Sunday, May 17, 2020

15 Questions on Mann's "Mario and the Magician"

1.     What is significant about the outrage of the man in bowler hat towards the narrator’s daughter running naked on the beach, and what does it say about the attitudes of the locals towards outsiders? (303)

2.     What complaints does the narrator offer concerning both "foreigners" and the local Italian population? How do these complaints shape the narrator's reaction to Cipolla's performance?

3.     What is the significance of Cipolla's physical deformity and drinking habit? Why are these elements important to his characterization?

4.     As a general observation, is Mann correct when he speaks of the  “curious, self-satisfied air so characteristic of the deformed,” which he states to be possessed by Cipolla (308)?

5.     The show begins when the giovanotto calls out “buona sera,” and proceeds with repartee between him and Cipolla.  Cipolla also says to him “people like you are just in my line. I can use them.” Do these exchanges demonstrate that Cipolla’s show is improvisational in nature? (309)

6.   What is Cippolla's goal that he wants to acheive as a performer?

7.     Why does Cipolla state that the giovanotto is unwell (“anyone can see that you are not feeling too well”) (314)

8.     Why does the narrator compare the family not leaving until intermission to them not leaving Torre earlier (“For things had been in Torre in general – queer, uncomfortable, troublesome, tense, oppressive – so precisely they were here in this hall tonight’)? (p. 321)

9.     Cipolla is a much more effective hypnotist than magician. Why do you think Mann makes this distinction?

10. Why does Mann give us a foreshadowing of Cippola’s demise when he writes “Yet I see no reason at all to cast doubt, on rational grounds, upon powers that, before our very eyes, became fatal to their possessor?” (p. 320)

11. Why on page 330 does Cipolla say to Mario, pointing to his cheek, “Kiss me, trust me, I love thee, kiss me here.”

12. Cipolla is killed by one of his own victims. What is the significance of Cipolla's death at the hands of Mario?

13. Much of the audience is horrified to witness Cipolla's assassination, yet the narrator views it as a liberation and leaves calmly with his family. Why do you believe his reaction is so different from that of the rest of the audience?

14. Is Mario justified in killing Cipolla?

15. What do you make of the narrator's attitudes towards "Southern" and "Northern" Europeans? What differences does the narrator note between the two groups

Thursday, May 14, 2020

A Glossary of Italian Terms in "Mario and the Magician"

Portrait of Thomas Mann taken
in 1929, the year "Mario and the Magician" was published,
and also the year Mann won the Nobel Prize for Literatute
The narrator of Thomas Mann's story "Mario and the Magician" recounts his vacation weeks with his family in the Italian seaside resort of Torre di Venere. Mann situates the reader in the setting by the use of a number of Italian words and expressions.  To assist you in reading the story, I have prepared a glossary of these Italian terms.  Page citations are from Great Conversations 6, published by the Great Books Foundation.

page
298: cornetti al burro: croissants with butter
301: Fuggièro: apparently a first name
303: rispondi almeno: answer at least
304: molto grave: very serious
305: illusionista: illusionist
305: prestidigitore: slight-of-hand man
306: frutta di mare: seafood
307: pronti: ready
307: cominciamo: we are starting
308: buona sera: good evening
309: paura: fear
309: bè: well
309: Ha sciolto la scilinguágnolo: "he has a glib tongue"
310: Questo linguista di belle speranze: "this hopeful linguist"
310: giovanotto: young man
310: donnaiuolo: lady killer
310: duce: leader (Benito Mussolini was know as "il Duce:)
311: parla benissimo: "he speaks beautifully"
311: simpatico: pleasant (said of a person)
311: non scherziamo: "we are not kidding around"
317: Lavora bene: "he works well"
321: cioccolata e biscotti: chocolate and biscuits
321: subito signorini: "at once, gentlemen"
321: anche se no vuole: even if he didn't want to
327: ragazzo mio: my boy
328: un tratto di malinconia: a bit of melancholy
329: nossignore: no sir!
330: poveretto: poor thing
331: carabinieri: police

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

More on "The Daughters of the Late Colonel"

Josephine compares "that queer
 little crying noise" inside her to the yeeping
of sparrows on the window ledge. Photo by fs-phil, 
Last Monday evening, 18 members of our group, under COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, participated in a Zoom videoconference on Katherine Mansfield's short story, "The Daughters of the Late Colonel."  In the final section of the story, an organ grinder starts playing music outside the window of the residence of the two sisters, Josephine and Constantia.  Josephine's immediate reaction is to pay the organ grinder to make him stop because their late father disliked the music, however the sisters then jointly remember it doesn't matter anymore.  Their father will never again thump his cane in anger.

Constantia goes into an extended reverie in front of her "favorite Buddha" on the mantelpiece. She contemplates the sunlight on the carpet. She thinks about her mother's death many years earlier and the sisters' inability ever to meet eligible men.  Her thoughts turn speculative, "It was only when she came out of the tunnel into the moonlight or by the sea or into a thunderstorm that she felt herself.  What did it mean? What was it she was always wanting? What did it all lead to?  Now? Now?"  At the very end of the story, "she stared at a big cloud where the sun had been."

Many thanks to our group member of long-standing, Peter McGullam, for calling to my attention some comments Mansfield made about the story in a letter to the writer William Gerhardi:
"All was meant, of  course, to lead us to that last paragraph, when my two flowerless ones turned with that timid gesture, to the sun.  Perhaps now.  And after that, it seemed to me, they died as truly as father was dead." (1)
In other words, Mansfield's feelings about her characters is that their effective quarantine, whether imposed by their father or themselves, wouldn't end.

(1) "An Introduction to Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories," by Stephanie Forward.  Posted on the British Library's website.