Mario and the Wizard

"The memory of Torre di Venere is atmospherically unpleasant." These are the opening words of Thomas Mann’s 1930 novella *Mario and the Magician*, in which the author draws on his own experiences from a summer vacation in Italy in 1926. He describes the growing nationalist sentiment in the country. The first-person narrator is vacationing at the Grand Hotel in the seaside resort of Torre di Venere. It is clear that the Italians are receiving preferential treatment. A change of pace is promised by the much-hyped show of the hypnotist Cipolla. This hunchbacked man with evil eyes seems to have 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 directed toward its own freedom meets with nothingness,” Cipolla tells the show’s audience, robbing them of any hope of resisting him. Despite his degrading antics, the audience watches the spectacle unfolding before their eyes, spellbound and with a mixture of disgust and admiration. When the waiter Mario becomes the next victim of Cipolla’s malicious manipulation, the evening takes a dramatic turn. "Mario and the Magician" was later interpreted as a parable of the rising tide of fascism: Cipolla, as the seducer and manipulator of the masses whom one cannot escape despite inner resistance, found his counterparts in politics back then and finds them today as well: eerie and extremely dangerous