"Mario and the Magician"

The first-person narrator is on vacation at the Grand Hotel in the seaside resort of Torre di Venere. The highly advertised show of the hypnotist Cipolla promises some excitement. This deformed man with evil eyes seems to have an infinite power over his audience. He forces some spectators to do impossible things and apparently breaks their will. When the waiter Mario becomes Cipolla's next victim of malicious manipulation, the evening takes a dramatic turn. "The memory of Torre di Venere is atmospherically unpleasant." With these words, Thomas Mann's novella "Mario and the Magician," published in 1930, begins, in which the author processes experiences from his own trip to Italy in the summer of 1926. He describes the spreading nationalist sentiment in the country. The first-person narrator is on vacation at the Grand Hotel in the seaside resort of Torre di Venere. It is clear that the Italians are given preferential treatment. The highly advertised show of the hypnotist Cipolla promises some excitement. This deformed man with evil eyes seems to have an infinite power over his audience. He forces some spectators to do impossible things and apparently breaks their will. "Freedom exists, and will exists, but free will does not exist, for a will that aims at its freedom encounters emptiness," Cipolla takes away the hope of the show's visitors to resist him. Despite his degrading antics, the audience watches the escalating spectacle before their eyes, captivated and with disgusted admiration. When the waiter Mario becomes Cipolla's next victim of malicious manipulation, the evening takes a dramatic turn. "Mario and the Magician" has since been interpreted as a parable of the rising fascism: Cipolla as the seducer and manipulator of the masses, from whom one cannot escape despite inner resistance, found his counterparts in politics at that time and still finds them today: uncanny and extremely dangerous.