The Question of Why. Der Zauberberg and the Meaning of Life.An Essay

Abstract

Abstract This essay examines why ordinary readers, even a hundred years after its publication, are still drawn to Der Zauberberg not just for its formal appeal, but also for its revelatory potential, its promise of holding deep significance. The “novel of ideas” has been repeatedly discredited throughout the twentieth century, and Thomas Mann has sometimes been discredited as a fusty practitioner of the genre. Yet something about Der Zauberberg seems to transcend the limitations of this form.