Ron Peters's Reviews > The Magic Mountain

This is a marvelously rich and complex novel, written in beautifully ironic modernist prose that fogies like me adore. It is a tragicomic bildungsroman about a young man who goes to the mountaintop, to the wastes of snow, on a great adventure, though he does not know that he quests.

In part, it is a book about time and the meaning of the times. Old liberal traditions are dying, to be replaced by no one knows what, though the evidence points to both mindless self-indulgence and things sinister and violent, as events roll toward totalitarianism and World War.

Mainly, though, Hans Castorp’s adventures centre on the mysteries of Apollo, Dionysus, and Aphrodite.

The bright Apollo is embodied by Settembrini and his dialogues about the West, liberal Enlightenment, science, progress, democracy, and devotion to improving the world we live in now.

The dark Dionysus is seen mainly through Naptha’s diatribes (though also in Mynheer Peeperkorn), diversely tinged with the East, radicalism, authoritarianism, violent religiosity, communism, and devotion to the next world.

Aphrodite is uncovered in many places and guises: Krokowski’s lectures on the intertwined nature of morbidity and eros, the pervasive simmering sexuality among patients in the sanitorium, the music Hans listens to on the phonograph and, of course, Hans’ obsession with Madame Chauchat.

Hans’ obsession with these themes builds to an epiphany while he is stranded in a blizzard. “Man is the master of contradictions, they occur through him, so he is more noble than they. More noble than death, too noble for it – that is the freedom of his mind. More noble than life, too noble for it – that is the devotion of his heart…. Love stands opposed to death – it alone, and not reason is stronger than death…. I will keep faith with death in my heart but… for the sake of goodness and love, man shall grant death no dominion over his heart.”

But with Mann’s typical irony, Hans remembers nothing of his grand synthesis the following day. Read this once in your life anyhow. Better, read it every decade or so and see how it changes each time. John Woods’ translation is excellent, with the long French passages given in English.