I re-read two books this summer, The Great Gatsby (1925) and The Magic Mountain (1926). And not until the end of the latter one I realised that they reflect the mid-twenties more than maybe any other books from that time, that there are so many similarities to our times in them and that, being a fan of both transformation and morphing, the veiled power within them origins from exactly that source. A power that fascinates me more than ever before.
Thomas Mann's atomic precision with which he reflects upon the events of a European continent turned upside down and on the verge to wars and catastrophes (but set in a pre-nostalgic setting, at the back-drop of the Alpes in a supposedly idyllic mountain retreat), clinging onto the only thing we can cling to in such times; the artistic vision and storytelling powers that lie within us. Little did he know, that he himself with his huge family (of six kids! most of them later to become writers in their own right) would have to flee nazi-Germany, first to Sanary, France, and then to California, in 1933.
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Gatsby took up his drink.
"They certainly look cool," he said, with visible tension.
We drank in long, greedy swallows
"I read somewhere that the sun's getting hotter every year," said Tom genially. "It seems that pretty soon the earth's going to fall into the sun - or wait a minute - it's just the opposite - the sun's getting colder every year.
"Come outside," he suggested to Gatsby. "I'd like you to have a look at the place."
In Fitzgerald's Gatsby everything is glowing. And isn't this the twilight that illuminates every time of grand change? The Gold, the Glitter and the Godly? But, what Gods do we pray to? And what can they do for us? I have no answer but only more questions, digging into the material that dreams and history are made of. At the turn of the tide, some 100 years later. Same issues, same glow, same power of transformation.
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Then wear the golden hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"
- Thomas Parke d'Invilliers