The Sheila Variations

The Books: "The Magic Mountain" (Thomas Mann)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

Methinks I need to read this mutha again. I read it 10 years ago and while much of it struck me as literally some of the most brilliant thought-provoking stuff I had ever read - and even now, flipping through the book - phrases leap out at me, and send shivers down my spine ... but even with all that, much of it washed right over me. I know it is partly a function of where I was at in my life when I read it, etc. etc. I was in grad school, which was already intellectually, physically, and emotionally challenging (as it is meant to be) - and not much space was left over for The Magic Mountain - which you can't just sit down and read, in a casual manner. It demands engagement. It demands a bit of WORK on the part of the reader. And normally I love that kind of work (uhm, as should be apparent) - when someone tells me a book is "easy" and they mean it as a compliment, normally I lose interest. Just my personal taste here. I read to lose myself completely. If a book is too obvious or too formulaic, I am pulled out of it - by my own boredom. I like a challenge. That's why I sit around reading Leviathan for fun. It's hard. I like that hard-ness. But The Magic Mountain needs to be read when you have a bit more space around you - or at least that's the case with me.

The Magic Mountain always makes me think of Mitchell. He moved to Chicago 8 or 9 months after I had moved there, and he moved in with me. I lived in one room. Let's be honest. It had a stove and a fridge against one wall, and a tiny bathroom, where your knees touched the opposite wall when you were on Ye Olde can. There was actually a long narrow corridor (sort of) which acted as a closet - but other than that - it was a ROOM. M., my main flame in Chicago, who spent much time in that ROOM with me, referred to it lovingly as "the box". His friends would try to be polite to me, and say, "So it's a studio? Or a one-bedroom?" I would open my mouth to reply and M. would roar in, saying loudly, "No. No. It is a BOX." I don't know why he was complaining - he was in his mid-20s and was still living at home with Mom and Dad! But "the box" was always a big joke. And there was also a caged elevator - where you had to yank the cage open to get into the rickety thing - and it always stalled between floors and you'd have to yell for help. It was hysterical. But it was my first apartment I ever had by myself - and I loved it. I had a single bed - or no, let's be honest. It was a mattress lying on the floor. I had zero money when I moved to Chicago - zero - it was a cliche: I moved with 2 suitcases and a head full of dreams. In a month I had temped enough (wearing my one skirt and my one blazer from the Salvation Army) to make enough for one month's rent and security deposit. The box cost 350 bucks a month.

So when Mitchell moved in with me - into that space- you can imagine the hilarity. We slept together on the single mattress on the floor. My cat Sammy crawled all over us. When I wanted to have M. over, Mitchell would go sleep over at Jackie's. It was perfect. Mitchell also arrived in Chicago with zero cash, but he got a job with a theatre company in about a week - so he started working immediately. And I will always remember that Mitchell was reading The Magic Mountain during his first months in Chicago. I still remember what the book looked like. It was a second-hand, third-hand paperback he had probably bought for 25 cents - it was falling apart when he got it. It had a bright yellow cover with bright blue writing. And it was an old translation. Meaning: there is a 15 page section of the book entirely in French. In MY translation of the book, that French is translated into English. In Mitchell's book, it remained in French. Mitchell could have skipped over that part. He knew enough French to say "aricoverts" and "Leslie Caron" with aplomb ... he also loved to muse ponderingly, "Ou sont les neiges d'antan" at a propos moments. You know, you'd say something like, "God, we had such a great time in college, didn't we? We didn't even know how good we had it." And Mitchell would stare off into the distance wistfully, and murmur, "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?" hahahahaha How do you say "asshole" in French? Anyway, Mitchell was determined that the French section of the book would NOT defeat him. He would read every word. And he did. He got a French-English dictionary - and methodically went through every page, putting together what was being said. I was very impressed. It took him 2 weeks to read those pages. He would read sections out loud to me, in halting French, and tell me what it meant. When I wanted to go to sleep, he took a pillow and a blanket into the bathroom, and curled up on the bathmat, to read in French late into the night. That's what I'm talking about - when I say that difficulty has its own rewards, and often difficulty is the best gauge that you are actually engaged in the writing.

So I always associate The Magic Mountain with Mitchell, and the box. And also Mitchell's general intellectual curiosity - which always spurred me on in my own reading. It still does.

Thomas Mann's experience of the writing of The Magic Mountain is almost as interesting as the book itself. His wife had been in one of those Alpine sanatoriums - sort of like what Katherine Mansfield went through, and many other folks suffering from tuberculosis and other degenerative diseases ... and Mann's experiences visiting his wife gave him the idea for the book. But then WWI happened - and Mann stopped writing the book. The upheavals were such that Mann took another look at his book - and saw in it the germs (pun intended) of something much larger. He saw that European society itself was sick. That destruction was stronger than creation. That something rotten, so to speak, was in the state of Denmark. So he went back and re-wrote what he had already written. Is sickness a metaphor for something larger? Mann seemed to think so - and much of the book does take on the psychological affects of illness - and what that might say about the society at large. I'm thinking now of the brilliant movie Safe, where Julianne Moore's character basically becomes allergic not just to the environment, but to life itself. The world is what is ill - and if you respond to it by becoming sick yourself, then that is just further evidence. It's almost like Heller's Catch-22: It is an insane world, and if you respond to it in a sane way - then YOU will be seen as the insane one. Yossarian believes that people are trying to kill him. His commanding officers are exasperated and say, "Of course they're trying to kill you! This is war!" Yossarian doesn't see what difference THAT makes. So what that it's war? He still flies over the earth in his plane and knows that people below are shooting at him. He does not even accept the construct. And boy oh boy, does that make you insane to the rest of the world, who accepts the rules. And therein lies the Catch-22. If you are healthy in a sick sick world ... then perhaps it is YOU who are sick. So Hans Castorp - the lead character in The Magic Mountain - is sick, and goes to a sanatorium. While there, he meets all kinds of different people - and they are representative of many elements of European society - all of them hovering on the precipice of the cataclysm that will be WWI. Hans is a German. I don't think I'm reading into this when I say -Mann saw a corrupt depravity in German society at the time (well, he saw it everywhere - but being German, he saw it in Germany much more clearly) - something that if taken to heart could make you physically ill. But of course much of this takes place on another level, sub-conscious ... Who knows what it is that is making us sick? Hans ends up staying in the sanatorium for many years. You can even see it as proof that being institutionalized just makes one grow sicker. The rules of the sanatorium do reflect the rules of the outside world - but in many ways they are inverted. Life itself starts to seem dangerous. And sickness - actual sickness - becomes a shield, one's armor against the destructiveness of the world itself. When Hans leaves the sanatorium finally - WWI has broken out - and he is conscripted into the army. All hell is about to break loose. The infection is coming through the skin. Sickness can no longer be contained in the sanatorium. It's out. No more metaphors. Only reality. And God help us all.

There's so much more in this rigorous book that I am not remembering - but that is what I am left with. I read all of Katherine Mansfield's letters and diaries when I was in high school and college. She was very very ill. And by the end of her life, she had become desperate for a cure - any cure - racing all over Europe, taking quacks seriously, succumbing to what we now would call "new age" alternative medicine - anything that might stave off her death. I think it is surmised that her mad dash around Europe at the end probably hastened her death, increasing her panic and stress. She yearned for an icy blast of air to "clean" her diseased lungs. That was the cure at the time. Lie in a lawn chair in the middle of a snowfield, wrapped in blankets ... the cold will do the rest. This is the atmosphere to which Hans Castorp submits himself. And the longer he is there, the more incomprehensible it becomes to him that he will ever be "out", and healthy. The sickness takes hold while he is there - rather than lessening. Mann, of course, is making enormous points, like 20th-century life points - about who we are, as a human race, and what we are capable of - the horrors, the carnage. Sickness is a metaphor.

Even just flipping through this magnificent book right now makes me realize I need to read it again. It's an intellectual feast.

Here's an excerpt. I love the bit on "beware of irony" ... "beware of it in general". Oh, how I agree with that. And the bit about "paradoxes" gives me a chill of dread. The whole book gives me a chill of dread, actually. There's a fog in the sanatorium - it's an alternate universe with its own rules ... where 'checking out' of the travails of life is paramount. But Mann writes about it physically - the thick turgid beer, the anxiety of clear thinking (evident in the excerpt below), the clouds of cigar smoke ... just the way the dining room is set up, with thick white linen on the table, and thick muffled carpeting ... I don't know. As I recall, the point is not to get well. Not really. The point is to drown. To smooth soft edges. To submit. The main feeling up there is disorientation. Time begins to lose meaning. You begin to lose faith that you could EVER make it on the outside. It becomes easier and easier to just stay, to foster your own sickness - so that you never have to leave. You can see Hans Castorp go through such an experience in the excerpt below. The sickness re-trenches itself - with his explicit permission.

EXCERPT FROM The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

How did young Hans Castorp actually feel about all this? For instance, did the seven weeks he had demonstrably, indubitably spent with these people here feel like a mere seven days? Or did it seem to him just the opposite, that he had lived here now much, much lover than he really had? He asked himself those same questions, both privately of himself and formally of Joachim - but could not come to any decision. Probably both were true: looking back, the time he had spent here that far seemed unnaturally brief and at the same time unnaturally long. It seemed everything to him. in fact, except how it really was - always presuming, of course, that time is part of nature and that it is therefore permissible to see it in conjunction with reality.

In any case, October was close at hand, might arrive any day now. Hans Castorp had no trouble figuring out that much; and besides, he heard mention made of the fact in the conversations of his fellow patients. "Do you realize that it's only five days till the first of the month?" he heard Hermine Kleefeld say to two young men of her acquaintance, Rasmussen the student and the thick-lipped lad, whose name was Ganser. Dinner was just over, its odors still heavy in the air, and people were lingering among the tables, chatting and putting off their rest cure. "The first of October - I noticed it on the calendar in the management office. This will be the second one I've spent at this cozy resort. Well fine, summer, or what there was of it, is over - we've been cheated out of it, just as we're cheated out of everything else in life." And she sighed with her half a lung, shaking her head and directing her doltish, sleepy eyes at the ceiling. "Cheer up, Rasmussen," she then said, slapping her comrade on one drooping shoulder, "and tell us some jokes!"

"I know only a few," Rasmussen replied, his hands dangling chesthigh like fins. "But I don't tell them very well - I'm always too tired."

"Not even a dog," Ganser said between his teeth, "would want to go on living like this much longer." And they laughed and shrugged.

Settembrini had been standing close by, too, a toothpick between his lips, and as they were leaving he said to Hans Castorp, "Don't believe them, my good engineer, never believe them when they squawk - and there's not a one who doesn't, although they all feel very much at home here. Lead a free and easy life - and then demand you pity them. Think they have a right to bitterness, irony, cynicism. 'At this cozy resort!' Well, isn't it cozy? I would certainly say it is, and in the most dubious sense of the word. 'Cheated,' the little minx says - 'cheated out of everything in life at this cozy resort.' But send her back to the plains and her life down there would leave you in no doubt that her sole object was to get back up here as soon as possible. Ah yes, irony! Beware of the irony that flourishes here, my good engineer. Beware of it in general as an intellectual stance. When it is not employed as an honest device of classical rhetoric, the purpose of which no healthy mind can doubt for a moment, it becomes a source of depravity, a barrier to civilization, a squalid flirtation with inertia, nihilism and vice. And since the atmosphere in which we live provides very favorable conditions for this swamp plant to flourish, I may hope - or perhaps I must fear - that you do understand me."

The Italian's remarks were truly the sort that, if Hans Castorp had heard them down in the plains seven weeks before, would have been mere noise; but his stay up here had made his mind receptive for them - receptive in terms of intellectual understanding, though not necessarily in terms of sympathy, which perhaps is the most telling factor. For although in the depths of his soul he was glad that, despite everything that had happened, Settembrini continued to speak with him as he did, continued to teach, to warn, to try to influence him, his own perceptive powers had advanced to the point where he would criticize the remarks and withhold his agreement, at least to some extent. "How about that," he thought, "he talks about irony in almost the same way he talks about music. The only thing missing is for him to call it 'politically suspect' the moment it stops being an 'honest and classical means of instruction'. But if 'no healthy mind can for a moment doubt its purpose,' what sort of irony is that for heaven's sake, if I may ask? - assuming I am to have a say in any of this. That would just be dry pedantry!" (Such is the ingratitude of immature youth. It accepts the gift of learning, only to find fault with it.)

Nevertheless, he would have found it all too risky to put his insubordination into words. He limited himself to objecting to Herr Settembrini's critique of Hermine Kleefeld, which seemed unjust to him - or which, for other reasons, he wanted to see as unjust.

"But the girl is ill," he said. "She is truly, positively very ill and has every reason to be in despair. What do you want from her, really?"

"Illness and despair," Settembrini said, "are often only forms of depravity."

"And what about Leopardi," Hans Castorp thought, "who explicitly despaired of science and progress? Or what about our good schoolmaster himself? He's ill and keeps coming back up here. Carducci wouldn't have been all that happy with him, either." But aloud he said, "Fine fellow you are. The young lady may breathe her last any day now, and you call her depraved. You'll have to explain that for me. If you had said that illness is sometimes a result of depravity, taht would at least have been plausible, or -"

"Very plausible," Settembrini broke in. "My word! So you would have agreed had I left it at that?"

"Or if you had said that illness sometimes is made to serve as a pretext for depravity - I would have accepted that, too."

"Grazie tanto!"

"But illness as a form of depravity? Which means, not that it arises from depravity, but is itself depravity? Now that's a paradox."

"Oh, I beg you, my good engineer, do not lay that at my door. I despise paradoxes. I loathe them. You may assume that everything I said about irony also applies to paradoxes, and more besides. Paradox is the poison flower of quietism, the iridescent sheen of a putrefied mind, the greatest depravity of all. By the way, I also notice you are coming to the defense of illness yet again."

"No, what you say interests me. It reminds me of some of the things that Dr. Krokowski lectures about on Mondays. He, too, declares illness to be a secondary phenomenon."

"No pure idealist, he."

"What do you have against him?"

"Precisely that."

"Don't you approve of analysis?"

"Not every day. It's very bad and very good, by turns, my good engineer."

"How am I supposed to take that?"

"Analysis is good as a tool of enlightenment and civilization - to the extent that it shakes stupid preconceptions, quashes natural biases, and undermines authority. Good, in other words, to the extent that it liberates, refines, and humanizes - it makes slaves ripe for freedom. It is bad, very bad, to the extent that it prevents action, damages life at its roots, and is incapable of shaping it. Analysis can be very unappetizing, as unappetizing as death, to which it may very well be linked - a relative of the grave and its foul anatomy."

"Well roared, lion," Hans Castorp could not help thinking, as he usually did when Herr Settembrini uttered something pedagogic. But now he said, "We recently participated in some illuminated anatomy downstairs on the ground floor. That's what Behrens called it when he X-rayed us."

"Ah, so you've now scaled to that level, too. Well?"

"I saw the skeleton of my own hand," Hans Castorp said, trying to recall the emotions that had stirred in him at the sight of it. "Have you ever had him show you yours?"

"No, I'm not the least bit interested in my own skeleton. And what was the medical finding?"

"He saw strands, strands with nodules."

"The imp of Satan!"

"You called Director Behrens that once before. What do you mean by it?"

"You may be sure that I choose the term deliberately."

"No, you're not being fair, Herr Settembrini. I'll admit that the man has his weaknesses. After being here awhile, even I don't find the way he talks that congenial; there's something so fierce about it, especially when you think of the grief that he felt at losing his wife up here. But what an admirable, respectable man he is all in all, a benefactor to suffering humankind. I recently met him as he was coming from an operation, a rib resection, a matter of life or death. And to see him like that, coming from such a difficult, practical task, made a big impression on me. He was still flushed and had just lit a cigar to reward himself. I was envious of him."

"How very generous of you. And your sentence is?"

"He did not mention any definite length of time."

"Not bad, either. So let us go and lie down, my good engineer. Assume our positions."

They said good-bye outside room 34.

"Well, go on up to your roof, Herr Settembrini. It must be more amusing to lie there in the company of others than alone. Do you find it entertaining? Are they interesting people, the ones you take your rest cure with?"

"Oh, nothing but Parthians and Scythians."

"You mean Russians?"

"Russians, male and female," Herr Settembrini said, and a tightening was visible at the corner of his mouth. "Adieu, my good engineer."

No doubt about it, he had meant something by that. Hans Castorp entered his room in confusion. Did Settembrini know what was going on with him? Presumably he had been spying on him for educational reasons, taking careful note of where his eyes were directed. Hans Castorp was angry at the Italian, and at himself, too, because it was his own lack of self-control that had provoked the gibe. He gathered up some writing materials to take out with him for his rest cure - because there could be no more delays, a letter home, his third, would have to be written - and he went on being angry, muttering things about this windbag and quibbler, who was sticking his nose into things that were none of his business, but who hummed little songs at girls in public. By now, he no longer felt like taking up the task of writing. This organ-grinder and his insinuations had definitely spoiled the mood for it. But one way or the other, he had to have winter clothes, money, underwear, shoes - everything, in fact, that he would have brought with him had he known he would be here not for just three weeks at the height of summer, but ... but for a still-undetermined period, which, no matter what, was sure to last into some of winter, indeed, given assumptions and circumstances up here, would very probably include the whole season. And that, or at least the possibility of it, would have to be shared with his family. It would require real work this time - making a clean breast of things and no longer pretending otherwise to himself or them.

And it was in this spirit that he wrote, making use of a technique he had freqently seen Joachim employ - sitting in his lounge chair, with his fountain pen in hand and a writing case against his raised knees. He wrote on sanatorium stationery, taken from an ample supply in his table drawer, to James Tienappel, the uncle to whom he felt closest of the three, and asked him to inform the consul. He spoke of an unforeseen vexation, of misgivings that had proved justified, of the necessity, on good medical advice, of spending a part of the winter, and perhaps all of it, up here, since cases such as his own were often more stubborn than those that began more spectacularly and since the important thing, really, was to intervene decisively and so arrest his case's progress for good and all. Seen from this angle, he suggested, it was a stroke of fortune, a happy turn of fate, that he had chanced to come up here and had occasion to be examined; because otherwise he would probably have remained unaware of his condition much longer and perhaps have learned of it in a much more distressing fashion. As for the estimated time of his cure, one should not be surprised if he might have to make a winter of it and would be able to return to the plains hardly any earlier than Joachim. Notions of time here were different from those applicable to trips to the shore or stays at a spa. The month was, so to speak, the shortest unit of time, and a single month played no role at all.

It was cool; he was wearing his overcoat, had wrapped himself in a blanket, and his hands turned red as he wrote. At times he would look up from his paper, covered with reasonable and convincing phrases, and gaze out into the familiar landscape, which he hardly noticed anymore: the long valley, its exit blocked today by pale, glassy peaks; the bright pattern of settlement along its floor, glistening now and then in the sun; and the slopes, covered partly by rugged forests, partly by meadows, from which the sound of cowbells drifted. Writing came more easily as he went along, and he no longer understood how he could possibly have been afraid of this letter. As he wrote, he came to see that nothing could be more plausible than his explanations and that of course his family at home would be in perfect agreement with them. A young man of his social class and circumstances took care of himself when that proved advisable, he made use of facilities set aside expressly for him and people like him. That was only proper. Had he returned home, they would have sent him right back up here upon hearing his report. He now asked them to send the things he needed. And in conclusion he asked that necessary funds be sent regularly. Eight hundred marks a month would take care of everything.

He signed it. That was done. This third letter home was comprehensive, it did the job - not in terms of conceptions of time valid down below, but in terms of those prevailing up here. It established Hans Castorp's freedom. This was the word he used, not explicitly, not by forming the syllables in his mind, but as something he felt in its most comprehensive sense, in the sense in which he had learned to understand it during his stay here - though that was a sense that had little to do with the meaning Settembrini attached to the word. And as he heaved a sigh, his chest quivered as the wave of terror and excitement that he knew quite well by now swept over him.

Blood had rushed to his head as he wrote, his cheeks burned. He picked up Mercury from the nightstand and took his temperature, as if he could not let this opportunity pass. Mercury climbed to one hundred degrees

"You see?" Hans Castorp though. And he added a postscript: "This letter has been quite an effort. My temperature stands at a hundred degrees. I see that for the time being I shall have to keep very quiet. You will have to excuse me if I do not write more often." Then he lay back and lifted a hand to the sky, palm out, just as he had held it behind the fluorescent screen. But daylight had no effect on its living form, the stuff of it grew even darker and more opaque against the brightness and just its outer edge shone reddish. It was the living hand he was accustomed to seeing, washing, using - not the alien scaffold he had seen in the screen. The analytical pit he had seen open up before him that day had closed again.

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