That conjurer who murmurs the past: The Magic Mountain and the Bildungsroman after the First World War

Abstract

This article seeks to comprehend how The Magic Mountain (1924), a novel by Thomas Mann (1875-1955), is an elaboration drawing from the challenge imposed to literature by the First World War; namely how, considering the crisis inaugurated by that conflict, could a Bildungsroman be possibly written. The specialized literature has already discussed for some time the characterization and development of The Magic Mountain as a Bildungsroman, and when Mann’s work is identified within this specific literary genre, it is frequently described as a parody. My aim is to show how parody is but one of the understandings of time to be found in the novel. Therefore, I endeavor to show how, beyond a parody-relation with the past, one may perceive – above all by the study of letters, diaries and essays written by Thomas Mann from 1914 to 1924 – how the past can be overcome, but, above all, how it can be experienced as Angst. Based on The Magic Mountain, this study seeks to grasp the Angst-experience as a way by which the past escapes from being either overcome or manipulated by parody, while it can also surprise and affect us, thus suspending the attempts of control and use.