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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Science in Mann's Zauberberg: The Concept of Space
Contributor:
Prusok, Rudi
imprint:
Modern Language Association of America, 1973
Published in:PMLA
Language:
English
ISSN:
0030-8129
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<p>Der Zauberberg contains a great deal of esoteric scientific information that is woven into its symbolic structure, making the novel only partially comprehensible without some knowledge of twentieth-century science. Old concepts are no longer relevant by themselves, but must be fitted into a new Weltanschauung with its new scientific terminology. Mann used the new scientific information as symbol and leitmotif, updated old myths, and created new ones out of the continually accumulating data of the sciences. His novel has characteristics of a scientific experiment, allowing an Everyman Castorp to develop in the controlled parameters of the Berghof microcosm. This development entails a reconsideration of the nature of man in the light of Einstein's Relativity Theory and modern medicine. The former brings about a new perspective by shrugging off the old absolutes of Euclidian space and linear time and thereby adopting a "higher dimensionality" of perception from that of the "flatland" dweller. The latter, medicine and psychology, redefine man in medical terms and reexamine the Romantic myth of genius springing from disease.</p>