Out of Step with the Times: Thomas Mann's 'The Magic Mountain'

"The Magic Mountain represents the high culture that is now in some jeopardy, since the book demands considerable education & reflection."
- Harold Bloom, How to Read & Why

"But then, you are healthy. You can do
whatever you want."
 - Joachim to Hans Castorp in The Magic Mountain.

"The Magic Mountain is where life is most lively - MOST ITSELF - precisely when it's diseased. That's the whole point of the novel, and the source of its great pathos. In The Magic Mountain, it is robust heath that is boring, and the signature quality of mere being, whereas everything that is most valuable, including love, is a form of creative rebellion waged against illness."
  -Ewan Fernie, The Demonic: Literature and Experience.

                            - Carravagio - "Bacchus"

Last week, I experienced an emotion that has perhaps been absent in me for a while. A genuine feeling of having achieved something, something that took great care, attention, and dedication, and that feeling was attained by me completing, for the second time in my life, Thomas Mann's great 712-page novel, first published in 1924, The Magic Mountain. It also gave me pause to ponder a few things: such as, how unusual it felt to have done something that is becoming a dying art in our insanely fast, "busy busy busy, time is money!" culture that we've created, and that is, of course, read a deeply philosophical novel, that takes time, patience, commitment, and love to do (nowadays I'm increasingly realising that many people hardly have the attention spans to scan a Twitter post correctly), and which also reminded me of how the world can work in strange, mysterious ways. For before I took up the novel again, I was in that limbo state where, after finishing my last book, I was undecided about what to read next. And then, out of the blue, came a wonderful surprise, so delightful to us that it could have arrived by pigeon post. Lydia and me received a postcard from our dear friend Robert from the Lake District (see a previous blog, Heaven is a Place on Earth), sent and written from a cafe which was perched on the Swiss mountain where The Magic Mountain is actually set. It felt like fate had intervened. It was back in 2006, in the sleepy town of Ruthin in North Wales that I last read The Magic Mountain. And that great magnum opus of a book suddenly called out to me once again, via a postcard from a dear friend of ours who was sitting on a terrace in Switzerland drinking coffee. What was also interesting for me to consider was the fact that since that first reading of The Magic Mountain thirteen years ago, my life has changed a great deal, in that I have obtained a cultural degree, moved to a seaside town on the south coast, and got married (although Lydia and me were already engaged and living together when I read it that first time). In fact, when I look back, I hardly recognise the person I was back then. So much has changed. I've changed, our circumstances have changed, the changes could hardly be greater: And so, this, I thought, is going to be a truly fascinating experience. I was not wrong, dear reader.

The first thing that struck me about the book was how eerily prescient it appears to be in connection with how things are in the world around us. The story is set in the years leading up to the horrors of the First World War, and terrifyingly, they have worrying connections with much of what's happening in the world today. The sense of a looming catastrophe (climate emergency), the abandonment of scientific fact (Trump, etc), loss of trust in politics & politicians (Trump, Johnson, neoliberalism, etc), belief in the Supernatural (conspiracy theories, New Age nonsense), loss of meaning in a greater whole (forget the Social Contract, it's all about 'the self' i.e., it's all about ME ME ME!), and the hatred of the flesh in favour of the spirit through all kinds of religious extremism. All of these things, and more, are explored in the novel, and each thing is shown as a symptom of a society and a culture that is hurtling towards disaster. But, aside from this, it also expresses a deep humanity and belief in making the most of life. As it is set in a tuberculosis sanatorium, many years before antibiotic therapies became available, some of the deepest questions regarding life, death, love, illness and health are explored. In those days people with TB, once they were diagnosed, had to adopt to their condition because, at best, it was one that could only be lived with and not cured. It was actually supposed to be an illness that was especially connected to those of a passionate nature, and symptoms often led to what was described as a quickening or a heightening of experience, particularly those of sensual experiences. It was an illness that had, at best, to be lived with and was, in effect, a vocation in itself. Managing the symptoms as best as possible, on a daily basis, through medication, gentle exercise, rest and diet, whilst hopefully prolonging the life of the patient was the best that could be hoped for as a cure was unavailable. To any readers among you who know me, does any of this sound familiar?

The two strands in the novel that left the deepest impression on me this time were that of the different values between the "healthy world" (described as the 'Flat Lands' or 'Down Below') and the value system in the sanatorium itself, that is, of the world of serious illness. When the main character, Hans Castorp, arrives to visit his ill cousin, Joachim, he is at first horrified by many of the things he witnesses. His moralistic bourgeois self is particularly outraged when he hears a Russian couple noisily making love in the room next to his on his first night. But soon, he begins to see things differently. After witnessing the impact that chronic illness and the constant, close proximity of death has on the patients, his morality shifts. On another night the couple noisily make love again, only this time he smiles to himself, and in a complete about turn realises that he would be far more shocked if they weren't making love and making the most of the precious time and joys that remained to them. He also sees how the obsession with money, industriousness, position, decorum and rules "down below" actually stifles life, and, on reflection, concludes that it is actually those values that are far more perverse than the so-called odd and strange ways in the sanatorium. And these are the rules we are imbued with from school, teachers, the church, parents, etc, from as soon as we can talk. Thank goodness for spirited rebels like David Bowie, Shirley Manson, and Fleabag, I say!

- William Etty, 'The World Before the Flood'

"Time Waits For Nobody"
- Dave Clarke, 'Time'

"But you are healthy. You can do whatever you like."
- Joachim (TB patient) to Hans Castorp

"Oh yes, we reckon in the Grand Style - that is the privilege we shadows have."
- Settembrini  (TB patient) to Hans Castorp

One of the themes explored deeply in The Magic Mountain is the impact serious, chronic illness has on individuals. It explores this with depth and great sensitivity, and as I know only too well from personal experience, it gives voice to the feeling that people who live with chronic health issues live practically in what feels like a different sphere to people without such problems. Thomas Mann even creates a physical place for this, as high above society in the TB sanatorium the land of the healthy is referred to as "the Flat Lands" or "Down Below." Even time is experienced by the people with TB in a different way. The future is something that is only considered in a space of months, rather than years. One young patient carries a pistol everywhere he goes in case he decides to do himself in and never refuses himself to any lady that takes a shine to him, as his situation means that the morals of the "Flat Lands, Down Below" is entirely without meaning for him. Other characters rail against the impositions that their lack of health has on their lives. With dreams and ambitions often having to be abandoned and given up due to disabling symptoms and the desperate attempt to prolong life for as long as possible. But the part of the novel that stood out the most for me is how all this is explored in such a way that as you read you are almost forced to take sides with the approaches to life that are presented. In the flat lands/down below, bourgeois careerism, mainstream (Christian) morality & the pursuit of money and so called respectability is the name of the game. The hero of the novel, Hans Castorp, arrives at the sanatorium for what he believes will be a three week visit to see his sick cousin, Joachim, who has consumption. When he arrives, he is the embodiment of the values of Down Below. He is psychologically unable to talk about illness and death, and on his first night, as I mentioned, he is outraged by a Russian couple couple in the room next to his, who noisily make love which embarrasses him profoundly. But soon, after spending time among the "shadow people" of the sanatorium, his whole view point begins to change. He falls hopelessly in love with one of the patients at the sanatorium, Clavdia Chauchat, a seductive siren who is as free as a bird in her thoughts and behaviour, although she would be bitterly condemned by normal society, "down below." And when he has been at the sanatorium for a week or so and the Russian couple once again have noisy sex in the room next to his, this time he smiles to himself and wonders how he could have reacted the way he did previously. "Why wouldn't they behave in such a way," he tells himself, with a smile. After just a few days of being surrounded by failing health, mortality, suffering and death, it now appears to him that he would actually find it more offensive if the Russian couple weren't making love and making the utmost of life whilst it remained possible for them to do so. So, dear reader, on which side do your beliefs fall on?

-William Etty,
The Pleasures of the Flesh

        
There is so much explored in this magnificent work of art that it would take me an entire book to accurately describe. But, in short, it is a truly stupendous achievement. Mann uses his favourite device of literary irony to the utmost, and many are the times where you, as reader, are so saddened and incensed at his characters that you wish you could scream and shout at them to prevent the disasters they are oblivious to. His dissection of a society falling into untruth, vanishing trust in politicians and authority figures, greed and chaos, through the fear of citizens losing control, which then leads to individuals believing all sorts of supernatural nonsense, and losing all their highly prized intellectual gifts in the process, is absolutely chilling when thought about in historic and contemporary terms. Our current society has terrifying parallels with the one described and dissected by Mann in this novel. But the reason it has such a close place to my heart is that Mann, possibly more than any other writer I've read, explores some very deep truths about what it feels like to live, every single day, with a chronic, life-threatening illness. I usually, quite literally, feel that I inhabit a different world to that of the healthy. Mann even makes this an actual physical place in this novel, not just a psychological space. I also have a tendency to embrace life in a way that may seem extravagant to other people, and, any regular readers will have no doubt noticed that I am in love with the senses and the sensual aspects of life. And perhaps, as was once thought about patients suffering from TB, maybe I too have a heightened connection with sensual experience, and am more passionate than if I had been born into life without suffering from CF. Unanswerable questions, I would imagine, but who knows. Whatever the truth of this situation, novels like this make me feel much less apologetic for needing to experience life the way I do, particularly in those precious, golden moments in-between dreaded exacerbations and flare ups, when a little more of life is actually open to me to fully experience.

'La Jeunesse de Bacchus' (Youth of Bacchus)' by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. 

And finally, it makes me recall a very wonderful memory of the first copy of The Magic Mountain that I owned and read, a splendid green hardback edition, translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter, that I purchased in a brilliant second hand book shop in Manchester. It was a discarded Manchester library book, and the dates that it had been issued were still there, ranging from the 1940s until around 1990 (I purchased it in 1999/2000). I couldn't help but wonder as I gazed at the dates and flicked through the beautiful paper that it was printed on, had Howard Devoto of Magazine perhaps borrowed this copy when he was studying European Literature at Manchester University? Without doubt it will have been on his radar. And what about Ian Curtis of Joy Division? Even Morrissey, perhaps, for there is a chapter called Alma Mater, and Morrissey released a song called Alma Maters in 1997. Maybe he got the inspiration for the title (a very haunting tune, truth be told) from the very book I now owned. Maybe he was the last person to loan it from the library before it finally reached me? We will never know, of course, but the Romantic dreamer in me would like to believe that this fascinating and inspiring book had actually passed through the hands of at least one, if not all, of these great lyricists that I admire so much. I like to think so.

- William Etty, A Bacchanalian Revel

Morrissey - 'Alma Matters' (Live, 2013)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs4vmKpYJ9A

“People get uncomfortable when you tell the truth. I don’t. I’m happy to feel. I wanna feel every single fucking thing. I want to feel the breeze, the punch, the disappointment. I want to feel love, lust and everything in between because I’m here for an infinitesimal amount of time. I wanna feel it all. I’m a greedy motherfucker. If that makes me dark, so be it.” 
- Shirley Manson: 'I want to feel love, lust and everything in between'
- Guardian Interview, Aug 2018.