Der Zauberberg: Sketches and First Block

How to vizualize a 1,000 page novel in twelve images? I spent December and the first part of January trying to figure that out. Right away, a dozen or so crucial scenes popped to mind. But then when I started sketching, I quickly realized I didn't want to portray "scenes" in the typical book illustration fashion, for which I have neither the technical competence (of drawing inanimate objects) nor the interest. But I was definitely not interested in the opposite-- some kind of interpretive flight of fancy where I draw a pile of crap to express my own personal feelings about the novel. I still wanted to represent identifiable characters, experiences, and ideas that Mann put into the novel, but in a more iconic portrait-heavy way that suits my own aesthetic inclinations and abilities. After selecting source material from old photos, books, and the google image machine, I came up with twelve images plus a 'frontispiece' to make up a series of thirteen woodcuts. At this point I have ten more or less workable sketches, two rough idea-based ones, and one carved woodblock. Hoping to carve one a week and print one a week from here on out.

Here's a pictorial log, from early brainstorm debris to carved and printed block:

My tentative list: a baker's dozen of prints

crude sketches

Rejected!

Peeperkorn sketch-- face is wrong

So I slapped a new one on.

study for Naphta--based on Georg Lukacs

Naphta sketch with cake-- a little too Lou Reed-like.

Final Naphta sketch

Rough doodle for Settembrini

Italian writer Giovanni Verga--looks just how I imagine Settembrini

Final Settembrini sketch

My friend Simon. I think his Germanic high cheekbones and sober gaze will work well for Joachim.

Final sketch for Joachim--on his death bed (must add gold coins over eyes)

Frontispiece/Title print-- I found my image for the protagonist Hans Castorp in a 1912 recital program of a Norwegian Men's Singing Society, which performed in SF at the Swedish-American Hall (oddly enough, where I got married). Bought the program at an antique store, but now it's gone missing, so I can't scan it to show you.

This old timer, a prominent German citizen of 19th-century Indiana, is just as I picture Hans's grandfather, Hans Lorenz Castorp.

Mazzini, the natural grandfather image of the liberal humanist Settembrini.

Sketch for the Two Grandfathers-- living genealogical tree.

Naptha's suicide at the Duel

Dueling pistols-- reminds me of the end of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler: "There she goes, playing with those damn pistols again!"

Hans and Dr. Behrens in the X-ray room--- my somewhat fabricated though factually-based imagining of a pre-war X-ray machine. The novel takes place in a Swiss sanatorium from 1907-1914, so I want at least one image to portray the medical environment.

source image for the dining hall. I think this is somewhere in Wyoming.

Final sketch for Walpurgis Nacht

rough sketch for the Lindenbaum chapter- the bare linden tree coming out of the record player as a symbol for the morbid Romanticism Hans has to overcome.

rough sketch for Hans's catarrh- fueled fever dream of Mdme Chauchat as a lusty personification of life.

I'm using bygone supermodel Tatiana Patiz as my model for Chauchat. She has what Mann describes as Chauchat's "Khirghiz eyes"

another rough sketch for Hans dreaming Chauchat as lusty life. Here she looks way too much like a stilted version of the bikini model she's drawn from.

photo of real Swiss sanatorium patients taking the rest cure outdoors.

final sketch for 'the horizontal'-- the rest cure.

the carved and inked wood block after the first test print.

First test print of the block. Reasonably satisfied.

Stay tuned for more...