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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
Had an on and off relationship with his book for years—appropriately. And well worth it.
Rating "classics" always feels weird to me, although one could argue that which books we consider "classics" is always up for debate. In any case, this is a good book. There's a lot crammed into it, and reading it was an experience that I truly enjoyed. Even though German is my mother tongue, I am much more familiar with English-language classics. Discovering Mann has given me more of an appreciation of the German language. He's also really funny at times, and smart, and obviously set out to write a piece of literature. This is something I often find difficult to take with modern authors - I suppose the difference is the staying power of classics. Anyway, he definitely succeeded.
My favourite aspect was probably the way he succeeded in making time feel so... malleable. Finishing this book truly feels like coming down from a mountain, and it's like I have to get used to reality again.
It's not the book I would recommend to someone who hasn't read Mann yet but wants to - that would be "Buddenbrooks". And I don't believe there are books that "everyone" should have read. But if you are interested in German literature, I would highly recommend reading this book.
My favourite aspect was probably the way he succeeded in making time feel so... malleable. Finishing this book truly feels like coming down from a mountain, and it's like I have to get used to reality again.
It's not the book I would recommend to someone who hasn't read Mann yet but wants to - that would be "Buddenbrooks". And I don't believe there are books that "everyone" should have read. But if you are interested in German literature, I would highly recommend reading this book.
This book was a struggle. The language, the style the sheer volume. It took two months to finish. But I came out the other side being a better reader and appreciating the author for his work. Reading books that are challenging, that need time, that are slow and feel endless is a lesson in itself. The story provides countless lessons, mystery, transports one to another world and can always be relatable. If I were to read it a second time, now that I know the story, I am sure I would have gotten much more out of it. But I don't think I would be coming back any time soon. It was truly painful to go through a 700 page book so slowly.
challenging
dark
emotional
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
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The reading of The Magic Mountain (TMM) represents a significant experience in my life. This is partly because I have been reading it as my sabbatical year of traveling through Mexico and Latin America began. I have certainly thought about time and personal development frequently in the last few months and Mann made for an excellent guide. I finished reading it in my last days in Mexico and am now among the initiated.There is no way to be comprehensive about it, so I won't attempt to write about everything, but rather I will try to address why in the end it must receive a 5 and what it means to me at this particular moment in time. When I read it again, maybe in 7 years, I will probably write a very different review. I had never planned to read it, but was talked into it, in a manner of speaking, by the leisurely paced discussion group. I didn't research the novel because I like to be surprised. It is often referred to and I thought I had gathered enough about the book to be prepared to read it. I guess all I really knew was that it was about a young man who goes to a sanatorium and what he experiences there. Honestly, I expected more debauchery, but am not disappointed to have been wrong about that. In high school, I read "Das Eisenbahnungluck" (The Train Accident) in German class and enjoyed the extended metaphor and remember the very long sentences. That was my previous exposure to Mann. I would like to thank Ian and Mala for our discussions of TMM. Some of what I write here comes from what they shared with me.
The novel's set-up is brilliant. At the time of the heyday of the sanatorium, there was no cure for tuberculosis. The entire project is essentially doomed. At the same time, it was perhaps somewhat of a luxury to be able to go to a sanatorium. As has been pointed out to me, tuberculosis figures prominently in opera as a trope. This set-up reminds me very much of Camus' The Plague, which I love, only the conditions of the sanatorium are depicted descriptively rather than metaphorically, but they speak of the same condition.
Upon finishing the novel, I have concluded that Hans never really had tuberculosis, but I have also decided that this fact is irrelevant. We all suffer from the condition of a finite time period to be alive - a time period that is not sufficient for the majority of us to become wise or self-actualized. Along with this difficulty, most of us don't exactly live in conditions that encourage our development nor do we seem to be aware of our death sentences. With a combination of the fact that one's perception of time is variable and immeasurable, which Mann portrays very well, and the magical process of "stiegerung" or transubstantiation experienced on the mountain, Hans, who is portrayed as quite simple, does more in the time he is given on the mountain in his intellectual and spiritual development than most people achieve in a lifetime. In the process of developing, Hans deals with a preoccupation with death and illness, the deaths of people he loves, a near death experience and suffering for unrequited or at least unfulfilled love. He is exposed to a number of significant paths that people pursue in life, all of which Mann represents, not in simple caricatures. Much time is spent on the humanist, the intellectual or cynic and the cult of personality, but also there are plenty of examples of other occupations from businessmen, in his family or patients, to the doctors that treat him, as well as his cousin Joachim, the soldier. He manages to navigate beyond all of these paths, not that they aren't good options, but because none of them seem to bring people who follow them full self-knowledge, enlightenment, or happiness. Hans loses track of time while pursuing his incredible development, but is aware of time passing. Mann manages not to tell the reader what Hans believes, but does show us the disposition Hans takes to new ideas and people and the way he is able to express himself. He maintains a "humbleness of doubt". Because of Hans' magical development, he is a character I can't see getting tired of as I strive for greater understanding myself. He feels like both a younger and an older beloved brother. This is to some extent true of the book as well.
Mann called the novel a time romance partly because he was conscious of representing a very particular time and place. This is something that I may love more than anything else about the novel. He allowed the reader to get a strong sense of the time and place by taking us out of strict chronological time while telling the story quite straight. When the patients see a film, use a phonograph and experiment with photography or learn about science I felt some of their excitement as such things were new and magical to them. As I absorbed this unsustainable bubble world Mann created, I became hyper-aware of the fact that he was describing a place that could never exist again, and I don't intend this to indicate a kind of modernist sentimentality for the past, though I reject Settembrini's naive belief in progress as well. This then suggests how much we are conditioned by our own time, which is one of the deepest impressions I take away from the book. I would like to illustrate this with a brief anecdote. My friend, a former hippy, was amazed when I said I was amused by something in TMM because she said in the countercultural movement, Hans "dropping out" of life-down-below in order to become enlightened was viewed as something very serious. TMM was one of their texts. I can see why they embraced it with its emphasis on self development, anti-war sentiments, and arguable support for a rejection of factory-like education and embracing the socratic style of education. I was born during Watergate and my generation X shares a certain amount of cynicism. Why should this be, though? None of the events that mark the 70's directly affected me. I think it is the stories that are told about our times that form a collective cultural memory that I have responded to without critiquing it. We seem to have a tendency to look at the past as separate from us, especially when significant events occur, partly because the myth of progress is generally accepted as implicit in the way we view time. As Mann said, "the bubble burst" and that is not just for Hans but for a whole bourgeois class, and bubbles go on bursting.
There are things I will need to read again to understand in this novel. That, more than any other factor, is why I rate TMM a 5. One of the things I want to deal with later, because the topic has interested me for some time and it is clearly present in the novel, is what he was trying to depict about concepts of the East. I am not entirely comfortable with the way Mann represents the Asian characters and Asia in the novel, but I also feel like I don't understand what he was trying to say about an East/West dichotomy. I guess I just feel that he didn't know Eastern thought as well as he understood Western thought back to the Greeks and early Christians such as St. Augustine, so he ran into misrepresentation when discussing the East. The question is how significant this misrepresentation is. It does serve to show what was thought at the time. There must have been an influence of Orientalists on his ideas here. I need to delve into the historical record, perhaps, on rhetoric about the East and what was considered East just before the start of WWI. I think this is significant to the political context of TMM. He purposely brings up anti-semitism in a critical light a few times such as in the fight between the anti-semite and Sonnenschein, but he doesn't seem as concerned with anti-Eastern feelings per say.
The discussion of ideas and philosophy in TMM is something I am also still thinking about. What I have concluded thus far is that he makes a great case for a belief in humanism requiring rationalism. However, the ability to think of this as a sound approach is hampered by the knowledge that, at the end of the novel, Hans is on the battlefield, anti-semitism looms, and there is a representation of the East based on very little information. He successfully shows the limitations of any purely intellectual or purely non-intellectual political ideology or personal philosophy, but I had already concluded this before reading his novel. To be fair, he offers further illustrations of this truth. Upon re-reading I would also like to delve more into Mann's aesthetics and what he says about it in the novel. Essentially, the ability to appreciate art is enhanced by one's relative level of spiritual development, and music, especially, may aid in the process of escaping chronological time. When one has had traumatic or significant experiences that are reflected in the art form, of course, there is a stronger reaction to the work.
There is something I wonder about the end. Hans is humming a tune while on the battlefield. Was this because he had gone back to his simple origins or because he was wise? Wisdom and foolishness can look like the same thing.
The novel's set-up is brilliant. At the time of the heyday of the sanatorium, there was no cure for tuberculosis. The entire project is essentially doomed. At the same time, it was perhaps somewhat of a luxury to be able to go to a sanatorium. As has been pointed out to me, tuberculosis figures prominently in opera as a trope. This set-up reminds me very much of Camus' The Plague, which I love, only the conditions of the sanatorium are depicted descriptively rather than metaphorically, but they speak of the same condition.
Upon finishing the novel, I have concluded that Hans never really had tuberculosis, but I have also decided that this fact is irrelevant. We all suffer from the condition of a finite time period to be alive - a time period that is not sufficient for the majority of us to become wise or self-actualized. Along with this difficulty, most of us don't exactly live in conditions that encourage our development nor do we seem to be aware of our death sentences. With a combination of the fact that one's perception of time is variable and immeasurable, which Mann portrays very well, and the magical process of "stiegerung" or transubstantiation experienced on the mountain, Hans, who is portrayed as quite simple, does more in the time he is given on the mountain in his intellectual and spiritual development than most people achieve in a lifetime. In the process of developing, Hans deals with a preoccupation with death and illness, the deaths of people he loves, a near death experience and suffering for unrequited or at least unfulfilled love. He is exposed to a number of significant paths that people pursue in life, all of which Mann represents, not in simple caricatures. Much time is spent on the humanist, the intellectual or cynic and the cult of personality, but also there are plenty of examples of other occupations from businessmen, in his family or patients, to the doctors that treat him, as well as his cousin Joachim, the soldier. He manages to navigate beyond all of these paths, not that they aren't good options, but because none of them seem to bring people who follow them full self-knowledge, enlightenment, or happiness. Hans loses track of time while pursuing his incredible development, but is aware of time passing. Mann manages not to tell the reader what Hans believes, but does show us the disposition Hans takes to new ideas and people and the way he is able to express himself. He maintains a "humbleness of doubt". Because of Hans' magical development, he is a character I can't see getting tired of as I strive for greater understanding myself. He feels like both a younger and an older beloved brother. This is to some extent true of the book as well.
Mann called the novel a time romance partly because he was conscious of representing a very particular time and place. This is something that I may love more than anything else about the novel. He allowed the reader to get a strong sense of the time and place by taking us out of strict chronological time while telling the story quite straight. When the patients see a film, use a phonograph and experiment with photography or learn about science I felt some of their excitement as such things were new and magical to them. As I absorbed this unsustainable bubble world Mann created, I became hyper-aware of the fact that he was describing a place that could never exist again, and I don't intend this to indicate a kind of modernist sentimentality for the past, though I reject Settembrini's naive belief in progress as well. This then suggests how much we are conditioned by our own time, which is one of the deepest impressions I take away from the book. I would like to illustrate this with a brief anecdote. My friend, a former hippy, was amazed when I said I was amused by something in TMM because she said in the countercultural movement, Hans "dropping out" of life-down-below in order to become enlightened was viewed as something very serious. TMM was one of their texts. I can see why they embraced it with its emphasis on self development, anti-war sentiments, and arguable support for a rejection of factory-like education and embracing the socratic style of education. I was born during Watergate and my generation X shares a certain amount of cynicism. Why should this be, though? None of the events that mark the 70's directly affected me. I think it is the stories that are told about our times that form a collective cultural memory that I have responded to without critiquing it. We seem to have a tendency to look at the past as separate from us, especially when significant events occur, partly because the myth of progress is generally accepted as implicit in the way we view time. As Mann said, "the bubble burst" and that is not just for Hans but for a whole bourgeois class, and bubbles go on bursting.
There are things I will need to read again to understand in this novel. That, more than any other factor, is why I rate TMM a 5. One of the things I want to deal with later, because the topic has interested me for some time and it is clearly present in the novel, is what he was trying to depict about concepts of the East. I am not entirely comfortable with the way Mann represents the Asian characters and Asia in the novel, but I also feel like I don't understand what he was trying to say about an East/West dichotomy. I guess I just feel that he didn't know Eastern thought as well as he understood Western thought back to the Greeks and early Christians such as St. Augustine, so he ran into misrepresentation when discussing the East. The question is how significant this misrepresentation is. It does serve to show what was thought at the time. There must have been an influence of Orientalists on his ideas here. I need to delve into the historical record, perhaps, on rhetoric about the East and what was considered East just before the start of WWI. I think this is significant to the political context of TMM. He purposely brings up anti-semitism in a critical light a few times such as in the fight between the anti-semite and Sonnenschein, but he doesn't seem as concerned with anti-Eastern feelings per say.
The discussion of ideas and philosophy in TMM is something I am also still thinking about. What I have concluded thus far is that he makes a great case for a belief in humanism requiring rationalism. However, the ability to think of this as a sound approach is hampered by the knowledge that, at the end of the novel, Hans is on the battlefield, anti-semitism looms, and there is a representation of the East based on very little information. He successfully shows the limitations of any purely intellectual or purely non-intellectual political ideology or personal philosophy, but I had already concluded this before reading his novel. To be fair, he offers further illustrations of this truth. Upon re-reading I would also like to delve more into Mann's aesthetics and what he says about it in the novel. Essentially, the ability to appreciate art is enhanced by one's relative level of spiritual development, and music, especially, may aid in the process of escaping chronological time. When one has had traumatic or significant experiences that are reflected in the art form, of course, there is a stronger reaction to the work.
There is something I wonder about the end. Hans is humming a tune while on the battlefield. Was this because he had gone back to his simple origins or because he was wise? Wisdom and foolishness can look like the same thing.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Aufgehört auf S40. Das is irgendwie anstrengend. Schwurbelig altbacken. Verstelzt wortgewaltig alt. Fühlt sich nach "durchkämpfen" an - why would I?
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes