Table Of ContentTHOMAS MANN'S
The Magic Mountain
• • •
A CASEBOOK
Edited by
Hans RudolfVaget
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2001>
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UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publi(ation Data
Thomas Mann'sTbe magic mountain: a casebook I edited by Hans RudolfVaget.
p. em.
ISBN 978-0-IY-530173-2; 97S-0-I9-5.1(H74-9 (pbk)
1. Mann, Thomas, IK75-1955. Zauberberg. l. Vaget, Hans Rud"lf.
1'1'2625. M4L 4475 2007
S33'.YI2-dd2 211117026.,79
246S97531
Printt'J in tht' Irnitt'd Statl'!I uf A.l11t'rica
on '!lid-frel' raper
Credits
• • •
Dorrit Cohn, "Telling Timelessness in Der ZauberberB." Originally published in
Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, NF 44 (1994): 425-439. Reprinted with
permission of the author and Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift.
Eric Downing, "Photography and BildunB in The MaBie Mountam." A revised and
much abridged version of an essay entitled "The Technology of Devel
opment: Photography and Bildung in Thomas Mann's Der ZauberberB,"
published in Deutsche Vlerteljahrsschrift fUr Literaturwlssenschaft und GeistesBe
Sch,chte, vo!' 77 (2003): 91-129. By permission of the author and Deutsche
Vierteljahrsschnft.
Anthony Grenville, "'Linke Leute von rechts': Thomas Mann's Naphta and
the Ideological Confluence of Radical Right and Radical Left in the Early
Years of the Weimar Republic." Originally published in Deutsche Viertel
jahrsschrift Jur LiteraturwlSSenschaJi und Geistesgeschlchte, vo!' 59 (1985): 651---675.
By permission of the author and Deutsche Vlerteljahrssehrift.
Malte Herwig, "The 'MagiC Mountain Malady': Der ZauberberB and the Medical
Community, 1924--2006." A revised and updated version of "Framing the
'Magic Mountain Malady': The Reception of Thomas Mann's The MaBie
Mountain in the Medical Community, 1924-2000," published in FraminB and
ImaBininB Disease In Cultural History, ed. George Sebastian Rousseau (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 20(3): 129-150. By permission of the author.
Todd Kontje, "Modern Masculinities on the Magic Mountain." Original
contribution.
vi Credits
Franka Marquardt and Yahya Elsaghe, "Naphta and His Ilk: Jewish Characters
in Mann's The MaB'c Mountain." Original contribution.
Nancy P. Nenno, "Projections on Blank Space: Landscape, Nationality, and
Identity in Der ZauberberB." A revised and updated version of an article pub
lished in German Quarterly, 69 (1996): 305-32l. By permission of the author.
Ellis Shookman, "The MaBie Mountain: A Humoristic Counterpart to Death in
Venice." Original contribution.
Martin Travers, "Death, Knowledge, and the Formation of Self: The Magic
MountaIn." Original contribution.
Hans RudolfVaget, "The Making of The MaB'c Mountain." Original contribution.
Hans Rudolf Vaget, '''Politically Suspect': Music on the Magic Mountain."
Original contribution.
Contents
• • •
Introduction 3
HANS RUDOLF VAGET
The Making of The MaBie Mountain 13
HANS RUDOLF VAGET
Death, Knowledge, and the Formation of Self: The MaBie Mountain 31
MARTIN TRAVERS
Photography and Blldun8 in The MaBie Mountain 45
ERIC DOWNING
Modern Masculinities on the MagiC Mountain 71
TODD KONTJE
Projections on Blank Space: Landscape, Nationality,
and Identity in Der Zauberbers 9S
NANCY P. NENNO
"Politically Suspect": Music on the Magic Mountain 123
HANS RUDOLF VAGET
viii COrrrel11S
"Linke Leute von rechts:" Thomas Mann's Naphta and the
Ideological Confluence of Radical Right and Radical Left in the Early
Years of the Weimar Republic 143
ANTHONY GRENVILLE
Naphta and His Ilk: Jewish Characters in Mann's The Ma8lc Mountain 171
FRANKA MARQUARDT AND YAHYA ELSAGHE
Telling Timelessness in Der Zauberbrr,q 201
DORRIT COHN
The Ma8'c Mountain: .A "Humoristic Counterpart" to Death In Venice 219
ELLIS SHOOKMAN
The "Magic Mountain Malady": Vrr Zauherbrr8 and the Medical
Community,1924-2006 245
MALTE HERWIG
Suggested Reading 265
Index 269
Thomas Mann's
The Magic Mountain
A CASEBOOK
Introduction
HANS RUDOLF VAGET
• • •
T
HE LITERARY FORTUNES of Thomas Mann's 1924 novel The MaBie Mountain
in the English-speaking world, unlike those in his native country, have
been rather mixed. Looking back over the eighty years since its publication, we
can readily distinguish three phases in the critical reception of the book: first,
a period of widespread acclaim, in which The MaBie Mountain was generally held
in the highest regard; second, a period of benign neglect in which the novel
receded into the background of the literary landscape; and third, during the
last two decades a period of significant new interest in Mann's work. The pres
ent anthology is designed to suggest what forms that new interest has taken
and to inspire further critical forays into some of the unmapped territories of
this great mountain of a book.
For some two decades after the appearance in 1927 of Helen T. Lowe-Porter's
translation of Der ZauherberB' American critics routinely ranked the author of
The MaBie Mountain among the foremost men of letters of his age. This view
found strong support in Hermann Weigand's book-length analysis of the
novel, the first such undertaking in any language, which appeared in 1933.1
It soon became customary to refer to Mann in the same breath as Proust and
Joyce as one of the outstanding practitioners of the modern novel. Aston
ishing as it may seem to today's professors of literature, it was by no means
3
4 Hans RudolfVager
unusual in and around the mid-twentieth century to offer one-semester
college courses devoted to the study of Remembrance ofThinBs Past, Ulysses, and The
MaBie Mountain. It appears that Harry Levin at Harvard was the first to design
this kind of course; many others followed suit.
The MaBic Mountain appeared at a time that, due to a confluence of diverse
factors, proved especially propitious to its success in America. In 1929, Mann
received the Nobell'rize for Literature, and even though the prize was expressly
awarded for his first novel, Budden/nooks (1901), it was generally assumed that the
Nobel committee at the time had been swayed by the powerful groundswell of
acclaim triggered by his more recent work. That prize, the most coveted and
consequential of all literary awards, confirmed the no\"el's favorable critical
reception in America and added greatly to Mann's prestige. Further evidence
of his preeminence came a year later, in 1930, when Marro and the MaBician, a
sophisticated political parable about Italian fascism, met with unanimous crit
ical acclaim and strengthened many intellectuals' perceptions of Mann as one
of the most perceptive diagnosticians of the age. Indeed, Mann's credentials
for such a role seemed impeccable. IJeeply rooted in German culture, he was
nonetheless conversant with all major intellectual currents on the continent.
Furthermore, he had by then shed the posture he had initially adopted of the
nonpolitical artist and had assumed the political responsibility of the public
intellectual when, in 1922, he called for the support of the unpopular Weimar
Republic and expressed his alarm over the rise of the Hitler movement. He
did so with increasing urgency in the years leading up to the Nazi takeover
in 1933 and, as an exile, with ever increasing passion, after 1936. (That self
imposed three-year hiatus of silence resulted from Mann's desire to protect
his JeWish publisher and to prolong the availability of his books in Germany.)
In comparison with Proust, whose work was greatly admired but not widely
read, and with Joyce, whose Ulysses was condemned to a clandestine existence
for twelve years after its publication in 1922, the author of The MaBie Mountain
appeared to many as the one writer who was most alive to the intellectual and
ideological issues confronting an age that began to look to many like a mere
interlude between two terrible world conflagrations.
The crucial factor in all of this was, of course, the literary character of
Mann's work itself. The MaBic Mountain was seen both as a novel filled with
wide-ranging ideas articulated on an elevated plane of philosophical self
consciousness, and as a novel offering an abundance of incident and pure
reading pleasure. It could be read both as a meditation on the timeless topics
of love, death. and disease and as a highly topical inquiry into the mental
ity of pre-World War I Europe. In fact, Der Zauherbers seemed to reach more
profoundly into the etiology of the twentieth century's seminal catastrophe
