The Magic Mountain (86 page)

Herr Settembrini said that Naphta had served up to their audience a mixture of revolution and obscurantism, in which, however, the obscurantist element outweighed the other, to an unsavoury extent. Herr Settembrini was pleased to see his concern for the enlightenment of the people, but his pleasure was marred by the fear that what really actuated Herr Naphta was an instinctive tendency to involve both people and world in analphabetic darkness.

Naphta smiled. “That bogy!” he said. Herr Settembrini believed himself to have uttered a word of terror, to have displayed the head of the gorgon, quite convinced that everybody would promptly pale at the sight. He, Naphta, regretted to disappoint his partner in the dialogue, but the fact was, the sight of the humanistic horror of illiteracy simply made him laugh. Verily, one must be a classical literary man, a
précieux
, a
seicentist
, a Marinist, a Jack-of-all-trades of the
estilo culto
, to attach such exaggerated educational value to knowing how to write, as to imagine that where that knowledge was lacking a night of the spirit must reign. Did Herr Settembrini remember that the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, Wolfram von Eschenbach, could neither read nor write? It had been thought blameworthy, in the Germany of that time, to send a boy to school unless he was to be a priest; and this popular-aristocratic scorn of the literary arts was always the sign of fundamental nobility of soul; the literary person, true son of humanism and bourgeoisiedom, could always, certainly, read and write—whereas the noble, the soldier, and the people never could, or barely—but he could do and understand nothing else in all the wide world, being nothing but a Latinistic windbag, who had power over language, but left life to people who were fit for it. Which was the reason why the literary person always conceived of politics as an empty bag of wind; that is, of rhetoric and “literature,” which in political jargon were called radicalism and democracy—and so on, and so on.

But now Herr Settembrini sprang into the breach. His opponent, he cried, was rash to expose his preference for the intense barbarism of certain epochs, and to pour scorn upon a love of literary form—without which no human nature was possible or thinkable, never had been and never would be! Fundamental nobility? Only misanthropy could so characterize the absence of letters, a rude and tongue-tied materialism. Rather you could only rightly so characterize a certain lordly luxuriance, the
generosità
which displayed itself in ascribing to form a human value independent of its content—the cult of speech as an art for art’s sake, the inheritance bequeathed by the Græco-Roman culture, which the humanists, the
uomini letterati
, had restored, restored at least to the Romance nations, and which was the source of every later significant idealism, even political. “Yes, my dear sir! That which you would disparage as a divorce between literature and life is nothing but a higher unity in the diadem of the beautiful; I am under no apprehension as to the side on which highhearted youth will choose to fight, in a struggle where the opposing camps are literature and barbarism.”

Hans Castorp had been only half listening to the dialogue, being preoccupied by the fundamental nobility of the soldierly representative then present—or rather by the strange new expression in his eyes. He started slightly as he felt himself challenged by Herr Settembrini’s last words, and made such a face as he had the time the humanist would have solemnly constrained him to a choice between East and West: a face full of reserve and obstinacy. He said nothing. They forced everything to an issue, these two—as perhaps one must when one differed—and wrangled bitterly over extremes, whereas it seemed to him, Hans Castorp, as though somewhere between two intolerable positions, between bombastic humanism and analphabetic barbarism, must be something which one might personally call the human. He did not express his thought, for fear of irritating one or other of them; but, wrapped in his reserve, listened to one goading the other on, each leading the other from hundredthly to thousandthly, and all because of Herr Settembrini’s original little joke about Virgil. The Italian would not give over; he brandished the word, he made it prevail. He threw himself into the fray as the defender of literary genius, celebrated the history of the written word, from the moment when man, yearning to give permanency to his knowledge or emotions, engraved word-symbols upon stone. He spoke of the Egyptian god Thoth, identical with the thrice-renowned Hermes of Hellenism; who was honoured as the inventor of writing, protector of libraries, and inciter to all literary efforts. He bent the knee metaphorically before that Trismegistus, the humanistic Hermes, master of the palæstra, to whom humanity owed the great gift of the literary word and agonistic rhetoric—which incited Hans Castorp to the remark that this Egyptian person had apparently been a politician, playing in the grand style the same rôle as that Herr Brunetto Latini who had sharpened the wits of the Florentines, taught them the art of language and how to guide their State according to the rules of politics. Naphta put in that Herr Settembrini was slightly disingenuous: his picture of Thoth-Trismegistus had a good deal of the reality smoothed away. He had been, in fact, an ape, moon and soul deity, a peacock with a crescent moon on his head, and in his Hermes aspect, a god of death and of the dead, a soul-compeller and tutelary soul-guide, of whom late antiquity made an arch-enchanter, and the cabalistic Middle Ages the Father of hermetic alchemy.

Hans Castorp’s brain reeled. Here was blue-mantled death masquerading as a humanistic orator; and when one sought to gaze at closer range upon this pedagogic and literary god, benevolent to man, one discovered a squatting ape-faced figure, with the sign of night and magic on its brow. He waved it away with one hand, which he laid over his eyes. But upon that darkness wherein he sought refuge from complete bewilderment, there broke the voice of Herr Settembrini, continuing to chant the praises of literature. All greatness, both contemplative and active, he said, had been bound up with it from all time; and mentioned Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, named the Prussian Frederick and other heroes, even Lasalle and Moltke. It disturbed him not a whit that Naphta referred him to China, where such a witless idolatry of the alphabet obtained as had never been the case in any other land, and where one might become a field-marshal if one could draw the forty thousand word-symbols of the language—a standard, one would think, directly after a humanistic heart!—Ah, Naphta well knew—pitiable scoffer though he was!—that it was a matter not of drawing symbols but of literature as a human impulse, of its spirit, which was Spirit itself, the miraculous conjunction of analysis and form. This it was that awakened the understanding of all things human, that operated to weaken and dissolve silly prejudices and convictions, that brought about the civilizing, elevating, and betterment of the human race. While it developed extreme ethical sensitiveness and refinement, far from being fanatical, it preached honest doubt, fairness, tolerance. The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint—in this high key was Herr Settembnni’s apologetic pitched. But alas, his antagonist was not struck dumb—on the contrary, he straightway set about with malicious, brilliant criticism to undermine the humanist’s panegyric. He declared himself to the party of conservation and of life, and struck out against the decadent spirit which hid itself behind all that seraphic cant. The marvellous conjunction to which Herr Settembrini referred, in a voice all quavering with emotion, was nothing but a deception and juggling, for the form which the literary spirit prided itself on uniting with the principle of examination and division was only an apparent, a lying form, no true, adequate, natural, living form. These so-called reformers of humanity did indeed take the words purification and sanctification in their mouths, but what they really meant and intended was the emasculation, the phlebotomy of life. Yes, their theory and moving spirit were in violation of life; and he who would destroy passion, that man desired nothing less than pure nothingness—pure, at least, in the sense that pure was the only adjective which could be applied to nothingness. It was just here that Herr Settembrini showed himself for that which he was: namely, the man of progress, liberalism, and middleclass revolution. For the progress was pure nihilism, the liberal citizen was quite precisely the advocate of nothingness and the Devil; yes, he denied God, the conservatively and positively Absolute, by swearing to the devilish anti-Absolute. And yet with his deadly pacificism thought himself monstrously pious. But he was anything else than pious, he was a traitor to life, before whose stern inquisition and
Vehmgericht
he deserved to be put to the question—and so forth.

Thus did Naphta astutely go about to turn Herr Settembrini’s pæan the wrong way and represent himself as the incarnation of the cherishing severity of love—so that it was again impossible to distinguish which side was in the right, where God stood and where the Devil, where death and where life. Our readers will believe us that his antagonist insisted on giving him tit for tat, paying in the newest-minted coin, receiving in his turn another just as good; thus the conversation proceeded, on the lines laid down. But Hans Castorp attended no longer. Joachim had remarked that he believed he had a feverish cold, and did not quite know what to do about it, as colds were not “
reçus
” up here. The duellists had paid him no heed, but Hans Castorp kept, as we have said, an eye on his cousin, and so got up, in the midst of a speech, relying on Ferge and Wehsal to display adequate thirst for further pedagogic disputation. On the way home he and Joachim agreed that it was best to invoke the official channels in matters like colds and sore throats. In other words, they would ask the bathing-master to see the Oberin, in order that something might be done to relieve the sufferer. It was well done. That very evening, directly after dinner, Adriatica knocked at Joachim’s door, Hans Castorp being present, and asked what were the wishes of the young officer.

“Sore throat? Hoarseness?” she repeated; “what sort of antics are these, young ‘un?” and undertook to pierce him with her eye. It was not Joachim’s fault that their glances failed to meet, hers swerved aside. Yet she would continue to try, though experience must have taught her it was not given her to succeed in the undertaking. With the help of a sort of metal shoehorn from her pocket, she looked at the patient’s tonsils, Hans Castorp standing by with the lamp. Rising on tiptoes to peer into Joachim’s throat, she asked: “Tell me, young ‘un, do you ever swallow the wrong way?”

What could he answer? For the moment, while she peered into his throat, nothing; but even after she was done, he was at a loss. Naturally, in the course of his life, when eating or drinking he had swallowed the wrong way; but everybody did the same, and surely that could not be what she meant. He asked why: he could not remember the last time.

It was no matter, she said. It had merely occurred to her. He had taken a cold, she added, to the astonishment of the cousins, for colds were in the ordinary way taboo. In any case, it would be necessary to have the Hofrat’s laryngeal mirror for further examination of the throat. She left some formamint, and a bandage with a guttapercha sheath, to be used for a moist compress during the night. Joachim availed himself of both, finding they gave relief. He continued to use them; but his hoarseness persisted, it even grew worse in the next few days, though the sore throat largely disappeared.

His fever proved imaginary—at least the thermometer gave no more than the usual result, that, namely, which together with the results of the Hofrat’s examinations kept our ambitious Joachim here for his little after-cure, instead of letting him return to the colours. The October terminus had slipped by and no man named it, neither the Hofrat nor the cousins between themselves. They let it pass, in silence, with downcast eyes. From the diagnosis which Behrens dictated at the monthly examinations
to
the psychically expert assistant sitting at his table, and from the results shown by the photographic plate, it was all too clear that though there had once been a departure, of which the best that could be said was that it had been decidedly risky, this time there was nothing for it but iron self-discipline, until such a day as entire immunity might be won, for the fulfilment of the oath and the service of the flat-land.

Such was the decree with which, one and all, they silently pretended to be in agreement. But the truth was, neither of the cousins was sure the other believed it; if they did not meet each other’s eyes, it was because of the doubt both pairs of eyes sought to hide, and because the eyes had met before. That, of course, often happened, after the colloquy on the subject of literature, during which Hans Castorp had first remarked the strange new light and ominous expression in the depths of his cousin’s eyes. And happened once at table. Joachim suddenly choked violently, and could scarcely get his breath. While he gasped behind his serviette, and his neighbour, Frau Magnus, performed the time-honoured service of slapping him on the back, the cousins’ eyes met, in a way more alarming to Hans Castorp than the incident itself, that being something that might happen to anyone. Then Joachim closed his eyes and left the table, his face covered with his serviette, to cough himself out in the garden. Ten minutes later he came back, smiling, if rather pale, and with excuses on his lips for the disturbance. He went on again with his hearty meal, and no one thought afterwards even of wasting a word on so trifling an episode. But some days later, at second breakfast, the thing occurred again; this time there was no meeting of eyes, at least on the part of the cousins, for Hans Castorp bent over his plate and went on eating without seeming to notice. But after the meal they spoke of it, and Joachim freed his mind on the subject of that damned female who had put the thing in his head with her silly question and somehow or other set a spell on him. Yes, it was obviously a case of suggestion, Hans Castorp agreed, and as such rather amusing, despite its annoying side. And Joachim, having named it, seemed able to counteract the spell; he was careful at table, and did not choke any more frequently than persons not bewitched. Not until nine or ten days later did it occur again—where there was simply nothing to be said.