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| Wagner's Tristan and Isolde |
I value irony in writing, and no one does it better than Thomas Mann.
Gabriele Klöterjahn, comes to mind with that romantic first name and Germanic last name. She has a vein in the middle of her forehead that throbs and becomes blue whenever she gets excited. Detlev Spinell excites her by convincing her to play Wagner’s the Liebestod on the piano, which arouses her (and him). That same night she throws up a little blood, and she’s dead by the end of the next day.
Mann must have guffawed the whole time he wrote The Magic Mountain: all the horny characters in a sanatorium with their low-grade fevers.
And who was that woman who
could whistle through her tracheotomy?
Sex and sickness. What is more perverse?
I miss lust in my old age but
see its absurdity.
Thinking of you today, Thomas
Mann.
And, here, I always thought it was James Bond...😆
ReplyDeleteI tried to read magic mountain. I was so lost. It also occurred at the same time as academic probation so I was lost in many more ways than just reading literature. I should revisit my copy on the book shelf downstairs. It's in the section of brown books, literature section, not poetry or children's book. My books, they are not lost.
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