The Thomas Mann Group discussion

This thread is to post supplementary readings and links to information about The Magic Mountain.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/31583019/Th...

An electronic version of the H. T. Lowe-Porter translation is available here. I believe there is a charge for downloading; at least, I never did. But it was useful for comparisons while reading or for quoting passages.

it's a good start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mag...

I've ordered three readers' guides to The Magic Mountain: Thomas Mann's The "Magic Mountain": A Casebook, A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, and Thomas Manns the Magic Mountain: A Readers Guide. I'll let you all know how they are when I start to read through them.

A.S. Byatt's introduction to The Magic Mountain (Everyman edition) is here: http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/clas...

Hmm, is Mann's Afterword online anywhere? I remember it as pretty helpful from last time....

Aha, found it on Scribd and formatted it - http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3...

Interesting article on Mann and music here (I didn't read all of it, skimmed about half).

Thanks Moira!

I'm slowly working my way through a history of the German Empire, this is after all the world that Mann was born into.
Die nervöse Großmacht: Aufstieg und Untergang des deutschen Kaiserreichs 1871-1918

And at the same time (as well as about four works of fiction!) The German Tradition in Literature 1871-1945

I hope to get further than the first few pages before we really start.

Moira wrote: "Interesting article on Mann and music here (I didn't read all of it, skimmed about half)."

Moira, thank you. You could also link it under the Music Thread.

·Karen· wrote: "Die nervöse Großmacht: Aufstieg und Untergang des deutschen Kai..."

Karen, we have also a separate Thread for Historical setting (there is so much on TM that supplementary reading can branch out with more subtopics). You may also want to put the book in the GroupShelf...

Kris, thanks so much for the link to Byatt's introduction to TMM. My paperback doesn't have an intro at all, and I was wondering how to get it. You made it easy!

My pleasure, Diane! It's so nice that Random House makes so many of the Everyman's edition introductions available online as PDFs.

And thanks, Moira, for posting Mann's Afterword. :)

Kalliope wrote: "Moira, thank you. You could also link it under the Music Thread."

Ooh, good idea.

Kris wrote: "And thanks, Moira, for posting Mann's Afterword. :)"

I hadn't remembered a lot of it -- it made me feel rather like an American coed in a lit class listening to a really benevolent German prof lecture several miles above my head!

The ridiculously expensive Thomas Manns the Magic Mountain: A Readers Guide by Rodney Symington is a book of annotations to TMM. I found a copy for almost half price (still expensive), and bought it, so I'm happy to look up references throughout the read if any questions arise. Just ask in the weekly discussion threads.

Kris wrote: "The ridiculously expensive Thomas Manns the Magic Mountain: A Readers Guide by Rodney Symington is a book of annotations to TMM. I found a copy for almost half price (still expensive), and bought i..."

DAYUM. That is fantastic! Good for you!

Kris wrote: "The ridiculously expensive Thomas Manns the Magic Mountain: A Readers Guide by Rodney Symington is a book of annotations to TMM. I found a copy for almost half price (still expensive), and bought i..."

Kris, this looks very tempting... Let us know what you think when you get it.

Kalliope wrote: "Kris wrote: "The ridiculously expensive Thomas Manns the Magic Mountain: A Readers Guide by Rodney Symington is a book of annotations to TMM. I found a copy for almost half price (still expensive),..."

Try WorldCat and see if there is a copy, probably at a nearby university library, that you can borrow?

The three guides Kris names @4 are all excellent. I have dabbled in each of them. If I recall correctly, all three are really edited collections of articles by scholars addressing different aspects of either MM or Mann or Mann's oeuvre. (If I were to choose one, which would be difficult, it would probably be the one by Vaget. The TOCs may be online with Amazon's "Look Inside" feature -- I haven't checked.)

Lily wrote: " (..."

Thank you Lily, the one I was aking about is already one of the 3 in Kris's #4.

WorldCat is good only for some countries, unfortunately.

From Mann's "Afterward" Moira has so helpfully given us @7 (link):

"...As for me, I am glad to be instructed by critics about myself, to learn from them about my past works and go back to them in my mind. My regular formula of thanks for such refreshment of my consciousness is: 'I am most grateful to you for having so kindly recalled me to myself.' I am sure I wrote that to Professor Hermann Weigand of Yale University when he sent me his book on The Magic Mountain, the most fundamental and comprehensive critical treatment the work has received."

Thomas Mann's Novel, Der Zauberberg; A Study

This, too, seems to be out of print. I see publication dates of 1933 and again in 1964. Used copies are available. I have not seen a copy -- there may be an excerpt in one of the other volumes we have named; one would need to check.

Kalliope wrote: "Thank you Lily, the one I was asking about is already one of the 3 in Kris's @4.

WorldCat is good only for some countries, unfortunately."

I'm sorry, Kalliope. Must have messed up when I cross checked. The third (fourth) book I used and had in mind was:

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann by Ritchie Robertson


I do recommend the other two Kris named @4:

Thomas Mann's The "Magic Mountain": A Casebook by Hans R. Vaget

A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain by Stephen D. Dowden


I did not use Symington, so can't speak for it:
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain: A Reader's Guide by Rodney Symington

P.S. Also, sorry that I missed you are in Madrid, Kalliope. (My son and his wife enjoyed your city and country in June.)

Literary trivia - the young Howard Nemerov Mann mentions is the poet, who was the brother of Diane Arbus.

Lily wrote: "Kalliope wrote: "Thank you Lily, the one I was asking about is already one of the 3 in Kris's @4.

WorldCat is good only for some countries, unfortunately."

I'm sorry, Kalliope. Must have messed ..."

Thank you, Lily. I have the Cambridge guide and will have a look at the other two. The one by Symington is a bit too expensive and from what I could see provides a lot of info that can be found in google.

Note these two guardians of the Underworld and the allusions in MM:

p.231 in Woods translation, possibly earlier

(view spoiler)[ Director Behrens: Rhadamanthus--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhadaman...

"According to later legends (c. 400 BC), on account of his inflexible integrity he was made one of the judges of the dead in the lower world, together with Aeacus and Minos. He was supposed to judge the souls of easterners, Aeacus those of westerners, while Minos had the casting vote (Plato, Gorgias 524A).

"Virgil (69–18 BC) makes Rhadamanthus one of the judges and punishers of the unworthy in the Underworld (Tartarus) section of the Aeneid.

"Pindar says that he is the right-hand man of Cronus (now ruling Elysium) and was the sole judge of the dead."

Minos -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minos

"In the Aeneid of Virgil, Minos was the judge of those who had been given the death penalty on a false charge - Minos sits with a gigantic urn, and decides whether a soul should go to Elysium or Tartarus with the help of a silent jury. Radamanthus, his brother, is a judge at Tartarus who decides upon suitable punishments for sinners there." (hide spoiler)]

"Switzerland with Bradshaw's 1913 Railway Guide" - if you can find the video of this, even though the journey doesn't go to Davos, you can get a sense of the train ride Hans took to visit his cousin. It may not currently be available -- I didn't find it tonight.

May alternatively be called: "Great Continental Railway Journeys with Michael Portillo."

From Lapham's Quarterly:

The Magic Mountain: Course of Illness by Ian Bamforth

Note: Contains Spoilers

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/recon...