THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

I'm two-thirds of the way through The Magic Mountain.  It's an incredible book, kind of an existential adventure story.  We had our first snow on Tuesday, and that was the time when I read the chapter "Snow," a vivid account of the hero skiing and getting lost in a blizzard.

Thomas Mann isn't afraid of long sentences: "He ridiculed the philanthropist's reluctance to shed blood, his reverence for life, claimed that such a reverence for life belonged to only the most banal rubbers-and-umbrellas bourgeois periods, but that the moment history took a more passionate turn, the moment a single idea, something that transcended mere 'security,' was at work, something suprapersonal, something greater than the individual--and since that alone was a state worthy of mankind, it was, on a higher plane, the normal state of affairs--at that moment, then individual life would always be sacrificed without further ado to that higher idea, and not only that, but individuals would also unhesitatingly and gladly risk their own lives for it."

Here's a passage from the "Snow" chapter: "Had his mind been less muddled, he would have had to admit that in terms of getting back home this was perhaps the worst thing he could have done; and indeed he told himself as much after he had taken a few sips, which produced an immediate effect, much the same effect as that caused by Kulmbach beer his first evening up here, when with a lot of loose, disreputable talk about fish sauces and the like he had offended Settembrini--Herr Lodovico, the pedagogue, who could keep madmen from letting themselves go, return them to reason with just a glance, and whose melodious little horn Hans Castorp now heard in the air around him, the signal that his oratorical teacher was now approaching at a forced march to free his troublesome pupil, life's problem child, from his mad situation and lead him home.  Which was pure nonsense of course, it was the Kulmbach beer he had drunk by mistake that made him think that.  Because firstly, Herr Settembrini did not have a little horn, but only his barrel organ, which had a folding leg so he could set it up on the cobblestones and cast a humanistic eye up at the houses as it played its familiar songs; and secondly, he knew nothing about what was going on, since he no longer lived at Berghof Sanatorium, but at Lukacek's, in his little garret with a water carafe, just above Naphtha's silken cell--and had no such right to do so on Mardi Gras night, when Hans Castorp had found himself in a position equally as mad and difficult, when he had given son crayon, his pencil, Pribislav Hippe's pencil, back to the ailing Clavdia Chachat."