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''The Magic Mountain'' (German: ''Der Zauberberg'') is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature. Mann started writing what was to become ''The Magic Mountain'' in 1912. It began as a much shorter narrative which revisited in a comic manner aspects of ''Death in Venice'', a novella that he was then preparing for publication. The newer work reflected his experiences and impressions during a period when his wife, who was suffering from a lung complaint, was confined to Dr. Friedrich Jessen's ''Waldsanatorium'' in Davos, Switzerland for several months. In May and June 1912 Mann visited her and became acquainted with the team of doctors who were treating her in this cosmopolitan institution. According to Mann, in the afterword that was later included in the English translation, this stay became the foundation of the opening chapter (''Arrival'') of the completed novel. The outbreak of the First World War interrupted work on the book. The conflict and its aftermath led the author to undertake a major re-examination of European bourgeois society, including the sources of the willful, perverse destructiveness displayed by much of civilised humanity. He was also drawn to speculate about more general questions surrounding personal attitudes to life, health, illness, sexuality and mortality. Given this, Mann felt compelled to radically revise and expand the pre-war text before completing it in 1924. ''Der Zauberberg'' was eventually published in two volumes by S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin. Mann's vast composition is erudite, subtle, ambitious, but, most of all, ambiguous; since its original publication it has been subject to a variety of critical assessments. For example, the book blends a scrupulous realism with deeper symbolic undertones. Given this complexity, each reader is obliged to weigh up the artistic significance of the pattern of events set out within the narrative, a task made more difficult by the author's irony. Mann himself was well aware of his book's elusiveness, but offered few clues about approaches to the text. He later compared it to a symphonic work orchestrated with a number of themes and, in a playful commentary on the problems of interpretation, recommended that those who wished to understand it should read it through twice. ==Plot summary== The narrative opens in the decade before World War I. We are introduced to the central protagonist of the story, Hans Castorp, the only child of a Hamburg merchant family who, following the early death of his parents, has been brought up by his grandfather and subsequently by an uncle named James Tienappel. We encounter him when he is in his early 20s, about to take up a shipbuilding career in Hamburg, his home town. Just before beginning this professional career Castorp undertakes a journey to visit his tubercular cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is seeking a cure in a sanatorium in Davos, high up in the Swiss Alps. In the opening chapter, Hans is symbolically transported away from the familiar life and mundane obligations he has known, in what he later learns to call "the flatlands", to the rarefied mountain air and introspective little world of the sanatorium. Castorp's departure from the sanatorium is repeatedly delayed by his failing health. What at first appears to be a minor bronchial infection with slight fever is diagnosed by the sanatorium's chief doctor and director, Hofrat〔''Hofrat'' (literally, court advisor) is a honorific title given by monarchs or, as in this case, their family members to people of merits. It is not his title ''as'' director of the sanatorium, which is Director. However, the novel mirrors the then German custom to call Hofräte by their honorific rather than their functional title. The most recent English translator of Magic Mountain, Woods, uses Director as a translation.〕 Behrens, as symptoms of tuberculosis. Hans is persuaded by Behrens to stay until his health improves. During his extended stay, Castorp meets and learns from a variety of characters, who together represent a microcosm of pre-war Europe. These include the Italian secular humanist and encyclopedist Lodovico Settembrini (a student of Giosuè Carducci), the totalitarian Jew-turned-Jesuit Leo Naphta, the dionysian Dutch Mynheer Peeperkorn, and his romantic interest Madame Clavdia Chauchat. In the end, Castorp remains in the morbid atmosphere of the sanatorium for seven years. At the conclusion of the novel, the war begins, Castorp volunteers for the military, and his possible, or probable, demise upon the battlefield is portended. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Magic Mountain」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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