Part 8 (1/2)

Hans Castorp and Joachim were in silent agreement about this talk of Settembrini's: they found it querulous and seditious in tone, if also highly entertaining and ”plastic” in its verbal pungency and animus. Hans Castorp laughed good-humouredly over the ”bundle of hay,” likewise over the ”beautiful characters”-or, rather, the drolly despairing way Settembrini spoke of them.

Then he said: ”Good Lord, yes, the society is always mixed in a place like this, I suppose. One's not allowed to choose one's table-mates-that would lead to goodness knows what! At our table there is a woman of the same sort, a Frau Stohr-I think you know her? Ghastly ignorant, I must say-sometimes when she rattles on, one doesn't know where to look. But she complains a lot about her temperature, and how relaxed she feels, and I'm afraid she is by no means a light case. That seems so strange to me: diseased and stupid both-I don't exactly know how to express it, but it gives me a most peculiar feeling, when somebody is so stupid, and then ill into the bargain. It must be the most melancholy thing in life. One doesn't know what to make of it; one wants to feel a proper respect for illness, of course-after all there is a certain dignity about it, if you like. But when such asininity comes on top of it- 'cosmic' for 'cosmetic,' and other howlers like that-one doesn't know whether to laugh or to weep. It is a regular dilemma for the human feelings-I find it more deplorable than I can say. What I mean is, it's not consistent, it doesn't hang together; I can't get used to the idea. One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual. At least as a rule-or I don't know, perhaps I am saying more than I could stand for,” he finished. ”It was only because we happened to speak of it”-He stopped in confusion. Joachim too looked rather uncomfortable, and Settembrini lifted his eyebrows and said not a word, with an air of waiting politely for the end of his speech. He was, in fact, holding off until Hans Castorp should break down entirely before he answered. But now he said: ”Sapristi, Engineer! You are displaying a most unexpected gift of philosophy! By your own theory, you must be yourself more ailing than you look, you are so obviously possessed of esprit esprit. But, if you will permit me to say so, I can hardly subscribe to your deductions; I must deny them; my position is one of absolute dissent. I am, as you see, rather intolerant than otherwise in things of the intellect; I would rather be reproached as a pedant than suffer to pa.s.s unchallenged a point of view which seemed to me so untenable as this of yours.” ”But, Herr Settembrini, I-”

”Permit me. I know what you would say: that the views you represent are not, of necessity, your own; that you have only chanced upon that one of all the possible ones there are, as it were, in the air, and you try it on, without personal responsibility. It befits your time of life, thus to avoid the settled convictions of the mature man, and to make experiments with a variety of points of view. Placet experiri Placet experiri,” he quoted, giving the Italian p.r.o.nunciation to the c. ”That is a good saying. But what troubles me is that your experiment should lead you in just this direction. I doubt if it is a question of sheer chance. I fear the presence of a general tendency, which threatens to crystallize into a trait of character, unless one makes head against it. I feel it my duty, therefore, to correct you. You said that the sight of dullness and disease going hand in hand must be the most melancholy in life. I grant you, I grant you that. I too prefer an intelligent ailing person to a consumptive idiot. But I take issue where you regard the combination of disease with dullness as a sort of aesthetic inconsistency, an error in taste on the part of nature, a 'dilemma for the human feelings,' as you were pleased to express yourself. When you professed to regard disease as something so refined, so- what did you call it?-possessing a 'certain dignity'-that it doesn't 'go with' stupidity. That was the expression you used. Well, I say no! Disease has nothing refined about it, nothing dignified. Such a conception is in itself pathological, or at least tends in that direction. Perhaps I may best arouse your mistrust of it if I tell you how ancient and ugly this conception is. It comes down to us from a past seething with superst.i.tion, in which the idea of humanity had degenerated and deteriorated into sheer caricature; a past full of fears, in which well-being and harmony were regarded as suspect and emanating from the devil, whereas infirmity was equivalent to a free pa.s.s to heaven. Reason and enlightenment have banished the darkest of these shadows that tenanted the soul of man-not entirely, for even yet the conflict is in progress. But this conflict, my dear sirs, means work, earthly labour, labour for the earth, for the honour and the interests of mankind; and by that conflict daily steeled anew, the powers of reason and enlightenment will in the end set humanity wholly free and lead it in the path of progress and civilization toward an even brighter, milder, and purerlight.”

”Lord bless us,” thought Hans Castorp, in shamefaced consternation. ”What a homily! How, I wonder, did I call all that down on my head? I must say, I find it rather prosy. And why does he talk so much about work all the time? It is his constant theme; not a very pertinent one up here, one would think.” Aloud he said: ”How beautifully you do talk, Herr Settembrini! What you say is very well worth hearing- and could not be more-more plastically expressed, I should think.”

”Backsliding,” continued Settembrini, as he lifted his umbrella away above the head of a pa.s.ser-by, ”spiritual backsliding in the direction of that dark and tortured age, that, believe me, Engineer, is disease-a disease already sufficiently studied, to which various names have been given: one from the terminology of aesthetics and psychology, another from the domain of politics-all of them academic terms which are not to the point, and which I will spare you. But as in the spiritual life everything is interrelated, one thing growing out of another, and since one may not reach out one's little finger to the Devil, lest he take the whole hand, and therewith the whole man; since, on the other side, a sound principle can produce only sound results, no matter which end one begins at-so disease, far from being something too refined, too worthy of reverence, to be a.s.sociated with dullness, is, in itself, a degradation of mankind, a degradation painful and offensive to conceive. It may, in the individual case, be treated with consideration; but to pay it homage is-mark my words-an aberration, and the beginning of intellectual confusion. This woman you have mentioned to me-you will pardon me if I do not trouble to recall her name-ah, thank you, Frau Stohr-it is not, it seems to me, the case of this ridiculous woman which places the human feelings in the dilemma to which you refer. She is ill, and she is limited; her case is hopeless, and the matter is simple. There is nothing left but to pity and shrug one's shoulders. The dilemma, my dear sir, the tragedy, begins where nature has been cruel enough to split the personality, to shatter its harmony by imprisoning a n.o.ble and ardent spirit within a body not fit for the stresses of life. Have you heard of Leopardi, Engineer, or you, Lieutenant? An unhappy poet of my own land, a crippled, ailing man, born with a great soul, which his sufferings were constantly humiliating and dragging down into the depths of irony-its lamentations rend the heart to hear.”

And Settembrini began to recite in Italian, letting the beautiful syllables melt upon his tongue, as he closed his eyes and swayed his head from side to side, heedless that his hearers understood not a syllable. Obviously it was all done for the sake of impressing his companions with his memory and his p.r.o.nunciation.

”But you don't understand; you hear the words, yet without grasping their tragic import. My dear sirs, can you comprehend what it means when I tell you that it was the love of woman which the crippled Leopardi was condemned to renounce; that this it princ.i.p.ally was which rendered him incapable of avoiding the embitterment of his soul? Fame and virtue were shadows to him, nature an evil power-and so she is, stupid and evil both, I agree with him there-he even despaired, horrible to say, he even despaired of science and progress! Here, Engineer, is the true tragedy. Here you have your 'dilemma for the human feelings,' here, and not in the case of that wretched woman, with whose name I really cannot burden my memory. Do not, for heaven's sake, speak to me of the enn.o.bling effects of physical suffering! A soul without a body is as inhuman and horrible as a body without a soul-though the latter is the rule and the former the exception. It is the body, as a rule, which flourishes exceedingly, which draws everything to itself, which usurps the predominant place and lives repulsively emanc.i.p.ated from the soul. A human being who is first of all an invalid is all all body; therein lies his inhumanity and his debas.e.m.e.nt. In most cases he is little better than a carca.s.s-” body; therein lies his inhumanity and his debas.e.m.e.nt. In most cases he is little better than a carca.s.s-”

”Funny,” Joachim said, bending forward to look at his cousin, on Herr Settembrini's farther side. ”You were saying something quite like that just lately.” ”Was I?” said Hans Castorp. ”Yes, it may be something of the kind went through my head.”

Settembrini was silent a few paces. Then he said: ”So much the better. So much the better if that is true. I am far from claiming to expound an original philosophy-such is not my office. If our engineer here has been making observations in harmony with my own, that only confirms my surmise that he is an intellectual amateur and up to the present, as is the wont of gifted youth, still experimenting with various points of view. The young man with parts is no unwritten page, he is rather one upon which all the writing has already been done, in sympathetic ink, the good and the bad together; it is the schoolmaster's task to bring out the good, to obliterate for ever the bad, by the methods of his profession.-You have been making purchases?” he asked, in a lighter tone. ”No,” Hans Castorp said. ”That is, nothing but-”

”We ordered a pair of blankets for my cousin,” Joachim answered unconcernedly.

”For the afternoon cure-it's got so beastly cold; and I am supposed to do as the Romans do, up here,” Hans Castorp said, laughing and looking at the ground. ”Ah ha! Blankets-the cure,” Settembrini said. ”Yes, yes. In fact: placet experiri placet experiri,” he repeated, with his Italian p.r.o.nunciation, and took his leave, for their conversation had brought them to the door of the sanatorium, where they greeted the lame concierge in his lodge. Settembrini turned off into one of the sitting-rooms, to read the newspapers before luncheon. He evidently meant to cut the second rest period. ”Bless us and keep us!” Hans Castorp said to Joachim, as they stood in the lift. ”What a pedagogue it is! He said himself that he had the 'pedagogic itch.' One has to watch out with him, not to say more than one means, or he is down on you at once with all his doctrines. But after all, it is worth listening to, he talks so well; the words come jumping out of his mouth so round and appetizing-when I listen to him, I keep seeing a picture of fresh hot rolls in my mind's eye.”

Joachim laughed. ”Better not tell him that. He'd be very put out I'm sure, to hear the sort of image his words call up in your mind.”

”Think so? I'm not so sure. I get the impression that it is not simply and solely for the sake of edifying us that he talks; perhaps that's only a secondary motive. The important one, I feel sure, is the talk itself, the way he makes his words roll out, so resilient, just like a lot of rubber b.a.l.l.s! He is very pleased when you notice the effect. I suppose Magnus, the brewer, was rather stupid, after all, with his 'beautiful characters'; but I do think Settembrini might have said what the point really is in literature. I did not like to ask, for fear of putting my foot in it; I am not just clear about it, and this is the first time I have ever known a literary man. But if it isn't the beautiful characters, then obviously it must be the beautiful words, and that is the impression I get from being in Settembrini's society. What a vocabulary! and he uses the word virtue just like that, without the slightest embarra.s.sment. What do you make of that? I've never taken the word in my mouth as long as I've lived; in school, when the book said 'virtus,' we always just said 'valour' or something like that. It certainly gave me a queer feeling in my inside, to hear him. And it makes me nervous to hear him scolding, about the cold, and Behrens, and Frau Magnus because she is losing weight, and about pretty well everything. He is a born objector, I saw that at once, down on the existing order; and that always gives me the impression that the person is we always just said 'valour' or something like that. It certainly gave me a queer feeling in my inside, to hear him. And it makes me nervous to hear him scolding, about the cold, and Behrens, and Frau Magnus because she is losing weight, and about pretty well everything. He is a born objector, I saw that at once, down on the existing order; and that always gives me the impression that the person is

spoilt-I can't help it.”

”You say that,” Joachim answered consideringly, ”and yet he has a kind of pride about him that makes an altogether different impression: as of a man who has great respect for himself, or for humanity in general; and I like that about him; it has something good, in my eyes.”

”You are right, there,” Hans Castorp answered. ”He's even austere; he makes one feel rather uncomfortable, as if you were-well, shall I say as if you were being taken to task? That's not such a bad way to describe it. Can you believe it, I had the feeling he was not at all pleased at my buying the blankets? He had something against it, and he kept dwelling on it.”

”Oh, no,” Joachim said after reflecting, in some surprise. ”How could he have? I shouldn't think so.” And then, thermometer in mouth, with sack and pack, he went to lie down, while Hans Castorp began at once to wash and change for dinner-which was rather less than an hour away.

Excursus on the Sense of Time

WHEN they came upstairs after the meal, the parcel containing the blankets lay on a chair in Hans Castorp's room; and that afternoon he made use of them for the first time. The experienced Joachim instructed him in. the art of wrapping himself up, as practised in the sanatorium; they all did it, and each new-comer had to learn. First the covers were spread, one after the other, over the chair, so that a sizable piece hung down at the foot. Then you sat down and began to put the inner one about you: first lengthwise, on both sides, up to the shoulders, and then from the feet up, stooping over as you sat and grasping the folded-over end, first from one side and then from the other, taking care to fit it neatly into the length, in order to ensure the greatest possible smoothness and evenness. Then you did precisely the same thing with the outer blanket-it was somewhat more difficult to handle, and our neophyte groaned not a little as he stooped and stretched out his arms to practise the grips his cousin showed him. Only a few old hands, Joachim said, could wield both blankets at once, flinging them into position with three self-a.s.sured motions. This was a rare and enviable facility, to which belonged not only long years of practice, but a certain knack as well. Hans Castorp had to laugh at this, lying back in his chair with aching muscles; Joachim did not at once see anything funny in what he had said, and looked at him dubiously, but finally laughed too.

”There,” he said, when Hans Castorp lay at last limbless and cylindrical in his chair, with the yielding roll at the back of his neck, quite worn out with all these gymnastic exercises; ”there, nothing can touch you now, not even if we were to have ten below zero.” He withdrew behind the part.i.tion, to do himself up in his turn.

That about the ten below zero Hans Castorp doubted; he was even now distinctly cold. He s.h.i.+vered repeatedly as he lay looking out through the wooden arch at the reeking, dripping damp outside, which seemed on the point of pa.s.sing over into snow. It was strange that with all that humidity his cheeks still burned with a dry heat, as though he were sitting in an over-heated room. He felt absurdly tired from the practice of putting on his rugs; actually, as he held up Ocean Steams.h.i.+ps Ocean Steams.h.i.+ps to read it, the book shook in his hands. So very fit he certainly was not-and totally anaemic, as Hofrat Behrens had said; this, no doubt, was why he was so susceptible to cold. But such unpleasing sensations were outweighed by the great comfort of his position, the una.n.a.lysable, the almost mysterious properties of his reclining-chair, which he had applauded even on his first experience of it, and which rea.s.serted themselves in the happiest way whenever he resorted to it anew. Whether due to the character of the upholstering, the inclination of the chair-back, the exactly proper width and height of the arms, or only to the appropriate consistency of the neck roll, the result was that no more comfortable provision for relaxed limbs could be conceived than that purveyed by this excellent chair. The heart of Hans Castorp rejoiced in the blessed fact that two vacant and securely tranquil hours lay before him, dedicated by the rules of the house to the princ.i.p.al cure of the day; he felt it-though himself but a guest up here-to be a most suitable arrangement. For he was by nature and temperament pa.s.sive, could sit without occupation hours on end, and loved, as we know, to see time s.p.a.cious before him, and not to have the sense of its pa.s.sing banished, wiped out or eaten up by prosaic activity. At four o'clock he partook of afternoon tea, with cake and jam. Followed a little movement in the open air, then rest again, then supper-which, like all the other meal-times, afforded a certain stimulus for eye and brain, and a certain sense of strain; after that a peep into one or other of the optical toys, the stereoscope, the kaleidoscope, the cinematograph. It might be still too much to say that Hans Castorp had grown used to the life up here; but at least he did have the daily routine at his fingers' ends. to read it, the book shook in his hands. So very fit he certainly was not-and totally anaemic, as Hofrat Behrens had said; this, no doubt, was why he was so susceptible to cold. But such unpleasing sensations were outweighed by the great comfort of his position, the una.n.a.lysable, the almost mysterious properties of his reclining-chair, which he had applauded even on his first experience of it, and which rea.s.serted themselves in the happiest way whenever he resorted to it anew. Whether due to the character of the upholstering, the inclination of the chair-back, the exactly proper width and height of the arms, or only to the appropriate consistency of the neck roll, the result was that no more comfortable provision for relaxed limbs could be conceived than that purveyed by this excellent chair. The heart of Hans Castorp rejoiced in the blessed fact that two vacant and securely tranquil hours lay before him, dedicated by the rules of the house to the princ.i.p.al cure of the day; he felt it-though himself but a guest up here-to be a most suitable arrangement. For he was by nature and temperament pa.s.sive, could sit without occupation hours on end, and loved, as we know, to see time s.p.a.cious before him, and not to have the sense of its pa.s.sing banished, wiped out or eaten up by prosaic activity. At four o'clock he partook of afternoon tea, with cake and jam. Followed a little movement in the open air, then rest again, then supper-which, like all the other meal-times, afforded a certain stimulus for eye and brain, and a certain sense of strain; after that a peep into one or other of the optical toys, the stereoscope, the kaleidoscope, the cinematograph. It might be still too much to say that Hans Castorp had grown used to the life up here; but at least he did have the daily routine at his fingers' ends.

There is, after all, something peculiar about the process of habituating oneself in a new place, the often laborious fitting in and getting used, which one undertakes for its own sake, and of set purpose to break it all off as soon as it is complete, or not long thereafter, and to return to one's former state. It is an interval, an interlude, inserted, with the object of recreation, into the tenor of life's main concerns; its purpose the relief of the organism, which is perpetually busy at its task of self-renewal, and which was in danger, almost in process, of being vitiated, slowed down, relaxed, by the bald, unjointed monotony of its daily course. But what then is the cause of this relaxation, this slowing-down that takes place when one does the same thing for too long at a time? It is not so much physical or mental fatigue or exhaustion, for if that were the case, then complete rest would be the best restorative. It is rather something psychical; it means that the perception of time tends, through periods of unbroken uniformity, to fall away; the perception of time, so closely bound up with the consciousness of life that the one may not be weakened without the other suffering a sensible impairment. Many false conceptions are held concerning the nature of tedium. In general it is thought that the interestingness and novelty of the time-content are what ”make the time pa.s.s”; that is to say, shorten it; whereas monotony and emptiness check and restrain its flow. This is only true with reservations. Vacuity, monotony, have, indeed, the property of lingering out the moment and the hour and of making them tiresome. But they are capable of contracting and dissipating the larger, the very large timeunits, to the point of reducing them to nothing at all. And conversely, a full and interesting content can put wings to the hour and the day; yet it will lend to the general pa.s.sage of time a weightiness, a breadth and solidity which cause the eventful years to flow far more slowly than those poor, bare, empty ones over which the wind pa.s.ses and they are gone. Thus what we call tedium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent upon monotony. Great s.p.a.ces of time pa.s.sed in unbroken uniformity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear; when one day is like all the others, then they are all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares. Habituation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time; which explains why young years pa.s.s slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon its course. We are aware that the intercalation of periods of change and novelty is the only means by which we can refresh our sense of time, strengthen, r.e.t.a.r.d, and rejuvenate it, and therewith renew our perception of life itself. Such is the purpose of our changes of air and scene, of all our sojourns at cures and bathing resorts; it is the secret of the healing power of change and incident. Our first days in a new place, time has a youthful, that is to say, a broad and sweeping, flow, persisting for some six or eight days. Then, as one ”gets used to the place,” a gradual shrinkage makes itself felt. He who clings or, better expressed, wishes to cling to life, will shudder to see how the days grow light and lighter, how they scurry by like dead leaves, until the last week, of some four, perhaps, is uncannily fugitive and fleet. On the other hand, the quickening of the sense of time will flow out beyond the interval and rea.s.sert itself after the return to ordinary existence: the first days at home after the holiday will be lived with a broader flow, freshly and youthfully-but only the first few, for one adjusts oneself more quickly to the rule than to the exception; and if the sense of time be already weakened by age, or-and this is a sign of low vitality-it was never very well developed, one drowses quickly back into the old life, and after four-and-twenty hours it is as though one had never been away, and the journey had been but a watch in the night.

We have introduced these remarks here only because our young Hans Castorp had something like them in mind when, a few days later, he said to his cousin, and fixed him with his bloodshot eyes: ”I shall never cease to find it strange that the time seems to go so slowly in a new place. I mean-of course it isn't a question of my being bored; on the contrary, I might say that I am royally entertained. But when I look back-in retrospect, that is, you understand-it seems to me I've been up here goodness only knows how long; it seems an eternity back to the time when I arrived, and did not quite understand that I was there, and you said: 'Just get out here'-don't you remember?-That has nothing whatever to do with reason, or with the ordinary ways of measuring time; it is purely a matter of feeling. Certainly it would be nonsense for me to say: 'I feel I have been up here two months'-it would be silly. All I can say is 'very long.' ”

”Yes,” Joachim answered, thermometer in mouth, ”I profit by it too; while you are here, I can sort of hang on by you, as it were.” Hans Castorp laughed, to hear his cousin speak thus, quite simply, without explanation.

He Practises His French