Moll on Mann

Björn Moll

Thought Paper Thomas Mann

18 Sept 2007

For Sara Danius the emergence of various photographic technologies bases on a »particular division of labor between the aesthetic and the epistemic«, that »should be seen as coextensive with a radical epistemological crisis« (179). One of the best narratives dramatizing this crisis is The Magic Mountain, which can be read »as an inquiry into the relativization of the epistemic mandates of human vision« (ibid.). By doing this the novel is able to negotiate »the problem of Bildung and subjectivity in terms of visually signifying systems« (180).

The novel is marked by an obsession with eyes, vision and visuality, showing a sheer abundance of visual metaphors and engages its inhabitants with visual activities all the time (185). Hereby the view of bodies is also affected as those begin to disassemble and dismember themselves under the diverse techniques of looking at them. Those techniques can be separated into two regimes of sight, both of which can be divided into several subregimes. The first form in which vision emerges itself is »aisthesis, that is, as a form of corporealized and individualized perception, often libidinally inflected. Vision, then, is a means of leisure activity, pleasure, and pain.« (ibid.) Examples for this would be the cinema visits or the erotically charged gaze.

»On the other hand, vision emerges as a matter of theoria, that is, as a means of gathering systematic knowledge (definition, classification, typology).« (186) This regime is at least defined by »social scanning, the medical gaze, and the mechanical eye« (ibid.) Both regimes »situate the world of the novel in a space of physiologically based vision, [], a space, in short, haunted by the asymmetrical relationship between the object of perception and the perceiving subject.« (187)

This asymmetrical relationship stages the problem of Bildung and modes of subjectivity in terms of visually signifying systems. Thus, knowledge becomes a crucial category that depends on what may be seen. Visual information pass trough different methods of signification, that »intersect, confront, and compete with another.« (188) The first method bases on the »visual hermeneutics of class«, that is a social scanning, basing on »institutionalized, yet semi-conscious, social categories« (ibid.). But this scanning doesnt lead to correct data in the course of the novel and thus precipitates a crisis of the social gaze, which affects the for the German bourgeois so important categories of Kultur and Bildung. This way, the novel tells the story about the exchange of one mode of subjectivity by another: »What is at stake in Manns novel is the male middle-class body« (191).

The medical gaze and the mechanical eye describe two other signifying systems that relativize the heros worldview. By becoming an object of Hofrat Behrens medical gaze Hans Castorp experiences an irritation of his stable position as the one, who, by social consensus, creates unambiguous facts of things by looking at them. Hence, he »gradually begins to occupy a world of alterity, allegory, and difference [] a world of interpretosis.« (193) The legibility of the human body comes to a new stage of quality when it is combined with the mechanical eye of the X-ray machine, which brings »the opaque interior of the human body [] to light by a language that names what is seen« (196) and is able to »translate[] the bodily interior into a visual record« (199). The dichotomy Castorp experiences in his situation as a subject and an object at the same time evolves into an »altered relationship to his own being« (201) after his insight into his own mortality. This three tense experiences of a change in visual signifying systems, the ability to explore the bodys interior and an altered self ignite Castorps intellectual efforts, »the cultivation of the interior.« (202) With this Castorp begins »his project of self-formation, of Bildung [] The result is a transfiguration of the former conception of the middle-class body« (203). Under this point of view, »the experience of the machine is vital to the formation of the hero and to Manns novel as a whole« (208).

José van Dijck argues that the novel discusses the reliability of X-rays in its diverse functions. In the medical context, the X-ray works as definite proof for nonvisional diagnostics (86). But, because it still has to be interpreted by humans, its quality as a diagnostical mean has to be questioned, as Settembrini does it (87). Castorp, who completely believes the doctors view, changes his mind when Behrens wants to discharge him from the sanatorium. Then he casts the unambiguous legibility of the X-ray plate into doubt and supports the opinion of his Italian friend (ibid.): »whereas the first X ray made Castorp feel sick, the last picture cannot undo that effect.« (88)

That mechanically produced images dont transport as clear messages as claimed by medicine and rely on interpretation is also illustrated in the love story between Castorp and Clawdia Chauchat. In the early twentieth century it was a popular tenet that X-rays could show much more than bones in a living body, but were associated with sexual intimacy and the possibility of an insight into anothers emotional inner self (89). Thus, Castorps view of Clawdias X-ray as an inscription of her love is wrong and only endures in his love-foolish mind (91). Like pieces of art X-rays are also objects of interpretation and in the early times of twentieth century they were also treated as art, which can be found in the novel in Hofrat Behrens picture gallery of X-ray plates he shows Castorp (92).

The highly questionable status of X-rays abilities of showing true facts is commented in the chapter »Fragwürdigstes«, where Castorp participates at a séance. Here the setting is equal to the X-ray chamber and Castorp turns on the light, when his dead cousin appears in front if him, instead of talking to him as Dr. Krokowski asks him to do, in order to make a picture of the ghost. »The visualization of the spirit, like the materialization of tuberculosis and inner feelings in an X-ray, is highly questionable in various meanings of the word. Besides the fact that he considers taking a picture of the dead very inappropriate, he also strongly doubts the photos status as objective proof of an imperceptible reality.« (97)

Thus, the novel shows that »X-ray technology, like painting and photography, is a representational technology creating an illusion of unmediated, objective reality.« (98)

In van Dijcks argumentation, the belief in the overall power of X-rays to produce objective facts is doubted. Hereby the importance of visual signifying systems is much less stressed than in Danius view, in which the new status of visuality leads to an epistemological crisis and thus to Castorps attempt of a self-formation.

Danius, Sara: Novel Visions and the Crisis of Culture: Visual Technology, Modernism, and Death in The Magic Mountain. Boundary 2 27:2: 177-211.

van Dijck, José: The transparent body. A cultural analysis of medical imaging. University of Washington Press 2005.