Classics and the Western Canon discussion

This seems to me, at least so far, to be the most significant section in the book, and may turn out to be a central turning point. Is this a view shared by others, or does it seem to be no more significant than, say, his Walpurgis Night experience?

What does the section tell us about HC before and after the experience? Has he undergone a significant change, and if so what?

Man, I am so far behind. Just now reading Research. I hope to be caught up soon and join in on the wonderful discussion. I am enjoying the book, but am finding my translation a bit rough at times. What with the note-taking and all for the discussion I am not participating in it is taking about 4 minutes per page. Wish me luck!

Luck!

Talk about contrast: Operations Spirituales vs. Snow. Everyman, your comment that this might be the crux of the novel was very interesting to me. On first reading I thought this was just a case of HC doing something rebellious and stupid and getting himself in a jam.

Reviewing it in the context of the preceding chapter made it so much richer. For the first time HC becomes an actor instead of a listener. And, even if it requires hallucination, he comes up with ethical and philosophical ideas of his own.

Whether and how he will act on them remains to be seen. I found them much more congenial than those of either S. or N.

Jonathan wrote: "Man, I am so far behind. Just now reading Research. I hope to be caught up soon and join in on the wonderful discussion. I am enjoying the book, but am finding my translation a bit rough at times. ..."

Research is a heavy chapter. It gets easier (for a while) after this, so keep your head down and barrel through it.

Thomas's response to Jonathan's struggles raises a broader question: why does literature require us to "barrel through it."

Is difficulty a requirement of serious literature? If so, (and I have no quarrel with this) why is this necessary?

"Barreling through" sounds sort of dismissive, so that was probably a bad way to put it. I think of the difficult sections of MM like pieces of music that sound alien to me. I have to get them in my ear and listen them more than once or twice to really hear them. So the first time through I have to "barrel through" them. Someone here mentioned that Mann said MM had to be read twice to understand it. Maybe this is why?

Yes, I think Magic Mountain is certainly a book that can be read twice as I am doing....as there is so much in it and this second go-round for me is perfect as with this group! Perfect book to ponder outloud about...this sanatorium melting pot of ideas so insular from the flat lands...brewing such mysterious thought ...much perhaps to be taken in the context of the time which makes it a bit more of something to "barrel through" perhaps! This snow chapter was interesting...it seems that HC had to sort out the death/life bit himself albeit in a drifting dream manner: his resolution of said thoughts resulting in survival.

Sue wrote: "...This snow chapter was interesting...it seems that HC had to sort out the death/life bit himself in light of his real life situation/context and albeit in a drifting dream manner, his resolution of said thoughts results in survival...."

Somehow, that became almost a bit too simplistically Darwinian for me -- the will to survive.

But, it did provide a contrast with Death in Venice.

The new heliotherapy apparatus. Wonderful. Another creator of illusions, making the men and women appear tanned and healthy and athletic.

And "even though they were aware" of that this was an illusion they were "foolish enough to be carried away by it" (469)

Because we believe what we want to believe?

I was enchanted with Settembrini's enthusiastic encouragement: "Si, si si!"

Settembrini, here, was a great encourager. "Even -- even if it did you harm -- just a little harm -- it will still have been your good angel roused you to it" (474). Settembrini was strongly opposed to Hans Castorp's relationship with Madame Castorp, but he's obviously not one who wants rules followed simply because they are rules.

I continue to like Settembrini.

Thomas wrote: ""Barreling through" sounds sort of dismissive, so that was probably a bad way to put it. I think of the difficult sections of MM like pieces of music that sound alien to me. I have to get them in m..."

I found it very interesting when I first read that Thomas Mann actually said that MM should be read twice. (I just find that he's asking a lot of his readers. This is not only a 700 page book, but it's a LONG 700 page book). In other words, I've read books of a similar amount of pages much more quickly than MM. I find this to be a book that has to be read quite slowly. I'm up to page 610, and at this point I can't imagine reading MM all over again. (Actually, yes, maybe I could read it a second time, but I can't see doing it sooner than at least three or five or ten years from now.)

However, even though I said that I feel Mann is giving his readers a lot of work to do by saying that MM should be read twice, I do understand what he means. I've been finding myself rereading certain chapters, or, in some cases, when I get to a certain point (maybe halfway) through a chapter, I've been going back to the beginning and starting over again. So in some respect, I'm "sort of" reading it twice.

I found "Snow" to be one of the most fun chapters (actually, forgive me for using the term "chapter" -- each of these are actually "sections" or "parts"). I thought "Snow" had more action in it than any other part, meaning less talk and more action. I've been enjoying the dialogues and the inner-monologues and I certainly love all the philosophy and psychology throughout the novel, but at times it's just too much.

Snow was a nice break from all of that. I also thought it was beautiful. I felt that HC felt so free during this adventure, and it was really nice to take the adventure with him. The dream/hallucination (I wasn't exactly sure what it was -- it seemed that he had worn himself out to a point of hallucinating more than simply falling asleep and dreaming) was absolutely beautiful.

Also, there were so many elements of fantasy and magical realism (although I don't believe "magical realism" was a term or writing style that was used when MM was written). Maybe it was just a partial form of magical realism, prior to the "term" magical realism being actually considered a real "form" or genre of writing. And I'm not just speaking of the dream -- I'm speaking of the whole experience of going deeper and deeper into the mountain (taking himself into a potentially dangerous -- very dangerous, situation).

So the combination of the "reality" of the action in Snow, along with the dream/hallucination, was just spectacular, beautiful, magical. I loved it.

I was wondering if HC had somewhat of a "death wish" in this scene. When he kept going further and further away, I started thinking that he just wanted to get lost and possibly freeze to death. This was one of the most rebellious things HC has done (so far) in the novel, in my opinion.

The character of HC at this point in the novel is SO "new and improved" and so much more interesting than the HC in the earlier parts of the novel. I'm thinking back to the HC of earlier days who was afraid to start a conversation with Frau Chauchat. And he behaved so childishly and did such silly things in order to try to get her attention.

Everyman said, in the 1st message of this thread, that Snow may be a central turning point in the novel. I can definitely agree with that in many ways, but I'm thinking that HC's evening with Frau Chauchat was an important turning point for him. I believe it gave him more confidence, and possibly gave him more inspiration and motivation to get out and take chances and risks, such as the chances and risks in Snow.

I expected this chapter/section to end with a search crew looking for him, finding him practically dead with frostbite. I imagined that he was going to be in serious trouble with Behrens to the point of Behrens threatening to throw HC out of Berghof, or at the very least I expected HC to become very ill from this adventure to the point that he was close to death. SO, while reading it, I was expecting this to be a major turning point in HC's illness, putting his life in great danger for a certain amount of time which would have lead to all new and different philosophical thoughts about death. (Philosophical thoughts in the mind of HC, and also discussed by Settembrini and Naphta).

So my own mind was expecting this section to bring up a whole new set of thoughts and discussions about death and near-death. Basically, I thought this was going to take the novel into a whole different direction.

But "Snow" ended very differently than I thought it would, which was a pleasant surprise.

Adelle wrote: "I was enchanted with Settembrini's enthusiastic encouragement: "Si, si si!"

Settembrini, here, was a great encourager. "Even -- even if it did you harm -- just a little harm -- it will still ha..."

Yes!! I LOVED Settembrini's encouragement here. In my previous post in this thread I talked about how I really liked this "adventurous" side of HC, but I failed to mention how much I loved Settembrini's encouragement. I loved the bond between the two of them in this section.

I have been an avid enough skier, but a cautious enough person about taking truly obviously dangerous risks with one's life, that I found Hans going out and skiing by himself almost a weird scenario, from a realistic standpoint. Did it fit with his character as it had been developed to that point? Well, I couldn't say that it didn't. But, especially with recent avalanche stories in mind, it seemed such a rash venture to ski in such a solitary manner that it was almost a denial of the value of communal connections on Hans' part in my reading of the text. I wondered how much Mann knew about skiing -- and how ski areas at Davos were patrolled in those days.

Yet, as others of you have hinted, the episode does have overtones of Hans challenging the external world and taking responsibility for living into it in ways that portend a kind of spiritual self realization, even turning point. But the ambiguous side for me was the implication of being able to thrive and survive without community.

I had a similar reaction Lily; this ski venture seemed out of character for HC. But, perhaps, that is the point. Throughout this novel we see very detailed and "realistic" descriptions. Yet, at the same time, the situations being described are so unrealistic as to be silly. (e.g. the dining room rituals,the thermometer fetish) This may be another example noting the novel's basic irony.

Zeke wrote: "...we see very detailed and "realistic" descriptions. Yet, at the same time, the situations being described are so unrealistic as to be silly...."

You know, the critics often refer to the novel's humor, but I don't think we have talked a lot about that aspect here and how/when humor interplays with or differs from irony.

Zeke wrote: "Talk about contrast: Operations Spirituales vs. Snow. Everyman, your comment that this might be the crux of the novel was very interesting to me. On first reading I thought this was just a case of ..." .... "For the first time HC becomes an actor instead of a listener..."

Zeke, your comment in message 4 of this thread is exactly what I was trying to say in my post (message 12), but I really like the way you said it -- that for the first time HC becomes an actor instead of a listener. That was one of the reasons I liked the Snow scene so much. It was so great to see HC actually "doing" instead of "being" and in his way of "being" it has mostly been about listening to others and/or observing others.

Lily wrote: "I have been an avid enough skier, but a cautious enough person about taking truly obviously dangerous risks with one's life, that I found Hans going out and skiing by himself almost a weird scenari..."

Lily, I used to do a lot of skiing too, and I felt exactly the same as you. I also wondered how much Mann really knew about skiing, which is the reason I wondered if Mann was adding some "magical realism" into this scene.

You and Zeke made some great points in Messages 14, 15 & 16 about the aspects of reality vs. unreality and humor with irony.

Lily wrote: "... that I found Hans going out and skiing by himself almost a weird scenario, from a realistic standpoint. Did it fit with his character as it had been developed to that point?"

Ah, it is maybe just another new step of development! Hans Castorp is acting, he is doing something, he breaks out, he takes risks, he thinks on his own and tries to find a way between Naphta and Settembrini ...

... and there is a great vision and a great result, the sentence is set in spaced letters in German: "For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts" This is a change in Hans Castorp's character. Life is now more admired than death, death is marginalized.

By the way, the vision: Isn't it great? It reminded me of the movie "The time machine" after HG Wells' novel, with the paradise people of the Eloi and the Morlocks living in the dark.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_time...
You agree?

And then I stumbled upon this: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle" by Ian Maclaren. (I didn't know him).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Macl...

Thorwald wrote: "Ah, it is maybe just another new step of development! Hans Castorp is acting, he is doing something, he breaks out, he takes risks, he thinks on his own and tries to find a way between Naphta and Settembrini ...
."

Yes, he finds courage. "...if courage before the elements is definded not as a dull, level-headed relationship with them, but a conscious abandonment to them, the mastering of the fear of death out of sympathy with them."

But it's interesting that he goes to Settembrini for encouragement first. Settembrini tells him, "For God's sake, do it! Don't ask anyone -- just do it. Your guardian angel has been whispering in your ear."

HC has some nice words for S. a few pages later, but he says a curious thing. He says he prefers Settembrini to Naphta, but that Naphta is almost always right when the two "argue and scuffle pedagogically for my poor soul." Is this true? Is Naphta almost always right?

http://colemanzone.com/images(4)/Radi...

I read the hallucinatory scene a bit differently, I think. It was so chock full of cliches (birds singing, harps playing, a curly-haired shepherd boy, a nursing madonna, etc., etc.) that I could hardly take it seriously. I wondered whether we were meant to understand that this is, after all, HC's vision of communal perfection, and it is limited to the cliches with which he is already familiar. He says, "At some level, I knew all along that I was making it up myself." But then he goes on to claim that

We don't form our dreams out of just our own souls. We dream anonymously and communally, though each in his own way. The great soul, of which we are just a little piece, dreams through us so to speak, dreams in our many different ways its own eternal, secret dream..."

This sounded a lot like the Transcendental "oversoul" to me, but I have no idea what Mann's connection to Transcendentalism might have been.

In rereading this passage this morning (I am a whole week behind you all, but trying to catch up!)I looked for some other clue that Mann might have been writing ironically in this long, sermonlike passage that kind of clunks us over the head with what we're apparently supposed to understand to have been revealed to HC, but I'm not sure I see anything. So maybe we are meant to read it straight. Maybe the cliches are more an indication of the failure of the language and the images Mann had at his disposal.

On the other hand, I must say I felt he reached what he seemed to be getting at in a couple of places. One was the description of what happens to the audience listening to the tenor: for me, a much more interesting and therefore effective description of that feeling of layers of knowing being peeled away, and not (to clarify, based on our earlier conversation about music) because it is a passage about music, but because of how the revelation is described:

He had held a high note--beautiful from the very first. And then gradually, from moment to moment, the passionate tone had opened up, swelled, unfolded, grown ever brighter and more radiant. It was as if veils, visible to no one before, were falling away one by one--and now the last, or so they thought, revealing the purest, most intense light, and then one more, the ultimate, and then, incredibly, the absolute last, releasing a glory shimmering with tears and a brilliance so lavish that a hollow sound of rapture had gone up from the audience, almost in protest and contradiction, it seemed, and even he, young Hans Castorp, had felt a sob well up within him.

I love that "almost in protest and contradiction"--that really seemed to capture the feeling, that the audience is so astonished they must protest what is happening.

I also thought it was interesting that the utopian passage of his hallucination went on for four pages, while the horrific passage of the old witches eating the child was only half a page long. Good is more powerful than evil? The readers can't take as much evil as good? HC was willing to linger in the good, but the evil immediately shook him awake?

Anyway, in the end, I agree with Lily, Zeke, and Barbara's skepticism above in the sense that I thought once he lay down in the snow and was hallucinating, it was all over for him. To imagine him getting up and carrying on just a few minutes later? I suppose we are meant to see it as some kind of rebirth. But the chapter ends (and I haven't gotten farther yet!) with the question of whether it will stick, since "by bedtime he was no longer exactly sure what his thoughts had been."

Bottom line: I found this passage overly didactic and unconvincing.

Zeke wrote: "Is difficulty a requirement of serious literature? If so, (and I have no..."

This is one of my favorite questions about literature :)
With my students (college freshmen), I work explicitly on questions of difficulty. One is to notice what makes a reading difficult for us. There are several common things: too much new vocabulary (so it's overwhelming to look up--a common one for them); unfamiliar allusions (we are finding some of that here); long, complex sentence structure (more a problem for them, as fairly inexperienced readers); disagreement with what the author is saying/doing (gets in the way of us reading "with the grain," seeing things the author's way); and a big one, unmet expectations. These are not "surprises" as in unexpected plot twists, but rather the problems we have when we expect a text to do or be one way, but it is something else entirely. For example, if we expect a traditional, linear plot progression and we get time shifts and digressions that don't fit into what we thought we were reading. There are other causes of difficulty, of course, but these are the big ones I run across with my students. It's helpful to recognize what causes us difficulty because then we can come up with strategies for dealing with it.

So, all that said, I do think "difficulty" is part of the definition of what makes for great literature. If we get what we expect and can already handle, we aren't really learning or experiencing anything new. This is comfortable and often entertaining. But in the end, the books that are great are the books that bring us something new; they don't simply recycle the same old forms, ideas, ways of thinking. Whenever we confront something new, we are initially confronting difficulty. It's really interesting (for me) to think about this MM discussion as a teacher because this group does, probably intuitively, what my students don't always know how to do, which is to confront rather than avoid difficulty. They have gotten really good at skirting what they don't understand and puffing up what they do understand. But truly strong readers see something difficult and are willing to go back and work on it some more (when they want to and see value in it).

OK, I'm being long-winded today! Sorry--making up for having lagged behind you all week!

Kathy wrote: "...They have gotten really good at skirting what they don't understand and puffing up what they do understand...."

Kathy -- loved your exposition on "difficulty" as relates to reading.

But what is your antecedent to "they" in the sentence above --"students" or "this group"? :-)

Kathy wrote: "Bottom line: I found this passage overly didactic and unconvincing."

You could say this on the characters of Settembrini, etc., too. Or you could say: Not the single scene and character, but the whole composition of this book makes the literature - ?

I confess, I still cannot say whether this is a good book or not. Let's see how all this will end!

Lily wrote: "But what is your antecedent to "they" in the sentence above --"students" or "this group?"

Ha! My students, of course! This group knows how to do a strong reading. Many of my students do not--yet... :)
As a member of this group, I would use "we" anyway... But sorry for the confusion!

Kathy wrote: "But sorry for the confusion! ..."

Kathy -- perhaps less "confusion" than consideration of self-participation. [g] And, to some extent, from the recent experience with Dante. Some things are simply difficult; others are especially difficult online, given conventions of our culture about sensitive, contentious, private, and ambiguous issues.

Anyway, thx for your response!

PS -- are you seeing any evidence that dictionary capabilities embedded with ebooks are helping the difficulties with vocabulary? I am hoping the habit and skill of looking up words will move down the educational levels in the years ahead. (And maybe this discussion should move over to the Tea Room.)

Kathy wrote: "I read the hallucinatory scene a bit differently, I think. It was so chock full of cliches (birds singing, harps playing, a curly-haired shepherd boy, a nursing madonna, etc., etc.) that I could ha..."

Mann seems to slip into a kind of interior monologue in this episode, and HC's interior is not terribly sophisticated. His vision is the result of a childish kind of escapism. He calls it "playing king," an activity he also enjoys while wrapped up on the veranda.

I wonder if the cliches might also be understood as Jungian archetypes, or as seems more likely, a parody of Jungian analysis. That stuff at the end about dreaming communally and "man is the master of contradictions" just seems a little over the top.

Again, what is parody? What is humor? I can't tell them apart from seriousness oft times.

Lily, heading over to Tea Shop 3.

Lily wrote: "Again, what is parody? What is humor? I can't tell them apart from seriousness oft times."

It's a matter of context. If you don't have one, the humor isn't apparent. HC's naivete is completely sincere, and the pastoral scene juxtaposed with the nightmare scene is certainly not humorous to him. But we have to ask what the author is doing here, and whether he expects experienced adult readers to approach the scene from a different perspective. I suspect that he does.

Thomas wrote: "Someone here mentioned that Mann said MM had to be read twice to understand it. "

Just after I read this comment, I heard a clip from an interview with Philip Roth, who said, "If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel, really." I thought of this group and the fact that we are spending 10 weeks on MM! His point, of course, was that we need to read in a sustained way in order to really experience the novel (see our discussion in Tea Shop)--curious what others think of this! Perhaps this is why Mann felt a second reading would be in order? A way of compensating for how long it takes to read?

Personally, I think that the Snow Dream is a great scene with great wisdom revealed in a great picture, great, simply great. And good and true and basic for human nature.

Does anybody share this view?

Kathy wrote: "Thomas wrote: "Someone here mentioned that Mann said MM had to be read twice to understand it. "

Just after I read this comment, I heard a clip from an interview with Philip Roth, who said, 'If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel, really.'..."

The following excerpt is from the "THE MAKING OF The Magic Mountain", based on a speech Thomas Mann gave at Princeton. It includes the paragraph where Mann asks his readers to read MM twice.

I have put it in < spoiler > format since some have said they don't want to read that essay until they have read the novel.

(view spoiler)[
"Now what is there that I can say about the book itself, and the best way to read it? I shall begin with a very arrogant request that it be read not once but twice. A request not to be heeded, of course, if one has been bored at the first reading. A work of art must not be a task or an effort; it must not be undertaken against one’s will. It is meant to give pleasure, to entertain and enliven. If it does not have this effect on a reader, he must put it down and turn to something else. But if you have read The Magic Mountain once, I recommend that you read it twice. The way in which the book is composed results in the reader’s getting a deeper enjoyment from the second reading. Just as in music one needs to know a piece to enjoy it properly, I intentionally used the word 'composed' in referring to the writing of a book. I mean it in the sense we more commonly apply to the writing of music. For music has always had a strong formative influence upon the style of my writing. Writers are very often 'really' something else; they are transplanted painters or sculptors or architects or what not. To me the novel was always like a symphony, a work in counterpoint, a thematic fabric; the idea of the musical motif plays a great role in it." (hide spoiler)]

While I perhaps understand what Philip Roth is saying, I don't really agree with him. Consider all the serialized novels of the Victorian era. I would not want to try to get through Don Quixote or War and Peace or Underworld or even The Iliad in only two weeks. Online discussions have taught me to enjoy even much shorter novels over a period of a month. Insofar as reading twice, even for Hopscotch, which particularly lends itself to rereading, Cortázar himself does not ask for such, although it is very useful to do so. Also, not all of us are interested in focusing on a single novel at a time. And, I would agree Roth's rule is not a bad one for his own novels.

With Magic Mountain, we may have sacrificed some of the novel's momentum and rhythms.

Thorwald wrote: "Personally, I think that the Snow Dream is a great scene with great wisdom revealed in a great picture, great, simply great. And good and true and basic for human nature.

Does anybody share this view?"

Yes, I share this view. This might be my favourite chapter in the whole book. Apart from the vivid evocation of solitary skiing in the snow, I thought the dream sequence clearly showed that HC has internalised what he has learned from Settembrini and Naphta: life as a kind of dynamic equilibrium between complementary principles. But he also goes beyond N and S in that although he accepts death and its role in life he resolves for himself that he shall grant it no dominion over his thoughts.

The dream reminded me of a short story by Ursula Le Guin called The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. Omelas is a beautiful and good city, but in a dungeon beneath the castle at its centre a child is kept chained up in the darkness. People who see this know that this cruelty to the child is somehow integral to the beauty and goodness of the city of Omelas. For some people this is too much, and they leave the city—they are the ones who walk away from Omelas. I thought the cannibalistic crones in the temple in HC's dream represented something similar.

Lily wrote: "Kathy wrote: "Thomas wrote: "Someone here mentioned that Mann said MM had to be read twice to understand it. "

Just after I read this comment, I heard a clip from an interview with Philip Roth, wh..."

This time reading MM was my second time, and I remember reading TM's preface before I read it the first time, and wondering when I might ever read this book again. As it turned out, it was to be much sooner than I thought, thanks to Everyman's invitation to join this group. I have read several classics twice, and have always got much more from them the second time, but with MM I have got incomparably more from it the second time. In such a dense book it very much helps to know where to situate everything, which details to remember, and it also helps the understanding to know what is going to happen in the end. I did not understand anything of the N-S debates the first time around. They just seemed interminable. On a second reading, knowing that they would actually come to an end and that there was actually structure and point to them made me much more prepared to be patient with them. Nor did I appreciate the significance of placet experiri the first time around. In fact the thing I liked best from the first reading was the Snow episode—I enjoyed it so much I felt it was worth the whole book just to get to this chapter.

Lily wrote: "The following excerpt is from the "THE MAKING OF The Magic Mountain", based on a speech Thomas Mann gave at Princeton. "

Thanks for this, Lily! I won't quote the spoiler (though it's not much of a spoiler) but the musical connection makes perfect sense to me. I hope we can talk more about this in the final analysis of the novel.

Peter wrote: "The dream reminded me of a short story by Ursula Le Guin called The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas."

I wonder how it would fit to "Brave New World" - this, too, a perfect nice world with some problems beneath the surface. But here, the world is *not* accepted, the protagonist in the end commits suicide as most efficient way of protest against such a nice world with problems beneath the surface.

2nd example: Mika Waltari, "Sinuhe the Egyptian". The scene in Crete: This, too, a paradise society, but the people do not care on the fate of their fellow citizen, and in the dungeons there is the Minotaur monster. Here, too, the author clearly dislikes this kind of society.

In the Time Machine: The same, the Morlocks are not accepted, the protagonist fights against them.

Hm, what is the difference between Mann's Snow Dream and these other views of paradise societies with problems beneath the surface?

PS: In case of "Sinuhe the Egytpian" I remember that the Minotaur monster was found dead and this was taken as a sign that the paradise society of Crete will soon fall - huh!