Word: manne
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Thomas Mann has been hailed far and wide as the creator of a new literary genre, as the consummate portrait painter of the modern world. Yet he seems to have done no more than to refine and elaborate this theory of a world of material objects. In the selection of a background for the great narrative painting which is "Magic Mountain", Herr Mann has displayed considerable cleverness. He has chosen an Alpine tuberculosis santorium, where life can be studied in simplicity without the usual consequent sacrifice of sophistication...
...Mann's interest is not in personalities or in noble characters. It is in the hidden forces of life which work despite men. From the moment of Pastoy's arrival, we are aware of an unusual atmosphere, of a certain tension and grimness. One of the first things which is pointed out to him is the road down which are brought, on sleighs, the bodies of the dead...
...takes Mann many pages to describe the three weeks stay. During that time an immense change comes over Hans Pastoy, a change that is gradual, from within, organic. He falls into the life of the sanatorium. He notices that in this place of absolute relaxation the hours are empty and become as nothing, and that the patients begin to think in terms of days, then weeks, finally, months, and years. Also there is a gradual corporalization of the individual: he begins to think of nothing but his bodily state, his temperature, his meals, his senses. Up here love...
...Author displays an intellect profound, searching, inclusive, an artistry profound and subtle in all his works. These in translation have been Royal Highness, ironic comment on the life of kings; Death in Venice, three short stories; Buddenbrooks, monumental saga of the 19th Century. Son of a merchant, Herr Mann had to write secretly at first, functioning ostensibly as a life insurance salesman...
...sense all the persons of the story are symbols of certain ideas in the muddle that preceded the War. Peeperkorn personifies the strength, the glitter of royalty. What gives the metaphor power is the juxtaposition of death. Author Mann shows how men can adapt themselves to an environment of mortality by forgetting its existence. So countries squabble and chatter in the presence of catastrophe; so men, in the shadow of an enormous horror, pursue their silly and incongruous intrigues...