When I first thought about this topic I encountered many ex pressions of surprise among my better-read friends, and a number of them asked me: "Is there really much love in Thomas Mann's works, and is it really important?" The posing of this question is the direct result of three decades of criticism which has represented Mann mainly as a serious and sober novelist, and frequently also as a prosy and prolix author who "clutters up" his works with superfluous bits of erudition. HisMagicMountain bids fair to join the list of immortal works of world literature which people bring back from their...