A quick aside on Modernist poets

There is something annoying about ‘footnote’ poets: Eliot, Pound, Yeats; that is, Modernism packed with obscure references.

I recently read Yeats's 1919. To view the poem in a ‘classical’ way, in which a poem is strong if its vision is concentrated, economical and thematically and visually unified, then it’s a piss-poor poem. 1919 covers the ‘Black and Tan’ years following the end of World War I; Yeats chooses to drop in diffusely references to Herodotus and the Persians’ burning of the Acropolis with fin-de-siècle dancers with Plato and fourteenth-century shape-shifters. The overall first impression I’m left with is exactly the same as that drawn from a conversation with a drunk – senseless lurching.

But 1919 is a powerful poem. Its imagery is rich, even if so diffuse that it stretches our powers of analogy. What we're dealing with is a different type of poetry which requires a different rubric.

A man in his own secret meditation

Is lost amid the labyrinth he has made

In art or politics.

Mann's The Magic Mountain (1924)

Have you ever visited a relative in a convalescent home and ended up falling ill yourself and staying there for years? Nor have I, but that is the backdrop to Thomas Mann’s novel.

Typically for Mann, it is a novel of ideas rather than sensations. Mann writes characters. These characters represent ideas, and between them they battle for the ‘problem child’s’ soul, the young hero Hans Castorp. A matrix to assist you:

	Settembrini	Naphta	Peeperkorn
Speech	Loquacious	Acerbic	Rambling
Taste	Thrifty	Luxurious	Munificent
Political eschatology	World republic	Roman Catholic world-state	Apolitical
Spiritual allegiance	Freemasonry	Society of Jesus	No allegiance
Century	19th century	Medieval	Contemporary (post-WWI)
Political system	Nation state	Spiritual communism	N/A
Nietzschean symbol	Apollo	Dionysus (Chandala)	Dionysus (aristocratic)

Clavdia Chauchat I exclude because she doesn’t represent what is for Castorp an ideal, even though symbolically she represents lust to the reader - lust for the exotic, boorish, energetic East. So too Castorp’s cousin, who represents duty, something which never tempts our protagonist.

Castorp's choice between antagonists? He doesn't really choose. Overall result of the novel: a loose baggy monster.