A Second Hike Up The Magic Mountain

I am now halfway through The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann’s 700+ page novel that I first read 34 years ago as a student at the University of Heidelberg. Begun in 1912 and not published until 1924, The Magic Mountain has been hailed as a masterpiece of German literature, a complex look into a country and culture thrust, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the 20th century.

After the main character Hans Castorp settles into his comfortable but chilly room at the Berghof sanitarium, the first thing the reader notices is that absolutely nothing happens. Nothing of any dramatic consequence, at least. Characters eat five gourmet meals a day, take walks, indulge in a little gossip now and again and saunter down to the village for the occasional shopping excursion. 

The most important parts of the day are the twice daily rest-cures on the patients’ private balconies with alpine views. And it is during these rest-cures that Hans ruminates: on life, death, illness, art, wildflowers, the weather, on whatever his fevered imagination can conjure.

What Hans Castorp thinks about most is time. How, when one is bored, minutes and hours slow down, but weeks and months fly past. How desire can affect the passing of time. And why we all experience it so differently, even though we are all equally subject to its passing.

After the first few hundred pages, I thought I’d get tired of the endless internal monologue. But I was quickly drawn into Hans Castorp’s brain, into this Everyman’s deepening intellectual and emotional maturation. Like Han’s own revelations on time, I find the pages turn rather slowly but the chapters fly by. It is a book rich and rewarding, but demanding of your full attention.

I read a review on Goodreads that claimed the book ‘“really gets going around page 686.” I can’t wait, only 300 pages to go! Yet even now I find myself looking forward to returning to the Magic Mountain each evening to immerse myself in the rarified air of the Berghof sanitarium and discover what Hans Castorp will think about next.

If you’d like to read about what Hans Castorp is thinking, you can reserve The Magic Mountain here.

On Re-Reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain

In 1980, I studied at the University of Heidelberg, in what was then West Germany. Although I did not pursue my academic studies with much vigor, I did challenge myself in other fields and in other ways.

One of those challenges was a promise to read Thomas Mannʼs nearly 800 page novel Der Zauberberg, The Magic Mountain, in the original German before the year was up. My German literature professor at university recommended it as essential to understanding 20th century Germany and its place in the European family of nations.

Along with traveling to almost every country on the continent (one of my other self-directed challenges that year), I managed to read the entire novel before I returned home to Washington, DC at the end of the summer. Iʼll admit it was tough going at first. But as my German language proficiency improved, so did my enjoyment of this most weighty book, considered to be one of the classics of German literature.

The Magic Mountain is a richly textured, densely packed Bildungsroman, a sort of coming of age novel. But it is also much more: an allegory on European culture as it entered the modern age as well as a philosophical investigation into the nature of time. It can also be read as an examination of the new psychological interpretations of art, illness and death that incorporated the insights by a range of 20th century thinkers and artists, including Friedrich Nietsche, George Lukacs, Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy and Sigmund Freud.

At its heart though, it is the story of Hans Castorp, a young man fresh out of college who, before starting a new job in the shipping industry, travels to Davos, Switzerland to visit his cousin, who is recuperating from a bout of tuberculosis in an Alpine sanitarium. He plans a three week stay.

 Hans winds up spending the next seven years at the sanitarium.

And now, over thirty years later, Iʼve challenged myself to re-read The Magic Mountain, in English this time. Will it still hold my attention as it did so long ago? Iʼll let you know.

 Newport Libraryʼs copy of The Magic Mountain will be checked out for the foreseeable future, but you can reserve one of the other OceanBooks copies here.