Back to the Magic Mountain

Abstract

The paper seeks to highlight the precise sense of timeliness of one of the most relevant writers of the troubled 20th century. With his work “The Magic Mountain”, Thomas Mann reveals the ordeals of German society, which, in fact, mirrors the latent tragedies in Europe that triggered the First and, later, the Second World War. The leading role of German science and culture is explained by its economic and technological high standards at the beginning of the 20th century. If development at levels not seen before was able to provide improvements in life, it was not efficient in resolving human disputes marked by bloody conflicts. At the existential level, the ordeals were no less challenging. The description of a character’s change of life, the never-ending conflict of ideas arising from the coexistence of minds with distinct experiences, and the duality of ideas explored unfold in a unique narrative in this novel from the beginning of the century. This is a bibliographical and documentary research carried out in the theoretical field with a qualitative approach. We propose an analysis of the personal conflicts of each character, aligned with the underlying reality and connected to it. We conclude that Mann’s impact and understanding of the human condition goes beyond his time and is still meaningful in the 21st century.