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A review by shoba
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
4.0
Hans Castorp, before beginning his apprenticeship with a German shipbuilder, visits his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, for three weeks. Ziemssen was seeking a cure for his respiratory ailments at a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps. As his three week vacation comes to an end, Castorp hesitates in taking his leave. He was found to have a bronchial infection of his own, requiring the extension of his stay. As the months go by, Castorp‘s days, filled with prescribed activities, become hard to differentiate.
“He had the feeling that he had been out of touch with yesterday since waking, and had only now picked up the threads again where he laid them down.”
Castorp becomes familiar with the other patients in the sanitarium, even forming a romantic attachment to a Russian woman, Madame Clawdia Chauchat. Several other patients instruct him in the fields of philosophy, politics and religion. And the years slowly slip by.
“…then at the very moment when one thought one had reached the outermost edge, everything began all over again. But that meant, did it not, that perhaps in inner world after inner world within his own nature he was present over and over again— a hundred young Hans Castroph…gazing out from a balcony onto a frosty, moonlit night high in the Alps….”
As Castorp approaches his seventh year in the sanitarium, the medical staff stops insisting he “do any work, because the decision has already been made to hold him back” because he was “no longer in the running….” He was set free of all responsibilities.
“…he had not found it easy to separate the ‘now’ of today from that of yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or the day before that, when all were alike as peas in a pod, of late that same ‘now’ was apt…to muddle its present with a present that had prevailed a month or a year before, and to fuse into an ‘always’.”
Soon reports from the world below arrives carrying troubling news, “…the murder of the archduke….” And here begins the First World War.
“…his mind turn the shadows of such things into one dream or another, but had never paid any attention to the things themselves, primarily out of an arrogant preference for seeing shadows as things, and things as mere shadows….”
Castorp decides to leave the sanitarium and enlist as a soldier. He marches off to war like thousands of other young German men, to defend their country.
“Where are we? What is that? Where has our dream brought us….Here is a signpost- no point in asking, the twilight would cloak its message even if it had not been riddled and ripped to jagged shreds. East or west? It is the flatlands- this is war. And we are reluctant shades by the roadside….”
During the fight, Castorp, feeling weary, falls to the ground, but the men keep coming.
“Then they are hit, they fall, flailing their arms, shot in the head, the heart, the gut. They lie with their faces in the mire and do not stir. They lie, arched over their knapsacks, the backs of their heads buried in the soft ground, their hands clutching at the air like talons. But the wood keeps sending new men, who hurl themselves down, leap up, and, with a shout or without a word, stagger forward among those who have already fallen.”
Earlier in the novel, Hans may not have wanted to leave the sanitarium because he was unsure of his career choices, scared of his future or simply wanted some time to think things over. Hans was described as average and so I ask myself as the novel comes to an end, what was an ordinary man’s life worth.
“Farewell, Hans Castorp, life's faithful problem child. Your story is over. We have told it to its end….”
From A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava-
“It's your basic library! You got your newspapers on wooden sticks if you like that sort of thing! They've got their share of books too! Though incredibly The Magic Mountain isn't one of them! You believe that?! No Magic Mountain! Thomas Mann they keep out but they've got all sorts of other Toms in there. All the Toms and Thomases your soul could desire! Not Tommy Mann though….It occurs to me now that I might have given you the wrong impression before about Thomas Mann like I'm some big reader of his work and was thus outraged that I couldn't find Magic Mountain! Truth is I've never read Magic Mountain or Buddenbrooks either for that matter! And the reason for that has nothing to do with the availability of those books in my local library! I have a dog-eared Magic Mountain and though I have picked it up countless times over the years it never takes me very long to put it down for good or at least until the next time! And before you get all worked up I assure you that I have other equal and even far greater holes in my education! Just wanted to come clean ...
“He had the feeling that he had been out of touch with yesterday since waking, and had only now picked up the threads again where he laid them down.”
Castorp becomes familiar with the other patients in the sanitarium, even forming a romantic attachment to a Russian woman, Madame Clawdia Chauchat. Several other patients instruct him in the fields of philosophy, politics and religion. And the years slowly slip by.
“…then at the very moment when one thought one had reached the outermost edge, everything began all over again. But that meant, did it not, that perhaps in inner world after inner world within his own nature he was present over and over again— a hundred young Hans Castroph…gazing out from a balcony onto a frosty, moonlit night high in the Alps….”
As Castorp approaches his seventh year in the sanitarium, the medical staff stops insisting he “do any work, because the decision has already been made to hold him back” because he was “no longer in the running….” He was set free of all responsibilities.
“…he had not found it easy to separate the ‘now’ of today from that of yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or the day before that, when all were alike as peas in a pod, of late that same ‘now’ was apt…to muddle its present with a present that had prevailed a month or a year before, and to fuse into an ‘always’.”
Soon reports from the world below arrives carrying troubling news, “…the murder of the archduke….” And here begins the First World War.
“…his mind turn the shadows of such things into one dream or another, but had never paid any attention to the things themselves, primarily out of an arrogant preference for seeing shadows as things, and things as mere shadows….”
Castorp decides to leave the sanitarium and enlist as a soldier. He marches off to war like thousands of other young German men, to defend their country.
“Where are we? What is that? Where has our dream brought us….Here is a signpost- no point in asking, the twilight would cloak its message even if it had not been riddled and ripped to jagged shreds. East or west? It is the flatlands- this is war. And we are reluctant shades by the roadside….”
During the fight, Castorp, feeling weary, falls to the ground, but the men keep coming.
“Then they are hit, they fall, flailing their arms, shot in the head, the heart, the gut. They lie with their faces in the mire and do not stir. They lie, arched over their knapsacks, the backs of their heads buried in the soft ground, their hands clutching at the air like talons. But the wood keeps sending new men, who hurl themselves down, leap up, and, with a shout or without a word, stagger forward among those who have already fallen.”
Earlier in the novel, Hans may not have wanted to leave the sanitarium because he was unsure of his career choices, scared of his future or simply wanted some time to think things over. Hans was described as average and so I ask myself as the novel comes to an end, what was an ordinary man’s life worth.
“Farewell, Hans Castorp, life's faithful problem child. Your story is over. We have told it to its end….”
From A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava-
“It's your basic library! You got your newspapers on wooden sticks if you like that sort of thing! They've got their share of books too! Though incredibly The Magic Mountain isn't one of them! You believe that?! No Magic Mountain! Thomas Mann they keep out but they've got all sorts of other Toms in there. All the Toms and Thomases your soul could desire! Not Tommy Mann though….It occurs to me now that I might have given you the wrong impression before about Thomas Mann like I'm some big reader of his work and was thus outraged that I couldn't find Magic Mountain! Truth is I've never read Magic Mountain or Buddenbrooks either for that matter! And the reason for that has nothing to do with the availability of those books in my local library! I have a dog-eared Magic Mountain and though I have picked it up countless times over the years it never takes me very long to put it down for good or at least until the next time! And before you get all worked up I assure you that I have other equal and even far greater holes in my education! Just wanted to come clean ...