Abstract
The starting point of the paper is Jacques Derrida’a reflection on the university today presented in his lecture on the „Unconditional University.” Then the author analyzes some passages from Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain to demonstrate that the novel has been based on the picture of the university during the anti-positivist reaction. In Mann’s novel, the Sanatorium is an allegory of the University, while the protagonist, Hans Castorp, is a student seeking Mentors and the Truth. Schulz’s story, “Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass,” has been interpreted as inspired by The Magic Mountain, since arguably it includes some traces of the „sanatorium – university” parallel. The paper refers also to Paweł Huelle’s novel Castorp, which tells a story of Mann’s character during a period of his studies in Gdańsk, anticipating the events described in The Magic Mountain. All the three texts – by Mann, Schulz, and Huelle – are connected by the debates characteristic of the humanities before the Great War (Mann, Huelle) and before World War II and the Holocaust (Schulz).
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