Classics and the Western Canon discussion

"Love as a Force Conducive to Illness." Are you persuaded? Or perhaps you prefer table talk where "both [participants] knew that their lies had double and triple twists"?

In the chapter Satanna Makes Shameful Suggestions we suffer through Hans disorientation about this new environment he has landed in. Settembrini tells him he should leave. He then tells the story of Fraulein Ottilli Kneifer.She proved to be one of the rare cures ("people do get well up here sometimes") but had become so well acclimated that she refused to leave. Because of the many people pressing to gain admittance, though, the hospital insisted.

She tried to induce illness and even to "catch her death" in the frigid lake.

"She left us in agony and despair, deaf to her parents words of comfort. 'What is there for me down below?' she kept crying. 'This is my home.' "

In the throes of his own fever, these words make no impression on Hans, who Joachim has to take to his bed. But they certainly made an impression on me.

Added to other disorienting aspects of the mountain (time, space, up/down) we now learn the the seasons are "all mixed up, so to speak, and pay no attention to the calendar." There are spring, summer, fall and winter days, but there are "no real seasons."

Jews and Christians (and others) find comfort from the words of Ecclesiastes that for everything there is a time and a season.

Not on the magic mountain.

Zeke wrote: "Jews and Christians (and others) find comfort from the words of Ecclesiastes that for everything there is a time and a season.

Not on the magic mountain.

."

Nice.

I need to know the meaning of "love." I wonder about connotations of the German word for love Dr. Krokowski uses in his lecture. From HC's meandering as the word loses meaning for him, I believe the German word is Liebe (the lingual, the bleating vowel.) The English word "love" can variously mean eros, philos, agape--desire, brotherly love, love of God. In the context Krokowski seems to mean eros, and is maybe too shy to say "libido." Does the German "liebe" have similar connotations? In English we say "making love"; "All You Need is Love"; "For God so loved the world...."; "I want a Woman, a Lover, and a Friend."

Don wrote: "I need to know the meaning of "love." I wonder about connotations of the German word for love Dr. Krokowski uses in his lecture. From HC's meandering as the word loses meaning for him, I believe ..."

Today "Liebe" has a similar meaning to "love" in English, I assume (although I really do not like it to narrow down the meaning of "love" to mere "having sex", this is so biased, I could have my personal Freudian 5 minutes on this topic ...).

What I do *not* know is how the word was understood in the 1920s ... my guess is, that in public it meant (real) love only, but in private talk it was just used to talk of eros/having sex, too, because of a lack of an officially accepted word for it and because of a lack of thinking on the meaning of love and sex. As we can see, the language and behaviour of a hypocritical person is often due to a lack of thinking - too much "music", maybe?

Over on an earlier thread Adelle makes an observation about Hans Castorp: I, too, think he's in denial or that he's repressing memories he doesn't want to remember. Hans is ever so good at managing to forget what he doesn't want to remember.

The chapter Hippe makes me want to suggest that, in fact, he is also ever so good at remembering things he wants to forget.

He goes out for a walk, suffers a nose bleed and other disorientations and finds himself "moving about in an earlier time, in different surroundings, confronted by a situation that, for all its simplicity,he found both fraught with risk and filled with intoxication."

This is his recollection of his infatuation with another school boy Pribislav Hippe from whom he eventually works up the courage to borrow a pencil. He "had never been happier in all his life than during that drawing class." He returns the pencil and they never speak another word. Still, "...it really did happen thanks to Hans Castorp's enterprising spirit."

The smell of the pencil shavings stays with him and seems to be entering this novel as perhaps a Mannian version of Proust's madeleine.

Zeke wrote: "...The smell of the pencil shavings stays with him and seems to be entering this novel as perhaps a Mannian version of Proust's madeleine..."

Zeke -- thank you for these observations. I find them very insightful. (Swann's Way -- published 1913, and it is probably of little consequence whether Mann had read it or no.)

(Just as another marker: Joyce published Ulysses in 1922.)

Zeke wrote: "Zeke | 1081 comments In the chapter Satanna Makes Shameful Suggestions we suffer through Hans disorientation about this new environment he has landed in. Settembrini tells him he should leave. He then tells the story of Fraulein Ottilli Kneifer.She proved to be one of the rare cures ("people do get well up here sometimes") but had become so well acclimated that she refused to leave. "

That's actually a well known phenomenon of institutionalization. Inmates who have spent many years in prison, for example, often have a great deal of trouble leaving, and in a number of cases intentionally commit offenses so that they can return to prison where they are in a known environment where their lives are highly regimented for them, their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter are met without the need for any effort on their part, and they don't have to face the sudden fear of having to make decisions about all sorts of issues.

I made a marginal note in my text next to that comment "Institutionalized." I suspect that she isn't the only patient who became/becomes so institutionalized that they have trouble leaving, or having left feel the urge to return even if their health doesn't require it.

I find that I am marking up my copy of MM far more than any other novel I’ve ever read. Almost every page has multiple passages underscored or marked in the margin, and usually several marginal notes.

And yet, how much, really, is happening in novelistic terms? If you had to summarize this much of the novel for a tenth grade English class, what could you say? “This guy goes to visit his sick friend, meets and talks to some other patients, eats a bunch of meals, goes on a few walks, and spends a lot of time lying in a lounge chair.” And that about covers the bare facts, doesn’t it?

Not very exciting. But I can’t remember reading another novel where so little goes on and yet so much happens.

Zeke wrote: "This is his recollection of his infatuation with another school boy Pribislav Hippe from whom he eventually works up the courage to borrow a pencil. He "had never been happier in all his life than during that drawing class." "

Hans dreams (earlier, in "Satana Makes Shameful Suggestions") that he was about to borrow a pencil from Madame Chauchat. She warns him that he definitely has to give it back. This certainly relates to the Hippe episode. What is the relation between Hippe and Chauchat?

The dream ends with Hans kissing Chauchat's palm, upon which he feels a "dissolute sweetness" and he then repeats verbatim what he felt when he tries to put himself in Herr Albin's shoes: "...how it must be when one is finally free of all the pressures honor brings and one can endlessly enjoy the unbounded advantages of disgrace."

There are symbolic connections between Hippe, Chauchat, and Albin. What are we to make of them?

The Hippe episode seems rather normal to me. Hans Castorp was a child, he admired Hippe somehow, but was far from even thinking to make more of it, which is ok for a child. Like a school boy admiring a teacher - not more (for the moment). I wouldn't even see a homosexual allusion (if I did not know that Thomas Mann was homosexual).

In only can attribute this episode a deeper meaning when looking at Hans Castorp's behaviour now, in the hospital.

My interpretation is: Hans Castorp is still like a child, no development since then. What once was ok for a child is not ok any more for an adult person.

Thorwald wrote: "...What once was ok for a child is not ok any more for an adult person...."

Stream of consciousness connection:

1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

(This is embedded in the famous, lovely passage about faith, hope, and love: http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=1Cor... )

In the beginning of the 21st century, do we believe this as strongly as we did in the middle of the 20th? Is there more acknowledgement that some of the characteristics, both positive and negative, of childhood may follow us into adulthood?

At 13 Lily wrote: "In the beginning of the 21st century, do we believe this as strongly as we did in the middle of the 20th? Is there more acknowledgement that some of the characteristics, both positive and negative, of childhood may follow us into adulthood?


Yes, I think so. And the child must become an adult.

I think, though, perhaps there is the question,

Does society want the child to grow into an adult who properly follows the rules ... because those ARE the rules of the society? Proper behavior.

Or, does society want the child to become an adult who learns WHY he acts as he does; an adult who then follows the rules...because he understands the reason for the rules ... and who then, in effect, agrees to follow the rules... or most of the rules?

It rather seems as though HC strictly follows the rules because it's the "proper" thing to do.

Joachim is very willing to follow rules for which he understands the reason (to make the ship run more smoothly).

Does a ship of state run more smoothly if the people proceed "properly," or does it run more smoothly if the people understand WHY various actions are required?
(This might relate to pre-WWI Europe?)

Settembrini is more of an iconoclast. Maybe he doesn't like rules much at all?

And, in the village and in the sanatorium, we are made aware that the patients are indeed breaking the sanatorium rules to gamble or play tennis. They are breaking societal rules to engage in non-proper relations---but I don't think that's a rule of the sanatorium itself. A rule that is pretty much expected to be broken---but properly speaking shouldn't be spoken of in society.


Mmmm. It's my understanding that a part of the reason that WWI became the huge conflict it did was due to the existing rules. Various countries had treaties which obligated them to join the war if their treat partner were attacked. Those were the rules.

Was it truly a good thing, or a reasonable response, that much of the world became engulfed in war because one man (and his wife) were shot?

Maybe Mann is considering whether such rigid rules were reasonable?

Adelle wrote: "At 13 Lily wrote: "In the beginning of the 21st century, do we believe this as strongly as we did in the middle of the 20th? Is there more acknowledgement that some of the characteristics, both pos..."

But we are also told, "Except you come as a little child...."

AT 11 Thomas wrote: What are we to make of them?

Since you asked.

What a great scene. Here’s what I think. Sigh. It's terrible. I start to think on an aspect of the book and then I think on and on because everything--everything--is so interconnected and important to the story. Mann was right. This IS a short story. Every word is important. No spoilers. (view spoiler)[

I think I should begin by pointing out three important things. {LOL. Oh my God. Everything is an important thing.}

The music. The cigar. The dream.

HC had said that with a cigar, he wouldn’t be miserable. Now, however, he finds he can’t smoke his cigars. That talisman is no longer there to protect him. Therefore, Hans now is feeling his miserableness.

That that evening there had been music playing downstairs. Music, I think, tends to open HC up to his inner self. So he’s been hearing the music. And he’s glanced across the room and seen Madame Chauchaut again and again thought she reminded him of someone. But he’s tired. He heads to his room. He thinks about a man going to bed “at least half-way decently” (88).

Immediately upon this thought, “A shiver ran over him.” And then! HC runs over to the thermometer (thermometers here at the Sanatorium sometimes being set up as “secret sisters” to tell the truth). He runs over “as if to catch it in flagrante” (89). Almost ALWAYS a sexual term. How very, very, very odd to use it in conjunction with a thermometer.

!!! Wonderful!!! : “I feel simply wretched,” he muttered. And suddenly he was moved by an extraordinary and extravagant thrill of joy and suspense, of which he was so conscious…” (89). HC admitting to himself that he is miserable! Flashback to Settembrini: one must call things by their proper names!!!!

“He sang to himself as he undressed.” !!! HC loves music from this heart. Singing while undressing. “certainly not from excess spirits” (89). To open himself up more?

Then he hears the sounds of the Russians in the next room having sex. And what does HC “say”? “Unheard of,” he whispered. Obviously a lie. He in fact DOES hear it. “And between such exclamations joined again in the insipid music that swelled insistently up from the Plaza” (90). So due to the music, I think HC is more suseptable to hearing from his inner/true self this evening. IE, more likely to dream dreams of meaning.


He dreams this twice “in precisely the same form” (92) so we know this is an important dream.

It’s got that magic number seven. The door slams. And we know there is SOMETHING about doors slamming that touches Hans Castorp on an emotional level. Madame Chauchat enters. I think that Madamde Chauchat, in Hans Castorp’s dream, IS a stand in for Hippe.

“She reminds me of something, but I cannot tell what” (85).

Hans Castorp is hyper-observant of her. “Hans Castorp had opportunity for the fleeting observation that her cheek-bones were broad and her eyes narrow. -- [VERY significant dash here! It comes not merely in the middle of a sentence. It comes AFTER a period. Where no dash would be needed/ required. Indeed, the use of a dash here is grammatically improper. Yet here it is.]

There’s another grammatically improper dash near the beginning of the “Hippe” chapter. They chattered…etc… completely neutral information. And then! AFTER a period—so this will be significant—“Hans Castorp distinguished with interest Frau Chauchat’s slightly husky voice” (115). More mannish than is normal for women.

And again, Hans knows there is something about her likeness..

“He felt his heart [and I think messages from his heart are emotional messages regarding things that are deeply important to Hans Castorp] give a sudden beat – [dash] without rhyme or reason, of it’s own accord, as it had taken to up here” (116). I think it’s without a purely physical reason. I think the truth is bubbly up in HC and is showing itself through physical signs. Esp when “it came from his heart.”



A vague memory of something, of somebody, stirred [great word choice] him slightly and fleetingly as he looked” (77).

“Of course, a female” he thought, or rather he actually uttered, in a murmur” (77). An improper remark to be making, especially at his table with females on either side of him. SOMETHING must have disturbed HC quite deeply for him to have murmured this remark audibly. Is HC saying that females are the kind of people who have bad manners and let doors slam and THAT is why he makes a derogatorily-toned remark about females? Or, Does HC for some reason not like females? And therefore, when he involuntarily makes a criticism, “of course, a female” would be in itself a criticism.

“Fraulein Engelhard understood” (77). She is a perceptive woman. She does understand that HC is attracted to the person who let the door slam, the person who Hans has just seen for the first time, a person about whom Hans Castorp—in a fleeting moment from across the room---was capable of noticing many tiny details.

In his dream, she doesn’t go to the “good” Russian table. Mmmm. Is she therefore possibly “bad”?

Lowe-Porter translates this as “the unmannerly female” (92). I wondered. In English, the placement of the word “unmannerly” might have been there to put the word “man” into the mind of the reader. I googled. There do appear to be some German words that mean unmannerly that have the word “man” in them. Which word, I wonder, did Mann himself use?

She glides to the table where Hans Castorp sits. She gave him her hand to kiss. She gave him, more specifically, her palm to kiss.

I googled.

”Even more tender than the straight-forward …is when you kiss the palm. The palm of a hand is very tender and vulnerable. So when you bring her hand to your lips, gently turn it and place the kiss into the palm of her hand. It is like saying that your heart is in her hands” (www.romanceclass.com). ONLY proper if you know the lady well. And Hans Castorp has never even been introduced to this woman.

“Hans Castorp kissed that hand, which was not overly well kept, but rather broad, with stumpy fingers, the skin roughened next the nails” (92). What in the world is the hand fixation??

And then that line:

“And at that there swept over him anew, from head to foot, the feeling of reckless sweetness he had felt for the first time when he tried to imagine himself free of the burden of a good name, and tasted the boundless joys of shame.”

And I DO think that this is a homosexual reference. Hans Castorp, a proper young man in society then, would have lost his good name were he openly gay. There would have been shame had he been openly gay. Probably shame for Hans Castorp ever were he discreetly gay. And yet, being gay, brought him joy.

And then, too. Here’s an interesting bit. There is going to be a lecture and Joachim tells HC, in point of fact, Joachim ”reiterates” that it is not permitted/it’s a rule to absent oneself from the lectures. (116)

The lecture? “Love as a force contributory to disease.”

HC “straightway” [a pun on “straight”?] resolved” to attend “in the first place out of courtesy” (116).
And our HC is courteous.

“but also with unconcealed curiosity.” So I wonder, Is Mann suggesting that there is a concealed aspect of which Hans Castorp is curious about?

But IF HC is gay, does he really want to sit through this lecture?

HC, having resolved to attend, goes for a long walk. Joachim: Make sure you’re back in time.

He crosses the stream. (Water, leading to self-knowledge?)

“The climbing rejoiced Hans Castorp’s heart.”

He sees the mirror-like lake” Self-reflection? … And he began to sing. Music. He’s singing, singing, singing. “He mounted still higher on the zig-zag path (118). A mountain stream.

“Hans Castorp loved like music the sound of rushing water—perhaps he loved it even more” (119).

His nose begins to bleed. He’s suddenly remembering when he was a boy of thirteen—“in a situation which was for him…vibrant with daring and adventure” (120). Hans had had his eye on this Pribislay ; had chosen him out of the whole host” (121).

“Host” has previous been used with grandfather’s funeral: “the host of tuber roses”/ the implied sickness in humans: “the host of tuberculosis.” Is HC attraction to Hibbe therefore a sickness too, HC might be wondering (1907)?

And there is apparently a moral judgment to be made regarding his attraction to Hibbe. “But alas, every characterization of this kind involves a moral judgment, whether favorable or unfavorable—though, to be sure, each trait of character has its two sides” (121).

A long description of how HC “loved the emotions ”he felt when Hippe was near him. “The affair had lasted a year” (122).

{I read the free excerpts from “In the Shadow of Magic Mountain”. Mann had married a young tom-boyish woman. “For Thomas’s part, the marriage was also a capitation to convention—he had just end a four-year love affair …..This sexual relationship was a departure from Thomas’s usual pattern of platonic obsession. At fourteen he had become infatuated with an adolescent boy, one of his classmates;”}

“Excuse me, can you lend me a pencil?” And sure, sometimes a pencil is just a pencil. But Mann makes sure we know that the fact that Hippe was a good student “was not the reason why Hans Castorp had borrowed his pencil” (125). Why would Mann include this information if not to make the reader ask, Ok, they what WAS the reason HC had asked to borrow the pencil?

“And Pribislov looked at him, with his ‘Kirghiz’ eyes above the prominent cheek-bones, and spoke, in his pleasantly husky voice… ‘With pleasure.’: (123).

HC, dreamingly thinking now, “How remarkably like her he looked--like this girl up here! Is that way I feel interested in her?”

He flashes back to the man he had met on the way up: “God be with ye!”

In the world of HC, God would not be with him were he gay.
The knees of HC will now not support him.
It’s almost as though he is lame…like Dante in the Divine Comedy. Is this a spiritual/moral lameness for HC?

He gets back to the lecture room. He sees Madame Chauchat. “Deuce take it—was he never to have a moment’s peace?” Is it the Deuce/the Devil that made HC attracted to Madame/Hippe?

HC is looking at “Frau (no longer Madame) Chauchat’s flaccid back”. What interesting word choice.

Oh, my. I can’t begin to include everything. There is so much! But the lecture goes on and on. “Love.” “Perversity.” “ambiguity.” “bourgeois standards” The lecturer specifically want to mention “shame and disgust.” The conflict “which takes place in the abysses of the soul” (128).

HC waits “to hear in what form love driven below the surface would reappear” (128). Answer: “In the form of illness.”

HC…thinking…his head down… “For a man to take an interest in a woman inwardly diseased had no more sense than – well, then interest HC had once taken in Pribislov Hippe” (130). “it roused memories better forgotten”

HC thinks, “Thank God I am healthy,” then he watches Frau Chauchat, then his “heart began to thump”

Well. Enough.

(hide spoiler)]

Way too long, I admit. But since Thomas had asked and I started thinking/writing my way through...there was just more and more that seemed important.

Adelle wrote: "AT 11 Thomas wrote: What are we to make of them?

Since you asked.

What a great scene. Here’s what I think. Sigh. It's terrible. I start to think on an aspect of the book and then I think ..."

Not terrible at all! Thanks for the analysis. I'm with you up to a point, anyway. I think that Chauchat probably is a stand-in for Hippe, but I'm not certain yet. Between the pencil and the cigars and the thermometer, and Chauchat's mannish appearance... it's just a little too much to ignore. But we'll see what happens, eh?

I loved your analysis Adelle. Talk about good, close reading!

I may not agree with all of your conclusions, and it will be interesting to see if any of them change as you read further.

We get some of the backstory of Dr. Behrens and how he came to the sanitoriaum. Learning that he came to tend his ill wife and, most likely, but not for certain, contracted TB himself, may have humanized him. Still, no matter how serendipitous his appointment, he is presented as the ultimate authority at the place--though, "to be sure, he stood far aloof from anything to do with the commercial side of the operation." [Oh Hans! You're so naive.]

The description also poses a question for us to consider:

"...there is something to the proposition that only he who suffers can be the guide an healer of the suffering. But can someone truly be the intellectual master of a power to which he is enslaved?...With all due respect, one must ask whether someone who is part of the world of illness can indeed be interested in curing or even nursing others in the same way a healthy person can."

For me, a subtext of the book that I am wrestling with is the extent to which we are dealing with biological disease and to which we are discussing spiritual illness.

Depending on how one views it the answers to Hans' proposition and question are likely to be different.

To what era does Mann's thinking/writing belong? Is it embedded in what is known as "modernism." Or...? (I'm not certain what I am trying to ask -- just sitting here reflecting that MM doesn't feel like postmodernism -- a world perhaps far more comfortable with simultaneous contradictions -- or at least willing to acknowledge and identify their existence. Mann, badly jarred by the Great War, feels to me to still be searching for overarching logic, for rationality, for...., even as he "jests.")

The discourse of Dr. Krokowski: Analysis:

Castorp is not really concentrated on the discourse but sees other things, which could be seen as illustration of the discourse?

The idea of a balance of psychological drives is not wrong and it is also not wrong that psychological drives cannot be suppressed ... but is illness the result? TB?!

Then psychoanalsis as quasi-religious redemption. Dr. Krokowski as Jesus ...

The final image: Dr. Krokowski as "Rattenfänger", an allusion to a German fairy tale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ratt...



The descriptions of Dr. Krokowski give me not the impression of a seriously looking person such as a banker or a usual doctor, rather that of a full bearded Hippie in woll socks, kind of a Guru - ? Jesus Christ Superstar?

A weird person.

At 22 Thorwald wrote: "The discourse of Dr. Krokowski: Analysis:

but is illness the result? TB?!
..."

Well...according to Krokowski it is: "all disease is only love transformed" (128).

Which did get my attention, because I was thinking that possibly the disease of HC was the result of sickness of his spirit or soul--

Virtue. HC said to J: "I’ve never taken the word in my mouth as long as I’ve lived”

HC: “…in school, when the book said virtus, we always just said ‘valour’ or something like that” (101).

And that makes me think of Settembrini: You must call things by their rightful/true names. HC has a lifetime of not doing that. Lying or dissembling one's entire life, I would imagine, would have some effect.





I had been thinking, however, that the rest of the people there really DID have TB due to physical TB reasons.





Settembrini, too, though attributes disease to non-direct physical causes.

…..”spiritual backsliding in the direction of that dark and tortured age, that, believe me, Engineer, is a disease-- But as in spiritual life everything is interrelated…"(98).

Thomas wrote: "Between the pencil and the cigars and the thermometer,"

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a pencil is just a pencil. Sometimes a thermometer is just a thermometer. But given that pencils are often chewed (I didn't go back and check, but didn't Hippe make a point of that) and the other two are most definitely oral, and given the precision with which Mann writes, I think it's unlikely that the cigar, pencil, and thermometer are all just a cigar, pencil, and thermometer. Especially not in the era of Freud!

Adelle wrote: "It rather seems as though HC strictly follows the rules because it's the "proper" thing to do.

Joachim is very willing to follow rules for which he understands the reason (to make the ship run more smoothly). "

I think that's a nice observation.

Also, though, we may want to add to it that HC is still a guest, and guests usually feel more constrained to fall in with their host's plans, whereas Joachim is by now a regular, and regulars often seem more willing to deviate from the expectations. It's the freshmen in the first weeks of college who are most attentive to following the rules strictly, and the second term sophomores who are more inclined to bend (or in my college break) them.

We have not yet talked about HC's walk in "Hippe." It's so striking that it must be significant. He starts out breathing deeply of "fresh, light, early-morning air that went easily into the lungs." His "brash baritone" voice seems lovely today, and even his falsetto, when he starts a song too high, he found lovely too. But his singing is so delightful to him that even though it is hard to climb and sing he keeps on singing until "he sank down at the base of a thick pine tree -- totally out of breath and gasping, half-blind, with only bright patterns dancing before his eyes...after such exaltation, his sudden reward was radical gloom, a hangover that bordered on despair."

This dramatic reversal of mood seems to me totally out of character for HC, who up to now has seemed fairly steady minded, though we do have those moments of temper at the slammed door. Still, this reversal from ecstasy to despair seems markedly out of character to me.

And then when he has recovered his peacefulness, he sits down to listen to the stream (we are told that he loves the purl of water as much as he loves music), and suddenly his nose opens up bleeding profusely. And it is in this post-bloodletting that he is transported to his school days and that's when we learn of the pencil incident.

But as important as the pencil incident is, what do we make of the singing to exhaustion and the profuse nosebleed?

(One aspect of it is, as we have noted far earlier, that the color red seems to be of significance; here comes the bright red blood, even staining his clothing red.)

I don't know what this incident means, but I'm sure it means something significant. Any ideas?

Everyman wrote: "...I don't know what this incident means, but I'm sure it means something significant. Any ideas? ..."

Whose meaning? Hans Castorp's? Mann's? Yours? Other readers?

Lily wrote: "Everyman wrote: "...I don't know what this incident means, but I'm sure it means something significant. Any ideas? ..."

Whose meaning? Hans Castorp's? Mann's? Yours? Other readers?"

Or all of the above? [g]

Everyman wrote: "We have not yet talked about HC's walk in "Hippe." It's so striking that it must be significant. He starts out breathing deeply of "fresh, light, early-morning air that went easily into the lungs..."

Hans Castorp's exhaustion is really out of the order for his character, I fully agree. If I am allowed to offer a very common psychological interpretation of illness:

Sudden, unexpected illness is often a sign that you can't go on the way you lived so far. You have to change. Change your food, your job, your flat, your friends, your what-ever-it-may-be.

Hans Castorp has reached this point. He cannot go on as he is used to. The pencil incident shows him where he has to change: Admiring is not enough any more. He should go one step further and have real contact.

Does this sound reasonable?

By the way: "Hippe through table talk" is maybe a thread with too many topics. A more dense section than previous ones.

Everyman wrote: "We have not yet talked about HC's walk in "Hippe...

HC is exhausting himself with the song " Stimmt an mit hellem hohen Klang", words by Matthias Claudius, 1772: http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/Lie...

Wikipedia does not confirm it, but I believe Claudius was one of those suffering from TB:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias...

Given this and the dramatic landscape: am I wrong when I feel that Mann is making a bit of fun of German romanticism here?

Wendel wrote: "HC is exhausting himself with the song " Stimmt an mit hellem hohen Klang", words by Matthias Claudius, 1772: http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/Lie......"

In case anyone who is interested didn't notice, selecting "Melodie" in the upper left will provide a download of the tune.

Went looking for the entire English and stumbled across this instead. It is not real short, and you kinda have to read the whole thing, down to the last line, to relate it well to MM, but it seemed to me to have considerable insight unto Mann's jostling of the aesthetic and the moral:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetr...

The wood scene made me also think of the Wandervogel movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandervogel.

Off topic: Claudius's Evening Song - not really a spoiler, just keep things clean.
(view spoiler)[
Claudius song in the book is just a jolly air, but he is also known from texts that became popular as evangelical hymns. His most famous work (apart from the song-version of Death and the Maiden) however, must be the lullaby Der Mond ist aufgegangen (The moon has risen), put to music by Johan Abraham Peter Schulz. An evergreen in Germany.

Original and translation: http://myweb.dal.ca/waue/Trans/Claudi...

Suffering from a nasty flu I followed Dr. Behrens orders, betook myself to a horizontal position and started searching for different versions of this simple Lied (a.k.a. Abendlied - Evening Song). I hope Settembrini will forgive me this silliness. I believe that listening to these interpretations you will also hear several interpretations of Germany.

The tenor Peter Schreier:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=re...

A small acapella version with a little twitch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOKjzt...

A Berlin theatre version (some coughing, but not mine):
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=re...

Herbert Grönemeyer (Herbie) in a crowd version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cXdSZ...

(hide spoiler)]

Thorwald wrote: "Sudden, unexpected illness is often a sign that you can't go on the way you lived so far. You have to change. Change your food, your job, your flat, your friends, your what-ever-it-may-be.

Hans Castorp has reached this point. He cannot go on as he is used to. The pencil incident shows him where he has to change: Admiring is not enough any more. He should go one step further and have real contact. "

True, but let's remember that the reason he decided to go visit his cousin in the first place is that the doctor thought he was a bit anemic. Late in "At the Tienappels" "Dr. Heidekind scolded whenever he saw him and insisted on a change of air, and he meant a radical change...what Hans Castorp needed was a few weeks in the Alps before going to work on the docks."

So this trip IS the change his condition called for. This is supposed to get him well. But is it or will it??

Thorwald wrote: "The final image: Dr. Krokowski as "Rattenfänger", an allusion to a German fairy tale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ratt...
"

Dr. K. as the Pied Piper (as the tale is known here)--I like it! Quite ominous...

I was interested in the descriptions of the woods during HC's walk. Often the woods is a dark and dangerous place--think Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," for example, or the Grimm Bros. fairy tales--yet here it seems more like the forest of a Romantic poet. I suppose this struck me because at the same time, HC himself is quite dark and brooding (and bleeding!) in this scene. A real "disconnect" between the setting and the action. Perhaps a sign that HC is "disconnected" himself, out of sync with the people and the world around him.

Everyman wrote: "Late in "At the Tienappels" "Dr. Heidekind scolded whenever he saw him and insisted on a change of air, and he meant a radical change...what Hans Castorp needed was a few weeks in the Alps before going to work on the docks."

This is really a short story where every word has heavy weight: "radical change" ... I laugh! From a doctor's point of view the stay in the Alpes is radical enough, but from a psychological point of view?!

Matthias Claudius: Yes, one of the most famous protestant poets of church songs. There is a bad but true word by Heinrich Heine on the German protestant church: "Wenn die protestantische Religion keine Orgel hätte, wäre sie überhaupt kein Religion." i.e. "If the protestant religion [in Germany] had no organ it would be no religion at all." Means: Music is all, there, and this exactly is the problem.

The content of Hans Castorp's song is rather usual (for this time, Wandervogel is a good idea), but I wonder that he sings a song on German nation and German woods - in Switzerland. Somehow displaced, at least.

I encountered another *very* interesting allusion which is gone in the English translation of Lowe-Porter (don't know if in the other), but I have to wait until we discuss the analysis discourse of Dr. Krokowski! I almost cannot wait to present it ...

At 34Kathy wrote: "Thorwald wrote: "The final image: Dr. Krokowski as "Rattenfänger", an allusion to a German fairy tale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Ratt...
"

Dr. K. as the Pied Piper (as the tale is known here..."

Mmm. May be important. The Pied Piper doesn't kill the children. He takes them away forever from their parents. Probably their bouchgeoisie parents. Perhaps Dr K will lead HC away from the Hamburg values he grew up with. At least maybe HC will question those values.

HC inherited his name; his career "choice" was decided for him; his standards of living that he couldn't truly afford--like the alligator-skin hand-bag-- were presented to him by his guardian.

There has been a recurring theme that HC looks to others to determine what the proper action or judgment "should" be.

He's all "i won't try to judge yet"(40-41). A number of statements along this line.

J tells him he's rather "flabby-minded" to have to depend on outside pyschological supports (his Marias) p49.

Settembrini says to him, "Somebody (HC?) must have some espirit" (59).

Hans Castorb with his pre-assigned "proper," "perfect," unexamined "rules."

I don't know if it will turn out positive or negative for him, but maybe a Rattenfanger is something HC needs.

Otherwise, how can HC live his life if he doesn't know what HC believes for himself? I mean, right now he doesn't even know for himself whether he feels his day to have been "amusing or dull." "whichever YOU like." (85).


Edit added: ??? W or T had mentioned that Mann's brother had written a book called "The Subject". If HC represents in some ways an Everyman, then perhaps Mann is suggesting that many people at this time weren't thinking for themselves-- or even questioning what the authorities told them.

I just re-read this passage over in background:

"A soul without a body is as inhuman and horrible as a body without a soul—THOUGH THE LATTER IS THE RULE and the former the exception. It is the body, as a rule, which flourishes exceedingly, which draws everything to itself, which usurps the predominant place and lives repulsively emancipated from the soul. A human being who is first of all an invalid is all body; therein lies his inhumanity and his debasement. In most cases he is little better than a carcass."

HC has been a follower of the rules.
So he probably falls into the body without a soul category.
HC's body has the predominant place in his life: good cigars, good porter, etc.

Therefore, HC must learn to question the rules and very possibly break the rules if he is to develop a soul (to grow as a human being) [Jung, I suppose, would hold that he needs to go through the process of individualization].

How are you all interpreting "a soul without a body"? Whether English or German, I need a "translation"! [g] -- in English, of course.

Since Settembrini was strongly objectly to HC's remarks on illness, I take "a soul without a body" to be a person/(the broader definition of soul) that is greatly diseased or sick... The body is, in effect, not performing it's proper function.

I take "a body without a soul" to be a body without a true/real/individualized/spiritual/self-actualized (take your pick) personhood.

Could be other interpretations, I suppose.

I'm struggling:

A person without a soul (sense of morality?) might as well be a cadaver?

Lily wrote: "I'm struggling:

A person without a soul (sense of morality?) might as well be a cadaver?"

Me? I don't think a sense of morality is necessarly what is meant.

More probably, I think it means a sense that there is an actualy person inside that body, one who has some idea who he is, what he believes, one who thinks or tries to think his own thoughts...rarher than simply looking to others, to the rules, to the pre-defined/handed-to-him determinations of what is wrong and what is right.

Ok, yes, maybe a sense of morality. But a morality the he himself has embraced as " right.". It might not be right. But at least he's tried to find out what is true. What he actually believes is a life. Not just being a trained monkey.

Mmm. Settembrini is the organ grinder. He plays the music and makes the monkey dance. Eh? Is Settembrini going to be able to get HC to become a real boy? Authentic. A soul in the higher sense.

But yeah, without a soul your just a body walking around. Might as well be a cadaver. Except. A cadaver can't be revived, can t be brought back to life. HC has the Opportunity, I think, to come back to life...and therefore have a life.

We'll see.

(Please excuse bad typing. Not on computer keyboard.)

Adelle wrote: "...More probably, I think it means a sense that there is actually a person inside that body, one who has some idea who he is, what he believes, one who thinks or tries to think his own thoughts...rather than simply looking to others, to the rules, to the pre-defined/handed-to-him determinations..."

Adelle, helpful. Thx.

Jeremy wrote: "I wonder how much Mann is parodying and criticizing psychoanalysis? It seems like he is overloading the pages with overt symbols: the cigar, the thermometer, the pencil. To me Dr. Krokowski came of..."

Dr. Krokowski makes on me the impression of obsession. Usually you think that talking openly about your feelings makes you free, but in case of Dr. Krokowski I have the opposite feeling: You are urged by him to talk and he exercises power over you by his psychoanalysis.

Jeremy wrote: " I might be reading far too much into it to say that sanatorium has almost a monastic quality at times. "

I don't think you necessarily are.

Everyman wrote: "Jeremy wrote: " I might be reading far too much into it to say that sanatorium has almost a monastic quality at times. "

I don't think you necessarily are."

Not really a spoiler, but maybe, so (view spoiler)[ Watch for conversations with such comparisons in upcoming sections. (hide spoiler)]

"Table talk" ends with HC understanding the condition of his heart: 'He needed only to think of Madame Chauchat—and he did think of her—and lo, he felt within himself the emotion proper to the heartbeats.'

It seems that love (carnal love) slowly takes possession of the body, beginning with those unexplained hart beatings. Love may therefore have more in common with illness, another invasion of the body, than we like to think.

NB: I read something about Mann attempting to introduce a 'symphonic' element in his novel: these heart beatings must have a place in that scheme too.

Wendel wrote: ""Table talk" ends with HC understanding the condition of his heart: 'He needed only to think of Madame Chauchat—and he did think of her—and lo, he felt within himself the emotion proper to the hear..."

True, but weren't the heart palpitations starting well before he began his infatuation with Madame CC?

You already reached Table Talk? Then I can finally drop my bomb on Dr. Krokowski and the translation of Lowe-Porter.

The last words of chapter "Doubts and Considerations" are: "Hans Castorp remarked that a shadowed dusk, a profound twilight, prevailed in Dr. Krokowski’s private sanctum."

In German this reads: "... wie Hans Castorp bemerkte, in Dr. Krokowski's analytischem Kabinett."

This is an absolutely clear allusion to the film "Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari"
= "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", a 1920 German silent horror film.

The plot of this horror film is of highest interest and shows many correspondances to the MM, see yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cabi...

at 50 Everyman wrote: "Wendel wrote: "..."

Yes. I happen to think that the the different environment--which has slightly shifted HC away from his normal routines..and normal habits of (un)thinking--combined with the music HC hears prior to so many of the incidents in which HC acts a little out of character (music affected him "from his heart"/ his core) have opened HC up to thinking more of his own core thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings he may have been suppressing for years.

Those aspects of life or thoughts that made him uncomfortable ...well, "He seemed to be practicing a seemly obsurantism, to be mentally drawing the veil..." (39).

When, I wonder, did he first notice his heat bearing fast?

The first I can find is page 70 ("his heat pounded dully"). This was right after Joachim had pointed out to him his neighbors--the Russians--whom he had heard having sex.

The sex thoughts seem to upset him, to aggitate him. What, after all, is Hans casporb's dream if not a deep-seated fear that the doctor will examine or find out about his sexuality?

He had just dreamed of Madame Chauchat's eyes, had" tore himself violently away from his dream" when he realized whose eyes hers reminded him of. And then he immediately dreams that he's trying to get away from Dr. K, he dream he tries to climb the flagpole, "--[dash] and woke prespiring at the moment when the pursuer seized him by his Trouser Leg" (91).

Lions, and tigers, and bears. Oh, my!

So I think it's STILL thoughts of Hibbe that get his heat pounding.

But I think HC is still lying to himself. He tells himself that his heart is pounding because of Madame C. That's so he has a nice reasonable explanation that he can accept,. An explanation that SEEMS to rationally explain the symptom. So he doesn't have to consider the real reason:Hibbe.