Every year, I undertake a big read. This year, I have heroically embarked on The Magic Mountain, the 1924 novel by Thomas Mann. No, I am not reading the Zauberberg in the original German; that would be an impossible strain on my student German abilities (apologies to the Carleton University German Department).
This is a mighty work of literature that took Thomas Mann 12 years to write. Mighty in length and content. I must confess that I have been labouring along. It is heavy going. I spend too much time looking at my bookmark to see how far I am along and how much still to go.
Unlike other great reads (I am thinking of Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’), this book all takes place in one location, a TB sanatorium above Davos in the Swiss Alps. There is no escaping for the reader to the ‘flatlands’. Our hero, Hans Castorp, goes there for a three-week visit to see his cousin and ends up staying seven years. Time takes a break from reality where illness and death are the norm in a surrounding of civilization, comfort and good food.
This is European society before the First World War. Here, personalities from Germany to Russia via Italy with a detour to Holland debate culture, politics, society, love, life and death. Hans Castorp is buffeted around with these ideas. But he sorts through it all with increasing wisdom. Our hero is coming of age in this rarified air challenging the reader’s values as the book progresses.
At the halfway mark in my reading, I decided to take a break. I was worried I would give up and have to live with that shame! But no, the mountain and the residents of the Berghof sanatorium called out to me. Like a Ricola cough-drop advertisement from the mountain top!
Thomas Mann won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and this book has a faithful following of frequent readers. No, I will not be among them. Once is my big challenge. However, in this age of Trump, critics point out it is sadly relevant. Mann presented European society leading up to World War One, and that is where our hero is sadly heading.
I am on the last quarter of the book, the end is in sight, and I will be proud of myself when I finish.