I feel sick
I feel sick
Stop arguing about sickness in our culture. Talk about the culture of sickness instead.
By João Ruy Faustino
Reviewed:
Ecce Homo, by Friedrich Nietszche (1908)
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann (1924)
Many people argue over the ‘sickness’ of and in our culture. However, there is not nearly enough discussion of the culture of sickness. It is a universal experience for all of us humans—and even though customs differ depending on culture, they are mostly recognizable to us all. It is unfortunate that the universality of the phenomenon doesn’t make for a great quantity of works surrounding the subject. That is, if you don’t count medical literature—which then is obviously extensive.
Is sickness, quite simply, not a great theme for literature? It might be, but it is indeed an inevitable state. One in which we take special concern over how we can endure and survive through. How, then, can we endure sickness? What can we reflect on the particular feeling of ‘being sick’?
For the moment we need only recall the swift flight of time – even of a quite considerable period of time – which we spend in bed when we are ill. All the days are nothing but the same day repeating itself – or rather, since it is always the same day, it is incorrect to speak of repetition; a continuous present, an identity, an everlastingness – such words as these would better convey the idea. They bring you your midday broth, as they brought it yesterday and will bring it to-morrow; and it comes over you – but whence or how you do not know, it makes you quite giddy to see the broth coming in – that you are losing a sense of the demarcation of time, that its units are running together, disappearing; and what is being revealed to you as the true content of time is merely a dimensionless present in which they eternally bring you the broth. (...)
– Thomas Mann, in The Magic Mountain
The greatest opus of this ‘culture of sickness’ is undoubtedly The Magic Mountain—a regular in the pantheon of long books that everyone claims they want to read. The story follows the character of Hans Castorp, a bourgeois young man who visits his cousin in a mountain retreat for people suffering from tuberculosis and other fashionable fin de siècle diseases. Hans ends up spending a whopping amount of seven years in the sanatorium, as he becomes sick himself.
One is never sure exactly ‘who’ is narrating the book, or even if one could call it narrating. The above paragraph, from the chapter titled ‘Soup Everlasting’, should serve as an example of how peculiarly the book is presented to the reader. The story is being told and digested at the same time, even though there is no rush. The little reflections inserted in-between the action and dialogues serve as streams of consciousness to add to those that the reader is probably having throughout the eight hundred page book. The novel is indeed extremely immersive, as everything seems to happen within it. The analysis occurs while one’s reading, both naturally to the reader and sometimes explicitly hinted by Mann. The Magic Mountain is a masterpiece of the characteristically German Bildungsroman—a theme previously discussed on At Midnight, All The Agents….
The work is also a great study on décadence, a topic of interest in the Belle Époque (Mann began writing the book in 1912). Even though The Magic Mountain never explicitly condemns the bourgeois class portrayed as ‘decadent’, the novel certainly transmits a familiar feeling of stagnation that one might recognize from – most famously – in T.S. Eliott’s poem The Waste Land, published in 1922. The wealthy background of Castorp is mentioned and acknowledged by the other characters. There is inevitably something of a judgement on how a man of his standing spends his time and money. Responsibility definitely calls, but the years pass by…
A much more explicit exercise on décadence – or degeneration even, depending on the translation – is Nietzsche’s autobiographical book Ecce Homo. Far from being a great book – of which he only possesses a pair – the work still holds value as a window to the mind and soul of XIX century’s most important philosophers.
A couple of annotations are especially curious, and it is easy to understand why they didn’t fit in any other work. Nietzsche’s diet, for example, is something that he took special thought of given that he was a sick man with a fragile stomach. This is a matter that is undoubtedly interesting to note, especially when discussing the culture around sickness:
Nothing should be eaten between meals, coffee should be given up. Coffee makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial only in the morning. It should be taken in small quantities, but very strong.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, in Ecce Homo
Elsewhere in the book the German author lists some ingredients of which he is keen on – rhubarb and mint being some of them (wholeheartedly seconded by yours truly!). This, along with captivating outdated digressions over their supposed medicinal qualities.
There is also a rant that manages to occupy a whole section regarding the matter of dry air – of which Nietzsche is adept – in opposition to humid air, associated with England—blech! The landscapes, the aromas, and the lifestyle portrayed in the meta-memoir – one is unsure how even to define the work – is a glimpse of how sickness was thought of in the past. It was much more commonplace back then. Treated as a regular occurrence, but not as we often nowadays call ‘chronic’ it seems. The treatments, more spiritual than medicinal, probably had a distinct effect on those afflicted… to a point that we may not even be able to recognize the disposition today.
Touching again on Nietzsche’s thoughts on décadence—quite an object fetish in the book. What strikes the reader above all else is that the work itself seems to be more evidence of the phenomenon than much of Nietzsche braves about in it (Christianity, German Culture, etc.). The ramblings of a sour, self-aggrandising man… who surely was a genius, even if nothing really justifies chapters titled ‘Why I Am So Clever?’, ‘Why I Am So Wise?’, or even ‘Why I Write Such Great Books?’
The sickness represented in the work is chiefly noticeable in the style of the prose. It is on the fringe of being passive-aggressive towards… I don’t even know. Nietzsche’s style – probably his greatest quality as a philosopher – works not because it is always good and infallible, but because it can effectively transmit gusto even, say… one hundred and sixteen years later. Reading a self-referencing reflection on his style is delightable for any serious reader. However, going through the last grasp of a great author in such a miserable tone is simultaneously quite a depressing activity. If you read it while you’re sick, it’ll have the same effect coffee had on Nietzsche: it’ll make you gloomy, and increase your temperature slightly.
I shall at the same time also say a general word on my art of style. To communicate a state, an inner tension of pathos through signs, including the tempo of these signs – that is the meaning of every style; and considering that the multiplicity of inner states is in my case extraordinary, there exists in my case the possibility of many styles – altogether the most manifold art of style any man has ever had at his disposal.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, in Ecce Homo