11.19.09
Mann: The Magic Mountain
(Der Zauberberg)
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.“Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?” thus concluded The Magic Mountain.
There is an enigmatic beauty in novels that give refuge to romantic language and a modernistic obscurity. However, the obscurity of The Magic Mountain would have been too excessive had Thomas Mann failed to foresee the daunting challenge he set before the reader, and so with a very necessary afterword, he aided me. Still, reading the novel turned out to be a formidable uphill climb with its indefatigable nebulous symbolisms and warring ideologies between characters. Furthermore, the gooseflesh that Mann lent me in Doktor Faustus gripped my mental and emotional reins. Mann’s proficience in the field of merging art and psychoanalysis is evident here that taking a breath in between heavy chapters, I was led to ask, “Can there be anything more psychologically thrilling than reading Thomas Mann?”
The Magic Mountain is a metaphorical reconstruction of a historical era replete with its philosophies and political dogmas incarnated in complex characters to which our average-minded protagonist, Hans Castorp, lends an ear. The author has also described this book as a “swan song” of a pre-World War I existence in Europe. All of these were fascinating to me as the roles pondered on the meaning of my desired timeless topics; literature, music, time, religion, life, and death. Nevertheless, the most meaningful element for me was the protagonist’s episodic journey of knowing himself – a topic very significant to me at this time in life.
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Hans Castorp did his best at this point to listen and comprehend and in the hope of finally learning wherein had consisted the crass ignorance of Magnus the brewer, and finding out what else literature actually was, above and beyond “beautiful characters”.
If there are reasons that prevented me from answering straightaway a close kin’s query of personal preferences, “Proust or Mann?” it was because I found both author’s lifeworks (Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and Mann’s The Magic Mountain) similar in these respects; their treatment and utilization of Time, and that their works are not merely stories but the “unburdening” of their lives and personalities and mediums of their search for lost time and their selves. Eventually, I answered, “Thomas Mann”.
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karlo said,
November 22, 2009 at 1:05 pm
wow, am quite envious that you can already form an answer to the question, “Proust or Mann?” Magic Mountain is another of the many novels i would really like to read. the only Mann i’ve read are some of his diary entries! :)
Miracle ♪♫ said,
November 24, 2009 at 7:01 am
It’s good to hear that, Karlo. I was beginning to wonder why Mann seems more outmoded nowadays compared to his contemporaries. Sure, his prose is not as “inviting” as Proust’s, but his writings pull me in everytime.
I really wouldn’t have raised one over the other if I hadn’t been asked, but the question also caused me to examine the works’ effect on me. While Proust tangibly affects my artistic side, Mann affects more of my subconscious…
Those diary entries are quite intriguing. I’ll have to look for those. =)