Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Magic Mountain, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Time
Coming of Age
Death and Illness
East vs. West
Abstract Ideals vs. Lived Experience
Summary
Analysis
Hans sits out on his balcony and looks at the columbine that has started to grow in the meadow now that summer has arrived. He frequently walks out to the same spot where he had his nosebleed and his vision of Pribislav Hippe one year ago—either to enjoy the columbine that grows there, or to marvel at the fact that he has been here a full year. These days, he doesn’t get nosebleeds, his Maria Mancinis have started to taste good again, and he no longer has visions of Pribislav Hippe, meaning that his “acclimatization [is] complete” and he’s now fully at home in the mountains.
Now that Hans’s “acclimatization [is] complete,” he has symbolically and practically committed himself to the directionless, unproductive lifestyle of the typical Berghof resident. He accepts that lifestyle as the default state—as the rational, right way to live—and can no longer justify or find value in the way that people in ordinary society live. Despite Settembrini’s (and to a lesser extent Joachim’s) efforts to keep Hans on track and tethered to reality, he seems to have become lost to the world, maybe forever.
Themes
Hans pulls out the X-ray image Clavdia gave him before she left the sanatorium—he carries it with him in his wallet—and holds it up to the sky. He feels his heart flutter as he looks at the image. Looking at it makes Hans consider big questions, lofty philosophical ideas that Joachim never bothers with, like “form and freedom, mind and body, honor and disgrace, time and eternity.” Hans refers to the thinking he does at this place on the hill as “playing king,” a term he got from games he played as a child.
The fact that Hans uses a childhood memory to describe his philosophical musings underscores their unseriousness. To be sure, there is value in unfettered, whimsical daydreaming, but that value is undercut by the fact that Hans isn’t translating his musings into practical action. Unless he returns to ordinary society, he cannot put all that he has learned into practice.
Themes
Hans feels obligated to visit Naphta—something Settembrini clearly disapproves of, having tried to delay Naphta’s introduction to Hans and Joachim. Hans grumbles to himself at Settembrini’s habit of talking down to him and gatekeeping knowledge—something all teachers do—and is grateful that he can’t actually prevent Hans from visiting Naphta.
Hans’s irritation at Settembrini, though understandable, reinforces his youth and inexperience: he can’t grasp that Settembrini is trying to help lead him back down the right path (that is, the path of rationality, productivity, and wellness).
Themes
Now, Hans and Joachim take the short walk from the Berghof to the tailor’s house where Settembrini and Naphta live. Lukačnek, the tailor, answers the door and sends a page to ask if Naphta will receive Hans and Joachim. The page returns, announcing that Naphta will see Hans and Joachim now, and leads the cousins to Naphta’s room. To the cousins’ surprise, Naphta’s room is luxuriously and elegantly decorated, with silk upholstery and tapestries covering nearly every surface. There’s a pieta sculpture displayed in a corner—it, too, is draped in silk, giving it an “almost grotesque” appearance. Hans compliments the sculpture, and Naphta explains that good works of art “are always beautiful to the point of ugliness and ugly to the point of beauty.” He says that only “inner beauty”—the sort one gets through religious experience—is real beauty.
Naphta’s living quarters reveal his hypocrisy: though he praises asceticism and religious devotion, he lives lavishly and decadently. This discord perhaps suggests that Naphta isn’t the best role model or mentor for Hans to model. Naphta’s praise for the statue’s ugliness reveals his disregard for human life on earth, which he finds inferior to the eternal salvation that pious humans experience after death. He believes that religious experience is the only “real beauty” that humans can experience. Meanwhile, earthly concerns like life, liberty, and happiness—concerns that Settembrini values most of all—hold no value for Naphta.
Themes
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Naphta explains that the sculpture is Gothic, from the late Middle Ages. He prattles on about the superiority of that era’s art, which didn’t “prettif[y]” its subjects, focusing solely on “suffering and the weakness of the flesh.” Hans gushes over everything Naphta says, declaring it all incredibly interesting. Just then, a page arrives with their afternoon snack (slices of layer cake) and, much to Hans and Joachim’s surprise, Settembrini enters behind him. Naphta’s casual greeting makes it clear that, despite their opposite opinions, he and Settembrini visit with each other regularly.
The layer cake to which Naphta treats himself and his guests is another sign of his decadence and his hypocrisy: though he praises ascetism and human suffering in general, he doesn’t seem too interested in suffering himself. Naphta is yet another character who advocates for abstract ideals and yet fails to adhere to them in his actual life.
Themes
Everyone eats their snack, and the conversation lingers on the pieta, which Settembrini clearly hates, though he tries not to say so overtly to be polite. Instead, he remarks on the sculpture’s errors in proportion. Naphta explains that this was an intentional choice on the part of the sculptor to convey “the emancipation of the Spirit from the bonds of nature.” Hans interjects to praise Gothic art’s rejection of nature, arguing that it’s just as “honorable” as Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire refusing to submit to nature. Settembrini laughs at Hans’s suggestion, then he reminds him that the only truly “honorable” protest against nature is one that does so to dignify humankind.
Settembrini dislikes the pieta because its ugly appearance, which represents the ugliness of earthly concerns and thus human life in general. This view is at odds with Settembrini’s humanist worldview, which holds that humankind reaches its full potential on earth, not in the spiritual realm.
Themes
Naphta continues to defend religion, claiming that even Church-sanctioned acts of brutality, like the burning of people at the stake, were intended for good. Burning people at the stake, he argues, was supposed to spare their souls from eternal damnation. The same can’t be said of the Jacobins’ exterminations. Furthermore, he claims that the major contributions of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment have only minimized humanity’s importance, with modern astronomy, for instance, turning the universe—which used to the heavenly realm of God—into meaningless planets.
Naphta’s defense of religious violence only holds up if one accepts religious doctrine as truth: if one doesn’t believe in the existence of hell or eternal damnation, then the act of burning people at the stake is nothing other than a brutal and senseless act of violence. Naptha criticizes acts of political violence as pointless because they are means to earthly ends rather spiritual ends (like salvation). Ultimately, though, his appeals to religion merely conceal the underlying nihilism of his worldview.
Themes
Settembrini argues that pure knowledge is superior to religious knowledge, but Naphta counters that faith is the basis of all understanding. Further, he claims that there’s no such thing as objective science, since bias is always present where voluntary will is involved. What’s more, truth is always centered around humankind: truth is whatever “profits” humans. Because of this, abstract knowledge that has no bearing on “man’s salvation” is uninteresting and useless. Naphta insists that it’s incorrect and even “childish” to claim that the Church kept people in the dark while Enlightenment thinking brought people into the light—the Church did what was right. If anything has led people into darkness, it’s the natural sciences. Settembrini thinks that this worldview sanctions all kinds of crimes and will do away with justice, truth, and democracy.
Naphta is correct that it’s difficult to empirically observe the world without some degree of personal bias, but he completely ignores the degree to which his own bias—his faith—skews his embrace of religious knowledge and his rejection of scientific (“pure”) knowledge. At its core, faith is about believing in something for which there is no proof. What’s more, Naphta’s appeal to logic to prove his point undercuts his attempts to argue for the superiority of religious feeling over rationality.
Themes
Naphta poses two possibilities. The first possibility is that Ptolemy and the scholastics are right that time and space are finite and only God transcends human experience. In this case, humanity’s conflict lies between what humans can sense and what “transcends” human sensory experience. And this, in turn, would mean that all human, social issues are basically meaningless. This is the view Naphta embraces. The other possibility is that Settembrini’s Renaissance astronomers are correct—the cosmos is infinite, meaning there is no duality—no world beyond that which humans can sense. In this case, all human conflict comes from a conflict between the individual and society. This would mean the state dictates what is moral, not god. Settembrini disagrees that the modern nation state imprisons people. To the contrary, he thinks modern democracy frees individuals from answering to more powerful forces.
Naphta’s view of human life is fundamentally different from Settembrini’s because of his religious beliefs. He will always place the spiritual and pure realm of God above the physical and sinful realm of mortals. Next to the pursuit of eternal salvation, then, all human pursuits—even noble pursuits of liberty and happiness—are meaningless and unimportant. Naphta's criticism of the nation state’s inherent bias is fair enough, but, once more, his claim that God alone possesses pure, unbiased knowledge only works if one accepts the existence of God. Though his arguments sound intellectually rigorous on the surface, their reliance on faith renders them irrational and illogical. What’s more, he appeals to religion to conceal his underlying nihilism.
Themes
Naphta and Settembrini also debate which economic systems imprison or dignify humanity, with Naphta arguing in favor of a Christian strain of communism, which condemns trade (making money off goods and services by merely exchanging them and placing arbitrary value on them rather than improving them) and lauds practical, physical labor. In fact, it's Settembrini’s enlightened capitalism that enslaves humanity and stifles individualism. Settembrini disagrees, claiming that Naphta’s “Christian communism” rejects technology and progress and therefore rejects freedom. It takes people back to the dark ages, back when all human relationships and even an individual’s personality were “bound to the soil.”
The narration uses Naphta and Settembrini’s intellectual debates to develop their characters, with each new argument further establishing one man as the other’s foil. This section elaborates on some of the central ideals that define either man. Settembrini’s Enlightenment ideals of progress, personal liberty, and rationality clash with Naphta’s spiritual beliefs.
Themes
Hans’s enthusiastic interest in Naphta’s viewpoint puts Settembrini on edge, and he abruptly announces that it’s time for himself and the cousins to leave. Settembrini shows Hans and Joachim to his own living quarters, which are sparsely furnished but cozy, before walking them back to the Berghof. As they walk, Settembrini cautions the cousins against getting too close to Naphta, who sounds rational on the surface but in reality is quite confused. Settembrini explains that he engages with Naphta because it allows him to argue and defend his own opinions, and he needs this “friction” in his life. But this only works because Settembrini is firm in his opinions—Hans and Joachim are younger, more naïve, and more in danger of Naphta negatively influencing their bodies and souls.
Settembrini’s abrupt decision to leave signals that he considers Naphta a threat: he sees that Hans’s youth and inexperience leave him vulnerable to outside influences and unable to discern bad information from good information. Hans’s characteristic ambivalence and short-lived intellectual pursuits suggest that Settembrini’s wariness is justified. Yet Hans has demonstrated time and again that he doesn’t respond well to Settembrini’s moralizing, so it’s unlikely that Settembrini’s caution will do much to dissuade Hans from continuing to engage with Naphta—in fact, it might even encourage Hans to seek out Naphta’s advice more eagerly than he would have otherwise.
Themes
Cautiously, Hans points out that for all Naphta’s talk of the evils of capitalism and property, his living quarters were really quite lavishly furnished. Settembrini smiles as he explains that this is “very characteristic” of Naphta’s people, who always take care of their own. Then Settembrini reveals a fact that shocks the cousins: Naphta is a Jesuit. He’s not a priest, but only because his illness set him back.
Hans might be naïve, but he’s not imperceptive: he correctly realized the dissonance between Naphta’s proclaimed ascetism and his lavishly furnished living quarters. The Jesuit order is a religious order within the Catholic Church. Jesuits vow to live in poverty and to remain chaste and obedient to God. Naphta’s status as a Jesuit associates him with traits that the novel has linked with Eastern sensibilities. When Settembrini wryly notes that Naphta’s hypocrisy is “very characteristic” of Jesuits, he could be referring to some common criticisms of Jesuits. For instance, Jesuits participated in the Atlantic Slave Trade but justified their actions with the claim that enslaved people were easy targets for evangelization.
Themes
Hans, Joachim, and Settembrini have reached the Berghof by this point. Before parting ways with the cousins, Settembrini repeats his grave warning to Hans and Joachim to be careful around Naphta. Settembrini states that Naphta’s brand of intellect is dangerous because all his thoughts “stand under the aegis of death,” which is by nature opposed to life, progress, and morality. With this, Settembrini departs. The narrator explains that this would be one of a few visits Hans and Joachim would make to Naphta, and each of these visits would give Hans lots to think about as he sat in his spot in the meadow and “played king.”
When Settembrini claims that all of Naphta’s thoughts “stand under the aegis of death,” he is referring to the way Naphta’s religious belief inhibits ability to rationalize. All of Naphta’s ideals are predicated on his belief that the earthly realm of humans is perpetually in conflict with the spiritual realm of God—and that the former is a perversion of the latter. Death, to Naphta, is the portal through which humans may shed their sinful physical forms and achieve their higher form in the afterlife. In this way, then, all Naphta’s logic is skewed in favor of death over life. This is what Settembrini finds most dangerous about Naphta’s logic: it is inherently self-destructive.
Themes
