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
Eventually the Berghof adds a gramophone to the collection of optical toys and other gadgets in the main social room, and this propels Hans out of his “mania for solitaire,” which by this point has lasted multiple years. The gramophone isn’t some old antique: it's modern, beautiful, and of the highest quality, according to Behrens. And it’s German-made, to boot. All the residents listen in awe as the gramophone plays an energetic Offenbach overture. It’s as though a real orchestra is performing for them.
The passing detail of Hans’s solitaire obsession lasting for years signals that considerable time has passed between this chapter and the previous chapter. This sudden shift forward reflects how time passes differently for Hans now that he has, it seems, fully succumbed to his inner malaise. Whereas it took hundreds of pages for the narration to convey Hans’s first three weeks at the Berghof, it now represents full years with a single sentence. The gramophone, though modern and flashy, functions as yet another source of distraction for patients who, like Hans, have succumbed to their inner malaise.
Themes
Hans waits in the background until everyone else retires for the evening, and then he approaches the gramophone and familiarizes himself with it, playing dozens of disks. He plays a lot of symphonies and overtures, but he also finds some disks of songs too. Hans is completely immersed in the music and stays up listening to it late into the night. The next day, people return to the social room to listen to the gramophone, and they let Hans choose which disks to play. Hans enjoys this responsibility, but he much prefers to listen to music late at night, after everyone has gone to bed for the evening. One night, he listens to some songs from the opera Aida, entranced by the tragic fate of Aida, Radames, and Amneris. He thinks it’s beautiful how Aida went to the doomed Radames “to share his fate in the crypt for all eternity.”
Hans’s late-night session with the gramophone could read as positive or negative. On the one hand, his renewed interest in technology could suggest that he hasn’t fully succumbed to his malaise—he was an engineer in his former life in the flatlands, after all, and perhaps there’s still a chance he can return to that life. On the other hand, his interest in music could also be yet another passing fancy he engages with to distract himself from reality and so perpetuate the state of malaise and inaction he’s existed in for years. What’s more, Hans’s romanticization of the tragedy of Aida signals that he still believes there is nobility and honor in suffering. In this reading, Hans’s interest in the gramophone only confirms that he is still in a state of self-denial, unable or unwilling to learn from his mistakes.
Themes
Hans also listens to the opera Carmen, in which the cruel and flirtatious “Gypsy” woman Carmen teases José, who loves her, without realizing the pain she causes him.
Hans very likely relates to José: Clavdia teased and hurt him just as the titular Carmen of Bizet’s opera teases and hurts José. Of course, while José’s unrequited love for Carmen leads him down a path of self-destruction until he eventually murders her, Hans still has a chance to regain his senses and start anew. Instead, he wallows in self-pity and continues to stagnate.
Themes
Another of Hans’s favorites is Schubert’s song “Lindenbaum.” In this recording, a tenor sings the song, accompanied by piano. The last verse repeats the line, “You could have found rest here,” and the words “could have” convey a sad “yearning.” Long ago, Settembrini critically deemed Hans’s “backsliding” (his getting used to life up at the Berghof) a sickness. But is Hans’s love of the “emotional world”—to which this song belongs—really so unhealthy? On the contrary, isn’t it actually quite healthy?
Schubert’s “Lindenbaum” is the song Hans sang when he first hiked up to the meadow where he would later spend so many days “playing king.” The song, which is set to text by the German poet Wilhelm Müller, is about a traveler who walks past a linden tree on a cold, winter night. The tree makes the traveler long for happier days, and he mournfully imagines that he “could have found rest” under the tree. Hans misunderstands the poem, interpreting it as validation of the “rest” he has found at the Berghof. In fact, the poem more accurately captures the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia, which can only be felt in retrospect. In reality, had the traveler stopped at the tree and sought refuge in his memories, he would perish of cold. The intensity of his emotion derives not from that happier time but from his longing for it. Hans, in remaining permanently at rest, denies himself the ability to experience this depth of emotion.
Themes
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