Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain

[waalkwriter]

Originally Posted by Manuel76

I read somewhere that Faulkner considered The Buddenbrooks the best novel of the XX century. It has certainly many points in common with Faulkner. But if you never heard about his saying so, I'm beggining to think that's a misquotation...

Sorry for my annoyance. But I have honestly never come across Mann in a Faulkner biography. It sounds like it could be true, but it would surprise me that none of the biographies, which all deal extensively with Faulkner's taste and opinion of contemporary writers, never mentioned Mann. I have read, on the other hand, no less than 12 times and based on multiple incidents over the years, that Faulkner considered Thomas Wolfe to be the greatest living author, better than himself.

[Bottle Rocket]

Originally Posted by waalkwriter

lol, Liam. I was a bit tired when I wrote that ...
You are perfectly right about Mann. Thing is Hesse is a novelist of ideas too, but he's profoundly readable and interesting and intriguing, simply because he's not a cold, disinterested academic lecturer like Mann is, drolly and pedagogically going on and on about subjects in a way that is just not appealing to read or sit through in any form. I am not opposed to novels of ideas at all, there just has to be real passion and talent behind them. I find Mann repulsive to read for reasons that are merely difficult to put into words accurately.

waalkwriter, you've just provided an insanely great example of what the rest of us mean when we occasionally suggest you pull in your horns a bit.

LOL ... I am not going to guess whether the order of magnitude of greatness of Mann over Hesse in the estimation of this particular forum would be two or ten, but this is a place (unless I have completely deluded myself) where a passion for Hesse is regarded as a youthful phase. Nearly everyone here over. say, 30 has been through the Tunnel of Hesse and most of us have come out the other end none the worse for wear, but not a whole lot wiser either.

So we HAVE shared your preference, but many if not most will smile a bit nostalgically at those idealistic, wooly-headed days, and the less charitable will wonder when you'll move on to Ayn Rand or Ken Kesey.

BRocket

TODAY'S BONUS FACT: As it happens, Tiggers don't care much for haycorns but they love cod liver oil, who knew??

[Manuel76]

Well...I really never read any book by Hesse, but I'm getting curious. I'll try to read one this year.

I knew about Faulkner's preference for Wolfe. I bought two novels from him six months ago, but they're very long and seem to be very dense too, so I still haven't decided to start them. They are in my list too...

[waalkwriter]

Originally Posted by Bottle Rocket

waalkwriter, you've just provided an insanely great example of what the rest of us mean when we occasionally suggest you pull in your horns a bit.

LOL ... I am not going to guess whether the order of magnitude of greatness of Mann over Hesse in the estimation of this particular forum would be two or ten, but this is a place (unless I have completely deluded myself) where a passion for Hesse is regarded as a youthful phase. Nearly everyone here over. say, 30 has been through the Tunnel of Hesse and most of us have come out the other end none the worse for wear, but not a whole lot wiser either.

So we HAVE shared your preference, but many if not most will smile a bit nostalgically at those idealistic, wooly-headed days, and the less charitable will wonder when you'll move on to Ayn Rand or Ken Kesey.

BRocket

TODAY'S BONUS FACT: As it happens, Tiggers don't care much for haycorns but they love cod liver oil, who knew??

I despise Ayn Rand as well.

I know people think I should roll in my horns, but that would defeat the point of what I'm about. I will always be this way. My great aunt is 63 and she is not past this phase either.

The whole point is, if I didn't believe my opinion is right, I would not believe it.

I actually get even more angry with the rude condescension here, people misinterpret what Hesse was really doing for their own goals and then criticize him. I share a lot of Hesse's aesthetic and philosophical beliefs and goals, therefore I'm not exactly a fan of Hesse because I'm in some "youthful" phase. I like him for different reasons than most.

And really, youthful?

Frankly most people my own age tell me I act much older, and online people generally awesome I much, much, much older than 18.

but please don't bring up Ayn Rand, especially not in the same sentence as Hesse. Her idiotic presence is degrading to both me and Hesse. She's on the opposite philosophic thread, and her philosophy is of absolutely no value to any true, non-petty bourgeoisie intellectual. She completely missed the point of human existence and the way society functions.

Hesse's philosophy is both complex and nuanced if you truly understand what he was going for, and it's crucial to forming a balance between philosophic ideals and aesthetics, and the reality you are able to function and live in.

There's an eternal line in Steppenwolf, to paraphrase, "Man was built for life, not thought, and so the man who trades life for thought is the man who trades the land for the ocean." It's such a perfect statement of the life of the intellectual, and the difficulty of being a true aesthetic. Hesse is, I will say again, genuine, sincere philosophy, Mann is more academic pedagogy. Hesse has a profound personal passion, and it shows in the writing, Mann is a dissecting and cool intellectual and it also shows. Mann's writing suffers from a lack of strong emotion, which is especially critical for me and always will be.

[Bottle Rocket]

Originally Posted by waalkwriter

I know people think I should roll in my horns, but that would defeat the point of what I'm about. I will always be this way. My great aunt is 63 and she is not past this phase either.

The whole point is, if I didn't believe my opinion is right, I would not believe it.

I don't care whether you pull in your horns or not, and as one nearly as auncientte as your great-aunt I have nothing but respect for people who know their own minds. However, a mind that never changes has ceased to learn, and opinions have more to do with taste than truth, however passionately held they may be.

I actually get even more angry with the rude condescension here, people misinterpret what Hesse was really doing for their own goals and then criticize him. I share a lot of Hesse's aesthetic and philosophical beliefs and goals, therefore I'm not exactly a fan of Hesse because I'm in some "youthful" phase. I like him for different reasons than most.

I don't mean to be condescending (and neither do most of the other people here) ... perhaps you are indeed a passionate and life-long Hesse-ite, but it is not I but the reality of time's arrow that says that you're in a "youthful phase."

And far be it from me to rain on your parade, but I've read all of Hesse, and in my opinion Magister Ludi is the only book of real substance in his oeuvre. But that's just an opinion (though it's based on four readings of ML)

And really, youthful?

Frankly most people my own age tell me I act much older, and online people generally awesome I much, much, much older than 18.

I generally awesome online people are tweeners or FBI plants, but I much, much, much misunderestimate ageness (and plus smrts)

There's an eternal line in Steppenwolf, to paraphrase, "Man was built for life, not thought, and so the man who trades life for thought is the man who trades the land for the ocean." It's such a perfect statement of the life of the intellectual, and the difficulty of being a true aesthetic. Hesse is, I will say again, genuine, sincere philosophy, Mann is more academic pedagogy. Hesse has a profound personal passion, and it shows in the writing, Mann is a dissecting and cool intellectual and it also shows. Mann's writing suffers from a lack of strong emotion, which is especially critical for me and always will be.

Fair enough ... still, thought distinguishes the human animal at least as much as emotion. If the latter is more important to you than the former, more power to you,

Be aware, though, that "the man who trades life for thought ... the man who trades the land for the ocean" is not necessarily getting the worst of the bargain. As a personal matter, I prefer the ocean to the land so Hesse's "assertion" makes no sense to me -- one could equally well argue that Germany has always been oriented to the continent and that in this preference Hesse is being extremely conventional and not original at all. And finally, for a man who chose life over thought, is it not interesting how very much thought he left in the wake of his lively passage?


BRocket

[Bottle Rocket]

Originally Posted by Liam

So much of art is subjective, anyway, and even Faulkner's greatness (whom I know you love, Waalkwriter) is not written in stone. Mann is a deep, brooding and difficult writer; I agree with anyone who says his fiction is often exhausting to read. Stiffelio is right: his books ARE novels of ideas, ultimately, which is why it takes forever to get through them. But they're worth anyone's while, I'd say, esp. Dr. Faustus and Death in Venice.

L.

No guts, no glory, sez I: the seduction scene with Mme Chauchat and Castorp is all by itself worth every word of the whole massive MAGIC MOUNTAIN; it's bizarre but realistic within its hothouse context, but without the whole sanatorium construct it would not only not be remarkably intimate but wouldn't make any sense at all.



BRocket

[waalkwriter]

Well his point was that a man cannot live on the ocean, he can't grow fins an live in the ocean, and so can he not live in the oceans of thought.

[waalkwriter]

Sorry for some crazy typos in their. I type way too fast.

Besides, I know opinion is taste, but what is the point of bothering to have either if you don't believe yours is superior?

[lenz]

Besides, I know opinion is taste, but what is the point of bothering to have either if you don't believe yours is superior?

What's the point of believing your taste and opinion is superior if you never ask yourself why you hold that belief? Why will you "always be this way"? Examine your life. Try a little humility. Opinion, if it is to have any meaning for anyone else (and you seem to want others to respect yours), should be more than taste. Learn how to think objectively, try stepping into that ocean of thought, grow some fins, learn how to swim with the big fishes and you'll find your way back to land "a better and a wiser man." Since this thread is about The Magic Mountain, I suggest you test your intellectual muscle by reading it again, this time putting yourself in Hans Castorp's place, imagine being someone else for a while.

[a-dogg]

thats weird, because i dislike both Hesse and Mann for the same reasons, i guess. They just seem so self-satisfied and full of themselves. I know it is unfair to do this, but just compare The Magic Mountain and Ulysses, which was written roughly at the same time: Ulysses is not only much more daring and interesting and funny all that but most importantly it is about the world in which people actually live in while in The Magic Mountain everything remains purely theoretical: Kastorps voyage into the intellectual world is contrasted with the boredom and flatness of life "down there". And I feel a similar contempt for the life "down there" and a wish to life in a pure, spiritual and kinda cold world in Hesse as well. to me this seems very german and very typical of the times and also very uninteresting. I guess they both should have married and this way got rid of at least some of their hanghups...but then again I just have this gut-level dislike to both of them and therefor dont do them justice.

I still enjoy Manns style and the way The Magic Mountain was structured, tho. And also Death in Venice. My girlfriend said she found Buddenbrocks very much like soap opera but written in this soothing, comfortable style(gemütlich is the word). Just nothing very exciting.

As a personal matter, I prefer the ocean to the land so Hesse's "assertion" makes no sense to me -- one could equally well argue that Germany has always been oriented to the continent and that in this preference Hesse is being extremely conventional and not original at all.

yes but the idea alone that "thought" is something that leads you away from life instead of into it is so strange to me. In such a case there must be something wrong with the thinking to begin with. I also think that Germany at that time - or at least people like Hesse but even thats a sweeping generalization - were much more oriented to the "ocean".

Sebastan Haffner once said that one of the reasons that political radicalism was so popular in the 20s was that many people simply had lost the ability to lead a private life. They just needed the entertainment and excitement of all the spectacle, marches and fights - to have a reason to get up in the morning, I guess.

[lenz]

And I feel a similar contempt for the life "down there" and a wish to life in a pure, spiritual and kinda cold world in Hesse as well. to me this seems very german and very typical of the times and also very uninteresting.

It's that "German" aspect and the time in which it's set that made the novel fascinating for me. What kind of thinking was going on in Germany and Europe then that made supposedly modern people so compliant in a medieval cult of war? I can't even remember much of it now - just that I felt I had a better understanding of human life than I had before I read it.

[titania7]

Originally Posted by waalkwriter

Besides, I know opinion is taste, but what is the point of bothering to have either if you don't believe yours is superior?

Why do you feel the need to see your opinions as superior to the opinions of other people? Would it not be healthier to see them as simply distinctly yours? When we are secure in ourselves, we have no desire to set ourselves up as superior to anyone else. We simply celebrate our individuality and allow others to do the same.

The moment when a person starts trying to persuade other people to think as he/she does, he/she is actually exhibiting a desire to control. Each person should live and let live, read the authors he/she enjoys most, and make the choices that are best for him/her. Life is complicated enough without this sort of pointless debate.

Alexis

[a-dogg]

Originally Posted by lenz

It's that "German" aspect and the time in which it's set that made the novel fascinating for me. What kind of thinking was going on in Germany and Europe then that made supposedly modern people so compliant in a medieval cult of war? I can't even remember much of it now - just that I felt I had a better understanding of human life than I had before I read it.

Yeah, I guess uninteresting is not the right word ...haha It's probably because I'm german that I dismiss it so easily.

For me Hans Castorp stands for a generation of intellectuals that was unable to really engage with the world at all - and therefor welcomed the war as a showdon that would put them out of their misery and maybe bring about salvation. Even Hermann Hesse has this totally disgusting passage at the end of Demian that gives a nice illustration of what he expected from the war, if I remember correctly.

Ironically it was Gravity's Rainbow - an american novel - that made me understand this part of German history a little better. The way Kurt Pöckler changes from an engineer with a progressive vision into one of the architects of the V-2 ... a friend told me this was the only time a book ever made him cry... but yeah this doesnt belong here.

[Bottle Rocket]

Originally Posted by waalkwriter

Sorry for some crazy typos in their. I type way too fast.

Besides, I know opinion is taste, but what is the point of bothering to have either if you don't believe yours is superior?

LOL ... I was only teasing anyway; no offense meant. And typos are human; 'tis proof-reading that's divine.

We don't "bother" to have opinions -- they thrust themselves upon us from birth and before. As soon as we have satisfied the "What We Need" part of the programme, we move on immediately to identify and pursue "What We Like" and spend most of the rest of our lives doing that.

Not everything is Manichean, anyway; this is not Opinion Death Match, where two theses enter the cage and just one emerges alive. Yours need not be the übermeinung and mine the unterdialektik, we can coexist fine.

It's also worth noting that a number of scientific studies have concluded that the people surest of their opinions and abilities are far more likely to be incorrect and ill-informed than other, more tentative mooks. It makes perfect sense: the more you really DO know, the more you understand how infinitesimal is your knowledge compared to "what's out there to know." Whereas if it doesn't even occur to you that there is such thing as independent data (like established facts or overwhelming political consensus or whatever) to test your opinions/aptitudes against, you have no impetus to question them. Positive isn't always either right or good: the Nazis were positive but unspeakably wrong; "positive" is about the most dreaded word a gay man can hear.

There is a quote from Wilson Mizner that has always struck me as worth taking to heart:

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.

BRocket

[Bubba]

Originally Posted by Bottle Rocket

So we HAVE shared your preference, but many if not most will smile a bit nostalgically at those idealistic, wooly-headed days, and the less charitable will wonder when you'll move on to Ayn Rand or Ken Kesey.

BRocket

TODAY'S BONUS FACT: As it happens, Tiggers don't care much for haycorns but they love cod liver oil, who knew??

Hey! Why lump together Ayn Rand and Ken Kesey? Sure, the merry pranksters may be no less annoying than the Rand acolytes, but One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is a perfectly decent book and, if I recall correctly, Sometimes a Great Notion, a long and fairly traditional novel, is even better. You'd said Ayn Rand and Tom Robbins or Ayn Rand and Douglas Addams or even Ayn Rand and Julio Cortázar and I wouldn't have objected.

Like most people who have read Hesse, I did so in in my late teens and early twenties. I enjoyed his work but haven't gone back to it. Sometimes I wonder what I would find if I did. Especially since, after a twenty-year interlude devoted to reading what I thought was more important work--Mann's Magic Mountain, for example--I have recently gone back to some of the writers (Richard Bradford, Charles Portis, Edward Abbey) I loved in my late teens and found, to my surprise and delight, that I love them just as much now as I did then.

Still, I have a soft spot for the oft-maligned Lowe-Porter translation of The Magic Mountain; Lowe-Porter, after all, and apparently unlike the perpetrator of the new-and-improved translation, had the good judgment to leave the marvelous scenes with Hans Castorp and Mme Chauchat in French. Oddly, then, after years of French classes, semesters of struggling through Balzac, it was a German book that made me realize I could read French. The dam broke.

Originally Posted by waalkwriter

Besides, I know opinion is taste, but what is the point of bothering to have either if you don't believe yours is superior?

Ha! Waakwriter. Here you betray wisdom well beyond your tender years. For many--hm, hm--the years go by in vain. For them, such wisdom as you seem to have imbibed at your mother's breast is forever out of reach!

[Bottle Rocket]

Originally Posted by Bubba

Hey! Why lump together Ayn Rand and Ken Kesey? Sure, the merry pranksters may be no less annoying than the Rand acolytes, but One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is a perfectly decent book and, if I recall correctly, Sometimes a Great Notion, a long and fairly traditional novel, is even better. You'd said Ayn Rand and Tom Robbins or Ayn Rand and Douglas Addams or even Ayn Rand and Julio Cortázar and I wouldn't have objected.

I basically pulled Kesey out of the air as a stand-in for any number of lefty cult-writers to counterbalance Rand. But point taken; Kesey's not really my cup of tea, and if I had to read about that particular counterculture genome I'd read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test instead. Plus I am SO tired of hearing how genius Jack Nicholson saved the world in the movie of Cuckoo's Nest (which is not, I realize, fair to blame on Kesey but I do anyway.)

But sure ... how 'bout Richard Brautigan (nah, too small-bore, plus that stupid hat makes him too easy a target) ... Jack Kerouac (one of Kesey's heroes, d'Oh!) ... Mailer (early postwar: check!; New York lefty blowhard Jew: check!; macho substance abuser: check! -- but WAIT!! He's not really a cult figure, innit: he was so busy puffing his own Cult the rest of us never got the chance to organize a genuine one ... or not.)

Like most people who have read Hesse, I did so in in my late teens and early twenties. I enjoyed his work but haven't gone back to it. Sometimes I wonder what I would find if I did. Especially since, after a twenty-year interlude devoted to reading what I thought was more important work--Mann's Magic Mountain, for example--I have recently gone back to some of the writers (Richard Bradford, Charles Portis, Edward Abbey) I loved in my late teens and found, to my surprise and delight, that I love them just as much now as I did then.

Well, that's sort of what I was trying to say to waalkwriter, that an amazing lot of people all seem to say "like most people who have read Hesse, I did so in in my late teens and early twenties. I enjoyed his work but haven't gone back to it." I can't tell you how often I've heard that (and I had the experience myself, too). My experience has been that it's the things you are really into that don't age well, because you gild them in memory and they rarely live up to your recollection of their wisdom and wonderfulness. Whereas if you just felt, "meh, it was okay," you're open to being pleasantly impressed at a later re-reading.

Still, I have a soft spot for the oft-maligned Lowe-Porter translation of The Magic Mountain; Lowe-Porter, after all, and apparently unlike the perpetrator of the new-and-improved translation, had the good judgment to leave the marvelous scenes with Hans Castorp and Mme Chauchat in French. Oddly, then, after years of French classes, semesters of struggling through Balzac, it was a German book that made me realize I could read French. The dam broke.

This is a marvelous story ... thx Bubba, you've made my Friday.


BRocket

[waalkwriter]

Not everything is Manichean, anyway; this is not Opinion Death Match, where two theses enter the cage and just one emerges alive. Yours need not be the übermeinung and mine the unterdialektik, we can coexist fine.

You're too funny. We should have a forum here called Thunderdome, where we do have opinion death matches

I shouldn't say I worship Hesse, to get that out of the way. I think some of his stuff, a lot of it, was just a silly, snobbish elitism, but what I like is that he realized it too, and part of the reason it comes off so strong is because that was a major part of "academia" at the time.

[waalkwriter]

Oh, and who dares criticize Tom Robbins! He coined the term, "The typewriter gleamed like electric sex" and "They suffered from the last quarter of the 20th century blues" to paraphrase. "It's never to late to have a happy childhood". Robbins is great, in a hilarious way, and once you finish reading him there is a certain emptiness but its purposeful. He sends you through these wandering bildungsromanen and odysseys of comical absurdity where he really helps you get some perspective on the modern world, I absolutely love reading Tom Robbins and the sort of reflective feeling of emptiness you get when moving out of his satire and the feeling of that hyper-ventilating mad rendition of our world that he brings. A very sort of post-modernist writer I actually like, a tangent writer I can read, (unlike Joseph Heller)

[Eric]

Bubba says:

Still, I have a soft spot for the oft-maligned Lowe-Porter translation of The Magic Mountain; Lowe-Porter, after all, and apparently unlike the perpetrator of the new-and-improved translation, had the good judgment to leave the marvelous scenes with Hans Castorp and Mme Chauchat in French.

I was wondering two things:

1) Was there dialogue between Castorp and Chauchat in the French language in the German original? I've not read the book for quite some while.

2) Translations are not maligned for nothing. Are you sure that Lowe-Porter was accurate and translated what was there in the original? That is the main criterion for a good translation.

I note that this German novel was set in the health resort (now ski resort and conference venue) Davos, Switzerland, which must add a further dimension to it.

[Bottle Rocket]

Originally Posted by Eric

I was wondering two things:

1) Was there dialogue between Castorp and Chauchat in the French language in the German original? I've not read the book for quite some while.

2) Translations are not maligned for nothing. Are you sure that Lowe-Porter was accurate and translated what was there in the original? That is the main criterion for a good translation.

Both excellent questions, but aren't you really the expert?? Certainly, for myself, if I were able, I'd have read it in the original; if not, I'd turn to you or someone like you for guidance.

My experience has been that in many cases you can pick up (almost subconsciously) felicities and infelicities that tip you to the translation's quality, but this is a spotty method at best. At other times, you can even tell whether it's the origin language or the destination language which is the translator's weak point, just from textual clues. Depending upon my mood, I may watch the same French movie with or without subtitles -- in the first case for the film itself, so as not to mess up the frame with extraneous, unnecessary crap; in the second, to see how accurate the subtitles really are both as to literal meaning and tone. I am frequently amazed at how shoddy they are in French (or, less reliably for me, in Spanish) and can only conclude that the law of averages says that the same must be true of other-language movies where I have no way of confirming my suspicions.

Are there a set of translator's guidelines, like the infamous MLA style sheets in the US academic world?? About 40 years ago, I sat the French government's translation certification exam (or whatever exactly it's called) at the consulate in Boston -- that year I was, amazingly to me, the only person in the whole New England region to take the exam. But although I was ultimately officially certified, I don't remember any Academie-Francaise-approved translators' standards (and if anyone were going to impose them, the Academie in the late Sixties would have been the people).

Finally, although I'm sure it's like asking for the loan of your philosopher's stone, where do you personally draw the bell curve about how free a translation can be and still be in bounds? I've faced similar issues in editorial areas, and find the subject fascinating. (Lately, exhibit #1 in the editorial debate has been the Raymond Carver/Gordon Lish imbroglio, which puts the whole thing in a convenient nutshell)

I note that this German novel was set in the health resort (now ski resort and conference venue) Davos, Switzerland, which must add a further dimension to it.

Any speculations? I mean, would "Last Year in Marienbad" be radically altered by being changed to "Last Year in Baden-Baden"?? I can see that if it suddenly morphed into "Last Year in Lourdes" there might be cause for alarm, and I know that there are all sorts of minute gradations between, say, St. Moritz and Gstaad among their jet-setty partisans and presume there must have been a similar peckng order among sanatoria in the early 20th century. But off the top of my head, the only immediately germane notion has to do with neutrality -- for a brief period just before the Great War it really did seem that all of Europe had become Switzerland, until the guns of August 1914 put paid to that comfortable self-delusion.


BRocket