The Magic Mountain

The Magic Mountain (German: Der Zauberberg, pronounced [deːɐ̯ ˈt͡saʊ̯bɐˌbɛʁk] ) is a novel by Thomas Mann. It was first published in Germany in November 1924. It is considered by critics to be one of the most influential works of 20th-century German literature.

Mann started writing The Magic Mountain in 1912. It began as a novella that revisited aspects of Death in Venice (another novel written by Mann) in a humorous way. The newer work reflected his experiences and impressions during a period when his wife, who was suffering from respiratory disease, resided at Dr. Friedrich Jessen's [de] Waldsanatorium in Davos, Switzerland. In May and June 1912, Mann visited her and became acquainted with the team of doctors and patients. According to Mann, in the afterword that was later included in the English translation of his novel, this stay inspired his opening chapter ("Arrival").

The outbreak of World War I interrupted his work on the book. Like many other Germans, Mann supported the German Empire. In a particular mental state he described as "sympathy with death", he wrote the essays "Gedanken im Kriege", "Gute Feldpost" and "Friedrich und die große Koalition", examples of an intellectual military service which he regarded as his duty. In response to anti-war intellectuals, Thomas Mann wrote a long essay, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, which came out in 1918. However, his position was shaken by these intellectuals, such as his older brother Heinrich who, unlike Thomas, did not support the German state. On the contrary, Heinrich was the author of the satirical novel Der Untertan and the essay "Zola", where he defended the idea of an inevitable defeat of Germany which would then lead to its democratization. The end of the war led Thomas Mann to rethink his position, and in 1919 he changed the tone of the novel to reflect the reality of war rather than a romanticized depiction of it and to include conflict between characters that was inspired by the one between his brother and himself.

Mann undertook a major re-examination of European bourgeois society. He explored the sources of the destructiveness displayed by much of civilized humanity. He was also drawn to speculate about more general questions related to personal attitudes to life, health, illness, sexuality, and mortality. His political stance during this period changed from opposing the Weimar Republic to supporting it. Der Zauberberg was eventually published in two volumes by S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin.

The narrative opens in the decade before World War I. It introduces the protagonist, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family. Following the early death of his parents, Castorp was brought up by his grandfather and, later, by a maternal uncle named James Tienappel. Castorp is in his early 20s, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his hometown. Before beginning work, he undertakes a journey to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is seeking a cure in a sanatorium in Davos, high up in the Swiss Alps. In the opening chapter, Castorp leaves his familiar life and obligations, in what he later learns to call "the flatlands", to visit the rarefied mountain air and introspective small world of the sanatorium.

Castorp's departure from the sanatorium is repeatedly delayed by his failing health. What at first appears to be a minor bronchial infection with a slight fever is diagnosed by the sanatorium's chief doctor and director, Hofrat Behrens, as symptoms of tuberculosis. Castorp is persuaded by Behrens to stay until his health improves.

During his extended stay, Castorp meets various characters, who represent pre-war Europe in miniature. These include Lodovico Settembrini (an Italian humanist and encyclopedist, a student of Giosuè Carducci); Leo Naphta, a Jewish Jesuit who favors communistic totalitarianism; Mynheer Peeperkorn, a dionysian Dutchman; and his romantic interest, Madame Clawdia Chauchat.

Castorp eventually resides at the sanatorium for seven years. As the novel concludes, the war begins, and Castorp volunteers for the military. His possible demise upon the battlefield is portended.

The Magic Mountain can be read both as a classic example of the European Bildungsroman – a "novel of education" or "novel of formation" – and as a satire of this genre. Many formal elements of Bildungsroman are present: the protagonist starts as immature and by leaving his home he learns about art, culture, politics, human frailty, and love..

Reflections on topics such as the experience of time, music, nationalism, sociology, and changes in the natural world are embedded in the novel. Castorp's stay in the rarefied air of "The Magic Mountain" gives him a panoramic view of pre-war European civilization and its discontents..

Mann describes the subjective experience of serious illness and the gradual process of medical institutionalization. He also alludes to the irrational forces within the human psyche, at a time when Freudian psychoanalysis was becoming a prominent type of treatment. These themes relate to the development of Castorp's character over the period covered by the novel. In his discussion of the work, written in English and published in The Atlantic in January 1953, Mann states that "what [Hans] came to understand is that one must go through the deep experience of sickness and death to arrive at a higher sanity and health...".

Mann also acknowledged his debt to the skeptical insights of Friedrich Nietzsche concerning modern humanity, and he drew from these in creating conversations between the characters. Throughout the book, the author employs the discussions among Settembrini, Naphta, and the medical staff to introduce the young Castorp to a wide spectrum of competing ideologies about responses to the Age of Enlightenment. However, a classical Bildungsroman would conclude by Castorp's having become a mature member of society , with his own worldview and greater self-knowledge, while The Magic Mountain ends with Castorp's becoming one of millions of anonymous conscripts under fire on a World War I battlefield.

Mann wrote that he originally planned The Magic Mountain as a novella, a humorous, ironic, satirical (and satiric) follow-up to Death in Venice, which he had completed in 1912. The atmosphere was derived 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 atmosphere and the character's journey in The Magic Mountain contrast considerably with the earlier novella. Whereas the protagonist of the novella was the mature and acclaimed author Gustav von Aschenbach, the central figure is now a callow young engineer at the outset of an anticipated career. The alluring Polish adolescent Tadzio in the novella corresponds to the Asiatic-flabby ("asiatisch-schlaff") Russian Madame Chauchat. The setting has shifted from the densely populated island city on the Adriatic coast to an alpine, quasi-resort-like sanatorium prized for its (alleged) health-restoring properties.

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:

The treatment of time (Zeit) is a major narrative and philosophical concern in the novel. The novel's structure reflects this through its asymmetrical handling of chronology: the first five chapters (approximately half the novel) detail only the initial year of Castorp's stay, while the final two chapters compress the remaining six years.

Mann addresses time both as a narrative device and a philosophical concept. Chapter VII, titled "By the Ocean of Time," opens with the narrator directly questioning the possibility of narrating time itself. The characters frequently discuss theories of time perception, debating whether time passes more quickly or slowly depending on circumstance and routine.

Contemporary philosophical discussions of time, particularly Henri Bergson's concepts of duration and subjective time experience, informed Mann's approach. This influence is evident in the novel's exploration of how time appears to accelerate or decelerate based on the characters' experiences in the sanatorium setting.

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 protagonist's 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.