Why The Magic Mountain is still relevant a century later
https://www.ft.com/content/16bbd874-0931-42ac-83e4-8598fdc22603
Thomas Mann might have published his literary masterpiece 100 years ago — but it still speaks with modern clarity
https://www.ft.com/content/16bbd874-0931-42ac-83e4-8598fdc22603
Thomas Mann might have published his literary masterpiece 100 years ago — but it still speaks with modern clarity
Thomas Mann and the European disease of nihilism
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2024/11/thomas-mann-and-the-european-disease-of-nihilism
Tanjil Rashid notes:
When I visited Davos, I had gone in search of the enduring relevance of The Magic Mountain. Little did I know that the novel’s centre of gravity had mysteriously migrated. Its dialectical questions are now more alive in Asia than Europe. Today’s Settembrinis, its Naphtas, fight it out there in the manically modernising countries of the east, where the bourgeois nation-state is still making its case against the seductions of theocracy and tribalism. For us children of Asia, it feels absurd now to read of Europe as the continent of “transforming action” and Asia as that of “inertia”. It is Asia that today actively transforms itself – while Europe lies inert. History has, with its mesmeric wand, performed a magic trick on The Magic Mountain; it reversed its poles… But the spark, one hundred years on, is still undiminished.
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2024/11/thomas-mann-and-the-european-disease-of-nihilism
Tanjil Rashid notes:
When I visited Davos, I had gone in search of the enduring relevance of The Magic Mountain. Little did I know that the novel’s centre of gravity had mysteriously migrated. Its dialectical questions are now more alive in Asia than Europe. Today’s Settembrinis, its Naphtas, fight it out there in the manically modernising countries of the east, where the bourgeois nation-state is still making its case against the seductions of theocracy and tribalism. For us children of Asia, it feels absurd now to read of Europe as the continent of “transforming action” and Asia as that of “inertia”. It is Asia that today actively transforms itself – while Europe lies inert. History has, with its mesmeric wand, performed a magic trick on The Magic Mountain; it reversed its poles… But the spark, one hundred years on, is still undiminished.
You’re All Paying Attention to the Wrong Davos
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-19/davos-2024-why-go-to-world-economic-forum-when-you-could-read-thomas-mann
There’s no point in going to the World Economic Forum when you could be reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-19/davos-2024-why-go-to-world-economic-forum-when-you-could-read-thomas-mann
There’s no point in going to the World Economic Forum when you could be reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.