The Magic Mountain (Volume 1)

Name: The Magic Mountain (Volume 1)
ISBN: 9787532780525

Thomas Mann / 钱鸿嘉Shanghai Translation Publishing House · ChinaApr 2019

4.4

Word count: 307K words
Chapters: 41
ISBN: 9787532780525

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Summary

Young Hans Castorp arrives at a mountain sanatorium for pulmonary disease to visit his cousin Joachim, but ends up contracting the illness himself and must stay for treatment. The patients come from far and wide, with sharply different temperaments and views. Hans is a young man with ideals, yet after mixing with these people his thinking grows confused and his spirits sink; the Russian woman Clavdia further bewitches him. He forgets career and duty, and the mountain becomes a "magic mountain" in which he sinks and cannot free himself. Seven years pass in a blink; his cousin dies, Clavdia leaves, and the close friends scatter. Life shatters his illusions one after another, leaving him in pain and loneliness. The guns of the World War wake him, and looking back, Hans feels he has slept entranced on the "magic mountain" for seven years; he resolutely sets out for the front. The novel has a grand scale and a large cast; it is built on two main threads: the love triangle between Hans, the young woman Clavdia, and the wealthy businessman Peeperkorn, revealing the conflicts between life and death and between spirit and flesh; and the struggle between democrats and militarists, reflecting the spiritual condition of German intellectuals before the First World War and the clash of differing views.

Editor's review

The first volume of The Magic Mountain is the gateway to the novel and the key to understanding how the “magic mountain” becomes what it is. Thomas Mann turns the student Hans from a visitor into a patient, using an incidental stay to open a closed and self-sufficient world: convalescents from every direction bring their own temperaments and ideas and engage in endless arguments in the dining room, corridors and treatment rooms. The emphasis of the first volume lies in laying out the environment and relationships: the thread of a triangular love affair and the opposition between democrats and militarists gradually emerge, and Hans's ideals and will loosen under the erosion of daily life. Qian Hongjia's translation accurately conveys the original's calm, slightly ironic narrative tone, keeping the speculative passages readable. The first volume serves well as an entry point into Mann's long-form fiction; readers can observe the sanatorium as a miniature society through Hans's eyes and grasp how personal disorientation intertwines with the spiritual crisis of the age. There is no need to hurry toward conclusions in the first volume; characters' positions and symbolic details continue to ferment in the second, and it is more important first to build an overall feel for the atmosphere and the characters.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers encountering a Thomas Mann novel for the first time
Readers interested in pre-war European society and the intellectual climate
Literary readers who enjoy closed-space narratives and group portraiture
Readers willing to read slowly through speculative dialogue and attend to symbolic detail

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting tight plotting and a clear ending
Readers who find long dialogue and intellectual debate tedious
Readers who want only the second volume and prefer not to start from the relationships

Reading tips

First remember the identities and positions of the main sanatorium characters, then move into the debating passages.
Pay attention to Hans's psychological shift from visitor to patient; this is the novel's key starting point.
Treat the first volume as groundwork for atmosphere and relationships rather than rushing toward plot conclusions.
Pause briefly after the first volume before starting the second, keeping your sensitivity to the characters' changes.

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

版权信息
译本序
前言
第一章
到达
三十四号房间
在餐厅里
第二章
关于洗礼盆和两重性格的祖父
在蒂恩纳佩尔家以及汉斯·卡斯托尔普的品德
第三章
庄重与阴郁
早餐
取笑。旅行用品。欢乐的情绪受挫。
魔鬼
思想的磨炼
多余的话
当然，是一个女人！
阿尔宾先生
魔鬼提出不光彩的建议
第四章
必要的购买
关于时间感受的一些题外话
他试图讲法语
政治上可疑！
希佩
分析
怀疑和推测
餐桌上的谈话
恐惧情绪在增长。关于两个祖父和黄昏的舟游。
温度表
第五章
永恒的汤汁和豁然开朗
天哪，我看到了！
自由
水银的情绪
百科全书
人文方面的学识
探索
死神的舞蹈
瓦尔普吉斯之夜

FAQ

What is the first volume mainly about, and how does it divide the work with the second?

The first volume mainly lays out Hans's entry into the sanatorium, the atmosphere of the setting and the relationships among the characters; the triangular love thread and the debate between democracy and militarism begin to unfold, and Hans's ideals and will start to loosen. The second volume drives toward an ending of blurred time, scattered friends and awakening through war. Only by reading both volumes together can one fully understand Hans's disorientation and transformation.

Can I read the first volume without a background in German literature?

Yes. The first volume's narrative begins with Hans's arrival at the sanatorium, and the relationships unfold naturally with the plot; no specialized knowledge of German literature is required. Readers need only patience for long dialogue and speculative passages, and can enter the work by following Hans's perspective on the sanatorium's ensemble.

Do I need to specially memorize the ensemble characters in the first volume?

No need to memorize them deliberately, but it is advisable to note the several recurring characters and their basic positions, especially the opposing sides in the debate over democracy and militarism. The first volume has many characters with differing ideas; remembering their main identities helps in understanding the direction of the dialogue and the sources of Hans's intellectual confusion in the second volume.

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About the author

Thomas Mann Author · German · 1875–1955

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) was a German novelist and essayist and a leading figure of twentieth-century German realist literature. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929 for Buddenbrooks, and his other major works include The Magic Mountain, Death in Venice, and Doctor Faustus. His writing probes the tensions between the artist and society and between reason and decadence, in a style both disciplined and deeply reflective. During his exile he firmly opposed the Nazis, and his stance and creative work together shaped the intellectual image of modern German literature. The library holds 21 of his works, spanning foreign literature, essays and miscellaneous writings, and social novels.

钱鸿嘉 Author

Qian Hongjia is a Chinese translator known for rendering German-language literature into Chinese. Public information about him is limited, and his dates of birth and death, nationality, and educational background are not clearly documented. Judging from the four works held in the collection, his efforts center on translating classic German novels. His representative translations include Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, in both the two-volume and boxed sets, as well as Death in Venice. These works are generally classified as foreign literature and social fiction, dealing with themes such as time and illness in a sanatorium and an artist's inner crisis in Venice, and they carry a strong modernist character. Qian's translations strive to convey the intellectual depth and narrative rhythm of the originals, offering Chinese readers fairly complete versions of major German-language novels. Owing to limited sources, the full scope of his translation career remains to be verified, yet the works at hand already reflect his sustained engagement with the translation of foreign literature.