The Magic Mountain at 100 Years Old: Chronicle of Troubled Times

A short, humorous continuation of his story “Death in Venice,” which, according to Thomas Mann, “seemed light and funny and did not take much time,” thus began his creative odyssey of “The Magic Mountain.” He was forced to realize the foolishness of this premise when the novel seemed to slip out of his hands and take on gigantic proportions in the breadth and depth of its themes. Twelve years later, when the great German writer finally published it in November 1924, both Mann and the country in which he lived had changed greatly. Mann was not a supporter of the democratic Weimar Republic, in which he lived when he began work on the novel. But by 1924 it was teetering on the brink of the catastrophe that was Hitler, and Mann had every reason to move away from his rather aristocratic disdain for democracy. The novel in the making transformed him from an apolitical writer into a man who saw it as his duty to respond to the conflicts of his time.

Ironically, “The Magic Mountain” refers to Haus Berghof, a tuberculosis sanatorium located among the snow-capped mountains of Davos, Switzerland. It is truly a magical world that transports its protagonist, Hans Castorp, to another world where everyday matters cease to have any meaning. An initially planned three-week visit to meet his cousin Joachim Ziemsen would last until he was seven years old, when he was diagnosed with a possible lung problem. Simple-minded, almost stupid Castorp is an aspiring engineer from Hamburg; in ordinary life he would have been a hard-working man, not particularly interested in matters of the mind and not bright in matters of the heart. But this is exactly what he becomes in the rarefied mountain air, when he is attracted by new and dangerously attractive alternatives in the person of Ludovico Settembrini, Claudia Chausha, Leo Nafta and Mynheer Peperkorn. Each of them represents a specific ideology/worldview that influences and confuses Castorp.

Life in the sanatorium, despite the atmosphere of disease and death, paradoxically breeds promiscuity among the inhabitants. They are absorbed in their own world, completely ignoring time and the moral values ​​of the outside world. Settembrini, an Italian humanist educator, is a warning voice for Castorp in the sanatorium, pointing out the dangers of being seduced by the sensuality of the place. Nafta, a doctrinaire politician with his fierce anti-humanism and cult of terror, becomes the ideological opposite of Settembrini. It anticipates the fascist doctrines that were to dominate Germany. The single-minded fanaticism, propaganda for war, contempt for individualistic humanism, ruthless asceticism and disdainful contempt for art displayed by Naphtha can to a certain extent be discerned in Hitler himself. Castorp can also be seen as a representative of post-World War I Germany, balancing between liberal humanism and fanatical nationalism.

Claudia Chausha and her lover Mynheer Peperkorn support Berghof’s hedonistic decadence, which convinces Castorp to fall into a rather mesmerized existence marked by a lack of decency and dangerous immorality. However, he retains enough self-awareness to admit that his hobby is a rather dubious experience that robs a person of common sense.

The Magic Mountain has been described as a Bildungsroman in which the main character develops from innocence to maturity; however, despite facing multiple points of view, it cannot be argued that Castorp is a mature person at the end of the novel. Finally we see him at the front, while his indifferent creator watches him with detachment, observing him like an insect squirming under a microscope lens, saying: “Farewell – and if you live, you will die! Your prospects are slim.

Published two years after the publication of two other powerful modernist works, The Waste Land and Ulysses, The Magic Mountain is quite unlike them in its linear narrative, reminiscent of the staid novels of the 19th century. However, nothing could be more deceptive, as behind the apparent order lies a fragmented and disordered world that is also dangerously attractive to gullible innocents such as Hans Castorp. The Magic Mountain, which Mann himself called “a very German book,” eventually became one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed of all his novels. Mann, who believed that an artist should be apolitical, changed his position during the creation of this novel. At a time when Europe was beginning to feel the grip of fascism, the novel became a warning of dangerous times ahead. It is not surprising that Mann’s books ended up in a book fire set by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party’s chief propagandist, in 1933.

Why should we read this giant novel a hundred years later? Because we, too, risk being seduced by magical worlds of hedonistic pleasures and plunged into a blissful seven-year languor. Because we need such warning notes to awaken us as we are gradually hypnotized by the serpentine gaze of revival glory promising a better future. Because we don’t want to be trapped in magical worlds that break our connection with the reality of the ordinary world.

Mini Chandran is a Professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT-Kanpur. The opinions expressed are personal