An Expectant Reading of Time

Abstract

The reading on time in Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain is inspired by the work of Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narration and by some phenomenological proposals. The reflections on the reading emphasize the notion of the unreliable narrator and base themselves on the detemporalization strategies that rotate around the binomial Kurzweil-Langeweile (entertainment-boredom). One endeavors to mold the temporal connotations of this binomial, from where denied time emerges. The latter’s irruption, historic time, is announced in the use of the verb zeitigen “produce, originate”.