearly or completely with the actual, or musical, time, or can be a world away.
The seemingly interminable discussions between Settembrini and the Jesuit, Naphta tested the patience of this reader, yet much of what was discussed must be seen as important background to the period, bringing to the fore concerns of different factions. This is accentuated towards the close of the novel with the brutal fight between the anti-Semite Wiedemann and the Jew Sonnenschein. The atmosphere has built up to provide the backdrop to the conflict foreseen and feared by Settembrini.
Yet there are moments in the novel which seem eons away from any conflict as when Hans learns how to use skis and sets out on his own over the snow. There are many wonderful descriptions of the snowy environment and Hans‘ reflections in the solitude, such as this of the crystals:
Myriads of tiniest drops of water, which in freezing had darted together in symmetrical variation – parts, then, of some anorganic substance which was the source of protoplasm, of plant life, of the human body. And among these myriads of enchanting little stars, in their hidden splendour that was too small for man’s naked eye to see, there was not one like unto another; an endless inventiveness governed the development and unthinkable differentiation of one and the same basic scheme, the equilateral, equiangled hexagon. Yet each, in itself – this was the uncanny, the anti-organic, the life-denying character of them all – each of them was absolutely symmetrical, icily regular in form.
I came out of this maze of a novel somewhat bewildered and weary but definitely content to have persisted to the end. Mann himself, in an article on the making of the book, recommends reading it twice, promising the reader “a deeper enjoyment from the second reading” as, having grasped the thematic material in the first reading, it is then possible “to read the symbolic and allusive formulas both forwards and backwards.” I am not yet ready for a reread but appreciate that there is much more that can be extracted from this rich work.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes