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Reviewed in December, 2013


I love when the themes of two books I happen to be reading overlap. And when those themes also reflect aspects of my own life experience, I feel a wonderful convergence, an exchange of awareness at an almost physical level as if the the space between the pages where the authors ideas are laid out and my reading of their pages has become porous and a continual flow happens between all three, an exchange not unlike the one that happens in the deepest tissues of the respiratory system when we breathe in and out.

In perhaps the most obvious parallel between the two books I've been reading and my own life, the hero of The Magic Mountain and the Narrator of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, both suffer from respiration related diseases. Proust’s Narrator, an asthmatic like myself, spends portions of his life à l’horizontale, wrapped in the tissued softness of a curtained room, lest any noxious air disturb the normal rhythm of his breathing. Quite early in his stay at the Berghof sanitorium, Hans Castorp discovers that he may have a soft spot on his lung and this discovery removes him from the normal rhythms of life to live his own horizontal version of ‘lost time� in the hermetic world of The Magic Mountain.

The exchanges that take place between the two books might also be compared to those produced by the vibrating membrane of the acoustic chamber of a gramophone - since music plays such a big part in both works even as it does in my own life.
Certain pieces of music become significant in both books, and are used by their authors as a kind of recurring theme. Schubert’s Am Brunnen vor dem Tore, a song about the symbolic linden tree, emerges as a connector between Hans Castorp’s feelings and ideas, and as a significant object in the working out of his life and fate.
Mann also uses other pieces of music as metaphors for his hero’s existence: just as Radomes in the opera Aida sings Tu - in questa tomba when Aida comes to him in his underground prison, Castorp is ‘buried� in the tomb of the Berghof sanatorium, waiting to be joined by his love. But like Don José in Bizet’s Carmen, Castorp’s Russian ‘Carmen� is drawn away from him towards a more ‘robust� toreador. However, Castorp, although ein Sorgenkind des Lebens, one of life’s problem children, is never at a complete loss and, without any operatic drama, he subtly vanquishes the toreador.

Music is therefore a powerful trigger for change in Castorp’s life but, as is the case in Proust, it is only one of a series of cathartic mechanisms: a simple nosebleed propels Castorp back in time to a significant moment in his childhood; the experience of being lost in a snow storm on the mountain awakens new levels of consciousness within him; dreams play a role too, as do images, in particular the x-ray image of his own body which provides a eureka moment in terms of his self discovery, his ‘Bildung�.

Hans follows many avenues of study in his quest to understand himself, one of them being the lectures given every week in the sanatorium by Dr Krokowski on the subject of love as a force conducive to illness. Among the arcane topics covered by the doctor is The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights. This work was a favourite of Proust, and love as a force conducive to illness is itself an underlying theme in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
Dr Krokowkski also talks about plants in connection with love, in particular the morel mushroom. Proust chooses the name Morel for one of his characters, a character himself associated with the destructive power of love.
The study of plants becomes a preoccupation for Hans in his personal program for self cultivation. He is particularly interested in the family of flowers called ranunculacae, a compound flower, as I recall, an especially charming plant, bisexual... This is yet another similarity with Proust’s work since the metaphor of bisexual and self-fertilising plants is an important element in the Recherche.

There are other parallels too, 'love' meaning ‘being loved�, references to duels, the personification of death, death wearing a starched Spanish ruff..whereas life always wore a little, normal, modern collar.
Proust and Mann place themselves in the text from time to time, acknowledging the reader reading, At the beginning of May (for May arrived while we were talking about snowdrops) ..., the ‘we� being the author and the reader.
They both have very sharp observational skills as if they had taken a quick snapshot of a glance, a way of sitting or standing, a way of walking, and they can stretch description almost to the point of caricature as in the case of Dr Behrens or Mme Verdurin. The authors also make frequent diversions within their narratives but seem to finish up exactly where they planned in the end, with a discussion of ‘Time�.

Thomas Mann has some very interesting things to say about the element of ‘time� in narration, the very cornerstone of Proust’s work.
Narrative, however, has two kinds of time: first, its own real time, which like musical time defines its movement and presentation; and second, the time of its contents, which has a perspective quality that can vary widely, from a story in which the narrative’s imaginary time is almost, or indeed totally coincident with its musical time, to one in which it stretches out over light-years.
He can stretch a moment out of all proportion to real time: Their eyes met.. Claudia's napkin slips towards the floor - Hans Castorp half rises as if to pick it up it - but she retrieves it, scowls in annoyance at her own silly panic and turns away with a smile. That brief incident takes half a page to tell but at other times, Mann can condense years into a single sentence: There is not that much time left in any case, it's rushing by slapdash as it is, or if that's too noisy a way of putting it, it's whisking past hurry-scurry.
Because the weather on the Magic Mountain is unpredictible with snow in summer and sunshine in winter, robbing the year of its seasons, Hans Castorp marks the passage of time not by calendars or watches but simply by his visits to the barber or the frequency with which he clips his nails - and since death is a major theme, as it is also in Proust, Mann reminds the reader more than once that, In the end it is only the physical that remains, the nails and the hair.
Hans Castorp lives outside of time while on the Magic Mountain just as Proust’s Narrator moves outside of time, en dehors du temps in his search for le Temps Perdu.