Ohhhh, a wonderful piece, thank you! I haven't read MM but listened to an audio book version last year which I thoroughly enjoyed. While travelling in Estonia earlier in the year I stayed on the Baltic coast and came across a still open Soviet-era sanatorium, I fantasied about meeting up with Hans C for a coffee and a quick cigarette ; )
A beautiful and thought provoking review of a favorite of mine. I’ve been rereading a lot lately so thanks for saving me 1,000+ pages with this gem. ;)
This is my second (and I believe definitive) attempt at reading this book. I'm more or less at the middle and I find large portions of it excruciatingly boring. But that's not particularly relevant. What's relevant is that I believe the third character (which I haven't come across yet) is most likely a stand-in for Mann's own aesthetic-political preferences (or non-political, as Mann thought politics was basically a dirty business for hucksters and do-gooders), which he sketches out in a wonderfully deranged book, "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man", where he defends the Prussian monarchy and blasts democracy (it was written before 1917, so communism isn't much discussed). Both books aren't exactly beach-reads, but people make so much out of TMM's philosophical undercurrents that I think the book that is actually overtly concerned with such matters deserves higher standing, as Mann's prose in TMM, at least in my Spanish translation, is pretty mediocre. (I am reading it alongside with Junger's Paris Diaries (an excellent new edition by Columbia University) and the contrast is simply staggering.) Reflections is actually, probably, the most moving and important political manifesto I have ever read, while TMM is probably the least enjoyable Great I've given a try.
Well, I will disagree with you there. I haven't read Reflections of a Nonpolitical man, so I can't speak to that — it's quite possible, even likely, that the political ideas in it are more interesting than those in TMM. But I don't really approach TMM as primarily a political novel (and will also disagree about the prose, although of course I read it in translation). What makes it fascinating for me are its more novelistic elements: the underlying sexual fucked-up-ness, the fever-dream scenes, the body horror and eroticism. The politics are certainly important but they're not the main course.
What's so fucked-up about the book's sexuality? His crush on Clavdia strikes me as thoroughly relatable; I am confident most bookish men experience this sort of thing like Castorp does (but then male sexuality has always seemed somewhat off to most women). The concretely odd thing is the slight homoerotic undertone, but is that truly so disturbing? Sidenote: I get the impression Mann was bisexual, not homosexual. A certain level of platonic attraction to other men was quite common in Belle Epoque aristocratic circles. I don't trust he could have sketched such a convincing heterosexual crush without having been in love with women. As for "the fever-dream scenes, the body horror and eroticism" I can see where you are coming from, but it feels like all of those have been in relatively short supply so far! I'll trod on.
I don't know, you don't think it's weird that he's obsessed with her decaying lungs and they exchange their X-ray pictures as love tokens?
I couldn't say about Mann's bisexuality, but with him and Proust sometimes I get the impression that they wish they were attracted to women, for aesthetic reasons. They like the idea of femininity and romanticize it even if it's not how their inclinations lie.
Ohhhh, a wonderful piece, thank you! I haven't read MM but listened to an audio book version last year which I thoroughly enjoyed. While travelling in Estonia earlier in the year I stayed on the Baltic coast and came across a still open Soviet-era sanatorium, I fantasied about meeting up with Hans C for a coffee and a quick cigarette ; )
https://nexus-instituut.nl/en/essay/the-quest-for-vision
A beautiful and thought provoking review of a favorite of mine. I’ve been rereading a lot lately so thanks for saving me 1,000+ pages with this gem. ;)
This is my second (and I believe definitive) attempt at reading this book. I'm more or less at the middle and I find large portions of it excruciatingly boring. But that's not particularly relevant. What's relevant is that I believe the third character (which I haven't come across yet) is most likely a stand-in for Mann's own aesthetic-political preferences (or non-political, as Mann thought politics was basically a dirty business for hucksters and do-gooders), which he sketches out in a wonderfully deranged book, "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man", where he defends the Prussian monarchy and blasts democracy (it was written before 1917, so communism isn't much discussed). Both books aren't exactly beach-reads, but people make so much out of TMM's philosophical undercurrents that I think the book that is actually overtly concerned with such matters deserves higher standing, as Mann's prose in TMM, at least in my Spanish translation, is pretty mediocre. (I am reading it alongside with Junger's Paris Diaries (an excellent new edition by Columbia University) and the contrast is simply staggering.) Reflections is actually, probably, the most moving and important political manifesto I have ever read, while TMM is probably the least enjoyable Great I've given a try.
Well, I will disagree with you there. I haven't read Reflections of a Nonpolitical man, so I can't speak to that — it's quite possible, even likely, that the political ideas in it are more interesting than those in TMM. But I don't really approach TMM as primarily a political novel (and will also disagree about the prose, although of course I read it in translation). What makes it fascinating for me are its more novelistic elements: the underlying sexual fucked-up-ness, the fever-dream scenes, the body horror and eroticism. The politics are certainly important but they're not the main course.
What's so fucked-up about the book's sexuality? His crush on Clavdia strikes me as thoroughly relatable; I am confident most bookish men experience this sort of thing like Castorp does (but then male sexuality has always seemed somewhat off to most women). The concretely odd thing is the slight homoerotic undertone, but is that truly so disturbing? Sidenote: I get the impression Mann was bisexual, not homosexual. A certain level of platonic attraction to other men was quite common in Belle Epoque aristocratic circles. I don't trust he could have sketched such a convincing heterosexual crush without having been in love with women. As for "the fever-dream scenes, the body horror and eroticism" I can see where you are coming from, but it feels like all of those have been in relatively short supply so far! I'll trod on.
I don't know, you don't think it's weird that he's obsessed with her decaying lungs and they exchange their X-ray pictures as love tokens?
I couldn't say about Mann's bisexuality, but with him and Proust sometimes I get the impression that they wish they were attracted to women, for aesthetic reasons. They like the idea of femininity and romanticize it even if it's not how their inclinations lie.
Haven't gotten to the X-ray part yet, although the decaying lung fixation certainly is a bit off.