I honestly find it hilarious you don’t think The Magic Mountain is one of the most antifascist novels ever written, and one of the most effective and wholistic takedowns of fascism ever created in any form ever… your understanding of history must be so mutilated into discrete bloody boxes one preceding after another with no connection between one and another…
Six months later, Mann resumed work on the novel he had begun before the war: The Magic Mountain. His development and completion of the manuscript occurred in tandem with a dramatic political reorientation: deeply shaken by the assassination of Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau in 1922, Mann took a decisive stand in defense of the fragile, embattled Weimar Republic. In his essays and speeches of the second half of the 1920s, he continued to warn Germans of the threat posed by the National Socialist Party. Had he not left Germany when he did, it is very likely that he would have been arrested and interned in the Dachau concentration camp.
your understanding of history must be so mutilated
I beg you to open a history book and look up when the rise of fascism happened.
In 1924 the NSDAP was a bunch of violent thugs pretending to be socialists. Their rise to power happened a decade later. The only fascist was Mussolini and he had not yet fully implemented all that we nowadays call fascism.
You have not made one single argument that actually ties anything in the book to fascism.
You keep quoting articles about Mann’s later life but the only reference you made to the book itself was mentioning the eve of WWI which at least time-wise sets the action before the rise of fascism.
You have not identified one anti-fascist theme in the book nor quoted any literary analysis that does so.
If you desperately want to make this argument, then you have to ask yourself:
What is fascism? What are its defining characteristics? Where does the book address them?
And which themes are specific to fascism? Contemplating mortality as such is not.
Yes I read it.
It has not a single reference to fascism in the 1920s.
The Weimar Republic was embattled primarily by monarchists and socialists/ communists; the NSDAP had not yet risen to power and not established fascism in Germany.
The Dachau concentration camp was opened in 1933, a decade after the book was published.
Again, you have not talked about anything actually in the book that relates to fascism.
Are you claiming The Magic Mountain is a reaction to Mein Kampf, a book that had not been published by then?
Naptha is clearly a fascist in all but name
Now, this is actually an argument engaging with the material.
It’s been ages since I read the book, can you remind me what Naphtha says and does and how the book critically engages with that.
So, did Mann know what Adolf would write in his book or what the Nazis would do in the 30s and 40s?
Did he know what Mussolini would get up to in the next decades?
No? Then he couldn’t have reacted to that. So none of that can be relevant to what he had written in 1924.
Now, it’s not unheard of that authors can see the proverbial writing on the wall and anticipate future events to some degree. But to argue that you would also have to actually point to his writing and draw parallels. You can’t just point at later events as proof for what is in the book.
Now, it’s not unheard of that authors can see the proverbial writing on the wall and anticipate future events to some degree. But to argue that you would also have to actually point to his writing and draw parallels. You can’t just point at later events as proof for what is in the book.
Have you actually read any literary analysis of The Magic Mountain… or like… just read the damn book? Were you not paying attention to the conversations with Naptha and how Hans Castorp changes in his disposition towards them over the course of the novel as WW1 ripens on the limb…? Go read the book again, I will not waste my time handing you things just so you can throw them at the wall like a baby.
Your desire to bifurcate periods of time and development of ideologies into artificial divisions is childish.
I honestly find it hilarious you don’t think The Magic Mountain is one of the most antifascist novels ever written, and one of the most effective and wholistic takedowns of fascism ever created in any form ever… your understanding of history must be so mutilated into discrete bloody boxes one preceding after another with no connection between one and another…
https://yalereview.org/article/morten-jensen-thomas-mann
I beg you to open a history book and look up when the rise of fascism happened.
In 1924 the NSDAP was a bunch of violent thugs pretending to be socialists. Their rise to power happened a decade later. The only fascist was Mussolini and he had not yet fully implemented all that we nowadays call fascism.
You have not made one single argument that actually ties anything in the book to fascism.
You keep quoting articles about Mann’s later life but the only reference you made to the book itself was mentioning the eve of WWI which at least time-wise sets the action before the rise of fascism.
You have not identified one anti-fascist theme in the book nor quoted any literary analysis that does so.
If you desperately want to make this argument, then you have to ask yourself:
What is fascism? What are its defining characteristics? Where does the book address them?
And which themes are specific to fascism? Contemplating mortality as such is not.
So you did not bother to read the article I linked before responding?
Yes I have.
Yes I read it.
It has not a single reference to fascism in the 1920s.
The Weimar Republic was embattled primarily by monarchists and socialists/ communists; the NSDAP had not yet risen to power and not established fascism in Germany.
The Dachau concentration camp was opened in 1933, a decade after the book was published.
Again, you have not talked about anything actually in the book that relates to fascism.
So is Mein Kampf not fascist because it predates 1933 too?
Get out of here with this lazy shit, Naptha is clearly a fascist in all but name in The Magic Mountain.
Are you claiming The Magic Mountain is a reaction to Mein Kampf, a book that had not been published by then?
Now, this is actually an argument engaging with the material.
It’s been ages since I read the book, can you remind me what Naphtha says and does and how the book critically engages with that.
…no?
So, did Mann know what Adolf would write in his book or what the Nazis would do in the 30s and 40s?
Did he know what Mussolini would get up to in the next decades?
No? Then he couldn’t have reacted to that. So none of that can be relevant to what he had written in 1924.
Now, it’s not unheard of that authors can see the proverbial writing on the wall and anticipate future events to some degree. But to argue that you would also have to actually point to his writing and draw parallels. You can’t just point at later events as proof for what is in the book.
Have you actually read any literary analysis of The Magic Mountain… or like… just read the damn book? Were you not paying attention to the conversations with Naptha and how Hans Castorp changes in his disposition towards them over the course of the novel as WW1 ripens on the limb…? Go read the book again, I will not waste my time handing you things just so you can throw them at the wall like a baby.
Your desire to bifurcate periods of time and development of ideologies into artificial divisions is childish.