How Thomas Mann Wrote the Magic Mountain

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/31/the-master-of-contradictions-by-morten-hi-jensen-review-how-thomas-mann-wrote-the-magic-mountain

81•Caiero•1d ago

Comments

lukan•21h ago

In case you know german and like audiobooks, I highly recommend the following version of Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg)

https://hoerspiele.dra.de/detailansicht/1426911

(No download link there, but it was a public broadcast production, so should be easy to find for free)

It is a great book, certainly made an impression on me.

eternauta3k•19h ago

I spent a while looking for a download and could only find a forum post linking directly to the BR CDN, but only the first chapter worked :(

hiichbindermax•19h ago

Have you checked the Internet Archive?

https://archive.org/details/der_zauberberg_hsp/

lukan•19h ago

Thanks, I should have just linked that directly.

cl3misch•20h ago

> an upstanding burgher obsessed with death and corruption

I assume "burgher" is a misspelling of German "Bürger"? There are "Burgher people" but Thomas Mann doesn't seem to be one of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgher_people

cyberlimerence•20h ago

It's correct in English. [1] The family of Thomas Mann were representatives of German bourgeoisie. From [2] (machine translated): "Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann, as well as members of the following generation, became writers; in their numerous, often autobiographically influenced literary works, they explored themes such as the history of the German bourgeoisie and educated middle class, as well as its decadence. Through this, the family itself came to be seen by the public as a symbol and late representative of that very social stratum."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgher_(social_class) [1]

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_(Familie) [2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsb%C3%BCrgertum

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCrgertum

auggierose•20h ago

In German it is called "Bürger", yes. Burgher is some weird English spelling of the original french one, and I don't think it applies in any reasonable way to Thomas Mann. In German it really just means "Citizen".

rubberpoliceman•19h ago

> In German it really just means "Citizen".

It most definitely does not — it’s both “citoyen” and “bourgeois”.

auggierose•19h ago

Thomas Mann was German, so he most definitely was not a "burgher", he was just a "Bürger". And the German "Bürger" is just "citizen" in English.

rubberpoliceman•18h ago

This isn’t hard to understand. “Burgher” is a perfectly legitimate translation of “Bürger” as in “bürgerlicher Mittagstisch”, “Der Bürger duldet nichts Unverständliches im Haus”. “Citizen” is a perfectly legitimate translation of “Bürger” when it comes to “Bürgeramt” or “Weltbürger”.

auggierose•17h ago

Well, Bürger means citizen, and bürgerlich means middle-class. Indeed, not hard to understand.

eru•17h ago

Please tell me you are trolling?

https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/B%C3%BCrger says:

Bedeutungen:

    [1a] Einwohner einer Gemeinde
    [1b] Angehöriger eines Staates
    [2] Angehöriger der Mittelschicht, des Bürgertums

rubberpoliceman•17h ago

Excellent. Now do “bürgerliches Gesetzbuch”.

eru•17h ago

The trolling of auggierose aside, whatever the bürgerliches Gesetzbuch might literally translate to, it is a triumph of the burghers, the bourgeoisie.

auggierose•16h ago

Law that applies only to the middle-class. Duh.

lukan•12h ago

But you do know it applies to everyone in germany?

Towaway69•10h ago

Cynicism is punishment looking for a crime.

ffuxlpff•17h ago

It meant an upper middle class urban citizen, while "Kleinbürger" was their lower middle class counterpart. Buddenbrooks was all about Bürgers, their history and lifestyle. Mann was a member of that class or even of its upper crust, the patricians.

eru•17h ago

Did you know that some words have multiple meanings?

See eg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gro%C3%9Fb%C3%BCrger or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Burgher or https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleinb%C3%BCrger

Archelaos•19h ago

From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

  burgher noun
  ...
  1: an inhabitant of a borough or a town
  2: a member of the middle class : a prosperous solid citizen

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/burgher

nephihaha•10h ago

"Burgher" certainly meant that in traditional Scots usage.

robin_reala•19h ago

If you haven’t read it, Standsrd Ebooks have a US public domain translation available: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-mann/the-magic-moun...

mrtx01•19h ago

It is one of the funniest book I ever read.

Thomas Mann has the most subtle humour.

aerhardt•18h ago

I chuckled in many scenes and more generally with the Hotel California vibes, but the book is also transcendental, mystical and dead serious at times. The mix of it all is what makes it arguably a masterpiece.

ffuxlpff•17h ago

True. It's bad that these books are usually read by only young people. I remember reading Steppenwolf for the first time since teens and only then I realized how funny it was all around. Dostoevsky's The Devils is hilarious too, being very dark at the same time.

The same goes for basically all higher culture. Popular culture is usually unfunny because humor is considered a commercial risk.

eru•17h ago

> Popular culture is usually unfunny because humor is considered a commercial risk.

Depends very much on your definitions. There's lots of low budget popular culture.

ndr42•12h ago

It's a question of mindset. I read it as I was in university (studying german literature) and thought that I should read some of the canonical works. Well, it was (at that time) no pleasure and boring. After finishing I read on the back cover that it was supposed to be humorous.

Today I'm able to enjoy it, but because of my mindset ("read something important!") it was not possible.

Now (as a teacher for german) I feel even some of the real serious stuff (dramatic works like Emilia Galotti, Nathan der Weise) have some funny elements, you can see it even as a soap opera (e.g. Nathan der Weise: In the end everybody is related).

edit: grammar

nephihaha•10h ago

I did find "Felix Krull" funny but not really feeling it in his other works.

throwaway81523•18h ago

I found this book (idk which English translation) unreadable when I looked at it in college. Maybe I should try again.

jstummbillig•17h ago

Same. I would not say unreadable (read it in German). I just found it remarkably boring given the glowing reviews.

lukan•12h ago

Boring is a part of the theme. The various ways the bored patients on top of their mountain castle (or prison) spend their time. And how in this boredom the protagonist finds the time to go deeper, not longing for shallow distractions, but meaning (and love).

mns•17h ago

I started reading it because I saw it recommended here 2-3 years ago on one of the end of year book threads. I’m still somewhere at around 40% according to my Kindle. I like the style and the way Mann paints the world so to say, like the world it creates in your imagination, but I find it so dragged and boring, I just can’t get myself to read it for long.

nephihaha•10h ago

The translation I had contained long sections in French.

jantissler•5h ago

Because the original does as well. But there’s a more recent translation that also translates the parts in French and uses italics to mark them.

WillAdams•15h ago

Interesting to see a new book on this, but disappointing that it seems to re-tread much of what was already known of the author --- maybe this is going to be a trend/standard for future writing about authors and their works for this window of time where folks still wrote letters? It is now possible to exhaustively analyze such correspondence far more easily than the laborious manual pouring over of photocopies and archives (for Mann, apparently, in addition to Yale, Baylor, Princeton, and the University of Bonn and the Library of Congress hold extensive collections).

Makes one wonder what will happen with recent and contemporary authors --- will their e-mail correspondence survive to be preserved? I know I've lost access to two major sets of my e-mails from previous employers and will lose access to the current one at my retirement (unless I go back as an annuitant? Copy the Outlook .pst archive?) --- at one point in time, Barry Hughart's (typewritten!) notes for his books were available on-line, but they have since vanished....

Interesting, and I'll have to add it to my to-be-read stack --- wondering if Hesse will get the same treatment (or already has and I missed it?) --- his _The Glass Bead Game_ was quite influential on me and probably is why I'm fascinated by software tools such as OpenSCAD Graph Editor.

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How Thomas Mann Wrote the Magic Mountain

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