Una descripcion morbosa de la decadencia. La Montana Magica fue la obra que logro para Thomas Mann, el insigne escritor aleman, el Premio Nobel. En esa historia, situada en un sanatorio de tuberculosos en los altos de una montana, el autor creo un increíble microcosmos, reflejo de lo que el consideraba la decadencia de su patria y de toda la civilizacion europea. El protagonista Hans Castorp, una persona promedio, sin ninguna aspiracion a ser heroe, representa al hombre del comun, aislado en un medio donde las cosas suceden pero sin que ninguno de los personajes pueda hacer nada para impedir o para avanzar los hechos. Considerada como una de las grandes novelas de la literatura universal, es una orgullosa adicion para esta serie de audiolibros.
In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness, as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.
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"It took me more than ten years to finally finish this book, and my completion of it was aided by this second english translation, by John E. Woods. Previously the book was available in only one english translation, by H.T. Lowe-Porter, who was Thomas Mann's "official" translator. Hers is the version I started reading back in the 80s, maybe 1985. But the big roadblock here is that when one reaches the important climactic chapter at the book's center, "Walpurgis-Night," the energy-charged conversation between Hans Castorp and an important character of the book's first half is, in this translation, entirely in French. Ten pages of conversation in French. For a non-French speaker, this was hugely frustrating. I searched all over in vain for an English translation of this section. Eventually I asked a French-speaking friend of mine to tackle a translation. He did, and his immersion in the book led him to read it himself. I did not get into the book again for years, but when I did. . .I could not find my friend's translation! No matter, said he, his French was so much better now than it had been, and so he tackled the job again. I finally tackled the book a third time, starting again from the beginning. When I got the the pivotal chapter in question I used my friend's translation. Somewhere in there, and it must have been 1996, I discovered this NEW english translation by John E. Woods, so I incorporated it in my reading of the book. While H.T. Lowe-Porter's translation of the book's voluminous amount of slang and vernacular speech strikes the modern American reader as off-putting and sometimes confusing, Woods handles the dialogue really well for this day and age. . .and he renders that critical breakthrough conversation in english!! But Lowe-Porter gets the subtleties of the book's long, often philosophical sentences much better. An ideal would be a combination of the two translators, and that, essentially is how I finished The Magic Mountain more than ten years after beginning it!"
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Jim (4 out of 5 stars)