Misty Mountain - World Literature Library

Author: (German) Thomas Mann
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: The Magic Mountain lacks a dramatic plot or thrilling scenes, yet it is filled with a sense of the bizarre, tension, and mystery from beginning to end. It is, however, marked by intense intellectual and spiritual collisions, confrontations, and even life-and-death struggles. These differing ideas and their conflicts are embodied through a vivid character, which endows the novel with its captivating and mesmerizing artistic charm. In other words, The Magic Mountain does not primarily depict the external manifestations and process of the decline of the free bourgeois class—though there are many brilliant moments in this regard—but rather focuses more on revealing its internal historical and spiritual roots. To sum up, the story takes place on the eve of World War I. The "mountain" sanatorium ruled by death, as depicted in the book, is in fact a microcosm of the spiritually empty, morally decadent, and crisis-ridden capitalist Europe of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The entire "mountain" is unable to escape the fate of death, which means that the world it symbolizes has declined and fallen, and the European bourgeoisie, representing free capitalism before the war, has spiritually decayed and collapsed. A common young man leaves his hometown of Hamburg in midsummer and heads to the Davos Plateau in the Graubünden Alps to spend three weeks visiting. The journey from Hamburg to the plateau is very long; especially for such a short stay, it is far too distant. Along the way, he passes through several countries, crosses mountain ranges, descends from the South German plateau to the Swabian coast, and then sails across the once. Up to this point, the journey has been smooth, all in straight lines; from here on, it becomes more complicated, with stops and starts, causing quite a bit of trouble. Upon reaching Rorschach in Switzerland, he boards a train again, but it can only go as far as the small station of Langquart in the Alps, where he has to switch trains once more. The small station is windy, with little pleasant scenery around it. After aimlessly traveling from station to station, he finally boards a narrow-gauge train. Only when its small but clearly powerful locomotive begins to move does the truly thrilling part of the journey begin: the train keeps climbing and climbing, as if there is no end in sight. It is worth noting that the Langquart station is not particularly high; the desolate and perilous railway cutting through the cliffs and rocks is the one that truly leads deep into the mountains. The young man's name is Hans Castorp. He is alone in a small Pullman car, the sofas in which are all gray. He carries a crocodile leather suitcase, a gift from his uncle and guardian—let me mention his full name here—Count von Dinnopolis. His winter coat is hanging on a hook, swaying back and forth; a Scottish tartan travel blanket is covering his legs. He sits in front of the tightly closed window, as the afternoon temperature gradually cools. Having been pampered at home since childhood, he has already turned up the collar of his wide, stylish summer silk coat. On the seat beside him lies a pamphlet titled Oceangoing Ships, which he had flipped through a few times when he first set off on his journey, but now has been left untouched and thrown to the side. The locomotive puffs heavily, exhaling dirty air into the car, and the book cover is already covered in tiny specks of coal. Two days of travel will take a person, a young man who has not yet taken root in life, far away from his familiar world and everything he calls his duty, interests, worries, prospects, and so on. The severity of the situation is far beyond what he could have imagined when he took a taxi to the train station. Spinning and rushing, a space is squeezed into his life and his native land, revealing the power that people usually believe only time possesses. Hour after hour, it brings about changes within him, changes that are very similar to those caused by time, but sometimes even more intense. Like time, it causes forgetfulness, by separating him from all his relationships and placing him in a free, primal state. Indeed, in the blink of an eye, it can even turn a disciplined middle-class citizen into someone like a vagrant. People say time is a river of oblivion, but the air of the faraway places has the same effect. Though breathing it does not make you forget everything as thoroughly as drinking from that river of oblivion, it makes you forget much more quickly. Hans Castorp is in this situation. At first, he did not intend to pay special attention to this trip, nor did he plan to dwell on it. He wanted to get it over with quickly because he had to go, and then return exactly as he had left, to that old place, and let his temporarily interrupted life resume. Just yesterday, his thoughts were still confined to his accustomed limits, considering the exam he had just taken and the upcoming employment at the Dürr-Wilhelms company—which includes a shipyard, a machine factory, and a boiler factory—and he was as impatient as he could be about the three weeks ahead. However, now it seems that the situation requires his full attention, leaving no room for carelessness. Being suddenly elevated to regions he had never breathed before, to places where he knew the living conditions were completely different and simple yet harsh, he began to feel agitated, and his inner self gradually filled with a sense of anxiety. His hometown and orderly life were not only left far behind, but even more worrisome was that they now lay deeply beneath his feet, and he was still constantly rising higher and higher. Suspended between them and the strange land, he couldn’t help but ask himself how he would live there. Perhaps, for someone born and accustomed to living just a few meters above sea level like him, to suddenly arrive in such an extremely harsh area without first staying for a few days at a moderate altitude would be both unwise and harmful to his health. He hoped to reach his destination quickly, because once he was on the mountain, he thought he could live normally as he would anywhere else, rather than constantly climbing and climbing, as he was now, always aware of how extraordinary his situation was. He looked out the window: the train was winding along a narrow pass; he could see some of the carriages ahead and the exhausted locomotive puffing out brown, green, and black smoke that drifted in the wind. To the right, the sound of water was gurgling in a deep valley; to the left, towering ancient pines stood among the cliffs, reaching toward the gray sky. Black tunnel mouths kept appearing ahead; when the train emerged into the sunlight, a vast valley opened up beside it, with the villages at the bottom clearly visible. The deep valley gradually closed in, followed by new passes; the snow had not yet melted from the cracks in the cliffs. The train stopped at shabby little stations one after another, sometimes having to turn around at the dead-end station, leaving people confused and unable to tell which way was east or west. Looking out, the peaks stood majestic and imposing, stretching as far as the horizon, and the sacred and wondrous world of the high mountains was already before his eyes. Yet, as the path turned, the beauty vanished from the pious eyes. At this moment, Hans Castorp thought, the temperate forest had already been left behind, and if his estimate was correct, the songbird zone had passed too. To this thought, he felt a sense of loss, and for two seconds, his head buzzed slightly, and his heart ached, and he could not help but cover his eyes with his hands. However, this feeling passed quickly. Hans Castorp realized that the climb had reached its end, and the highest pass had been conquered.