Classics and the Western Canon discussion

"It was strange suddenly [for HC]to have sitting beside him a representative and ambassador from home, the scent of an old, vanished, earlier life...Hans Castorp had been quietly expecting such a raid from the flatlands for a long time now..."

And so we come face to face with several issues.

-- The difference between up here and down there is emphasized almost to an extreme. Sure, there is a difference between the flatlands and the mountains, but isn't there more going on than that?

-- Is HC really ill? Does he really need to stay at the sanatorium? Or has he found an easy and comfortable life which he can afford, and is happy not to make any contributions to the betterment of the country, declining to put his shoulder to the wheel of industry? (His satisfaction in indolence seems to me the contrary of what the German people are thought to stand for.)

"THE WHEEL revolved. The hand on time’s clock moved forward. Orchis and aquilegia were out of bloom, and the mountain pink. The deep-blue, star-shaped gentian and the autumn crocus, pale and poisonous, appeared again among the damp grass, and a reddish hue overspread the forests. The autumn equinox was past. All Souls’ was in sight—and, for practised time-consumers, probably also the Advent season, the solstice, and Christmas. But for the moment there were lovely October days, a succession of them, like that on which the cousins had viewed the Hofrat’s paintings." (p 290 online Lowe Porter, pp 503-4 in Woods.)

Beautiful blue of the glacier gentian in Switzerland:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39527581...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sekitar/...

Autumn in the Alps (enlarge for the maximum effect of the reddish hue): http://www.flickr.com/photos/39527581...

http://www.inmagine.com/searchterms/a...
Running mouse over autumn crocus images permits identifying location. A few indicated as poisonous.

Orchis in Switzerland: http://www.inmagine.com/inmsearch.php...

A more general portfolio of Swiss alpine flowers. Not sure if the mountain pink named above is here. http://www.squidoo.com/alpine-flowers...

This was a nice and funny chapter! It is a 100% déjà-vu from Hans Castorp's own first days in the sanatorium. Only that Hans Castorp is now in the role of the experienced inhabitant and his guest is having his problems ...

I think Hans Castorp is not ill but stays because he wants to learn - he scented something that he wants to have, so he stays until he got it. Lowe-Porter p. 288: "It would be the abandonment of certain comprehensive responsibilities which had grown up out of his contemplation of the image called Homo Dei; it would be the betrayal of that appointed task of “stock-taking,” that hard and harassing task, which was really beyond the powers native to him, but yet afforded his spirit such nameless and adventurous joys; that task it was his duty to perform, here in his chair, and up there in his blue-blossoming retreat."

Thorwald wrote: "This was a nice and funny chapter! It is a 100% déjà-vu from Hans Castorp's own first days in the sanatorium. Only that Hans Castorp is now in the role of the experienced inhabitant and his guest i..."

This section definitely has its funny moments, such as when Tienappel picks up HC's "souvenir," a photograph of a headless skeleton, immediately pardons himself and leaves the room. It mirrors the scene earlier in the book when JOachim tells HC the story of a patient who committed suicide and HC says "I may have to leave soon."

But of course HC doesn't leave, and the seduction of the mountain even for Tienappel, who is generally appalled by the place, is apparent. It reminds me of the passage in Moby Dick where Tashtego falls into the head of a whale:

Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there.

http://www.powermobydick.com/Moby078....

Not only does HC not leave the mountain. He is aware of a decisive turning point. While his decision merits no more than a "final shrug" from the flatlands, "for him it meant freedom finally won."

While his heart "no longer fluttered" at the thought, we must question whether this freedom will save him or destroy him.

Zeke wrote: ""for him it meant freedom finally won.""

And we thought he had won his freedom from the flatlands in the section titled Freedom. Or is this freedom from family and all flatland responsibilities? Is this a different freedom, or an extension of the same freedom?

I don't know. But it seems like he if he ever goes back it will be as a very different person. Will he be unalterably alienated from flatland's bourgeois values?

Zeke wrote: "While his heart "no longer fluttered" at the thought, we must question whether this freedom will save him or destroy him..."

I vote for destroy him. How chilling it is when he says to Uncle James, "We're never cold."

I was also thinking about the two contradictory "attacks repulsed," even though the chapter title makes it singular: James repulses Behrens' attack when he attempts to catch him and keep him; HC repulses James's attack, attempting to take him away, after which he feels "free."

I must say I was relieved to get back to some plot after the whole Settembrini/Naphta bit. My quiet this week has partly to do with end of semester here, but also to do with the fact that those passages literally put me to sleep a number of times!

Kathy wrote: "I must say I was relieved to get back to some plot after the whole Settembrini/Naphta bit. My quiet this week has partly to do with end of semester here, but also to do with the fact that those passages literally put me to sleep a number of times!
"

I will admit that I also found the Settembrini-Naphta discourses dragging on a good bit longer than my attention span wanted them to. That section of the book, for me at least, could have used a good editor.

Kathy wrote: "I must say I was relieved to get back to some plot after the whole Settembrini/Naphta bit. My quiet this week has partly to do with end of semester here, but also to do with the fact that those passages literally put me to sleep a number of times! ..."

[g] These sections approached psychobabble for me. I just wasn't up unraveling the intellectual twists and turns, especially when at the point I thought I might understand a passage I might immediately after wonder if I was in the midst of a parody.

Lily wrote: " These sections approached psychobabble for me. I just wasn't up unraveling the intellectual twists and turns, especially when at the point I thought I might understand a passage I might immediately after wonder if I was in the midst of a parody"

I agree. At the beginning the arguments of both sides made some sense and it was worth thinking about it, but the longer the controversial goes the less worth it was to follow the ideas, and in the end we have a wild mixture of confusion and self-contradictions. I assume this was the author's intention. He will not sort out on a rational level "who is right" but the novel will lead a totally other way, I expect.

Thorwald -- oh, thank you! How reassuring. I figured I was just being a lazy reader. :-(

S and N are both shallow characters -- philosophical cartoons, almost -- because they are almost entirely cerebral. It's not important to understand their arguments in detail, but I think it's important to understand the role they play as dialectical opposites. We have the polarity of the weather conditions, the patients and the flat-landers, the good russians and the bad russians, etc etc... S. and N. are intellectual opposites, but it takes a lot more effort for Mann to demonstrate this convincingly. After reading the comments here, I have to wonder if Mann ever second-guessed his decision to write a "novel of ideas."

Thomas wrote: "Thomas O | 1588 comments S and N are both shallow characters -- philosophical cartoons, almost -- because they are almost entirely cerebral. It's not important to understand their arguments in detail, but I think it's important to understand the role they play as dialectical opposites...."

I'm not sure I would agree with shallow, but I do agree that they're being used to represent views which I believe were prevalent in German thinking at the time. I think they are being used to challenge HC and make him (and the reader with him) think about these views. It will be interesting to see what direction HC goes, and what he does with the various philosophical/religious positions. He seems to me, so far, not to have committed either to S or to N.