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PARTISAN REVIEW
vision of it.
Nothing is more telling against the moral authority of ideas than the bril-.
liant penultimate chapter, "The Great Petulance," in which Naphta, insulted
by Settembrini, challenges
him
to a duel. In the duel, Settembrini fires in the
air,
enraging Naphta, who calls out "coward" and turns his gun upon
him–
self. The event deposes Reason, the very medium of ideas, from its pedestal
above the fray and shows that in its most abstract manifestations, it "contains
far more profound and radical possibilities for hatred, for categorical and irrec–
oncilable hostility than are found in social life" and that
in
its very rigor it can
lead "inexorably to bestial deeds." (The most devastating critique of
Enlightenment Reason is made by the champion of the Enlightenment.)
This is Settembrini's lesson to Castorp, and it effectively collapses the intel–
lectual opposition between Naphta and Settembrini.
It
produces
in
Castorp
an understanding that exceeds that of his mentor: "[Settembrini's] thoughts
were not his thoughts-just as he would never have taken the notion to fight
a duel on his own, but had only adopted it from Naphta, the litde terrorist;
they merely showed that he, too, was enveloped by the same inner state that
had possession of them all-it had enslaved Herr Settembrini's beautiful rea–
son, had made it its tool." The novel in effect concludes with an
acknowledgment of the power of ideas to destroy rather than create. Rather
than an alternative to violence (Reason's dream of itself), ideas are the source
of violence. We should speak not only of the ineffectuality of Reason, but of
its destructiveness.
It
is not fortuitous that the chapter that follows and con–
cludes the novel, "Thunderbolt," gives us the scene of the Great War and
Castorp's participation in it.
So we have the paradox of a novel of ideas which dramatizes their inef–
fectuality, or their destructive effectuality. They can neither explain nor
transform the world.What is the attraction of these ideas? Ideas for the nov–
elist do not have a life of their own. They do not exist, as they do for the
philosopher, in an abstract space, free of "the genetic fallacy." "It is remark–
able how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general way
without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it,
quite unawares presenting as
in
allegory the basic themes and problems of his
own existence." Ideas are a medium in which a character performs and reveals
or conceals what he is. However confused the ideas may be, what emerges are
characters who betray themselves in the expression and acting out of the ideas.
Dostoyevsky was the master of the novel of ideas, because so much was at
stake for his characters (Stavrogin, Kirilov, Ivan Karamazov, etc.) in their com–
mitment to ideas. I would not make the same claim for Mann's characters.
Mann's interest in ideas has a strong theatrical element. Naphta,
Settembrini, and to a lesser extent Behrens and Krokowski are performers
of ideas. In his
Italian Journey
Goethe jests that the hospital could become
