Macumbeira

Danton's Death by George Büchner

2012-01-27T20:54:00.001+01:00

Robespierre, Danton and Marat, by Alfred Loudet, 1882

Nothing impresses me as much as precociousness, and in the list of young geniuses, George Büchner is one of the most impressive. Büchner was only 23 when he died of Typhus on the 19th February 1837. Still, he left a body of work, whose baffling modernity still impresses. “Danton’s death”, “Woyzeck” (of Herzog – Kinski fame) and “Leon and Lena” are all, in their own special way, genuine masterpieces.
Practically unknown in his own century and heavily bowdlerized when published, Büchner has been brought to attention to a larger public by the likes of Brecht, Böll and Grass. Today, his reputation is secured.

“Danton’s death” is a play in four acts, written in the early weeks of 1835, its conception separated a mere forty years, one generation so to say, from the occurrences Büchner describes in his book.

The play, which has Paris as a setting, during the brutal days of the French revolution, recounts the 13 days, from 24th March to 5 April 1794, that lead to Georges Danton’s public execution. Thirteen days, is a nice symbolic number, which later historical writers will use again to frame moments of high Political significance.

I never harbored any romantic feelings about the French revolution and its aftermaths. When intellectuals meet the mob, the ugliest things take place. While the intellectuals are ever so surprised that once set in motion, the bloodthirsty mob cannot be stopped or steered, the mob once on the move, soon speeds up its momentum of looting, raping and murdering, venting all the frustrations they have accumulated in their sorry lives.

So, Paris in that “red” year of 1794, is enjoying its “Khmer rouge” moment. The days, Büchner covers in his play, see the ideals of the French revolution turn into the frenzied, genocidal acts of “La Terreur”. Faction after faction is denounced as an enemy of the revolution and their alleged members executed after what is hardly a semblance of jurisdiction. At the moment the play starts, the Girondins have already been taken care of because they were “not revolutionary enough”, and so are the Herbertists, who are accused of being “too revolutionary”. Only Robespierre and Danton are over. Danton is trying to bring the revolution back on track and to return to “normality” in order to start reorganizing the country, but his opponent argues that the country has not been cleaned yet of all anti –revolutionary elements and that Danton is betraying the revolution…

In the chaos of the French revolution it is difficult to keep one’s bearing. Not only because of the nearly 250 years it is separated from us but also because of the political complexity of the different factions. Even the calendar months and days are altered . Who are we to belief? Who are the good guys, who are the bad guys?

Büchner, himself a young political rebel, was fascinated by that carnival of liberty, when liberty was a synonym of lawlessness and chaos, and equality and fraternity just empty slogans. His modernism lays in the fact that, contrary to what was the standard back in the 1840’s, he refused to depict the happenings in a romantic way. No embellishments, just a few raw facts discernable through the interactions of the major players. To make his dialogues as realistic as possible, he literally quotes the conversations, copied from the written testimonials he consults during his extensive research. There is also much lurid talk and sexual innuendos. While it ads to the realism of the play, the reason Büchner inserted it was to distract the critics from his more dangerous political statements. The world had changed since 1789, but many things had not. Büchner risked imprisonment with his book and he did in fact flee Germany to escape the secret police.

This said, while I agree with the modernity of the play, I find it unfitting for such a grand spectacle as the French revolution was. The play misses more juicy verbal interaction and intellectual gusto. I even missed a few famous quotes from Danton. Where for instance is Danton’s famous prediction “Robespierre, you will follow me!”, he shouted, when the tumbrel carrying the condemned, passed the house of his opponent? Büchner even forsakes to mention Danton’s last words. As Danton stepped up the blood soaked planks towards the guillotine, after witnessing the beheading of his three companions, he reminded the executioner to show his head to the crowd: “N’oublie pas de montrer ma tête au people, elle est bonne à voir” (Show my head to the people, it’s well worth seeing”)

I would have preferred a “Sturm und Drang” rendering of this “Sturm und Drang” period.

" To the end of the world" by Blaise Cendrars

2012-01-21T15:41:00.003+01:00

La Folle de Chaillot by Georges Stefanescu ( 1967 )

The Old Bard told us that the world was a stage and we, mere players. Blaise Cendrars, a maimed survivor of “La Grande guerre” and an eyewitness of that most promethean 20th century, in his last book, turns the famous quote around: “The theatre is a world, enormous and delicate, in which the frontiers between reality and illusion blur so that one never knows whether it is the lies or the truths which are more important”.

How Blaise Cendrars’ odd book « Emmène-moi au bout du monde ! », poorly translated as “To the end of the world!” slipped into my reading list, I cannot recall, but it might have to do with that epigraph on the title page of Chatwin’s “In Patagonia". I wrongly thought I would find the text of this epigraph in Cendrar’s book with the ambitious title but it was not, and I couldn’t care less: “To the end of the world” is quite simply a blast and Blaise Cendrars the most originally funny and exciting writer I have “discovered” recently. And the title, by the way, does not refer to a gentle romantic invitation, it is the coïtal cat-yell of the incomparable Thérèse Eglantine, a woman with a rather strange amorous taste and one hell of a story to tell…

« Emmène-moi au bout du monde! » is like nothing you have ever read before. It hangs somewhere between Molière’s scapinesque fourberies and a vulgar Legionnaire’s yarn, it is something between a Barnum freak show and a “Tartufian slapstick”. It has the breathless pace of a Celine, the black humor of a François Villon and the savagery of a Genet.

What else could we expect from a writer who has the looks of a criminal fit for the “bagne”, with his broken “boxer’s nose” and his eternal cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. A face carved out by a life as exciting as any adventure story.

Born Fréderic – Louis Sauser in Switzerland in 1887, in a well established Bourgeois family, the writer’s first memories are of the many travels in the wake of his travelling salesman father. An unruly boy, he is soon sent to a boarding school in Germany. He runs away. His parents send him to an “Ecole de commerce”; he fails brilliantly. When he is seventeen, his dad sends him to Moscow and to Saint Petersburg to work as an apprentice for a Swiss watchmaker. The revolutionary atmosphere suits young Felix well enough and he starts educating himself at the Imperial library. His first poem, “The legend of Novgorod”, written in 1907 and translated into Russian and of which only 14 exemplars were printed has attained a mythical status with collectors.
Travelling around the world, Felix writes poetry. He changes his name to Blaise Cendrars, a wordplay on braises (embers) and cendres (ashes), a metaphor on the creative and destructive transformation of the Artist. Moving about in the artistic milieus, Cendrars soon enough befriends the likes of Apollinaire, Chagall, Modigliani and Archipenko.
Still, following the adventurous temperament of his youth, he volunteers to fight during World War 1. In 1915, a corporal in the foreign legion, he takes part in the Battle of Champagne. A machine-gun salvo cuts of his right arm. Cendrars is evacuated and survives his wounds. During what he calls his “terrible year”, the maimed poet learns to write with his left hand. In a nearly unreadable handwriting he pens down his combat experiences: “La Guerre au Luxembourg” in 1916 and “J’ai tué” ( I have killed ) in 1918. Cendrars, now famous as the “left-hand poet” leaves for Brasil and loves it. He returns to France only in 1925. Full of stories, he switches to novels and prose. Famous books and commercial success soon follow: “l’Or” ( Gold ) in 1925, the brilliant and disturbing “Moravagine” in 1926 and “ Rhum” in 1930. In 1934 he meets Henry Miller and they remain friends forever.

During the Second World War, Cendrars is active as a war correspondent for the British army. After the war and an interruption in his writing for three years, ( devastated by the death of his youngest son, killed in a plane accident) Cendrars keeps on writing book after book: “ la main coupée” (the severed hand), “Bourlinguer” and “le lottissement du ciel”

Cendrars dies on the 21th januari 1961 after a stroke has already paralyzed him intellectually since 1956. People hasten to bestow on him “forgotten” honors: the “Paris grand prix the literature” in 61 and even “la legion d’honneur” in 1960.

One more book still has to appear, “To the end of the world!” and it causes a scandal…

From the first lines, we are pulled into a savage sexual scene of an odd couple fornicating away in a rented room in a sleazy hotel somewhere in the outskirts of Paris. A young legionnaire, drunk and aggressive, tattooed from head to toes is bumping an old woman. They go at it so brutally, that one first thinks we witness a rape, but no, the 78 year old woman seems the enjoy it and even encourages and excites her “lover” even more. “Take me to the end of the world!” she screams.
In the heat of the action, they tumble from one position into another and the young solder even violently kicks out the old woman’s dentures and beats her a black eye. In his pre-coital frenzy, the man, a tank commander, remembers some gross criminal war-scene and instead of an orgasm, the legionnaire collapses and passes out, not before getting sick and vomiting all over the woman under him.

It is a rough scene, I admit, but what is most surprising is that the old woman doesn’t seem to care; on the contrary, she has enjoyed it all and confesses that she has found true love again.

The scene takes place in Paris, in 1946, a few months after the liberation. Normal life has not fully been restored yet. In the faubourgs, American army deserters, mostly, be not all of them black, still hide in the ruins. Regular electrical black-outs paralyze the city and the Parisians are trying to find their way back to normality.

The woman, Thérèse Eglantine, we soon find out, is an old but still ( in ) famous actress, whose success has pushed her beyond normality. Thérèse should be preparing for her next play, a comedy called “Madame l’Arsouille”, but her strange antics and eccentricities are jeopardizing her chances to play the lead role. Her encounter with her soldier – lover has run late into the morning and Thérèse is late for the dress rehearsal. Gathering her ripped clothes around her, ignoring the looks of the people she bumps into, Thérèse catches a taxi to rush her to the theatre. While the cab is racing through the streets of the capital, Thérèse, an octogenarian slut on the run, wriggles her bare bottom out of the window to cool it down.

Thérèse arrives in front of the theatre at the same time, as the young beautiful actress who has been summoned to replace the old absentee. Thérèse in a few well placed words, smartly corrects the “picking order” and rushes upon the scene ready to confront her furious boss, her angry colleagues, the writer, the stage-hands, the journalists and the photographers. She has covered herself with a self-made dress, extravagantly decorated with real diamonds, she borrowed from a friend, diamonds worth millions. Ignoring the sneers and bad looks and while everybody gasps at her arrogant boldness, Therese steps up into the floodlights and… drops her dress. There she stands, the old woman completely naked, exhibiting herself in all her un-glory, sagging breasts and bold crotch. The theater is silenced. Then there are whispers, laughs and shouts.

Suddenly Thérèse, who until then has been silent, starts intoning Villon’s poem, “Les regrets de la belle Heaulmière”, that poignant lament on faded beauty…

‘Oh, old age, proud in wickedness,
You’ve battered me so, and why?

The theatre is silenced. Only her haunting voice reciting the lines of that medieval poet, whose complaint only now comes clear to the audience, cuts through the silence…

Who cares, who, for my distress,
Or whether at all your blows I die?
You’ve stolen away that great power
My beauty ordained for me
Over priests and clerks, my hour,
When never a man I’d see
Would fail to offer his all in fee,
Whatever remorse he’d later show,
But what was abandoned readily,
Beggars now scorn to know.

As Thérèse réincarnates Villon’s "Belle Heaulmiere", Flashes pop, journalists run for the telephone to call their redactions and the women, tears in their eyes, rush to embrace the actress. The old woman is all smiles, Thérèse Eglantine is back, she knows the piece will be hers and again a roaring success, her fame secured…

Years of exhibiting herself has turned Therèse into something of a freak, into what the French call a “Monstre Sacré”. She has become larger than life, adored and adulated. Nothing in what she does is normal anymore and we understand that true life and the roles she plays on stage, have blurred into one burlesque and grotesque show.

In the intro of “To the end of the world!”, Cendrars warns the reader that his book is a “roman à clef”, a novel with a key, a novel about real life and real people, but overlaid with a thin veil of fiction. But he immediately ads that he hopes the readers will have the delicacy not to use the key or “to be so paltry as to recognize themselves as they look through the keyhole at their neighbor”. The hole, “un trou” in French, is an important symbol in the novel. Cendrars will use it regularly. In the sex scene of the first chapter, Thérèse feels herself like a hole and more than one character comes out of a “trou”, a dirty hole of child abuse and neglect. More than one thinks about nothing else than burry himself in a “trou”, a hole made of alcohol and drugs and outrageous sex. More than one truly comes out of and ends in prison, again, “a trou” in French

“To the end of the world!”, was Blaise Cendrars last novel, written before his stroke but published after it, a few months before he died. It was written in his Parisian apartment in the rue Jean- Dolent, looking out on the “Santé Prison” famous for its literary inmates, Guillaume Appolinaire and Jean Genet, who got out of his “trou” only a year or so earlier.

The book, which demanded a long and arduous job, is inspired by the stories his second wife, Raymone Duchâteau, whom he married in 1949, told him. Raymone, an elderly theater actress, famous in the days of “l’entre deux guerres”, had lived through one of the most exciting periods of French theater and had indeed a few yarns to spin. Especially her remembrances of the actress Marguerite Moreno, who had just died in ’49, after a last moment of exhilarating glory, were a treasure trove for a writer like Cendrars. Moreno like Thérèse, survived a final role playing the exuberant crazy woman in the last play of the then deceased playwright Jean Giraudoux, “La Folle de Chaillot”.
Cendrars turned Marguerite Moreno into Thérèse Eglantine, a character who reminded me of something between Gloria Swanson in that Billy Wilder film noir, Sunset Boulevard and the charismatic French first ladies Simone Signoret or Edith Piaf.

And this is probably the biggest excitement of the book. All these crazy scenes and absurd situations might be based on true occurrences and despite Cendrars request, we do indeed look through the keyhole and hypnotized keep looking through the “trou”.

Thérese is not the only monster in the book. Her best friend is some kind of monster too.
La Présidente is a pretty half –woman, a beauty without legs, a lovely torso carried around by a huge negro. As absurdly comic and tragic, that it may appear, the Presidente too could be based on a real character, the true legless marvel known as Mademoiselle Gabrielle ( 1884 - ? ) exhibited at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 as the Half-Woman. Deprived of legs, she had no stumps either, her “torso finished just below the hip gracefully”. Like Cendrars, she was born in Switzerland and it could be that the young chap had heard of her and even saw her on one of his peregrinations. Gabrielle was so charming and beautiful that the public who came to gape at her forgot or accepted her deformity. She was exhibited in freak shows in different circuses, Barnum not the least of them. She even appeared in a vaudeville with the New York’s Hammerstein theater. Gabrielle did not live an unhappy life, she grew wealthy and was married three times! She disappeared in anonymity and it is not known where and when she ended the last part of her life.

In an earlier review, I observed that Chatwin had the habit, when asked about his literary influences, to mention grand names: Flaubert, Turgenev and even Racine, but he never mentions the writers we feel instinctively he is much more indebted to. Writers like Robert Byron, Frederic Prokosch and …Blaise Cendrars ! In his first novel, In Patagonia, is it not a legless woman who unknowingly attacks his homosexuality?
.
When do freak shows, exhibiting grotesque humans, turn into something we call “good taste”, culturally fit for theaters and movies? This a question Cendrars seems to ask. The writer divides the world between the exhibitionists and the voyeurs, and is interested in the interaction of both.

How much does the nakedness of that octogenarian “folle” contribute to the success of the vaudeville - comedy? Do the people come to see Thérèse in the same way as they would be attracted by the unusual exhibition of the “Hottentot Venus”? It seems so and it is brilliant that Thérèse realizes it and plays her “freak”-card to secure her last job.

Now, between both women, Thérèse and la Présidente, who already share an outrageous
sexual appetite and taste, an uterine fury, there is more than just friendship. It is clear that both women have been lovers, but there is more, unconsciously, secretly. I will not spoil it, but the story of both women might be hidden in a sordid legend Legionnaires tell around the campfires in North – Africa.

Because the story of Thérese turns out to be a soldiers tale, and a crime story too, and a story worthy of the 1001 nights. It is at the same time a comedy and a tragedy, it is true and it is false, it is a story Cendrars lived, it is a story he invented, he is part of the story and he is the narrator and all this turns into a most fantastic and entertaining yarn whose wisdom is summarized in the chapter’s titles: Life is Magic and the street is a theater scene, courtrooms are for comedies, perfect crimes do exist and finally Man has his desires and the arse has no soul…

Life is a freak show and the monsters are aplenty.

TBR 2012

2011-12-30T13:20:00.001+01:00

1. Moby Dick By HermanMelville

2. Arjun & thegood snake by Rick Harsch

3. Leys & otherworks by Victor Segalen

4. Danton & otherworks by Georg Buchner

5. Williwaw by Gore Vidal

6. Pale fire byNabokov

7. To the end of theworld & other works by Blaise Cendrars

8. As I lay dying byFaulkner

9. La route desFlandres by Claude Simon

10. Kaputt byMalaparte

11. The periodic tableby Primo Levi

12. Cloche – Merle byGabriel Chevallier

13. Shipwrecks by AkiraYoshimura

14. Dark avenues byIvan Bunin

15. The Scorpion God byWilliam Golding

16. Labyrinth by AlainRobbe-Grillett

17. Montaigne

18. What’s bred in thebone by Robertson Davies

19. L’empire des sensesby Roland Barthes

20 Dante in Love by Wilson

"Les Gommes" ( The erasers ) by Alain Robbe-Grillet

2011-12-29T21:22:00.001+01:00

Guido Cagnacci: Allegoria della vita umana

One would have expected that when Alain Robbe – Grillet (1922 – 2008 ), a young engineer, fresh from the Agricultural institute of Paris and himself a son of an engineer, would choose a subject for his first book, he would decide for recounting the time he spent as a conscripted worker in Nazi - Germany or of his experiences in the French colonies.

But no, “Les Gommes”, which was published in 1953 by les “Editions de Minuit” had all the appearances of a simple whodunit à la Gaston Leroux or Maurice Leblanc, what the French call a “Polar” or a ‘Roman Policier”, The first readers however noted immediately that something was different with this whodunit. Already from the first pages it is clear that there has been no murder, that the surprised would-be assassin only wounded his victim. The identity of the hit man, holding the smoking gun, is instantly revealed, and so is the identity of his evil sponsor. The wounded victim however disappears together with the criminal and a newly appointed agent, a man with the very foreign name “Wallas” enters the scene and sets himself the task to find both victim and assassin.

It is a strange “Polar” indeed, for Robbe – Grillet, this young engineer who has decided to dedicate his life to literature, has just delivered to the French public the first “Nouveau Roman”. While a first, the writer appears confident enough and he is very clear in explaining his literary aims and the theoretical background of his books. Jerôme Lindon, the director of “Les editions de Minuit, impressed by the young man’s new ideas, appoints him on the spot as his literary consultant. Robbe - Grillet enters the French literary scene, not as any newcomer but immediately as the “Pope” of the “Nouveau Roman”

Le “Nouveau Roman” is too often dismissed as a mere demonstration of craftsmanship, of “savoir faire”, an exhibition of the skill of the writers to play with words, syntaxes, and phrases. Often the story as such is of lesser importance and reduced to its bare essentials like a simple fait divers from a newspaper, an anecdote like the case in “l’Amante Anglaise” by Marguerite Duras. And neither is there a “message”, philosophical, ethical or political, hidden behind the words.

The “Nouveau Roman” was understandably accused of breaking with tradition, to make tabula rasa with all what has been written before. In the case of les Gommes, it proved to be the opposite. Unaware of what really was flowing out of his revolutionary pen, Alain Robbe – Grillet, bridged thousands of years of narrative tradition and turned out with a variant on the most classical of all texts…

We need an engineer like Alain Robbe – Grillet, to explain us in a clear way what his intentions were and which tools he used. In the article “Du nouveau Roman et la nouvelle Autobiographie”, he invites us on an imaginary scaffold (l’échafaudage structurel) surrounding the text to have a look at the work and craftsmanship involved in the conception of his book.

Initially Robbe – Grillet wanted not so much to write a book with an original story, but rather one that challenged the traditional way stories were told, the linear narrative structure, to which the public had grew accustomed to since the 19th century “Bourgeois Age” of Balzac. Like other contemporary experimental authors he would try his hand at a circular narrative, one where the end and the beginning would coincide and fused into one another.

The young engineer had been fascinated by the “Ouroboros numbers”, the magical sequence of numbers studied by the ancient priests of Egypt. The Ouroboros snake, better known as the snake that eats its own tail, had according to the Egyptian legend 108 rings of dorsal scales, numbered not in a traditional 1, 2, 3 way, but in a special more arcane sequence. Every Ouroboros number is the sum of the two preceding ones. When that sum is higher than 108, it is subtracted by 108, so that with number 108, you come back to 1. It is therefore a circular order and hence the numerological reference to the mythical snake. What fascinated the Egyptian priests as well as Alain Robbe – Grillet, was that if you do that you get all the traditional numbers and never twice the same.

Robbe – Grillet sat down at his desk and wrote a straightforward police story narrated in a linear way. Then he cut his story up in 108 pieces and wrote these “events” down on index cards. He reshuffled the cards in an “ouroboros” way and saw what happened to his story if it came out in a circular logic.

It did not work, the scaffold collapsed. The structure could not hold the tension of the narrative and in the words of Robbe - Grillet “exploded”. While he realized that he could not charm this Ouroboros snake, this chtonic reptile reminded him of another snake, the Python hiding under the Delphic Oracle and another cyclical story : the endless battle between Apollo Sauroctonos ( the day ) and the reptile ( the night ). Each one of them would alternatively win and lose the battle in an endless cycle of revolving days.

During his narrative experiment, Alain Robbe – Grillet suddenly realized that in the fragments of his earlier trials appeared something like a variant of Sophocles Oedipus Rex story, one of the more famous victims of the Delphic oracle. Oedipus investigates a murder until he realizes that he, himself, is the murderer. The premonitions, oracles and the dramatic outcomes of that classical story had indeed all the characteristics of a circular narrative.

Robbe – Grillet returned to his writing table. He replaced the Delphic Oracle with the heading of his “fait-divers” in the local newspaper “A murder has been committed!”. But some readers of the newspaper, witnesses, know that there has been no killing. The victim was slightly wounded but not killed. But what is written in a newspaper is expected to be true so… In “les Gommes”, Wallas, the Policeman is investigating a murder that did not happen but has been predicted.

The young writer, who had read “Ulysses” by Joyce and who confessed that without the help of Valery Larbaud, he would not have had a clue about what that book was all about, realized that his own book was rather obscure too. He had to decide if he would hide the classical text within his story or help his readers to discover it. He decided, just like Joyce to be helpful. To help the reader uncover the hidden myth, he opened the story with a slightly adapted epigram of Sophocles:

“le temps qui veille à tout a donné la solution malgré toi »( time who takes care of everything has given the solution…)

It did not really help. In an interview, Robbe - Grillet told his interviewer, that despite the hints, not one of the early readers saw the parallels with Sophocles text. Not even Roland Barthes, who was known to be a Sophocles specialist and who made an extensive study on the famous classical text.

“Les Gommes” is something like an experiment. It is the knowledge of what Robbe – Grillet is trying to do, that makes it so exciting. The result is highly recommended.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

2011-12-27T14:43:00.001+01:00

( Spoiler warning ! )

Dystopian societies inreality are Monsters, in the Latin sense of “Montrum”, a sign of the gods, awarning of what could happen. Writers inflate an actual perceived problem intoa complete fictional new world, in an attempt that their work might function asa warning. A Cacotopia says as much about our present fears than about apossible future.

Ray Bradbury wrote hisdark story in 1953 and now that he has reached the venerable age of 91, hemight even experience some of the predictions he set in a not too distant future.Fortunately all has not happened…yet, but on the other hand we are not safeeither, for some things are evolving rather in the wrong direction.

The book is set in an

America

of a near future. In this society, a kind of Mega suburbia, books are bannedand Firemen instead of extinguishing fires have the parodoxical task of settingfire to (horror of horrors) the last remaining books! Books are destroyedbecause it is feared that they contain ideas and ideas can only disturb asociety once it thinks it has attained perfection. Whatever books are stillfound they are joyfully torched.

One of the firemen, aguy named Montag (a weekend has passed since man was a savage cannibal), afterbumping into a mysterious “flower” girl, experiences a kind of consciousnesscrisis and starts to ask existential questions. Meeting the girl is a first ofa series of epiphany - kind encounters, one with the lovely girl, one when hesees an old woman who dies in the flames with her books, one when he has a chatwith a lonely intellectual. The old man’s tale makes Montag think and rejectthe society in which he has been living up till now.

One prediction ofBradbury has already proved true. Discarding books, people turn to the tellyfor their entertainment. Not the black and white gizmos of the fifties, but thetelevisions of today, flat and furious, HD, Herzy, Megapixly, wall-wide andsurround soundy. High-tech indeed, but the programs, as we have already beenaccustomed to, are moronic to the core: endless sitcoms, reality tv stupiditiesand a constant stream of “breaking news” interruptions. Sound familiar doesn’tit?

People seem to bereally doped by this room invading television, Montag’s wife sure is but itdoesn’t make her happier. One evening, Montag finds her collapsed, filled withpills, an attempted suicide. In this future society, suicide is so common thatsome kind of plumber - intubation teams drive around to rescue people. Theyplug their tubes in all the orifices, pump pump pump, and they are away fortheir next call.

Another way to escapeboredom is car violence. The streets at night have become the playground forsadistic youth whose idea of fun is to run down any lonely walker who has thecarelessness to walk on the road.

The originality ofBradbury’s desensitized utopian world lies in the fact that it is self-inflicted. Indeed, it is the citizens themselves who have backed away into thisworld where critical thinking has been banned. I think it is one of the mostpoignant messages of Fahrenheit 451, that as a herd, we don’t necessarily needan enemy to close us up, the fear of an enemy, real or imagined, is sufficientto give up our own liberty.

Now it seems that Montaghas been a naughty boy. In a secret closet, out of curiosity for what his jobmakes him destroy, he keeps some books. One of them is, hallelujah, the Bible.Montag starts to act queer and his boss and colleagues find out rather quicklywhat is wrong with him and they send the dog after him. The dog is some creepyelectronic Doberman with six paws and a lethal needle between its jaws.

Montag flees, escapesthe dog by crossing the river and falls in the hands of some literary hobos,all bookish people, professors, editors and critics. They gather around thefire in the woods. They want to know what Montag has read, because they can,thank you lord, excerpt whatever you have been reading out of your brain.Great, nothing is lost. Reason triumphs.

Mass culture,commercialism and the disappearance of objective criticism , today are already“de rigueur”. We are more controlled than we dare or want to admit. Books areunder threat too. They are not burned yet, but they are massively changed intodigitalized version. Digitalized versions are easier to manipulate. They caneven be changed when you have already paid them and they are (you think) safelyin your reader. In 2009 Amazon from a distance, was able to erase, both thebooks 1984 and Animal Farm in the Kindle of their customers. In the wake ofmass international protest, Amazon apologized and promised not to repeat suchan action. Maybe, but we are warned that it is possible.

So while Bradbury’s Fahrenheitfeels a bit dated here and there, I find that the messages he brings remainactual. Even after 50 years, we should not erase this one from our shelves.

La Peur ( Fear ) by Gabriel Chevallier

2011-12-25T12:43:00.002+01:00

French troops preparing to counterattack at Verdun

Gabriel Chevallierwrote a book that nobody wanted to read, about a moment in history nobodywanted to be reminded of and about a feeling everybody was ashamed of.

His war book “La Peur”(Fear) is not one of the more famous books coming out of la “Grande Guerre”.Chevallier’s name for instance has not the ring of an Ernst Junger or a HenriBarbusse, a Robert Graves or a Ford Maddox Ford, those better known writers whohave attempted to capture the horrors of the trenches of World War I.

I say attempted,because no words can ever bring home the sheer terror soldiers from all sides experiencedin one of the most scandalous episodes of human history. Chevallier’s bookhowever comes close…

Gabriel Chevallier ( 3May 1895 – 6 April 1969 ) is better known for his satirical novel Clochemerle.It brought him commercial success and allowed him to live from his pen. “Fear”however was a book which had always been very difficult to find, until recently,when several editions appeared in the wake of commemorations of the war of14-18. “Fear” never had the success it deserved. It appeared rather late, onlyin 1930, 12 years after the hostilities ended. Then, from 1939 on, the book wasforbidden for obvious demoralizing reasons and then in the fifties, when itbecame available again, the public was a bit weary of wars and turned to othertopics.

“La Peur” is anautobiographic book. It relates Chevallier’s experiences at the frontlineduring the first World War. The narrator, his thinly disguised alter ego, JeanDartemont, survives the four year war, but does not come out of this hell unscathed.

A most shocking thing,the writer insists on, is that the enemy for the common soldiers are not theGermans. Dartemont will come face to face with enemy soldiers only twice in hisfour year of battle experience. The real enemy in the trench war is invisible. Andthis makes it so terrible. The enemy comes in the shape of constant bombing, oflethal grenade rains, of invisible snipers, of mines that maim horribly, of gassesthat kill slowly, of tunnels that cave in. Rarely is there a face to facebattle. Worse than the Germans, for the front soldier, is one’s own officer, theones who order him out of the trenches, against all common sense, into the open,marching towards the certain Death of German machinegun fire.

The soldiers in thetrenches are beastly scared, Chevallier reminds us constantly. No, that is notstrong enough. Soldiers are imbued with fear, soaked in fear, devoured withinwith fear. They whine, they cry, they shit their pants, they vomit their gutseach time the attack orders are imminent or that the rumble of anotherbombardment approaches.

Dartemont does notexperience this senseless fear immediately on his first tour. Like most of theFrench, like most of the enthusiastic young men, he does not know what toexpect when he marches for the first time to the warzone, his head full ofpatriotic and heroic ideas. That is until he has his baptism of fire.

The battle scenes arereally terrible; the horror hypnotizing, as when the soldiers who survivedrecall how they “stepped in flesh” ( marchait dans la viande ) when they walkedover hundreds of their dead companions from the previous attack waves. Severaltimes Dartemont cannot believe he is safe, because he is so covered in bloodand pieces of meat. Unfortunately it is not his blood, not his pieces of skinand he has to remain in the trenches.

After his bloodydefloration, another logic takes over, the logic of survival at all costs.

The more experienced soldiersare ingenious in these survival strategies. Self wounding, self maiming and suicideare easy solutions. Wounded, they are transported to the safe hinterland. Theyhide, they delay, they slow down their advance. They act constantly on theverge of desertion. Sometimes they do cross the line and are executed. Anothertrick is to interrupt fighting as soon as they can capture a German. It allowsthem to escort their happy prisoner to HQ behind the frontlines. Surroundingthemselves with prisoners protects them from snipers too. Most crazy of all iswhen they come to an understanding with the poor buggers from the oppositetrenches. They warn each other of coming fire so as to have the time to findcover and do dig in. The soldier’s common enemies are the officers. Notsurprisingly that true communist ideals have sprouted from the horrors of thewar…

It is not so long ago,it was the time of our grandfathers. Still we cannot fully comprehend to whathorrors we send a whole generation of young men…

Not a book to enjoy,but not a book to miss either…

MM Part 7: The Thunderbolt

2011-11-27T08:03:00.001+01:00

August 1914, German troops advancing through Belgium

Hans remains seven years at the SanatoriumBerghof and sits at each of the seven tables.

His tablemates at the last, “bad Russian”table come from the foggy edges of Europe.

Hans has become some kind of a hermit, an anchorite.He takes less care about himself and wears a goatee. There is, the narratoradds, a certain philosophical negligence in his appearance.

With the exception of his occasional visitsto his mentor Settembrini, Hans has become silent and most people, even thedoctors and nurses, leave him alone.

Hans has no watch anymore and no calendarsin his room, so he is also standing outside time now. Time has continuedslipping past and many things have changed, people have died, kids have grownup and died and the old consul Tienappel has died too. While Hans is verydistant to what happens in the flatlands, he still sees the departing of hisuncle as another step towards his total freedom.

He has stopped writing letters to people heonce knew, stopped ordering his Mancinis ( replaced them by a new brand “Oathof Rutli” – an independence symbol ), cut all strings which still attached himto the flatlands.

We hear a “Rumble of thunder”. We are inthe Summer of 1914 ( WW1 officially begins 28^th July ). The twodemons introduced in the last chapters Stupor and Petulance, have taken geopoliticdimensions and are the cause of war.

“The Thunderbolt itself was the deafeningdetonation of great destructive masses of accumulated stupor and petulance”

The War has of course an effect on theresidents of the Berghof too. People are fleeing the sanatorium and travellingdown to the flatlands.

The Magic Mountainbursts open and “rudely sets the entranced sleeper outside the gate”. (TheTannhauser gate of Wagner’s opera…)

Our friend Hans has not seen things comingdespite the warnings of Settembrini. Hans is the Sevensleeper.

“There he sits ( rubbing his eyes ) in the grasslike man who has failed to read the daily papers”

HC is released, set free… “not by his ownactions he had to admit to his shame”

Settembrini is very ill and will not makeit down to the flatlands.

There is an emotional adieu between Settembriniand Hans

Next we find ourselves on the battlefield “Whereare we ? What is that ?”

Sounds of War, Brass blaring, Drumbeats. Thereis a Regiment of volunteers, youngsters, students, 3000 of them. Statistically1000 are about to die in the imminent attack.

A “shameful and sublime” war sceneinterrupted with a vision of that “golden age” , we remember from the chaptersnow.

Among the volunteers we discern our Hansfor a final last time…

He has turned into a real soldier, withouthesitation he steps on the hand of a fallen comrade. Marching towards theenemy, he is singing to himself strophes of Schubert’s “Der Lindenbaum”.

“Upon its bark, I have carved there so manywords of love

And all its branches rustled, as if theycalled to me”

The world of Death beckons…

The narrator and the readers take leave ofHans. “We have told your story to the end…”.

Hans disappears in the fog of war. It isnot likely that he will survive. But for the story, it does not matter thatmuch…

What a way to finish a Bildungsroman ! Hasall that learning served to nothing? Will all those pedagogic efforts becrushed by the next bomb?

And even if we get an answer to thequestion “Will Love rise up from this carnival of death too?”, will it be in anendless cycle of learn and build and then…destroy?

Finis operis

( the end, not in the sense of the “lastpage” but in the sense of St Thomas of Aquinas : the purpose of the work)

MM Part 7: The great petulance

2011-11-26T22:23:00.001+01:00

The demon of stupor makes place for the demon of irritability, contempt, acute petulance, a love of quarrels. A penchant for outbursts of rage, nasty verbal exchanges and even…yes… fisticuffs.

The peaceful sanatorium has become the scene of nasty, embarrassing moments: quarrels, fights, anti-semitism…

Clearly what happens on the mountain is a reflection of worser things taking place in the flatlands. But it is the infection of the atmosphere that worries us most.

The unthinkable happens. A fierce discussion between Naphta and Settembrini, just like the ones we witnessed so many times before, turns awry. Naphta challenges Settembrini for a duel. Settembrini accepts. The discussions are over, it is the defeat of the intellect. Hans, Wehsal and Ferge try to bring the two antagonists to reason but with no success.

Mann has read his Lermontov and the details of the duel are described in detail. The duelists go for quality; they choose Belgian Brownings to settle their discord.

Standing face to face, both Settembrini and Naphta underscore their intellectual stances.

Settembrini the humanist, refuses to shoot at Naphta and makes his point by emptying his weapon by shooting in the air. Naphta is furious, turns the pistol and shoots himself. For him too, the suicide, the self-destruction underscores the intellectual stance he has been defending since we met him for the first time.

It is just brilliant how Mann brings this scene, so well in line with what those two man have said before and what we have come to expect from them.

Bravo Settembrini !
Bravo Thomas Mann !

Can’t believe it, but tomorrow we will read the last chapter.

MM Part 7: Highly Questionable.

2011-11-26T15:01:00.001+01:00

Still from "Der Spieler" by Fritz Lang

Nothing good can come of having too muchtime at hand…

I must confess that when I read thischapter for the first time, I was as shocked as Hans by what had happened.Lulled into comfort during fifty and more chapters of realistic style and thekind irony of the narrator, I was not prepared to what Hans and the readerswere about to experience…

A very sad chapter…

Edhin Krokowski’s ( first time I notice hisfirst name ) interest is slipping from the psychoanalytic towards theparanormal ( hypnotism, somnambulism, etc etc )

The Danish girl Ellen Brand from the cityof Odense ( the city of HC Andersen ), a new patient at the Berghofshows some uncanny knack to uncover hidden objects. “Voices” seem to directher. She has some paranormal talents.

Krokowski decides to “take care” of theyoung girl. She seems to be haunted by the spirit of a young boy, a child namedHolger who whispers her answers or directions…

( Holger or Olger is the name of one of thekings of the Mountain) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_in_the_mountain

Ellen has regular visions and paranormalexperiences, so the bored patients of the Sanatorium decide to organize aséance of spiritism in the room of Hermine Kleefeld

Using a glass and tokens with the lettersof the Alphabet they summon a ghost. Holger soon enough indicates he is invisiblypresent. It starts as a game. Holger appears to be a poet and recites a Romanticpoem by making a glass slide over the table towards the different letters.

When they decide to switch to practicalquestions and Hans asks how long he shall remain in the Sanatorium things startto change. There are knocks, the lights go out, Ellen Brand slips into a sleep-likestate.

Hans gets an enigmatic answer: “Go Across”and then something about his room nr.34. To his surprise he finds the x-raypicture of Clawdia on his lap. It seems that the Poltergeist has dropped ittheir on purpose for Hans did not have the picture with him at that moment.

The answer to Hans question could beunderstood as “Go 3 + ( a cross ) 4 = 7” “Go after seven years?”. But why theClavdia picture reappears is not clear. Has something happened to her?

They stop the experience… for now

Settembrini disapproves and is understandablyangry with Hans that he participates in this act of primitive magical mumbojumbo.

Hans, who has stayed away from thisparanormal activity for some time, is lured back by his friends, because thespirit Holger has appeared to the audience and Ellen Brant has promised tobring back a deceased person.

Hans, with his awful fascination for death,is thinking about… Joachim. Remember how listening to the Valentin part of the Gounodopera, has brought Joachim to HC mind.

The séance starts. Light is dimmed, musicis played. ( an ouverture by Millocker )

Ellen goes in trance with spasms and shakes…

“Whom shall friend Holger reveal to us?”. Nobodydares to say a name until HC frivolously asks to see his cousin JoachimZiemssen again. ( That bloody placet experiri of the boy!).

They wait while the girl is in trance for 2hours! The term scandalous is appropriate for what is happening…

The exhausted Ellen makes pulling movementswith her hands, just like Joachim when he was about to die. After a shortbreak, they continue. The trancelike state of Ellen is compared to a woman inlabour. Hans suggest to put on another record, Valentin’s prayer from Gounod’sFaust. Although Hans is sure that the record was not brought to the room, itseems that by accident ( slipped into the wrong sleeve ) it is available and Wesel puts it on…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlipNY5oLao&feature=related

Suddenly Joachim makes his appearance. Hematerializes even before Hans notices him. It is an absolutely chillingpassage. Summoning his cousin from the world of the dead is an awful act ofdesecration. Hans looks up and looks straight at Joachim. “There was one moreperson than before in the room…” It is our Joachim of the last hours, like hewas described on his death-bed, with hollow cheeks and warrior’s beard. Hisbeautiful eyes look tenderly and in friendly silence at Hans…He is in the fieldgarb of the coming war, probably with a steel picklehaube on his head.

It is a terrible sad but crucial moment. Thenovel’s two basic stitches Love and Death are sewn and complete Hans spiritualdevelopment. Hans understands he has crossed the line and is both physicallysick ( he wants to throw up ) and mentally stunned…he sobs, mumbles “forgive me”to his cousin …tears blind him…

Hans pulls himself free, leaving Ellen in astate of shock and Krokowski in anger. Under menace Krokowski hands Hans thekeys of the room and our friend…

A very sad chapter indeed.

MM Part 7: Fullness of Harmony.

2011-11-26T04:46:00.001+01:00

The great Stupor continues. After the “patience” fad, we switch to music. Music, if it has the effect of a drug, is politically suspect. You should remember that from the teachings of Settembrini…

Love for music fills the emotional gap which Clavdia has left. Hans listening to the music “filling time” should be therapeutic. The different operas, ballet themes and songs are carefully chosen by the narrator. They create a spark of an emotional memory in Hans and the reader and as such are a perfect resume of the story to which end we are coming. It is brilliantly done….

To entertain its guests the Berghof has invested in a German-made “Polyhymnia” music cabinet. Behrens gives a demonstration with a first record. What else could we expect but…

1.The ouverture of the opera “Orpheus in the Underworld” by Offenbach

Hans too has travelled to the Underworld and has not been able to bring back his Clawdia…

“ Ach, Ich habe Sie verlohren”... I have lost you...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95LX5MMctkk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus

then

2. An Italian baritone singing from “ The Barber of Seville” by Rossini

Is that Settembrini we hear ? – eh il barbiere.( eh inginere ) Di Qualita, di Qualita!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyhuIC1sxJY

then

3. An aria from La Traviata by Verdi

Beautiful Violetta is ill, has tuberculosis, but thinks she is healed, she is not…
She has no eyes for the younger Alfredo who declares her his love (Un di, felice, eterea – the day I met you )…in spite of the fact that she is with another older man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1ELC9RBsqM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXZNX32E3ew

Hans takes over the manipulation of the machine as soon as Behrens leaves.

4. The Barcarole from the “Les contes d’Hoffman” by Offenbach.

Hoffmann falls in love with Giuletta but his love is not returned…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tales_of_Hoffmann

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u0M4CMq7uI&feature=related

HC has discovered a new passion, a new Love. He spends time with the machine till late at night, then from early in the morning.

5. „Blick ich umher in diesem edlen Kreise“ from Wagner’s Tannhauser

The ministrel Tannhauser, like Hans, is imprisoned on the enchanted Mountain Horselberg by his love for Venus
This is the Opera, Mann is most indebted to, although he never admits it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvJn_A9MZW8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannh%C3%A4user_(opera)

6. « Da mi il braccio, mia piccina » from Puccini’s “La bohème »

Rodolfo is madly in love with Mimi. After some time Rodolfo wants to leave Mimi because of her flirtatious behavior. But the poor girl is terminally ill…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFtidDtipfs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_boh%C3%A8me

Hans appoints himself as caretaker of the musical cabinet and even takes the key.
The cabinet is described as a coffin, a temple, it is ghostly music…

Hans has favorite discs. The narrator lists them for us…All of them conclude with a reunion of Love in Death.

1. Aida…

Radames cannot forsake his love for the Barbarian girl Aida.
They are thrown and reunited in a tomb where they die in each other arms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aida

Tu en questa tomba… the final scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztStUKOBBu4

2. L’après midi d’un Faune by Claude Debussy

Reminiscent of Hans waking up on the bench near the mountain brook, those beautiful days he “played king”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaX9GZfjROg&feature=related
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afternoon_of_a_Faun_(Nijinsky)

3.Carmen by Bizet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen

Corporal Don Jose is ripped apart by his love for the beautiful gypsy woman and doing his duty. Here too Love ends with death

Here is ( gasp ) Anna Antonacci in La Habanera…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2XyHfi50yE

4.Faust by Gounod

Valentin makes us think about our poor Joachim

Here is “avant de quitter ce lieu”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFjVrwlxOcA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust_(opera)

and we end with

5. Schubert’s Lindenbaum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IlMRIHkBBE

Which was this world of forbidden love behind this enchanting song ?

It was Death…

MM Part 7 : The great Stupor

2011-11-24T06:28:00.001+01:00

Stupor is an introduction for the four last (and strange) chapters. Mann is preparing the end…and warns us that some characters we are now meeting, we see for the last time…

HC is still on his Mountain although we cannot understand why…

Peeperkorn and Joachim are dead.
Clawdia is gone
The teachings are over,

And strangest of all, Behrens thinks that Hans illness has nothing to do (anymore) with TBC…There is some blood taking without decisive outcome. There is no reason to stay on the Mountain.

Why is Hans idling away, wasting away his youth in that damn Sanatorium?

Hans has entered a state of “ Stupor”.
Stupor according to Wiki is the lack of critical cognitive function and level of consciousness wherein a sufferer is almost entirely unresponsive and only responds to base stimuli such as pain.

The narrator compares the stupor with a demon who has a hold on HC. “This is life without time, care or hope, life as a stagnating hustle-bustle of depravity, dead life”.

HC fills his time, as all the old timers do, with “fads”: photography, stamp collecting, chocolate tasting, mathematical games ( with endless and innumerable outcomes ), bogus business plans , to end with the worst of all…playing patience.

Our old friend Settembrini cannot belief his eyes. Hans even insults Settembrini with a “placet experiri”- remark while playing this stupid game.

Things are happening in the flatlands “ The world situation baffles me” Settembrini , who read papers, says. HC is not interested. Hans, we know, does not read papers.

The Great Stupor, both in HC mind as in the world down below, will come to no good, the narrator warns us. “The end will be a catastrophe, a thunderstorm and a great cleansing wind will break the spell and wrench life from its dead standstill and overturn the doldrums in a terrible Last Judgment…”

MM Part 7: Mijnheer Peeperkorn ( conclusion )

2011-11-23T22:02:00.001+01:00

Peeperkorn has organized an excursion to the Fluela Valley waterfall. The occasions for such activities become less and less for the man is very ill and has to stay more and longer in his bed.

The group consists of 7 people: Peeperkorn, La Clawdia, Hans, the brainy duo Settembrini and Naphta and Ferge and wretched Wehsal.

The excursion is physically demanding for Peeperkorn… the departure is postponed several times…

Creepy Wehsal is sick of love and his comments on his lust for Clawdia are scary. Strange that Hans accepts this kind of obnoxious ramblings and masochistic fantasies. Hans in fact acts very mature and adult.

Pieter Peeperkorn leads his procession towards the waterfall.

“The woods were not like others…”. We are entering a fantastic realm…
Words like exotic, eerie, bizarre, disfigured, sickly are used to describe nature around them.
There is a feeling of ghosts here, mourners maybe, subjects who are “draped”, “wrapped” and “webbed”. The sound of the waterfall is overwhelming. It is the “pandemonium of hell”

They thought they could hear menacing, threatening trumpet calls and brutal male voices.

Where are we?

Speaking to each other is not possible. However Peeperkorn decides to picknick right there where the noise is too much. They pick-nick in silence like deaf-mutes in a howling storm.

Peeperkorn gives a long soundless speech. He challenges nature, tries to dominate the waterfall with his presence and his voice, but his voice is drown out by the thunder of the water. The whole scene underscores his impotence.

The old King, the fallen God looks now more like the Man of sorrows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_Sorrows

After his inaudible speech, Peeperkorn decides to go back to the Berghof. They return in silence. That same night Hans is woken and asked to come to the room of Peeperkorn. The old man is dead. He has committed suicide. Poisoned himself, using a snake – like device.

The brilliant scene of Hans kissing Clawdia on the brow over the dead body, while the Malayan servant’s eyes turn white conclude this chapter and the story of Pieter Peeperkorn.

MM Part 7: Mijnheer Peeperkorn ( continued )

2011-11-23T21:58:00.001+01:00

This chapter announces a “quite memorable excursion” ( including Naphta + Settembrini ) to the Fluela waterfall near Davos. This excursion coincides with Peeperkorn “departing”. The narrator is very mysterious about the way Peeperkorn departs. He doesn’t die like Ziemmsen, that at least is sure.

The narrator is also worried about time speeding past. The hour hand turns at speed of seconds, a time experience of opium or hash-addicts. The narrator fears the censor…

Hermetic pedagogy ? in what sense? Obscure? Esoteric?

HC does not see Peeperkorn as a rival and maybe this annoys Clawdia.

HC visits P in his room. It is a luxury room adjoining Clavdia’s room. P is very ill. He has malaria and takes Quinine drinks as a cure.

Clawdia is present in the room (to make sure HC will not divulge their tryst to Peeperkorn?)

See Peeperkorn imagery

regal head
lance-nailed captain’s hand
dancing heathen priest

Fingers forming the ring of perfection and the three “finger lance” pointing upwards.
Peeperkorn gives a dissertation on poison, he knows all about it and seems to be fascinated by it’s killing properties.

HC introduces everybody to everybody, well aware of the differences between his many pedagogues and friens. It is an expression of his “life – affirming” nature, everything is worth listening too.

Important enough to notice is that for both Naphta and Settembrini, as for all pedagogues , women are a disruptive and distracting element. A silent primal hostility unites both men against “La Clawdia”

Peeperkorn walking reminds HC of the steps of a senile old man rather than a king. Peeperkorn the wounded king, the fisher king ? Did Mann see Wagner’s Parsifal ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_King

It is rather comical to picture Naphta and Settembrini overwhelmed by the presence and personality of Peeperkorn. HC is not taking sides.

Settembrini accuses Hans of worshipping Peeperkorn’s “personality” as an idol. You are venerating a mask, you are in danger of idol – worship. You see something mystical where there is only mystification…You should be ashamed of yourself …

Mundus vult decipi…Petronius: “Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur” "The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived."

See also Marcus Varro: “there are many truths, which it is useless for the vulgar to know; and many falsities which it is fit the people should not suppose are falsities”.

Settembrini is still jealous: “ … your weakness for things Asian is well known…I cannot treat you to such wonders”

And showing his Latin temperament

“your businesslike composure borders on the grotesque”

Settembroni accuses HC of unmanliness in his acceptance of Peeperkorn, his rival for Beatrice
.
Funny because Settembrini is aware that he has to be silent about the themes of jealousy and acceptance of rivals. He too did not show any “manly” bravery.

Interesting is how the “presence” of Peeperkorn puts in the shadow all rational; intellectual arguments. Whatever S and N discuss about, people await the stuttering reaction of Peeperkorn. Here is a “presence”, people will flock to, against all intellectual presentiments and ego’s. Is this the secret of the initial populist success of Hitler, Il Duce and Stalin.

Again a long argument between N and S is developed. Is anybody, characters and readers alike still following these discussions?

Peeperkorn interrupts the discussions and commands his companions to notice the “taste” and the “smell” of the crisp mountain air. They do. Then he spots the regal eagle. Peeperkorn for a moment is the Zeus, the god of the sky, lord of Mount Olympus. Is his raised sharp fingernail, lightning ready to strike?

The chapter finishes with two anecdotes.

1° Clawdia approaches Hans mimicking his first approach of Hippe.” Do you have a poststamp. They have a long and deep “lovers” discussion. Despite her attitude, she gives the impression to be in need of a friend. There are hints at the impotence of Peeperkorn and he is illness. Is Clawdia approaching Hans, a sign of the end of Peeperkorn.
This discussion is ended with a kiss on the lips. A Russian kiss.

Clawdia does not accept the claim that HC staid on the mountain for her. She will not be responsible for his waste of time. We agree, it is Hans folly.

Clawdia speaks with premonition: “Germans will one day be the enemy of humankind, because they are so repulsively egoistic”. The Magic Mountain was written in 1924.

2° The second scene takes place in Peeperkorn’s room where the old Man wants to know the true feeling and relation between Hans and Clawdia. HC is afraid, clumsily confesses. Wine is spilled like blood, there are even some words about a duel, but in the end P and HC close a bond of brotherhood. Peeperkorn has assigned HC as his successor?

MM Part 7: Vingt et un

2011-11-20T18:56:00.001+01:00

Hans has « lost » Clawdia but has to witness each day how she and PP enjoy themselves together. He is jealous.

It is Clawdia, who opens the conversation again with Hans. “…and your cousin, monsieur?”
Hans first words to Clawdia is “Dead”. Joachim is dead. When Hans start speaking nonsense, only the reader can follow the ramble.

Hans uses Mme Chauchat’s first name. ( Who is the uneducated savage now ?)
CC does not accept it.
HC confesses that he has been waiting for her. “Fool !”.
CC still does not like Settembrini and his Mediterranean arrogance

Pieter Peeperkorn joins the couple. They are three now, like “ménage à trios” or like the “Christian Trinity”?

PP is the great himself and is immediately open and sympathetic to Hans. He does not see in the young man someone ordinary or unassuming but someone “promising”.

PP organizes an “evening” of drinks food and game. Let us enjoy ourselves. Again he gathers 12 people around the table for a game of 21. ( numerology again ). As they sit around the table with PP toasting, the scene resembles the Eucharist or a Bacchanale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist

Peeperkorn has seated Hans between him and Clawdia.

Everthing goes well until food that is served is (according to PP) a gimcrackery, cheap, tasteless. PP explodes in fury ! Clawdia calms him down and PP makes an effortless transition from rage to composure…

PP keeps his pleasures holy, simple, directly from the hand of God…drink, eat. Smoking is already too sophisticated, decadent? Cocaine – Hashish – Opium is too much. But PP does not reprove, does not judge.

“The unforgivable Sin lies in…” Hans takes over the answer, but we don’t know what in the eyes of PP is the “unforgivable Sin”.

“Demands”, Life’s holy, feminine demands upon our manly honor and vigor…”

HC likens PP to the God Bacchus. That would make Clawdia, Ariadne ? will she help our Perseus out of the Labyrinth?

“Life is a woman sprawled…”

The defeat of feeling in the face of Live, that is the inadequacy for which there is no pardon, no pity…. Impotency is the unforgivable sin…

Hans babbling nearly infuriates PP in a comic scene.

PP refers to the sleep at Gethsemane. The sleep of the last night.
Matthew 26:45 “Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, Are you still sleeping and resting?... Behold, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners”.

The party starts all over again !

When the rumor goes that Behrens approaches, the party breaks up and HC and CC accompany PP to his room.

“Kiss one another!” Hans refusal makes him suspicious…

MM Part 7: Mijnheer Peeperkorn

2011-11-20T18:55:00.001+01:00

Mann is getting short on inspiration: 3 chapters will be titled Peeperkorn.

Peeperkorn is a colonial Dutchman. He is from the east and the west. His name reminds us of this duality. Pepper the spice from the east. “Koren”, grain the bread of home.
A Dutchman, Peeperkorn drinks Jenever ( from Schiedam btw ), the liquid bread. ( Not Gin ! )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenever

“someone else”. The narrator promises that this last “pedagogue” will “spread great confusion” over our hero but this time ( Thanks God !) “no one need to worry that yet another instigator of intellectual and pedagogic confusion has made his appearance”. Mann knows we have got our fill.

PP is the companion of Clawdia

PP is described as a God – like figure. His hair forms an aura around his head, he commands respect with his colourless eyes, he has a white and regal head and a beard. His most impressive way however, is how he speaks, speaking without saying anything, with unfinished incomprehensible phrases , punctuated with hand and arm movements like an orchestra conductor… a fantastic figure ( and funny too ! ). PP calls everybody “my child” and surrounds himself occasionally with 12 people.

The positioning of his fingers when he underscores what his about to say, remind me of a “Christ Pantocrator” . Christ like too is how he raises his Jenever glass. It looks like an Eucharist ( see also next chapter )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocrator

PP speaks about himself in the 3rd person when drinking.
PP is ill too. Maybe Malaria, or worse.

Clawdia ignores Hans for now.

The kinky Egyptian Princess is back too ( with here eunuch, a castrated Moor ), she turns out to be a lesbian…

“Jewish woman from Romania with the very plain name of Landauer”. Is Mann taking a jab at the anarchist Gustav Landauer?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Landauer

My languishing Céladon: referring to the hero of the “Novel of novels” l’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Astr%C3%A9e

MM Part 7: A stroll by the shore

2011-11-20T18:53:00.001+01:00

This is the last part, the seventh part, and it is introduced by short dissertation on Time.

The narrator reminds us that a Narration like Music “fill time”.

There are different ways to “experience” Time. There is the time described by the narration and the time needed to read this narration. Although, we started reading a month ago, it feels like ages ago…. ( at least to me ) and how many years have passed since Hans first arrival at the Berghof. Mann cleverly does not mention when Clawdia had arrived so we cannot make an exact calculation…but does it matter ? Clawdia is back, what great news!

MM Part 6: A good soldier

2011-11-17T21:23:00.001+01:00

Winter is over. We are in summer. Soon Hans will be two years at the Berghof;

Joachim’s time as a young officer in training is a happy time, until his weak health overtakes his “desire to do his duty”. Joachim has to return to the Sanatorium. His mother is with him.

HC concludes: the (ill) body triumphs over the soul. Has the body been lured back to a certain Marusja? Hans does not seem to understand that Joachim might die.

J has met Clawdia in the flatlands, she might come back to the Berghof for winter. The spell needs to be revived.

“Great War Games”. Is all this military muscle flexing a hint of things to come?

Settembrini turns out to be a Free – Mason which makes him a bit “terroristic” like Joachim and… Naphta. There is a whole tedious dissertation on Freemasonry. More discussions between Settembrini and Naphta.

Some phrases I jotted down : “Everything is politics” “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil” “Wordlessness isolates”

S jokes to Hans that his Beatrice is back and that this time he hopes that he will not show any disdain towards his Virgil.

HC notices that Joachim eyes have taken on a meditative and ominous expression (foreboding or foreshadowing evil : inauspicious ). J ‘s condition worsens. Behrens predicts that our lieutenant will die in 6 to 8 weeks. “Not much hope my lad” How sad. How sad when his eyes look down in shame, how sad when he finally speaks and says adieu to Marusja. “Yes he is lost”. How sad when he finally goes horizontal, his mother summoned to his bed and dies in her arms.

Death is overrated Behrens assures Luise Ziemmsen, J will die without pain.
He dies at 7 o’clock. It is Hans who closes J’s eyes.

There is stage imagery. The curtain comes down on this last chapter of the sixth part. The narrator mysteriously promises us that it will rise one final time. We need to read a few more chapters to understand what he means.

This is Hans’s second epiphany. Death comes after love, the first epiphany, the Erotic love he experienced at the end of the fifth part. Now, it is as if Hans experiences his own death. For is his cousin not his alter-ego, his counter-part and complement, his twin brother?
After Hans’s experiences in the two last chapters, he cannot get any closer to death. One’s own death, one cannot experience, Behrens reminds us

Only the awful rictus smirk which appears on the face of Joachim drives Hans away from the “empty shell”

Could this be the last step in Hans decadent, voyeuristic attraction to death, the last step of the Danse Macabre ?

Time to open a new and final thread…”A safe descent”

MM Part 6: Snow

2011-11-17T12:00:00.001+01:00

Top of the Mountain !

This chapter isconsidered by many critics to be the centre of the book. In time Thomas Mannwould agree and said that he regretted not to have put this chapter at the endof the Magic Mountain. But if Snow would have beenthe last chapter, the book would have been completely different and probablynot “open” to so many ways of understanding.

In the previous chapter,the two pedagogues Settembrini and Naphta, have given a demonstration of a rhetoricallymasterful but pointless debate, unconsciously switching stances and chasingeach other to the extremes of the consequences of their philosophicalpositions. Hans and we the reader are left in “great confusion”.

Two things happen inthe chapter “Snow”: Hans is visiting his old friend “Death” again ( the wintrywhite landscape symbolizes death, eternity, the dissolution of individuality,nothingness), getting closer than he ever did before, (the relation becomingquite personal now) and secondly he is about to come to a summary, a conclusionof what he has learned; not in words, but in a vision. Had this be the lastchapter, the book would have ( in my opinion ) suffered a lot.

Is it over after this?Absolutely not, some important and excellent chapters remain to be read. Thedance of death will continue in a cruel way and the “summary” to which Hanswould come in this chapter will have to be reviewed nearly every chapter…

And remember, still weneed to meet one more “major character” to complete the number of 7 teachers ofour friend Hans.

But lets not cutcorners, Snow first !

Winter. Patients of theBerghof grumble because of the lack of sunshine.

There is a lot of snowhowever. Mann’s description of the snowy landscape instil in the reader and thepatients feelings of the “sublime and the holy”.

Frau Solomon is backfrom the flatlands. Her stay in the flatlands has worsened her illness and sheis about to die. We fear for others who have gone down too: Joachim and Clawdia

A snowstorm isdescribed as a “beast”, it is dangerous for you lose your way and you mighteven suffocate. Mann has to instruct his readers a bit about extreme weather.

(there is no tv and noNGS channel yet )

HC rebels against the “Berghofrules”and purchases a pair of skis anlearns the skill. Settembrini loves thissimple act of rebellion. See how Settembrini compares himself to Mercury withwings on his ankle ( Hermes ): funny… what an agreeable companion, S is, encouragingand helping HC.

HC lately longs to bealone… “It permitted him the solitude he sought, the profoundest solitudeimaginable…”. Is this a new development ?

Nature is described asdangerous and threatening. HC experiences fear and courage in his solitaryexpeditions. Fear is prerequisite of courage.

HC sets of on anotherlonely trip.

praeterit figura huiusmundi ( Corinthians 7:31)” and those that use the world, as not abusing it: forthe fashion of this world passeth away.

HC takes positions: helikes Settembrini ( … my pedagogue Satana…) and prefers him to Naphta ( terrorist, torturer, flogger ). A trick oflight makes him remember Hippe and Clawdia. “Glad to…”

HC is losing hisbearings. Blinded by the whiteness on all sides it even seems he enters themountain at a moment. The reader is worried before HC who is acting recklessly…with some kind of defiance of death. He challenges death? “Fear made himrealise he had secretly and more or less purposely, been trying to lose hisbearings all the time, to forget in what direction…”. Compare this to the veryfirst chapter, where we had also Hans visiting the world of the death.

“But there is only oneword for what was happening in HC’s soul: defiance”.

Hans is caught up bythe snow storm and experiences the unexpected “wind-chill” danger. ( comparedDeath’s scythe )

Not only is he lost,probably tired but also dangerously under-dressed.

Dangerous things arehappening in his mind:

“…The more physicalpart…was inclined to abandon itself to the muddled state threatening to engulfhim as exhaustion grew…

HC compares a lifethreatening situation with “illness”. “…familiar blend of languor andexcitement…” “… a merciful self narcosis sets in…” Are we witnessing one more (final?) turn in Hans “dance of death”? Another step closer to his experiencewith death?

Luckily HC realizesthat this numbing “means great harm”

“…The desire, thetemptation to lie down and rest crept into his mind”

“… All he had to do wasto submit to it…” The “it” is the life-denying force. HC “withstood thetemptation..”

Finally he gets coverfrom the shed he has already sighted several times during the afternoon.

The shed might safe hislive…

Terror sets finallyin…”What a hell of a state of affairs”

The situation in thesnow-storm wakens up parts of HC’s brain we thought were numbed for ever: Heunderstands that “…you ran around in a circle…a foolish arc that led back onitself…a teasing year come full circle…And so you wandered around and neverfound your way home”

The experience of timehas slowed down considerably.

Hc mind begins tofantasize, to hear Settembrini’shorn, to see him as a genuine organ grinder,..his mind is jumping – horizontal position – impersonal desire to lie down andsleep –

From the relativesecurity of the wooden barn against which he is sheltering, Hans has hisvision. He sees an Arcadian world, a Mediterraneanlandscape (the cradle of civilization) – referring to Goethe, Classicism, theEnlightment, the soil from which Settembrini draws his ideas. It is a happyscenery with beautiful, healthy people. There are hints of Clawdia – of love inthis vision – of Hippe and then suddenly his eyes are diverted to another sceneembedded in the happy one. In a moreancient, archaic Doric (? ) temple a gruelling scene takes place. Two witchesare ripping a child apart and eat it “piece by piece, the brittle bonescracking in their mouths, blood dripping from their vile lips” The woman cursehim in his own dialect…

Hans awakens into adream – state from his mortal sleep… and ecstatic wonders about the dream. Wheredoes it come from? What does it mean ?

“We dream anonymouslyand communally… the great soul, of which we are just a little piece… , dreamsthrough us….( Jung ? )

It is our own eternalsecret dream – about youth, its hope, its joy, its peace, and its bloody feast”

The dream is revelationof the Human condition, the Golden Age pitted against the cruelty of life. Thereis a lot of Nietzsche’s “Birth of tragedy” here with its “Olympian Magic Mountain”

Horror is in the middleof our world, most Modernist writers remind us. Mann’s sunny people do notintervene in the horror, cannot stop it, are not willing, are not able…theyhave to live with it.

And here comes Hansconclusion : “ Where they ( The sunny people ) charming and courteous to oneanother, out of silent regard for that horror? What a fine and gallantconclusion for them to draw! I shall hold to their side, here in my soul, andnot with Naphta, or for that matter with Settembrini – they’re both windbags”

… in the middle iswhere the Homo Dei’s state is found…

And emphasized by ThomasMann : “For the sake of goodness andlove, man shall grant death no dominion over his thoughts”

Hans wakes up: My dreamhas granted me ( the truth ) so clearly that I will always remember… Theweather changes to the better and Hans returns safely back to the Berghof.

The chapter endsironically…

His dream was alreadybeginning to fade…. He was no longer sure what his thoughts had been…

MM Part 6: Operationes Spirituales

2011-11-16T05:40:00.001+01:00

For one reason or another Leo Naphta’s story is told by the narrator himself. Remember how Settembrini told his story himself and we learned about Clawdia’s past through gossip.

Mann tells the story of Naphta in more detail, to explain the unlikely combination of everything the German Bourgeois feared: born a Jew, Communist by choice and fundamentalistic Christian by education.

There is blood and violence in Naphta’s youth, torture even and the young boy early links piety with cruelty, spurting blood with what is holy and spiritual.
When his dad dies crucified by angry Christians against the door of his burning house, Leo is evacuated by his mother, together with his brother and sisters to a safe village. The death of Naphta's father is really a Medieval tableau although it happens in the second part of the 19th century !

Naphta inherits the lung disease from his mother.
He rebels against his Hebrew teacher and is picked up by a Jesuit priest who helps him to enter their school Stella Matutina. The priest has recognized the intelligence of the boy. Leo has found a world where military discipline, worldly luxury and religious rigour are at his disposal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Matutina_(Jesuit_School)

His weak health unfortunately jeopardizes Naphta’s career within the order and he find himself in some kind of banishment on the Magic Mountain.

Naphta and Joachim military callings are compared as well as their willingness to shed blood when needed.

The second part of this chapter kicks off with a long debate between Naphta and Settembrini on “Christian reverence for human misery” switching to torture as a procedure to find out the truth, capital punishment, illness, sufffering and so on. Naphta and Settembrini are pitted against each other in a passionate discussion with HC, Ferge and Wehsal regularly interrupting for some kind of relief in this heavy text. The most horrible things are said: killing compared to the act of love, the joy of masochistic self flagellation, Sadistic torture as an improvement of Justice etc etc…

The discussion goes nowhere. Whatever Naphta or Settembrini say, the other one is likely to claim the opposite just for the sake of the argument. Again their positions seem to shift within the argumentation, so in the end we get the impression that S defends the principles of N and N those of S.

It is one big confusion for HC.

We have now arrived at what is generally understood as the central chapter of the book: Snow and its terrible next chapter.

MM Part 6: An Attack repulsed

2011-11-14T21:33:00.001+01:00

October…”two months and a half in our friend’s second year”

HC has been assigned another place at another table. Second year, second table? Anyhow he sits where Settembrini once sat.

Again disruption of the peace at the Sanatorium: Clashes between Wenzel from Bohemia and Magnus from Halle. Does it mirror of what happens in the flatlands ? We don't know, Hans does not read newspapers.

Wehsal from Mannheim : a competitor for Clawdia who looks at HC with devotion. Strange adoration ?

Hans' uncle James Tienappel visits the Sanatorium to bring his nephew back home. See chapter “eternal soup” about Settembrini who predicted this visit. Hc experiences it as a raid from the flatlands but is not too much concerned. Tienappel has probably been urged by Joachim to save the lost family member.

See how this chapter parallels the first chapters of the book. HC imitates the welcoming J gave him. ( including the story of the evacuation of dead bodies by sleigh ). HC sounds like an “old hand” of the Sanatorium. He is totally indifferent to things from down below- family, job, home -

HC sounds like a ghost: ( monotonous voice ) “We’re never cold”
T asks HC to come home.

T reacts exactly like HC the first evening, laughing with the bizarre stories HC are telling, feeling uncomfortable etc etc

Poor James Tienappel, he experiences all the lures, dangers and fantasies of the enchanted mountain: divine creatures with deep cleavages, Krokowski’s erotic conferences, the absurd time experience…even a fascination with death…

King’s Capuchin’s catacombs of Palermo… not for the fainthearted !

http://motomom.tripod.com/index-3.html

and Uncle Tienappel runs away…

Notes

Niello Silver : Russian silver ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niello
Wenzel, Wenceslas? Like saint Wenceslas patron of bohemia?

MM Part 6: An outburst of temper / Something very embarassing

2011-11-13T18:11:00.001+01:00

August, HC is one yearon the mountain…

Ring of Polycrates :metaphor on how lucky one can be. I miss the joke here. What was Stohr thinkingof?

Joachim is moody and upto something. The weather which is bad darkens the mood. Joachim is rebellingagainst his stay. HC is scared. If Joachim leaves, he will be left alone on themountain. Worse, if Joachim stops his cure, HC fears he will die.

An uncovered secretlove affair turns into a scandal and Behrens has to expel the three culprits. Whyis this important? To explain Behrens later outburst of temper? Or are theguests of the Sanatorium slipping more and more into immorality and scandalousbehaviour?

Joachim: “DirectorBehrens…I have decided to depart”. Joachim takes up the responsibility for hishealth and decides to go to the army in the flatlands.

Behrens in a frustratedrage ( I think ) has an outburst of temper. Interestingly he says that Hans iscured and can leave too. Hans cannot accept this and wants to stay in theSanatorium – …(for) HC a departure seemed impossible… he had to wait forClawdia Chauchat”

HC remembers Herr Albin’ssuicidal boast he once overheard: the sweetness of deciding to give up.

Joachim was for HC anexample of self-discipline and order. What will happen if this influence disappears?Hans has slipped in to silence and inaction. He is likened to the Quietists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(Christian_philosophy)

When the cousins say adieu to each other atthe railway station where they met a year ago, both get emotional. Joachim usesfor the first time Hans first name. With his last words he urges Hans to comesoon to the flatlands too…

Hans is on his own…

MM Part 6: The city of God and Evil Deliverance

2011-11-13T08:00:00.001+01:00

21^st of July1908. Hans is 11 months on the Mountain. Soon his initial 3 weeks will haveturned into a year.

His favourite spot, thebench in the meadow near the brook, where Hans had his nosebleed is a placewhich seems to conjure up memories and reminiscences. Hans thinks about “themany and varied impressions and adventures” he had since his arrival. He has aname for this mental occupation “playing King”

His Maria Mancinis haveacquired their good old taste again, a sign that he has fully adapted to theatmosphere of the Mountain. HC still orders them from his favourite shop Hamburg. This and the occasionalletters to and from his uncles is his only connection with the world below.

His Clawdia infatuationis said to have calmed down – he has no more visions –

We do not believe it,because he always carries with him a “naked” picture of Clawdia with the palehalo of the flesh HC “tasted” on Mardi-Gras.

This picture from “beyondthe grave” is a morbid relic. Love and death in one image. (He could have askedher after all for a lock of hair or some lingerie, no?)

He pits dualitiesagainst each other like the “rebel grandfather vs the faithfull servant”, thetwo sides of analysis, military vs civilian, Naphta vs Settembrini.

Settembrini lost hisfirst fight over Hans soul against the power of“atavistic love”. Will he standhis ground against Naphta, now that the clash remains in the realm of theintellectual?

HC is interested by theidea of the “Homo Dei”, the human God and agrees to visit Naphta.

“Lukacek Ladies Tailor”(the name on the plate beside the bell). It is more than just a detail. Thecharacter of Naphta is heavily based on Gyorgy Lukacs, who was a majorcommunist theorist in German universities at the moment Mann wrote theMountain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gy%C3%B6rgy_Luk%C3%A1cs

Naphtalives in luxury and has made his apartment “cosy” à la Baroque. How Jesuit !

Themost startling decoration of the room is a polychrome medieval wooden statue, anaïve pieta, a strong grotesque image of suffering and torture. It is “frightfullygood” according to HC.

Naphta:

- The beauty of the body is abstract. Only inner beauty ofreligious expression possesses true reality.

- The nameless Artist. Typically it an anonymous communalwork. There cannot be another Mr Individual Creator. See parallel between thismedieval thought and Islamic art. There is only one creator.

- This depiction of “suffering and the weakness of the flesh”is not “…glossed over and prettified…” We are in dark, religious medievalism here…

- Sign ofMortification ( killing the flesh, humiliate, abase )

Thank God, Settembriniinterrupts this exhibition of terrible ideas…

Our friend thepedagogue is worried about the cousins and does not want them in the hands ofNaphta.

Naphta vs Settembrini

- Spirit vsBody

- Middle ages againstGraeco Roman heritage

- IndependentScientific truth vs whatever profits Man is true

- Freedom vsobeying

Settembrini mentions theKonrad von Marburg as an example of where Naphta’s idea’s lead to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_von_Marburg

Naphtarefers to “the mad exterminations of the Jacobins”

Naphtaargues that torture that is done to save souls of eternal damnation isacceptable. Only if it does not arise from a belief in the next world it isbestial.

Thecatholic stupidity at its extreme: denying the heliocentricity.

Faithis the vehicle of understanding, the intellect is secondary.

Naphta“ What our age needs, …is terror” ( notice the flash of his glasses, like theflash of a knife, a sable, a guillotine”. Naphta is ready to do it to create atotalitarian religious – communist state. Fundamentalist statement.

Thediscussion goes on and on, demonstrating Naphta’s and Settembrini’s skills inthis kind of conversations. Often we are not sure anymore who says what and atthe end more confusion comes out of it.

Settembrinistops the discussion and invites the cousins to ( oh irony ) his monastic cell.How different from Naphta’s lodgings.

Swarns the cousins “ keep your relation with Naphta within its prudent limits”

Naphtais a half fanatic half malicious humbug. Your minds and your souls are indanger.

Thewealth of Naphta is of course supplied by his Jesuit order. It debunks the sincerityof his communist claims. It also undermines the sincerity of the Jesuits. Butthat is not all.

Thepseudo Jesuit priest Naphta, is according to Settembrini a voluptuary, only interestedin luxury and sensual appetites:

Settembrinireiterates his earlier warning;

- if you separate death from life in a dualistic way, youcreate Detah as an idea.

- Death becomes a force in competition with Life

- It becomes a seduction.

- Its kingdom is lust, because it delivers, it is an evildeliverance from morals and morality, it delivers from discipline and selfcontrol, it liberates for lust…

Gotthat Hans?

…

Upto the next chapter where something unexpected will happen!

2011-11-12T14:59:00.001+01:00

Master of Rabenden; Pieta

MM Part 6: Someone else

2011-11-12T08:05:00.001+01:00

Date 21 of July 1908. Time flows faster and faster…
Hans is filling his days with study. He is not gathering wisdom from books this time but empirically as an amateur biologist, astrologist.

HC even attempts a philosophical discussion with his nephew without Settembrini even being in the neighbourhood. “Those are awfully grand notions you are playing with…” remarks Joachim. Our disciplined soldier is not afraid of big ideas either “War is necessary. Without war the world would soon go to rot” ( Moltke = German General ). War as a regenerative force !

Strange that war is mentioned…and Jews…

Ready to meet the next pedagogue?

Naphta : Settembrini avoids to introduce him to the cousins ( they are his pupils and S does not want competition )

Small, skinny, ugly, hunchbacked, pale, caustic, logical…but very well dressed… he has a cold and coughs. Not the kind of guy you want to hug

I wonder if his ugly look and the fact that he has money is intended as a naughty German caricature of a Jew?

Quotes Pietro Aretino, the man who laughed himself to death

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Aretino

Settembrini has found his match in Leo Naphta and soon enough the cousins are witnessing a lively discussion of these two “extremes”, the humanist against the Jesuitical Jewish Communist.

I will not analyse the discussions, as they lead to more confusion, but this can be said about Naphta. The guy is a combination of everything the German Bourgeois was afraid of: He is a Jew, a communist but above all he is a Jesuit. ( Jesuits are or were forbidden in Austria ). He reminds me in any case of the inquisitor character in the brothers Karamazov.

There are contradictory elements in his figure. He is communist with money. Money on the other hand is associated with the Jews but even more with the Jesuits. He combines Jewish intellectual radicalism and a Slavic revelry for Christ. He is progressive and reactionary, ascetic and epicurean.

He is very Jesuit. Discipline, hard work and hierarchy for him are everything. Jesuits are after all the “soldiers of God”. As a boy N has been educated by the Jesuits. Jesuits are notoriously apt to select intelligent people to join their forces, nationality and parentage are less important to them. Jesuits are no racists. They do indeed resemble a communist and military force as they force the individual into the shape of the group. Totalitarian is what they are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Jesus

Interesting is how our cousins experience the “great confusion” of the discussion between Naphta and Settembrini.

Joachim about Naphta

“ I like some things he said…” Joachim probably likes that military element of the Jesuits.
But
“ That nose is Jewish too…” Typical anti-Semitic reaction.
“Do you intend to visit him..” Not the kind of people they normally meet.

Hans about Naphta:

“ There is something occult about him…” Hans who wants to play the little priest himself appreciates this.

Both cousins are confused. “… the more they talked the more confused I got”

Joachim the soldier: “ The best thing is to have no opinions at all and just do your duty” How funny ! Poor Joachim !

Hans says Joachim is a mercenary: They don’t care which side they are fighting for.

Learning and getting healthy can go together says Hans. Smarter and healthier.
“ Dividing the world in two is a great mistake”.

Notes

Ordinary blue eyes? To remember us that HC is ordinary?
Princeps ( first, major ) scholasticorum ( teacher, schoolman )

MM Part 6: Changes

2011-11-11T08:48:00.001+01:00

We have left Easterbehind us. We are in this chapter already 6 weeks after the Mardi-Grashappenings.

This first chapter of anew part kicks off with HC musing about the concept of time

Our dear Hans’situation is shaken up. He has to adjust to a world without his Clavdia.

HC is a also disturbedby Joachim’s open rebellion against the medical establishment of the Berghof.

Joachim, eager toproceed with his military career, is getting more and more impatient with theunreliable results of the Gaffky Scale and with the cure in general. The factthat Marusja has left the Sanatorium temporarily does not improve things for.

“To Hell with Gaffky, I’ve had it - ,I am going home, even ifit kills me”. Together with HC, we are worried for we remember Clavdia’sopinion that Joachim is very ill.

HC does not dare reproach J for he is a bit bothered by therealization that J knows about HC’s time with Clawdia.

It seems that despite the fact that Hans and Clawdia left thedining room separately on that last Carnival evening, they secretly met again afew minutes later in her room.

Hans has given her back her pencil and is now in possessionof her “X-Ray” frame. X marks the moist spot? Hans is a fetishist if ever therewas one !

The narrator reminds us that HC has gone to his roomconsiderably later than Joachim and then confesses that he has not told useverything! He has chosen to pass over a certain interval. There has beenanother secret conversation, one we did not overhear, in which this wicked womanhas cast a sequel to her spell! “Frau Chauchat plans to return” we are told.

What else happened in Clawdia’s room? Was there just anexchange of pens against X rays? Only promises made?

No there is more. Hans, it seems, has not only “known” sweetClavdia, he has “possessed” her during one wicked, riotously, sweet hour…

If so, this is a key epiphanic moment. HC’s experience ofbodily love, his transcendence in his merging with Clawdia, offers him a firstglimpse of the abyss.

But poor Hans is not ready yet to go back to the real world.He remains under the spell – a shadowy token of a pledge…a possibility of aprobability… that Frau Chauchat will come back.

His body helps him takes to block the idea to go back home.His fever increases, he needs injections, he is condemned for 4 more months atthe Sanatorium

Behrens is the only one to whom Hans can turn for someconversation about “La Clavdia” but the doctor has no message from her. But hehas a message for Joachim. He orders Hans to pass it to his cousin:” if Joachimgoes down to the flatlands, he will not survive a year!”

There is a certain coolness between HC and Herr Settembrini.Hans has a bad conscience of the way he rebuked his former friend and S sulksbecause he still suffers the indignation of a frustrated pedagogue. Or is theremore?

The narrator reminds us that there is a “mythologicalallusion” when S and HC finally speak again to each other. “Well my goodengineer, how did you like the pomegranate?”.

The pomegranate alludes to the myth of Persephone, the woman lostin the world of the death, but how does S know that HC has tasted the forbiddenfruit? S is clearly reacting like a jealous abandoned lover.

S next remark, identifying Hans to Persephone obviouslypredicts that Hans will stay forever on the Mountain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone

The ice is broken between H and S. S compares the Sanatoriumto an Ocean Liner navigating over a dangerous sea. …when such a luxury arkfounders and plummets to the depts….( The Titanic sinks in 1911, Hans orSettembrini in 1908 cannot know this but Mann writing in 1919 of course knows). A sinking Ocean Liner as a metaphor for Hubris. S does not see in Hubris adanger, on the contrary … the hubris of reason set against the dark powers isthe highest form of humanity…

S is still hurt by HC’s comments during the Mardi Grasevening. He cannot withhold his jabbing at Hans : … when a man perishes inwanton experiments with the powers of unreason…. ( What a prick! )

S announces ( he too? ) his departure. Despite what he saysabout work etc, he is not leaving the Mountain. He has rented a cheaper lodgingin town. S is financially not as favoured as Hans to be able to remain in the Sanatorium.The animosity he has against Behrens and the commercial aspect of the health-curemay well be caused by financial trouble and quarrels over payments.

Frau Salomon from Amsterdam,disgusted with her poor health improvements leaves the Sanatorium for theflatlands “cursing the doctors, the cure, the fine air etc…”

In fact, she might set a bad example.

Frau Salomon’s case is not the only one. Other people emboldenedby the coming spring, leave. Some patients die (Blumenkohl, Rasmussen ), someget better ( Ferge), some go away, soon to return ( Marusja )

The unpredictable weather is described

The chapter ends withhow Joachim finds out that Hans too has been lured to Krokowski’s den for apsycho-analytical session. The end of his love affair has send him to theshrink!

2. Notes

Gaffky = a numerical rating for the classification of tuberculosis according to the number of tubercle bacilli in the sputum, ranging from 1 (one tofour organisms in the whole preparation)to 9 (an average of 100 per field).

See “Charming andbisexual” in one sentence. Thomas Mann secret yearning?

Morel : A phallic shape( aphrodisiac ? ) mushroom smelling of decay of death. (Impudicus ) Love andDetah intertwined.

MM Part 5 : Walpurgisnight

2011-11-11T05:56:00.001+01:00

This is a veryentertaining chapter although it has a surprising end. “A coup de theatre” asthey say in French!

The chapter alludesheavily on the “ Walpurgisnight” chapter in Goethe’s Faust.

Walpurgisnacht, the night from 30 April to 1 May, is the nightwhen witches are reputed to hold a large celebration on the Brocken and await thearrival of spring.

This chapter takes place during the Carnival orMardi Gras evening

Also in Time it is a special chapter. HC is nowup in the mountain for 7 months. Joachim who arrived earlier in the Sanatoriumcelebrates his first year.

What to expect?

Settembrini ironically warns Hans that the MardiGras celebration in the Sanatorium is “magnifique”. S also makes a most cynicalremark that a lot of people now death cannot join the party. “… it is over athalf past nine…”. Ghosts will only appear after 12.

But the Narrator toocreates high expectation:

“ At this juncture….wealone know to what these Carnival festivities eventually led…”

Settembrini our warnsHans in the same way Mephistopheles warns Faust : “Behold bright flames…”

Murk,of those flames the motley glare!
A merry clubassembles there.
In a small circleone is not alone,

Seehttp://www.online-literature.com/goethe/faust-part-1/9/

Soon the party is fullswing. Champagne flows and Champagne mixedwith Burgundy

Settembrini slips anothersecret message of warning to Hans “But bear in mind…” again he quotes Goethe,Faust, Walpurgis-night chapter.

“He searched his pocketfor a pencil…” The meeting Hans – Clavdia is introduced with the “pen” –anecdote and the “Hippe” character.

“ My God…” echoes the“My God” of the fantasy in the “Eternal Soup” chapter

A second secret note;..“ A party to your heart’s desire…” Goethe, Faust, Walpurgis-night chapter.

“ In the Harz mountains…” setting of Goethe, Faust,Walpurgis-night chapter.

First couples form,there is cross-dressing, there is travesty. Frau Stohr turns into a genuinewitch with broom and all…Settembrini compares her with Baubo, the old woman whoshows her private parts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baubo

There is comedy withthe “silent sister” and the “blue Henri”

Clavdia brushes Hanstable. With her sleeve – less dress showing her beautiful arms, she looksdivine to Hans.

Settembrini keepswarning Hans “ ‘Tis Lilith” Adam’s second wife, the she-devil.

Again it parallelsGoethe’s Faust.

Hans is not distractedfrom his fascination with Clavdia. He has to take care of the annoyingSettembrini first…

HC addressesSettembrini with his first name Lodovico. S experiences this nearly as aninsult “ …a repulsive, barbaric practice…but it brings the pedagogue at thesame level as Hans. HC does not see S as superior anymore…

HC then shows that hesees “through” Settembrini and shows ironically that he knows how Thomas Mannuses the Settembrini character. “ You are a representative of something…

HC says adieu to hispedagogue: “ To your health Lodovico…”

S cannot but comment “Those sound like words of farewell”. S has to make place for Clavdia.

The people assembleround the Punch bowl.

The Pig drawing game ofBehrens brings us back to the Pig analogy of Circe. “ And what Monsters wereborn” Again there is a need for apencil. Now that he has severed his bond with Settembrini he is emboldened: heheads direct to Clawdia. Settembrini shouts one last warning…and exits.

HC experiences his“Hippe” – moment once again and finally speaks to Clawdia and says “Do you havea pencil perhaps?”

Clawdia amused and in aMardi-Gras mood reacts amused and surprised. “You are very eager…”. She teasesHC with dangling the pen in front of his nose. HC lets himself not chased away,on the contrary CC follows him “ as if pulled by a magnetic force”

They are left alone, (S gone, Joachim gone )there is music. HC shows that he has been observing CCfor a long time, that he has been since a long time interested in her. “ Youare wearing a new dress…”

Their conversation inthat French “dream –speak” develops rather well, CC too had noticed HC earlieretc etc… Everything goes well until the “killer” sentence is pronounced.Clawdia says “I am leaving ( the Sanatorium )”. Hans is rudely awakened from hissleep state.

The awakening is veryshort. HC is lured again soon enough: “ So you will be coming back…” – he isgoing to wait for her – No way he is ever to go back down to the real world !

CC reminds HC thatJoachiim is very ill.

HC asks her X- Raypicture. CC does not have it with her. It is in her room.( important detailwink wink )

CC asks who preventedHC to make an earlier contact with her. She knows of course.

CC says “Moralitycannot be found in virtue but in sin”. She is a teacher too.

“ You know theconsequences Monsieur” CC teases HC by telling him the Mardi Gras Magic isover, but Hans will not accept it and declares his love in a grand and theatricalway.

While not totallyunreceptive, - she strokes his hair – she decides to return to her room.

“ Adieu my CarnivalPrince”, but she leaves one trailing message… “Don’t forget to return my

pencil”

And Clavdia leaves.

What a chapter, whatromance !

MM Part 5 : Danse Macabre

2011-11-07T20:51:00.001+01:00

A danse Macabrereminds us that we are mortal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre

Time : Christmas andNew Year and then the first months of the next year

2. Death

The Horseman, whom weheard couching the very first evening of Hans’ arrival, has died. With all thelove abounding in the previous chapters, we nearly forgot that people die heretoo.

It is about time forHans to resume his “Dance Macabre”.

He starts off withunderscoring again “…that a dying deserved every kindness, every honour thatcould be bestowed on him…” this in defiance of both the opinions of Joachim andSettembrini.

He then starts to makepersonal visits to the Moribundi, they who are going to die. Again this is againstthe rules and against the common practice of the Sanatorium, where the staffnormally tries to conceal the “ dying part” of their business.

Note that Hans isrelaxed, at ease, …a skilled expert at all this…

The visit is veryappreciated by the patients… someone at least seems to care…

HC admires the blackclothing he remembers from the Verdi Opera Don Carlos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Carlos

I think the world and life are such thatpeople ought to dress mostly in black…HC remembers the attire of hisgrandfather and generations before him where black was the only proper colourfor dress. Death and morning would permeate every day of life.

“… I always keep death in mind- that’s howI’d like it, that would be moral…” HC reminds us.

Hans is setting up his “Danse macabre”: “Ihave decided that from now on, I shall show more concern about serious andmoribund cases”. Hans rebels against the “way” they have on the mountain tohide the death. Although it would mean breaking the house rules, Joachimaccepts to join HC. Strange… does he see it as some kind of military trainingto get acquainted to death?

HC plans to fight the egotism prevalent onthe Mountain, the absence of respect for death and the general “laissez –aller” in the face of death.

People do not seem to take death serious inthe Sanatorium and for a lot of them being at the Sanatorium is an excuse for adebauched life – drinking, betting, flirting and cavorting.

HC is extremely annoyedby the “unbecoming” stupidity of Frau Stohr.

An epileptic attack bya certain Popov during a meal is a shocking interruption of the daily order ofthe Sanatorium. The patients who have attended Krokowski latest conference understandthat Popov publicly suffers a “brain-orgasm”, the equivalent of bodily love, againa show of disrespect of the seriousness of illness and death.

Hans is going to embrace death out of acomplicated spiritual need.

Leila Gerngross is Hansfirst “success”. He and Joachim succeed in meeting her in her (death)-bed. HCand Joachim stick to the decorum…hushed voice…holding hand…kneeling beside thebed – ah, no they don’t, that would be too much…

While the girl and herparents appreciate the visit, already after 10 minutes it becomes too much…

The mother blames theillness of her daughter on her own weak health. Mother appreciates what thecousins have done: send the daughter flowers… brought a little happiness,enjoyment… a chance of flirtation with …handsome cavaliers…

HC is annoyed by thisfor it seems that instead of solemnity, he has brought luscious live into theroom of the dying girl

Next Fritz Rotbein, Fritzdying is business as usual but he too seems to be moved to tears by the kindvisit of the cousins.

Then it is up to Frau “Overblown”Zimmermann. This very funny woman is laughing with everything and everybody:Her illness, Behrens, Hans Castorp and his funny face… hahahahaha

The silly goose makesme think about Adèle’s laughing song in the Fledermaus…. hahahahahaherrCastorp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCmIIGHD_sg&feature=related

But it does not end there. They visit whatis left of Tous-les-deux, then we turn to Teddy, Herr Ferge who experienced ahorrible operation without anesthetics, Frau Von Malinckrodt, the female Joband so on. The Cousins are rapidly known as the Good Samaritans and Hospitallersand Settembrini approaches HC ( one of life’s problem children ) because once more his pupil’s actions areworrying him.

“Let the dead bury their dead”

Matthew 8:18-20:"When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the otherside of the lake. Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, 'Teacher, Iwill follow you wherever you go.'
"Jesusreplied, 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Manhas no place to lay his head.'

"Anotherdisciple said to him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.'

"But Jesustold him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead.'"

Jesus means thespiritually dead or so I am told…

Mexican Lauro preparesto die as a hero in bed…

Ferge recounts sleightravels through the Russian tundra with the eyes of the following wolvesglowing like stars… ( Pushkin ? Gogol ? ) Russian Empire? Belles withprotruding cheekbones and Asia in their blood?Our friend HC is immediately captivated.

Natalie Malinckrodt isquite interesting for her illness seems to reflect her moral fall. She haseloped with a younger man, a half-grown boy really, abandoning a boring husbandand children. She is definitely HC’s kind of woman and he takes especially careof her. Joachim is not needed by his side when he visits her.

Karen Karstedt, a veryill dying young girl is taken for an entertainment tour by the two cousins. Theyvisit in the village the ice-skate ring, a movie, a dance hall. Their they meetFrau Stohr, who shows insight in why HC spends time with Karen, it is asubstitute for Frau Chauchat.

Finally the brave youngwoman, a girl really with her 19 years, with the cousins walk to the smallcemetery and end in front of a new un-dug plot. There is no drama, no tears, nopassionate denial of her upcoming death. There is only silence and respect.

And so the chapterends, this danse macabre, this carousel of death. It has shown Hans and usdifferent people facing death, different ways to face death, differentattitudes but always a certain proud resignation, some kind of acceptance…Hanswith his fascination of death has set a step closer to the object of hisfascination. What is he up after this?

3. Geography

The Russians give auseless present

The Westerners give apractical present

4. Note

HC avoids Knut and histroop of young healthy young man. HC doesn’t want to hear of them because theyremind him of the option he could take to go back home.

HC is worried aboutappearances from natives of Hamburg.Shame ?

Clawdia has chosen atraditional “Tartar” dress for Christmas.

Latin fo the Monks isthe language of death.

Tannhauser: Opera by Wagner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannh%C3%A4user_(opera)

Fun: The women “attire themselves in theirflirtatious best” to go to see the doctor …

MM Part 5 : Research

2011-11-06T06:12:00.004+01:00

It turns winter and HCis still on the mountain. He finds it a bit strange to celebrate Christmas awayfrom his family for the first time.

1. Bildung

Hans is in a state ofexcitement. He is now filling his empty days with scientific study. Anatomy,Physiology, Biology. He tries to understand, at least scientifically, “What isLife?. Even when he involves himself in the deepest scientific thoughts, hismind produces visions of a body hovering before him with eyes having a slantedlook because of a racial variation, pouting lips, smiling, leaning charmingly,etc etc and now that we are at it lets continue… the night of the pubic region –mystic triangle – pungent darkness of the armpits - red mouth – the navel – the red buds of thebreast.

Mann, incidentally givesa good summary of what is scientifically known and not known at the moment hewrites his book. Like with early psychology ( Freud ) and early physics (Einstein ) you feel that we are at a threshold here… Genetics with it’s DNA isnot there yet, microbiology neither…but the notion that the infinitesimal smallconnects to the unimaginable vast is already understood…”The atom was an energy– laden cosmic system”

It is rather funny but itremembers me of my own scientific quest and period of “scientific readings” on “Live”.Sagan, Gribbin, Prygogin, Fritjof Capra etc…

What to conclude of allthis readings? That Life itself is an illness? A cancerous stimulation of the immaterial?

In the end, even thischapter on the scientific explanation of life, can only end with the fantasy ofa first kiss.

2. Time

See :people leapingover the weeks. Christmas – New year – Mardi Gras. Something HC is not used topracticing.

3. Eros

Fun: Herr Albin’s dirtybook : The Art of seduction. Women fight over it.

4. Note

We are reminded thatthe Sanatorium is a special place, now certainly under all that snow. It is noweven more removed from the flatlands. See : the world seemed to be under aspell...trapped inside a fantastic dream of fatal enchantment…bewitched valley…

MM Part 5 : Humaniora

2011-11-05T09:57:00.003+01:00

Still October

1. Bildung

Behrens interrupts on the cousins who are brooding in silence on a bench in a garden of the Sanatorium. HC is silently rebelling against the attitude of Joachim who drags him away of the company of others.

Behrens opens the conversation with a peculiar opening phrase: “ Behold Timothy” which alludes to a paedagogue – pupil relationship. Behrens too is a pedagogue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_to_Timothy

Some knowledge of cigars is exchanged with a lot of allusions to woman, love and sex.
Then HC asks Behrens about “painting”. The knowledge of a painting of Clawdia has gnawed at him the last weeks.
“Anch’io sono pittore”, Italian not Spanish (but Behrens probably knows that) meaning, “I am a painter too”, famous words of the ambitious but still unknown young Corregio when he sees the painting of Saint Cicilia by the great Raphael.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_da_Correggio

A pleased and nervous Behrens agrees to show some paintings and invites the cousins to his house.

Paintings of a diaphanous wife in an angelic pose.
Fraternity cap with duelling swords
Portrait of Clawdia “Why I know that face don’t I”. – “Do you recognize her ?”One cannot be smile at the cunning little bandit.
Behrens had her in his room for 20 sessions !

Behrens about Clawdia’s eyes “the epicanthic foil turns out to be an atavistic abnormality”
Hans touches the crude nakedness of her décolleté - on the painting that is –

The analytical rambling over Clawdia’s skin excites poor Hans. There is something perverse in the two men discussing the details of Clawdia’s body.

“ You are wondering ,…, why I am speaking about all this…” The impromptu babblings of our amateur philosopher make indeed no sense.

Hans trailing the painting with him is hilarious!

Woman are made of fat, not ambrosia !

They relax in an oriental corner in the living room of Behrens apartment. Coffee, cigar, what’s next ? Belly dancers ? Nearly, here is Behrens speaking about “The fat is thickest around the female breast and abdomen, the upper thighs…everywhere you find a little something of interest for your hand and heart. And of course “… the soles of her feet…”

Some pornographic ornaments liven up the cylindrical (phallic shaped ?) coffee mill which was offered by an obscene ( ah the orient !) Egyptian Princess.

Hans is not bothered? Remember how he reacted to the Russian couple only three months earlier ?

Unusually large cigarettes for tip top occasions. Are they smoking pot now?

Hans rambles on : engineer – docter – clergyman

Behrens continues with an explanation of how an erection exactly functions continuing over the orgasm and the post coital “petite mort” ( all in secret language of course) : “…why the cock’s comb actually swells… “ … you are all swollen with blood till you can hardly see a thing…” until “…make you look like a corpse…with the heart thumping right along…”

Encouraged by Hans, Behrens paints a broad picture of the body in life and death in all chemical and biological details. Behrens too is a pedagogue lets not forget it. He opens the door for a scientific understanding of what life and love, death and decomposition is all about…

Then suddenly, an attack of mysterious melancholia halts Behrens in his enthusiastic exposé.
Hans and Joachim thank the doctor and hurry back to their rooms

Has the Doctor had an attack of some kind of depression ?

2. Geography

The coffee corner in Behrens room is an oriental feast; Turkish , Indian , Persian etc etc

3. Notes

See symbolism of the cigar : a woman ( brunette – she likes you to leave her ash long – she has her little moods – she has good breeding ) a penis ( tiny pores here and there – the veins that seemed almost to throb - irregularities of skin ) – a living being (she died , she grew sickly and died , nothing left but leathery corpses ) – sex ( pop my cork – have a girl for the first time – melt together in euphoria )

Phideas: Great Classical sculptor, the other one Polykleitos ? Jewish – sounding name ?

MM Part 5 : Encyclopedia

2011-11-05T06:29:00.003+01:00

A long chapter this oneand an important one too. Settimbrini does not miss any opportunity to be apedagogue, but this time Hans resists and argues back.

1. Time

Waiting can bediverting, because it devours quantities of time without our ever experiencingor using them for their own sake.

2. Death

Settembrini looking atHC funereal photograph.

3. Eros

“…( in love ) is anurge, a compulsion to reveal oneself…”

There is a lot offlirting and love affairs at the Sanatorium…

Joachim by his coolexample dampens HC enthusiasm to expose himself more.

HC’s love for Clawdiais now known at all tables. HC makes a fool of himself.

Clawdia’s grey – blueeyes have turn grey – green… the light ?

Settembrini “bothers”and interrupts HC’s dreaming about Clawdia.

We are in for a longpedagogic chapter:

4. Bildung

a) Lesson 6 (Asia is devouring us ) is said surreptitiously, whisperedwith a sense of urgency, as if there was a danger of threatening Barbariansoverhearing them.

“Asiais devouring us. Tartar faces in every direction you look…” Settembrini warnsHC for Clawdia and for the “Asian degenerative forces” – see theories of OswaldSpengler, which had a huge success in Europeand which Mann was reading at the time.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler

Within the development of his ideas,elements for debunking Settembrini abound. See his racist stance: “one of yourIvanovitches”, the words barbarity, savage etc.

Check that Settembrini never laughs “Onecould not even imagine his ever laughing heartily”

Settembrini looking atHC funereal photograph: Settembrini seems to tactfully turn away to hidehis face. Why ? Hide tears at seeing a “new lost young person”. S doubts thatHC is really ill “ The decision that (HC ) is ill lies in the eye of thebeholder”

“ And so you propose tospend the winter with us….” S is not happy because he finds that HC belongs inthe world “down there”, doing his job, doing his duty.

“ it is truly hideousthe way you throw the months away..” Settembrini urges HC to remain civilizedand not to be infected by the “idleness and barbarity” of the MongolianMuscovites.

“Your higher nature…”“son of the West, the divine west”. S pits the Civilized West against theBarbaric east. Hans attraction to Clawdia with all her un- correctness is ametaphor of this civilization clash.

“This barbaricextravagance in the use of Time…” is Asian says Settembrini. Today it bothersus especially in southern, Latin people : )

Hans should “Use (his)time in the service of Human progress”

And finally “The Easttreats suffering with pity and infinite patience. We dare not , we cannot dothe same…”

b)“It is about anencyclopedia…” S is working on a “encyclopaedia of suffering”. It is aninitiative of the ILOP, “the International league for the organisation ofProgress” ( sounds important, doesn’t it ? ). It has two principles: (1)Humankind’s innermost natural purpose is its own self perfection and (2) it isthe duty of every person who desires to satisfy that natural purpose tocooperate in the cause of human progress.

Its programs andobjectives are so vast and vague, that one wonders if they can reach anythingexcept give their members a superior attitude.

“four importantlanguages”… German and Italian for sure, French probably, English or Spanishmaybe…

The ILOP is preparingan “encyclopaedia of suffering” which will order and classify all illness andsuffering. A list ! They are preparing a list ! Eco said we make lists becausewe don’t want to die… it is a huge, immense and futile enterprise.

Settembrini’s task isto list the books which contain “suffering”, so that it can serve as a TBR ofsolace and advice for the people suffering. There are a lot of books about allkinds of suffering including this one.

S explains this to HCto show that he is not losing his time on the mountain. That he is busy with animportant and huge task to help the advance of humanity (nothing less)

S turns back to HC andsays that as an engineer, HC can only do his duty down below.

“You can only be aEuropean in the flatlands…”

Then comes a nicecomparison of Hans to Odysseus and the Sanatorium to the isle of Circe.

Clawdia is of courseCirce and Settembrini warns Hans “ …you are not Odysseus enough to dwell thereunharmed…”, “ you will walk on all fours…” “and soon begin to grunt…” Beware !

HC accepts the lesson“What should I do?”. Settembrini does not answer and insists that HC comeshimself to the conclusion: “you mean leave?” “You mean that I should go backhome…”

HC says he could havedone it earlier, but that he is ill now and going down would damage his health.HC fed up with Settembrini’s irony and challenges him: “would you takethe responsibility and send me back…” ( the battle between teacher and pupilhas been engaged )

S answers affirmativelybut does not expect the counterattack.

H understandablyconcludes “…you are more cautious about yourself than you are about otherpeople…”

S loses his balance abit: he will not use the argument that he is more ill than HC but says that hecan do his duty from where he is but that HC has to be an engineer in theflatlands.

Now we switch to a body– spirit argument: S to Hans : is it not the body and its evil proclivitiesthat you all too willingly obey…? S means that HC is led by his dick ?

“What do you have againstthe body ?” ( The clash becomes harsher – there is blood… - at least HC hasbloodshot eyes ). S as a Humanist has nothing against the body but favours thespirit. Ultimately humanistic pride will see the tie between body and mind as a“debasement” and a “curse” because the restrictions the body imposes on themind.

The earthquake of Lisbon 1755: S wants togive an example of Voltaire rebelling against a natural phenomenon. Voltaireactually uses the human tragedy of that natural catastrophe to question if wecan still speak of a just and compassionate God when we see that he punish sinsthrough such terrible means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me_sur_le_d%C3%A9sastre_de_Lisbonne

Goethe was only sixwhen the Lisbonearthquake happened and HC funnily alludes to another “earthquake story”. Goetheliving in Germany at thetime wakes up and tells his servant he has just experience an earthquake which laterturns out to really have happened thousands of kilometres away in Calabria. ( The epitomeof Reason has an eerie extra sensory perception ?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gespr%C3%A4che_mit_Goethe

This other anecdote annoysS.

S “ Behold the mindsenmity to nature, the right to criticize Nature and her evil and irrationalpower. Nature is a power and it is servile to accept her to reconcile with her

Luckily Joachim entersthe room and we are given a break…

MM Part 5 : Mercury’s moods

2011-11-03T06:12:00.002+01:00

October!

1. Time

Months slip into thenext without one noticing. Nature with the evergreens gives no clear signeither of changing seasons

2. Eros

Hans is often silent,thinking about Clawdia ? An intoxication he does not want to be rid off ? Drunkenwith Love ?

Hans compares thethings Settembrini said and how he feels about Clawdia. All the annoying things( door slamming, nail biting…etc ) which offended him earlier on, do notdisturb him anymore. Instead it are the comments of Settembrini who annoy himnow.

Hans is crossingborders, both in his opinions and attitudes. He slumps in his chair, let doorsbang etc…

Mann confirms what weknow already: Hans has fallen head over heels in love with Clawdia

He gives two examplesof how Hans gets immense joys out of trivial events.

Everybody is aware ofHans love for Clawdia, Joachim included.

HC hurries up themountain to overtake Clawdia walking in front of him.

Joachim tries to followhim but because of his illness strains himself, but for HC too, it is a bit toomuch. Because of the effort or the renewed contact with la Clawdia, histemperature is rising again.

Twice, the ill Clawdiais compared and preferred to a healthy little goose from down below. AgainstSettembrini’s advice HC still sees something superior in being ill.

3. Note

The narrator intervenesdirectly in the text “ We have as much right as anyone to private thoughtsabout the story unfolding here…” and says : “ HC would not have stayed with thepeople up here…if some satisfying answer about the meaning and purpose of lifehad been supplied…”

MM Part 5 : Freedom

2011-11-03T06:10:00.004+01:00

Week 7 and October isclose at hand. Hans sends a long postponed letter home to prepare himself for alonger winter. He needs more money, clothes and other stuff. He in fact cutshimself free from the world down below.

1. Building

Two young patients arecomplaining:

Hermine Kleefeld: “We’vebeen cheated out of it ( summer ) just as we’re cheated out of everything elsein life”

Ganser: “ Not even adog, would want to go on living like this much longer…”

Settembrini warns Hansnot to believe them, they lead a free and easy life…, and ads a new lesson:

Lesson nr. 5: Beware of irony as an intellectual stance… itbecomes a source of depravity, a barrier to civilization…etc etc

“Illness and despairare often only forms of depravity”

“Paradox is the poisonflower of quietism…the greatest depravity of all.”

Hans tentativelyobjects and compares Settembrini’s opinions with those of Krokowski

But analysis too can begood or bad, depending on it’s use to free men ( from preconceptions forinstance ) or not.

Hans changes subjectand speaks about his view of the skeleton of his hand.

I am not sure how tounderstand these things about paradox – irony – analysis etc, three pedagogictools ( ? ) which can be used both in a positive or negative way ? Help anybody?

2. Time

How has Hansexperienced these 7 weeks, like 7 days or 7 years ?

3. Eros

“Russians, male andfemale…”Hans has the impression that Settembrini is aware of his infatuationwith Clawdia. Is he jealous ?

4. Geography

Parthians and Scythians= the Russian = the threat of the east

5. Note

Quietism = mysticalsurge for God in lifetime

X ray : analytical pit: a way to keep hans at the Sanatorium…

TC Murr adds

2011-11-03T06:09:00.002+01:00

I'm getting the feeling that HC's/the narrator's/the book's attitude towards humanism is changing. There is some doubt creeping in, both on the personal level with S himself (he is becoming a bit ridiculous - at least more and more divorced from reality) and on the ideological level.

HC challenges S: as mac points out, the two questions he asks S stump him and he has no answer. The challenge to the teacher, and the ultimate betrayal of the teacher are an essential ingredient in the evolving pedagogical relationship, in that it is only in this way that the student can free himself of the teacher, which is after all the goal of the teaching: independence for the student. the theme of the link between humanism and pedagogy again becomes important.

If the basis of humanism is transcendence in a very general sense, the teacher/mentor role in this process becomes essential: the guide. Nietzsche wrote: He who is a teacher from the very heart takes all things seriously with reference to his students - even himself. Regarding the erotic element of this relationship, I don't detect any sexual love from S towards HC, just a very generalised eroticism which is part of the teacher/student relationship. Now, be careful, don't get me wrong: what I mean by 'erotic' has nothing to do with sex (or at last only very generally as love of the other person). what I mean can best be understood by comparing 'eros' with 'agape', the other kind of love posited by classical humanism.

Eros = the love of the specific person, shown in friendship, mentor-mentee, family relationships, sexual partners (in its most basic -degraded? - form)
Agape = the love of the general; notions such as charity, mercy, altruism, love of humanity, of that which is human in everyone

As a humanist, S is motivated by Agape; as a teacher and friend and mentor, he is motivated by Eros.

Things are getting complicated in two ways:

first, the disturbing presence of Clavdia, who represents a competing influence on HC both on the personal level of sexual love, passion, and on the symbolic level as the EAST, an ideological threat to the WESTern humanism.

Second, S himself is swinging more to the Agape pole. his encyclopedeia, frankly, is a joke. Cataloging all the forms of suffering will not eliminate them. S is embodying a critique of humanism: it's possible to love humanity but hate people (perhaps 'hate' is too strong a word, but I think you get the point. We saw this also in BK, remember? It's a common trope of Russian lit, appearing also in Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.) The problem with humanism is that it can become too abstract, in the love of a perfectable humanity, the specific human is cast aside as not perfect enough. This is a problem inherent in all thought systems, though, not just humanism, and I certainly don't mean that humanism leads to the holocaust. I think Mann is introducing a critique of this depersonalising aspect of humanism.

It's interesting that the light f humanism begins to dim in the novel as HC comes under the growing influence of two forces: sexual love, and an awareness of death, in his visits to the moribund.

MM Part 5 : My God I see it!

2011-11-02T06:44:00.000+01:00

Hans is going back tonormal life within the boundaries of the Sanatorium.

Hans and Joachim havean appointment for an X Ray session. Hans who thinks he is now “part of thefamily of the Moribundi” and deserves respect, is now confronted with ahierarchy of illness. The sicker you are, the more respect you deserve. “…people who were slightly ill, did not count for much…”.

People at his tablehave not missed him with two exceptions: Settembrini and maybe Clawdia

1. Eros

Hans “infatuation” forClawdia has grown in the three weeks he was alone in bed. He has day-dreamedabout her a lot and Settembrini has interrupted one of these “dreams” whichmade H blush. H has completely fallen for her.

“… we sympathize withthe qualms of conscience that accompanied the terrifying bliss of these visionsand images…” Masturbatory imagery and sexual fantasies?

Hans is ready for more “…overtactions and blind adventures…” but Joachim’s coolness towards Marusja sets anexample of discipline and restraint. Without that Hans would already have “borroweda (phallic) pencil”

Hans gets more infoabout Clawdia from “cupido” Frau Engelhart. There is competition: A gentlemancaller, a sick man from Mannheimand even… Hofrat Behrens. Jealousy sets in. Behrens paints her portrait! – over-energeticgarrulous widower and a narrow-eyed pussy footing young lady – how funny!

Behrens is the mostdangerous competitor for Hans knows that the doctor is his superior in age,character and position.

Clawdia is also sittingin the waiting room for the X-Rays, close to Hans. Clawdia speaks to Joachim,not to Hans. There are opportunities for small talk which Hans does not use. Hansfantasizes that she speaks to Joachim and not to him because between her and Jthere is no “savage, profound, terrible secret” . How cute !

Hans keeps on fantasizingover her: the slender outline of the whole leg, her very agreeable size,relatively long legs ( gasp ), not at all broad in the hips, small breasts of ayoung girl pressed together from both sides… ( gasp again )

2. Death

In the X- Ray room:

Hans asks permission fromJoachim to look at what he is not supposed to look at.

Hans chokes up when hesees J honour-loving beating hearth

“Yes Yes I see it”,Hans is remembering an old aunt who had sights of people as skeletons as apremonition of their death.

Hans is deeply moved

When Hans sees an X rayof his own hand he “sees his own grave” and for the first time of his lifeunderstands that he too will die. Hans takes conscience of his own mortality

3. Note

Cicerone = guide

Dioscury boys, Castorand Pollux , twins

MM Part 5 : Eternal Soup and sudden clarity

2011-11-02T05:31:00.001+01:00

Our poor Hans has been confined to bed (doctor’s orders ) as from the Saturday of his third week. His mood switchesbetween triumph and exhilaration to fear and alarm. There is a double feelinghere. To remain on the mountain is not necessarily a drama for Hans. Joachimreminds Hans to warn his family that he is not coming back immediately. Hansneeds more stuff too is he has to stay longer. Joachim is embarrassed by thewhole affaire and feels a bit responsible for it. Hans refers to possible poorhealth inherited from his parents. Hans stays in bed until he reminds Behrensthat he has staid there for three weeks without improvement. Behrens sets himfree and says that they will next make an X-ray portrait of his chest.

1. Bildung

Krokowski has anotherlecture on “love”. Some substance in our body is decomposing and intoxicatescenters around the spinal cord ( ? )

Hans is ill and countsnow, he is part of the club. Krokowski visits him, materializes “ as anapparition” and leaves a terrifying impression. With his two-pronged beard, hisyellow teeth and completely clad in black, the fellow looks indeed like thedevil.

“You seem surprised tosee me… overnight our guest has become a comrade…”

Krokowski says that the“moist spot” is a secondary phenomenon. “Organic factors are always secondary”.The “moist spot” like an “ejaculae praecox” is caused by something else.Inhibited love ?

The sixth weekSettembri visits Hans. His entrance in the dark room has an effect of “ suddenclarity”, the room overflowing with the light of reason.

“Ecco” = there you areas if Hans condemnation to a longer stay could have been expected.

“Poveretto” = Poorfellow, it is a bad thing having to stay longer at the Sanatorium

Settembrini obviouslycares about Hans.

Settembrini hints inhis remarks that Hans has been “tricked” to stay longer for “commercial reasons”

Settembrini tells thestory of the “medical error” of the Baltic woman. You can get worser as well asbetter on the Mountain.

Settembrini doubts theX – Ray pictures always give a correct image or are correctly interpreted.

Interestingly Hansreturns the question to Settembrini “ Does your plate show spots…?” “And youare really ill…?”Hans reduces Settembrini to silence ! S rhetoric is silencedwith two simple questions.

S asks : How about yourfamily ( what do they think about all this ? ), what about your job ( what aboutyour career , future ? ) Hans shrugs away both questions. Settembrini reminds Hthat families do care and will try to get him back: “ …he is certain to come upand check your situation”. H doubts this.

H fights back with adescription of a “hard”, cold, materialistic and unfriendly world down there. “The air down there is cruel, ruthless” ( Nota place one yearns to go back to )

Here comes Settembrini3^rd lesson

( 1. sickness andstupidity 2. Music is political suspect )

“ Do you know what it means to be lost to life?”

To charge the “outside”world of cruelty is a proof of a certain alienation that is taking root intoHans mind. “ Because a man who gets used to making that charge can vey easilybe lost to life, to the form of life for which he was born”

Do you know what itmeans “ To be lost to life”? “Slip into idleness and not do one’s duty”

Hans fails to get themessage

The comes S fourthlesson:

“The only healthy andnoble and only religious way in which to regard death is to perceive it andfeel it as a constituent part of life…”

To set it apart of life, to separate it , to oppose it, is wrong. “Once separated from life, itbecomes grotesque, a wraith – or even worse”

“ For as an independentspiritual power, death is a very depraved force, whose wicked attractions arevery strong and without doubt can cause the most abominable confusion of thehuman mind”

Hans has really beenlectured: 1) Go down and do your duty whatever that is but do not stay herewasting your time in idleness. 2) Beware of your morbid fascination with death,for it can cause “the most abominable confusion of the human mind”

Settembrini offers Hguidance, a role as a caring teacher. He will do this sine pecunia, he will notbe outclassed by Behrens.

2. Time

TM reminds us that thenarration of the “next” three weeks will only take a fraction of the time,needed to recount the first three weeks. The reader experiences the flow oftime exactly as Hans, for whom, because of the monotony of the days ( eternalsoup) he spent in bed as a patient, time flows very fast indeed.

3. Death

“I’ ve sometimes almostwished I had become a clergyman…”.Hans is aware of his attraction in sad andedifying things and links it to the experiences of his youth. It is good thatSettembrini does not overhear this connection between sad and edifying.

4. Eros

When H recognize, heblushes… ( see next chapter to see why ), but Hans thinks about Clawdia themoment he sees Settembrini. Both seem to be linked.

“ … not that I want tocast my aspersions on your masculinity…” ( what kind of sexual innuendo is that? )… you remind me of a young nun… ( Hans looks more female than male to S? )…young brides of Christ… ( bride, like in husband and wife ? )….hair newlyshorn… ( their feminine look taken away )… ( What kind of talk is that, comingfrom a pedagogue ? )

6. Note

Reminder of the opinionof Settembrini about Music being political suspect.

Joachim’s temperaturehas risen because of Hans’ problem

Hans third week passesand he informs his Uncle with a letter that he will stay longer

The tailor’s son diningfrom the magic table ( Grimm ? )

Orbis Pictus =Children’s encyclopedia, an educational picture book

Radames = militarycommander in Aida by Verdi

Wag = mischievous joker

TC Murr adds

2011-10-28T06:36:00.003+02:00

Anyway. The Growing Anxiety chapter is very important for the theme of humanism: we see three versions of it: the revolutionary, outward-directed humanism in the grandfather, the studious, inward-directed humanism of the father, the pedagogue in the figure of S himself. The chapter ends with this: 'What a piece of work is a man', which is of course a reference to two of the most luminous texts of humanism:

Hamlet's Act 2 Scene 2 speech:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

and this, from Sophocles's Antigone:

Numberless are the world's wonders, but none
More wonderful than man; the storm gray sea
Yields to his prows, the huge crests bear him high;
Earth, holy and inexhaustible, is graven
With shining furrows where his plows have gone
Year after year, the timeless labor of stallions.

The light-boned birds and beasts that cling to cover,
The lithe fish lighting their reaches of dim water,
All are taken, tamed in the net of his mind;
The lion on the hill, the wild horse windy-maned,
Resign to him; and his blunt yoke has broken
The sultry shoulders of the mountain bull.

Words also, and thought as rapid as air,
He fashions to his good use; statecraft is his
And his the skill that deflects the arrows of snow,
The spears of winter rain: from every wind
He has made himself secure--from all but one:
In the late wind of death he cannot stand.

O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure!
O fate of man, working both good and evil!
When the laws are kept, how proudly his city stands!
When the laws are broken, what of his city then?
Never may the anarchic man find rest at my hearth,
Never be it said that my thoughts are his thoughts.

There are constant references to this latter speech in S's remarks throughout this chapter.

some thoughts on Spengler from earlier. It' is unfortunate that the term 'Asiatic' used by Spengler has connotations of Orientalism, and colonialism, because I think it's not very inaccurate. One of the differences between Western humanism and Asian thought systems, such as Doaism, Confucianism and Buddhism is in the attitude towards transcendednce. Western humanism is driven towards transcendence, as we see in the figures of the three Settimbrini's, and in the Sophocles speech. Nature is there to be controlled, to be exploited (in the good sense of this word), man is master of his destiny. Eastern systems, however, emphasise the oneness of man with nature and hold up the ideal of non inteference with nature's flow. Eastern cultures often seem extremely passive, or at least breed what looks like passivity to our Western eyes. I'm thinking here of the Daoist Wu Wei idea, 'do nothing'.

At the end of this chapter, HC chooses Asiaticism (?) represented by the Kirghiz eyes, the beyond-the-Caucus Russianness of Clavdia, over Europeanism, the moon over the sun, the mist over clear light. Hans cannot stop his mind being drawn to the opposite of what S has just told him. This is a wonderful chapter.

At the risk of boring everyone, I also must say I loved the analytic chapter too. The conflation of Freud/psychoanalysis with Jesus/Christianity, and then both culminating in an 'advertisement for dissection' was a wicked joke on Mann's part.

Mac, I'm going to take up your challenge and put some thoughts together on music.

MM 4 : Thermometer

2011-10-27T22:30:00.002+02:00

This is the lastchapter of part 4 and a terrible chapter it is.

Hans is three daysinto his third and last week. He just received his bill for the second week.Hans is making some doubtful arithmetic, he calculates that a stay would notcost more than 1000 Swiss Francs a month, a 12000 Francs a year. In hiscalculation he even adds cigars and a new suit.

Joachim doesn’t smokeand is in no need of a new coat. That means that Hans has made this calculationto check if with his ample annual income of 18000 SF he could stay longer onthe mountain. At least a year longer that means. That sneaky fellow…

Hans has nothing tokeep him on the mountain, or so he says to himself except that he feels sorryfor his cousin who has to stay behind. Hans thinks he has acclimatized by now,the taste of his Maria’s confirm it and Hans rather likes this laidback life onthe mountain.

He has adapted to thestrict regime of the Sanatorium too: the five meals, the rest cures, the shortwalks. The only thing he does not do is take his temperature but that is soonto change.

Hans has caught a coldand has the sniffles. Joachim advices to consult the head nurse Mecklenburg, who visits him on her next round. Hans buysa thermometer from her and soon measures nervously his temperature and yes… youguessed it, Hans has a fever.

At his table in therestaurant, people seem to be happy with his fever. They now feel he is one ofthem and his fever has taken away this superiority healthy people have over illones. Joachim proposes to ask Behrens to control Hans too, when on Friday at2o’clock he goes for his check-up. In an eerie moment, Clawdia who sits withher back towards Hans turns around and over the tables looks straight in Hanseyes. Obviously the grave pine has told her about Hans condition. Is sheworried about him, or expecting him to stay longer…?

The outcome of thecheck-up is dramatic. Not only has Joachim’s health not improved, but Hans itseems has TB too. At least there is a moist spot in his lungs which couldindicate or deteriorate in TBC. Behrens advices Hans too stay longer.

Krokowski, who is alsopresent, advances too Hans and shakes his hand, either out of compassion or asa welcome to the world of the Moribundi.

MM 4 : Growing Anxiety / two grandfathers and a twilight boat-ride

2011-10-27T19:57:00.003+02:00

Hans is nearly a weekand half on the Mountain. He tries not to think about his departure.

We are entertained byHans early attempts to get in contact with beautiful Clavdia. Then we switch toSettembrini and his sayings

Eros

What entertainment!What beautiful lines! Hans and Clavdia are executing the early steps of aprecise choreographed mating dance. It is sooooo cute. First the eye contact,trying to get noticed, then the stolen smile, the cruel games, how she makesHans suffer by not noticing him for two full days. How charming are Hansstrategies to try to meet her in the corridor, to bump into her, so to say unexpectedly.How clever is his trick to forget his handkerchief to be able to approach her head-onas she walks to the restaurant. In a first attempt, surprised, maybe a bit intimated,she looks away but the second time, the second time, she turns towards him andholds his gaze… and his and our blood runs cold. Frau Chauchat’s face inclose-up, she is such a beauty… That reddish blond hair with its slightmetallic sheen, the small somewhat flattened nose, those prominent highcheekbones which give her that exotic mysterious look, the soft concavity ofthe cheeks enhancing her slightly voluptuous pout and then those wide set of magicaleyes, Kirghiz shaped, blue – grey or grey blue, the color of distant mountains…

The anxiety of thetitle is the claustrophobic feeling of being locked together with the auspiciouschance of meeting Pribislav/ Clawdia again, inevitable and inescapable.

Hans is caught in theweb.

Joachim, by avoidingsocial contact with Marusja, has not been caught. He is driven away, nay, hedrives himself away from Marusja because he is aware that it holds such astrong attraction for him.

Bildung

Hans is in need of afather figure or a pedagogue, he craves to be influenced. He is in need advice.

He pits to mentorsagainst each other, Behrens the father figure and Settembrini the pedagogue.

Behrens he cannottrust, there is something wrong with him, but what ?

He is too brash, toojovial, too easygoing. What is this melancholy and this secret vice he has? Whydoes he stay on the mountain? Because he wants to be close to his wife tomb ? orbecause he too is incurable ill? Or is it just because he wants to save as manypeople he can?

And what about hisarchenemy Settembrini? That windbag, that nay-sayer, that criticalorgan-grinder who had rebuked Hans twice.

Should he pack hisbags as Settembrini suggested?

First Settembrini isdescribed as an agreeable and entertaining man and on top of that a funnygossip. Alone with the cousins Settembrini tells about his grandfather, arevolutionary, and about his father, the man of letters.

Hans compares him withhis own grandfather, a solid bourgeois. Both wore black clothes as if inmourning, but for different reasons.

Hans compares these toopposites to a vision he once had of day and night at the same time.

Settembrin rambles on,enlightenment – progress - revolutions and so on. Settembrini in his words israther polemic. He uses sentences as: “one must deal a fatal blow to

Austria

and crush her…”

Settembrini thinks theWestern democracies and principles of enlightenment should free the world ofthe Asiatic principle of bondage and obduracy.

Hans gets the message,he has now well understood that Behrens is not the enemy of Settembrini’s thinking, but who else than Clawdia…?

Notes

Is room 7, Clavdia’sroom?

Funny stupidities ofFrau Stohr… Tantalus vs Sisiphus etc

Young Schneermanwhisked away by his mother because o his debauched life on the mountain. “InBaccho et ceteris”

MM 4 : Table Talk

2011-10-27T15:43:00.000+02:00

Hans head has a slighttremor thought to come from an inner excitement. We learn more about MadameChauchat.

Eros

Hans is ashamed forthe behavior of Clawdia, as if he has to account for her bad manners.

Frau Engelhart, Hanstable neighbor has understood that there is a certain emotional bond between HCand CC. Her name might indicate she acts as a surrogate Cupido. For she starts “breakinginto raptures about Mme Chauchat”, egging Hans on, promoting Chauchat. FE actsas a matchmaker.

Poor Hans, thecomments of Englehart must make him crazy: what a charming way she has abouther – like a kitten slinking to its bowl of milk – (notice animal imagery)

Russian women are bytheir very nature so very free and liberal.

You are not supposedto know what Chauchat first name is. Minka ? Tatyana ? Natasha ? Avdotya ? Katyenka? Ninotchka ? but then it turns out to be Clawdia.

Hans is clearly inlove: humming, cheerful, singing, heart pounding. Ah l’amour ! ( Mac turns eyesupward )

Geograph

Clawdia is no Kirghiz but from Daghestan beyond the Caucasus.

Notes

MM 4 : Doubts and Considerations

2011-10-27T15:09:00.000+02:00

Tuesday. Hans is nowone week at the Sanatorium. He gets his weekly bill. 180 Swiss Francs. ( cananybody calculate what that would be in today’s money?)

Clearly runningSanatoria is big business. ( Board of directors, Joint-stock, juicy dividends )

Bildung

The paradox of thesick physician. Again Hans doubts and considerations makes us cringe.

Notes

Although Hans seesnothing to complain about, I think the bill is a genuine scandal.

- HC as avisitor has to pay for medical treatment.

- HC has topay an entrance fee

- HC has topay for the disinfection of the room

I think that it israther romantic that Behrens has chosen to stay close to his buried wife.

Krokowski’s office isdescribed as a hellish den in the underground: Murky twilight, deep dusk. Seethe image of the woman escaping, in shock we think, from the office of K.

MM 4.

2011-10-27T14:48:00.001+02:00

Hans Castorp's room ?

MM 4 : Analysis

2011-10-27T14:47:00.001+02:00

Hans, still unsettledby his lonely walk, arrives in the nick of time for Krokowki’s conference. Thereis a free chair in the back of the room where he urgently sits down. The personright in front of him is “La Clawdia”! It turns out to be, quite an excitingchapter.

Bildung

Hans thinks that theloose manners of Mme Chauchat are due to a certain “laissez-aller” à la HerrAlbin, in the face of death.

Eros

Hans is sitting rightbehind Clawdia who holds herself as if she is standing on all fours: her backrounded (mentioned three times in the text ), shoulders drooping forward butthrusting her head out…the arm barely clad, the hand so suffocating close tohis face.

Krokowski is a caricatureof early psychiatry and like Freud is sex obsessed. K is talking dirty. Krokowskidescribed like a real Rasputin…including the Monastic sandals

Erotic images abound: Imagesof watery milk… sperm ? Very stiff things…Open gasping mouths, Perversion here,perversion there,

Conclusion ofKrokowski conference: Illness is transformed Love !!! Unsanctioned lovereappears as illness!!! Imagine that.

HC understands it all:Women dress “ just to arouse our ardent desires”. It is accepted because it isthe way to get pregnant. He continues: Is there any point in wearing sexyclothes when you are ill? When you are not suited for motherhood? … ought to beconsidered improper, to be forbidden”. (Hans, what are you saying ?!)

And here comes theconclusion one might expect… “Because a man to be interested in a sick womanwas certainly no more reasonable than…well, than for Hans Castorp to have pursuedhis silent interest in Pribislav Hippe back then”.

Hans has still lots ofthings to learn.

Notes

Krokowski takes thepose of Jesus on the cross

… all ye that labourand are heavy laden… ( pregnancy ?)

Strange last sentence.Both cousins are avoiding to speak about the love theme. Because it is inappropriate?Does Joachim refrain to make advances towards Marusja because she is ill? Because,like Hans said because she is not suited to Motherhood, because it is no usefor she will be death soon?

MM 4 : Hippe Hippe Hurrah

2011-10-27T14:01:00.002+02:00

Chapter finalizes thecheerful Sunday! The cousins are watching Clavdia and Marusja in the carriages.“Russians (particular Russian ladies) love to go for rides”.

On Monday, Hansdecides to take an extended walk, all by himself. This is perverse and illadvised. He exhausts himself terribly and after a while will rests on bench near abrook. His nose starts bleeding and Hans has something like a minor epiphany.

Bildung

It is forbidden not toattend Krokowski’s lectures! Settembrini is absent.

Death

The Austrian Horseman’scough he hears every day, lest he would forget where he is.

“The nose bleedingleft him in a state of strangely reduced vitality”. This pseudo death announcesanother one later, more dangerous. This time HC suddenly remembers where he hasseen the eyes before, finally telling us who he recognized in the dream hedreamt in the chapter “Satana makes shameful suggestions”

Notice HC’s bodydescribed as “lifeless”

Eros

Hans is still puzzledabout who or what he was reminded of each time he sees Clawdia’s eyes. Hansnotices again the effect Marusja has on Joachim.

Krokowski’s lecture “Loveas a force conducive to illness”

Remembering PribislavHippe, Polish first name, Slavic blood, bluish grey or greyish blue eyes ( likedistant mountains, the Caucasian Mountain range no doubt ), curious, narrowslanted shape ( Asian ) with prominent distinctive strong cheekbones.

Kirghizeyes, Kirgizstan in the Caucasus? Is that not where Clawdia comes from and whereher French husband is working? Where do German schoolboys know Kirgizstanfrom? Their reading of the Russians? Tolstoy? Lermontov?

“HC did not worryabout the intellectual or emotional basis of his reaction or even what name hewould give it if he had to. It could not be called friendship…” It is love ofcourse, it is attraction, it is infatuation. See how many times the word “loved”is used indirectly when speaking about the attraction Hans feels for Hippe. He lovedthe emotion, he loved the satisfaction, he loved the disappointments. Thishomosexual attraction cannot be pronounced. It is too adventurous, too risky…

Exchange of the silverand red phallic symbol: “Could you lend me a pencil?”, both heads bent in ajoint communion. Hans the fetishist collects the shavings.

“Intimate relationshipwith Hippe”.

And he looked sostrangely like her…The heterosexual attraction Hans obviously feels for Clawdiais a remake of an attraction of an earlier platonic and homosexual Love Hansfelt for the beautiful boy Hippe.

Time

The epiphany is like a timewarp

Geography

Lovely people have (Central Asian ) Asian blood.

MM 4 : Politically suspect

2011-10-27T12:34:00.003+02:00

Sunday! It is the fifthday of our friend Hans on the mountain. People dress smartly for Sunday. Thereis a holiday atmosphere hanging over the Berghof, Music is playing.

Bildung

“Ah Bravo…Beer,tobacco and music…behold the fatherland”. Settembrini observes a patriotic moodin Hans. Ironic? Does S want to say to Hans, I can see that you enjoy these things;you can have that everyday in your normal world.

“Don’t you enjoyMusic?” “Not when I am ordered to do so”.

Music plays animportant role in the book. I am not taking it into detailed account in thisreading, but there is a whole symbolic world out there: from the popular porno polkasthrough the classics and the military or funeral marches. Anybody willing tostudy it for us ?

S does not like musicbecause it is planned ( every second week and only on Sundays ) and because itis organized for medical reasons. He wants independence in his enjoyment ofmusic (what, when and where)

S sees his attitude asa rebellion against the strict order of the Berghof. He annoys Joachim with a “you’velearned the trick of keeping your pride, even in slavery”

S compares Music toWriting and remarks that there is something dubious, irresponsible andindifferent about it. (this is how I would characterize nature instead of theearlier “evil”.) … S seems to expect this comment “nature can be clear as well-but what good does that do us?”

“My distaste for Musicis Political”

It can be positive andthen S likes it: awakening our zeal, a power that draws the mind upward andforward. Literature must precede it. S means probably the words, the text.

Negative, by itselfmusic cannot draw the world forward, music is dangerous

Joachim: “it fills thehours, it gives the empty hours content”. A piece last 7 minutes...

S reacting: “Bravo,Music awakens time”, “a moral element in the nature of music”. Music is goodwhen it awakens! But what if like a drug in numbs you, puts you to sleep, counteractingactivity and progress. Music like Opiates is a Devil’s tool, creates dullness,rigidity, stagnation, slavish inertia…”

Music is ambiguous anddubious and thus political suspect.

Dangerous Music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gQV15DPvyE

Music as a drug:Goaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Mj6bbyohs&feature=related

Music that makes usmove forward

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etGOwkoVhqU

Eros

There is flirting inthis spring weather

Time

“spring-like day”: By thetime that the first week has passed, Hans will have experienced the fourseasons. Arrival in Summer, then quickly following: fall and winter ( is yoursummer over ?) and now spring-like weather

Notes

The boy with thefingernail… A boy sent to the sanatorium for a short stay and who became illand had to stay… beware Hans beware !

Cigar tastes betterafter four days.

MM 4.

2011-10-26T20:20:00.003+02:00

Restcure

MM 4 : Excursus on the sense of time & MM 4 : He tries out his conversational French

2011-10-26T06:20:00.004+02:00

MM 4 : Excursus on the sense of time

Hans learns to fold his blankets. It is not as easy as it looks. He is also thinking about time.

1. Time

Dissertation on the nature of boredom: Do things new and interesting shorten or lengthen the experience of time ?

MM 4 : He tries out his conversational French

Hans has not yet settled in yet. It is only the fourth day. He starts to look at and understand details, minor things.

1. Bildung

Behrens tries to keep Hans at the sanatorium by describing Ladies – la crème de la crème – beautiful as birds of paradise who visit Davos in Winter. And amorous wohoooooo…

2. Death

Hans sees his first dying man, a man called Reuter. – waxen profile – large rolling eyes
“What dignity in the way the man lay his head…” Hans obviously hasn’t listened to one word of Settembrini.

Hans is imitating the big eyes of the dying man when he bumps into Clawdia Chauchat. He must have looked stupid to her – simply hilarious

Meeting with Tous-les-deux, Hans reacts perfectly “ Je le sais Madame…et le regrette beaucoup”. Well done Hans !, except that he is more concerned with how he handles this moment, than really empathize with the misery of that sad « Mater Dolorosa »

Hans finds that he gets along better with sad people
“ I feel in my element…”

Then he sounds like a genuine Ishmael, loving coffins and funerals

3. Notes

The potbellied containers he noticed already his first evening are canisters containing pure oxygen. They are used to rouse dying people – the moribundi – a last time. Behind the doors where those canisters are found, someone is dying

They meet sister Berta, caretaker of the moribundi in their last act.

MM4: A necessary purchase

2011-10-25T06:48:00.003+02:00

This chapter covers the third and fourth day of Hansstay. The weather has changed to the worst.

The cousins go for shopping and meetSettembrini

1.Bildung

Hans Castorp goes into town to buy himselfsome blankets. He even considers to buy a fur lined sleeping bag but backs off,frightened by the idea. Investing in a sleeping bag, which he cannot use in Hamburg would mean he considersstaying on the Mountain, to make himself at home the Sanatorium.

Meeting with Settembrini

- he is suffering of the cold ashe was from the warmth some days before. With only one set of clothes he iseither over dressed or under dressed.

- He criticizes the rules of theSanatorium which are according to him based on financial interest.

- Yearning for warmth he has fondmemories of his father

- Settembrini suffers from thestupidity of some of his tablemates

- Settembrini does not likeBehrens ( because he keeps him on the mountain? ) nor Krokowski ( fatherconfessor ) who wants to dissect his mind

Then Hans makes a careless assumption :

“One assumes stupid people must be healthyand vulgar, and that illness must ennoble people and make them wise and special”

Settembrini reacts immediately:

- placet experiri: Settembrinisays that Hans like other young people is experimenting with ideas.

- Bad ideas must immediately becountered else they become an indelible trait of character in the young man

- Of all ideas “hanging” aroundthis subject, why has Hans exactly chosen this one?

- “Illness is definitely notelegant and certainly not venerable- such a view in itself is a sickness”

- It is an ugly and outdated ideathat comes from ( religious ) superstition that harmony and health issuspicious and devilish and infirmity a passport to heaven

Then Settembrin as an organ grinderswitches to his political tune : Reason and Enlightment will battle religioussuperstition with earthly work, which will lead us on the path of progress and civilization and then towards a brighterlight.

And now comes the catch. Settembrini in hisreasoning overshoots the truths with which he has begun with and makes his ideassuspicious. Listen to the ugly things he says:

- “Illness is a debasement ofhumanity”

- “The tragedy begins wherenature has been cruel enough to break the harmony of the personality by joininga noble and life – affirming mind to a body unfit for live”.

- ( about Leopardi) “He viewednature as evil, and she is evil, stupid and evil”

- “ A human being who lives as aninvalid is only a body – he is no better than a cadaver

Finally Settembrini sees the young mind notas an empty page, but a page fully written, the wrong and the good ideas togetherand it is up to the educator the erase the wrong ideas

Anyhow the message is missed on Hans andJoachim who have only been impressed by his eloquence

2. Time

Snow in August. Seasons are absent on themountain. We cannot count on them to appreciate time. See: The seasons arenot all that different from one another.

3. Notes

Reminder that Settembrini is not as well todo as most guests.

Placetexperiri: Latin phrase meaning "It pleases to experiment"

See howHans when speaking to Settembrini isashamed to admit that he bought blankets.