Abstract

The contribution analyzes the figure of Hans Castorp in Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg. It aims to clarify how this character expresses and sums up some of the main contradictions of the genius and of the artist, which were at the core of Mann’s previous literary production. In the first part, through a comparison with Schopenhauer’s concept of genius and Eichendorff’s character of the Taugenichts, the article shows how the figure of Castorp reinterprets some of the essential features of the concept of genius, such as the contemplative and melancholic attitude and the refusal of utilitarian and bourgeois concept of work. In the second part, the article offers an interpretation of the episode of the dream in the snow, which shows the deep influence of Nietzsche’s The birth of tragedy. The reference to Nietzsche sheds light on the inner connection, metaphorically exposed by the dream, between violence and culture, sorrow and art, barbarism and civilization. This connection is both constitutive and problematic for Mann’s newly proclaimed humanism, insofar as it subverts the relationship between the universal normative struggle of humanism and the social presuppositions of modern and bourgeois art and civilization.