Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Summer. A time for rest, relaxation, ease, right?

Wrong. Into this comes a new figure who is anything but easy and restful. Naphta. And the first serious challenge to Settembrini's views, forcing HC to face a set of ideas he hasn't faced before. Ideas very different from Settembrini's!

Hans Castorp studies nature: Plants and Stars.
He likes the Chaldaeans. Is it an allusion to the East?
Or is it an allusion to the Greek Natural philosophers before Socrates?

Then Naphta: Naphta plays the role of the "bad guy", at first glance.

His thoughts are dark, compared to the crystal-clear ideas of Settembrini. He is stoking and poking in religious and mythical thinking and dangerous political ideas of an absolute character. He is twisting thoughts easily into their opposite. He seems to be an intriguer in thought. He is very like Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust.

Settembrini and Naphta are like Angel and Devil fighting for Hans Castorp's soul.
Naphta represents: Middle Ages, Religion, Communism, Hierarchy, Plato's Republic.
Settembrini represents: Enlightenment, Reason, Liberalism, Democracy, Plato's Laws.

By the way: In the discussions with Naphta it becomes quite clear, now, that Settembrini is *not* a leftist or communist, he is a classical liberal, though a naive classical liberal, maybe, and one without soul. So at least this we know now for sure.

I thought the argument between Hans Castorp and his cousin at the end of Someone Else was interesting. I don't think anyone has noted it yet.

Hans is finding himself confused by all the opinions he is encountering (as I am by both those in the book and the ones here!). J's position is: "I'm telling you, it doesn't matter what sort of opinions a man has, but whether he's a decent fellow. the best thing is to have no opinions at all and just do your duty."

I disagree for all sorts of reasons and the bloody 20th century would seem to bear out the danger of this. However, it is the reason for Hans's disagreement that interests me in the context of the story.

He concludes: "You [J.]say our job is to get healthier, not more clever. But the two must be compatible, damn it. And if you don't believe that, then you're dividing the world in two--which is always a great mistake let me tell you."

Thorwald wrote: "By the way: In the discussions with Naphta it becomes quite clear, now, that Settembrini is *not* a leftist or communist, he is a classical liberal, though a naive classical liberal, maybe, and one without soul. So at least this we know now for sure. "

A curious statement, Thorwald! Why you think Settembrini has no soul? He is clearly a humorless rationalist, but why no soul? He is a clear advocate for life and the living, which seems to me rather soulful (at least in the Greek sense) so I wonder what you mean by "soul" here.

Thomas wrote: "A curious statement, Thorwald! Why you think Settembrini has no soul?"

Because of this statement in the other thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...


"No soul" is maybe a bit exaggerated ...

The Walpurgis night at the end of chapter 5 finished off the first part of the two volume first edition. I think that at this point we also reached the end of the the story as originally planned. To sum things up in a few words: Instinct (Chauchat) is stronger than Reason (Settembrini). The war (or the chaotic times following it) made a much wider application of this principle actual. So we move beyond the level of the individual, and the novella becomes a novel.

At this point, I presume, Mann needed a more articulate opponent of Settembrini. Enter Naphta (the name suggests something like: Firebrand). While Naphta is not Chauchat, they certainly fight from the same corner: that of instinct, passion. Which does not mean that they are wrong: we have instincts to make quick and hopefully correct decisions when there is no time to think (or when a problem is just difficult). Nonetheless, if there is any sense in Naphta's points, it may be a challenge to understand it.

While Settembrini's problem is his complete lack of empahthy, his opponent lives on sentiments. Even if they are not very pretty. In fact, they are mostly negative: revulsion against science, capitalism, individualism, general education, the state - you name it. He is a true reactionary, dreaming about an imaginary past, much like Settembrini dreams about a future that will never be. He is also terroristic, longing for war and revolution - great conflagrations that can lead us nowhere.

Naphta's terroristic theocracy (Khomeini comes to mind) is hardly conducive to a meaningful discussion. The long and pointless monologues in this chapter are difficult to digest, and I am certainly not the only reader who (again!) skipped some of it. But HC is clearly fascinated, even if it's hard to decide if or how he is influenced. I suppose we have to interpret the interaction as the ultimately fruitless German search for a 'third way', an alternative between soulless Western materialism and formless Slavic emotion.

PS: in fact formless Slavic emotion is Chauchat's department, Naphta represents excessive 'Spanish' formalism - oppositions nearing each other?

Wendel wrote: "While Settembrini's problem is his complete lack of empahthy, his opponent lives on sentiments."

I wonder whether we can interprete Naphta as emotional .... his arguments are very rational, but he has an other starting point of his considerations than Settembrini, so he ends with other conclusions. Which starting point is this? It is faith, or to be precise: Dogmatic faith, absolute faith, Fundamentalism, "ruling faith". We know this phenomenon today from the currently predominant variants of Islam: Faith has to rule and only certain other monotheistic religions are tolerated as subjects under this rule. This is the general pattern of Naptha's thoughts.

Does this mean, Naphta is emotional, because he is a passionate believer, or does it mean, he is cold as ice, because he exercises his religion with a reckless rationality?

My suggestion in the spoiler:
(view spoiler)[
IMHO this is no contradiction. The extreme insensibility is just another kind of passion, not an expression of rationality. For Naphta rationality is only a tool which he uses if it fits to his needs, whereas Settembrini submits himself under the rule of rationality, which is possible only with a moderate emotionality, not too much, not too less of it.
(hide spoiler)]

One of the challenges of rationality is to not become the rationalization of emotions without denying the perceptions and the knowledge of reality emotions may sometimes provide. I.e., rationality must avoid caving to or becoming the tool of unjust or unrealistic emotions.

Now, the judges thereof that such is occurring?

Lily wrote: "One of the challenges of rationality ... (it) must avoid caving to or becoming the tool of unjust or unrealistic emotions."

And that is exactly what, imho, is happening here. I see no coherence in Naphta's ideas, no explanation, but on an emotional level. The key to understanding Naphta is in the story of his extremely traumatised Jewish childhood. I believe Mann wants us to see him in this light, and to understand that he exercises his influence in different manner as Settembrini.

Wendel wrote: "The key to understanding Naphta is in the story of his extremely traumatised Jewish childhood."

Not quite correct, I think, rather the opposite. It is more his experience with blood, the kosher butchering, and that he was a brooding type, who did not find an appropriate counter part for his intelligence, to answer his questions and guide his development.

The description of the father's death etc. makes rather the impression that the child did not react to it, that he already was cold as ice at this time. I cannot proof in Thomas Mann's text that this event had a major impact on the child's character.

Thomas Mann makes use of the typical prejudices on Jews: His strange nose, with glasses, a brooding type, the blood from the kosher butchering, the Jew in the role of an intriguer, with sympathies for communism, etc. etc.

From a post-1945 perspective it is quite strange to see the bad guy being a Jew. Quite a challenge for a post-1945 reader!

We have to find out why Thomas Mann made this choice. For an intelligent man like him this is too simple! It must have a meaning (at least I hope so). But I cannot see it, yet.

@Wendel: Sorry that I always contradict you, I am in the role of Mephistopheles, here: "I am the Spirit that denies!"

You may be touching on the specific examples of what some critics have commented upon as a curious, even suspect, underpinning of MM, verging on religious, social, and intellectual discrimination towards traits associated with Jewish traditions.

I'm wondering whether it is just a coincidence (is there any such thing in a well crafted novel?) that M Chauchat leaves and immediately Naphta shows up.

Chauchat provided a nice offset to Settembrini; the one appealed to HC's intellect, the other to his emotions. Is Naphta now going to take the place of CC as providing the contrast with/alternative to Settembrini's cold logic?

I was interested that Settembrini very badly didn't want HC and JZ to meet Naphta, and tried as far as was consistent with basic manners to avoid having them get to know each other.

Was he afraid that Naphta would draw HC away from him, or at least make him question S's dogma and truth?

Sometimes I felt as if Settembrini almost used Naphta as a tease to draw Hans back into conversation -- "forbidden" therefore enticing.

I would like to say a few words in defence of Naphta, who I think is one of the most interesting characters I have come across in anything I have ever read.
My take on it is as follows.

Settembrini and Naphta enter HC's world as emissaries from more rarefied intellectual spheres—from outside his own sphere of "honourable mediocrity". First comes S, then Naphta: we are growing outwards with HC through concentric spheres of increasing radius. Naphta likewise enters Settembrini's world from a more rarefied sphere: I submit that his learning is in fact more absolute than Settembrini's, in the sense that N's historicism contains within it S's liberal humanism. Also, from the description of Naphta's childhood experiences, we can gather that he was something of a spiritual prodigy, which makes him "heroic" in the same sense that HC is described as "mediocre". In his humanist rejection of unreason, Settembrini casts off death by discarding the discourse of the absolute, and thereby failing to confront some fundamental paradoxes: the problem of time in eternity, and space in infinity. Naphta has explored these realms, and has read the musings of the ancients and the medieval monks on the subject, when these issues were discussed in religious terms. He has a historical sense of the ways in which humans have approached these problems—and they are "problems" because they are to do with the confrontation of complementary things: the particular vs the transcendent; the viewpoint of a human vs omniscience.

In the first debate we witness between N and S—when N concludes that man seeks only to return to the divine, and that in a fallen world of increasing individualism, this will lead us into terror—he bests Settembrini by exposing his secular humanism as an artefact of, or incidental to, enhanced technological capacity, an increased knowledge of the natural world, the world "as it is in itself", that leads not to redemption and perfection but into darkness. For Naphta, there can be no world for humankind whose centre is not God. In N's scheme of things, in other words, the humanist project is a will-o-the-wisp. It errs by failing to account for the fundamental paradoxes of being—time in eternity, transcendence, the divine in the mundane. Settembrini's humanist science has a relatively poorly defined conception of the divine, if it acknowledges it at all, and merely invents rugs to sweep these paradoxes under. Settembrini cannot ultimately respond to these charges, either logically or rhetorically, but must instead be satisfied just to warn his young and impressionable audience of the darkness/chaos/evil of Naphta's worldview, which his own humanism, his glorification of the objective truth as the highest law of morality, his ardent and pitifully hubristic "eradication of suffering", has lost the means of describing or even defining.

Of course, Naphta's "Whatever profits man is true" sounds like dreadful moral relativism, and Settembrini is right to say that it opens the door for every sort of crime. But this is only the case in the post-Enlightenment world which has reified "objective truth" and abrogated (to use one of John E. Woods' favourite words) spiritual belief as hindering further enlightenment which has a new idea of the proper progress of humanity. Naphta argues indirectly that the teachings of the church were once true. Humankind on the earth in an Aristotelian cosmology were the "focal point of the universe" not only in a conceptual sense, but morally: "…the sublime arena where God and Satan struggled to possess the creature whom they both ardently coveted…". This worldview took a body blow when Copernicus discovered that the Earth orbits the Sun. We will never again know that earlier belief, and we are still struggling to come to terms with the spiritual implications of its loss. "Whatever profits man" is no longer that which helps him find his place in the natural order of things, a local event within eternity and infinity. Now, that "whatever" has been reappropriated with the most cynical short-sightness. To show this is the aim of N's contrast between the ecclesiastical punishments and the exterminations of the Jacobins: "…every sort of torture, every bit of bloody justice, that does not arise from a belief in the next world is bestial nonsense."

I sympathise with Naphta because I personally believe that in a broad sense humans do yearn for salvation, for some sort of relief from or resolution of the human condition ("Light is given to us, but our way is hid"), and I am frustrated by the claims of advertising that technology and democracy will solve everything in the here and now and the fact that the spirituality of humanity has been rendered a redundant question. I agree with him that modern physics and philosophy do not address certain questions that are fundamental to humans. We have evolved an intuitive grasp only of certain scales of time and space. When we extrapolate this intuition we get some nightmarish glimpses of possible worlds. Our very best observations tell us that 95% of the universe comprises "stuff" that we have barely even a sniff of knowledge about, stuff that we can never see or measure directly. Where is all this progress leading us if not to further psychological destabilisation, with better gadgetry the only consolation? Naphta's arguments remind me of the notes of Dostoyevsky's underground man: The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations—and nothing more.

We might find Naphta repellent, but we cannot answer his dark questions. We can only hope that we will outgrow them. I would like to think more about the way N uses infinity and eternity in his logic—I find some of his conclusions unconvincing. But who in this day and age has the optimism or faith in the golden future that Settembrini shows? A century on, Naphta's analysis seems to have predicted results that are closer to the truth. Then where is the hope in all this? I think we will find out. Naphta is just one of the characters of this all-encompassing story!

Peter wrote: "I would like to say a few words in defence of Naphta, who I think is one of the most interesting characters I have come across in anything I have ever read.
My take on it is as follows. "

An excellent defense, Peter! And one that needs, and deserves, to be argued.

I think what Naphta offers is the security of the Absolute, and this is a position which must be acknowledged, both from a spiritual and an historical perspective. It is an extreme position, however. Where Settembrini casts off death, Naphta casts off life. Both positions are untenable inasmuch as one leads to the other, though which leads to which is the focus of their argument.

Settembrini's idealism is naive, and potentially destructive. Naphta's idealism is apocalyptic, and inherently destructive. They are both obsessed with their own idealism and so sure of themselves that they deny everyday reality, and this denial is what I think typifies the world of the sanatorium. James Tienappel glimpses this insanity in HC's "souvenir" and runs for his life. His flight is humorous, in a way, but in the frame of these furious dialectical arguments between S. and N. it seems like a perfectly sensible reaction.

Peter wrote: "I would like to say a few words in defence of Naphta, who I think is one of the most interesting characters I have come across in anything I have ever read. ..."

Naphta is not arguing without rationality, this is very true, he is "the other side of the coin" (maybe the dark side?). But I reached already the end of "Operationes Spirituales" and ...

(view spoiler)[
... and I do think it is worth to wait with comments and judgements on Naphta at least until this point is reached.
(hide spoiler)]

@ 9 Wendel wrote: " The key to understanding Naphta is in the story of his extremely traumatised Jewish childhood. I believe Mann wants us to see him in this light,

I strongly lean that way myself. Will expand later.

At least in this chapter Hans Castorp has learned to tell time by reading the stars. That seems to be one certainty in his life now.

Peter wrote: ""Whatever profits man" is no longer that which helps him find his place in the natural order of things, a local event within eternity and infinity. Now, that "whatever" has been reappropriated with the most cynical short-sightness

I'm finding similar ideas in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy (which I have been reading in an attempt to see the connection between his "magic mountain" and Mann's).

"a people -- or, for that matter, a human being -- only has value to the extent that it is able to put the stamp of the eternal on its experiences; for in doing so it sheds, one might say, its wordliness and reveals its unconscious, inner conviction that time is relative and that the true meaning of life is metaphysical." (section 23)

If I understand Nietzsche correctily, he is proposing that classical Greek tragedy served as a gateway to the gods, an aesthetic unveiling of the eternal before the audience. He further believes that Socrates, who embodies reason and is emblematic of analytical scientific thinking, closed this gate. (I don't agree with him here, but I think that's what he is saying.) In any event, he is lamenting the loss of what Naphta defends. If it is true that Mann took the phrase "magic mountain" from The Birth of Tragedy, I find all this very interesting in light of the Settembrini-Naphta debate and the ongoing treatment of time as an idea. I'd be curious to know your thoughts if you've read it.

@20 Thomas wrote: "Where Settembrini casts off death, Naphta casts off life. Both positions are untenable inasmuch as one leads to the other, though which leads to which is the focus of their argument."

Yes! This is clear to me now! Before it was cast in Naphta's gloomy light I was not convinced that Settembrini's philosophy was indeed "life-affirming" (if that is actually the same as denying "life-denying"!), but there is a truly beautiful dialectic structure here that I think the story of the two grandfathers and the picture of HC's evening boat ride was preparing us for.

Here is a picture of a 14th century wooden Pieta that must be very like the one Naphta has in his room.

Everyman wrote: "I was interested that Settembrini very badly didn't want HC and JZ to meet Naphta, and tried as far as was consistent with basic manners to avoid having them get to know each other.

Was he afrai..."

I'm still wondering about that. Does Settembrini really feel protective over HC and JZ (especially HC) and is concerned that Naphta would "poison" HC's "young mind" or is Settembrini selfish and possessive of HC and afraid that Naphta would draw HC's attention away?

The debates between Naphta and Settembrini almost seem like little "stage plays" set up for HC's entertainment. I've really been enjoying Mann's writing style, but the Naphta/Settembrini debates seem a bit too theatrical (or staged.) They just don't seem real to me.

I continue to struggle my way through reading or re-reading the final cantos of The Divine Comedy. It diverts or fascinates or intrigues me -- I'm not quite sure which is the more accurate descriptor -- that a journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven somehow seems so much more life affirming than a novelistic stay at a sanatorium, ostensibly a place in a gorgeous, healthy earthly setting whereat to restore wellness.

At 10 Thorwald wrote: "Thomas Mann makes use of the typical prejudices on Jews: His strange nose, with glasses, a brooding type, the blood from the kosher butchering, the Jew in the role of an intriguer, with sympathies for communism, etc. etc.

From a post-1945 perspective it is quite strange to see the bad guy being a Jew. Quite a challenge for a post-1945 reader!

We have to find out why Thomas Mann made this choice. For an intelligent man like him this is too simple! It must have a meaning (at least I hope so). But I cannot see it, yet...."

Yes, the stereotype was quite blatent. The woman Th Mann married was " the daughter of converted Jews" (168). And apparently Mann would joke sometimes to his wife how Jewish the children looked. I haven't a page number, but there was a sentence along the lines that everybody made fun of Jews-- even in the home of his wife's parents.

"He identified himself as '...a convinced and unequivocal 'philo-Semite''" (206). He had Jewish friends, neighbors; his publisher was Jewish,

But...during the Munich revolution (I had known nothing of the unrest in Germany after WWI), Mann believed that the Bolshevist faction was being led largely by Jewsh intelligentsia. Also, there were Jewish journalists and critics. Some of his work was criticized. Mann was apparently thin-skined. He raged against them privately or in his diary. After emigrating, he became friends again with some.

(There was intense competition and back-and-forth published retorts for years and years between Thomas Mann and his writer brother Heinrich Mann. And then they would...eventually...make up. And then they would again publish remarks directed against one another.)

Don't know if that sheds much light or not.

(I'm reading Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature)


Thomas Mann: Eros And Literature

Adelle wrote: "At 10 Thorwald wrote: "Thomas Mann makes use of the typical prejudices on Jews: His strange nose, with glasses, a brooding type, the blood from the kosher butchering, the Jew in the role of an intr..."

Difficult topic. Making jokes on jews was surely quite a different thing in the 1920s than it is today. I assume that the irony was always present when Mann made such jokes. Furthermore, there is the strange effect that minorities generally love to make self-mocking jokes, whereas they do not like it if others make exactly the same jokes on them :-)

Adelle wrote: "Mann believed that the Bolshevist faction was being led largely by Jewsh intelligentsia."

Well, in fact Jews were statistically overrepresented in many political and societal fields, because of several reasons. In case of communism I assume it was due to the fact that these jews were driven by the possibility to overcome traditional and religious differences between jews and non-jews. Of course, this consideration cannot result in the prejudice that "the" jews are all communists ...

Thorwald wrote: "Adelle wrote: "At 10 Thorwald wrote: "Thomas Mann makes use of the typical prejudices on Jews: His strange nose, with glasses, a brooding type, the blood from the kosher butchering, the Jew in the ..."

You make a good point. ( Half the population in the state where I grew up was Norwegian and people seemed to love Norwegian jokes. I know I did. I still do.)

I thought the physical description might have been quick literary short-hand for the time...the eyes identified MC as Eastern....the nose an ID as Jewish. Others, too, might have slanted eyes or larger noses...but readers would realize what Mann was saying...perhaps more socially acceptable. (I wondered for a long time whether the red eyes and purple cheeks weren't supposed to indicate drinking problems.)

And then when I read that Mann was sometimes angry over bad reviews I thought he might have decided to exagerate the N character--that maybe he had someone specifically in mind and maybe enjoyed writing this guy over-the-top.

Peter wrote: "I would like to say a few words in defence of Naphta, who I think is one of the most interesting characters I have come across in anything I have ever read.
My take on it is as follows. "

Wonderful post. I had been a bit down on Naphta myself, but your apology (in the Socratic use of the term) was enlightening and thought-provoking. I was particularly interested in your comment that Naphta includes Settembrini inside him.

Naphta is, thinking about it, certainly a much more complex and multifaceted character than Settembrini is. I'm still not sure I like much of what he says, but you encourage me to take a further look at him.

There must be a more appropriately literary way of saying this, but for lack of being able to conjure such, I'll simply wonder if there isn't an author's pun somewhere in embodying a (stereotypical?) Jesuit priest and a Jewish (stereotypical?) man in the same character.

Lily wrote: "There must be a more appropriately literary way of saying this, but for lack of being able to conjure such, I'll simply wonder if there isn't an author's pun somewhere in embodying a (stereotypical..."

I'm curious, Lily -- what is the Jesuit stereotype? I have some experience with them (four years of high school) and I'm curious to know what the "stereotype" is. (It's hard to see stereotypes from up close!)

The association that the narrator draws between Judaism and Catholicism is thought provoking as well. This is in a later chapter though, so I think I'll scoot over there for my comment.

Thomas -- I wrote the sentence first without using stereotypical and simply saying "Jesuit priest and Jewish man in the same character." Maybe I should have left it that way. The question mark and parenthesis in each case were intended to indicate my uncertainty and discomfiture with stereotypes of any kind -- yet I realize the world creates and uses them.

For myself, I don't have enough familiarity with Jesuit priests to have a well-developed stereotype, and some isn't stereotype per say, but just reality, e.g., Catholic. But that in turn can lead to its own set of stereotypes. Usually my own presumption when I hear "Jesuit" is learned -- well educated, trained to think and teach logically, about the external world, but particularly as regards theology and church doctrine; member of a long train of Catholic tradition. (This is more provisional, but also an order that sometimes produced priests that challenged the status quo, the established order. Possibly because the order attracts those given to disciplined thought and nourishes its practice. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ is an example who comes early to mind.)

I wondered what Jesuits Mann knew.

Fair enough, Lily. I understand "stereotype" is a loaded word, but I didn't mean to put you on the spot. The Jesuits I know are pretty diverse people from my point of view, but it's true, they're all teachers and intellectuals. I'd say that's a characteristic of the order rather than a stereotype, but there are exceptions as well. Fr. Greg "G-Dog" Boyle comes to mind.

http://www.homeboyindustries.org/life...

Thomas wrote: "...The Jesuits I know are pretty diverse people from my point of view, ..."

Thomas, you are almost tracing the evolution of my silly sentence: without "stereotypical," yes, one can imagine a Jewish man and a Jesuit priest in the same man. But if one added "stereotypical" to Jewish man wasn't one almost also implying some typical Jesuit priest, rather than the simple reality that the world has all sorts of unusual unique combinations. At that point, I probably should have just folded, but I wanted to raise the question about what was especially interesting (to the author? to the reader?) about that particular combination.

P.S. Operationes Spirituale @36 -- I forgot the proviso Thomas reminds us about -- prohibitions re those of Jewish ancestry becoming Jesuits. I had read that before, but it didn't register.

Jesuits:

Thomas wrote: "I'm curious, Lily -- what is the Jesuit stereotype? I have some experience with them (four years of high school) and I'm curious to know what the "stereotype" is. (It's hard to see stereotypes from up close!)"

I have some not-so-close experiences with modern Jesuits, and the funny thing is that they all were "bloody leftists"! You could not talk seriously with them, it was all about the poor, how to "liberate" them, and the recipee to achieve this was Marxism, more or less.

Maybe this is only a German experience ... but I find it funny and interesting in connection with Naphta.

Thorwald wrote: "I have some not-so-close experiences with modern Jesuits, and the funny thing is that they all were "bloody leftists"! ..."

My experience is just the opposite. Jesuits (in the U.S. anyway) tend to be more conservative, which makes some sense given the history of the order -- as opposed to the Franciscans, say, or the monastic and mendicant orders. But there are some leftists (I'd leave out the "bloody" in this case) amongst them as well. That's why I was puzzled by the notion of a "stereotype," but Lily has settled what she meant by that already.

Thomas wrote: "My experience is just the opposite. Jesuits (in the U.S..."

Well, the new Pope is a Jesuit, too! Seems, that he is in the middle of our two experiences: He talks always of the poor and how to help them with a poor church (IMHO this is leftist nonsense, if you want to help you do not have to be poor yourself), but on the other hand he is opposed to Marxism and has clearly conservative family values.

Pope's coat of arms:
"At the top of the shield is the emblem of Pope's religious order, the Society of Jesus: a radiant sun carrying the letters in red, ihs, the monogram of Jesus."
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/fra...

Thorwald wrote: "Thomas wrote: "My experience is just the opposite. Jesuits (in the U.S..."

Well, the new Pope is a Jesuit, too! Seems, that he is in the middle of our two experiences: He talks always of the poor ..."

Just my point. The Jesuits have been known for promoting "liberation theology" in South America, but Pope Francis does not. He is not a Marxist, but he also opposes capitalist greed. They are intellectually vibrant people, and holding them as a group to one particular set of views (excluding matters of faith, of course) is mistaken, IMHO.

Thomas wrote: "That's why I was puzzled by the notion of a "stereotype," but Lily has settled what she meant by that already...."

But what is interesting to me is what did Mann divine (to make a bad pun) a Jesuit priest or a Jewish man to represent?

Lily wrote: "

But what is interesting to me is what did Mann divine (to make a bad pun) a Jesuit priest or a Jewish man to represent?

I'm still not sure, but maybe it has something to do with the intellectual reputations both enjoy? Or suffer from?

An exchange occurred not long ago in California's Sacramento Superior and Municipal Courts. As a lawyer attempted to excuse his client's behavior with a convoluted explanation, Judge James Ford interrupted acidly with the comment, "That's just ... that's just too Jesuitical for words." The colloquy continued as follows:

Lawyer: "Pardon me?"

Judge: "It's too Jesuitical. You probably didn't go to a Jesuit school."

Lawyer: "Certainly didn't. I am of the Jewish faith."

Judge: "Then it's too Talmudic for words."

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/th...

Thomas wrote: "Lily wrote: But what is interesting to me is what did Mann divine (to make a bad pun) a Jesuit priest or a Jewish man to represent?

I'm still not sure, but maybe it has something to do with the intellectual reputations both enjoy? Or suffer from? ..."

Thomas -- I spent a fair chunk of the afternoon with two essays on Naphtha:

"'Link leute von rechts' --Thomas Mann's Naphta and the Ideological Confluence of Radical Right and Radical Left in the Early Years of the Weimar Republic" by Anthony Grenville

and

"Naphta and His Ilk -- Jewish Characters in Mann's The Magic Mountain" by Franka Marquardt and Yahya Elsaghe.

Both appeared in Thomas Mann's The "Magic Mountain": A Casebook edited by Hans Rudolph Vaget.

Wish I could readily summarize them. I can't. And I should probably be doing this in background rather than here. But two points that I will pull for this thread:

1) Naphta was originally a Protestant minister (Bunge) in Mann's early plans for MM.

2) Using letters and diaries "to reconstruct the genesis and development of the figure of Naphta...these bear out the pattern of a simple opposition of right and left, Bunge and Settembrini, giving way to a combination of the two extremes against the moderate center: Naphta and Settembrini."

No wonder Naphta seems self-contradictory at times, but apparently Mann at this point saw a chief political conflict of the time as the ability of the "center" to sustain itself amid attacks from extremes on either side of it.

PS -- enjoyed the humor from Slate!

Another quote from Grenville: (view spoiler)["Naphta the ex-Jew is the alien intellectual, keen to discard his Jewish faith, first for Marxism, then for Catholicism, he makes a radical break from his roots and finally plunges into pure nihilism." (hide spoiler)]

Haven't thought through whether I agree with the assessment or not based on the text. I put the quotation as a spoiler because it may be considered to include some foreshadowing.

Lily wrote: "Wish I could readily summarize them. I can't. And I should probably be doing this in background rather than here. But two points that I will pull for this thread:"

I also wish you could have summarized them. I still don't feel that I have a handle on Naphta.

Everyman wrote: "...I also wish you could have summarized them. I still don't feel that I have a handle on Naphta. ..."

I'll try for some selective quotations over the next week, but one article has untranslated German sections (not necessarily from MM) and both are entangled with German politics with some antisemitism thrown in, which makes them difficult to comprehend and to parse fairly. In extracting, I fear for unfairly maligning either the author or Mann.