He later compared it to a symphonic work orchestrated with a number of themes.

Mann was well aware of his book's elusiveness, but offered few clues about approaches to the text. Given this complexity, each reader is obliged to interpret the significance of the pattern of events in the narrative, a task made more difficult by the author's irony.

For example, the book blends a scrupulous realism with deeper symbolic undertones. Mann's vast composition is erudite, subtle, ambitious, but, most of all, ambiguous since its original publication it has been subject to a variety of critical assessments. Der Zauberberg was eventually published in two volumes by S. Given this, Mann felt compelled to radically revise and expand the pre-war text before completing it in 1924. His political stance also changed during this period, from opposing the Weimar Republic to supporting it. He was also drawn to speculate about more general questions related to personal attitudes to life, health, illness, sexuality, and mortality. He explored the sources of the destructiveness displayed by much of civilised humanity. The savage conflict and its aftermath led the author to undertake a major re-examination of European bourgeois society. The outbreak of World War I interrupted his work on the book. According to Mann, in the afterword that was later included in the English translation of his novel, this stay inspired his opening chapter ('Arrival'). In May and June 1912, Mann visited her and became acquainted with the team of doctors and patients in this cosmopolitan institution.

Friedrich Jessen's Waldsanatorium in Davos, Switzerland for several months. The newer work reflected his experiences and impressions during a period when his wife, who was suffering from a lung complaint, resided at Dr. It began as a much shorter narrative that comically revisited the aspects of Death in Venice, a novella that he was preparing for publication. Mann started writing The Magic Mountain in 1912. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of twentieth-century German literature. The Magic Mountain (German: Der Zauberberg, pronounced ( listen)) is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in German in November 1924.

La montaña mágica by Thomas Mann