10.13125/2039-6597/2601
The essay compares the representations of tobacco use in two modernist novels. By analyzing the smoker characters from Volter Kilpi’s Alastalon salissa and Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg the essay considers particular literary representations of tobacco use and, in terms of that, also particular cultural meanings of tobacco. The comparison is between pipe smoking and cigar smoking and the analysis focuses on how they differ in terms of constructing the identities of the fictitious characters. As a result, it is stated that the pipe represents the stability of identity whereas the cigar represents the instability of identity.
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2039-6597
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Mika Hallila
Between
semiotics
Two Smokers in Search of Identity: Comparing the Representations of Tobacco Use in <i>Alastalon salissa</i> and <i>Der Zauberberg</i>
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
7
Identarian Images
2017-06-02
2017-01-02
2017-06-02
2017-06-02
1
Mika Hallila
2017/06/02
10.13125/2039-6597/2601
University of Warsaw
2039-6597
13
semiotics
en
Two Smokers in Search of Identity: Comparing the Representations of Tobacco Use in <i>Alastalon salissa</i> and <i>Der Zauberberg</i>
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/2601/2465
7
   Two Smokers in Search of Identity:
   Comparing the Representations of
   Tobacco Use in Alastalon salissa and
            Der Zauberberg
                                 Mika Hallila


     This essay offers a comparative analysis of the representations of
tobacco use in two European novels from the first half of the twentieth
century: Volter Kilpi’s Alastalon salissa (In the Parlour at Alastalo, 1933)
and Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, 1924).1 It aims
to show how the novels depict smoking as an important constituent of
male identities. Furthermore, this study points out how the differences
between the cultural meanings of pipe smoking and cigar smoking are
meaningful in terms of the stability or instability of identities.2 Hence,
the main idea of the comparison is based on the interrelationship
between the representations of smoking and the characters’ identities in
the selected novels.
     In addition to the representations of smoking, the relevance of the
comparison between these modernist novels results from their


     1
        I am using John E. Woods’ English translation of Mann’s Der Zauberberg.
As Alastalon salissa has not yet been translated into English, all translations of
the quotes from this novel are mine.
      2
        The idea for this, maybe an odd-sounding, topic rests on my larger re-
search project on the cultural representations of smoking in Finnish literature.
Thus, the comparison between Finnish and German novels made here is par-
ticularly meant to support my aim to define the cultural meanings of smoking
in Finnish literature.


Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/ May 2017)
Mika Hallila, Two Smokers in Search of Identity



similarities in terms of themes, and especially in terms of the theme of
time. By following the philosophical ideas of modernism, each novel
demonstrates a strong interest in time, temporality, and the human
experience of time. This is an important aspect as in order to analyze the
representations of identities in narrative literature, it is, in general,
necessary to take time into account as the primary context of the
identity-making process and to pay attention to temporality as the main
component in identity narratives. These two novels are no exceptions to
this rule, especially as time, tobacco, and problems of identity are
interconnected in their narratives.
      Time is often considered the main theme of Der Zauberberg (see
Ricœur 1985). The third-person narrator of the story speaks of time in
many places and in various ways; and the main character, Hans Castorp,
can be seen as some kind of guinea-pig in the novel’s – and the novelist’s
– research of time and temporality. In turn, Alastalon salissa – the work
considered as a masterpiece of Finnish prose fiction – is an extremely
long novel in which almost nothing happens during those six hours that
the narrative lasts. With its modernist strategies, such as the inner
monologue, Alastalon salissa stretches time as far as can be imagined. In
this sense, it is also a novel about time.
      As for tobacco, as is well known, cigars have an important role in
the narrative of Der Zauberberg, and in the context of Finnish literature
and Finnish literary history, the same holds true for the pipes in
Alastalon salissa. It is thus interesting that these modernist novels share
similarities in how they present the function and meaning of smoking
when representing identities. Smoking coincides with identities in both
novels and its representations give meaningful information about the
characters, while at the same time giving particular meanings to
smoking. Here, smoking functions as a signifier of the characters’
identities. Smoking in these novels therefore has a crucial role in relation
to both the theme of time and the representations of identities.
      Using the concept of identity in a narrow sense–referring to the
fictive character’s selfhood and the inner and outer processes that define
this selfhood –, allows me to highlight the analogy between selfhood and
smoking. According to Daphna Oyserman, Kristen Elmore and George


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                                           Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)



Smith, «identities are the traits and characteristics, social relations, roles,
and social group memberships that define who one is». Part of one’s
identity is the so-called “self-concept” which is «what comes to mind
when one thinks of oneself» (Oyserman et al. 2012: 69). The analysis of
the fictive characters’ identities will show how the inner “self-concepts”
of the characters as well as the other defining aspects of identity, such as
social relationships, depend on their smoking habits.
      In terms of the cultural meanings of both smoking and identity, it
is also worth noting what Eric Burns states about (male) smokers and
their ways of smoking, in his work The Smoke of the Gods: A Social History
of Tobacco (1997). According to Burns, the ways of using tobacco are
related to the personality of the smoker:

        You could tell a lot about a man from the way he took his
     tobacco. You could tell what he thought about himself, what he
     wanted others to think about him, and how far he was willing to go
     to be so identified. You could tell about his personality, his
     standards, his style (Burns 1997: 103).

      Burn’s claim, even if he is speaking of the (f)actual world and real
history instead of fiction, is quite valid and applicable to fictitious
characters regarding their smoking habits since in fictive narratives, the
depiction of how a character takes his/her tobacco is usually meant to
tell a lot about this character and his/her identity.
      After the synopses of the novels and a short presentation of the
theoretical framework, the analysis will focus on the representations of
pipe smoking and cigar smoking and determine how different smoking
habits define the identities of the characters in Alastalon salissa and Der
Zauberberg.

           Alastalon salissa meets Der Zauberberg
     Volter Kilpi’s Alastalon salissa is a modernist novel, famous in
Finland and highly valued for its skillful use of narrative strategies, such
as the inner monologue and the stream of consciousness. Kilpi’s


                                                                                   3
Mika Hallila, Two Smokers in Search of Identity



narrative, which is told in nine hundred pages, covers a period of only
about six hours. Nothing much happens in the narrative: a group of
people has gathered together at the house of a character named Alastalo.
Most of them are men and all are either ship-owners or sea captains
belonging to a small community on the West Coast of Finland. They are
having a meeting in Alastalo’s parlour to decide whether they will sign
a contract meant to finance the building of a very big and expensive ship,
a bark ship. All of those who will sign have to make an investment in
this project, and the rule is that the more one pays, the more one will
own of the bark. The situation emphasizes the social hierarchy between
the men. This leads each of them to consider their own position within
the community and to evaluate their own social value as a member of
the group.
      Most of the story happens in these men’s minds, as they are
positioning themselves within their group. The inner monologues of the
men form the multi-narrational structure of the novel. As the chapters
of the novel switch from one member’s perspective to another, the point
of view and focalization change accordingly. In 1930s Finland, Kilpi’s
innovative style seemed quite peculiar as it was exceptionally
experimental. Nevertheless, even more peculiar is the novel’s original
use of language. The language of the novel is indeed unique in Finnish
literature when compared to both older and more recent fiction (see e.g.
Lyytikäinen 1992; Rojola 1995). In the Finnish literary canon, Kilpi’s
novel is considered as one of the best literary works ever and, in 1992,
Finnish literary critics and scholars elected it the best Finnish novel of
all time. However, Alastalon salissa has so far never been translated in
any other languages than Swedish and, thus, it is unknown outside
Finland and some parts of Scandinavia–although it might well fit in with
many well-known modernist novels in Europe. From a Finnish point of
view, it is still a great European modernist novel–even if only
appreciated in its own culture.
      Instead, Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg is known across the globe
as one of the greatest novels of European literature, and many even
consider it one of the most fascinating novels ever written. Mann’s
famous work from the beginning of 20th century has benefitted from a


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long and important research tradition which has emphasized the novel’s
theme of time and temporality. Der Zauberberg represents the modernist
thought regarding the subjective nature of time, albeit through the
poetics of realism (see e.g. Lukács 1979; Ricoeur 1985). Der Zauberberg
tells a story of a young German man named Hans Castorp who travels
to a sanatorium situated high up in the Swiss Alps, in the city of Davos.
Castorp’s intention is to stay there three weeks as a guest of his
tubercular cousin who is being treated there. The narrative tells how and
why Castorp finally stays at the sanatorium over three years and what
happens there during those years.
      In both novels, smoking has a great importance, and it is most often
interrelated with the theme of time–and with problems of identity.
There are two significant similarities between the novels when
considering how they represent smoking: firstly, they both use tobacco
and the representations of smoking as the thematic device through
which it is possible to indicate what kind of a person the smoker is.
Secondly, in both novels, the representations of tobacco use reflect
temporal aspects of the character’s stable, or instable, identity.

                            Tobacco is a sign
       Tobacco is a very addictive substance with a very long history. In
human culture over time, tobacco has acquired various contradictory
meanings due to its ability to signify different things and aspects of life
within diverse socio-cultural contexts.3 Consequently, it can be argued
that it is reasonable to research tobacco as a sign in cultural sign-systems,
i.e. tobacco as a signifier. This “tobacco-sign” can indeed be interpreted
semiotically, as David Grylls shows in his article “Smoke Signals: The

     3
       Recently, it has been established as a medical fact that tobacco, as a sub-
stance, is very poisonous and dangerous for health. Nevertheless, this was not
self-evident during the hundreds of years of tobacco’s global history. For in-
stance, tobacco was considered both poison and medicine at the same time,
like some kind of a modern pharmakon. This contradictive nature explains also
why its meanings have been both rich and ambiguous.



                                                                                    5
Mika Hallila, Two Smokers in Search of Identity



Sexual Semiotics of Smoking in Victorian Fiction” (2006). Here, Grylls
compares the cultural meanings of pipes and cigars and underlines the
fact that, in Victorian fiction, the meaning of cigar is more masculine
than the meaning of pipe and that it is connected to men’s sexual activity
(2006: 19). Furthermore, in the Victorian era pipe was a much more
down-to-earth activity than “modern”, high-class, and exclusive cigar:

         Cigar smoking in the nineteenth century, then, stood in contrast
      with the commoner activity of pipe smoking; it was exclusively (or
      almost exclusively) a male activity; and it was catered for in such a
      way as to suggest hedonistic transgression.
         […]
         Since pipe smoking was so common an activity, it could have
      numerous meanings in various contexts, but in general it had more
      stolid and traditional associations than the smoking of cigars.
      (Grylls 2006: 18)

      Grylls’ findings are interesting especially as his approach is
historical. Other disciplines are showing interest in the topic and «the
semiotics of tobacco» (a concept I have developed elsewhere, see Hallila
2016) is also receiving attention from scholars in cultural and social
science studies. Even if they do not state explicitly that tobacco is a sign
(see e.g. Gilman & Xun 2004; Hakkarainen 2000; Schivelbusch 1992),
they nonetheless consider tobacco as a substance that people use in their
life to signify and give meaning to, in various cultural and social aspects
of human life; they consider tobacco as a sign and as a symbol.
      Tobacco’s European and global history started in the 16th century.
Until today, both the ways of using the substance and the significance
of smoking have continuously evolved. Tobacco is an extraordinary
substance amongst substances: it has both an ambivalent essence and
contradictory meanings. This is what Claude Lévi-Strauss argues in his
From Honey to Ashes (1973: 29) when considering tobacco: «Only tobacco
worthy of the name unites attributes that are generally incompatible».
According to Lévi-Strauss, tobacco has an important role in the structure
of myths since being neither food nor beverage but being only analogous



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to them, tobacco is a substance which stays in-between the necessary
and the unnecessary, in-between culture and nature. Lévi-Strauss even
states that tobacco is the first cultural step toward semiotics since its
place is on the border between nature and culture. Like him, Jacques
Derrida emphasizes the extraordinary role of tobacco in sign-systems:
«tobacco symbolizes the symbolic» (Derrida 1992: 112).
      The very ambivalence of tobacco may well be the core of its cultural
meanings. This argument can be found in contemporary cultural and
literary studies concerning themselves with tobacco. For instance, Linda
and Michael Hutcheon emphasize tobacco’s great cultural ambivalence
in their article “Smoking in Opera” (2004) as follows:

        The act of smoking has always been given contradictory
     meanings in Western culture. As both a relaxant and a stimulant,
     tobacco has been associated with both the medicinal and the deadly
     with both sensual pleasure and sexual danger; with both the
     companionship of society and the alienation of the rebel. (Hutcheon
     & Hutcheon 2004: 230)

     As Linda and Michael Hutcheon claim, the elements that form the
basic view of tobacco are opposed yet complementary. But there is also
another side to the issue: although tobacco is an extremely complex and
ambivalent sign, it is at the same time a very conventionalized sign. On
the one hand, there is a network of ambiguous and contradictory
cultural meanings of smoking; on the other, people have learned to
interpret these meanings, and thus they easily recognize the tobacco
signs. This observation is found in Richard Klein’s influential study,
Cigarettes Are Sublime (1993):

        Smoking cigarettes is not only a physical act but a discursive one
     – a wordless but eloquent form of expression. It is a fully coded,
     rhetorically complex, narratively articulated discourse with a vast
     repertoire of well understood conventions that are implicated,
     intertextually, in the whole literary, philosophical, cultural history
     of smoking. (Klein 1993: 182)



                                                                                   7
Mika Hallila, Two Smokers in Search of Identity



     Klein researches cigarette smoking, not smoking in general. Yet, his
idea of smoking as a discursive act is applicable to different contexts
since all ways of using tobacco carry multiple and rich connotations that
the readers of tobacco-signs are familiar with. These evolve, however,
and the different forms of tobacco use can be understood as the
continuously changing signs in cultural sign systems. These signs can
work two ways: they can produce meaning themselves, and they also
can be used to produce meaning. As the following section will show,
Alastalon salissa’s pipe smoker, Härkäniemi, and Der Zauberberg’s cigar
smoker, Hans Castorp, are the characters whose identity coincides with
their ways of smoking. The comparative analysis of the novels will
demonstrate that in both Alastalon salissa and Der Zauberberg, tobacco as
a sign works two ways: first, it symbolizes certain ideas and contents of
identities, and second, it is a symbol carrying its own meanings, which
effects the identities of the smoker characters.

               The smoker’s choice: Alastalon salissa
     All men in Alastalon salissa smoke pipes. There is a big pipe-rack
hanging on the wall of Alastalo’s parlour, and from that rack each man
can choose himself a pipe. At the end of the novel, after the men have
signed the bark contract, there is a most important episode in which the
householder, Alastalo, lights a new, unused pipe. That gesture is
analogous to his first step as new leader of the whole male community.
The fact that the pipe-smoking motif has been developed from the
beginning allows the reader to understand the significance of that
particular moment. The most important episode in this regard is in
chapter three of the novel. The title of the chapter is “Härkäniemi
chooses himself a pipe from the pipe-rack of Alastalo and thinks some
thoughts to pass the time”. This over eighty-page-long chapter is
probably the most famous part of Kilpi’s novel; it shows that in this
narrative, it is possible–in order to “stretch time” to the extreme–to use
that many pages for the description of someone’s selection of a pipe,
which in the real world may not last more than a couple of minutes.



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                                          Between, vol. VII, n. 13 (Maggio/May 2017)



Above all, the analysis of this chapter offers an interesting perspective
to tobacco as a sign of identity in Alastalon salissa.
     The title of the chapter tells exactly what happens in it: Härkäniemi
is choosing a pipe in front of the pipe-rack, and his head is full of
thoughts. His painstaking decision-making and thinking process show
how pipe smoking is linked to the problems of identity. In his inner
monologue, while trying to decide which one of the pipes on the rack is
the right pipe for him, Härkäniemi compares both the pipes displayed
on the pipe-rack and the men who smoke those pipes. Furthermore, he
compares the pipes to the men and the men to the pipes. Since he is an
old bachelor, he moreover associates the selection of the pipe to the
selection of a wife. While thinking of the differences between the pipes
and the men, and while associating the pipes with the imagined wife-
candidates, Härkäniemi is defining who he is and is not.
     As said earlier, Härkäniemi’s careful selection of the pipe takes
place in a very sensitive context: the male community of the novel is
experiencing great changes due to signing a bark-building contract as
each member of this quite small patriarchal group, in one way or
another, attends the project. This arrangement brings forth the
hierarchical relations between the men, since those with the larger
estates can have a bigger share of the bark than those with the smaller
incomes. And this sensitive situation leads the men to reconsider their
own position in the community. This is why Härkäniemi’s deliberation
over which pipe to choose represents his inner self-evaluation in relation
to his community.
     In addition to these personal aspects, social aspects of identity are
also exposed when Härkäniemi appraises the pipes. This is how
Härkäniemi defines his own personality while considering the
similarities between the selections of wives and pipes:

        Also in a good house and in a proper pipe rack there are many
     kinds of pipes, good and even better, and a man, who has a high
     opinion of his own mouth, selects the best one to place between his
     teeth. One does not marry just anyone, but potentially suitable
     wives are selected, reviewed, and even worthy ones can be left in



                                                                                  9
Mika Hallila, Two Smokers in Search of Identity



      the rack when targeting the best one, and a man does not consider
      his mouth lesser than his bed! I who have been wise enough to
      remain a bachelor until this age, how would I be flighty when
      selecting a pipe? (Kilpi 2013: 40)

       On the one hand, the issues raised by Härkäniemi are related to his
own personality because the difficulties in selecting the suitable pipe
reveal that it would be too difficult for him to get married. On the other
hand, Härkäniemi associates pipes and women as if they were both
objects that a man has the power to choose. This reveals the patriarchal
ideology of the community; there is the male hierarchy which ignores
women. For Härkäniemi therefore, a man may select the right woman
for him to marry as he would a pipe. Pipes and women thus represent
the kind of commitments a man makes in his life. However, in his case
it is ironic as he is a bachelor. He compensates the lack of a wife with
juxtaposing pipes and women, but in fact the only thing he can really
choose from the pipe-rack is a pipe–which still allows him to position
himself into the male hierarchy. His social identity is consequently
defined by this choice. In order to strengthen his identity, he needs to
consider carefully how he chooses as choosing the “wrong pipe” could
lead to identity instability.
       Here is a quote showing how, for instance, analogies between pipes
and men are made inside Härkäniemi’s mind:

         I have never believed in those kinds of men who smoke the
      porcelain pipe. (ibid.: 41)
         […]
         [The pipe of the judge of Ristimäki is] the pipe of a man such as
      Langholma, it is a serious pipe, a staid pipe, I would say a strict pipe
      suits Langholma’s mouth as an ass down the pew or a note in a
      cantor’s throat. (ibid.: 51)

    Similarly to these two characters, the judge of Ristimäki and
Langholma, other men in the group are identified with the pipes that




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Härkäniemi is looking at. The characteristics of the pipes are compared
with the characteristics of the men.
     Alastalo’s pipe-rack is, furthermore, structured hierarchically;
every pipe has its own particular place on the rack. In the middle of the
rack, as the absolute king of the pipe hierarchy, stands the pipe that
Härkäniemi names “the governor’s pipe”. This pipe has never been in
use and Härkäniemi wonders why Alastalo bought it, although this kind
of pipe does not seem suitable for anybody in the community.
Härkäniemi wonders who the pipe is meant for, and that is the reason
why he names it “the governor’s pipe”:

        I believe that I would find it gorgeous to watch as I would see
     this gadget in the corner of the mouth of the governor; it is imposing
     when on the lapel of the imposing man lays an imposing pipe and
     the mouth of the festive man speaks behind the festive pipe, the
     festive speech or the festive smoke. (ibid.: 48)

     The governor–or, in fact, the idea of the governor–represents a much
higher position in the social hierarchies of the society than any of the
men swarming around the parlour has. But, as an echo of the
transcendent signifier, the very presence of the governor’s pipe in the
rack gives a structure to the whole pipe-system of male identities. While
looking for the right pipe for himself, Härkäniemi cannot choose freely,
since he has to take into account the hierarchy of this whole system,
which is structured from the ontological superiority of the governor’s
pipe. When, at the end of the novel, Alastalo lights the governor’s pipe,
he thus occupies the highest position in the male community. This
gesture, therefore, defines the social identities of the whole of the group.
     Before this revelatory happening takes place, Härkäniemi selects
quite a modest pipe for himself. This is because he believes he has «too
respectful a heart for both getting married and for cultivating a
luxurious pipe» (ibid.: 49). Härkäniemi’s pipe selection nevertheless
provides a very happy ending since he can now finally have an
enjoyable smoke from the pipe that «suits his mouth». Maybe even more




                                                                                  11
Mika Hallila, Two Smokers in Search of Identity



importantly, Härkäniemi, after choosing the pipe deemed right for him,
now knows both who he is and where he belongs.
      As the analysis has shown, in Alastalon salissa, the selection of the
pipe is a defining process for personal and social identities. The pipe is
a symbol of one’s belonging to a patriarchal community: it represents
the common values of a community and, at the same time, it offers a way
to find a stable position in it. The pipe is the sign of a stable identity.

                    A man of Maria: Der Zauberberg
      In Der Zauberberg, the main character Hans Castorp has a special
relationship with the specific cigar brand called Maria Mancini; Castorp
has committed himself to smoke only this brand. The cigars are a very
important part of his selfhood, and his relationship to them is an
important motif in the novel. For instance, at the beginning, when
Castorp arrives at the sanatorium, he intends to spend only three weeks
up there. Nonetheless, he has with him two hundred Maria Mancini
cigars, and this is a strikingly large amount for such a short sojourn.
      The exaggerated number of cigars refers to two aspects of the story:
time and addiction. Smoking Maria Mancini cigars is what Castorp must
do as he is addicted to them, but bringing two hundred cigars with him
for three weeks implies also that Castorp unconsciously has prepared to
stay at the sanatorium longer than planned. He needs to be sure that he
will not be out of cigars no matter what happens since he thinks he
would not survive without them. He declares this addiction to his non-
smoker cousin in a little speech:

         “I don’t understand how someone cannot be a smoker–why it’s
      like robbing oneself of the best part of life, so to speak, or at least of
      an absolutely first-rate pleasure. When I wake up I look forward to
      being able to smoke all day, and when I eat, I look forward to it
      again, in fact I can honestly say that I actually only eat so that I can
      smoke, although that’s an exaggeration, of course. But a day
      without tobacco–that would be absolutely insipid, a dull, totally
      wasted day. […] what I am saying, is that if a man has a good cigar,



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     then he’s home safe, nothing, literally nothing, can happen to him.
     […] Because things can go very badly–let’s assume, for instance,
     that things would go miserably for me–but as long as I had my
     cigar, I’d carry on, that much I know, it could bring me through
     anything.” (Mann 1995: 46–47)

      Castorp equates his relationship to Maria Mancinis with friendship
and safety, and clearly confirms two aspects referring to the identity
question: his belonging to “the smokers’ group” and his intimate
relationship to the cigars, thus indicating that he would not feel like
himself without them. He uses the cigars to define his personal identity
and self-concept–which is somewhat similar to Härkäniemi’s approach
to pipes. And like Härkäniemi, Castorp associates tobacco with women:
in Der Zauberberg it is often mentioned that Castorp considers his cigar
brand akin to a lover – and indeed, he calls it fondly “my Maria”.
However, the function of cigars here is not so much to be substitutes for
women, but to provide the identity of the smoker with a sense of
continuance and stability.
      Nonetheless, Castorp fails to ensure such stability for himself, and
it turns out that cigars are in fact the signs of the uncertainty
surrounding his personal and social identities. Most of the time in the
story, Castorp does not feel like himself and he does not belong to the
community of the sanatorium or to the people living outside the place
either. Soon after his arrival, he no longer knows who he is (or was), and
the changes in his cigar smoking coincide with his loss of selfhood. At
the beginning of the novel, he seems to have a very balanced
relationship with his Maria Mancinis, but soon after that, when he has
settled down at the sanatorium, he experiences recurring problems with
the taste of his cigars. He had thought himself “a man of Maria” but, in
the new situation, this relationship starts to signify the loss of his former
identity; his enjoyment of Maria has for some reason turned into its
opposite, into disgust:




                                                                                 13
Mika Hallila, Two Smokers in Search of Identity



          “I’ve been asking myself the whole time what was the matter,
      and now I realize that my Maria is the problem. I swear to you, it
      tastes like papier-mâché, exactly if I had a terribly upset stomach.”
          […] “Every puff is a disappointment; there’s no point in forcing
      it.” (ibid.:50)
          […]
          He sat down in Joachim’s large flowered armchair–there was a
      chair like that in every room–and lit a Maria Mancini. It tasted like
      paste, like coal, like anything except what it should; nevertheless he
      continued to smoke it […] (ibid.: 86)

     The radical change in the smoker’s satisfaction with his cigars
coincides with his identity crisis, and even if Castorp occasionally
recovers the capability to enjoy his cigars, these remain signs of his
increasingly precarious individuality. Hence, even if Maria “is the
problem”, Castorp continues “to smoke it” as he tries to ensure the
steadiness of his selfhood. However, in contrast to Alastalo’s pipes,
Castorp’s cigars do not offer any possibility to define a stable personal
or social identity within the community. On the contrary. Living in the
sanatorium, Castorp progressively loses both his identity and his sense
of time. The representation of his tobacco use is linked to this loss: he
then changes cigar brands. But this change does not improve his
growing unstable identity. The new brand does not allow Castorp to
reflect the social hierarchies or personal aspects of his self either, and
these cigars actually perpetuate the sense of identity instability:

         He no longer ordered his Maria Mancinis from there [from
      outside the sanatorium]. He had found another brand up here, one
      that suited him and to which he was now as faithful as he had once
      been to his former girlfriend–a brand that would even have helped
      polar explorers get over their worst hardships in the ice and that
      when you smoked it made you feel as if you were lying on the beach
      and would be able to carry on. It had an especially well cured
      wrapper and was named Oath of Rütli; somewhat stubbier than
      Maria, mouse gray in color with a bluish band, it was very tractable
      and mild by nature; it had a snow-white durable ash that still



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     showed the veins of the wrapper. It drew so evenly that it could
     easily have served as an hourglass for the man enjoying it, and,
     indeed given Hans Castorp’s needs, did serve as such, for he no
     longer carried his pocket watch. (ibid.: 698–699)

     In this episode, Oath of Rütlis have come to replace Maria
Mancinis, and Hans Castorp has lost his interest in time: «he no longer
carried his pocket watch». The cigars here represent the loss of both time
and identity since, even if the new brand «suited him», its ash still «drew
so evenly that it could easily have served as an hourglass». The fact that
the ash of his new cigars really serves as the only thing from which he
can measure time, means that the measuring of time has lost its meaning
in Castorp’s life. Time has become meaningless for him, and as Oath of
Rütli “suits him”, timelessness can be interpreted as analogous to his
identity. His identity no longer has stability in time. Crucially, in
contrast to Maria Mancinis, Oath of Rütlis are not described as
companions or reliable friends. Rather, they represent the solitude to
which Castorp has now been driven, which only highlights the cultural
meaning of the cigar as a sign of unstable identity.

                             Conclusion
     As this analysis has shown, Volter Kilpi’s Alastalon salissa and
Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg represent, respectively, pipe smoking
and cigar smoking as important parts of their characters’ identities. The
personal and social individualities of both Härkäniemi and Hans
Castorp are here defined in terms of tobacco use. Pursuing other studies
of tobacco use representations in literature, this investigation further
demonstrates that, as identity signs, pipes and cigars possess distinct
cultural meanings. For Härkäniemi, the pipe is an object with which he
can define his self-concept and his position in the social hierarchy of the
patriarchal community. In Alastalon salissa, pipe smoking functions as a
sign of acceptance of one’s social identity in a male community. The pipe
signifies the stability of the identity. While Hans Castorp’s cigars also
function as signs related to his identity, they do not provide the


                                                                               15
Mika Hallila, Two Smokers in Search of Identity



character with a chance to define a stable self-concept or social identity.
In Der Zauberberg, the cigar is a sign of identity instability.
     In the context of “the semiotics of tobacco” these results
supplement earlier analyses of cultural meanings of pipes and cigars
such as David Grylls’ analysis on Victorian fiction. In this essay, the
focus was not on historical context but on the problems of fictive
characters’ identities. The comparison of these two novels therefore
highlights the fact that the idea of tobacco as a sign applies to the
analysis of the representations of tobacco use in literature, in terms of
identity.




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Mika Hallila, Two Smokers in Search of Identity



Ricœur, Paul, Time and Narrative Vol. 2, Temps et Récit, vol. 2, 1984, transl.
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                                      The author
Mika Hallila

       Mika Hallila has been a visiting professor of Finnish literature and
culture at the University of Warsaw since 1st of August 2013. Earlier,
during the years 1999–2013, Hallila taught and conducted research in
two Finnish universities, University of Joensuu and University of
Jyväskylä, in different academic positions (three years as a professor of
literature). Hallila is the docent in literary theory at the University of
Eastern Finland. The main themes of his research are literary theory,
especially theory of the novel, and contemporary novel. Most of his
publications —including the doctoral dissertation Metafiktion käsite.
Teoreettinen, kontekstuaalinen ja historiallinen tutkimus (“The Concept of
Metafiction. Theoretic, Contextual, and Historical Study”; in Finnish
[2006]) —are dealing with these very themes. Professor Hallila has,
among other things, co-edited with four other scholars the large two-
volume research anthology of contemporary Finnish literature (Suomen
nykykirjallisuus 1–2; “Contemporary Finnish Literature 1–2” [2013]).
Recently, one of his main research interests has been the cultural
representations of smoking in Finnish literature.



        Email: m.hallila@uw.edu.pl


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                             The paper
Date sent: 31/01/2017
Date accepted: 15/04/2017
Date published: 31/05/2017



                    How to quote this paper
Hallila, Mika, “Two Smokers in Search of Identity: Comparing the
Representations of Tobacco Use in Alastalon salissa and Der Zauberberg”,
Longing and Belonging/ Désir et Appartenance, Eds. Massimo Fusillo,
Brigitte Le Juez, Beatrice Seligardi, Between, VII.13 (2017),
http://www.betweenjournal.it/




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