Roger Hecht wrote:

>Is that your opinion of her translation of Magic Mountain? I found it
>readable enough, but didn't like the book much and assumed it was because
>I didn't like the book.  I threw in the towel when I got to the seven or
>so pages of French that for some reason weren't translated.  The new
>translation does handle the French, however.

Hans Castorp is speaking in French becase he'd never have the nerve to say
those things in his native language to the woman on whom he has had such
a long unconsummated crush.  (Remember this is taking place in 1907.)

Subscribers to this list who will read further in *The Magic Mountain*,
either in the original or in one of the translations will find their
musical interests gratified in the chapter towards the end, entitled
"Fullness of Harmony" in the Woods translation, describing the collection
of classical phonograph records that the sanatorium has acquired along w/
a state of the art record player, of which Hans Castorp, by default became
the custodian.  In addition to some Offenbach, Figaro's aria from *Barber
of Seville* and an aria from *Traviata*, which entertain the patients, we
are entrusted with Hans Castorp's personal favorites, as he discovers them,
as well: scenes from *Aida*, especially the final tomb scene; *Afternoon
of a Faun*; scenes from *Carmen*; from Gounod's *Faust*; Schubert's "Am
Brunnen vor dem Tore".  Whatever our current opinions may be of these
works, I found it fascinating to read Thomas Mann's description of Hans
Castorp's appreciation of them developing against the background of his
experience on the enchanted mountain.

Walter Meyer