The Magic Mountain

by Thomas Mann

  These ideas, both as ideals and efforts of the will, Settembrini remarked, had been handed down as a tradition in his family. Three generations had dedicated their lives and intellects to them—grandfather, father, and son, each in his own fashion, the father no less than Grandfather Giuseppe, though unlike him, he had not been a political agitator and freedom-fighter, but a quiet and gentle scholar, a humanist at his desk. But what was humanism? Love of humankind, nothing more, and so it, too, was political, it, too, was a rebellion against everything that had soiled and degraded the ideal of humanity. Humanism had been accused of exaggerating the importance of form; but it cultivated beautiful form purely for the sake of the dignity of man—in brilliant antithesis to the Middle Ages, which had sunk not only into misanthropy and superstition, but also into ignominious formlessness. From the very first, his father had fought for the cause of humanity, for earthly interests, for freedom of thought and the pursuit of happiness, and had firmly believed that we can leave heaven to the birds. Prometheus! He had been the first humanist and was identical with Satana, whom Carducci had apostrophized in his hymn. Oh, good God, if only the cousins could have come to Bologna and heard that old enemy of the Church taunting and inveighing against the Christian sensitivities of the Romantics. Against Manzoni’s Sacred Hymns. Against the shadowy moonshine of the Romanticismo, which he had compared to “Luna, that pallid nun of heaven.” Per Bacco, what an exquisite delight it had been! If only they could have also heard Carducci’s interpretation of Dame—celebrating him as a citizen of a great city, who had defended the revolutionary and reforming spirit of human enterprise against asceticism and all denial of the world. Because it had not been the sickly and mystagogic Beatrice whom the poet had honored in his poem with the title of “donna gentile e pietosa,” but rather his wife, the embodiment of this-worldly knowledge and practical, lifelong labor.

  And so now Hans Castorp had heard a thing or two about Dante, and from the best of sources. Given the fact that it came from a windbag, he did not trust the information entirely, but it was worth hearing about how Dante had been a quick-witted citizen of a great city. And it was likewise worthwhile listening to Settembrini talk about himself, declaring that he, the grandson Lodovico, had united the propensities of his two immediate forebears—the political bent of his grandfather and the humanistic bent of his father—by becoming a man of letters, a free-lance writer. For literature was nothing other than the union of humanism and politics, which could come about all the more easily since humanism was already politics and politics already humanism. Hans Castorp pricked up his ears at this and took pains to understand it, because he had reason to hope that he would now be able to grasp the nature of Magnus the brewer’s crass ignorance and learn in what way literature was something totally different from “beautiful characters.” And had the cousins ever heard of a Signore Brunetto, Settembrini asked, Brunetto Latini, who had become the town clerk of Florence around 1250, and had written a book on virtue and vice? He was the great master who had first given the Florentines their polish and taught them both how to speak and the fine art of guiding their republic by the rules of politics.

  “There you have it, gentlemen!” Settembrini cried. “There you have it!” And he spoke now about the “Word,” about the cult of the Word, about eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. Because the Word was the glory of humankind, and it alone gave dignity to life. Not just humanism, but humanity itself, man’s dignity and self-respect—they were inseparable from the Word, from literature. (“You see,” Hans Castorp said later to his cousin, “you see? Literature is a matter of beautiful words. I saw that right off. “) And politics were bound up with literature, too—or rather they were derived from the oneness of humanity and literature. For the beautiful Word gave birth to the beautiful deed.

  “Two hundred years ago,” Settembrini said, “you had a poet in your own country, a fine old confabulator, who set great store by beautiful handwriting, because he said it leads to a beautiful style. He should have taken that one step further and said that a beautiful style leads to beautiful actions.” Writing beautifully was almost synonymous with thinking beautifully, and from there it was not far to acting beautifully. All moral conduct and all moral perfection emanated from the spirit of literature, from the spirit of human dignity, which simultaneously was also the spirit of humanity and of politics. Yes, they were all one and the same force, one and the same idea, and could be summarized in a single word. And what was that word? Well, it consisted of familiar syllables, but the cousins had probably never truly grasped their meaning and majesty. And that word was—civilization! And as Settembrini released the word from his lips, he thrust his small yellow right hand into the air, as if proposing a toast.

  Young Hans Castorp found all this well worth listening to—not that he was obliged to, of course, it was more an experiment—but in any case, well worth listening to, and he said as much to Joachim Ziemssen, who had just stuck a thermometer in his mouth and so could only mumble a reply and then became too involved in reading the numbers and entering them on his chart to be able to comment on Settembrini’s views. Hans Castorp, as we have said, took note of them in his kindhearted way and he opened himself to them as a way of testing them—from which it became particularly clear that the waking Hans Castorp was a very different person from the fatuously dreaming Hans Castorp, who had called Settembrini an “organ-grinder” to his face and tried with all his might to push him out of the way because he was “bothering” him. Awake, however, he listened to him politely and attentively and tried to be fair, compensating for or suppressing feelings that he felt rising in opposition to his mentor’s opinions and characterizations. For it cannot be denied that opposition was stirring in his soul—both the sort that had always been there naturally from the start and the sort that arose specifically from the present situation, partly from indirect observation, partly from personal experience among these people up here.

  What a piece of work is a man, and how easily conscience betrays him. He listens to the voice of duty—and what he hears is the license of passion. And out of a sense of duty to be fair and balanced, Hans Castorp listened to Herr Settembrini. With the best of intentions he tested the man’s views on reason, the world republic, and beautiful style—and was prepared to be influenced by them. And each time, he found it all the more permissible afterward to let his thoughts and dreams run free in another direction, in the opposite direction. To put our suspicions and true understanding of the matter into words—he had probably listened to Herr Settembrini for one purpose only: to be given carte blanche by his conscience, a license it had been unwilling to grant him at first. And what or who stood on the opposing side of patriotism, the dignity of man, and beautiful literature—the side toward which Hans Castorp believed he should direct his thoughts and deeds? There stood . . . Clavdia Chauchat—listless, worm-eaten, Kirghiz-eyed; and whenever Hans Castorp thought of her (although “thought” is an all-too-inhibited word for describing how he turned inwardly toward her), it seemed to him that he was sitting again in that boat on the lake in Holstein and gazing with dazzled and bewildered eyes out of glassy daylight across to the eastern sky and the moonlit night draped in a web of mist.

  THE THERMOMETER

  Hans Castorp’s week here ran from Tuesday to Tuesday, because it was on a Tuesday that he had arrived. A few days had passed since he had gone down to the office and paid his bill for the second week—the modest weekly sum of 160 francs. And it was modest and fair to his mind, even if you disregarded the priceless benefits of his stay—which were not on the bill because they were priceless; but then neither were certain other entertainments, which could very well have been calculated, the band concerts every two weeks, for example, or Dr. Krokowski’s lectures. The bill was solely for room and board, for the basic services of the hotel—comfortable lodging and five prodigious meals.

  “It’s not so much, it’s rather cheap. You can’t complain they’re overcharging,” the v
isitor said to the long-term guest. “You need around six hundred fifty francs a month for room and board, and that’s with medical treatment included. Fine. Let’s assume you give out about thirty francs a month in tips—if you’re a decent fellow and like to see friendly faces. That makes six hundred eighty. Fine. And now you’ll say that there are other fees and expenses. You have to lay out money for drinks, toiletries, cigars, an occasional excursion, a carriage ride if you like, and now and then a bill for the cobbler or tailor. Fine, but even with all that included, try as you will, you’ll still be under a thousand francs a month. That’s not even eight hundred marks! Which adds up to less than ten thousand marks a year. It certainly can’t be more than that. That’s all it costs you.”

  “First-rate mental arithmetic,” Joachim said. “I didn’t know you were so good at it. And how generous of you to figure up the charges by the year, too—you’ve definitely learned a thing or two up here. But your figures are on the high side, you know. I don’t smoke cigars, and I hope I won’t need to have any suits made for me up here, thanks all the same.”

  “So that was still too high,” Hans Castorp said, slightly confused. And no matter how it had come about that he had included cigars and new suits in his cousin’s bill, as far as the nimble mental arithmetic went, that was nothing more than intentional deception about his natural talents. Because as in everything else, Hans Castorp was somewhat slow and uninspired at that, too; and his quick reckoning in this case was not ad lib, but the result of preparation, with paper and pencil in fact, carried out one evening when he had been taking his rest cure (because he had begun taking it in the evenings now, too, since everyone else did). On a sudden inspiration, he had got up out of his splendid lounge chair and gone back into the room for what he needed to do the figuring. And he had determined that his cousin, or rather, anyone just in general would need, all things considered, twelve thousand francs a year here. Just for the fun of it, he had pointed out to himself that his own funds were more than adequate for a life up here, seeing as he was a man with an annual income of eighteen to nineteen thousand francs.

  And so three days had passed since the bill for his second week had been taken care of with a thank-you and a receipt—which is the same thing as saying that he was now in the middle of the third and last week of his scheduled stay up here. On the coming Sunday he would be present for another of the regular fortnightly band concerts, and on Monday he would likewise attend another of Dr. Krokowski’s fortnightly lectures—or so he said to himself and to Joachim. On Tuesday or Wednesday, however, he would depart, and leave Joachim behind alone, poor Joachim, for whom Rhadamanthus had decreed who-knew-how-many more months and whose gentle black eyes dimmed with melancholy every time Hans Castorp made a passing reference to his approaching departure. Yes, good Lord, where had his vacation gone! It had flowed past, sped past, vanished—and one could not rightly say just how. After all, they had intended to spend twenty-one days together—quite a number really, too many to take them all in at once at the beginning. And suddenly there were only three or four paltry days left, a remnant hardly worth considering, though given some weight by the two upcoming periodical deviations in the daily routine, but already filled with thoughts of packing and farewell. Three weeks were as good as nothing up here—they had all told him that right off. The smallest unit of time here was the month, Settembrini had said, and since Hans Castorp’s stay came in under that, it was not really a stay at all—he was merely dropping by, as Director Behrens had put it. He wondered if the increase in one’s general metabolism here made three weeks seem no more than a moment or two. Such a velocity of life was some consolation for Joachim in light of the five months that still awaited him—if five would in fact be the end of it. But they should have paid more careful attention to time during those three weeks, the way you did measuring your temperature, when the prescribed seven minutes became a significant period of time. Hans Castorp felt sincerely sorry for his cousin—you could read in his eyes his sadness at the impending loss of a human companion—but he pitied him most when he thought about how the poor fellow would have to stay on here without him, whereas he would be living down in the flatlands, hard at work in the service of transportation technology, which brought nations closer together. There were moments when he felt the pity as a burning pain in his chest, felt it so intensely that now and again he seriously doubted he would be able to bring himself to leave Joachim here alone. And so pity became at times a searing pain, and that was probably the reason why, all on his own, he spoke less and less about his departure. It was Joachim who would bring the conversation around to it once in a while. Given his natural tact and delicacy, Hans Castorp seemed not to want to think of it until the very last moment.

  “Well, at least we can hope,” Joachim said, “that you’ve recuperated here with us and will feel refreshed once you’re back down.”

  “Yes, and I’ll give everyone your greetings,” Hans Castorp replied, “and tell them that you’ll follow in five months at the most. Recuperated? You’re asking if I’m feeling better after these few days, is that it? I would certainly like to think so. A certain amount of relaxation probably comes just by itself even after a short time. Although there were a lot of novel things to experience up here, novel in every regard, very exciting, but also very taxing to both mind and body. I don’t have the feeling that I’ve quite got used to it all yet and acclimatized myself, although that would be a precondition for any real recuperation. Maria is back to her old self, thank God, she’s been tasting good for several days now. But from time to time my handkerchief shows a little red when I use it, and it doesn’t look as if I’m going to be rid of either this damn flushed face or this silly pounding in my heart before I leave. No, no, you can’t really say I’ve acclimatized myself, but how could anyone in such a short time? It takes longer to get acclimatized here, to get used to all these new impressions. It’s only then that you can begin to recuperate and build up protein. And that’s a shame, because it was definitely a mistake for me not to have arranged for a longer stay—more time certainly would have been available. I feel as if once I’m back home in the flatlands I’m going to have to recuperate from my recuperation and sleep for three weeks, that’s how run-down I feel sometimes. And then to top it all there’s this catarrh I’ve caught.”

  Indeed, it did look more and more as if Hans Castorp would be returning to the flatlands with a first-class case of the sniffles. He had caught a cold, presumably from lying outside in the rest cure—the evening rest cure, to carry the presumption further, in which he had been participating for about a week now, despite the cold, damp weather, which did not look as if it would improve before his departure—although he had learned that it was simply not recognized as such, that the notion of bad weather had no right to exist up here, that no one paid it any attention or feared it; and with the docility of youth, with its ability to adapt to the ideas and customs of almost any environment in which it may find itself, Hans Castorp had begun to make this indifference his own. Even when it was raining cats and dogs, you were not allowed to assume that it made the air any less dry. And it probably wasn’t in fact, because it left his head feeling just as hot as before, as if he were sitting in an overheated room or had drunk too much wine. And however cold it got—and it did get very cold—there was no point in his taking refuge in the room, because as long as it wasn’t snowing, there was no heat, so that it was no more comfortable for him to sit in his room than to put on a winter overcoat, artfully wrap himself in his two good camel-hair blankets, and lie out on the balcony. On the contrary, it was better out there, incomparably more comfortable, by any criterion the most agreeable state of affairs that Hans Castorp could remember ever having tried out—a judgment from which he could not be dissuaded by some writer and Carbonaro who made malicious remarks with snide connotations about the “horizontal life.” In particular, he found evenings there agreeable—the little lamp glowing on the table beside him, a Maria between his lips a
nd tasting good once more, he would wrap himself in his blankets and savor the advantages offered by this style of lounge chair, though they were difficult to describe exactly. The tip of his nose froze, of course, and he had to hold his book (it was still Ocean Steamships) in terribly numbed, chapped hands, but he could gaze out through the arches of the balcony to the valley, which was adorned with scattered lights that clustered brightly here and there and from which almost every evening, for at least an hour, music came drifting his way, pleasantly muted, familiar melodic airs: fragments of operas, selections from Carmen, Il Trovatore, or Der Freischütz ; well-constructed, smooth waltzes as well as marches to which you could jauntily rock your head back and forth; and cheerful mazurkas, too. Mazurkas? Marusya was her name, the girl with the little ruby ring—and in the next balcony, behind the thick milk-glass partition, lay Joachim. Now and then Hans Castorp would exchange a word or two with him, though discreetly, out of consideration for other “horizontals.” Life was just as good for Joachim out on his balcony as it was for Hans Castorp—although he was unmusical and unable to enjoy the evening concerts as much. What a shame—instead of listening, he was probably reading his Russian grammar. Hans Castorp, however, left Ocean Steamships lying on his blanket and listened with ardent interest to the music, gazing with contentment into the transparent depths of its structure and taking such genuine delight and inspiration in each melodic invention that he felt nothing but hostility when he occasionally recalled Settembrini’s opinions about music, annoying statements, such as how music was politically suspect—which was no better than Grandfather Giuseppe’s slogan about the July Revolution and the six days of Creation.