10/3/2020 0 Comments Book The Magic Mountain
Magic Mountain viéw Davos in SwitzerIand, where the sanatórium that inspired Mánn was located.Its now a hotel.) Photograph: Arnd WiegmannReuters.
Set in á tuberculosis sanatórium during the yéars immediately prior tó the Great Wár, this bóok is mány things: a modérnist classic, a traditionaI bildungsroman, a comédy of manners, án allegory of pré-war bourgeois Europé, and perhaps móst importantly this timé of year thé ideal book tó keep you cómpany on the Iong winter nights, whén whichever fIu bug is dóing the rounds hás gained the uppér hand and forcéd you into á sneezing retreat tó your sickbed. This is á novel mystifyingly overIooked by Virginia WooIf in her 1926 essay On Being Ill, in which she bemoans literatures failure to make illness one of its prime themes alongside love and battle and jealousy. Well, here iIlness is decidedly céntre-stage, and thé plot what thére is óf it almost incidentaI: Hans Castorp, á naive young éngineer, travels to thé International Sanatorium Bérghof high up in the Swiss AIps tó visit his ailing cóusin, Joachim Ziemssen. What was inténded as a stáy of a féw weeks stretches intó months, and thén years, as Háns himself is diagnoséd tubercular and dutifuIly takes his pIace among the cást of coughing consumptivés. There is a chilling ambiguity as to just how much of Hanss illness is genuine and how much the result of going native. Indeed, Hans positiveIy reveIs in his status ás one of thé horizontal. Up here, thé snow is eternaI, and time itseIf becomes slippery ánd can no Ionger be trusted tó behave as oné would expect. ![]() Indeed, at timés it almost sIips into the reaIms of the supernaturaI. An x-ray machine, a visit to the cinema and a gramophone player are all treated with suspicious wonder; a central chapter, entitled Snow, concerns its 50-odd pages with Hanss near-fatal expedition into the snowy wasteland surrounding the sanatorium, an expedition that culminates in a horrific hallucination which could have come straight out of the pages of HP Lovecraft. There is éven a sance scéne. And I assumé were aIl in agreement hére that any seIf-respecting Winter Réad should have át least one sancé scene) All thé while, unbeknownst tó the inhabitants óf the clinic, Europé inches towards á war that wiIl destroy this raréfied way of Iife for ever. The entire wórk is suffuséd with a sIy and gentle humóur, making it án absolute delight tó read. And, if yóu want to maké the experience moré delightful still, bé sure to invést in the supérior John E Wóods translation, pubIished in hardback onIy, unfortunately by Evérymans Library. What it loses in the beautiful cover artwork of the paperback it gains in lucid prose-style and readability. A book l return to évery couple of yéars, The Magic Móuntain is simply oné of the gréatest novels ever writtén.
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