Nov 02, 2024 07:27 PM IST
One hundred years later, why would we read this gargantuan novel? Because we too are at the risk of being seduced by magical worlds of hedonistic indulgence and lulled into a blissful seven-year languor
A short, humorous sequel to his novella Death in Venice, which, according to Thomas Mann “seemed an easy and amusing thing to do and would not take much time” – this was how he started upon the creative odyssey of The Magic Mountain. He was to realise the folly of this presupposition when this novel appeared to slip out of his hands and assume gigantic proportions in its breadth and depth of issues. Twelve years later, when the great German writer eventually published it in November 1924, both Mann and the country he lived in had changed a lot. Mann had not been a supporter of the democratic Weimar Republic in which he lived when he started work on the novel. But by 1924, it was teetering on the brink of a catastrophe called Hitler and Mann had every reason to step away from his rather patrician disdain of democracy. The novel in the making had changed him from an apolitical writer to one who felt it his duty to respond to the conflicts of his times.
The Magic Mountain, ironically, refers to the Haus Berghof, a tuberculosis sanatorium nestled among the snowy mountains of Davos in Switzerland. It is indeed a magical world that whisks its central character Hans Castorp to another realm where matters of the everyday cease to have any relevance. What was planned initially as a three-week visit to meet his cousin Joachim Ziemssen extends to seven years when he is diagnosed with a possible lung problem. The simple-minded, almost foolish Castorp is an aspiring engineer from Hamburg; in ordinary life he would be a plodder, not particularly interested in matters of the head nor flamboyant in matters of the heart. But that is exactly what he becomes in the rarefied mountain air when he is drawn to new and dangerously attractive alternatives in the form of Ludovico Settembrini, Clavdia Chauchat, Leo Naphta and Mynheer Peeperkorn. Each of them represents a specific ideology/worldview that influences and confuses Castorp.
Life in the sanatorium, despite its atmosphere of disease and death, paradoxically breeds licentiousness in the inmates. They are engrossed in a world of their own with complete disregard for time and the moral values of the external world. Settembrini, the Italian pedagogic humanist, is the cautionary voice for Castorp in the sanatorium, pointing to the dangers of getting seduced by the sensuality of the place. Naphta, the doctrinaire politician with his virulent anti-humanism and cult of terror, becomes the ideological antithesis of Settembrini. He anticipates the fascist doctrines which were to dominate Germany. The single-minded fanaticism, advocacy of war, contempt for individualistic humanism, ruthless asceticism and disdainful contempt for art displayed by Naphta can be discerned to a certain extent in Hitler himself. Castorp could also be viewed as representing post-World War I Germany, poised between liberal humanism and fanatic nationalism.
Clavdia Chauchat and her lover Mynheer Peeperkorn espouse the hedonistic decadence of the Berghof that persuades Castorp to slump into a rather hypnotised existence that is marked by a lack of decorum and dangerous amorality. Nevertheless, he retains enough self-awareness to admit that his passion is a rather questionable experience which robs a man of his better judgement.
The Magic Mountain has been described as a Bildungsroman where the central character evolves from innocence to maturity; however, despite being exposed to multiple perspectives, it cannot be claimed that Castorp is a mature individual at the end of the novel. We see him finally on the warfront while his indifferent creator looks on with detachment, observing him like an insect squirming under the lens of a microscope, saying: “Farewell – and if thou livest or diest! Thy prospects are poor.”
Published two years after the publication of two other modernist juggernauts – The Wasteland and Ulysses – The Magic Mountain could not be more unlike them, with its linear narration that is reminiscent of sedate 19th-century novels. Nothing could be more misleading, however, because what it conceals beneath the seeming order is a fragmented and disordered world that is also dangerously attractive to gullible innocents like Hans Castorp. The Magic Mountain, which Mann himself described as “a very German book”, eventually became one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed of all his novels. Mann, who believed that the artist should be apolitical, changed his stance in the period that went into the making of this novel. At a time when Europe was beginning to feel the stranglehold of fascism, the novel came as a warning of the dangerous times ahead. It is no wonder that Mann’s books found their way into the bonfire of books organised by Josef Goebbels, the chief propagandist of the Nazi party, in 1933.
One hundred years later, why would we read this gargantuan novel? Because we too are at the risk of being seduced by magical worlds of hedonistic indulgence and lulled into a blissful seven-year languor. Because we need such warning notes to awaken us, as we are slowly being mesmerised by the serpent’s gaze of revivalist glories that promise a better tomorrow. Because we do not want to be trapped in magic worlds that sever our connections with the reality of the ordinary world.
Mini Chandran is professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT-Kanpur. The views expressed are personal
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