The Magic Mountain ( Der Zauberberg )

Believe it was Andre Gide who said we shouldn’t dismiss the novel of ideas because no one does it well - implying that he did. Well, I admire both THE COUNTERFEITERS and LAFCADIO’S ADVENTURES but for their art not their ideas, whatever they may be. For me THE STRANGER works because it contains only one idea, which convincingly obliterates all other ideas. But beyond Camus the novel of ideas holds little interest for me. Especially since the shelf life for most ideas is so short. So I avoided this mountain of ideas for decades. But climb it I finally did.

From Thomas Mann’s Foreword:
“We shall tell it at length, in precise and thorough detail - for when was a story short on diversion or long on boredom simply because of the time and space required for the telling? Unafraid of the odium of appearing too meticulous, we are much more inclined to the view that only thoroughness can be truly entertaining.”

Fair enough. Forewarned is forearmed. The details are abundant and for the most part well chosen. Writing throughout is of the highest caliber. Not necessarily a caliber that will appeal, interest or awe you but nonetheless high as a mountain in terms of quality. I took special pleasure in “The Baptismal Bowl/Grandfather in His Two Forms,” “Teasing/Viaticum/Interrupted Merriment,” “Satana Makes Shameful Suggestions,” “Hippe,” “Doubts and Considerations,” “My God, I See It!,” “Humaniora,” “Dance Macabre,” “Walpurgis Night,” “Changes,” “Someone Else,” “Operationes Spirituales,” "Mynheer Peeperkorn (Conclusion)," and the profoundly moving literary art of “A Good Soldier.”

Other chapters are a real slog while some mix the bad with the good. “Snow,” for example, goes on and on about Hans Castorp learning to ski. You think it will never end. It only does after a blizzard overtakes then spellbinds Hans with a dream of fanciful Mediterranean vistas filled with pretty, healthy, happy people that turns on a dime into a brutal, savage nightmare of two naked old crones dismembering a child then devouring it piece by piece - at which point Hans collapses into the snow and awakes. Powerful stuff. Like all great dreams it is impenetrable; like all great dreams it says more than it means. More than a bit over the top but Mann’s enormous skill as a writer puts it across in a forcefully dramatic way that wins us over just as Wagner’s enormous skill as a composer puts across THE RING.

Much of the dialogue - and there’s tons of it - is intriguing. But sometimes you feel trapped in a Faculty Meeting with the worse faculty in the worst university in the world located, no doubt, somewhere in the Federal Republic of Germany. No surprise this book is loved by teachers, loathed by students. But THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN deserves better than to be doomed to the classroom. When I finished the novel, I admired the titanic size of the author’s ambition. I know it will stay with me in a way that many novels do not. Partly because of Mann’s great talent, partly because of my own effort to push through. It’s probably the kind of book that will mean much more to you once you’ve finished and absorbed it than when you were reading it.

Still in the end THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN’S emphasis on ideas at the expense of art appalled me. This is one baggy monster Henry James didn’t live to see. Worse: not baggy in the tolstoyan way, the dickensian way, the melvillian way, but baggy in the metaphysical German way of looking for all the answers to all life’s questions big and small. Noble, perhaps, but also fatiguing.

After my assault on the mountain, a teacher friend told me I’d gone about it all wrong. “You don’t read THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN,” he said, “you live it.” That is you don’t start reading and continue till you finish - three weeks, four weeks, whatever. No. You slow the process down. Read one section each week. But with 51 sections that means it will take you almost a year! Wrong, he said, longer since you’ll put off reading sometimes for pressing personal concerns. It might take even two years! His theory is that it puts you in the same position of Hans Castorp himself for whom time and the meaning of time is a frequent intellectual concern. Also when you read, go away, come back, you’re less likely to get bored. May find yourself looking forward to a weekly visit to the sanatorium. You may even miss Naphata and Settembrini - becoming fascinated by their arguments rather than seeing them as gasbags.

Maybe. Or maybe I’ll book a seat on the next toboggan down the mountain.

Totally useless. Ca't understand what the publisher was thinking. I have read the book in both german and english. There was m effort to print the book the way a german book's language appears in the usual printed german editions. Basically unreadable.

I was immersed in this extraordinary novel since visiting Davos in March - and it has taken me a third of a year to find my way through. Rather like Hans Castrop's three weeks that turn into seven years, the experience of reading The Magic Mountain made me lose all sense of time. I would hesitate to visit the hotel in Davos that the Berghof is based on as I suspect it is Switzerland's answer to Hotel California.

The novel is the story of a young man with latent hypochondriac tendencies who goes to visit his ailing cousin in a Swiss sanatorium. Before long, influenced by the charlatan-like physicians, Hans Castrop falls under the enchantment of illness. He is flattered to be admitted to what seems an elite, closed society 'up here' who have little to do except eat, flirt, have intellectual debates, lie wrapped up in blankets and obsessively measure their temperatures. This last aspect particularly amused me as I wonder what Mann would have made of today's narcissistic hypochondriacs with their apps and devices.

Love, life, time, death - and more - it's all there. The writing is at times humorous, at times beautifully lyrical (the chapter entitled "Snow"), at times deeply moving (the chapter entitled "A Soldier, and Brave") and rather too frequently for me, over-intellectual and impenetrable (Settembrini and Naptha's debates.)

Mann made a self-confessed "very arrogant request" that the book should be read twice. I might just take him up on it - but not this year.

Mann's masterpiece is one of those books I thought I should have read in college or grad school, but hadn't .So, I persuaded my UChicago Book Club to choose it for our last book. For the first one-third of the book, I was regretting our decision. Very little happens. The beauty of Mann's writing made the experience tolerable. In the second third characters come to life and interest and concern for them increases, especially for "our hero", Han Castorp. The last third is action-packed enough to satisfy any adrenaline junkie. So, for anyone who undertakes reading this great beast of a book and begins to waver early on, hang in there. It is a masterpiece and will prove well worth the hours and days of effort to reach the conclusion.

Mann has droll fun in this classic book.

It tells the story of Hans, a dull and plodding fellow

who visits his cousin in a TB sanitarium. While there,

the head doctor discovers TB in Hans. Hans must stay

and live the life of an invalid. He hesitates. Then he bumbles

ahead.

Mann makes him a believable fool. We laugh

at his gaffes. We encourage him to learn from

Herr Settembrini, an artist of the beautiful ideal and

the noble gesture. We see him timidly tumble into

puppy-love with the beauty Claudia.

Hans moves further into the kingdom of the mind. An

afternoon dream re-awakens his vague worship

of another school-boy years ago. In this dream, Mann

suggests everything and nothing at the same time.

It is his constant theme of admiring beauty, no matter

where one finds it. Man, woman or cathedral, it seems

all the same to Mann.

Hans strives on. He adventures into speaking his

love to Claudia in a dream-like night orgy. He explores

the universe of right and wrong, all in this

sanitarium.

The story has great moments of gentle fun. We can

image Mann smiling a droll smile, off to the side of

the stage that he has set.

The story is told in an almost medieval style. But the

humor is timeless. Every reader who gets past the

fortress of the opening pages will enjoy spinning past

the humor.

One may read the sanitarium as a miniature of Europe

just before World War One. Or one may reach further

back and view it in the German tradition of a youngster

sallying forth to learn chivalry and become a knight.

Get through this rich but weighty book. It will

change your life.

--- Frank Hickey, Retired LAPD Officer and writer of the

Max Royster crime novels of Pigtown Books.

While reading the first three hundred pages or so, I must have thought about throwing this book into the recycle bin at least a dozen times. I hated it! It went nowhere! Now that I have finally finished it, there are tears in my eyes because the effect it had on me. This sounds crazy, but I think it is a not uncommon reaction among readers. The novel got more interesting after the first 300 pages when I realized that I was up there on the magic mountain with Hans, and there was after all nothing to be afraid of or worried about except that little damp spot on my left lung and what I would read during my afternoon rest cures. It is then I suddenly stopped waiting for something to happen, and began to say goodbye to the bustling flatlands below, to hell with them, and to just enjoy the experience of being above it all. I also fell in love with the characters; they became personal friends almost. It was probably also a case of gradually warming to Mann's highly ironic writing style. Once I finished the work, there was an emotionally powerful effect of looking back upon the entire story from the position of the last pages. Now one is down in the flatlands again, in the trenches of the Great War; and Hans gradually disappears into the anonymity of the field of battle.

The phenomenological philosopher László Tengelyi, in his book "The Wild Region in Life-History", discusses Hans Castorp's personal transformation throughout the novel and the role that time plays. Mann asks, "Can one tell -- that is to say, narrate -- time, time itself, as such, for its own sake?" The novel raises the fundamental question of not only every time novel but of every life-history as well. Tengelyi says the novel "offers a term as an answer, which implies that a life-history is permeated with a mysterious unity. That term is destiny." In his debate with Mynheer Peeperkorn, Hans indirectly refers to the idea one's destiny:

"For love of her [Clavdia Chauchat], in defiance of Herr Setembrini, I declared myself for the principle of unreason, the spiritual principle of disease, under whose aegis I had already, in reality, stood for a long time back, and I remained up here. I no longer know precisely how long. . ."

Destiny: meaning "For a long time back". This idea of destiny, says Tengelyi, offers an answer to the fundamental question of all life stories: although time, "time itself, for its own sake" cannot be narrated, we are able to recount time woven into a destiny. Yet the last pages of the novel relate that although Hans may very well have stood under the aegis of the spiritual principle of disease for a long time back, he does not in the end remain on the magic mountain. Tengelyi's book explores this question further, as he introduces the idea of a destinal event: a radical turn in life-history. "A fatal event will only become a destinal event if it is not simply met but it strikes someone down in his or her alleged self-identity." It seems this is what happens to Hans at the end of the novel. Where Hans had sought to realize his own destiny as "life's problem child", apart from the world below in the flatlands, never attending to what was going on down there, that other world down below finally forced reality upon him, forced him to create a new beginning in his life history. In this way the novel underscores the fact that we are never fully in control of our life stories. As Tengelyi writes, "The field of one's own experience is profoundly marked by a difference between what is, in fact, one's own and what is, in reality, alien to oneself. In other words, the experience one gains never fails to include some hints at the experiences others gain, have gained, or may gain."

This is a novel that will remain with me for a long, long time, and one I plan to return to in the future whenever these flatlands get to me and I need to take another restful journey to the International Sanatorium Berghoff.

Finally, after 30 years, I’ve closed the gap and completed the task that Thomas Mann, in his afterword to the novel, suggests for his readers: to read The Magic Mountain not once but twice.

My first reading of it was in the spring and summer of 1982, when I was 23. It was not the first of his works that I had read, for I had already made my way through his short stories, including “Death in Venice”, and before any of those, his late novel Doctor Faustus, which I read first because it happened to be on the bookshelf at home. Even so, it was not our book, for it was on loan from my mother’s friend Dorothy Burt, an avid reader, a close friend of Malcolm Lowry, and a passionate fan of Thomas Mann. It was Dorothy who first made me want to read Thomas Mann, and Dorothy, wherever you are: thank you.

I enjoyed The Magic Mountain very much the first time through, although I was not in a position to get a great deal out of it except the pleasure of sojourning at length in that world of his creation, populated with so many striking and memorable characters. Although I was a writer myself, even a serious one, I did not have the experience or the literary education to appreciate it for its deeper qualities, beyond the realization that these deeper qualities were there to be plumbed by the knowledgeable.

By 1982 I had already read Joseph Campbell’s Creative Mythology, but I don’t recall applying any of Campbell’s thoughts on that first reading of The Magic Mountain. However, the next time I read Creative Mythology, I paid much more attention to his discussion of The Magic Mountain and his comparison of it with James Joyce’s Ulysses. Campbell regarded them as the two greatest novels of the 20th century, and held them up as examples and products of the unfolding and altogether unprecedented mythology of the modern West: a mythology created not by prophets, priests, or shamans, but by “adequate” individuals—people with the courage and integrity to be their own unique selves. The conveyor of this new “creative” mythology is the artist who is true to his own conscience and his own experience of value, and Campbell regarded Joyce and Mann as the preeminent voices of this new mythology in the literary field.

So The Magic Mountain, set in the years before World War I, is the story of a 22-year-old German, Hans Castorp, who travels to a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin Joaquim, a young soldier who is taking the rest cure to rid himself of infection before embarking on his military career. Castorp, for his part, is merely taking a quick break before he himself embarks on his own chosen career in nautical engineering. He plans to stay for three weeks.

He stays longer. Much longer. For the bacillus is discovered in his own lungs, and the medical director, Hofrat Behrens, advises him that he too will need to clear his infection before returning to the “flatlands.” So young Castorp settles in to life among the international clientele of the Berghof.

It is a strange life of indolence and routine, in a setting of sumptuous luxury and scenic splendor. Ordinary concepts of time vanish, and before long one forgets about the world below and one’s interests in it, and becomes a feverish, sometimes moribund, patient with little on one’s mind but passing amusements, gossip, and flirtations.

At least, that describes the typical sanatorium patient; everyone is different. One important friendship for Castorp up here is with the down-at-heel Italian pedagogue Ludovico Settembrini, who views the Berghof and its denizens with an ironic and mocking eye. Another important relationship is with the patient Clavdia Chauchat, an attractive and mysterious creature from the wastes of central Russia.

The story is subtle, meandering, and takes its time (my disintegrating pocketbook edition—the same yellow one I read in 1982—runs to 727 pages). If you’re in a rush, this book is not for you. But then, the whole idea of being in a rush is what those at the Berghof would call a “flatland” preoccupation. It arises from a vulgar, bourgeois, and thoughtless attitude toward the great mystery of time. For Hans Castorp, in stepping off the little train in the alpine village, enters what we would now call a time warp, and he soon discovers that he hasn’t the least idea of what time is or how it works. What exactly is it? Indeed, at one point in the book the narrator confides that he is telling a “time-romance”.

That is all I will say about the story itself. Mann is a master artist and he has woven his literary tapestry with great care. I see that it is described as a “novel of ideas”, and I suppose it is; but then I regard every novel as a novel of ideas. Yes, characters talk about ideas, and there is a lot of abstract talk in the book; maybe too much. But that is the milieu here; it is the time and place. The world has not yet slid off the cliff into the conflagration of world war. Ideas are part, but only a part, of Castorp’s journey. Without knowing it, he is on an inward quest of self-discovery, and the the seeming outward events mirror back to him the transformations happening within his own soul, as within the chrysalis of the butterfly.

Is The Magic Mountain the greatest novel of the 20th century? That’s a matter of opinion. In mine, it’s certainly one of them. After this my second reading, I intend to reflect on the book and its meaning over the coming days and weeks, and I fully expect it to repay that reflection. I thought that I couldn’t truly enjoy fiction-reading anymore, but The Magic Mountain has reminded me that I can.

Thank you, Dorothy Burt.

A very tedious book which attempts to philosophize on time, death, life, goals, character, and the meaning of life. The main attraction is the sentence structure and the endless allusions to spending time without any purpose or task.

The Magic Mountain is an enchanting novel by German novelist and short story writer, Thomas Mann (1875-1955), who received the 1929 Nobel Prize for Literature. This tour de force novel relates the story of Hans Castorp, a young engineer who goes to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Switzerland, The Berghof, "The Magic Mountain." Hans' last name Castorp perhaps alludes to the mythic twin Roman gods Castor and Pollux engendered in the close relationship between Hans and his cousin Joachim.

It turns out that The Berghof becomes a comfortable and dreamlike, totally enchanting place for Hans Castorp who finds himself unable to cut short his visit and return home to face the world as a young engineer. Instead, he becomes enamored of a charming aristocratic Russian lady, Madame Clavdia Chauchat, and the Magic Mountain itself. Moreover, it soon becomes obvious that Hans may also be infected with the tubercle bacillus, increasing the complexity of his situation and providing him with a valid reason to stay on the Magic Mountain. Castorp stays at the Berghof for seven years and only leaves to join the German army with the advent of World War I.

The novel provides a vehicle for Mann to discuss the advances and mysteries in medicine -- for example, the use of x-rays, which had only been discovered in 1895 by the physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, and Sigmund Freud's development of psychoanalysis and his theory of the unconscious. The novel also serves as a medium to describe complex personal inter-relationships and social interactions in society at large, and even more profoundly, the toll of diseases and human suffering, ultimately death and dying, as metaphors for man's existence, journey and final exit on this planet.

Simply, this is one of the best and greatest books of all times, and the Franklin Library edition is a collector's choice. Recommended without reservations with 5 stars. I have also read and reviewed the leather Franklin addition. Both editions deserve the same review — 5 stars for a magnificent book and excellent translations!

Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D. is an Associate Editor in Chief and World Affairs Editor of Surgical Neurology International (SNI). He is the author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (1995) and Cuba in Revolution -- Escape From a Lost Paradise (2002).

Borrowing a phrase from another Thomas, it might have been more fitting if the English translation of this book were titled "Time and the Mountain" ... but Mann's book came before Wolfe's.
Not much happens in this book of almost 800 pages. The hero, Hans Castorp, arrives at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Switzerland to visit his cousin for three weeks. During that time he falls in love with a patient from the Dagestan region of Russia and is diagnosed as being ill himself. As a result of the illness he has to prolong his stay and is eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis himself. He ends up staying for seven years, and has lots of conversations with other patients; in the course of those seven years, he witnesses the death of his cousin and two suicides, and his love interest vanishes (we don't find out where to or with what emotional consequences for the hero). In the end, he leaves to fight (and most likely die) in the First World War, which has just broken out. That, in essence, is it. And yet in spite of this dearth of "action" every one of the 800 pages is fascinating, on many different levels.
On one level, the novel can, I think, be read as a morality play in which the Jewish Communist Jesuit (sic!) Leo Naphta represents Passion, the Italian liberal humanist Lodovico Settembrini Reason, and the Dutch business mogul Pieter Peeperkorn Action. Mann uses the interactions of Castorp with these characters, and their interactions with each other, to illustrate the problems that arise when each of these appears in isolation, unbalanced by the others: all are self-destructive - fiery Passion becomes violent fanaticism; Reason spins endless plans and projects for reforming the world and writing a utopian encyclopedia; both Action and Passion end up committing suicide.
The book can also be read is as an exploration of language - and again this seems to occur on more than one level. On the most obvious level, Mann displays his talent for differentiating his characters by giving each of them a unique voice, a unique rhetorical style, ranging from Castorp's clumsy and naïve style, to Peeperkorn's endlessly elaborate formulations of pure nothingness, to Settembrini's highly eloquent rhetorical style. Upon reflection, however, what is perhaps even more striking is that almost all of what is said in the endless disputes in which the protagonists cross their rhetorical swords is essentially pure nonsense. The novel was published in 1929, and although its action takes place in the run-up to the First World War, it is clear that Mann was preoccupied with the lengthening shadow of dictatorship falling over Europe in the 1920s (republics had already given way to dictatorships in Italy and Poland, and the rise of dictators in Austria and Germany was only four years away). Mann makes his Swiss sanatorium a sort of microcosmic arena in which these problems are played out, and his concern is to show us where the use, and - more importantly - abuse, of language was leading Europe. This lesson remains as important nearly 80 years later as on the day of the book's publication.

The Magic Mountain is a renowned classic of twentieth century literature, especially German and European literature. As a book, it is moderate to easy to read, and I highly recommend the novel. It is easier to read than some of Mann's other works. I recently purchased and read this exact novel as shown.

The novel is set near Davos, Switzerland, just before the outbreak of World War I. The story was inspired by Mann's own visit to a clinic in Davos when his wife was admitted to a similar clinic when she was suffering from a lung ailment.

Without giving away the plot, the story is about a young man, Hans Castorp who comes to the mountain clinic for a brief visit to see a relative, a man of a similar age, who is a patient. He becomes caught up in clinic life. Mann uses his stay at the clinic as a vehicle to explore issues of European bourgeois society, including the destructiveness of the society as a whole. Mann presents a story with six main characters who discuss, debate, or represent various aspects of morality and behavior including health, illness, sexuality and religion. At an earlier time, Mann had planned on making the book a short satire, but he changed his mind and developed it into a full novel - which has become a masterpiece - and not difficult to read compared with some of Mann's other works.

The patients are cut off from civilization, or what the patients call the "flatlands" in the book. They are living in their own small world and are fed sumptuous meals along with wines many times a day. Between the meals, they meet, they leave the clinic and go on walks, they have discussions and sometimes flirt. Isolated as they are, they live in a magic and artificial world surrounded by the natural beauties and the wonders of the Swiss mountains. The weather in Davos lacks sharp seasonal changes. It can snow in the summer; and, in the unchanging weather and repetitive daily routine they lose the feeling for time and they lose their perspectives.

Without giving away the plot, Castorp, comes for a short stay of three weeks to visit his cousin. With a degree of foreboding, he stays on. He develops a secret lust after a fellow patient, a Russia woman, Madame Chaucat, who is married but whose husband is far away. Of the six main characters, Clavdia Chauchat represents erotic temptation and lust. Castorp and his cousin represent the values of current pre-World War I German society.

He engages in conversations with fellow patients, and among them he is regarded as a proper German man with the German reservations and morality. Outside the clinic, they take walks where he becomes friends with Settembrini, an Italian, who is a liberal, a humanist, a supporter of the democratic ideals, and morality. Settembrini comes into conflict with Naphta, the fifth main character, who represents the forces of decay, of radicalism and extremism. fascism, anarchism, and communism. The story is complicated by a sixth character, Mynheer Peepercorn, who enters towards the end of the story.

Added to all of this is Mann's own love of music which he mixes in near the end, plus surprisingly for the reader, a touch of the supernatural, which actually spoils the book a bit.

This is a highly entertaining and worthwhile read.

Anyone who is preoccupied with the cares of the "flatland", who lives busily working away with the sense that everything will keep humming along indefinitely, will find this book a waste of time. The main character, Hans Castorp, takes leave of his life in the lowlands of northern Germany at first on a vacation, but then due to a lingering illness stays on at a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland for what turns out to be an ominous seven years: the time leading up to the outbreak of World War I. From a life of comfort and security, in which he follows the well-defined and socially-acceptable track of becoming an Engineer, he finds himself transported with an unknown future to a rarefied mountain world, in which death is stalking.

The narrative moves briskly at the beginning, much like I remember BUDDENBROOKS, but soon the author gets into a different kind of territory and sabotages the running narrative by lengthy descriptions. At one point, he takes almost an entire page to describe Hans taking his temperature (in keeping with the theme of time). What drew me into this descriptive style concerned the events as they unfolded: certainly, Hans's attraction to Clavdia Chauchat, the fate of his cousin Joachim, the doings of the patients at the sanatorium in the face of death; and especially, the perceptive way of the author in noting all those personal concerns that are often skipped over in the usual rush and roar of everyday life.

On one level, this book is about the education of Hans Castorp - an education all-together different from what he would get in the flatland. We get introduced to the long-winded discourse of Settembrini, the secular humanist ; and as a counterpoint, Naphta and his incessant arguments defending the authoritarianism of the Church. These two represent the European conflict between the legacy of the Greeks and the religion imported from the deserts of the Levant. They, along with others such as Rhadamanthus and Peeperkorn, more closely resemble operatic characters than actual flesh and blood characters. They engage more in soliloquies than dialogue, and they confront and challenge Hans.

On a deeper level, Hans can be seen as embarking upon a spiritual quest, which is certainly unlike the material quest that he was following in the flatland. The quest for the Holy Grail in Western Mythology is a quest that can only be undertaken by a unique individual on a path not traveled ever before by anyone else, by the most difficult of possible ways. Hans is as Settembrini calls him: "the delicate child of life". But he is tested in his own way by the very immediate presence of death and disease; and he is also tested when he gets lost in a snowstorm.

Thomas Mann was one of the foremost philosophical novelists of the early 20th century. He saw the world as diseased, as described by artists and intellectuals much like himself. Because he was just such an artist/philosopher, most of his novels ring with the details of autobiography. In THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN he writes of Hans Castorp, who exemplifies the anguished artist who suffers greatly in the European society during and after the First World War. Castorp is a successful middle-class business man who does not know it at the start of the novel but his life has a huge spiritual void in it, one that remains unfulfilled until he visits a sick cousin at a German health sanatorium. His original plan is to stay for just a few weeks, but when he learns that he has contracted tuberculosis, his stay becomes indefinite. What he learns about himself, his fellow inmates, and the world at large form the bulk of the book.

The sanatorium is located high in the rarified Swiss mountains. In such an atmosphere, time has a habit of ceasing to be. Each day is just like the next so that the serene unchanging atmosphere is conducive for the intellectual to ponder the Mysteries of the Universe. Later Castorp will view this serenity as too much of a good thing, but at the start of his sojourn, peace and quiet are what he needs. While there, he meets several inmates, all of whom seem to be there more for spiritual than medical reasons. Each of them tries to inculcate a mindset in Castorp that matches his own. There is Settembrini, the realist and humanist who loves to debate whoever will listen about the common fate of man. There is Naphta, a Jew converted to Catholicism, who is the opposite of Settembrini in his insistence on the superiority of the spiritual over the rational. Naturally, both Settembrini and Naptha take turns haranguing Castorp. There is Clavdia Chauchat, a Russian woman with whom Castorp has a brief but stormy affair. And then there is Mynheer Peeperkorn, a rich Dutchman whose inability to articulate his thoughts Castorp finds engaging. All of these collectively induce Castorp to remain for seven years. When Castorp enters the sanatorium his mind is very nearly a philosophical tabula rasa, a blank slate in which they cannot resist scribbling in their unique perspective on life, death, and the absurdities engendered by the interaction of the two.

Castorp changes during the course of the novel, as well he must given his daily debates with his fellow inmates and his extended periods of isolation that allow him to digest their views so that he may find his own way. Slowly and painfully he succeeds. His tuberculosis becomes secondary to his regeneration of self. He unwisely takes a walk alone in a snowstorm and has a spiritual epiphany which Mann describes in allegorical terms such that for him life and death are but opposite sides of one coin. Eventually, his perspective expands so that he can now see the isolation of his seven years were not the end, but merely the means to his own understanding of himself and his world. When he realizes this, he can leave the cocoon of the sanatorium for the world outside, even knowing that the unspeakable horrors of trench warfare await. For Mann, this too was an epiphany that suggests that vibrant life however ugly and nasty it might be is preferable to the sainted and unchallenged life of seclusion. Castorp grew to realize that the magic of an isolated mountain is a two-edged sword even if most of his fellow inmates did not.

This translation of 'The Magic Mountain' by John E. Woods should be your choice to attempt to tackle this large, complex book. Why? Is there really a difference between H.T. Lowe-Porter’s translation compared to Woods’ translation? Yes, there is!

For example, in Lowe-Porter’s translation, in the chapter of “Walpurgis-Night,” there is a key part of the whole book where the protagonist, Hans Castorp, is speaking with Clavdia Chauchat, the love of his life. They conduct a long conversation in French. Lowe-Porter’s translation does NOT bother to translate this French dialogue into English! Yes, that is correct; for those of us who do not speak (or read) French, you are on your own. Fortunately, Woods’ translation translates this key dialogue of the book into English.

And Woods’ translation is a much more effective read; reading Thomas Mann is not easy, and Lowe-Porter’s translation did not make it any easier. Woods, however, has captured the ‘cadence’ (or ‘pace’) of Mann’s writing, and uses words and phrases much more understandable to your average reader.

As for the book itself? Well, many reviewers have commented on how reading this large, yet dense book is a figurative example of the book’s title; they feel as though they have scaled a mountain when they have finished reading the book. My feeling is different: reading The 'Magic Mountain' is like running a marathon, where in the process of running all the 20+ miles, one encounters some stretches that are tough to traverse, and at other times one is running through stretches where the scenery is fantastic, and the going is actually smooth. This is my overall view of the book. Some parts of the book are some of the finest fictional writing I have ever had to pleasure to read: the chapters of “An Attack, and a Repulse,” “Snow,” “Highly Questionable,” “Hysterica Passio,” and the last 12 pages or so of “A Soldier, and Brave” could, with some minor alterations, stand by themselves as excellent short stories. Yet other parts of the book, where Mann through the characters of Settembrini and Naphta, presents the social and intellectual views of the world at the book’s point in time, seem to go on forever. I sometimes wonder if Mann’s editor had the courage to bring this up with the author, only to be overridden by Mann’s insistence that every word had to remain.

This is a very good book; but like all books, 'The Magic Mountain' has its flaws. If one is willing to invest the time and have great patience, one should be rewarded with reading a book that will keep you thinking about the book’s theme and characters for the rest of your life.

What begins as a slow, listless, ponderous novel soon becomes a stirring adventure of the senses. It is, in fact, the most deliciously sensous book I have ever read. Hans Castorp goes to the Berghf sanatorium in the Swiss mountains to visit his cousin, intending to stay only three weeks, but he ends up staying for seven years. Amidst death and disease, Castorp experiances a dizzying array of physical, spiritual and intellectual impressions, the effects of which all seem sublimated by the rarefied mountain air. The dominant theme is the nature of Time. The Berghof is hermetically sealed, as it were, from the outside world; its inhabitants live by a different clock, where even mundane routines - such as taking one's temperature - assume almost ritualistic proportions. To me, above all this is a novel of the senses, not just the physical senses, but also the "extra-senses" and "Time-sense". It even deals with senseless-ness, both in its inanimate material form and in the form of death. Even the intellectual convolutions of Naphta and Settembrini - one the rational humanist, the other the romantic terrorist - are intensely sensous in that they often leave the logical realm and take flight into a world that may be described as sense-ideas. To the reader, the very act of reading provides a sense of timelessness, of suspended animation in all the hustle-and-bustle of the real world. It is a book to be savoured slowly, for it draws you into its own pace, which is leisurely yet intense. Amidst the pristine whitness of the enchanted mountain, there is much color: the sky here is more intensely blue, the grass greener. The people here, all presumably so ordinary down there at the almost forgotten " flat-land", are here so extraordinarily human, for here they exhaust the limitless sense-possibilities of the human experiance on this earth. This is a most unusual novel, perhaps a one-of-a-kind experiance. It creeps under your skin and enters your bones and becomes, like your senses, part of your earthly existance.

To read this unbelievable work is to experience the fruition of one of the most enlightened minds in literary history. From the beautiful but intellectually minor Buddenbrooks to this impeccable piece of fiction, Thomas Mann grew as a thinker with staggering rapidity and thoroughness. The book reads like a bottomless bag of delicious morsels: no matter how many you pop in your mouth at one time, you never seem to get to the last one. "What a piece of work man is," Mann observes, "and how easily conscience betrays him. He listens to the voice of duty, and what he hears is the license of passion." The book teems with passages such as this, whose inarguable truth and sincerity transcends traditional value judgements. Northrop Frye writes that art is neither good nor bad, true nor false. That certainly applies to this book. If we are to believe that the great poem should not mean but be, then Mann's book is just as immortal a poem as it is a novel. But equally as delightful as its language and ideas (excitingly rendered into English by John E. Woods) are the book's actions and characters, which are drawn so vividly you could almost touch their faces, hear them breathing, dwell in their hearts until the book's final word. And the action: who would not want to take a ride up to that hermetic but wildly sociable world of the Swiss Alps sanatorium, which seethes with the lust and intellectual vigor of of an ancient Greek tragedy? The cast of individuals Hans Castorp meets during his stay there are unforgettable, and the dramatic pitch of their many quarrels and parties is indeed nothing short of "magic." This is a world you fall in love with and would die to step into. If any single passage in all of Mann's work won him the Nobel, it is the one this book concludes with: the matured and resolved Hans Castorp blending into the violent human sea of the battlefield in what would become World War I, that epic nightmare which Mann predicts with alarming detail and precision. Ultimately, I think this is a book about being human, one of the select few that do not settle for examining a particular aspect of the human experience, but the entire scope of it all. It is a book for everyone: the lonely, the loved, and the lost.

As sort of a running joke whenever an online reviewer begins their say on Nobel Prize Winner Thomas Mann's gargantuan symbolic pretext to WWI, they always begin by remarking how it's a novel about how Hans Castorp (who's best described as an ordinary German gentlemen) intends to go to a tuberculosis sanitarium for three weeks and ends up staying there for seven years- at which point the reviewer states that this is essentially the entire plot and it's a massive novel where nothing happens and, after many months effort, I must reluctantly concur that to paraphrase The Magic Mountain would be saying that it's a whole lot of nothing and that this is a novel that can only be enjoyed and understood on the most infintesmal detail; but don't be afraid dear reader! there is ne'er a word wasted and Thomas Mann's Olympian sarcasm, irony, and humor give the novel brisk- though full of philisophically bantering and sidetracked tedium- pace that keeps your interest hooked and pedagogically intoduces you to many prevailing modernist ideas via symbolic characters.

700 pages, loved every word of it, even if at times it did get a little dry and overly academic (namely the parts with Settembrini and Naphta). Ultimately- very funny, many quotable digressions on philosophy, colorful characters, magical prose, and difficult readability that's worth it in the end. Recommended for anyone who's intrigued by metaphysical fiction but doesn't know where to start.

"A+"

Probably more than any other author since Goethe, Thomas Mann wrote the quintessential "Bildungsroman" with The Magic Mountain. Like all of Mann's works, it is a sprawling monster of a novel, getting into just about everything under the sun from the first impression of hearing a phonograph (back when they really were new) all the way to the intellectual underpinnings of the counterreformation. Like most great writers, Mann can get into your interior life, and he will do so here in a way that will put you into the sanitarium with our hero Kastorp, and share his life and discoveries. It never ceases to amaze me how the thinnest of plots - none at all, in fact - can spin such a pure gold of a novel. I must confess that I prefer "Faustus", but after that this is my favorite Mann novel.
However, I will stick with H.T. Lowe-Porter's version over Mr. Woods'. Ms. Lowe-Porter had the advantage of a personal and professional relationship with Mann, and if Mann were writing in English (which he spoke passably, I believe) I think it would probably parallel her version more than Mr. Woods'.

"The Magic Mountain" might very well be my favorite book of all times. There might be other books which I enjoy equally, but there cannot be a book I value more than this one. And that although I did not have a good start with Thomas Mann. Indeed, I had to read his "Felix Krull" in highschool when still living in Germany. I hated it. Many of my friends had to read "Magic Mountain" instead, and they hated it as well and called it the most boring book of all times.

Years later, I still can understand this view. It might even happen that the book also bores you. Indeed, all that happens is that a young man comes to a Spa in the Alps, sleeps, eats and talks to people and nothing more, and that over a 1000 pages. Besides that, Thomas Mann writes like an old Latin teacher, his sentences are often a page long, and overly structured.

It just happened that the book really touched me. I don't even know why. Here are some reasons: First, German is not the most beautyful language. It is quite hard and quite complicated and has a harsh tone to it. But Thomas Mann really manages to turn the complicated structure into a virtue. He is one of the very few people who can handle german extremely well (one of the others being Kafka) and who manage to turn it into a beautiful language. I imagine that any good English translation can account for that.

Second, it adresses the major philosophical question everybody of us has. And these questions are timeless and do not seem to depend on the circumstances in which you are living. In that sense, the book is very apolitical (although it adresses European Politics at the beginning of the 20th century, but in a very "abstract" way).

Third, I have not read a book where character development and structure is better. Thomas Mann has such a deep understanding for his protagonists and his surroundings.

Fourth, I like the humanistic feel of the book. It certainly is "bourgoise", and for that the german hippie community hated Thomas Mann.

Well, you have to read it to understand what I mean, I can't describe it. Love it or hate it. I cannot imagine that in this case there is something in between (and normally I don't like saying that!).

What a sweeping novel. Really, I have never come across another book in which I felt I knew the main character quite so well as this one. We, the readers, as not spared one detail of Hans Castorp's 7 year soujorn into the Swiss Alps seeking treatment for a supposed case of TB. This novel, quite simply, encompasses all of early twientieth centery Europe. Bergohf, the santatorium where Hans stays, is, as the back of the book states, a microcosm of Europe. Ths you will find that all the characters represent some aspect of the European mindset in the early 1900's (right before World War I, mind you...). We are shown the major deabates of contenintal philosophy, the angry polemic of radicals and reactionaries alike. Our blank slate, Hans, is molded and shaped by this world away from reality, and we come to understand things about human nature, suffering, illness, and strife that simply wouldn't be illuminate otherwise. I did like this book. But in the end, I was finding it excessivley long. Many of the later episodes do not seem to give much to the plot and do not shed any new light on to Hans' character. So I recommend this book with reservations. The Good parts of it are REALLY good. But just be prepared for a long, occasionally frustrating read.

"The Magic Mountain" might very well be my favorite book of all times. There might be other books which I enjoy equally, but there cannot be a book I value more than this one. And that although I did not have a good start with Thomas Mann. Indeed, I had to read his "Felix Krull" in highschool when still living in Germany. I hated it. Many of my friends had to read "Magic Mountain" instead, and they hated it as well and called it the most boring book of all times.

Years later, I still can understand this view. It might even happen that the book also bores you. Indeed, all that happens is that a young man comes to a Spa in the Alps, sleeps, eats and talks to people and nothing more, and that over a 1000 pages. Besides that, Thomas Mann writes like an old Latin teacher, his sentences are often a page long, and overly structured.

It just happened that the book really touched me. I don't even know why. Here are some reasons: First, German is not the most beautyful language. It is quite hard and quite complicated and has a harsh tone to it. But Thomas Mann really manages to turn the complicated structure into a virtue. He is one of the very few people who can handle german extremely well (one of the others being Kafka) and who manage to turn it into a beautiful language. I imagine that any good English translation can account for that.

Second, it adresses the major philosophical question everybody of us has. And these questions are timeless and do not seem to depend on the circumstances in which you are living. In that sense, the book is very apolitical (although it adresses European Politics at the beginning of the 20th century, but in a very "abstract" way).

Third, I have not read a book where character development and structure is better. Thomas Mann has such a deep understanding for his protagonists and his surroundings.

Fourth, I like the humanistic feel of the book. It certainly is "bourgoise", and for that the german hippie community hated Thomas Mann.

Well, you have to read it to understand what I mean, I can't describe it. Love it or hate it. I cannot imagine that in this case there is something in between (and normally I don't like saying that!).

What a sweeping novel. Really, I have never come across another book in which I felt I knew the main character quite so well as this one. We, the readers, as not spared one detail of Hans Castorp's 7 year soujorn into the Swiss Alps seeking treatment for a supposed case of TB. This novel, quite simply, encompasses all of early twientieth centery Europe. Bergohf, the santatorium where Hans stays, is, as the back of the book states, a microcosm of Europe. Ths you will find that all the characters represent some aspect of the European mindset in the early 1900's (right before World War I, mind you...). We are shown the major deabates of contenintal philosophy, the angry polemic of radicals and reactionaries alike. Our blank slate, Hans, is molded and shaped by this world away from reality, and we come to understand things about human nature, suffering, illness, and strife that simply wouldn't be illuminate otherwise. I did like this book. But in the end, I was finding it excessivley long. Many of the later episodes do not seem to give much to the plot and do not shed any new light on to Hans' character. So I recommend this book with reservations. The Good parts of it are REALLY good. But just be prepared for a long, occasionally frustrating read.

Like many in America today, I find myself a product of an unfinished education, with a sense of being flung into a history I don't quite grasp. I do my best to remedy my inadequacies, and a novel like this is an excellent tonic for them.
A classic 20th century novel of ideas, there's so much to mull over here: the nature of time, notions of progress and regress in history, the body and illness, psychoanalysis and spiritualism.
Unlike his contemporaries Joyce and Faulkner, Mann doesn't give us radical experiments in narrative form. This is fairly straightforward and readable. The only bit of cleverness is Mann's telescoping of narrative and chronological time: 1 week can take a hundred pages, while a few years can be covered in twenty. However, as Mann writes at the outset, only the exhaustive is truly interesting, and Mann seeks to be fascinating throughout the 700 pages.
Mann has a sense of humor and a sense of tragedy, and both shine here, with adults wrapped up like babies, medical X-ray photos as sensual mementos, multiple breakfasts, and grief as fetish. Despite the ironic and frequent declarations of the hero Hans Castorp's "mediocrity," by the end, Mann elicits from us genuine and deep sympathy for him.

Thomas Mann's opus follows Hans Castorp's visit to a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a stay which would last seven years. This immensely rich and complex novel is, at its core, about temporality. We are given numerous conversations between the primary actors about the plasticity of time, about the ways in which our sense of time shape our existence. What is particularly brilliant about Mann's prose in 'The Magic Mountain,' is his ability to provoke sensations in the reader that mirror the protagonist. For instance, during the scene early in the novel where Castorp decides to stay at the sanatorium, I found that I too had been seduced by the private world which Castorp had become embedded. It is during this scene that it is revealed that the patients are in fact intoxicated (both literally and metaphorically) by their environment; the accretion of bacteria on the spinal cord creates the effect of a subtle intoxication and euphoria. Remarkably, Mann does not fail to create this effect through the creation of his conversations, which achieve an extraordinary level of verisimilitude. This is a novel about ideas, not actions. We are thrown into an ongoing dialectic between the enlightenment and romanticism, between the hard sciences and psychoanalysis, between philosophy and religion, and so on. The characters, particularly Castorp, Settembrini, and Dr. Krokowski, pulse with realistic energy. 'The Magic Mountain' is a masterpiece of form and scale, it is truly one of the great literary works of its time. John Woods has provided a supremely readable translation, both in the beauty of its cadences and in the rich subtlety of the dialog.

Nominally, the Magic Mountain is the story of Hans Castorp, a young German man who has just finished school and is about to start on a career in shipbuilding. First, he goes for three weeks to a Swiss sanatorium to visit his cousin, partly for a vacation before he starts his job and partly to convince his cousin, a soldier, that he should rejoin the real world rather than stay in the sanatorium. Castorp gets a check-up from the doctor, learns that he is ill and remains for seven years.
Mann originally started this book as a novella parody of sanatoriums and medicine in the early 20th Century, when doctors were first saying that disease was created by organisms and were enamored with the power of the newly discovered x-rays. However, Mann stopped the novella at the beginning of World War I, and came back to it at after the war, realizing that he had a lot to say and that this story might be a good vehicle through which to say it.
After all, the sanatorium's clientele were the new rich and the old upper class of all the different countries of Europe who began the war. The doctors acted both as the leaders who led them through the insanity and the scientists who made the mechanized, horrible war possible. And Hans Castorp was the age of the soldiers, following the leaders, the aristocracy, the scientists and the intellectuals into battle.
You can read all this into the book, if you wish. The doctors are firm in their belief that they are helping their patients, but are not above shenanigans like "proving" with little evidence that patients should stay year-round, rather than leave for the summer in order to line their wallets. Herr Settembrini and later Herr Nafta are the intellectuals filling Castorp with ideas that seem sometimes benign and sometimes diabolical. Castorp is a young, impressionable man who falls madly in love for a fellow patient, Clavdia, but has no outlet for his emotion, except during Carnival--a truly amazing scene, which alone is enough to make the book worthwhile. No wonder this continent was plunged into a tragic war that left Mann with the need to write this beautiful, tragic book.
I, however, was more interested in Mann's thoughts about of life in general that permeate this book. My favorite example is the way Mann talks about the concept of "getting used to getting used." He describes it in the sense of Castorp who never gets used to the thin air in the Alps and therefore always winds up redfaced and short of breath. However, Castorp does get used to always being redfaced and short of breath. Therefore, he gets used to getting used to the Alps.
This is what part of life is. We are unhappy with many parts of our life (maybe a job, maybe family, maybe friends or lack of friends, or financial resources) and we never get used to that. It leaves us with an empty feeling somewhere in our soul and no way to get rid of it. We never get used to this problem and thus the empty feeling never goes away. But we get used to the empty place in our soul and think of it only occasionally. But it is there crying out.
What a sad thought about life. The solution, of course, is to listen to the part that is crying out rather than squelching it and to try to do something about it. But it is often easier to get used to getting used to a situation than it is to fix the situation. It is easier for Castorp to stay in the mountains rather than breathing normally.
Overall, an excellent book, with ideas that I had never even come close to thinking of before.

This book could be classified as an adult substitute rendition of Animal Farm as the Berghof grows hostile. It is the story, written between the World Wars taking place in the run up to World War I of Hans Castorp, a young German with a future who makes a three week trip of visiting his cousin up in the Alps. The specific destination in the mountains is a sanitarium for those with tuberculosis. Given the time period the word tuberculosis is never used. Only the condition, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment are described in many scenarios where you finally say aaah tubular...tuberculosis. But all this is the back drop to Mann's exploration in to the perceptions of time and the rift between social science and religion. Castorp ends up staying in the sanitarium out of choice.

In the beginning of each chapter Mann puts forth a hypothesis on time in a novel narrative. The rest of the chapter is suggestive color commentary on the antics of people in a 1920's Sanitarium. I call this poetry in prose. This takes longer to tell the rest of the story, which is mildly intriguing at best, but engages the reader to examine his own philosophies. In the end time becomes secondary in conflict of the soul between that which is spiritual and that which is material to which all social problems are secondary of which this is the only kind of Individualism that can be constant.

Mann uses three characters to create the analysis of society. Setrmbrini, is an advocate of secular civic norms; Naphta, is an exiled not quite ordained Jesuit priest. Both pedagogs are introduced early in the book and provide on going debate to out wit the other to the benefit of Hans Castrup. Peepercorn arrives late to the sanitarium and is incoherent in his commanding communication who imparts a don't worry be happy final ruling on all. Mann himself author weighs-in on one position over the other in the voice of Hans Castrup who surmises "There are many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is the worst". Hans Castrop's many previous observations of the pedagogic debate between Setembrini and Naphta was contradictory in whole and on each person's part. Their clever wit was no better than Peeperkon's incoherent incomplete sentences. In the end personality prevails over intelligence in societies. It pains me to see too many examples of this phenomena being the reality.

The subject of time the ends up being an undercurrent in theme. I believe Mann suggests that the cosmos is infinite and therefore there exists no supersensible world, no dualism. In the voice of Naptha: "The Beyond is absorbed in to the Here, the antithesis between God and Nature falls, and man ceases to be the theater of struggle between two hostile principles and all becomes unitary and harmonious." And therefore without man, there is no time.

In my commented bibliography found by searching on the key word cigarroomofbooks, each note is categorized as either philosophical, or that to do with time, or both.

I've just been travelling for 2 months and decided to pack a ratty second copy of The Magic Mountain with me. A long 'didactic' novel, certainly enough sustenance for any journey. I managed to skim through most of the last half on a 10 hour train trip, so my impressions will be that of a tourist. A friend of mine who read it said it was a powerful work of philosophy. Having studied a certain amount of philosophy, I found certainly a whole wealth of philosophical, sociological and historical musings. But to my annoyance, none of the issues could really be developed into a strongly structured argument. Rather, I feel, Mann was trying to conjure up the intellectual milieu of the time. If anything, Mann, as artist was trying to describe the philosophy of the age from a point above philosophy, weaving a narrative of contradictory thoughts, if you will. I found the characters beautifully drawn and they rebounded off each perfectly. From the indolent, dreamy Hans to the intensely funny Settembri, as he pontificated what was basically an inarticulate philosophical position. The book was at its best in the heated discussions which cemented the foible and nuaced details of the characters. But...between these conversations, I found the prose rather lacklustre and pedestrian. Pages and pages of static descriptions of the sanitarium put me very close to catatonia, until I got woken up by the arrival of some characters. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the writings of some more contemporary writings, but couldn't the passage of time be evoked by ways other than the physical passing of time in the reading process itself? But let it be said, the coherence of the novel is staggering. The tightness of the structure is sustained over the course of this weighty novel. Now that is a feat to be admired.

Many cogent remarks have already been made on Mann and his Magic Mountain. I will not rehearse them here but simply add a few reflections based on my second reading of the book. First, the Woods translation, as others have remarked is significantly better than the one by Lowe-Porter. Upon rereading I reflect that the old French aphorism -plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose (The more things change the more they stay the same) is only true most of the time. Mann's mountain was masking a massive volcano that erupted in the twentieth century destroying the world he created. The descendants of Hans Castorp and his mountain top friends - if there are any- have been transmogrified into a cell phone Facebook crowd, twittering their confreres in the valley about the the sanatorium scene. A resurrected Mann would now have to considerably expand the Totentanz chapter in a revised edition and perhaps retitle the book as Dance Macabre.

When my book club chose to read Magic Mountain, I had absolutely no idea what it was about. Being a fan of science fiction and fantasy, I guess my interpretation is a bit off the beaten track. After the first couple hundred pages, I thought that perhaps it was a "Haunted House" story, that the sanitorium was exerting some evil influence on the characters. It took me a while to figure out that it was really a fairy tale, one of those stories in which hapless mortals fall into a fairy ring and stay to dance the night away, and afterwards discover that a hundred years have passed in the real world.
Last month my whole family got the flu, and we were all in bed for almost a month. Just as with the folks encamped on Magic Mountain, time just seems to stand still as all attention is focused inward, and the real world and its responsibilities just seem to disappear.

I hesitate to think what would happen if Thomas Mann wrote the Magic Mountain today. Would his publisher ask him to shorten it by half? Would he be told by his agent -- were he fortunate enough to get one -- that the book could never sell unless he enlivens the plot? Truly, it would be simple enough to ridicule the book's simple plot, particularly given its length. But if anyone listened, they just might miss out on arguably the greatest philosophical novel ever written.

As intellectually stimulating as this book was, it was equalling gripping to the heart. That, of course, is the hallmark of a truly great novel of ideas. In a land of action movies and MTV for teenagers and 50+ hour work weeks for "college educated" adults, I wonder what percentage of our population would have either the time or the patience to savor this masterpiece. In fact, it might not be too bold to say that we can evaluate the level of education in a society by its ability to nurture the appreciation for works like this one. I feel blessed for being given the opportunity to read it.

I liked this book without understanding much why. I always wanted to read more and more. For one, I wanted to know when Mme. Chauchat would come back and what would happen :-) I also enjoyed the conversations between Settembrini, Hans and Joachim and later Nafta. The climax of Hans' revelation in the mountain is also nice. But so much is left unexplained... ********* SPOILERS AHEAD ********* Why did Nafta kill himself? Or Peeperkorn too? Why did Clavdia leave so suddenly to be never mentioned again (when she was quite central during a long part of the book)? ************ END OF SPOILERS *********** And what's the central point of the book? I see many disconnected facts. Maybe there isn't such a central point, but then why are all those facts in the same book? :-) I see people saying this is one of the very best books ever, and I wonder. Yes, it is good, but to be acclaimed like that it would have to have shown some essentially new insight, and I didn't see that. The discussion about Time is interesting, but that's far from a great original insight. ... .

In this popular novel of the author, set almost entirely in a sanatorium for tuberculosis in Switzerland, is discussed everything that is life. All reflections about life are treated. It is a typical narrative of modernism, which enters a lot into the circumstances and thoughts of the characters. Every book lover should read the classics once in their life and this is one of them. But you have time to do it and have a clear mind. More than a reading is a study.

Having read most of Thomas Mann's works in English translation, I am of the opinion that he is the most brilliant man ever to become a well known novelist. In general, his books are hard to read. But, he puts more ideas and thoughts into one book than any other novelist I have read. The Magic Mountain brings before the reader, in one novel, the entire spectrum of European thought in the time preceding World War 1. I found the book very slow going. But when you have finished the book, you will be overwhelmed by the greatness of the book and of Thomas Mann's mind. If you want to read a book by him that is easy. try The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. Highly enjoyable

Finished this book last night and still trying to digest all that Thomas Mann was trying to tell me. A book of many levels, some of which I remain only dimly aware of. At its most basic level a young man spends seven years in a health spa during which time his contacts with the inhabitants educate him in the forces which are tearing at europe such as liberal humanism, aesthic spirituality and the ever present human passion.
I am left with the feeling that Mann was himself struggling with the issues that he raised. That to him it was "the great confusion". He does not provide answers, but in Magic Mountain he provides many of the questions which we should be asking.

In this absolute masterwork, Mann tells us the story and the education -intellectual, emotional and spiritual- of young Hans Castorp. Recently graduated from his engineering studies at the university, and just about to begin working for a shipyard, Castorp travels to the Swiss Alps at Davos. He is supposed to spend there three weeks visiting his cousin Joachim Ziemssen, who is receiving treatment against tuberculosis in a high-mountain hospital. After the three original weeks, Castopr discovers he is "sick", and so he stays there seven years, the span of this magnificent "bildungsroman" or novel of apprenticeship and inner growth. It is never really clear if Castorp does get sick or if he gets trapped by the magical place.

Anyway, the isolated hospital is the perfect place for Mann to create this microcosmos of Europe and of life, a few years before that world came crumbling down forever in the suicidal WWI. In the Berghoff hospital, Castorp meets several people which will be, either through affinity or antagonism, his mentors. But first we have to mention the beautiful Russian Clawdia Chauchat, the one with the "steppenwolf-like eyes", a little older than Castorp, and with whom he falls in love -from a distance. Castorp will only have one chance of passionate love with her, before she temporarily leaves the hospital. The rest of their love will be only Platonic.

But Castorp meets other interesting and influential people. The most important one is Settembrini, an extremely sympathetic and attractive character. He is an Italian rationalist and liberal, who talks about progress, democracy, freedom, and the bright future of humankind, once it is set free from oppression and superstition. Settembrini embodies Western culture , faith in science, and progress, with a touch of naivete. Settembrini is sarcastic and straightforward, and a great creator of memorable sentences.

Halfway through the novel appears Settembrini's antagonist, his eternal (or almost) rival in heated debates. He is Naphta, a Jewish converted to Jesuit seminarist, who is a dangerous and terrorist radical. He embodies the spirit of the Middle Ages, mysticism and occultism. At the same time a religious fanatic and a Communist (after all, Communism is more a religion than a philosophy), Naphta hates all things bourgeois: family, business, democracy, science and freedom of thought. He proposes a world that is static and egalitarian, a mystic Communism ruled by the Church, and he states that the only way to reach that Utopia is through Terrorism. Settembrini's and Naphta's discussions, which have a prophetic ending, are of the utmost relevance for our time.

A third mentor appears, late in the book, in the form of the millionare Dutchman Peeperkorn. He is an old, vane an at the same time endearing man. He comes back with Clawdia when she returns from her European sojourn, as her lover. Even though he is his beloved's lover, Castorp develops a father-son relationship with this man. Peeperkorn represents the Dyonisiac impulse, the life of the flesh, the senses, and the self. Irritant and inarticulate, Peeperkorn teaches Castorp many things about life, until he makes a sad, honorable and admirable decision. I won't spoil the ending, but it makes for one of the best books ever written.

Anyone who reads this book, aside from his or her affinities, will come out of it a little or much wiser. Like in "Doktor Faustus" (which can be considered a philosophical sequel and which I have reviewed here in the store), Mann brilliantly explores a number of important subjects. The most important is Time, or rather, the passage of Time. What is Time? Can it be really measured? Is it its length the same for all of us, all the time? What is its relationship with Space? The hospital's isolation, as I said, is perfect to explore this subject. The other major subject is sickness and health, as well as the relationship between body and mind. And, of course, Society. Mann opposes the rational and liberal mentality to the mystic and spiritual.

Never boring -in spite of its seemingly dense themes-, and with a great sense of humor and of irony, this book can be read fastly and merrily, even though it is long. Character development is of the highest order, as well as the Alpine setting and the poetic quality of Mann's prose.

PS: Look out, near the end of the sixth part (there are seven), for a chapter called "Snow". It is magical and it could be a masterfull short story in its own merit.

What is the difference between learning and naiveté, original thought and stupidity, good and evil? What does it mean to find yourself in totally strange world where the time is still and disease is an every day occurrence, where snow is around 9 months out of 12, and where death is part of life? Hans Kastorpe is diagnosed with a light form of tuberculosis and has to spend over a year on mountain top in a health resort. The experience radically changes him. From a somewhat high minded bourgeois he turns into a thoughtful young man, studying sciences he never thought of studying before, thinking about life, philosophy and politics, arguing with his two highly educated friends, and wondering whether he will ever come back to the plain.
The book is uneven -- on its highs it takes one like an ocean wave and the words are being simply breathed in. On its lows it becomes a bit tedious, a bit wordy, a bit too philosophical. But overall a great work.

I won't summarize anything here... it's been done in these reviews already... but I've just finished the book and found it to be one of the most rewarding reading experiences of my life. I can see that this book isn't for everyone...it does require a great deal of patience...there are lots of long, slow moving passages... but it isn't haphazard in it's unfolding. I just feel as though I've been in the presence of a master here, an author who guided me quite expertly through his created world. I found the characters fully developed, the story rich in detail, landscape, thought, idea, and purpose. It did take me a LONG time to read, but it was worth every second. I rank this among my favorite books, one of the most important books I've read, and one of the most rewarding.

After being blown away by the perfection of Thomas Mann's short novels A DEATH IN VENICE and TONIO KRUEGER,and after reading all the glowing reviews of this book I was fully expecting the reading of THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN to be on the same level of enjoyment and intellectual stimulation as I experienced while reading Joyce's ULYSSES or Faulkner's THE SOUND AND THE FURY. The book started out well and had some gorgeous passages, but after about 250 pages I found myself wanting to skip sections and skip more sections and ultimately came to the conclusion that I found the book to be Wagnerian in it's length and development without sustaining my interest or drawing me into the characters. It dragged on and on and I decided that the time I would expend reading the remaining 550 pages could be spent better on some other reading. I am willing to grant that a German reading this book in his own tongue and with the typical German love of exhaustive exploration of subjects could well react to this book with the same resonance with which I feel when reading Faulkner, Proust or Joyce; but for me, I found that after getting very deep into the novel and scanning the rest of the text that THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN in this translation into English was a let down. I must also qualify my judgement of this book in saying that I prefer the audio book format and like to use good books on literary criticism which help illuminate the texts of great literature, neither of which were available for THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN to the best of my knowledge.

J.B. Priestley (1894-1984), the British novelist, playwright, and critic, declared >>The Magic Mountain<< "a novel of marvellous solidity, richness, complexity." Yes...this is one of the most profound and cerebrally provocative literary works of the modern era. Ostensibly a protracted experience at a Swiss alpine sanitarium, the novel as a whole is an enduring symbol of humanity in a pathological universe. Like other great novelists (such as Proust and Joyce) of the 20th cent., Mann was fairly obsessed with Time. Indeed, <<Magic Mtn.>> brings into striking juxtaposition the clockless time of the convalescent institution (where life is a seemingly endless succession of days) and the time-sense of the goal-directed world. The centralized point of view which prevails throughout the book is that of Hans Castorp and his expanding consciousness. By the end of the story, when Castorp has returned to "flatland," he has become a far wiser and more internally developed man than he could ever likely have become if he had lived a merely "horizontal" existence amongst general society. He achieved maturity through suffering, awareness, and confrontation of the Real. <<The Magic Mtn.>> is a great "developmental" novel but also a classical Germanic novel of education in the most beneficial sense of the term. Indisputably one of the seminal literary creations of the past century. I strongly recommend that you purchase/read the H.T. Lowe-Porter translation -- not the John E. Woods version.

I enjoyed the beginning of this novel - and have enjoyed other Mann works -
but by page 150 the ever-recurring descriptions of scenery, clothing, superficial
views of unpleasant people, combined with the endless paragraphs, the stodgy prose of the Lowe-
Porter translation, the repulsiveness of so many characters - I started finding
it as hard to breath as some of the most sickly members of this sanatorium for
tubercular patients.

And one can only wonder at the value of reading page
after page of obsolete 1900s science - and the constant repetition of their main ideas by
the philosophizing personae. For example, Settembrini is supposed to represent the values
of humanism, but he makes only the most shallow, sloganistic statements, and repeats them
at each appearance. All the characters are two-dimensional, with usually a couple of bizarre
traits added to their description, the only attempt to give the characters any personality.
It seemed to me like a puppet show of ideas: here is the humanist puppet, the materialist puppet,
the totalitarian puppet, etc.

I stopped reading by page 200, read some of the 5 star reviews here, so tried it again -
only to find I couldn't wait another 500 pages to escape from this stifling sanatorium
filled with two-dimensional freaks who do and say the same things over and over
and over.... One has to say that there is something compelling about the book, it is hard to put down - but
after a while, I just had to escape to writers who have some enjoyment of life, and of people,
before I as the patients herein lost the ability to breath.

Honestly, I had never heard of The Magic Mountain until reading an the store review of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, although I had enjoyed Mann's short stories as well as other German lit. These reviews of M.M. so consistently emphasized its insipid nature that I took the challenge upon myself and I am now, a week later, more than halfway finished. I disagree with the complaints of boredom because I personally have been intrigued by Mann's treatment of human nature and, to beat a dead horse, time. Mann's character development is remarkable and I find myself anticipating Settembrini's next lesson.

This book is not a good choice for fans of pop fiction, nor was it intended to be. However, anyone who appreciates classic literature and/or philosophy would most likely find reading this to be a pleasant and surprising experience, much like I have.

I finally managed to read the complete book, after several attempts, many years ago and the different interpretations others have made has always puzzled me. Something like Kaffka - no one knows what he is talking about - not really, but the desire to know never stops......

If you want to read a good book by Thomas Mann, read Buddenbrooks......I have read it three times, once in German, once in English and once parallel. So many years ago.....I would read it again, but I might spoil the dream . Meantime, keep a check on other interpretations of the Magic Mountain -someone is bound to agree with your idea, given time!!! It is a talking point, even in other countries - amazing!

One thing about the Magic Mountain is it never lets one go. I was upset in the beginning by the vividness of his descriptions - he is a powerful writer, and I was young, but once I had settled down to it, I didn`t find it a tedious task and I am glad I read it.

No doubt inspired by Greek literature and philosophy, The Magic Mountain reads must like Platonic dialogues. Each character is a representation of an idea or point of view. The long debates, monologues, and dialogues are not there to advance the story, but rather express theories prevalent in Europe prior to WW1. Many of these debates are timeless and go on today as they did since the birth of theoretical thought.

Perception of time, materialism vs. idealism, liberalism vs. conservatism, love, lust, and logic are some of the vast discussions taking up in depth by Mann through his characters.

The Magic Mountain is an intensely important work for anybody with the patience and endurance to wade through its many dense pages.

Hans Castorp, een jonge kerel die op zoek is naar iets, maar nog niet precies weet wat, besluit in het sanatorium te blijven waar hij oorspronkelijk alleen maar zijn neef ging opzoeken. Zijn 7-jaar lange verblijf biedt de lezer een zicht op de Europese geschiedenis en vormt tevens ook een parodie op die geschiedenis. Met allerlei karakters die ver uiteenlopen en soms ook vervaarlijk dicht in elkaars buurt komen, zal hij uiteindelijk als volwassen uit het boek komen. En breekt WOI uit natuurlijk ...

An annoying translation of a great book. The translator repeatedly uses words and phrases that are meaningless in English, such as "playing king", which in other translation is rendered "taking stock". Would you have been able to guess the meaning? On the other hand, a few passages are done with exquisite beauty. The evident care taken in the few marvelously written passages makes me think the translator was being lazy the rest of the time.

than the one by Lowe-Porter. Woods retains the magic. Initially, in a bookstore, I compared the two translations' respective first 3 paragraphs and found one read more like the minutes of a business meeting with better flow, while the other was more dense with description, more clunky with short sentences but richer in imagery and far more engaging. In my mind I labelled the former "garbage" and assumed it was the more recent translation. To my surprise the superior one was by Woods!