Classics and the Western Canon discussion

Time. A story is like music in that it fills time. Hmmm?

A short section, but I think it deserves its own separate discussion because it seems -- not so much to pull together as to amplify and perhaps extend the notions of time (and now adding space) that have been scattered throughout the book to this point.

I really like the existential flavor of this chapter. Time doesn't exist except by virtue of what one does with it, or how one lives within it. Joachim finally gets up and does something with his time, and he dies. So the question at the end of the chapter is this: did Joachim make better use of his time, even though it cost him his life, than HC does with his "wicked dawdling"?

Don't we all have a soldierly duty, like Joachim, to plant a "flag of life"? Or is the horizontal life better, wrapped up on the veranda and waiting for that eternal soup?

Thomas wrote: "I really like the existential flavor of this chapter. Time doesn't exist except by virtue of what one does with it, or how one lives within it. Joachim finally gets up and does something with his ..."

Great post. Related to a post I just made in the section A Good Soldier about HC's earlier attitude toward work.

I love your question whether Joachim or HC made the better choice.

Thomas wrote: "Don't we all have a soldierly duty, like Joachim, to plant a "flag of life"? Or is the horizontal life better, wrapped up on the veranda and waiting for that eternal soup? "

But the narrator calls Joachim a "zealot," and blames that on his "fatal outcome," as if he had been somehow too duty-bound to time or to life. As a result of J's death, we are told, HC is encouraged in his "disgraceful management of time" and his "wicked dawdling with eternity," for which we might consider excusing him because, after all, he just lost his cousin.

I confess that, again, I wasn't sure whether to read this ironically. Maybe it was the words "disgraceful" and "wicked"--words that seem almost over the top--that made me question whether Mann was really praising HC for attempting to step outside time.

I, too, really enjoyed this chapter. I have heard that observation about time in art before, but it's still interesting--that the visual arts (painting, sculpture) are experienced outside of time, all at once, while so many other arts--music, literature, dance, theater--must be experienced linearly (although, as a reader, I am always flipping back and forth, a freedom we have because we, rather than the performers, are in control of our experience of the work).

I also found it striking that Mann/the narrator referred to the diminishment of time that happens in some stories (and in life) as "diseased." Does he see his own book as diseased? He says he is attempting to "narrate time precisely," which of course is an experiment bound to fail. In asking us to "find some excuse for our young hero's behavior," Mann is perhaps asking us to "excuse" his experiment as an author. As I write this out, I realize this could account for what I read ironically in the last paragraph of the chapter. Maybe Mann is somewhat disingenuously asking us to "excuse" him for doing something that he feels is really worthwhile and maybe even feels he is doing quite well, but he wants to behave more modestly toward his readers.

What came to my mind, here:

Isaac Newton: "... to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Kathy wrote: "I confess that, again, I wasn't sure whether to read this ironically. Maybe it was the words "disgraceful" and "wicked"--words that seem almost over the top--that made me question whether Mann was really praising HC for attempting to step outside time.."

I think it must be meant ironically, and I really like the idea that Mann might find his own book "diseased." It reminds me of the quote that Lily posted earlier where Mann admits that his request that MM be read twice is "arrogant". I'm sure the author sympathises with HC. He is a bit of a dawdler himself.

I think something fundamentally changed when mankind shifted from a conception of time as something circular (days, seasons, etc) to something linear (beginning, middle, end, and, significantly, afterlife). In that shift comes a desire for more and efforts to extend life, prepare for a "good" death, and hope for "eternity." I think it also is the beginning of human alienation and anxiety as we know them.

Zeke wrote: "I think something fundamentally changed when mankind shifted from a conception of time as something circular (days, seasons, etc) to something linear (beginning, middle, end, and, significantly, af..."

I like this idea, but I have to admit that the first question that comes to mind is... "When?" When did this change happen? What caused it? (I know this is getting off track a bit, but I am genuinely curious!)

Zeke wrote: "In that shift comes a desire for more and efforts to extend life, prepare for a "good" death, and hope for "eternity." I think it also is the beginning of human alienation and anxiety as we know them."

Settembrini would answer to this Naphtanian thought: "It was the beginning of progress, the liberation of priestly authority, the awakening of reasonability!"

Thomas wrote: "the first question that comes to mind is... "When?" When did this change happen? What caused it?"

The earliest progressive change in the history of humankind which I know was surely the neolithic revolution: The invention of agricultural techniques, the end of small tribal hunting societies, the beginnig of bigger social communities. There is a debate whether this was good or bad for human beings, because it was also the beginning of war. Now land was important, and more people than only small tribes were united to fight each other.

And then the next step: Discovery of metals, bronze making. Then iron. And then ... philosophy! Very late, isn't it? And this philosophy knows well the idea of circles of time, as we learn from Plato.

Plato re-establishes the circle by the idea that after progress there comes decay ... again and again and again ...

Zeke wrote: "I think something fundamentally changed when mankind shifted from a conception of time as something circular (days, seasons, etc) to something linear (beginning, middle, end, and, significantly, af..."

Somehow, it seems to me that any woman who ever bore a child acquired some conception (pun unintended, but I'll leave it) of time as linear.

(It is a point of observation to me that there are no births, other than that of Hans, in this sprawling novel, at least that I recall encountering so far.)

(view spoiler)[ I perhaps spoke too soon -- it might have been better without? (hide spoiler)]

I liked this:

"Narrative, however, has two kinds of time: first its own real time, which like musical time defines its movement and presentation; and second, the time of its contents, which has a perspective quality that can vary widely, from a story in which the narrative's imaginary time is almost, or indeed totally coincident with its musical time, to one in which it stretches out over light years." (641-2)

(view spoiler)[

I'm not quite sure at the moment how much time has elapsed since the start of MM, but I have a sense Mann is preparing us for a collapse of narrative time relative to elapsed time. (hide spoiler)]

I smiled at this:

"...at the slender second hand busily pecking its way around its own special circle....The little hand tripped along paying no heed to the numerals as it came up on them, touched and passed them, left them behind, far behind, and returned to come up on them again..."

And then stuttered and stopped a moment at this:

"...It had no sense of goals, segments, measurements. It could have stopped at the 60 {12?}for a moment or at least given some tiny signal that something had been accomplished...." (646)

Zeke wrote: "I think something fundamentally changed when mankind shifted from a conception of time as something circular (days, seasons, etc) to something linear (beginning, middle, end, and, significantly, af..."

Something also fundamentally changed when clocks were invented and we were able to subdivide the day into much smaller segments than the natural world allows.

(I love that scene in Crocodile Dundee where he is about to set off into the outback with his girlfriend, whose name I'm too lazy to go look up. He sneaks a peek at the watch of his friend who is leaving them there, then looks up at the sky thoughtfully and announces the time.)

Could any of us spend an entire week never once looking at a timepiece but just living life according to the natural daily and weekly cycle of nature?

(I don't think this is off topic, given the amount of time Mann spends talking about time and our relationship to it.)

Lily wrote: "Somehow, it seems to me that any woman who ever bore a child acquired some conception (pun unintended, but I'll leave it) of time as linear.
"

Where's the "Like" button for this?!

Kathy @14. Perfect! When I read Lily's quip I was trying to think of the appropriate way to salute her.

Notwithstanding that, I stand by my speculation. I was not suggesting that people were not conscious of death--only that they didn't feel compelled to resist it. The concept of a longer life being a "better" life did not exist.

Zeke wrote: "I was not suggesting that people were not conscious of death--only that they didn't feel compelled to resist it. The concept of a longer life being a "better" life did not exist."

(Kathy and Zeke -- thank you both. I had been entwined in a discussion of gender and literature on the 21st century board re where do perspectives coincide versus diverge; I am still trying to name an equally obvious male ah-ha point.)

I do think Zeke's exploring question @7 is an interesting one -- and perhaps even more nuanced with "didn't feel compelled to resist it."

I wonder what perspectives animal studies of recent years lend the question. Certainly many (most?) do take measures to "protect" their lives, i.e., to survive.

The other place my stream of consciousness went was to the Genesis creation stories of the Abrahamic faiths. Creation is portrayed as a linear process. Once man and woman have eaten of the tree of knowledge they are driven from the garden so as not to be able to eat of the tree of eternal life. It appears this story seems to imagine a sense of knowledge of desirability of eternal life was fairly coincident with knowledge of good and evil.

http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Gene... (Genesis 1-3 -- its two overlapping creation stories can spring surprises each time they are read.)

The privilege of the Olympic gods was immortality. (Consider the Dioscuri linked to our MM tale. "When Castor was killed, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini." Wiki.)

Do the Neolithic cave drawings or other ancient art provide perspectives to your question?

Did you see this month's National Geographic with the cover picture of a baby with a life expectancy of 120 years?

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/201...

Lily wrote: "Zeke wrote: "I was not suggesting that people were not conscious of death--only that they didn't feel compelled to resist it. The concept of a longer life being a "better" life did not exist."

In ancient times human beings had not the feeling of being masters of their destiny. Many died as children or as young men and women, only few grew old. Keeping life was more like a lottery and you accepted any result. - Only if you expect with high likelihood to live a long life, you have the feeling of being specially disfortunate if you don't reach it.

Other thought:

Progressive and cyclical understandings are mostly combined. Such stories can be delivered only in written form. But who can write has the experience of progress because he knows that once human beings could not write. So there are many myths who talk of a creation, a beginning, which ends in an endless circle. Egyptian myths e.g. know a creation, too, but then, life is an endless circle of Nile floods and pharaos coming and going.

Everyman wrote: "Could any of us spend an entire week never once looking at a timepiece but just living life according to the natural daily and weekly cycle of nature?
"

I think a lot of us would be missing our flights. But seriously, I tend to think that the importance of time as schedule is an industrial phenomenon.

But the notion of death as a limit which gives meaning to a linear life is not new. This is as ancient as Achilles' choice. Life can be a lottery, as Thorwald points out (and which is also an ancient idea) or it can be lived deliberately. Life in the sanatorium is for the most part not deliberate at all. Achilles would not be happy wrapped up on the balcony. :(

Standardized time didn't go into effect in the US until Nov. 18, 1883. It was needed to keep rail travel running smoothly. Before that, every city and town set its own local time. Savannah was reportedly an entire half-hour ahead of Atlanta!