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Socratic Dialogues

"The Magic Mountain" is a sequel to “Death in Venice��.

Just as Plato’s Socratic Dialogues were the foundation of the novella, they guide the narrative of "TMM", a "Bildungsroman" that is concerned with the education of the protagonist, Hans Castorp, during the seven year period from ages 23 to 30.

Castorp doesn’t so much learn or grow by his physical actions. The character development is intellectual, a development which is equally apparent in both the author and the reader.

Because it's structured as a Socratic Dialogue, there is no guarantee that all readers will take the same message from the novel. Mann presents us with two, if not multiple, pedagogical or metaphysical points of view. While we might be able to infer Mann’s preference, it's not always clear, and it's left to us to draw our own conclusions.

This reinforces the reputation of the novel as one of the great works of literature, not only because its subject matter is the rival ideas upon which civilization is founded, but because it lets us be the judge.

As with Socrates, the goal is to make us think methodically about the issues, rather than to encourage us to approach them with inflexible preconceptions or to depart captive to rigid dogma.

In Which the Hero is Heightened and Enhanced

"TMM" is set in a sanatorium on a Swiss mountain, where patients suffering from tuberculosis go to receive treatment and a cure.

To do so, they must leave the flatlands of Germany and elsewhere and reside "up here" in a rarefied, pure, idealized atmosphere and world. They undergo a "change of air" and learn to breathe afresh.

They are pulled out of day-to-day timetables, responsibilities, cares and conflicts. On the mountain, they can see things for what they really are.

Not that it is all heavenly and harmonious: there is no less rivalry and conflict or, for that matter, gossip up here.

At times the novel betrays an almost comic fantasy tone associated with fables, morality plays (Goethe described his "Faust" as a "very serious jest") and fairy tales (not to mention "The Master and Margarita").

Olympian Rivalries

The title of the novel derives from Nietzsche’s "The Birth of Tragedy":

"Now it is as if the Olympian magic mountain had opened before us and revealed its roots to us. The Greek knew and felt the terror and horror of existence. That he might endure this terror at all, he had to interpose between himself and life the radiant dream-birth of the Olympians."

For Nietzsche, the Olympian gods helped mankind battle "that overwhelming dismay in the face of the titanic powers of nature."

Because the gods lived the lives of mortals, their example gave the Greeks strength, resolve and moral guidance.

However, unlike Christianity, there were multiple gods, and thus scope for differences of perspective or emphasis, in particular, the difference that most interested Nietzsche, the difference between the Apollonian and the Dionysian (a preoccupation of Mann in both "Death in Venice" and "TMM").





Dialectics, Dialogues and Diabolics

In both Nietzsche and Mann, there is a polarity, a dialectic, a double-sidedness.

The dialectic is ideological. However, Mann presents it to us in the form of a dialogue or duel between two characters. It is personalized, as it is with Dostoyevsky.

While the dialogue is often essayistic in total length, it is not just fodder for a dry "novel of ideas", it is a dramatic embodiment and reflection of a personal and philosophical tension between two vital people. It comes to us in short, sharp, punchy grabs. It’s like going 15 rounds with two intellectually-gifted prize fighters.

If you’re not interested in the rivalry of ideas, this novel might not be for you. If you are, it could be a wonderful reading and thinking experience.

Still, Mann’s refusal to always resolve the tensions between the ideas might not be to your liking.

Some see it as disingenuous, witness this assessment by one of my favourite critics, Alfred Kazin, who once met Mann in Hollywood:

"Mann, the creative peer and contemporary of great experimental novelists like Proust and Joyce, is easier to read but actually harder to grasp through the external conventionality of his form and the heavy load of Germanic philosophic apparatus.

"He is so continuously double-sided, so ‘safe�� in manner and so subversive within, so much the pompous German pedant in his literary manner and in his substance so representative of his aesthetic, nihilist, decadent generation, that it is almost impossible to do justice to the range and elusiveness of his mind.

"Either one makes too much of only one side of him or one imitates his own tiresome Olympian irony, the suavely self-protective use to which he put his doubleness by effectively concealing his real opinions."

Kazin damns Mann with faint praise. In contrast, the Marxist Hungarian critic Georg Lukacs (who unknown to him was the model for the character, Leo Naphta) declared Mann the "last great bourgeois writer", writing:

"Thomas Mann is a realist whose respect, indeed reverence, for reality is of rare distinction."

Whether or not the subversiveness, the elusiveness, the concealment to which Kazin adverts is real, it might have contributed fuel to recent attempts to go beyond Mann’s writing and venture into his personal life, in particular for the purposes of reassessing his legacy on the basis of perceived homoeroticism.

This trend is prurient, but in an age of media voyeurism seems to be inevitable. Regrettably, it distracts attention from the writing and the subject matter, which can’t be any more fundamental to the concerns of any civilization, and was regarded as sufficiently meritorious to justify the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Taking Stock of Time and Space

Hans Castorp is an inexperienced and inexpert engineer, a simpleton, a naïf, a neophyte.

When he arrives at the Berghof, he takes stock of both time and space. He takes his bearings, he is measured, he measures himself, so that he can determine exactly where he is and what he's about (as he will later use a thermometer to "measure" his temperature and his illness). However, gradually, he loses his sense of time and place, and as if he were on Olympus or in Heaven or Eternity, his experience becomes timeless, almost dreamlike.

Apart from the dialogues, nothing much happens to Castorp. He doesn’t cover a lot of space. The narrative doesn’t depend on the passage of time, so much as the transmission of ideas. Before we know it, Mann has quietly covered seven years in 700 pages.

In a way, Mann plucks Castorp out of his world, out of his time and makes him listen to pedagogues, perhaps because, like most of us, he is not yet able to think particularly deeply about these issues himself.

Not only is "TMM" a great work of literature, but it is about how a great work of literature works: it takes us on a journey from innocence and ignorance to experience and wisdom. It’s we who experience character development. If we are lucky, we can put our lessons into practice in our lives.

Settembrini versus Naphta

The principal dialogues are between Settembrini (an heroic individualist) and Naphta (a divine collectivist).

Settembrini is an eloquent Italian, "a dark man of graceful carriage, with curling black moustaches." He’s a humanist, an individualist, a rationalist who upholds the beauty and dignity of man:

"Our Western heritage is reason �� reason, analysis, action, progress."

Leo Naphta is small, thin, clean-shaven, ugly, hook-nosed, bespectacled, well-dressed. He is a Jew by birth, but a Jesuit by inclination and training. Paradoxically, he is a collectivist who supports both the Catholic Church and Socialism:

"Like many gifted people of his race, Naphta was both natural aristocrat and natural revolutionary; a socialist, yet possessed by the dream of shining in the proudest, finest, most exclusive and conventional sphere of life.

"[In effect, he had made] a declaration of affection for the Roman Church, as a power at once spiritual and aristocratic (in other words anti-material), at once superior and inimical to worldly things."

Perhaps, what Naphta is seeking spiritually is both Heaven in Eternity and Heaven on Earth. Both require a respect for authority, the authority of God (and the Church) and the authority of the State, whether religious or secular.

Sometimes, to establish and protect the authority of a State, it is necessary to use force. In other words, sometimes, Naphta must advocate Revolution and Terror.

Life and Death

The contrast between the two worldviews is revealed in their perspectives on Death.

Settembrini sees Death as part and parcel of Life, as the flipside of Life. If it is differentiated from Life, it takes on a negative quality:

"Severed from life, it becomes a spectre, a distortion, and worse. For death, as an independent power, is a lustful power, whose vicious attraction is strong indeed; to feel drawn to it, to feel sympathy with it, is without any doubt at all the most ghastly aberration to which the spirit of man is prone."

Naphta sees the nobility of man solely in terms of the Spirit, not the organic or animal aspect of the human. Death and disease are in dialectical opposition to the life of the Spirit, yet they govern and influence Life at the level of the non-spiritual human, the animal, the organism that is capable of disease, of illness, of dissolution, of suffering:

"Disease was very human indeed. For to be man was to be ailing. Man was essentially ailing, his state of unhealthiness was what made him man. There were those who wanted to make him 'healthy,' to make him 'go back to nature,' when, the truth was, he never had been 'natural.'

"All the propaganda carried on to-day by the prophets of nature, the experiments in regeneration, the uncooked food, fresh-air cures, sun-bathing, and so on, the whole Rousseauian paraphernalia, had as its goal nothing but the dehumanization, the animalizing of man.

"They talked of 'humanity,' of nobility �� but it was the spirit alone that distinguished man, as a creature largely divorced from nature, largely opposed to her in feeling, from all other forms of organic life.

"In man’s spirit, then, resided his true nobility and his merit—in his state of disease, as it were; in a word, the more ailing he was, by so much was he the more man."

Man is less than Spirit.

Point and Counter-Point

Castorp listens to all this and remarks:

"You say we did not come up here to get wiser, but healthier, and that is true. But all this confusion must be reconciled; and if you don’t think so, why then you are dividing the world up into two hostile camps, which, I may tell you, is a grievous error, most reprehensible."

Just as if he is listening to two Greek gods, he regards the two pedagogues as aristocratic. However, in the chapter entitled "Snow", he sees the light in a dream-like state on an Olympian mountain:

"Man is the lord of counterpositions, they can be only through him, and thus he is more aristocratic than they. More so than death, too aristocratic for death—that is the freedom of his mind. More aristocratic than life, too aristocratic for life, and that is the piety in his heart.

"There is both rhyme and reason in what I say, I have made a dream poem of humanity. I will cling to it. I will be good. I will let death have no mastery over my thoughts...Death is a great power...Reason stands simple before him, for reason is only virtue, while death is release, immensity, abandon, desire.

"Desire, says my dream. Lust, not love. Death and love—no, I cannot make a poem of them, they don’t go together. Love stands opposed to death. It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.

"Only love, not reason, gives sweet thoughts. And from love and sweetness alone can form come: form and civilization, friendly, enlightened, beautiful human intercourse...For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts. - And with this - I awake."

The Awakening of Love

So, after point and counterpoint, after the working of the dialectic, finally we have an awakening of Eros.

"Adventures of the flesh and in the spirit...granted thee to know in the spirit what in the flesh thou scarcely couldst have done. Moments there were...when there came a dream of Love...may it be that Love one day shall mount?"

As in "Death in Venice", Castorp awakens to the light of Desire, Lust and Love. Only, while Aschenbach died in peacetime, Castorp survives in wartime.

Still, in neither case does Mann allow us to witness his protagonist mount his Love. Perhaps, after all, it's legitimate for Kazin and others to wonder why Mann denies his protagonists the fulfilment of Love?

This doesn't necessarily mean that we readers are also denied. We must find and consummate our own Love while we fend off Death.






VERSE:

Homo Humanus

Herr Settembrini,
Homo humanus,
Man of acumen,
Judgement and learning,

Carping pedagogue,
Chronic windbag and
Oppositionist,
Proudly discerning,

Wielding influence
On those gullible,
Confiding, childlike,
Still full of yearning

With his garrulous
Gift of florid gab,
Lively harangue and
Animus burning.


Naphta's Catholic Communism
[After and in the Words of Thomas Mann]

I believe not in original sin,
But in an ideal state
Of man as the child of God,
A paradise without government
And without force,
In which there is neither
Lordship nor service,
Neither law nor penalty,
Nor sin nor relation
After the flesh.
No distinction of classes,
No work, no property.
Nothing but equality,
Brotherhood and
Moral perfectitude.


Clavdia Chauchat, Hot Cat
[After and in the Words of Thomas Mann]

Whenever he thought of
Her, Clavdia Chauchat,
Kirghiz-eyed and tainted,
Grinning like a hot cat,
He was back in his boat,
Fantasising about
A time crepuscular,
The place a Holstein lake,
Scanning with dazzled eyes,
From the glassy daylight
Above the western shore
To the mist and moonbeams
That wrapped eastern heavens
Round likely lovers, in
Tight embrace, hoping for
Desire evermore.


Sleeping between TB Sheets

Once I received
A circular
Warning me that
I'd possibly
Caught some disease
Tubercular.


Mynheer Peeperkorn

Who is this man of Java,
Regal and plutocratic,
Who exclaims in foreign Dutch,
That’s both guttural and thick?

Mynheer Pieter Peeperkorn,
A coffee-king retired,
Larded with money and
Expensively attired.

Indisposed by an aching
Spleen that’s quite inflamed,
He saves a weighty summons for
His small Malayan valet.

His face is sparsely whiskered
And his skull’s white-haired,
Though he is otherwise
Colourless and blurred.

His personality matches
The pallid gaze of eyes,
Each small and pale, beneath
Stern deep-wrinkled brows.

He’s an alcoholic who
Loves to sniff one of those
Fine burgundies with his
Large and fleshy nose,

But better still to sip
The glass in his tight grip
Through his oddly thick
And much distorted lips.

Nevertheless, you know, this
Netherlander from abroad
Is somewhat lean and tall,
His chest robust and broad.

A wealthy business magnate
With a mighty money magnet,
Whose silent push and pull
Towards women gravitates.

Now, it’s Madame Chauchat,
The hero of our tale believes,
With whom the Dutchman’s
Quietly thick as thieves.

For he noticed in dismay
And much perplexity
That their arrival was
Concurrent, if not coincident.

Still, unperturbed, Peeperkorn
Sought a place inside an inn
To take unto himself
A glass of Holland’s gin.


"The Art of Seduction
(For Men and Women Alike)"

Literally translated from the French,
Hopefully preserving its elegance,
"The Art of Seduction", read by a Mensch,
Could teach him a few of the elements
Of sensual passion learned from a wench,
Meant, too, for women of preeminence
Who desire in beaus no arrogance,
Just a man of the world's beneficence,
An aura of debonair resonance
And a suitably furnished residence.


The Egyptian Princess

Only the English guests who chewed
On their cucumber sandwiches
Complained with ascetic attitude
That speaking foreign languages
Was just plebeian and too crude.

Like the extroverted paramour,
Princess of Lesbia and of Egypt,
Who’d exchanged three months�� cure
For a carton of sphinx cigarettes
And a brand new coffee machine.

For she eschewed skirts and blouses
For severely short-cropped hair,
A sack coat and well-pressed trousers,
While her multi-beringed fingers
Were yellow-stained with nicotine.

Except her sickly Moorish eunuch,
She scorned the world of hetero men,
And their rampant egomania,
To pant hot and heavy in the bed of
Frau Landauer, a Jewess from Romania.





Nazi Party Girl
[Apologies to Elvis Costello]

You’re nothing but a nasty party girl
Looking for new party members
That you can check up upon
And add to your collection.

You know the two little Hitlers?
The ones that you’ve been pursuing?
It's said, all's not gold that glitters,
Could fools gold be your undoing?

You think you’re not a guilty party, girl,
But it's obvious your mouth is made up
And some of us know your mind is undone,
The true colours of your flag have unfurled.

You're in a knitting circle, on your
Hobbyhorse, seeking Lebensraum.
If you don’t have the space for us,
Why would we have the time for you?

You’re nothing but a Nazi Party Girl.
You believe you’ve got it made, your pockets
Are full and you’re rolling deep in clover,
But what'll you do when the Party’s over?


Carnaval
[After and in the Words of Thomas Mann]

Out on the streets and
In the market place,
A mighty magic-mad,
Mountain carnival
With harlequins
And columbines,
Shaking rattles
And tin trumpets.
Comic opera and costumes,
Masquerades and bedlam.
Confetti on the ground
And maskers on foot.
Decorated sleighs
And skirmishes.
Champagne and burgundy,
Sweet and spiritous.


The Kiss
[After and in the Words of Thomas Mann]

He beheld the image
Of a life in flower,
Of flesh-borne loveliness,
As she opened her arms,
So unspeakably sweet.
First leaning from above,
She inclined unto him,
Then bent down overhead,
While he became conscious
Of organic fragrance
And the mild pulsation
Of the heart in her blouse.
Something warm and tender
Clasped him around the neck.
Melting with desire,
He sensed her upper arms,
He felt her fine-grained skin,
Heavenly cool to touch.
Then upon his shy lips,
The moist cling of her kiss.