^{Note 1 in page 936} Briefe 1948–1955, ed. Erika Mann (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1965), p. 262. In his fine essay “Der Briefschreiber Thomas Mann,” in Lebendige Form, Festschrift für Heinrich Henel (München: Fink, 1970), Bernhard Blume also points to this letter, and finds in it Thomas Mann's last word about his own art (p. 289).

^{Note 2 in page 936} Needless to say, the evaluation of and attitude toward music are very different in the two writers. See J. Müller-Blattau, Sinn und Wandlung der Musik in Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus und Hermann Hesses Glasperlen-spiel, Annates Universitatis Saraviensis II (Saarbrücken: Univ. des Saarlands, 1953). Quite primitive is the presentation of G. W. Field, “Music and Morality in Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse,” UTQ, 24 (1955), 175–90.

^{Note 3 in page 936} All Mann quotations are taken from Gesammelte Werke in zwölf Bänden (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1960). Vol. iii contains Der Zauberberg; in reference to it only the page is given. If another work of Thomas Mann is referred to, the number of the volume is also given.

^{Note 4 in page 936} Above all by Hermann J. Weigand, Thomas Mann's Novel, ‘Der Zauberberg‘ (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1964), still by far the best and most instructive discussion of the novel. But even Weigand considers this number magic a minor “fairy-tale feature,” which can be dealt with in a footnote (p. 182). The brief glosses of M. Z. Norman, “Seven Symbolism in the Magic Mountain,” Monatshefte, 47 (1955), 360, and Joyce Hallamore, “Zur Siebenzahl in Thomas Manns Zauberberg,” GQ, 35 (1962), 17–18, are without consequence.

^{Note 5 in page 936} See Realencyclopädie für protestantische Théologie und Kirche, xviii (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906), s.v. Siebenzahl, heilige.

^{Note 6 in page 936} Of course, the sub-chapters neither of Der Zauberberg nor of the Joseph stories are numbered. So the reader has to make his own discoveries, which should enhance the enjoyment of the game.

^{Note 7 in page 936} Since the second part, Der jimge Joseph, is so short (only 30 sub-chapters), the number game cannot unfold quite as richly. But even here the sub-chapters divisible by seven are of key importance, especially sub-chapter twenty-eight (four times seven), which relates Jaakob's desperate reaction to Joseph's (purported) death.

^{Note 8 in page 936} Strictly speaking, Lotte in Weimar is, of course, not the “next novel.” It was written and published between the third and fourth volumes of the biblical tetralogy.

^{Note 9 in page 936} The tongue-in-cheekness reaches here its most amusing heights. Serenus Zeitblom solemnly declares: “Zahlenmystik ist nicht meine Sache, und immer nur mit Beklemmung habe ich diese Neigung an Adrian … wahrgenommen.” And this is the sentence with which narrator Zeitblom begins section 14, twice seven (vi, 149).

^{Note 10 in page 936} In Die Entslehung des Doktor Faustus Thomas Mann calls Ch. 47 “das letzte eigentlich” (xi, 299).

^{Note 11 in page 936} The conception of the four-cornered earth probably goes back to the Babylonians. Some of the references in the New Testament: Matt, xxiv.31; Apoc. vii.l and xx.7. (See the Ohio State Univ. dissertation [1966] of Johanna S. Belkin: “Beiträge zur Geschichte des Wortes Welt.”) Thomas Mann was well aware of this idea. In Der junge Joseph, Jaakob speaks of the four elements, “das vierte, die Erde” (iv, 654).

^{Note 12 in page 936} The magic square plays an important part in the novel, from the time it is first mentioned in connection with Durer's “Melencolia I” and the “arithmetischer Stich,” which Adrian affixes over his piano in his student quarters in Halle (vi, 125). It reappears at the most decisive stages of Adrian's life: in the discussion of the twelve-tone system and in his conversation with the devil. These samples are listed and discussed by J. Elema, “Thomas Mann, Diirer und Doktor Faustus,” Euphorion, 59 (1965), 97–117. Of only marginal value is Henry Hatfield's “The Magic Square: Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus,” in his Crisis and Continuity in Modern German Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 166–76.

^{Note 13 in page 936} It is interesting to see how section 34 of Doktor Faustus is bound up with Thomas Mann's life story. In Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus he tells us that he started this chapter in the first days of January 1946, i.e., when he was exactly halfway between his seventieth and seventy-first birthday (xi, 247). He worked on this chapter while his almost fatal sickness became more and more acute. When he was through with the “Apocalipsis” section, “das Tagebuch bricht ab” (xi, 254). Then followed the report of his operation in Chicago which brought him to the brink of death and interrupted the work on the novel for many months. When the narrator returned to his work on Doktor Faustus (after almost twenty pages), we hear about his starting Ch. 35 (xi, 272).

^{Note 14 in page 937} Excursus: Since in all the previous discussions of the structure of Thomas Mann's works the “key” of the number seven has not been discovered, the results are disappointing or simply untenable. Gunilla Bergsten calls her book Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus: The Sources and Structure of the Novel (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1969). While her discussion of the sources is illuminating, the outline of the structure is, to say the least, vague. About the question to which we address ourselves, she has the following to say: “Some of the numerical mysteries remain unsolved. Why did Mann divide chapter 34 in three ? Did he have a particular reason for ending the book with chapter 47, or did he wish to avoid the natural number 49 ? These questions cannot yet be answered. … But it is also possible that the number magic will prove to be a sort of private joke with no significance for the novel as a whole” (p. 176). In his article “Thomas Manns Faustus-Roman: Versuch einer Strukturanalyse,” Die Sammlung (Göttingen), 9 (1954), 539–51, Martin Greiner proves a little less timid, but no less wrong. He realizes that there are 49 sections, but since he adds the pointedly unnumbered “Nachschrift,” he arrives at a “runde Zahl,” i.e., 50, as if it were a question of “round figures” instead of meaningful figures. Being offered by the author such a pretty round figure, he then makes the roundness even rounder by dividing the whole novel into 10 books with 5 chapters each. It does not bother him that by this process Ch. 34, which is, after all, a unit, albeit a tripartite one, has to be split up, the first two parts going into “book” vii, the last one opening “book” vin. J. Elema recognizes the equation of 47 and 49, and also points to the fact that by such “cabalistic” count the pact-scene with the devil is placed in the exact middle of the book (p. 105). But although dealing with the role Dürer plays in the novel (and he discovers some interesting hidden allusions), he mentions only in passing and in an innocuous parenthesis that Dürer steps fully and domineeringly into view in Ch. 34, the number of the Magic Square, since Adrian's oratorio “Apocalipsis cum figuris” is based on the fifteen woodcuts by Dürer. If he had gone into the discussion of Adrian's composition more thoroughly, he would have made the startling discovery that with the exception of the first (unnumbered) print of the series only one other is singled out by number, of course “Dürers siebentes Blatt” (vi, 494), and Adrian's most devilish and horrifying music is written as an illustration of the print that depicts the “Lösung des siebenten Siegels” (vi, 497). I venture to guess that Adrian's (i.e., Thomas Mann's) choice of the Apocalypse is largely determined by the number seven. It is that part of the Bible which simply revels in sevens. Written by the evangelist for the seven original Christian communities, it presents (and this is only a brief catalogue): seven stars, seven planets, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven candelabra, seven torches, the lamb with seven eyes and seven horns, the Beast from the Sea with its seven heads. Besides, no one has noticed the striking parallelism of the number arrangement of Dürer's woodcut series and the structure of Thomas Mann's novel. Of Dürer's fifteen prints only fourteen are numbered, the first one, the “preface” so to speak, is not given a number by Dürer. The formula thus reads: 0 plus 7 plus 7. The structure of Doktor Faustus: 7 times 7 plus 0 (unnumbered “postscript”).

^{Note 15 in page 937} The realization came late enough. Mr. Peeperkorn is one of the most deplorable victims of the nefarious “critical” obsession: the hunting for “sources.” To every reader “in the know” it was immediately apparent that the Dutchman was an exact portrait of Gerhart Hauptmann, both in his physical appearance and in his idiosyncracies, his proverbial “thirst” and his bumbling, fumbling speech pattern. And with this the problem was solved: a caricature, good-natured or not so good-natured, and that was that. Even so brilliant a critic as Erich Heller cannot suppress this bit of chronique scandaleuse, and goes so far as to say: “… sein Vorbild ist nicht so sehr das Leben wie die Kunst: Gerhart Hauptmann” (Thomas Mann, der ironische Deutsche, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1959, p. 243). Weigand (p. 13) has rightly rejected such an illegitimate approach to a work of art. Only he has substituted another model: Goethe's “König in Thule,” as unlikely a “model” as one could imagine.

^{Note 16 in page 937} Weigand, p. 12.

^{Note 17 in page 937} It must be noted that only a very few critics have seen this double aspect. Weigand mentions the synthesis, but later in his book, when (briefly) discussing Peeperkorn, he speaks only of the “half articulated Dionysian emotions” (p. 123). Heller does not see the Christian component at all. Neither does Hans M. Wolff (Thomas Mann: Werk und Bekenntnis, Bern: Francke, 1957), who finds in Peeperkorn “die Karikatur des dionysischen Menschen” (p. 73), and thus offers a grotesque misinterpretation. The same is true of Hermann Stresau (Thomas Mann und sein Werk, Frankfurt: Fischer, 1963), who recognizes Dionysos and adds “eine makabre und fatale Figur” (p. 141). On the other hand Paul Altenberg (Die Romane Thomas Manns, Homburg v.d.H.: Gentner, 1961) recognizes only the Christ configuration: “Abendmahl, Lieblingsjünger, Gethsemane” (p. 89). In his “Die Kategorie des Hermetischen in Thomas Manns Der Zauberberg,” in Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 80 (1961), 404–22, later incorporated in his excellent book Die Entwicklung des “intellektualen” Romans bei Thomas Mann (Bonn: Bouvier, 1962), Helmut Koopmann sees in Peeperkorn, certainly without reason, a Hermes figure. Some proper evaluation can be found in John C. Thirlwall, “Orphic Influences in the Magic Mountain,” Germanic Review, 25 (1950), 290–98, but he buries his insights in a mass of unconnected glosses ranging from the Orphies to the Sophists. Since he labels the Dionysian elements “anti-Christian” (p. 297) he undoes the synthesis which Peeperkorn represents. In Theodore Ziolkowski's forthcoming book, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus, additional aspects of the Christ image will be illuminated.

^{Note 18 in page 938} Werke, Briefs, Dokumente, ed. Pierre Bertaux (München: Winkler, 1963), p. 173.

^{Note 19 in page 938} This is one of Thomas Mann's most remarkable strokes of genius. “Korndestillat” is a neuter noun, which means that he can refer to it by using the neutral pronoun “es,” which is the fitting one for the neuter noun “Brot,” (“nachdem er es kurz gekaut”). All the possible names for the drink Peeperkorn actually consumes are masculine (Schnaps, Korn, Genever, Cognac) and would require the masculine pronoun “ihn.” There is only one exception, “das Getränk,” but this word had to be avoided, for it would have given away the fact that it is a drink to be drunk, instead of “bread” to be chewed and swallowed.

^{Note 20 in page 938} I am gratified that here I find myself in accord with one of the most penetrating minds in matters literary, Rudolf Kassner. His brief review of Der Zauberberg (Die literarische Welt, 23 April 1926, now reprinted in Heinz Saueressig, Die Entstehung des Romans Der Zauberberg: Zwei Essays und eine Dokumentation, Biberach: Wege und Gestalten, 1965, pp. 63–67) ends as follows: “… die prachtvolle, durchaus bedeutende, ins Symbolhafte reichende Figur des Holländers Peeperkorn, daher das Außerordentliche der ganzen Situation: Castorp, Chauchat, Peeperkorn, was … den Wert des ganzen Buches bestimmt.”

^{Note 21 in page 938} See Hans M. Wolff, p. 73

^{Note 22 in page 938} Herbert Lehnert, “Hans Castorps Vision; Eine Studie zum Aufbau von Thomas Manns Roman Der Zauberberg” Rice Institute Pamphlets, 47 (1960), 27.

^{Note 23 in page 938} Herman Meyer, “Thomas Manns Der Zauberberg und Lotte in Weimar” in Das Zitat in der Erzahlkunst (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1961): “gewifi eine scheufiliche Blasphemie” (p. 220).

^{Note 24 in page 938} How anyone listening to this sentence can speak of blasphemy is beyond me. It is one of the most serene, beautifully “poetic” sentences Thomas Mann ever wrote, quite atypical of the great Ironist, whose normal style (and this is the style of the Ironist) is full of syntactical subordinations, qualifications, and complexities. Here one main clause flows into the next; there is the near rhyme (“verbreiterten-weiteten”), the triple alliteration (“Stirnestiegen”; “blassem Leidensblick”; “Bild der Bitternis”), the alliteration plus rhyme (“schlaff-klagend klaffte”), all this within less than five lines. If style means anything at all, and I think it is the very heart of a work of verbal art, then this sentence alone refutes all the talk of caricature, blasphemy, and weirdness.

^{Note 25 in page 938} In his article “Thomas Mann's Early Interest in Myth and Erwin Rohde's Psyche,” PMLA, 79 (1964), 297–304, Herbert Lehnert has shown how intimately familiar Thomas Mann was with the work of the great Nietzsche friend and mythographer Erwin Rohde, and how thoroughly he had mined it for Der Tod in Venedig. Of course, Rohde speaks extensively of the myth of Dionysos Zagreus. I had at my disposal only the abbreviated version of Rohde's book (Kröner edition, Stuttgart), but even there the Dionysos Zagreus story is told in detail (pp. 182–83 and 288).

^{Note 26 in page 938} Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzyklopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1903), s.v. Dionysos, col. 1041. I do not know whether Thomas Mann was familiar with this late Alexandrian version. In the abbreviated edition of Rohde's Psyche which I consulted (see above) it is not mentioned.

^{Note 27 in page 938} It may not be irrelevant to point to the fact that the word “erledigt” already appears in a key position in Tonio Kröger, after Lisaweta has summed up Tonio Kröger's existence.

^{Note 28 in page 938} The word “fool” is to be taken here in its biblical connotation, as an epithet for the children of God as opposed to the “worldly wise.” Here, indeed, a reference to Gerhart Hauptmann is permissible, even required. In 1910, shortly before Thomas Mann first conceived the plan of a story from which was to grow Der Zauberberg, Gerhart Hauptmann had published his first great novel Der Narr in Christo Emanuel Quint. This is the “source” of Peeperkorn's “Narretei.” And Gerhart Hauptmann's famous short story Der Ketzer von Soana (1918) could strengthen the Dionysian elements, because it celebrates “die Übermacht der Natur, ihre Majestät, ihr ungeheures Phallus-Lied.” Only the Ketzer von Soana parallel has been noticed by Jürgen Scharfschwerdt, Thomas Mann und der deutsche Bildungsroman (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1967), p. 128. Unfortunately, he destroys his nice discovery by insisting that Peeperkorn can be understood only as “Parodie der Persönlichkeit” (p. 127). And why? Because he does not represent “die ungebrochene in sich ruhende Persönlichkeit im klassischen Sinne.” Of course, he doesn't. But is there no other conception of “Persönlichkeit” possible? Thomas Mann (and Hans Castorp) tell us clearly what he means by “Persönlichkeit”: “das Dynamische… das Mysterium… wie das Leben.” This is, of course, not the harmoniously classical “Persönlichkeit,” but a different one. But why must it for this reason be a parody?

^{Note 29 in page 938} Lehnert, “Hans Castorps Vision,” p. 26. In the same vein Inge Diersen, Untersuchungen zu Thomas Mann (Berlin/Ost: Riitten & Loening, 1965), whose Marxist bias succeeds in distorting Thomas Mann's work completely. We are being told (p. 152) that Peeperkorn “für Hans Castorp ohne praktische Konsequenzen bleibt,” but a few pages later we hear: “Dennoch ubt er auf seine Umwelt einen positiven Einfluß aus” (p. 164). Evidently, the hero of the novel does not belong to this “Umwelt.”

^{Note 30 in page 938} Fritz Kaufmann (Thomas Mann: The World as Will and Representation, Boston: Beacon Press, 1957, p. 111) has at least noticed this correspondence. But he speaks only of an “echo” while it is a word-by-word translation; and he limits the validity of this key sentence by restricting its application to Joachim Ziemßen.

^{Note 31 in page 938} It would be highly worthwhile, although leading us somewhat afield, to outline the intricate pattern which regulates the use of “du” and “Sie” between Clawdia and Hans, and to a similar degree between Hans and Peeperkorn: Hans's insistence on calling her “du” until the moment of Peeperkorn's death when he switches to “Sie”; her indignation at this “familiarity” and insistence on sticking to “Sie” until the covenant scene when she suddenly calls him “du.”

^{Note 32 in page 938} I suspect that Thomas Mann has lifted this beautiful oxymoron of the “weiße Finsternis” from Stifter's Bergkristall. There, too, the children bravely resist the lure of death, finding their way home and to a reconciled community after the dreadful night of relentless snowfall in the high mountains.

^{Note 33 in page 939} There is, of course, the strange effort of some interpreters to prove that “die Struktur des Zauberbergs … ein ”Ergebnis' nicht zuläßt“ (Herbert Lehnert, Thomas Mann, Fiktion, Mythos, Religion, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1965, p. 193), in which case the novel would be neither a ”Bildungsroman“ nor even the parody of a ”Bildungsroman“ but a farce. I have tried to show that the lesson Hans Castorp learned in the ”Schnee“ is not forgotten, but manifests itself as living reality in the Peeperkorn episode, as it manifests itself at the end of the novel in his free decision to return to the community of the living, even if this community is engulfed in a deadly war, which Hans Castorp may or may not survive. But there is obviously a difference whether someone loses his life in the fight to stay alive (and this is the last glimpse we have of him), or whether one embraces the principle of death by the rapturous abandon to ”le corps, l'amour, la mort, ces trois ne font qu'un.“ Once ”l'amour“ is experienced as eros and caritas, as it is in the Peeperkorn episode, the spell of death is broken, and with it the enchanting magic of the magic mountain. If this is not an ”Ergebnis,“ I don't know what is.