The Magic Mountain : A safe descent.

Dear fellow mountaineers, we have reached the last part of the Mountain. Let me see your faces, you have been awfully silent in this last stretch to top ! After the top in "Snow" it is time to go down. It is a tricky route down as you will see, with lot of unexpected things happening. Check the ropes and let's go.... Wohoooooooo

I am still just at "Snow" having finished "O. Spirituales" this a.m. Will slog through them before coming back to here.

I know you can do it Anna

I am just starting Peeperkorn. Your notes are fantastic and greatly appreciated!

Txs slick

ditto what slick said. A superlative job, Mac. I finished the book a few days ago and am relaxing at base camp.

Very little time with 12 hrs. of work and am tired when day ends, but enjoying going over the better chapters. Not to mention a little selected criticism.

Two random thoughts:

The font in the Knopf edition is sooooo small. And the spacing is so tight in the paperback or soft cover version. One page must equal 1.5 normal pages.

I read the Woods translation but also picked the Spanish translation by Mario Verdaguer out of curiosity. Its fascinating what a difference the translator can make and how they deal with different situations.

How is Clavidia Chauchat in spanish ? Gatacaliente ?

Hehehe, no, Clavdia is Clawdia. Her long conversation with Hans is in French with a translation at the bottom of the page.

I only scanned the Spanish version. The English version, as usual, felt less clunky, more fluid. The thing about the formal pronouns makes more sense in Spanish though. And the final sentence, to my ears, is sounds better.

MM Part 7: A stoll by the shore

This is the last part, the seventh part, and it is introduced by short dissertation on Time.

The narrator reminds us that a Narration like Music “fill time”.

There are different ways to “experience” Time. There is the time described by the narration and the time needed to read this narration. Although, we started reading a month ago, it feels like ages ago…. ( at least to me ) and how many years have passed since Hans first arrival at the Berghof. Mann cleverly does not mention when Clawdia had arrived so we cannot make an exact calculation…but does it matter ? Clawdia is back, what great news!

MM Part 7: Mijnheer Peeperkorn

Mann is getting short on inspiration: 3 chapters will be titled Peeperkorn.

Peeperkorn is a colonial Dutchman. He is from the east and the west. His name reminds us of this duality. Pepper the spice from the east. “Koren”, grain the bread of home.
A Dutchman, Peeperkorn drinks Jenever ( from Schiedam btw ), the liquid bread. ( Not Gin ! )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenever

“someone else”. The narrator promises that this last “pedagogue” will “spread great confusion” over our hero but this time ( Thanks God !) “no one need to worry that yet another instigator of intellectual and pedagogic confusion has made his appearance”. Mann knows we have got our fill.

PP is the companion of Clawdia

PP is described as a God – like figure. His hair forms an aura around his head, he commands respect with his colourless eyes, he has a white and regal head and a beard. His most impressive way however, is how he speaks, speaking without saying anything, with unfinished incomprehensible phrases , punctuated with hand and arm movements like an orchestra conductor… a fantastic figure ( and funny too ! ). PP calls everybody “my child” and surrounds himself occasionally with 12 people.

The positioning of his fingers when he underscores what his about to say, remind me of a “Christ Pantocrator” . Christ like too is how he raises his Jenever glass. It looks like an Eucharist ( see also next chapter )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocrator

PP speaks about himself in the 3rd person when drinking.
PP is ill too. Maybe Malaria, or worse.

Clawdia ignores Hans for now.

The kinky Egyptian Princess is back too ( with here eunuch, a castrated Moor ), she turns out to be a lesbian…

“Jewish woman from Romania with the very plain name of Landauer”. Is Mann taking a jab at the anarchist Gustav Landauer?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Landauer

My languishing Céladon: referring to the hero of the “Novel of novels” l’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Astr%C3%A9e

MM Part 7: Vingt et un

Hans has « lost » Clawdia but has to witness each day how she and PP enjoy themselves together. He is jealous.

It is Clawdia, who opens the conversation again with Hans. “…and your cousin, monsieur?”
Hans first words to Clawdia is “Dead”. Joachim is dead. When Hans start speaking nonsense, only the reader can follow the ramble.

Hans uses Mme Chauchat’s first name. ( Who is the uneducated savage now ?)
CC does not accept it.
HC confesses that he has been waiting for her. “Fool !”.
CC still does not like Settembrini and his Mediterranean arrogance

Pieter Peeperkorn joins the couple. They are three now, like “ménage à trios” or like the “Christian Trinity”?

PP is the great himself and is immediately open and sympathetic to Hans. He does not see in the young man someone ordinary or unassuming but someone “promising”.

PP organizes an “evening” of drinks food and game. Let us enjoy ourselves. Again he gathers 12 people around the table for a game of 21. ( numerology again ). As they sit around the table with PP toasting, the scene resembles the Eucharist or a Bacchanale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist

Peeperkorn has seated Hans between him and Clawdia.

Everthing goes well until food that is served is (according to PP) a gimcrackery, cheap, tasteless. PP explodes in fury ! Clawdia calms him down and PP makes an effortless transition from rage to composure…

PP keeps his pleasures holy, simple, directly from the hand of God…drink, eat. Smoking is already too sophisticated, decadent? Cocaine – Hashish – Opium is too much. But PP does not reprove, does not judge.

“The unforgivable Sin lies in…” Hans takes over the answer, but we don’t know what in the eyes of PP is the “unforgivable Sin”.

“Demands”, Life’s holy, feminine demands upon our manly honor and vigor…”

HC likens PP to the God Bacchus. That would make Clawdia, Ariadne ? will she help our Perseus out of the Labyrinth?

“Life is a woman sprawled…”

The defeat of feeling in the face of Live, that is the inadequacy for which there is no pardon, no pity…. Impotency is the unforgivable sin…

Hans babbling nearly infuriates PP in a comic scene.

PP refers to the sleep at Gethsemane. The sleep of the last night.
Matthew 26:45 “Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, Are you still sleeping and resting?... Behold, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners”.

The party starts all over again !

When the rumor goes that Behrens approaches, the party breaks up and HC and CC accompany PP to his room.

“Kiss one another!” Hans refusal makes him suspicious…

Woah Mac, I have to say I missed those religious Christian references when I read this. Peeperkorn seemed more like a pagan God to me, with his head circled by white flames.

">

I didn't post a pic yet for this last thread. But here is room with a view on the terrace and reclining chair. It is not room 34, it is a more luxury corner room.

And here is Fluela waterfall near Davos. Check Hans on the bridge...

">

Mac and all: What do you make of Peeperkorn's most characteristic hand gesture and his clawlike fingers and nails?

oops, didn't realize there was a new thread. Great stuff Mac. I'm still ahead, but limping along at ten pages or less a day for a few days now. In Highly Questionable

20

To any Orthodox or Catholic Christian, Jesus’ right hand is unmistakably shown as being raised to give a blessing.
The arrangement of the hand, repeated by clergy when blessing others, is also rich in meaning.
The fingers spell out the four-letter Christogram “IC XC”, as it is by the name of Jesus that we are saved and receive blessings. “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;” (Phil 2:10).

The fingers are arranged to form the following letters—IC XC—

Hence, the index finger points upward, forming an “I.” The middle finger is curved to form a “C.” The fourth finger crosses over the thumb to form an “X,” while the little finger is curved in a manner similar to that of the middle finger, thereby forming another “C.”

The three fingers of Christ – as well as spelling out “I” and “X” – confess the Tri-unity of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The touching finger and thumb of Jesus not only spell out “C”, but attest to the Incarnation: to the joining of divine and human natures found in the body of Jesus Christ.

A long chapter, the Peeperkorn one. I hope to get next notes by tomorrow.

Gang signs have a Catholic lineage? I did not know!

Anybody familiar with Castorp? I think I'd rather read Chaucat. There is a lot to work with and plenty of open space too. Somebody please write it.

Still here, though waaay down the mountain. Picked it up again last night and will likely finish it next week. I'll catch up to the threads as I catch up with the book.

Peeperkorn was one of my favorite characters. I wish he had appeared earlier in the book.

>25 slickdpdx: I liked Castorp! Although, yes, rather Chauchat. But I thought it made Hans a fuller character not necessarily by expanding him, but by indicating a certain reading of him in the MM:

http://www.librarything.com/work/3701940/reviews/80138931

27: mejix will now take unto himself a Holland's.

28: Nice review, as usual. I was thinking what is there to do with Hans, really, but the author found a way. I still envy Hans' port at breakfast. (Is that first or second breakfast?)

MM Part 7: Mijnheer Peeperkorn ( continued )

This chapter announces a “quite memorable excursion” ( including Naphta + Settembrini ) to the Fluela waterfall near Davos. This excursion coincides with Peeperkorn “departing”. The narrator is very mysterious about the way Peeperkorn departs. He doesn’t die like Ziemmsen, that at least is sure.

The narrator is also worried about time speeding past. The hour hand turns at speed of seconds, a time experience of opium or hash-addicts. The narrator fears the censor…

Hermetic pedagogy ? in what sense? Obscure? Esoteric?

HC does not see Peeperkorn as a rival and maybe this annoys Clawdia.

HC visits P in his room. It is a luxury room adjoining Clavdia’s room. P is very ill. He has malaria and takes Quinine drinks as a cure.

Clawdia is present in the room (to make sure HC will not divulge their tryst to Peeperkorn?)

See Peeperkorn imagery

regal head
lance-nailed captain’s hand
dancing heathen priest

Fingers forming the ring of perfection and the three “finger lance” pointing upwards.
Peeperkorn gives a dissertation on poison, he knows all about it and seems to be fascinated by it’s killing properties.

HC introduces everybody to everybody, well aware of the differences between his many pedagogues and friens. It is an expression of his “life – affirming” nature, everything is worth listening too.

Important enough to notice is that for both Naphta and Settembrini, as for all pedagogues , women are a disruptive and distracting element. A silent primal hostility unites both men against “La Clawdia”

Peeperkorn walking reminds HC of the steps of a senile old man rather than a king. Peeperkorn the wounded king, the fisher king ? Did Mann see Wagner’s Parsifal ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_King

It is rather comical to picture Naphta and Settembrini overwhelmed by the presence and personality of Peeperkorn. HC is not taking sides.

Settembrini accuses Hans of worshipping Peeperkorn’s “personality” as an idol. You are venerating a mask, you are in danger of idol – worship. You see something mystical where there is only mystification…You should be ashamed of yourself …

Mundus vult decipi…Petronius: “Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur” "The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived."

See also Marcus Varro: “there are many truths, which it is useless for the vulgar to know; and many falsities which it is fit the people should not suppose are falsities”.

Settembrini is still jealous: “ … your weakness for things Asian is well known…I cannot treat you to such wonders”

And showing his Latin temperament

“your businesslike composure borders on the grotesque”

Settembroni accuses HC of unmanliness in his acceptance of Peeperkorn, his rival for Beatrice
.
Funny because Settembrini is aware that he has to be silent about the themes of jealousy and acceptance of rivals. He too did not show any “manly” bravery.

Interesting is how the “presence” of Peeperkorn puts in the shadow all rational; intellectual arguments. Whatever S and N discuss about, people await the stuttering reaction of Peeperkorn. Here is a “presence”, people will flock to, against all intellectual presentiments and ego’s. Is this the secret of the initial populist success of Hitler, Il Duce and Stalin.

Again a long argument between N and S is developed. Is anybody, characters and readers alike still following these discussions?

Peeperkorn interrupts the discussions and commands his companions to notice the “taste” and the “smell” of the crisp mountain air. They do. Then he spots the regal eagle. Peeperkorn for a moment is the Zeus, the god of the sky, lord of Mount Olympus. Is his raised sharp fingernail, lightning ready to strike?

The chapter finishes with two anecdotes.

1° Clawdia approaches Hans mimicking his first approach of Hippe.” Do you have a poststamp. They have a long and deep “lovers” discussion. Despite her attitude, she gives the impression to be in need of a friend. There are hints at the impotence of Peeperkorn and he is illness. Is Clawdia approaching Hans, a sign of the end of Peeperkorn.
This discussion is ended with a kiss on the lips. A Russian kiss.

Clawdia does not accept the claim that HC staid on the mountain for her. She will not be responsible for his waste of time. We agree, it is Hans folly.

Clawdia speaks with premonition: “Germans will one day be the enemy of humankind, because they are so repulsively egoistic”. The Magic Mountain was written in 1924.

2° The second scene takes place in Peeperkorn’s room where the old Man wants to know the true feeling and relation between Hans and Clawdia. HC is afraid, clumsily confesses. Wine is spilled like blood, there are even some words about a duel, but in the end P and HC close a bond of brotherhood. Peeperkorn has assigned HC as his successor?

Thanks mac for taking us through part 7, which is one of the finest in the book.

There are a few of us doing a group read of Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach over on club read 2011 and so I had wondered about Peeperkorn being likened to the Fisher King. However I could not place the grail and M Chauchat is no virgin.

The relationship between M Chauchat and Peeperkorn is interesting, they are described as travelling companions and there is little evidence of anything more - no intimacies seem to be exchanged.

Peeperkorn alludes to his impotence, doesn't he? Somewhere there in his discussion of the failure of feeling.

If there is a Christological connection to him, it seems inverted, or purposely distorted. The text itself frequently refers to him with the metaphor of a "heathen priest," and at least once, somewhere between Dionysus and Silenus.

I just finished the book this morning. With the finish of it, it gathers up around itself so many more layers of feeling and meaning... I have lived with the book for something like a quarter of a year now. It's going to take time to settle in before I know what to think of it. I know it's going to require a second reading to really even begin to come to terms with it. On first reading it feels like I've just skimmed the surface.

I have reached the end, safely descended, and...I feel smaller now. I have completed a difficult and large book slightly ahead of our lantern and yet, as Tuirgin, said, I've just skimmed the surface. There is so much more here that I have merely expanded what I don't know, touched on so much that I didn't take in.

Upon completing I have a strange affection for Naphta. I don't like him, but he made me think more than S (and I'm so thankful for a certain bit at the darkness that wasn't quite what I dreaded, which would have been so much worse). So, in ode to Naphta, an excerpt from Charles Bukowski, one that's been on my mind for much of time I have been reading this:

its not so much that nothing means
anything but more that it keeps meaning
nothing

Thanks Mac. This first read isn't really complete until I have read all your commentary. So, I'll try to stand by closely over the coming US holiday. Terrific summary of MP (cont.), one of my favorite chapters in this book.

I'll try to finish this weekend...

But I recognize both reactions "we skimmed the surface". It has been like this for me each time I turned over the last page... this feeling never goes away. It is a Magical book.

Alchemical.

MM Part 7: Mijnheer Peeperkorn ( conclusion )

Peeperkorn has organized an excursion to the Fluela Valley waterfall. The occasions for such activities become less and less for the man is very ill and has to stay more and longer in his bed.

The group consists of 7 people: Peeperkorn, La Clawdia, Hans, the brainy duo Settembrini and Naphta and Ferge and wretched Wehsal.

The excursion is physically demanding for Peeperkorn… the departure is postponed several times…

Creepy Wehsal is sick of love and his comments on his lust for Clawdia are scary. Strange that Hans accepts this kind of obnoxious ramblings and masochistic fantasies. Hans in fact acts very mature and adult.

Pieter Peeperkorn leads his procession towards the waterfall.

“The woods were not like others…”. We are entering a fantastic realm…
Words like exotic, eerie, bizarre, disfigured, sickly are used to describe nature around them.
There is a feeling of ghosts here, mourners maybe, subjects who are “draped”, “wrapped” and “webbed”. The sound of the waterfall is overwhelming. It is the “pandemonium of hell”

They thought they could hear menacing, threatening trumpet calls and brutal male voices.

Where are we?

Speaking to each other is not possible. However Peeperkorn decides to picknick right there where the noise is too much. They pick-nick in silence like deaf-mutes in a howling storm.

Peeperkorn gives a long soundless speech. He challenges nature, tries to dominate the waterfall with his presence and his voice, but his voice is drown out by the thunder of the water. The whole scene underscores his impotence.

The old King, the fallen God looks now more like the Man of sorrows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_Sorrows

After his inaudible speech, Peeperkorn decides to go back to the Berghof. They return in silence. That same night Hans is woken and asked to come to the room of Peeperkorn. The old man is dead. He has committed suicide. Poisoned himself, using a snake – like device.

The brilliant scene of Hans kissing Clawdia on the brow over the dead body, while the Malayan servant’s eyes turn white conclude this chapter and the story of Pieter Peeperkorn.

I thought it was an elegant moment, MP's speech against the waterfall. He's described as all personality, who never actually completes his thought. So, here we have removed the words, there is only personality and physical expressions. We can even understand his mannerisms ("settled" etc). It's an exaggeration of who MP really is, a magnificent presence without words. Is he pointless, or does he defy meaning, or is he maybe larger than mere words?

As a presence and a voice, Peeperkorn has to bend down to something that has even more presence and more voice.
Is it Man's made God bending down for the atavistic ur -powers of Nature.

Was it not awe in front of cataclysmic events and Sublime Nature that was the spark out of which religion started?
Maybe we have experienced some regression? From Intellect ( Settembrini & Naphta ) to Presence ( Peeperkorn ) to forces of nature.

thinking on that...

Many thanks to Mac for his guidance through the maze of the MM. It's a work for a lifetime. The best we can do is keep reading, reading, reading, as long as we have breath in our lungs and life in our legs.

I am probably totally off base here and I am not really trying to simplify this to an absurd level but I remember when I was in college my friend and I decided that the Book of Job could be summarized into the following dialogue:
Job: Why?
God: Because!

So if I were to attempt such a dialogue to summarize the three figures that attract Hans' attention, I might write:

Rationalism: Celebrate human liberty and happiness through the use of reason!
Scholasticism: Celebrate God through human slavery amd misery!
Nature: Celebrate! What? You want answers? Not going to get any answers from me!

Maybe we have experienced some regression? From Intellect ( Settembrini & Naphta ) to Presence ( Peeperkorn ) to forces of nature.

This makes sense.

I was also thinking about how Settembrini is the first major influence on Hans, and he remains to the end. Later we get Naphta, and Peeperkorn, and there's various smaller figures throughout, but Settembrini is there through it all.

Settembrini may have become apparently ridiculous at times, but I think this is really more like the way fathers are first demi-gods, then overbearing autocrats, then ridiculous, wounded, and pity worthy, and then finally human. Settembrini is an incredible figure. He isn't appealing to me as an ideal, but in the way he is so thoroughly human even in his idiosyncrasies and flaws. I love the end of the book, which reverberates back over the book all the way to the beginning.

>41 anna_in_pdx: Scholasticism: Celebrate God through human slavery amd misery!

I still have trouble with this view of Naphta, though I don't want to rehash the arguments from the other thread. He seems to hide in the darkest aspects of medievalism, but that's only one of the shadows in which he lurks. He seems to flit here and there wherever he finds something to suit his purpose, but what is his purpose once you remove the façade from it?

43: I have to admit that at times he just seemed like a classic Devil's Advocate, that his only purpose was to argue against S. And often I felt that his arguments were just sort of incoherent. (That O. Spirituales was a long chapter, the fault may have been with me.) But the arguments of his that I *could* clearly follow ended in this kind of grotesque view.

Naphta wants a City of God on earth. He is Religion, Settembrini is Reason, although Mann leads us a typical Mannish paradoxical dance showing how religion uses reason (Jesuitism) and how a cult of reason is "like" religion (freemasonry).

By the way, did anyone else feel like jumping into the debates? I wish I had the stamina to write fanfic. A million times I wanted to retort, to all of them. Most irritating when one or the other says ALMOST what you'd say, but not quite, or veers off, or stops short, or goes too far, or... :)

*sheepishly raising hand* But then, I was glad that I didn't, I'd only have made a fool of myself, I get mad when people sneer at me and both S. and N. were so good at that.

>45 LolaWalser: Good point about the cult of reason/freemasonry. Still puzzling over Naphta, though. There's something more there that's puzzling me.

The Wikipedia entry on The Magic Mountain has a section on Naphta that makes a lot of sense to me and seems like a place to start unraveling Naphta's complexities. None of these characters seem to dissolve into simple allegory. They just aren't simple characters.

I think we should not forget that all the characters (apart from Hans) are ill. Most of them seem quietly desperate in some way or another. They are all battling with their illness, with their mortality, with their fever.

#49

I didn't intend a "simple allegory". Those are the keys in which these characters are played, and there's certainly little simple about the tune.

#50

Well, Hans is somewhat ill too, ill with existence.

49: Point taken and I should not have attempted it.

>52 anna_in_pdx: Why not? I know I'm sorting through all my thoughts about this immense book. I assume others are, too, and that we'll benefit from different, even opposing ideas about what was going on below the surface. If I wanted to stay locked within my own ideas I'd just skip discussion and find a place to lecture undistracted. The shower seems a good place, but the water gets cold so damned fast.

Much to think about here...

#43 "I don't want to rehash the arguments from the other thread. "

T, which other thread?

...going to wikipedia and then then to look for the other thread...

I am confused. Why do I see Nafta as mainly about nihilism, that nothing means nothing, that the idea of infinity just proves that no matter how valuable something is, it's still so useless, nothing. That we might as well be religious to avoid realizing how pointless everything is... ??? Am I completely off here? (this is my response to wikipedia...)

Naphta is a critic of secularism and the values of modernity but I wouldn't call him a nihilist. I am not sure that he could be called a defender of theocracy, he is more of a critic of bourgeois values. The curious thing about the character is that his discussion is more historical, philosophical than strictly religious. He doesn't strike me as a particularly religious personality but I guess that is just a function of the type of ideas that Mann wanted to explore.

Amazing discussion and commentary by Mac. I am in Koh Samui enduring monsoon weather And power outs. I will try to catch up and contribute later.just quickly, though, I saw Peeperkorn as Dionysius, or at least, the 'spirit of life' in contrast to the 'spirit of talk' embodied by N and S, which is why p never actually says anything. The christian elements I saw as just parodies of Christianity: I was weeping with laughter all through these chapters.

>54 dchaikin: This is the thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/125683

I basically do not see Naphta as representative of medieval thought, nor of Christian thought except in the most narrowly defined -- and negative -- way. Taken as representative of Christianity, even of a specifically medieval, and 'swounds obsessed Christianity, he is a caricature. Having reached the end of the book, I don't think Mann was making a caricature of the worst aspects of medieval Christianity. Naphta was reactionary in such a way that he would claim anything that would suit his argument.

>57 mejix: The curious thing about the character is that his discussion is more historical, philosophical than strictly religious. He doesn't strike me as a particularly religious personality...

Religion seems like a tool on his belt, almost, or an aspect of a his overall ideology, which seemed to me quite removed from theological concerns.

45 Yes I like that Mann-ism

MM Part 7 : The great Stupor

Stupor is an introduction for the four last (and strange) chapters. Mann is preparing the end…and warns us that some characters we are now meeting, we see for the last time…

HC is still on his Mountain although we cannot understand why…

Peeperkorn and Joachim are dead.
Clawdia is gone
The teachings are over,

And strangest of all, Behrens thinks that Hans illness has nothing to do (anymore) with TBC…There is some blood taking without decisive outcome. There is no reason to stay on the Mountain.

Why is Hans idling away, wasting away his youth in that damn Sanatorium?

Hans has entered a state of “ Stupor”.
Stupor according to Wiki is the lack of critical cognitive function and level of consciousness wherein a sufferer is almost entirely unresponsive and only responds to base stimuli such as pain.

The narrator compares the stupor with a demon who has a hold on HC. “This is life without time, care or hope, life as a stagnating hustle-bustle of depravity, dead life”.

HC fills his time, as all the old timers do, with “fads”: photography, stamp collecting, chocolate tasting, mathematical games ( with endless and innumerable outcomes ), bogus business plans , to end with the worst of all…playing patience.

Our old friend Settembrini cannot belief his eyes. Hans even insults Settembrini with a “placet experiri”- remark while playing this stupid game.

Things are happening in the flatlands “ The world situation baffles me” Settembrini , who read papers, says. HC is not interested. Hans, we know, does not read papers.

The Great Stupor, both in HC mind as in the world down below, will come to no good, the narrator warns us. “The end will be a catastrophe, a thunderstorm and a great cleansing wind will break the spell and wrench life from its dead standstill and overturn the doldrums in a terrible Last Judgment…”

What has happened to CC?

MM Part 7: Fullness of Harmony.

The great Stupor continues. After the “patience” fad, we switch to music. Music, if it has the effect of a drug, is politically suspect. You should remember that from the teachings of Settembrini…

Love for music fills the emotional gap which Clavdia has left. Hans listening to the music “filling time” should be therapeutic. The different operas, ballet themes and songs are carefully chosen by the narrator. They create a spark of an emotional memory in Hans and the reader and as such are a perfect resume of the story to which end we are coming. It is brilliantly done….

To entertain its guests the Berghof has invested in a German-made “Polyhymnia” music cabinet. Behrens gives a demonstration with a first record. What else could we expect but…

1.The ouverture of the opera “Orpheus in the Underworld” by Offenbach

Hans too has travelled to the Underworld and has not been able to bring back his Clawdia…

“ Ach, Ich habe Sie verlohren”... I have lost you...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95LX5MMctkk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus

then

2. An Italian baritone singing from “ The Barber of Seville” by Rossini

Is that Settembrini we hear ? – eh il barbiere.( eh inginere ) Di Qualita, di Qualita!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyhuIC1sxJY

then

3. An aria from La Traviata by Verdi

Beautiful Violetta is ill, has tuberculosis, but thinks she is healed, she is not…
She has no eyes for the younger Alfredo who declares her his love (Un di, felice, eterea – the day I met you )…in spite of the fact that she is with another older man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXZNX32E3ew

Hans takes over the manipulation of the machine as soon as Behrens leaves.

4. The Barcarole from the “Les contes d’Hoffman” by Offenbach.

Hoffmann falls in love with Giuletta but his love is not returned…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tales_of_Hoffmann

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u0M4CMq7uI&feature=related

HC has discovered a new passion, a new Love. He spends time with the machine till late at night, then from early in the morning.

5. „Blick ich umher in diesem edlen Kreise“ from Wagner’s Tannhauser

The ministrel Tannhauser, like Hans, is imprisoned on the enchanted Mountain Horselberg by his love for Venus
This is the Opera, Mann is most indebted to, although he never admits it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvJn_A9MZW8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannh%C3%A4user_(opera)

6. « Da mi il braccio, mia piccina » from Puccini’s “La bohème »

Rodolfo is madly in love with Mimi. After some time Rodolfo wants to leave Mimi because of her flirtatious behavior. But the poor girl is terminally ill…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFtidDtipfs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_boh%C3%A8me

Hans appoints himself as caretaker of the musical cabinet and even takes the key.
The cabinet is described as a coffin, a temple, it is ghostly music…

Hans has favorite discs. The narrator lists them for us…All of them conclude with a reunion of Love in Death.

1. Aida…

Radames cannot forsake his love for the Barbarian girl Aida.
They are thrown and reunited in a tomb where they die in each other arms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aida

Tu en questa tomba… the final scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztStUKOBBu4

2. L’après midi d’un Faune by Claude Debussy

Reminiscent of Hans waking up on the bench near the mountain brook, those beautiful days he “played king”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaX9GZfjROg&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%A9lude_%C3%A0_l%27apr%C3%A8s-midi_d%27un_faun...

3.Carmen by Bizet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen

Corporal Don Jose is ripped apart by his love for the beautiful gypsy woman and doing his duty. Here too Love ends with death

Here is ( gasp ) Anna Antonacci in La Habanera…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2XyHfi50yE

4.Faust by Gounod

Valentin makes us think about our poor Joachim

Here is “avant de quitter ce lieu”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFjVrwlxOcA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust_(opera)

and we end with

5. Schubert’s Lindenbaum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IlMRIHkBBE

Which was this world of forbidden love behind this enchanting song ?

It was Death…

Brilliant exposition of the music chapter Mac.

MM Part 7: Highly Questionable.

Nothing good can come of having too much time at hand…

I must confess that when I read this chapter for the first time, I was as shocked as Hans by what had happened. Lulled into comfort during fifty and more chapters of realistic style and the kind irony of the narrator, I was not prepared to what Hans and the readers were about to experience…

A very sad chapter…

Edhin Krokowski’s ( first time I notice his first name ) interest is slipping from the psychoanalytic towards the paranormal ( hypnotism, somnambulism, etc etc )

The Danish girl Ellen Brand from the city of Odense ( the city of HC Andersen ), a new patient at the Berghof shows some uncanny knack to uncover hidden objects. “Voices” seem to direct her. She has some paranormal talents.

Krokowski decides to “take care” of the young girl. She seems to be haunted by the spirit of a young boy, a child named Holger who whispers her answers or directions…

( Holger or Olger is the name of one of the kings of the Mountain) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_in_the_mountain

Ellen has regular visions and paranormal experiences, so the bored patients of the Sanatorium decide to organize a séance of spiritism in the room of Hermine Kleefeld
Using a glass and tokens with the letters of the Alphabet they summon a ghost. Holger soon enough indicates he is invisibly present. It starts as a game. Holger appears to be a poet and recites a Romantic poem by making a glass slide over the table towards the different letters.

When they decide to switch to practical questions and Hans asks how long he shall remain in the Sanatorium things start to change. There are knocks, the lights go out, Ellen Brand slips into a sleep-like state.

Hans gets an enigmatic answer: “Go Across” and then something about his room nr.34. To his surprise he finds the x-ray picture of Clawdia on his lap. It seems that the Poltergeist has dropped it their on purpose for Hans did not have the picture with him at that moment.

The answer to Hans question could be understood as “Go 3 + ( a cross ) 4 = 7” “Go after seven years?”. But why the Clavdia picture reappears is not clear. Has something happened to her?

They stop the experience… for now
Settembrini disapproves and is understandably angry with Hans that he participates in this act of primitive magical mumbo jumbo.

Hans, who has stayed away from this paranormal activity for some time, is lured back by his friends, because the spirit Holger has appeared to the audience and Ellen Brant has promised to bring back a deceased person.

Hans, with his awful fascination for death, is thinking about… Joachim. Remember how listening to the Valentin part of the Gounod opera, has brought Joachim to HC mind.

The séance starts. Light is dimmed, music is played. ( an ouverture by Millocker )
Ellen goes in trance with spasms and shakes…

“Whom shall friend Holger reveal to us?”. Nobody dares to say a name until HC frivolously asks to see his cousin Joachim Ziemssen again. ( That bloody placet experiri of the boy!).

They wait while the girl is in trance for 2 hours! The term scandalous is appropriate for what is happening…

The exhausted Ellen makes pulling movements with her hands, just like Joachim when he was about to die. After a short break, they continue. The trancelike state of Ellen is compared to a woman in labour. Hans suggest to put on another record, Valentin’s prayer from Gounod’s Faust. Although Hans is sure that the record was not brought to the room, it seems that by accident ( slipped into the wrong sleeve ) it is available and Wesel puts it on…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlipNY5oLao&feature=related

Suddenly Joachim makes his appearance. He materializes even before Hans notices him. It is an absolutely chilling passage. Summoning his cousin from the world of the dead is an awful act of desecration. Hans looks up and looks straight at Joachim. “There was one more person than before in the room…” It is our Joachim of the last hours, like he was described on his death-bed, with hollow cheeks and warrior’s beard. His beautiful eyes look tenderly and in friendly silence at Hans…He is in the field garb of the coming war, probably with a steel picklehaube on his head.

It is a terrible sad but crucial moment. The novel’s two basic stitches Love and Death are sewn and complete Hans spiritual development. Hans understands he has crossed the line and is both physically sick ( he wants to throw up ) and mentally stunned…he sobs, mumbles “forgive me” to his cousin …tears blind him…

Hans pulls himself free, leaving Ellen in a state of shock and Krokowski in anger. Under menace Krokowski hands Hans the keys of the room and our friend…

A very sad chapter indeed.

The seance chapter was the one that most mystified me. Thanks for helping me understand it.

Loved the association of the seances and the X-rays. Also psychiatry and the underground. Very evocative. This section was completely unexpected and moving. I am not sure why he is asking for forgiveness though.

Hans has desecrated the barrier between Live ( Love ) and Death and perturbed the eternal peace of Joachim.

Yes, there are so many references to the coming war, that are so easy to miss (J.'s outfit, Clavdia's statement about Germans becoming the enemy of the world, etc.).

Thanks so much for the music chapter. I loved this chapter, especially the detailed program notes of each piece and had fun identifying them in my mind - of course all these pieces are very famous. The Apres midi d'un faun was so perfectly described/evoked! (I love Debussy.)

You guys know Aida was commissioned for the opening of the Cairo Opera House but it was not ready in time and they had to open it with Rigoletto. It is often performed in Egypt at the Pyramids, now. (The Cairo Opera House burned down, there is another one now)

>68 Macumbeira:

Oooooh ok. Thanks.

MM Part 7: The great petulance

The demon of stupor makes place for the demon of irritability, contempt, acute petulance, a love of quarrels. A penchant for outbursts of rage, nasty verbal exchanges and even…yes… fisticuffs.

The peaceful sanatorium has become the scene of nasty, embarrassing moments: quarrels, fights, anti-semitism…

Clearly what happens on the mountain is a reflection of worser things taking place in the flatlands. But it is the infection of the atmosphere that worries us most.

The unthinkable happens. A fierce discussion between Naphta and Settembrini, just like the ones we witnessed so many times before, turns awry. Naphta challenges Settembrini for a duel. Settembrini accepts. The discussions are over, it is the defeat of the intellect. Hans, Wehsal and Ferge try to bring the two antagonists to reason but with no success.

Mann has read his Lermontov and the details of the duel are described in detail. The duelists go for quality; they choose Belgian Brownings to settle their discord.

Standing face to face, both Settembrini and Naphta underscore their intellectual stances.

Settembrini the humanist, refuses to shoot at Naphta and makes his point by emptying his weapon by shooting in the air. Naphta is furious, turns the pistol and shoots himself. For him too, the suicide, the self-destruction underscores the intellectual stance he has been defending since we met him for the first time.

It is just brilliant how Mann brings this scene, so well in line with what those two man have said before and what we have come to expect from them.

Bravo Settembrini !
Bravo Thomas Mann !

Can’t believe it, but tomorrow we will read the last chapter.

Fullness of Harmony was completely lost me. I was hopeless. Your commentary helps, as I read a lot of words there that had no meaning to me.

I found Highly Questionable irritating. So much nonsense, and then I'm suddenly supposed to take it seriously and think about it. My mind rebelled, and is trying to pretend the chapter doesn't really exist.

The Great Petulance, meanwhile, had me at the edge of my seat, and left me with a lot to think about. One of my favorite chapters. Not sure if I'd say Bravo to Settembrini, as he seemed to me to defy his own principals. But he was brave, and I am terribly relieved he walked away from it.

And, Naphta. I just can't feel too much dislike for Naphta. He's constantly described as freely changing his argument just to win. Since I got lost in those arguments, I can't say for sure it's not true, but it's doesn't seem true. It seems to me that Naphta had a clear position, but it just wasn't directly stated in his words. His end was so certain. My tenuous take, and I'll have to read this again to know how far off from the truth I am, is that S represents a certain kind of idealism that was universally accepted as true both at that time, and today. That his "humanism" is essentially a desire to be to make the best of humanity using modern "enlightenment". Lets' be clear, he is no scientist, there is nothing empirical in what he does. His ideas are commendable, and his expression of them is beautiful. But, in the end they are just ideas with no really true foundation. There is nothing to prove or prove against. Naphta sees this, he is aware of the philosophical and logical flaw. And he attacks it in his own way. In the end he wins, S is undermined and becomes a chatterbox to HC. But Naphta loses too; he loses meaning and ends up in a very stark meaninglessness...which leads directly to his last speech and suicide. Apologies for my errors here, this is just an idea of the moment. Corrections welcome.

Mac - I'll be sad to see your last contribution here.

MM Part 7: The Thunderbolt

Hans remains seven years at the Sanatorium Berghof and sits at each of the seven tables.
His tablemates at the last, “bad Russian” table come from the foggy edges of Europe.

Hans has become some kind of a hermit, an anchorite. He takes less care about himself and wears a goatee. There is, the narrator adds, a certain philosophical negligence in his appearance.

With the exception of his occasional visits to his mentor Settembrini, Hans has become silent and most people, even the doctors and nurses, leave him alone.

Hans has no watch anymore and no calendars in his room, so he is also standing outside time now. Time has continued slipping past and many things have changed, people have died, kids have grown up and died and the old consul Tienappel has died too. While Hans is very distant to what happens in the flatlands, he still sees the departing of his uncle as another step towards his total freedom.

He has stopped writing letters to people he once knew, stopped ordering his Mancinis ( replaced them by a new brand “Oath of Rutli” – an independence symbol ), cut all strings which still attached him to the flatlands.

We hear a “Rumble of thunder”. We are in the Summer of 1914 ( WW1 officially begins 28th July ). The two demons introduced in the last chapters Stupor and Petulance, have taken geopolitic dimensions and are the cause of war.

“The Thunderbolt itself was the deafening detonation of great destructive masses of accumulated stupor and petulance”

The War has of course an effect on the residents of the Berghof too. People are fleeing the sanatorium and travelling down to the flatlands.

The Magic Mountain bursts open and “rudely sets the entranced sleeper outside the gate”. (The Tannhauser gate of Wagner’s opera…)

Our friend Hans has not seen things coming despite the warnings of Settembrini. Hans is the Sevensleeper.

“There he sits ( rubbing his eyes ) in the grass like man who has failed to read the daily papers”

HC is released, set free… “not by his own actions he had to admit to his shame”

Settembrini is very ill and will not make it down to the flatlands.
There is an emotional adieu between Settembrini and Hans

Next we find ourselves on the battlefield “Where are we ? What is that ?”

Sounds of War, Brass blaring, Drumbeats. There is a Regiment of volunteers, youngsters, students, 3000 of them. Statistically 1000 are about to die in the imminent attack.

A “shameful and sublime” war scene interrupted with a vision of that “golden age” , we remember from the chapter snow.

Among the volunteers we discern our Hans for a final last time…
He has turned into a real soldier, without hesitation he steps on the hand of a fallen comrade. Marching towards the enemy, he is singing to himself strophes of Schubert’s “Der Lindenbaum”.

“Upon its bark, I have carved there so many words of love
And all its branches rustled, as if they called to me”

The world of Death beckons…

The narrator and the readers take leave of Hans. “We have told your story to the end…”.

Hans disappears in the fog of war. It is not likely that he will survive. But for the story, it does not matter that much…

What a way to finish a Bildungsroman ! Has all that learning served to nothing? Will all those pedagogic efforts be crushed by the next bomb?

And even if we get an answer to the question “Will Love rise up from this carnival of death too?”, will it be in an endless cycle of learn and build and then…destroy?

Finis operis

( the end, not in the sense of the “last page” but in the sense of St Thomas of Aquinas : the purpose of the work)

"Farewell, Hans- whether you live or stay where you are! Your chances are not good. The wicked dance in which you are caught up will last many a little sinful year yet, and we would not wager much that you will come out whole. To be honest, we are not really bothered about leaving the question open. Adventures in the flesh and spirit, which enhanced and heightened your ordinariness, allowed you to survive in the spirit what you probably will not survive in the flesh. There were moments when, as you 'played king,' you saw the intimation of a dream of love rising up out of death and this carnal body. And out of this worldwide festival of death, this ugly rutting fever that inflames the rainy evening sky all around---will love someday rise up out of this, too?"

Fantastic Mac. What a way to end your guidance through this wonderful novel. I have enjoyed every minute of it: from my initial readings to reading your marvelously informed commentary, which both clarifies events and sets new thoughts racing. What a great climb!

Nice end piece mejix

Am I the first with a review of this magnificent novel:

http://www.librarything.com/work/4108376/book/80350918

applause and thumbed !!!

You deserve a parade, Mac! Wonderful job!!!

I wish you'd read all my books for me.

Thanks Baswood.

And thanks Macs, great job.

Mesmerizing, Mac. All of it.

Beautiful review too, Bas!

I did not get a sense of deep melancholy from Hans. MM for me is a book exploring conceptual extremes and human perception. The two together explore what it means to be human.

Check out "The Davos Disputation"! I did not know about this.

Also worth checking out: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/25/durantaye.php

Great text slick, thanks

Is there a Behrens vs Krokowski axis? Xrays and thumps vs. psychoanalysis and seances.

The old Vintage copy of the Lowe-Porter translation includes an afterword from Mann. Was that in the other versions people here read?

Slick - My edition did not have an afterword. I used Woods translation, from Vintage.

There is some interesting information about the genesis of the book in his wife's admission to a TB sanitarium and Mann's three week (!) visit around the time she entered. He started the book after that time and before WWI he set the book down and did not pick it up again until many years later. I am thinking that accounts for it's becoming in some ways a different book at the last third or so. It also includes Mann's reactions to early academic readings of the book. Its worthing looking up. As is the Davos Disputation, a real life Naphta-Settembrini encounter at Davos a few years later (without the guns.)

Thanks slick. I found a post on Mac's blog where he mentions that it is only included in the 1927 Lowe-Porter translation (presumably that post is here in Le Salon somewhere). I will search out the afterword. If anyone finds an free English-language copy on the web, please post a link.

The afterword is in the Lowe - Porter not in The Woods translation. I do not remember if it ads anything to a understanding

Behrens ( body ) vs Krokowski ( mind )

After the massacres of 14 - 18 Mann changed his intention of writing a comical morbid book to something more serious. He also softened a bit his conservative patriotic stance

Bas has been hottest of the hot reviewers for ages !

I've been away, but I'm back now. fabulous discussion everyone, and thanks to Mac for a stupendous job providing all those chapter commentaries. The music commentary was especially useful, as I was not impressed with HC';s musical taste, but now I see how his choices connect with the themes of the novel (Carmen has got to be the WORST opera ever written, closely followed by Aida my god, talk about KITSCH!)

I was reading Nietsche on vacation and this made me think of the whole setting and premise of MM:

For the human being is more ill, less certain, more changeable, more insecure than any other animal - there`s no doubt about that. He is the sick animal. Where does that come from? To be sure, he has also dared more, innovated more, defied more, and demanded more from fate than all the other animals combined. He is the great experimenter with himself, unhappy and dissatisfied, who struggles for ultimate mastery with animals, nature, and gods - still unconquered, always a man of the future, who never gets any rest from his own inner powers, so that his future relentlessly burrows like a thorn into the flesh of his present. Why should such a brave and rich animal also not be the animal in most danger, the one which, of all sick animals, suffers the most lengthy and intense illness? . . .

Genealogy of Morals:
Third essay section 13

oh, and well done bas, great review. Lots to think about

Ummm, I'll defend both Carmen and Aida. As for Hans, I think what's more important is what he drew from music, the way he was transported by it.

Nietzsche--sounds like he was writing about himself, no?

oh sure, himself, and all of us. the pieces mentioned act as signifiers for the themes of the novel. I might have been over provocative about Aida, which I don't know very well, but Carmen is really bad. Really bad.

Bas - a thought-provoking review.

mejix also has a review, but I can't read it. (err, oops, no he hasn't...)

My much lighter reviewer is posted here: http://www.librarything.com/review/72703812

My bad. I use the review section to write notes to self. Sorry for the confusion.

Carmen is really bad. Really bad.

Is not.

Mejix - apologies! I made a silly assumption that if it looks like a review then it must be one...

Is too. lol

haha. crzay moon talk, cat! Give in to hot gypsy love!

Nice review DC !

Hey, I made it! Just finished Herr Mann's "The Making of the Magic Mountain," at the bitter end.

The Tibetan prayer flags are all faded, discarded gas bottles everywhere, a few human remains still scattered about, near the summit.

Where the freeque is everybody?

I started prematurely, circa September, 2011, lost a crampon, got a wicked bad case of cerebral edema, tossed the book across the room, got caught up with work, gave up, resumed, read other tomes, returned, got frostbite on my toe, and finally committed to finishing, this weekend.

It was a bear. Hell, it was German. Hell, it was harder than Ulysses.

But I'm actually looking forward to re-reading all these ancient, wonderful posts, as well as my crisp copy of A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. I'm sure someday, I will heed Herr Mann's recommendation and actually read this beast MM, again.

congrats on making it to the top, dog.

Yay Sandydog! May you someday read a similar post from me in the final moby Dick thread!

overwhelmed by emotion Macumbeira wipes tears from his eyes

but did you manage to finish the introduction "The Making of the Magic Mountain,"or the complete novel ? It is not clear...

But well done well done in any case

Aw, jeez you guys, I'm blushing...

(Sandy-dawg becomes roseate-y dog.)

And yes, Mac, I finished the whole darned, snot-filled saga.

And, I just finished those eleven essays comprising A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. Eugene Goodheart (comedy), David Blumberg (musical themes), Steven Meredith (illness), Ulker Gokberk (the imminent war and political climate), Michael Brenner (German-Jews and anti-Semitism), Karla Schultz (technology themes), Kenneth Weisinger (homosexuality), et al, - have nothing on our own Mac.

Of course, there was also a delightful description of school student Susan Sontag's pilgrimage to The Mann residence, for tea.

LOL congrats Sandy.

The meeting Mann - Sontag is indeed a nice chapter. How cool both kids were and what a nice person Mann seems to be allowing them the time to have their conversation.