Differences between World Time and Individual Perceptions of Time in Thomas Mann’s novel ‘The Magic Mountain’

Abstract

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) published his third novel, ‘Der Zauberberg’ (‘The Magic Mountain’), in 1924. This masterpiece spans more than 1,000 pages and took Mann over a decade (1913–1924) to complete, with a significant interruption due to World War I (1914–1918). The novel follows young Hans Castorp in a Swiss sanatorium for tuberculosis patients called ‘Der Berghof’. During his stay in this isolated environment before 1914, Castorp encounters otherworldly figures who challenge him with discussions on politics, philosophy, love, illness and death. Enchanted by a woman he meets there, who reflects an early and formative affection for a male classmate (likely reflecting Thomas Mann´s own unlived homosexuality), he extends his visit from a planned short stay to a total of seven years. Castorp engages with various characters and participates in profound political and philosophical debates with Lodovico Settembrini, a humanist and Freemason who significantly influences him. In contrast, the ascetic Jesuit Naphta, a Galician Jew with a troubled past who converted to Catholicism, serves as Settembrini's counterpoint. Naphta is a brilliant and rhetorically gifted logician. Time plays a crucial role in this novel, with individual time appearing completely disconnected from world time within the sanatorium's closed community. This analysis examines the concept of time, particularly as it pertains to ill patients. I will reference the concept of ‘Lebenszeit und Weltzeit’ (‘Life Time and World Time’) as articulated by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996) and explore how this concept relates to the narrative. The patients in the sanatorium have entirely excluded world time and instead live according to their own temporal frameworks, which contributes to both psychological and somatic pathologies.