Disease Discourse In The Magic Mountain

The broad boundary between medicine and literature is the premise of this paper.The metaphorical tradition of tuberculosis provides the cultural background and narrative structure for Der Zauberberg.This article takes the tuberculosis in the novel as the research object,and then discusses Thomas Mann's unique construction about illness in the interaction with the metaphor of tuberculosis.Based on the historical tradition of the metaphor of tuberculosis,the first part of this paper analyzes the inheritance of "illness of artist" and "illness of love" in Der Zauberberg.The concept of wholeness,which has existed since the Hippocratic school,holds that mental activity and the state of the body constantly interact with each other,and mental overactivity or depression can lead to the occurrence of disease.Tuberculosis enters the aesthetic field of vision based on this view of illness and its peacefulness,and has become a popular disease of artists and love.The Magic Mountain,on the one hand,through the freedom and isolation of sanatorium,on the other hand,through the improvement of the ability to meditate and the enrichment of knowledge,represents the metaphor of " illness of artist",which means tuberculosis is free from the burden of secular responsibilities and gets the spiritual trial.Similarly,the novel reproduces the classic image of a lover suffering from tuberculosis in the literary tradition.Love becomes the source of Hans Castorp's lesions.In addition,through the indolent nature of the illness and the emphasis on physical desire,the ill body becomes an object of erotic desire.The second part of this paper explores the novel's disenchantment of the tuberculosis by examining Hans Castorp's experience of living in the sanatorium.The dignity and solemnity of the death that the protagonist experienced in his childhood made him understand the illness from a spiritual level,and he did not know the dangerous consequences of it.The close contact with illness and death in the sanatorium just made him fade away from his naive fantasies.He gradually learned that on the one hand,the illness caused real and violent physical destruction and pain;on the other hand,the boundless freedom conferred by the illness ultimately led to unlimited indulgence.The unique sense of time in the sanatorium and the patient's slutty life here constantly confirm this to Castorp,which makes the protagonist unable to insist on his noble understanding of the illness.In addition,the novel's description of the true state of illness examination and treatment and modern medical knowledge directly subverts and deconstructs the romantic imagination about illness.The novel thus shows that on the one hand,disease contains something that is extremely in line with human dignity,and on the other hand,it tends to dehumanize people as a simple body,thus playing a dehumanizing role.The third part of this article is devoted to exploring how the protagonist handles himself in the seemingly contradictory meaning of the disease.Therefore,this section will first analyze the arguments of the two important figures-Settembrini and Nafta to further analyze why the illness is noble or vulgar.On this basis,dream in the Schnee abandon extreme positions.Castorp learned from the beautiful,noble picture and cruel cannibalism in his dream that the so-called contradiction between health and disease,life and death does not exist,they are actually a whole.Therefore,he does not want to join any extreme camp,but chooses the middle way: the interest in death is actually rooted in the interest in life,and who wants true health must experience illness.However,the negative side is reflected in his stagnant actions,which reminds readers that how to maintain balance is still an open question.