Review: 'The Magic Mountain' by Thomas Mann, trans. by John E. Woods, narr. by David Rintoul

The Magic Mountain is a capital-C Classic, but it is also a novel about social malaise, illness, and intellectual pursuits. While telling the story of a young man, the novel is also permeated by the looming threat of World War I. Perhaps there was no better time than the COVID-19 era, with war once again taking place in Europe, to visit this masterpiece, when we are all so restricted and fearful of what might come next. 

Original Pub. Date: 1924
Audible Publisher: Ukemi Audiobooks
Audible Pub. Date: 5/4/2020

It was The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) that confirmed Thomas Mann as a Nobel prizewinner for literature and rightly so, for it is undoubtedly one of the great novels of the 20th century. 

Its unusual story - it opens with a young man visiting a friend in a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps - was originally started by Mann in 1912 but was not completed until 1924. Then, it was instantly recognised as a masterpiece and led to Mann’s Nobel Prize in 1929. 

Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912, and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure, and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, some of whom have been there for years, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents. 

Among them are Hofrat Behrens, the principal doctor, the curiously attractive Clavdia Chauchat and two intellectuals: Ludovico Settembrini and Leo Naphta with their strongly contrasted personalities and differing political, ethical, artistic and spiritual ideals. Hans Castorp’s stay is extended, once, twice and still further, as he appears to develop symptoms which suggest that his health, once so robust, would benefit from the treatments and the mountain air. 

As time passes, it becomes clear that the young man, with a particular interest in shipbuilding and not much else, finds his outlook and knowledge broadened by his mountain companions, his intellect stretched and his emotional experience deepened and enriched. Hans Castorp is changing, day by day, month by month, year by year, sometimes imperceptibly, sometimes with a sudden advance, as he encounters the varied range of sparkling characters, their comedies and tragedies, their aspirations and their defeats. 

The Magic Mountain is a classic bildungsroman, an educational journey of growth - a genre that began with an earlier novel in the German tradition: Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. It is presented here in the acclaimed modern translation by John E. Woods and is told by David Rintoul with his particular understanding for Thomas Mann as displayed in his widely praised Ukemi recording of Buddenbrooks.

As some of you might know, I have a strong desire to read all the big Classics, the works that are said to have captured an era, defined a zeitgeist, and more. So far I've managed to read Les Miserables (which I greatly enjoyed), The Decameron (loved it!) and War & Peace (less enthusiastic about that one). Now, it was time for a major German classic which I, to my great shame, chose to approach in translation rather than my native German. The Magic Mountain is an intimidating book, even if it comes in at "only" 700-or so pages. It is a complex book, full of long conversations about philosophy and politics and descriptions of heavy meals. Even though technically not much happens plot-wise, it is an intense experience. I was incredibly happy to find this excellent audiobook edition by Ukemi Audiobooks, narrated absolutely brilliantly by David Rintoul. He brings this book to live, working with John E. Woods excellent translation. Rintoul finds the humour in the story and walks the fine line between ridicule and empathy that all the people populating the Mountain deserve.

Hans Castorp is merely traveling to the Berghof Sanatorium to visit his cousin, Joachim, who is staying there to take the cure. Hans' three week visit, however, quickly extends into a years-long stay as his own health declines And yet, is he really ill or is it the Berghof itself that refuses to relinquish its strong hold on this lost, young man. Hans does not know what his life should look like, has no real passions of his own, and mostly just wants to be. Here, at the Sanatorium, he knows exactly how each day will look, has the company of the weirdest and most fascinating of people, and can let go of everything he was meant to do "down below". And so, Hans stays and time passes. It is only by the time you reach the end of the novel, that you realise just how much Hans has changed and grown, how many things have happened to him, and how fundamentally different the world he returns to is from the one he left. I found myself deeply fond of this lost "problem child of the world", this layabout who had loads of dreams but no idea how to really exist in the world.

It is in this weird balance that I found myself most interested. How can it be that the day to day, the nothingness of a structured, boring life, can amount to years in which so many things have changed? How can it be that a world can descend into a World War without you even being fully aware of it? The Magic Mountain is elusive; you cannot pin down what Thomas Mann meant to say with it. Perhaps here I should admit that the thing that finally pushed me towards reading it was listening to a lecture by the mythologist Joseph Campbell in which he extolled the virtues of the book. According to Campbell, The Magic Mountain is full of symbology, psychoanalytical depths, and mythology. And I found that indeed I could get lost on this mountain myself. Perhaps it is the times we live in, maybe it's just me, but I felt the strong pull of the mountain, of an ordered life in which my only responsibility was to get better and in which I could completely leave the rest of the world behind. The ending of the novel, which I will discuss here so spoiler alert, therefore, came as an absolute shock to the system. When WWI breaks out, Hans descends from the mountain and the last time we see him is as he stumbles across the hellscape of the trenches. Whether he lives or dies, we do not know. And yet, how could he survive in this world? How do any of us? This cold shower of an ending is what made the novel such a riveting experience for me because it demonstrated that even though we can try and leave the world behind, we still live in it. 

For some The Magic Mountain is a novel in which "nothing happens". This is not entirely incorrect, since the magic of the novel does not lie in a tight plot line or a sequence of unbelievable events. Rather, its draw lies in the way Mann lays out Hans' development and growth. It truly is at once a novel in which nothing really happens and a novel in which everything happens. As Hans Castorp grows up, the reader gets to experience everything through his eyes: love, loss, childhood, adulthood, illness, betrayal, and so on. There is nothing that The Magic Mountain doesn't touch upon, nothing Mann leaves aside. As Hans Castorp is educated by the humanist Settembrini and the skeptical Naptha, the reader is presented a view of the wide panorama of possible philosophies, lives, opinions, and experiences. While The Magic Mountain isn't wholly positive about humanity, perhaps taking his cue from Nietzsche, it is nonetheless filled with a persevering love for life. 

I give this novel...

5 Universes!

Ground-breaking opinion: The Magic Mountain is a masterpiece. I'm glad to have waited until now to read the novel, so that I could fully appreciate it, really reflect upon it and recognise myself in it. While not an easy novel per se, The Magic Mountain is a very rewarding read.