The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann

Connection to Death in Venice

Mann wrote that he originally planned The Magic Mountain as a novella, a humorous, ironic, satirical (and satyric) follow-up to Death in Venice, which he had completed in 1912. The atmosphere was to derive 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 Magic Mountain contains many contrasts and parallels with the earlier novel. Gustav von Aschenbach, an established author, is matched to a young, callow engineer at the start of a regular career. The erotic allure of the beautiful Polish boy Tadzio corresponds to the Asiatic-flabby ("asiatisch-schlaff") Russian Madame Chauchat. The setting was shifted both geographically and symbolically. The lowlands of the Italian coastlands are contrasted to an alpine resort famed for its health-giving properties.

Illness and death

The Berghof patients suffer from some form of tuberculosis, which rules their daily routines, thoughts, and conversations 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 a harrowing Viaticum scene, and cousin Ziemssen, who leaves this world like an ancient hero. The dialogues between Settembrini and Naphta examine life and death from a metaphysical perspective. Besides the deaths from fatal illness, two characters commit suicide, and finally Castorp goes off to fight in World War I, and it is implied that he will be killed on the battlefield.

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 Hans 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

Closely connected to the themes of life and death is the subjective nature of time, a leitmotif that recurs throughout the book—here the influence of Henri Bergson is evident. Thus chapter VII, entitled "By the Ocean of Time", opens with the narrator asking rhetorically, "Can one tell – that is to say, narrate – time, time itself, as such, for its own sake?" Mann's authorial (and ironic) response to the question posed is, "That would surely be an absurd undertaking..." He compares storytelling with the act of music-making, describing them as being alike in that they can " ...only present themselves as a flowing, as a succession in time, as one thing after another...".

The Magic Mountain, in essence, embodies the author's meditations on the tempo of experience.

The narrative is ordered chronologically but accelerates throughout the novel, so that the first five chapters (approximately half of the text) relate the first of Castorp's seven years at the sanatorium in great detail; the remaining six years, marked by monotony and routine, are described in the last two chapters. This asymmetry corresponds to Castorp's own skewed perception of the passage of time.

This structure reflects the protagonists’ thoughts. Throughout the book, they 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.

Magic and mountains

The titular reference to 'mountain' reappears in many layers. The Berghof sanatorium is located on a mountain, both geographically and figuratively, a separate world. The mountain also represents the opposite of Castorp's home, the sober, businesslike "flatland".

The first part of the novel culminates and ends in the sanatorium's Carnival feast. There, in a grotesque scene named after Walpurgis Night, the setting is transformed into the Blocksberg, where according to German tradition, witches and wizards meet in obscene revelry. This is also described in Goethe's Faust I. At this event, Castorp woos Madame Chauchat; their subtle conversation is carried on almost wholly in French.

Another topos of German literature is the Venus Mountain (Venusberg), which is referred to in Richard Wagner's opera Tannhäuser. This mountain is a "hellish paradise", a place of lust and abandon, where time flows differently: the visitor loses all sense of time. Castorp, who planned to stay at the sanatorium for three weeks, does not leave the Berghof for seven years.

In general, the inhabitants of the Berghof spend their days in a mythical, distant atmosphere. The X-ray laboratory in the cellar represents the Hades of Greek mythology, where Medical Director Behrens acts as the judge and punisher Rhadamanthys and where Castorp is a fleeting visitor, like Odysseus. Behrens compares the cousins to Castor and Pollux; Settembrini compares himself to Prometheus. Frau Stöhr mentions Sisyphus and Tantalus, albeit confusedly.

The culmination of the second part of the novel is perhaps the – still "episodic" – chapter of Castorp's blizzard dream (in the novel simply called "Snow"). The protagonist gets into a sudden blizzard, beginning a death-bound sleep, dreaming at first of beautiful meadows with blossoms and of lovable young people at a southern seaside; then of a scene reminiscent of a grotesque event in Goethe's Faust I ("the witches' kitchen", again in Goethe's "Blocksberg chapter"); and finally ending with a dream of extreme cruelty – the slaughtering of a child by two witches, priests of a classic temple. According to Mann, this represents the original and deathly destructive force of nature itself.

Castorp awakens in due time, escapes from the blizzard, and returns to the Berghof. But rethinking his dreams, he concludes that "because of charity and love, man should never allow death to rule one's thoughts". Castorp soon forgets this sentence, so for him the blizzard event remains an interlude. This is the only sentence in the novel that Mann highlighted by italics.

There are frequent references to Grimms' Fairy Tales, based on European myths. The opulent meals are compared to the magically self-laying table of "Table, Donkey, and Stick"; Frau Engelhardt's quest to learn the first name of Madame Chauchat mirrors that of the queen in "Rumpelstiltskin". Castorp's given name is the same as "Clever Hans". Although the ending is not explicit, it is possible that Castorp dies on the battlefield. Mann leaves his fate unresolved.

Mann makes use of the number seven, often believed to have magical qualities: Castorp was seven when his parents died; he stays seven years at the Berghof, from the years 1907 to 1914; the central Walpurgis Night scene happens after seven months, both cousins have seven letters in their last name, the dining hall has seven tables, Madame Chauchat is initially assigned room number 7, the digits of Castorp's room number (34) add up to seven, and Joachim's room is a multiple of seven (28=7×4). Settembrini's name includes 'seven' (sette) in Italian, Joachim keeps a thermometer in his mouth for seven minutes, and Mynheer Peeperkorn announces his suicide in a group of seven. Joachim decides to leave after a stay of seven times seventy days, and dies at seven o'clock. The novel itself, moreover, is divided into seven chapters.

Music

Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon him much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply soothing, narcotic effect, tempting him to doze.

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect. (Herr Settembrini, ch. 4)

Mann gives a central role to music in this novel. People at the Berghof listen to "Der Lindenbaum" from the Winterreise played on a gramophone. This piece is full of mourning in the view of death and hints of an invitation to suicide. In the book's final scene, Castorp, now an ordinary soldier on Germany's western front in World War I, hums the song to himself as his unit advances in battle.

Allegorical characters

Mann uses the novel's main characters to introduce Castorp to the ideas and ideologies of his time. The author observed that the characters are all "exponents, representatives, and messengers of intellectual districts, principles, and worlds," hoping that he had not made them mere wandering allegories.

Castorp

According to the author, the protagonist is a questing knight, the "pure fool" looking for the Holy Grail in the tradition of Parzival. However, he remains pale and mediocre, representing a German bourgeois that is torn between conflicting influences – capable of the highest humanistic ideals, yet at the same time prone to both stubborn philistinism and radical ideologies. As usual, Mann chooses his protagonist's name carefully: 'Hans' is a generic German first name, almost anonymous, but also refers to the fairy tale figure of "Hans im Glück" and the apostle St. John (Johannes in German), the favourite disciple of Jesus, who beholds the Revelation (Offenbarung des Johannes in German). Castorp is the name of a historically prominent family in Mann's hometown, Lübeck, which provided at least three generations of Mayors for the town in the era of the Renaissance. The "torp" is Danish, not unexpected on the German north coast. Castorp also refers to the twins Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology, who were identified by the New Testament scholar Dennis MacDonald as models for the apostles James and John.

In a way, Hans Castorp can be seen as the incorporation of the young Weimar Republic: Both humanism and radicalism, represented by Settembrini and Naphta, try to win his favour, but Castorp is unable to decide. His body temperature is a subtle metaphor for his lack of clarity: Following Schiller’s theory of fever, Castorp’s temperature is 37.6 °C (99.7 °F), which is neither healthy nor ill, but an intermediate point. Furthermore, the outside temperature in Castorp's residence is out of balance: it is either too warm or too cold and tends to extremes (e.g. snow in August), but never normal. According to Christian Kracht, "Hans Castorp experienced the elevation of his temperature as lifting him to an elevated state of being."[4]

The most pronounced instances of Thomas Mann's political conversion is in the "Schnee" chapter. Completed in June 1923, this chapter, which forms the philosophical heart of the novel, attempts to overcome apparent contrasts and find a compromise between Naphta's and Settembrini's positions. In the chapter "Humaniora", written in 1920, Castorp tells Behrens, in a discussion on medical matters, that an interest in life means an interest in death. In the "Schnee" chapter, Castorp comes to exactly the opposite conclusion. The basis for Castorp's contradiction can be found in the speech "On the German Republic" (Von deutscher Republic), written in the previous year, in which Mann outlines his position with regards to precedence of life and humanity over death. Even though Castorp could not possibly have learnt from either Naphta or Settembrini the idea that the experience of death is ultimately that of life and leads to a new appreciation of humanity, Mann was determined from at least September 1922 onwards to make this message the main point of his novel. In a letter of 4 September 1922 to Arthur Schnitzler, Mann refers to "Von deutscher Republik", in which, he says, he is endeavouring to win the German middle classes over to the cause of the Republic and humanitarian concerns, and adds that his new-found passion for humanitarianism is closely related to the novel on which he is working. In the climax of the "Schnee" chapter, Castorp's vision is of the triumph of life, love and human concern over sickness and death. This realisation corresponds closely to Mann's key observation in "Von deutscher Republik". As if to dispel any lingering doubts, Mann makes the meaning absolutely clear in his "Tischrede in Amsterdam" [Dinner speech in Amsterdam], held on 3 May 1924. Death stands for the ultra-conservative opponents of the Republic, while life embodies the supporters of democracy, the only way to guarantee a humanitarian future. The "Schnee" chapter was written in the first half of 1923 and the italicisation of the key sentence was probably requested by Mann when the book was set in print in 1924, as a message to the readers of the time, who, after years of hyper-inflation and political turmoil, not only expected but also desperately needed a positive direction to their lives, some words of wisdom which would give them hope.[3]

Settembrini: Humanism

Settembrini represents the active and positive ideal of the Enlightenment, of Humanism, democracy, tolerance and human rights. He often finds Castorp literally in the dark and switches on the light before their conversations. He compares himself to Prometheus of Greek mythology, who brought fire and enlightenment to Man. His own mentor Giosuè Carducci has even written a hymn to another lightbringer: Lucifer, "la forza vindice della ragione." His ethics are based on bourgeois values and labor. He tries to counter Castorp's morbid fascination with death and disease, warns him against the ill Madame Chauchat, and tries to demonstrate a positive outlook on life.

His antagonist Naphta describes him as "Zivilisationsliterat", meaning cosmopolitan, un-German intellectuals. Mann originally constructed Settembrini as a caricature of the liberal-democratic novelist represented, for example, by his own brother Heinrich Mann. However, while the novel was being written, Mann himself became an outspoken supporter of the Weimar Republic, precipitated by the assassination of then German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau whom Mann deeply admired, which may explain why Settembrini, especially in the later chapters, becomes the "Sprachrohr des Autoren" (the voice of the author).[3]

Settembrini's physical characteristics are reminiscent of the Italian composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo.

Naphta: Radicalism

Settembrini's antagonist Naphta was Jewish, but joined the Jesuits and became a Hegelian Marxist. The character was a parody of the philosopher Georg Lukács, who "plainly has not recognized himself in Naphta", wrote Mann in a 1949 letter.[5]

Even here a change in Mann's political stance can be seen. In "Operationes spirituales" from Chapter VI, written towards the end of 1922, Naphta is termed a "revolutionary" and "socialist", but Settembrini sees Naphta's fantasies as emanating from an anti-humanitarian reactionary revolution ("Revolution des antihumanen Rückschlages"). In this chapter, the terrorism championed by Naphta is no longer, in Castorp's eyes, associated solely with the "Diktatur des Proletariats", but also with conservative Prussian militarism and Jesuitism. The association here between Naphta's advocacy of terrorism and two extremely conservative movements—Prussian militarism and Jesuitism—is a huge political shift for the novel. Terrorism, up till now exclusively the province of the communist revolution, is now suddenly also an instrument of reactionary conservatism. In a clear allusion on Mann's part to the assassination of Walther Rathenau, Naphta goes into the motivation of the revolutionary who killed Councillor of State August von Kotzebue in 1819 and concludes that it was not just the desire for freedom at stake here but also moral fanaticism and political outrage. That this is a direct reference to the death of Rathenau is borne out by the fact that in the first edition Mann refers to the shooting of Kotzebue, whereas he was in fact stabbed. Alerted to this mistake by Max Rieger, Mann replied on 1 September 1925 that he would rectify the error at the first opportunity. Mann changed the word geschossen to erstochen for future editions. For the 1924 readership, however, the association with Rathenau could not have been clearer.[3]

Chauchat: Love and temptation

Clawdia Chauchat represents erotic temptation, lust, and love, all in a degenerate, morbid, "Asiatic-flabby" form. She is one of the major reasons for Castorp's extended stay on the magic mountain. The female promise of sensual pleasure as hindrance to male zest for action imitates the themes from the Circe mythos and in the nymphs in Wagner's Venus Mountain. Chauchat's feline characteristics are noted often, her last name is derived from the French chaud chat [hot cat], and her first name includes the English 'claw'. (Her name may also be a reference to the Chauchat machine gun, a French weapon that saw significant use by the French and American forces during World War I.) ChaudChat could also be a play on words with 'chaud' [hot] and 'chatte' [female genitalia] in French slang.

Clawdia Chauchat leaves the Berghof for some time, but she returns with an impressive companion, Mynheer Peeperkorn, who suffers from a tropical disease.

Peeperkorn: The Dionysian principle

Mynheer Peeperkorn, Clawdia Chauchat's new lover, enters the Berghof scenery late, but he is one of the most commanding persons of the novel. His behavior and personality, with its flavour of importance, combined with obvious awkwardness and the strange inability ever to complete a statement, is reminiscent of certain figures in former novellas of the author (e.g. Herr Klöterjahn in Tristan) – figures, which are, on the one hand, admired because of their vital energy, and, on the other hand, condemned because of their naïveté. In total, this person represents the grotesqueness of a Dionysian character. The Greek god Dionysus is also important in Nietzschean philosophy, whose The Birth of Tragedy is the source of the title The Magic Mountain.[6]

Peeperkorn ends his life by suicide, also performed in a strange manner.

Mynheer Peeperkorn is used by the author to personify his rival, the influential German poet Gerhart Hauptmann, and even certain properties of Goethe (with whom Hauptmann often was compared).

Ziemssen: Duty

Joachim Ziemssen, Hans Castorp's cousin, is described as a young person representing the ideals of loyalty and faithfulness as an officer. As already mentioned, Dr. Behrens alludes to the pair as "Castor(p) and Pollux", the twin brothers of the Greek mythology. And in fact, there is some affinity between the two cousins, both in their love to Russian women (Clawdia Chauchat in the case of Hans Castorp, the female co-patient "Marusja" in the case of Joachim Ziemssen), and also in their ideals. But, in contrast to Hans Castorp, who is an assertive person on the Berghof scene, Joachim Ziemssen is rather shy, known to stand somehow outside of the community. He tries to escape from what he, unspokenly, feels to be a morbid atmosphere. After long discussions with his cousin, and in spite of being warned by Dr. Behrens, he returns to the "flatlands", where he fulfills his military duties for some time. But after a while, forced by deterioration of his lungs, he returns to the Berghof. It is, however, too late for a successful treatment of his illness, and he dies in the sanitarium. His death is described in a moving chapter of the novel, with the title "As a soldier, and a good one" [(Ich sterbe) als Soldat und brav], again a well-known citation from Goethe's Faust.