La montaña mágica

Por Thomas Mann

El protagonista de la novela, Hans Castorp, un joven de 22 años, estudiante de ingeniería y de familia adinerada, va a visitar a su primo al hospital de tuberculosos de Davos, en donde su estancia, originariamente planeada para tres semanas, se convierte en una estadía de siete años.Pronto comprende que la lógica que rige en el hospital, situado a 1530 m de altitud, es distinta a la que gobierna el mundo "de los de abajo" –el mundo de los sanos-.
El hospital de Davos, reino de la enfermedad y la muerte, pero también de la ociosidad y la seducción, transforman profundamente al protagonista.
La montaña mágica es también una descripción de la situación social e intelectual europea, que registra los acontecimientos filosóficos, sociales y políticos de Europa que provocaron la Primera Guerra Mundial.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: EDHASA
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 21 ene 2013
• ISBN: 9788435045957

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, and essayist. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. Mann won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.

Comentarios para La montaña mágica

[colligan · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

A master at his craft!

[labrick · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

This book follows the story of Hans Castorp from his opulent, although fractured, early life through his stay at a Swiss sanatorium reserved mostly for tubercular patients. His main companion during and after his acclimatization to this other-worldly center for the infirm is his cousin Joachim, an ambitious and reserved military man whose only mission is to return to the “flatlands” and continue his career. Stays at the Berghof Sanatorium are lengthy, to say the least: “the shortest measurement of time is the month”. Joachim, a resident for six months before Hans arrives, explains the regimented daily routine and odd etiquette that exists in Berghof. Although there are many other colorful guests, the patients remain relatively isolated, even from each other. This makes Joachim and Hans’s relationship all the more important throughout the book.The book has many sub-stories (not subplots): little vignettes that add to the subject matter, but have no real bearing on the main story. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that these tangents are strictly diversionary and ultimately damaging to the continuity of the story, some are immensely insightful and complementary. Time, or the perception of time, being a major them throughout the book, it should be noted that at Berghof, where every day is like the next, time does not exist. Hans notes that “The scholastics of the Middle Ages claimed to know that time is an illusion . . . and that the true state of things is a permanent now.” This idea of timelessness and its relationship to eternity are central to the theme of this book. In addition to this idea of eternity, Hans and other characters are constantly referring to the two main doctors by names that are associated with mythical gods that judge the dead. There are heavy undertones of existentialism and transcendentalism throughout: whole segments of inner dialogue that Hans calls “playing king” (Ex.“For the sake of goodness and love, man shall grant death no dominion over his thoughts.”). This philosophizing is what I found most intriguing about the book, not the interpersonal struggles that occurred in the closed environment of the sanatorium. Although very interesting and thought provoking at times there is some redundancy in the book that is unnecessary; the author could have just stated that life at the sanatorium was monotonous. There are also large sections devoted to debates between Hans’s two polarized “pedagogues” (opinionated intellectuals who are also patients) that become tedious and tend to obfuscate. Understandably, these characters are essential to the struggle of opposing viewpoints, but the subject matter tends to become purely theoretical and trite. One final negative point about the book is that different languages are used throughout. Luckily I read the newest version that translated much of the non-English text, but I now have a couple bookmarked translation websites because of this book. Unless you have a working knowledge in French, Italian, German, Latin, and Spanish, you will find yourself translating at least small sections of text every couple of pages; not to mention that you will most likely be using the English dictionary quite a bit as well.Obviously an extremely intelligent person, hence the Pulitzer, Mann provided something for me to take away from the read. Although this is true, I’m sorry to say that I’ve gleaned much more from books with less pretention and girth. I was originally drawn to this book because I had read some by Hermann Hesse and was looking for other German authors. Although this is the best, and only, “time novel” I have read (the author labels it that within the book), I found Steppenwolf to be a far superior book as it relates to personal introspection and the polarity of ethics. This epic should be a ways down your list of books to read. If you really want to read Thomas Mann, try Death in Venice and then give this book a shot.

[xine2009 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Fascinating, but not all of it. The edition I read was not annotated and I needed about five dictionaries to get through it, and even then was stumped by about five pages of French dialogue. This book was written for an erudite audience. If there's an annotated edition, read that. Unless you know about five languages.

[myhi_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

The very best of Mann; an all-times masterpiece, not really easily to read though. Some of the never-ending discussions on topics no one cares about anymore are hard to go through; still worth making the effort.. Find myself thinking of that Hans sometimes, that special/timeless world on the top of a mountain - and the last scene.... Hans disappearance - back to the world, back to life, Hans actually died once he cured.

[falevian · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Perhaps the best book of my collection. Sublime.

[jensenmk82 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

An extraordinary tour de force of sustained narrative, with unparalleled depths of characterization. I waited many years before undertaking this book and think it was just as well, though I recall reading that Susan Sontag read it at 17 and then went to visit the author.

[meditationesmartini · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This book was daunting to me, expansive, uncompleted (by me, not the author) in a way that I've never really experienced before, not even in say War and Peace or Ulysses. Hans Castorp, sort of a bourgeois German cross between Candide and Woody from Cheers, goes to visit his cousin Joachim Ziemssen for three weeks at the sanatorium in Davos in 1907. Seven years and the whole world pass, and Hans encounters the enervating society of the sickies' club, where less and less matters less and less. Where the last things to go are your own comfort, your flirtations, and the fluctuations of your body and brain--and it occurs to me to wonder whether the analysis comparing the Magic Mountain to the Ivory Tower, or, like, the Castro in 1975, or even the "we fixed Victoria" scene in 2004.
Hans is educated, and encounters the wide and sociopathic world of Europolitics pre-WWI, and I suppose there's a certain amount of presentism in this on Mann's part, but Herr Settembrini is one of the best, most heroic "good teachers" I can think of in literature (without being lionized, as those guys often are), and Herr Naphta is as memorable as a serpent. Assailant!
Hans Castorp falls in love, and I think doing the whole wooing scene in French is a cute conceit. I see with relief that the newer translation I bought has it in English--I'm sure I'll get to it, especially since Mann recommends reading the book twice. Like music, you need to come back to it to hear the texture. Really you should read every good book twice.
And you are enchanted and intoxicated and exhausted and start to feel like you too may have a spot on your lung, or at least like staying up reading in a cold basement can't be the best for your health. And then you think, what the hell, the magic mountain! I don't think like that! But it is nice, like hanging up your hat and brushing off your jacket every time you come in from the cold, getting all set in your fur sack and going back out into it for an extended stay,but with a tiny heissschokolade this time. When the real magic happens, it's wonderful but almost a distraction. I will visit the Berghof again, as sure as I will the real "hier in oben."

[brokentune · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

Abandoned it.

Don't get me wrong, the two stars are not a reflection on the writing. There are some fantastic pieces of writing in this book - mostly in the voice of the narrator. However, I cannot bring myself to rate it higher. This would be to say I liked it. And the condensed truth is that apart from the narrator - I just didn't.

I guess I also prefer books that have a story to tell that I can care about, but since TMM/Zauberberg is about characters which can't bring myself to particularly care about, their story does leave me rather un-affected.

This is my fourth shot at Thomas Mann, and my last.

[kerns222 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Read it on a long bikeride from north to south California. My memory of the book is mixed in with the isolation of pedaling 10 hours a day, reading 5 or 6 and sleeping the rest. Or rather passing out from exhaustion. MM was a good book to be exhausted with--I did not fight going slowly, long discussions, or cold TB treatments.

A great way to book out.

[wassilissa · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Da der Zauberberg eines meiner Lieblingsbücher von Thomas Mann ist, habe ich es schon mehrfach gelesen und nun das Hörbuch, gelesen von Gert Westphal, angehört. (Ich bin übrigens als junges Mädchen mit 15 oder 16 durch die Geissendörfer-Verfilmung zu dem Buch gekommen und seitdem hat es mich nie richtig losgelassen).Die Lesung ist ganz meisterhaft und es ist sicherlich kein Wunder, dass Westphal neben Thomas Mann begraben ist- er verleiht seinem Text Leben und interpretiert ihn ausgezeichnet. Dennoch ist das Selber-Lesen bei diesem Buch fast kurzweiliger. Manche doch recht langatmigen Abhandlungen kann man zügiger lesen, manche schöne Handlung länger auskosten, zurückblättern. 19,5 Stunden sind schon eine wirklich lange Hörbuch-Zeit -aber auch ein tolles Hörerlebnis. Was mir an der Lesung am besten gefiel, war der feine Humor, der meisterhaft vom Leser rübergebracht wurde. Die Szene etwa, in der Castorp zum ersten Mal Fieber misst, habe ich hörend noch viel mehr genossen. Die Botschaft und Geschichte selbst muss ich sicher nicht schildern. Diesmal wurde mir, wohl durch die Lesung, die Naivität und Unbedarftheit des jungen Helden deutlich. Sieben Jahre zieht er sich aus der Welt zurück, vermeintlich erhöht durch Krankheit und Todesnähe. Dabei erscheint er doch eigentlich immer gesund und hätte bald schon heimkehren können. "Uns friert nicht", sagt der junge Mann zu seinem ihn besuchenden Onkel und stellt so eine elitäre Gemeinschaft her, der er angehört und die schon weit entfernt ist von den schnöden leiblichen Dingen- obwohl sie gerade durch die Krankheit so nahe damit konfrontiert ist. Und am Ende- und das finde ich nach wie vor absolut meisterlich- ist es dann doch ganz egal gewesen: Ob sieben Jahre im Sanatorium oder sieben Jahre in der Welt: am Ende liegt der junge Hans im Schützengraben. Und was aus ihm wird, ist ungewiss. Nach wie vor ein geniales Buch- und auch genial gelesen vom großen Gert Westphal.

[widsith_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

You’re faced with a daunting task when you try to talk about The Magic Mountain – there are so many threads that to pull on one seems unfair to the others. For some it’s a meditation on time, for others it’s the foundational ‘sick-lit’ masterpiece; it’s an allegory of pre-First World War Europe, say one group of supporters; not at all, argue others, it’s a parody of the Bildungsroman tradition.And yet despite the profusion of themes and ideas, this is a supremely contained book. ‘Insular’ you might almost say, were the etymology not so inappropriate; perhaps ‘hermetically sealed’ is better (and indeed that becomes an important phrase in the text). The world of this novel is a closed one, or so at least it appears – sealed off from reality, with its own rules, its own time, its own space. The extent to which the characters here can interact with the ‘real’ world is something they have to discover themselves through the book’s seven-hundred-plus pages.The plot can be disposed of in a single statement: that a young engineer called Hans Castorp takes a three-week visit to see his cousin in a Swiss sanatorium and ends up staying for seven years. This is not a novel of events, but a novel of ideas. (The main idea was apparently, I wonder if I can write seven hundred pages where literally nothing happens?)At first the set-up seems to anticipate the whole imprisoned-in-a-medical-facility trope that has subsequently become familiar – as Hans gets sucked into the routine, and gradually diagnosed with problems of his own that prevent his leaving, I was picking up on a vague One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest vibe, and I also found myself thinking of the Alpine clinic scenes from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or even the Timothy Cavendish bits of Cloud Atlas.But the danger here is more subtle. The staff are friendly and accommodating (despite a sense that ‘above and behind [the Director] stood invisible forces’); you can leave for a trip into town, or even discharge yourself, whenever you wish. To paraphrase The Eagles, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never discount the possibility of a tubercular relapse forcing you to return with a collapsed lung. The patients claim they want to get out, but their attitude, in reality, is much more ambiguous. There’s a brilliant moment where Hans rails against the surroundings a little too much, and the director of the sanatorium calls his bluff with a quick examination:When he was done, he said, ‘You may leave.’Hans Castorp stammered, ‘You mean…but how can that be? Am I cured?’‘Yes, you’re cured […]. As far as I’m concerned, you may leave.’‘But, Director Behrens. You’re not really serious, are you?’And suddenly we realise that Hans does not want to leave at all. He doesn’t want to go back to the responsibilities and expectations of his engineering job; here, in the sanatorium, he has freedom – freedom, and also a certain license in behaviour granted to the sick.This is what lies behind the book’s treatment of time, and why the narrator can refer to the story as a Zeitroman, a ‘time-novel’. The inhabitants are in some sense degraded by being there, but they also cherish their privileged status, exempt from the world’s calendar. One character speaks of the sanatorium as an ‘isle of Circe’; it is a ‘life without time’, where the ‘true tense of all existence is the “inelastic present”’ (ausdehnungslose Gegenwart). In such an environment, there is a tendency for ideas, ideologies, dogma, to clash together unmediated – and also, conversely, for petty jealousies, flirtations and sexual desires to be unnaturally heightened.Indeed this must be one of the most sexual novels ever written to involve so little actual sex. Everything is sublimated into various social conventions, so that Hans’s quasi-relationship with his mysterious fellow patient Clavdia Chauchat is initiated when he asks to borrow a pencil, and a climactic instance of sexual union is described, adorably, as a moment when ‘the use of informal pronouns achieved its full meaning’.Psychoanalytic critics have had a field-day with the pencil-lending, not least because it reminds Hans of his homoerotic feelings for a childhood friend. But what makes the book truly Freudian in a less trivial sense is its close examination of the links between sex and death, eros and thanatos. One of my favourite chapters is the section called ‘Research’, where Hans stays up all night reading books about anatomy and biochemistry and feeling intimations of mortality mixed with a vague horniness. Life is imagined as ‘a secret, sensate stirring in the chaste chill of space’ – ‘matter blushing in reflex’ – while evolution is ‘the quintessence of sensuality and desire’, stirred into action ‘by reeking flesh’. Gazing out over the nighttime Alpine landscape, Hans sees only a cosmic, naked (female) human body:The night of its pubic region built a mystic triangle with the steaming pungent darkness of the armpits, just as the red epithelial mouth did with the eyes, or the red buds of the breast with the vertically elongated navel.(This whole virtuoso section reminded me of university, spending all night poring over textbooks while trying to manage teenage hormones.)So much for the metaphysical games, the grand narrative theories. I’d expected something of the sort just from the novel’s reputation. What I had not expected – and it came as a very pleasant surprise – was to find that The Magic Mountain is a comic novel. In fact the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it’s this tone that lifts it, for me, into the first rank. Apart from anything else, it’s so important for the reader that they have some counterpoint to the grandiose theories so many of the characters want to expound upon, and Mann provides exactly that through the endearing character of Hans himself, our ‘thoroughly unpretentious’, ‘unheroic hero’. High-minded comments – and there are many – are rarely allowed to stand without an invitation for us to smile at them:‘Did you know that the great Plotinus is recorded to have said that he was ashamed to have a body?’ Settembrini asked, and with such earnest expectation of an answer that Hans Castorp found himself forced to admit that this was the first he had heard of it.Later, after a similarly earnest apophthegm from another character, we are allowed to eavesdrop on Hans's thought process: ‘Well, there’s a Delphic remark for you,’ he says to himself. ‘And if you purse your lips tight after delivering it, that will certainly intimidate everyone for a bit.’ In fact even when Hans is the one delivering the sententiousness, he can’t take himself very seriously:‘There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst. Hello! Why, I think I’ve just coined a phrase, a bon mot. How do you like it?’(‘Very much,’ comes the deadpan reply. ‘I cannot wait for your first collection of aphorisms.’) Without these ironic shifts in register, the book would still be fascinating but it would be monotone: with them, the effect is almost orchestral.Such things are brought out especially well by John E Woods in his 1996 translation, an improvement on the old 1927 Lowe-Porter version in every way. Lowe-Porter, it has been said, succeeded in translating the novel into German, and having tried the first few pages of her translation I admit I found it almost unreadable. I had to order the Woods from the US, but it was worth it, despite the godawful cover and font design used by Vintage, and passing over also the Americanisms scattered through the text (catercorner being perhaps the most jarring; Woods also silently amends the patients’ temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit!).Towards the end of the book, we finally suspect that Mann is pushing us beyond the ‘hyperarticulate’ arguments and towards real-world applications of these theories – to ‘leave logomachy behind’, as the narrator says at one point. The final couple of pages of this book move for the first time beyond Davos, to show us the Western Front – and we realise with a terrific jolt that it is 1914 and time has not stopped moving after all. Suddenly we appreciate the full importance of the novel’s investigation into how love and life can be made to emerge from death.But now I am in danger of just rephrasing the book’s final lines in less felicitous language. Suffice to say that the whole mountainous project comes together in the climax, and it all ends, characteristically, in a question mark. Readers today may be better-placed than they wish to supply the answers.

[luli81_1 · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

I finished this over-long book and I can only say I am not prepared to read it again, even if Thomas Mann himself asked me in person.A complex book, philosophy, history and politics all mixed up with symbolism and irony. The author plays with the perception of time and the reader loses touch with reality. A weak main character, too much vanity and little sense. For my taste.I won't deny the singularity of the work, but I can't say I enjoyed it. I must have a too much plain mind to follow this kind of argument, I'll leave it for others to enjoy, I'll turn to something quite different.

[traumleben_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

It took me half the summer to plow through this book, but I'm glad I stuck with it. I wouldn't call it a "page turner", but the varied themes and uncertain lives of the characters make it a difficult book to abandon. Mann's characters are residents of a sanitarium in Switzerland, some of whom are essentially permanent residents while others wash in and out during different parts of the book. The guests of the sanitarium are identified by nationality and characterized by their myriad illnesses. In a way, they're loosely representative of "sick old Europe" before the first World War, each person with their own personality, philosophies and alliances. Amid the romances, friendships and acquaintances, the main character, Hans Castorp, explores the meaning of time and perception of its passage; he grapples with the concept of honor in his interactions with the other guests, but more acutely as he compares himself to his cousin who has committed himself to a military life. His seven year stay provides time for a tremendous amount of introspection. Other philosophical issues surface throughout, namely through the discussions of two intellectuals (a German mystic and an Italian anarchist). Magic Mountain is a dense tapestry and really merits reading more than once, but it's going to sit on the shelf for awhile before I heed my own recommendation.

[bookomaniac-1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Definitely one of the great novels of the twentieth Century. Essentially this is a book about the learningprocess of a young man (Hans Castorp) that gets drawn in and eventually consciously chooses reclusion from the world (in a sanatorium in Davos); a kind of Bildungsroman for sure, but at the same time an evocation of a whole period of time (the world before World War I). On the philosophical level this novel shows time is relative and absolute. After lengthy deliberations Hans Castorp finds life is compelling him to take responsibility: he can not and may not stand apart.

[pickwick817 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I did not get much from this book. Some books I think I need Cliffnotes for, or would get more out of if I read it as part of a class. This is one of those books. Its about a guy who basically gets lost along the road of life. He ends up at a dead end for quite a while, and does not seem to mind it. He encounters some interesting characters while stagnating in his life. That's about all I got from it.

[jveezer · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

My first reading of Thomas Mann. I think I was led to him through some link to/with James Joyce that I saw somewhere. This book is about time. Thomas Mann referred to The Magic Mountain, both within its pages and outside of them, as his 'time-novel'. Michael Wood, in his excellent Introduction, says it is "dedicated to a deep and ironic exploration of what it means not to lose time but to get lost in time".It seems easy enough to understand a youth who doesn't seem to know what he wants to do with himself. As a father of teenagers, and having been a teen myself once, I can relate. Hans gets lost in the nothingness of a Swiss Alps sanitorium and time becomes irrelevant to his point of reference. However, it is moving around him, and WWI is approaching and threatening to suck him into it's voracious maw. Great writing that deserves a second read someday.

[jwhenderson_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

When thinking of The Magic Mountain and Hans Castorp, the young protagonist of the novel, I cannot help but consider the loss of innocence resulting from Hans' gradually increasing knowledge. As he learns from discussions with Settembrini and Naphta he gradually grows into a young man of some little wisdom. His questions and speculations mirror our own and his world, upon leaving the sanatorium, becomes a mirror for ours. Who is our Mephistopheles?

[autodafe_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

One of the most intellectually stimulating novels about the Fin Du Siecle period I have ever read. The exchanges between Herrs Naphta and Settembrini are brilliant.

[niecierpek · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

The setting for this novel is Switzerland seven years before the First World War. Hans Castrop, a young 23-year-old German engineer right before his first job, goes to visit his cousin Joachim in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, where the former is getting the cure for TB. Hans ends up staying there for seven years. While there, he undergoes an education in ideas, love, compassion and truths of life. His main teachers are Settembrini, an Italian humanist intellectual, and Naphta, a curious conservative communist theologian. In terms of genre, The Magic Mountain is a novel of ideas and rather removed from what we would expect from a novel nowadays. As A.S Byatt points out:‘Novel-readers expect certain emotional satisfactions -- love and liking, drama and tension, insights into the motivations and drives of characters. At first, and at second glance these things are deficient in this story . . . Nevertheless, I think, we persist in trying to read this story as a novel, and not simply as an allegory. This is partly at least because Mann always raises his structure of meaning on a foundation of the real, the solid, the banal, the observable.’ It is undoubtedly an impressive intellectual work with a lot of scholarly discussion and many poignant insights, but it struck me as ultimately a work of longing and unfulfillment. Everybody there is longing for something they cannot get, whether at the intellectual or emotional level. No love is reciprocated, no teacher convinces a follower, no mystery of life’s conduct or social contract is resolved. The only resolutions come through death. To put it in Mann's words, 'Death is the beginning and the end. Death is part of Life. Death is not the opposite of Life, Love is'.In the end the novel is quite wonderfully humane and contemporary. Even though Mann remains both aloof and mildly sarcastic towards all his characters and himself throughout the narration, there is a lot of humane intensity there. It was interesting to learn that Naphta’s views were fashioned on Thomas’ early political and philosophical views influenced mainly by Nietzsche, and the humanistic views of Settembrini on his brother’s, Heinrich. It turns out that Thomas, a German nationalist early on (despite the fact that both his mother and wife were Jewish), was against democracy and progress. His views changed diametrically after WWI and became close to those of progressive communism later on in his life. The Nazis evicted the family from their home and burnt Mann’s books.

[poulantik · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

a famous and difficult to read novel - but is worth the trouble.

[garyseverance-1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

"The Magic Mountain" is a lengthy extension of a comical short story of a passive, unremarkable upper middle class gentleman. World War I caused Mann to use the character as an observer of the decay of traditional German values and the political and social chaos that culminated in a "break" that changed Germany forever. Like Goethe's Faust, Hans Castorp takes a tour of life remaining passive as he explores the nature of time, the influence of art, the responsibility of social intervention, the obsession of passion, the intrusion of other cultures, and the direct confrontation of death. This novel has a profound effect on readers as they are linked to and limited by Castorp's perceptions. We are passively exposed to ideas and events as Hans travels to the sanitorium for a brief stay. Weeks become months as Hans receives a vague diagnosis, and we share his fate. Time slows to a virtual standstill during some days and accelerates to another season a few pages later. Years go by as we are exposed to the cultural views of the era. Ultimately, Hans must accept responsibility for his own life and death as we do page by page. This is a remarkably life-changing novel, particularly for readers intimidated by their own death.

[thomasburnett · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I just finished Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, tr. John Woods), and without a doubt it is among the five best works of literature that I have ever read. Covering more than 700 densely-packed pages, it is not for the light of heart, but provides ample reward for the tenacious reader. Published in 1924 and winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929, The Magic Mountain should reside on your shelf next to The Brothers Karamazov, The Persian Letters, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and East of Eden.Part of why I found this novel so delightful was that I could closely relate to the ordeal of the protagonist, Hans Castorp, who as a young man finds himself unexpectedly confined to a hospital. In his case, he makes a trip to a sanatorium high in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin. The patients are all receiving treatment for tuberculosis, and since most have been there for quite a long time, he finds himself in a very different culture than the "flatlands" from which he came. Just before leaving, Castorp asks for a physical exam to determine the cause of a fever which was plaguing him during his stay. But to his disappointment, the doctor finds that he has a mild case of tuberculosis himself! Our poor hero will be staying on for much longer than three weeks he had planned, and not as a guest, but as a patient.One of the most interesting themes in the novel is the treatment of time. Far up in the mountains, completely removed from the normal iterations of daily life, time takes on a different dimension. Each day is strictly regimented to best facilitate the recovery of patients. The residents move from bedroom, to dining hall, to outdoor "rest cure," and back, in an utterly predictable manner. Far from what one might expect, this apparent tedium does not cause time to slow down, but rather speed up, since each day is nearly indiscernible from all others. Thus, Hans Castcorp learns, his original three week stay is hardly worth mentioning: up here, a month is the smallest measurable unit of time.Besides our hero, there are two other outstanding characters: Settembrini, a boisterous Italian literary humanist, and Naphta, a sharp-tonged communist Jesuit. Castorp takes on the role of student when listening to the rhetorical fireworks of these bombastic speakers. These three men, along with a cast of other patients with tuberculosis, fill hundreds of pages of fascinating narrative and dialog. Put it on your Christmas list now

[margaritamorris-1 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I first read this book as a Modern Languages undergraduate at Oxford back in the late 1980s and, amazingly, I actually managed to plough through it in German. I remember a tutorial on it where my German tutor, who was something of a maverick, described it as, "A ***** boring book!" I've since read it a couple of times in English and it beats me how I managed to make head or tail of it in German because it's hard enough reading it in translation. Anyway, I have to disagree with my late tutor (rest his soul) that this book is boring, but it is quite heavy going in places.
The basic idea is quite simple - Hans Castorp, who is a regular German guy, arrives at this sanatorium to visit his cousin Joachim who is suffering from consumption. Hans thinks he's just going to pay his cousin a short visit but he soon discovers that maybe he's not as fit as he thought he was and ends up as a patient there himself. The sanatorium is full of unusual characters who Hans gradually meets and there is a strong comic element to the narrative. Hans falls in love with a Russian woman and the only language they share is French. They have a long conversation at one point which is entirely in French and which is not translated. There are also lots of earnest philosophical debates between the humanist Settembrini and the Marxist Naphta. As for what the book is actually about, that's a tough question. Possibly the book is a metaphor for the state of Europe in the early 20th Century. The book is certainly a melting pot exploring life, love, death, music, illness, politics and philosophy. It's a book of ideas with moments of humour and pathos.

[bodachliath · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This is a book with very little plot - the young Hans Castorp is sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland where he talks at length with various intellectuals about philosophy. However, that simple description can't do justice to this magnificently eloquent novel of ideas.

[jmoncton_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Hans Castorp plans a 3 week holiday visiting his cousin Joaquim who is a TB patient at a sanatorium in Switzerland. But instead of being just a visitor, Castorp ends up becoming a patient and lives at the sanatorium for many years. In this community, everyone shares one trait, they are all ill with tuberculosis and are there to participate in the rest cure which involves eating huge meals and breathing the fresh mountain air. This epic novel (almost 800 pages!) explores many different facets of life in Europe during the early 19th century, including social customs and behaviors and the impending war. But with a cast of people who range from being terminally ill, to having some mild medical issues, there is a wonderful philosophical analysis of life and the role people play in the world.

[miguelnunonave · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

A masterpiece, a huge and complex book - yet one of the most thought-provoking I have ever read. The spiritual and intellectual growth of the protagonist, in an out-of-this-world space (the sanatorium lost in the mountains), surrounded by surreal characters, is absolutely fascinating. The philosophical debates are profound and, yet, so pleasing. The narrative is slow - and yet so engaging. The sanatorium as a melting-pot of social types, as a metaphor for an absurd society on the eve of disaster (first world war), as a nightmare we wish we'll never have, as a place where time has stopped, where death renders all human worries, distinctions and conflicts so pointless. I have also watched an obscure German movie version, but - as expected - this is the kind of book that simply doesn't work on film. Probably one of the most relevant books of the 20th century.

[thorold_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Hans visits his cousin in a TB sanatorium. 1000 pages later he's still there when the Great War breaks out.That's arguably all you really need to know about this book, if you haven't read it, and it was pretty much all I remembered from the first time I read it (quite some time ago). Mann himself encourages readers to read it twice. More than twice would probably be better, but there are limits to how many times you can plough through a work this long. I certainly hope it won't be my last time...So what is it really about? As usual with Mann, you can take your pick. It's a book with a lot of discussions of serious political and philosophical topics, with characters who explicitly argue for and are obviously meant to represent abstract principles and schools of thought, but it's also a book full of apparently trivial superficial detail about the everyday life of the sanatrium. The international clientele of the sanatorium is obviously sometimes parodying the clumsy process by which Edwardian/Wilhelmite Europe lurched towards war, but at other times the symbolism is more existential than political, as the patients step back from the real world to flirt with the seductive attractions of illness and death. Basically, it's a book where you can find just about anything discussed to just about any depth, with no apparent rule to fix how much analysis should go on - say - the best way of wrapping yourself in blankets, as opposed to the utility of revolutions, the physics of the gramophone, the history of Freemasonry, or tonight's menu. Endlessly fascinating, occasionally infuriating (no-one but Mann could take over a hundred words to tell us that a record was the last act of Verdi's Aida), always magnificent.(This was my 1000th review on LibraryThing!)

[zottel-1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Ein sehr faszinierendes Buch, das man wirklich gelesen haben sollte.Zu Beginn, über die ersten hundert oder zweihundert Seiten hinweg, ist das Buch inhaltlich ziemlich langweilig. Interessanterweise gelingt es Thomas Mann trotzdem, die Geschichte so zu erzählen, dass man weiterlesen möchte; es wird nie tatsächlich langatmig, obwohl kaum etwas passiert.Als dann aber die Diskussionen zwischen Settembrini und Naphta beginnen, wird es wirklich furios. Zwar legt Mann beiden eine nicht hundertprozentig schlüssige Version ihrer jeweiligen Standpunkte in den Mund, das tut aber der Faszination ihrer Schlagabtäusche keinen Abbruch.Hier zeigt Thomas Mann eine geistige Beweglichkeit, die ich (der ich zuvor keinen Mann gelesen hatte und über ihn nur wusste, was ich in der Schule gelernt hatte) ihm niemals zugetraut hätte. Es gelingt ihm, verschiedenste Standpunkte schlüssig darzustellen und keine der Seiten übermäßig zu bevorzugen. Auch die Radikalität der Ansichten hätte ich bei Mann, der uns immer als konservativ und bürgerlich dargestellt worden war, niemals erwartet.Insofern eine echte Überraschung, die Lust macht, mehr von ihm zu lesen. Auch die ungeheure Detailverliebtheit, die geradezu irrsinnige Rechercheleistung, die Mann hier vollbracht hat, hat mich sehr beeindruckt. Hut ab!Satzfehler dann und wann im eBook (vor allem harte Trennungen, die dann mitten in der Zeile auftraten) waren selten genug, um wenig zu stören.Insgesamt eine große Entdeckung für mich. Es wird beim Lesen definitiv klar, weshalb das Buch als eines der größten der deutschen Literatur gilt. Unbedingte Empfehlung!

[lisacurcio · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Our hero is a rather simple-minded, unassuming young man—a delicate child of life--who is ready to embark upon his career as an engineer in the family ship building business, but first goes for a three week visit to his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen who is staying at the sanatorium, Hotel Berghoff, in the Swiss Alps seeking a cure of his tuberculosis. In fact, Hans Castorp hopes that his cousin will return to the flatland with him, when he leaves. Things do not, however, turn out quite that way!Joachim plans a military career, and he approaches the prescribed regimen as a military man—he follows it strictly. He has been told he needs another few months to be cured—he will stay those months and he will not be convinced otherwise by his cousin.Three weeks pass—slowly or quickly? It depends on one’s perspective of the moment. Hans Castorp catches cold—an illness not allowed or recognized on the mountain. He falls in love with one of the patients during his three weeks. At the end of the three weeks he has not recovered physically or romantically. When he is diagnosed with a “moist spot” on his lung for which a stay is recommended, he quickly acquiesces.The doctors: are they medical men or charlatans or both? The patients: are they truly ill or have they settled into life in a dream world from which they do not wish to awaken? Some die on the mountain and not even their bodies are returned to their homes. Some remain there, seemingly forever. Some come and go and return.Seven years pass, but Hans Castorp does not know how long it has been. He follows endless philosophical debate between Herr Settembrini, the humanist and Herr Naphta, the communist. Does he learn? Does the reader learn? He is overwhelmed by Mynheer Peeperkorn, the personality. Joachim leaves and returns. Hans Castorp’s love—Clavdia Chauchat—leaves and returns. Death overcomes some of these important actors—is Hans Castorp affected? Does he change? Is he still a “delicate child of life”?Hans Castorp finally leaves the mountain—but only because the Great War has begun. He returns to the flatland not as an engineer, but as a German foot soldier. We do not know whether he will survive to return to “normal” life. Themes of time, music, death, naiveté, knowledge, power and, perhaps, growth are interwoven through this tale. It is not a modern novel. As a reader I at first did not like our hero, Hans Castorp. I questioned whether I should continue to read this very long book. I kept reading based upon encouragement from one who loves this work, and I was rewarded. I never liked Hans Castorp, but his story enthralled and challenged me. Thomas Mann wrote: “Now what is there that I can say about the book itself, and the best way to read it? I shall begin with a very arrogant request that it be read not once but twice. A request not to be heeded, of course, if one has been bored at the first reading. A work of art must not be a task or an effort; it must not be undertaken against one’s will. It is mean to give pleasure, to entertain and enliven. If it does not have this effect on a reader, he must put it down and turn to something else. But if you have read “The Magic Mountain” once, I recommend that you read it twice.”Is this book on your “ought to read” list? I recommend you try it. Then, if you finish it, I think you will be ready, as am I, to read it twice.

[stormrose · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

13/20 Well, this is a short book! I'm joking, of course, because it's about 850 some pages long...and worth every one of them. When I started reading it, I was in a very "this is a serious book and ought to be approached as such" mindset; but fortunately, the novel beat that out of me, which was good - or else I would not have appreciated it half as much. Yes, it is a serious novel, but it's also a fun novel, an interesting novel, a hilarous novel (what else to a say in a story where characters lie about how high their fever is to get respect?). The plot can be described in two sentences: Young man goes to a sanitorium. Young man gets stuck in sanitorium: brilliance ensues. The cast of characters is fantastic, from the lewd, but strangely sexy and sophisticated Frau Chauchat, to the perfect military cousin Joaquim (who comes back in a seance later), and the director, who probably has tuberculosis himself). Readings this book, you start to wonder if anyone DOESN'T have tuberculosis - it seems that once you get onto the mountain, the atmosphere sucks you in, and you develop the disease just to avoid leaving! And the atmosphere is incredibly thick and powerful, we readers are sucked into it as much as the hero Hans is.I've never read a novel as obsessed - and as intelligent in its obsession - with time as this one, which not only philosophizes on time, but also applies that philosophy in the structure of the novel itself - more than half of the novel takes place during the first year, and the next six get progressively less time. What else to say about this book? A book where the attraction is expressed in terms of anatomy: " derived from and perfected by substances awakened to lust via means unknown, by decomposing and composing organic matter itself, by reeking flesh." The beauty of sickness: " There was something perfectly delighful and enjoyable about a tickle in the depths of your chest, that got worse and worse until you reached down deep for it, squeezing and pressing to let it have its way." Perhaps what this book is about is living life in the constant presence of death, and the way it's written, this seems almost like a good thing.