The Polish literary critic Justyna Sobolewska describes how she sinks into the plot of the novel “The Magic Mountain”. 

By Justyna Sobolewska

For the last three months, just before bed, I’ve been opening up an old edition of The Magic Mountain with a navy-blue dust jacket and immersing myself in life at the Berghof Sanatorium – I lie wrapped up in a blanket on the veranda, a chill wind swirls about me even in August, I check the temperature curve, I learn that corpses are taken uphill on bobsleighs (at the very beginning), I observe the upper cervical vertebrae of Madame Chauchat, I listen as the door slams, I delight in the disputes between Settembrini and Naphta.

Keepsake

The dust jacket is a bit torn, because I’ve dragged both volumes around everywhere. Underneath there’s a solid canvas cover. It’s a 1965 edition. The first volume has a dedication: “So you get lost again…”. The second one says: “…and then find yourself”. This novel is my only keepsake left from a certain episode. I remember reading it in a tent, and then on the way home in a train, someone stole Mann from my compartment. That summer left me with a reluctance to sleep in a tent and a love of that book. The two volumes in navy-blue dust jackets were bought in a used bookshop, but for years I never opened their covers. Now a slip from the purchase of imported goods (from before there was Pewex) falls out from the first volume, dated November 1965. I use it as a bookmark. Retail price 0.70 zloty. I wonder what those imported goods were – coffee, alcohol, chocolate?
 
They eat so well in the Berghof Sanatorium: “Hans Castorp sat down and noted approvingly that early breakfast here was a serious meal. There were pots of marmalade and honey, bowls of oatmeal and creamed rice, plates of scrambled eggs and cold meats; they had been generous with the butter. Someone lifted the glass bell from a soft Swiss cheese and cut off a piece; what was more, a bowl of fruit, both fresh and dried, stood in the middle of the table.” A six-course dinner, and on Sundays even more lavish: “Dinner included a chaudfroid of chicken, garnished with shrimps and halved cherries; ices with pastries in little baskets of spun sugar; even fresh pineapple.” Hans Castorp observed that everyone in the dining room was ravenous: “It would have been a joy to observe, if its effect had not at the same time seemed somehow eerie, even repulsive.”

Terrifying views

This is a highly corporeal novel; at its heart is a sickness that creates damp spots in the lungs. We also have the sensual desires of Hans Castorp, whose eyes scan every inch of Frau Chauchat’s body. Peering inside the body through an X-ray photograph leads to conversations on matter and the spirit. Naphta and Settembrini’s talks are a stroke of genius – only now, years later, do I see how terrifying Naphta’s views are. He is a Jewish intellectual who hunted a Jesuit and turned into an Inquisitor. Settembrini, the humanist in tattered gloves, Freemason, advocate of the Enlightenment, progress, and the Republic, warns Hans Castorp against the Jesuit’s influence. Naphta praises the Middle Ages, he believes mankind is evil, and so must be kept in line to serve the Lord’s Kingdom. These conflicts grow until they are vented in the famous duel. During these discussions, we also see the main protagonist’s changes. Castorp ceases to be the average and dull young man who arrived and was a constant source of distress. He gains self-confidence and his own opinion. He cuts into discussions, having something to say both about magic tricks and the mystery of time.

How time passes

Speaking of time: seven weeks there, on the mountain, seem to us like seven days, or maybe seven years? For me, diving into The Magic Mountain meant stepping outside of time’s ordinary flow. The narrator often reminds us that during this tale, time imperceptibly passes. “We measure on a grand scale – it is one of the privileges of shades”, says Settembrini. The nature of time is one of the major ingredients of this novel, returning like a refrain in various forms: “Time – not the sort that train station clocks measure with a large hand that jerks forward every five minutes, but more like the time of a very small watch whose hands move without our being able to notice, or the time grass keeps as it grows without our eyes’ catching its secret growth, until the day comes when the fact is undeniable”. I draw out time to stay within this novel. I don’t even want to finish this article, though it is one in the morning. Even when I reach the place where we part ways with our protagonist: “Farewell, Hans Castorp, life’s faithful problem child. Your story is over”, I don’t want to close the book. Fortunately, however, Mann comes to the rescue, advising readers to reopen the book and start all over. Is this in order to better perceive the flickering network of meanings and connections? “I am most tempted to conclude”, writes Małgorzata Łukasiewicz in her Jak być artystą na przykładzie Tomasza Manna (How to Be an Artist: The Example of Thomas Mann), “that he wanted to say that The Magic Mountain, that literature, is (…) quite different from life, where, having soldiered through the end, you cannot go back and start again.”