The master of contradictions : Thomas Mann and the making of The Magic Mountain / Morten Høi Jensen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jensen, Morten Høi, 1987- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mann, Thomas, 1875-1955. Zauberberg.

Mann, Thomas.

Physical Description:

238 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"The arresting story of how Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain as a defeated Germany descended into political chaos. Like many writers of his generation, Thomas Mann (1875-1955) welcomed the outbreak of the First World War. He viewed it as a spiritual necessity, a chance to reassert German cultural dominance over Western ideas of democracy and enlightenment. Then, in 1924, he published The Magic Mountain, a massive novel that culminated in the slaughter of war and foreshadows the Nazi terror to come. One of the central achievements of modernism, The Magic Mountain hears testimony to its author's dramatic reorientation as a defender of democracy. This poignant book is a biography of Mann's great novel -- its evolution from a short story into a two-volume masterpiece and one of the best-selling novels of the Weimar era. Deftly weaving together elements of biography, history, and literary criticism, Morten Høi Jensen reveals how writing The Magic Mountain against a backdrop of world war, revolution, hyperinflation, and rising right-wing terror moved Mann to embrace the democratic and humanistic ideas he once scorned. One hundred years after The Magic Mountain was first published, at a time when democratic ideas are again under threat, Jensen reveals the universality and timeliness of Mann's great novel -- its still-resonant debates over democracy and tyranny, time and place, illness and death"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Arrival, 1912

Sympathy with death, 1914

The thunderbolt, 1914-1915

A good soldier, 1916-1918

Doubts and considerations, 1919-1921

Changes, 1922-1923

Fullness of harmony, 1923-1924.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-222) and index.

ISBN:

9780300233742

0300233744

OCLC:

1499658698