Novel
The Magic Mountain
Der Zauberberg
Thomas Mann · 1924
Opening lines
Ein einfacher junger Mensch reiste im Hochsommer von Hamburg, seiner Vaterstadt, nach Davos-Platz im Graubündischen. Er fuhr auf Besuch für drei Wochen.
An unassuming young man was travelling in high summer from Hamburg, his native city, to Davos-Platz in the canton of the Grisons. He was going on a visit for three weeks.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Hans Castorp, a young man from Hamburg of twenty-three who has just finished his studies as a naval engineer, goes up to Davos to spend three weeks at the Berghof sanatorium with his cousin Joachim Ziemssen. The atmosphere of the house, with the chief physician Behrens, Dr Krokowski and patients who cough up blood at table, fascinates him. He becomes friends with the Italian humanist Lodovico Settembrini, who undertakes his education, and a woman he meets there, who reminds him of a schoolboy passion, occupies his thoughts.
Context
The novel grew out of a three-week stay in 1912 at the Davos sanatorium where the author's wife was being treated. Conceived at first as a short novella, a comic counterpart to Death in Venice, it was interrupted by the war, during which Mann defended the German cause, and did not appear until November 1924. The character of Behrens borrows traits from Dr Friedrich Jessen, who ran the establishment. Hans W. Geissendörfer brought it to the screen in 1982.
Who it is for
A long novel, made up of conversations of ideas; the narrative slows down as time dissolves for the hero.
Prizes and reception
Printed in a run of a hundred thousand copies in four years, it has been translated into twenty-seven languages, including five times into English.