Chapter VII: By the Ocean of Time (Part 6 of 7)
upon the expected phenomena. On the contrary, a slightly diffused attention, with conversation, was recommended. And Hans Castorp was cautioned, whatever else he did, not to lose control of the medium’s extremities.
“ We will now form the chain,” finished Dr. Krokowski; and they did so, laughing when they could not find each other’s hands in the dark. Dr. Ting-Fu, sitting next Hermine Kleefeld, laid his right hand on her shoulder and reached his left to Herr Wehsal, who came next. Beyond him were Herr and Frau Magnus, then A. K. Ferge; who, if Hans Castorp mistook not, held the hand of the ivory Levi on his right — and so on. “ Music! ” the doctor commanded, and behind him his neighbour the Czech set the instrument in motion and placed the needle on the disk. “ Talk! ” Krokowski bade them, and as the first bars of an overture by Millocker were heard, they obediently bestirred themselves to make conversation, about nothing at all: the winter snow-fall, the last course at dinner, a newly arrived patient, a departure, “ wild ” or otherwise — artificially sustained, half drowned by the music, and lapsing now and again. So some minutes passed.
The record had not run out before Elly shuddered violently. A trembling ran through her, she sighed, the upper part of her body sank forward so that her forehead rested against Hans Castorp’s, and her arms, together with those of her guardians, began to make extraordinary pumping motions to and fro.
“ Trance,” announced the Kleefeld. The music stopped, so also the conversation. In the abrupt silence they heard the baritone drawl of the doctor. “ Is Holger present? ”
Elly shivered again. She swayed in her chair. Then Hans Castorp felt her press his two hands with a quick, firm pressure.
“ She pressed my hands,” he informed them.
“ He,” the doctor corrected him. “ He pressed your hands. He is present. Wei — come, Holger,” he went on with unction. “ Wei — come, friend and fellow comrade, heartily, heartily wel — come. And remember, when you were last with us,” he “went on, and Hans Castorp remarked that he did not use the form of address common to the civilized West — “ you promised to make visible to our mortal eyes some dear departed, whether brother soul or sister soul, whose name should be given to you by our circle. Are you willing? Do you feel yourself able to perform what you promised? ”
Again Elly shivered. She sighed and shivered as the answer came. Slowly she carried her hands and those of her guardians to her forehead, where she let them rest. Then close to Hans Castorp’s ear she whispered: “ Yes.”
The warm breath immediately a z his ear caused in our friend that phenomenon of the epidermis popularly called goose-flesh, the nature of which the Hofrat had once explained to him. We mention this in order to make a distinction between the psychical and the purely physical. There could scarcely be talk of fear, for our hero was in fact thinking: “Well, she is certainly biting off more than she can chew! ” But then he was straightway seized with a mingling of sympathy and consternation springing from the confusing and illusory circumstance that a blood-young creature, whose hands he held in his, had just breathed a yes into his ear.
“ He said yes,” he reported, and felt embarrassed.
“Very well, then, Holger,” spoke Dr. Krokowski. “We shall take you at your word. We are confident you will do your part. The name of the dear departed shall shortly be communicated to you. Comrades,” he turned to the gathering, “ out with it, now’ Who has a wish 5 Whom shall our friend Holger show us? ”
A silence followed. Each waited for the other to speak. Individually they had probably all questioned themselves, in these last few days; they knew whither their thoughts tended. But the calling back of the dead, or the desirability of calling them back, was a ticklish matter, after all. At bottom, and boldly confessed, the desire does not exist; it is a misapprehension precisely as impossible as the thing itself, as we should soon see if nature once let it happen. What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief at not being able to call them back as it is grief at not being able to want to do so.
This was what they were all obscurely feeling, and since it was here simply a question not of an actual return, but merely a theatrical staging of one, in which they should only see the departed, no more, the thing seemed humanly unthinkable, they were afraid to look into the face of him or her of whom they thought, and each one would willingly have resigned his right of choice to the next. Hans Castorp too, though there was echoing in his ears that large-hearted “ Of course, of course ” out of the past, held back, and at the last moment was rather inclined to pass the choice on. But the pause was too long; he turned his head toward their leader, and said, in a husky voice: “I should like to see my departed cousin, Joachim Ziemssen.”
That was a relief to them all. Of those present, all excepting r. Ting-Fu, Wenzel, and the medium had known the person asked for. The others, Ferge, Wehsal, Herr Albin, Paravant, Herr and Frau Magnus, Frau Stohr, Fraulein Levi, and the Kleefeld, loudly announced their satisfaction with the choice. Krokowski himself nodded well pleased, though his relations with Joachim had always been rather cool, owing to the latter’s reluctance in the matter of psycho-analysis.
“ Very good indeed,” said the doctor. “ Holger, did you hear? The person named was a stranger to you in life. Do you know him in the Beyond, and are you prepared to lead him hither? ”
Immense suspense. The sleeper swayed, sighed, and shuddered. She seemed to be seeking, to be struggling; falling this way and that, whispering now to Hans Castorp, now to the Kleefeld, something they could not catch. At last he received from her hands the pressure that meant yes. He announced himself to have done so, and —
“ Very well, then,” cried Dr. Krokowski. “ To work, Holger! Music,” he cried. “ Conversation! ” and he repeated the injunction that no fixing of the attention, no strained anticipation was in place, but only an unforced and hovering expectancy.
And now followed the most extraordinary hours of our hero’s young life. Yes, though his later fate is unclear, though at a certain moment in his destiny he will vanish from our eyes, we may assume them to have been the most extraordinary he ever spent.
They were hours — more than two of them, to be explicit, counting in a brief intermission in the efforts on Holger’s part which now began, or rather, on the girl Elly’s — of work so hard and so prolonged that they were all toward the end inclined to be fainthearted and despair of any result; out of pure pity, too, tempted to resign an attempt which seemed pitilessly hard, and beyond the delicate strength of her upon whom it was laid. We men, if we do not shirk our humanity, are familiar with an hour of life when we know this almost intolerable pity, which, absurdly enough no one else can feel, this rebellious “ Enough, no more! ” which is wrung from us, though it is not enough, and cannot or will not be enough, until it comes somehow or other to its appointed end. The reader knows we speak of our husband- and fatherhood, of the act of birth, which Elly’s wrestling did so unmistakably resemble that even he must recognize it who had never passed through this experience, even our young Hans Castorp; who, not having shirked life, now came to know, in such a guise, this act, so full of organic mysticism. In what a guise! To what an end! Under what circumstances! One could not regard as anything less than scandalous the sights and sounds in this red-lighted lying-in chamber, the ^77
maidenly form of the pregnant one, bare-armed, in flowing nightrobe; and then by contrast the ceaseless and senseless gramophone music, the forced conversation which the circle kept up at command, the cries of encouragement they ever and anon directed at the struggling one: “ Hullo, Holger! Courage, man! It’s coming, just keep it up, let it come, that’s the way! ” Nor do we except the person and situation of the “ husband ’’ — if we may regard in that light our young friend, who had indeed formed such a wish sitting there, with the knees of the little “ mother ” between his own, holding in his her hands, which were wet as once little Leila’s, so that he had constantly to be renewing his hold, not to let them slip.
For the gas fire in the rear of the circle radiated great heat.
Mystical, consecrate? Ah, no, it was all rather noisy and vulgar, there in the red glow, to which they had now so accustomed their eyes that they could see the whole room fairly well. The music and shouting were so like the revivalistic methods of the Salvation Army, they even made Hans Castorp think of the comparison, albeit he had never attended at a celebration by these cheerful zealots. It was in no eerie or ghostly sense that the scene affected the sympathetic one as mystic or mysterious, as conducing to solemnity; it was rather natural, organic — by virtue of the intimate association we have already referred to. Elly’s exertions came in waves, after periods of rest, during which she hung sidewise from her chair in a totally relaxed and inaccessible condition, described by Dr. Krokowski as “ deep trance.” From this she would start up with a moan, throw herself about, strain and wrestle with her captors, whisper feverish, disconnected words, seem to be trying, with sidewise, jerking movements, to expel something; she would gnash her teeth, once even fastened them in Hans Castorp’s sleeve.
This had gone on for more than an hour when the leader found it to the interest of all concerned to grant a brief intermission. The Czech Wenzel, who had introduced an enlivening variation by closing the gramophone and striking up very expertly on his guitar, laid that instrument aside. They all drew a long breath and broke the circle. Dr. Krokowski strode over to the wall and switched on the ceiling lamp; the light flashed up glaring y, ma ing them all blink. Elly, bent forward, her face almost in her lap, slumbered. She was busy too, absorbed in the oddest activity, with which the others appeared familiar, but which Hans Castorp watched with attentive wonder. For some minutes together she moved the hollow of her hand to and fro in the region o er ips. carried the hand away from her body and then with scooping, raking motion drew it towards her, as though gathering something and pulling it in. Then, with a series of starts, she came to herself, blinked in her turn at the light with sleep-stiffened eyes and smiled.
She smiled affectedly, rather remotely. In truth, their solicitude seemed wasted; she did not appear exhausted by her efforts. Perhaps she retained no memory of them. She sat down in the chair reserved for patients, by the writing-desk near the window, between the desk and the screen about the chaise-longue; gave the chair a turn so that she could support her elbow on the desk and look into the room; and remained thus, receiving their sympathetic glances and encouraging nods, silent during the whole intermission, which lasted fifteen minutes.
It was a beneficent pause, relaxed, and filled with peaceful satisfaction in respect of work already accomplished. The lids of cigarette-cases snapped, the men smoked comfortably, and standing in groups discussed the prospects of the seance. They were far from despairing or anticipating a negative result to their efforts. Signs enough were present to prove such doubting uncalled for. Those sitting near the doctor, at the far end of the row, agreed that they had several times felt, quite unmistakably, that current of cool air which regularly whenever manifestations were under way streamed in a definite direction from the person of the medium. Others had seen light-phenomena, white spots, moving conglobations of forces showing themselves at intervals against the screen. In short, no faint-heartedness! No looking backward now they had put their hands to the plough. Holger had given his word, they had no call to doubt that he would keep it.
Dr. Krokowski signed for the resumption of the sitting. He led Elly back to her martyrdom and seated her, stroking her hair. The others closed the circle. All went as before. Hans Castorp suggested that he be released from his post of first control, but Dr. Krokowski refused. He said he laid great stress on excluding, by immediate contact, every possibility of misleading manipulation on the part of the medium. So Hans Castorp took up again his strange position vis-a-vis to Elly; the white light gave place to rosy twilight, the music began again, the pumping motions; this time it was Hans Castorp who announced “ trance.” The scandalous lying-in proceeded.
With what distressful difficulty! It seemed unwilling to take its course — how could it? Madness! What maternity was this, what delivery, of what should she be delivered? “ Help, help,” the child moaned, and her spasms seemed about to pass over into that dangerous and unavailing stage obstetricians call eclampsia. She called at intervals on the doctor, that he should put his hands on her. He did so, speaking to her encouragingly. The magnetic effect, if such it was, strengthened her to further efforts.
Thus passed the second hour, while the guitar was strummed or the gramophone gave out the contents of the album of light music into the twilight to which they had again accustomed their vision. Then came an episode, introduced by Hans Castorp. He supplied a stimulus by expressing an idea, a ish; a wish he had cherished from the beginning, and might perhaps have profitably expressed before now. Elly was lying with her face on their joined hands, in “ deep trance.” Herr Wenzel was just changing or reversing the record when our friend summoned his resolution and said he had a suggestion to make, of no great importance, yet perhaps — possibly — of some avail. He had — that is, the house possessed among its volumes of records — a certain song, from Gounod’s Faust , Valentine’s Prayer, baritone with orchestral accompaniment, very appealing. He, the speaker, thought they might try the record.
“ Why that particular one 5 ” the doctor asked out of the darkness.
“ A question of mood. Matter of feeling,” the young man responded. The mood of the piece in question was peculiar to itself, quite special — he suggested they should try it. Just possible, not out of the question, that its mood and atmosphere might shorten their labours.
“ Is the record here? ” the doctor inquired.
No, but Hans Castorp could fetch it at once.
“ What are you thinking of? ” Krokowski promptly repelled the idea. What? Hans Castorp thought he might go and come again and take up his business where he had left it off? There spoke the voice of utter inexperience. Oh, no, it was impossible. It would upset everything, they would have to begin all over. Scientific exactitude forbade them to think of any such arbitrary going in and out. The door was locked. He, the doctor, had the key in his pocket. In short, if the record was not now in the room —
He was still talking when the Czech threw in, from the gramophone: “ The record is here.”
“ Here? ” Hans Castorp asked.
“ Yes, here it is, Faust, Valentine’s Prayer.” It had been stuck by mistake in the album of light music, not in the green album of arias , where it belonged; quite by chance — or mismanagement
6 8o or carelessness, in any case luckily — it had partaken of the general topsyturvyness, and here it was, needing only to be put on.
What had Hans Castorp to say to that? Nothing. It was the doctor who remarked: “ So much the better,” and some of the others chimed in. The needle scraped, the lid was put down. The male voice began to choral accompaniment: “ Now the parting hour has come.”
No one spoke. They listened. Elly, as the music resumed, renewed her efforts. She started up convulsively, pumped, carried the slippery hands to her brow. The record went on, came to the middle part, with skipping rhythm, the part about war and danger, gallant, god-fearing, French. After that the finale, in full volume, the orchestrally supported refrain of the beginning.
“ O Lord of heaven, hear me pray. . . .”
Hans Castorp had work with Elly. She raised herself, drew in a straggling breath, sighed a long, long, outward sigh, sank down and was still. He bent over her in concern, and as he did so, he heard Frau Stohr say, in a high, whining pipe: “ Ziems — sen! ”
He did not look up. A bitter taste came in his mouth. He heard another voice, a deep, cold voice, saying: “ I’ve seen him a long time.”
The record had run off, with a last accord of horns. But no one stopped the machine. The needle went on scratching in the silence, as the disk whirred round. Then Hans Castorp raised his head, and his eyes went, without searching, the right way.
There was one more person in the room than before. There in the background, where the red rays lost themselves in gloom, so that the eye scarcely reached thither, between writing-desk and screen, in the doctor’s consulting-chair, where in the intermission Elly had been sitting, Joachim sat. It was the Joachim of the last days, with hollow, shadowy cheeks, warrior’s beard and full, curling lips. He sat leaning back, one leg crossed over the other. On his wasted face, shaded though it was by his head-covering, was plainly seen the stamp of suffering, the expression of gravity and austerity which had beautified it. Two folds stood on his brow, between the eyes, that lay deep in their bony cavities; but there was no change in the mildness of the great dark orbs, whose quiet, friendly gaze sought out Hans Castorp, and him alone. That ancient grievance of the outstanding ears was still to be seen under the head-covering, his extraordinary head-covering, which they could not make out. Cousin Joachim was not in mufti. His sabre seemed to be leaning against his leg, he held the handle, one thought to distinguish something like a pistol-case in his belt. But that was 68 I
no proper uniform he wore. No colour, no decorations; it had a collar like a litewka jacket, and side pockets. Somewhere low down on the breast was a cross. His feet looked large, his legs very thin, they seemed to be bound or wound as for the business of sport more than war. And what was it, this headgear 5 It seemed as though Joachim had turned an army cook-pot upside-down on his head, and fastened it under his chin with a band. Yet it looked quite properly warlike, like an old-fashioned foot-soldier, perhaps.
Hans Castorp felt Ellen Brand’s breath on his hands. And near him the Kleefeld’s rapid breathing. Other sound there was none, save the continued scraping of the needle on the run-down, rotating record, which nobody stopped. He looked at none of his company, would hear or see nothing of them; but across the hands and head on his knee leaned far forward and stared through the red darkness at the guest in the chair. It seemed one moment as though his stomach would turn over within him. His throat contracted and a four- or fivefold sob went through and through him. “ Forgive me! ” he whispered; then his eyes overflowed, he saw no more.
He heard breathless voices: “ Speak to him! ” he heard Dr. Krokowski’s baritone voice summon him, formally, cheerily, and repeat the request. Instead of complying, he drew his hand c away from beneath Elly’s face, and stood up.
Again Dr. Krokowski called upon his name, this time in monitory tones. But in two strides Hans Castorp was at the step by the entrance door and with one quick movement turned on the white
light-
Fraulein Brand had collapsed. She was twitching convulsively in the Kleefeld’s arms. The chair over there was empty.
Hans Castorp went up to the protesting Krokowski, close up to him. He tried to speak, but no words came. He put out his hand, with a brusque, imperative gesture. Receiving the key, he nodded several times, threateningly, close into the other’s face; turned, and went out of the room.
Hysterica Passio
With the swift-changing years, a spirit began to walk in House Berghof: a spirit of immediate descent, or so Hans Castorp surmised, from that other demon whose baleful name we have spoken. With the facile curiosity of inquiring youth on its travels, he had studied this new demon, yes, had even discovered in himself an alarming aptitude, in common with the rest of the world up here, to pay him extensive homage. This new evil genius had, like the other, always been present, as it were, in the germ, but now it began to spread itself; Hans Castorp had by nature no great predilection for becoming its slave; yet with something like horror he observed that even he, when he let himself go ever so little, fell victim to a contagion so general that scarce anyone in the circle escaped it.
What was this, then, that was in the air? A rising temper. Acute irritability. A nameless rancour. A universal tendency to envenomed exchange of words, to outbursts of rage — yes, even to fisticuffs. Embittered disputes, bouts of uncontrolled shrieking, by pairs and by groups, were of daily occurrence; and the significant thing was that the bystanders, instead of being disgusted with the participants, or seeking to come between them, actually sympathized with one side or the other to the extent of being themselves involved in the quarrel. They would pale and tremble, their eyes would glitter provocatively, their mouths set with passion. They envied those actively engaged the chance, the justification for screaming; a gnawing desire to do likewise possessed mind and body, and he who could not summon strength to flee apart, was soon willy-nilly in the midst of the melee. The fruitless dissensions, the mutual recriminations, in the face of authorities bent on accommodation but themselves falling with alarming ease a prey to the general temptation to brawl — these become frequent occurrences in House Berghof. A patient might issue forth of the house in tolerable tranquillity and not know at all in what frame he would return. A member of the “ good ’’ Russian table, an elegant dame from the provinces, from Minsk, still young, and a light case, with only three months prescribed, betook herself one day to the village to make purchases at the French lingerie shop; fell there into a quarrel with the modiste, of such dimensions that she came back in a state of violent excitement, suffered a haemorrhage, and was thenceforth incurable. The husband was summoned, and informed that her stay up here would terminate only with her life.
Her case aptly illustrates the general mood. Albeit with some distaste, we cite others. Our readers may remember the greedy schoolboy in the round spectacles, who sat at Frau Salomon’s table and had a habit of cutting up all the food on his plate into a sort of mess, and gulping it down, now and again wiping his fcyes with his serviette behind his heavy spectacle-lenses. He had sat here, still a schoolboy, or rather still a former schoolboy, all this time, gobbled and wiped, without drawing upon his person more than the most cursory attention. But now, one morning at early breakfast, out of a blue sky, he was overtaken by such a transport of disorder that half the dining-room started up at the noise coming from his quarter. He sat there all pale and shrieking, and it was at the dwarf waitress standing near him that he shrieked. “ You lie,” he yelled, his voice breaking. It’s ice-cold, this tea you have brought me is ice-cold, I tell you. Try it yourself before you lie to me again about it — it is just lukewarm wash-water, try if it isn’t, not fit for a decent person to drink’ How do you dare think of bringing me ice-cold tea and setting it in front of me and actually persuading yourself that I would drink such hog-wash^ I won’t drink it! I won’t! ’’ he screamed, and began pounding with his fists on the table, till the dishes rang. “ I will have hot tea — boiling hot — that is my right before God and man — boiling hot; I’d rather die on the spot than take a drop of this — you damned dwarf, you! ” he fairly bellowed, and with the words appeared to fling off the last vestige of restraint and go stark mad, shaking his fist at Emerentia, literally showing her his foaming teeth. He went on, stamping, pounding, yelling “ I will ” and “ I won’t while the dining-room displayed the now usual scene. There was tense and alarming participation in the schoolboy raving. Some of the guests even sprang up and glared, fists doubled, teeth clenched; others sat white and trembling, their eyes cast down. And they still glared or trembled, long after the schoolboy had spent himself, and sat in a collapse before his fresh tea, not drinking.
What was all this?
Among the Berghof community was a former business man, some thirty years old. His case was long-standing, he had wandered for years from one establishment to another. This man was a confirmed anti-Semite, out of conviction and the sporting instinct. He devoted a joyous consistency to the game, and the preaching of this negative gospel was the pride and content of his life. Business man he had been, he was so no more, he was nothing more in the world, but he was still an anti-Semite. His illness was serious, he had a burdensome cough, and made a sound as though he sneezed with his lung, a short, high-pitched, uncanny sound. But he was no Jew, and that was his one positive characteristic. His name was Wiedemann, a Christian name, not a filthy Jewish. He took in a paper called the Arian Sun ; and would talk in this wise: “ I arrive at the A— sanatorium, in B— . When I go to sit down in my chair in the rest-hall, whom do I find on my right hand? Herr Hirsch! And whom do I find on my left? Herr Wolf! Of course, I leave.” And so on.
Wiedemann had a quick, threatening glance. It was literally as though he had a punching-ball hanging close in front of his nose, and squinted at it, seeing nothing whatever beyond. The prejudice that haunted him was grown to an itch, a ceaseless persecution-mania, which led him to smell out the vileness hidden or disguised in his neighbourhood and hold it up to scorn. Wherever he went, he suspected, he gibed, he vented his spleen; in short, his days were filled with hunting out and hounding down all his fellow-creatures who did not possess that inestimable advantage which was the only one he had.
The prevailing temper in House Berghof, which we have been indicating, aggravated Wiedemann’s complaint to an abnormal pitch. Naturally, he could not fail here to come into contact with persons suffering from the disability of which he was free; and so it came to a scene, at which Hans Castorp was present, and which will serve us as further illustration of our theme.
For there was another man. No possibility of concealing what he was, the case was clear. The man’s name was Sonnenschein, than which he could bear no filthier; and thus he became for Wiedemann the punching-ball in front of his nose, at which he squinted with his threatening glare, at which he struck, not so much to drive it away as to set it in motion that it might rasp his nerves the more.
Sonnenschein, like the other, was a business man born and bred. Fie too was critically ill, and illness made him sensitive. A friendly man, not at all a dull one, by nature rather playful, he hated Wiedemann for his gibes and stabs as Wiedemann hated him; and one afternoon things came to a head down in the hall, they fell on each other like beasts.
It was a horrid sight. They scuffled like small boys, but with the grimness of grown men when things have got to such a pitch. They clawed at each other’s faces, clutched throats or noses, grappled, hewed loose from each other and rolled together on the floor, spat, kicked, worried, and foamed at the mouth. The “ management ” came running and by main strength dragged them asunder, scratched and bitten. Flerr Wiedemann, bleeding and frothing, his face brutish with rage, displayed a phenomenon Hans Castorp had never before seen and had always supposed a figure of speech: his hair stood on end. He staggered away. Herr Sonnenschein, with one black eye, a bleeding lacuna in the curling black locks about his brow, was led into the bureau, where he sat down, buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly.
Thus Wiedemann and Sonnenschein. All those who saw the encounter trembled hours after. Let us turn from it to a real affair of honour, which by contrast with such ignominy will seem almost refreshing. This affair of honour occurred at about the same period, and, on account of the solemn formality with which it was conducted, deserved the name, even to the’ point of absurdity. Hans Castoip did not assist in person at the successive episodes; but was informed of its involved and dramatic course by means of certain documents, protocols and formal declarations, touching the affair, circulated not only in the house and without, not only in the village, the canton, and the country, but even abroad and in America; and presented for the consideration of persons who most certainly were not in the faintest degree interested in the circumstances.
It was a Polish affair, a “ pain in the honour,” having its seat in the heart of the Polish group which had lately collected in the Berghof, a little colony, which pre-empted the “ good ” Russian table — Hans Castorp, be it said in passing, sat there no longer, having moved thence to the Kleefeld’s, then to Frau Salomon’s, finally to Fraulein Levi’s. Social relations in the Polish group were so elegant, so courtly, so polished, that one could only elevate one’s eyebrows and be prepared for anything. There was a married couple, and an unmarried young female who stood in friendly relations with one of the gentlemen; the rest were male, with such names as von Zutawski, Cieszynski, von Rosinski, Michael Lodygowski, Leo von Asarapetian, and others. Now it fell out that one of them, named Japoll, drinking champagne in the restaurant with two others of the party, made, in their presence, remarks of a certain nature about the wife of Herr von Zutawski, and about the young lady, named Kryloff, who was the intimate friend of Herr Lodygowski. And from this circumstance arose all the proceedings, acts, and formalities, which were the theme of a widely circulated composition. Hans Castorp read:
“ Declaration, translated from the Polish original: On the 27th of March, 19—, M. Stanislaw T von Zutawski addressed himself to MM. Dr. Anton Cieszynski and Stefan von Rosinski, with the request that they should betake themselves to M. Kasimir Japoll and in his name demand satisfaction in the usual way for the ‘ calumny and detraction ’ which the said M. Kasimir Japoll had been guilty of against M. Stanislaw von Zutawski s wife, Mme. Jadwiga von Zutawska, in the presence of and in conversation with MM. Janusz Teofil Lenart and Leo von Asarapetian.
“ When the above conversation, which took place at the end of November, came, indirectly, to M. von Zutawski’s knowledge, he took immediate steps to assure himself of the fact and the circumstances of the calumny and detraction. On the previous day, the 27th of March, 19—, he was able to confirm the fact of the said calumny and detraction by the mouth of an immediate witness to the conversation in which the offensive words and insinuations had been uttered. And thus M. Stanislaw von Zutawski was constrained to apply without delay to the undersigned and to authorize them to institute honourable proceedings against the said M. Kasimir Japoll.
“ The undersigned make the following statement:
“ 1. On the basis of a protocol of the 9th of April, 19—, drawn up at the instance of one party, written at Lemberg by M. Zdzistaw Zygulski and Tadeusz Kadyi in the affair of M. Ladislaw Goduleczny versus M. Kasimir Japoll; and further, on the basis of the declaration of the court of honour of the 18th of June, 19—, drawn up in Lemberg with reference to the same affair, both which documents agree in establishing that M. Kasimir Japoll, ‘ in consequence of repeated conduct not to be reconciled with the principles of honour, cannot be regarded as a gentleman,’
“ 2. the undersigned, having reference to the significant conclusions to be deduced from the foregoing, assert and confirm the absolute impossibility of any longer considering M. Kasimir Japoll as capable of affording satisfaction,
“ 3. and the undersigned, for their own persons, consider it inadmissible, with reference to a man who stands outside the pale of honour, to act either as principals or as seconds in any affair of honour.
“ With reference to this state ot affairs, the undersigned inform M. Stanislaw von Zutawski that it would be fruitless to proceed against M. Kasimir Japoll according to the procedure laid down in affairs of honour; and recommend him instead to have recourse to a criminal court, in order to prevent further injury on the part of a person otherwise incapacitated from giving satisfaction. — Dated and signed: Dr. Anton Cieszynski. Stefan von Rosinski.”
And further, Hans Castorp read: “ Protocol
“ of witnesses to the affair between M. Stanislaw von Zutawski, M. Michael Lodygowski,
“ and MM. Kasimir Japoll and Janusz Teofil Lenart, in the bar of the Kurhaus in K— and on the 2d of April, 19- , between 7.30 and 7.45.
“ As M. Stanislaw von Zutawski, with reference to the representations of his friends, MM. Dr. Anton Cieszvnski and Stefan von Rosinski, in connexion with the occurrences of the 27th of March, 19—, had after mature consideration come to the conclusion that the taking of the judicial steps which they recommended against M. Kasimir Japoll for the calumny and detraction uttered against his wife Jadwiga would afford him no satisfaction whatever, since
“ 1. There was a justifiable suspicion that M. Kasimir Japoll would not appear before the court, and since, he being an Austrian subject, further proceedings would be difficult if not impossible,
“ 2. and since furthermore, a legal chastisement of M. Kasimir Japoll would in no wise atone for the insult by which he had sought to injure and defame the name and family of M. Stanislaw von Zutawski,
“ now therefore, M. Stanislaw von Zutawski took what appeared to him the shortest, most thorough, and in view of the circumstances most appropriate course, after having indirectly ascertained that M. Kasimir Japoll purposed leaving the place on the following day,
“ and, on the 2d of April, 19- , between 7.30 and 7.45 in the evening, in the presence of his wife Jadwiga and MM. Michael Lodykowski and Ignaz von Mellin, administered several boxes on the ear to M. Kasimir Japoll, who was seated in the company of M. Janusz Teofil Lenart and two unknown young women, in the American bar of the Kurhaus, imbibing alcoholic drinks.
“ Immediately thereafter, M. Michael Lodygowski boxed the ears of M. Kasimir Japoll, stating that he did so in return for the insult offered to Friiulein Kryloff and himself;
“and immediately thereafter M. Michael Lodygowski boxed the ears of M. Janusz Teofil Lenart, in return for the unqualifiable injury offered to M. and Mme. von Zutawski, and further,
“without losing a moment, M. Stanislaw von Zutawski li ewise, and repeatedly, boxed the ears of M. Janusz Teofil Lenart for the calumnious defamation of his wife as well as of i e. Kryloff. “MM. Kasimir Japoll and Jannsz Teofil Lenart remained entirely passive during the whole of the above proceedings.
Dated and signed: Michael Lodygowski, Ign. v. Mellin.”
The prevailing temper did not permit Hans Castorp to laugh, as he would otherwise surely have done, at this rapid fire of boxes on the ear. Instead, he quaked as he read. The irreproachable bearing of the one side, the contemptibleness and total lack of self-respect of the other were both apparent in the document, which was, despite its frigid objectivity, so impressive as to move him deeply. So it was with them all. The Polish affaire (Thormeur was conned far and wide, and discussed through clenched teeth. A counterblast by Herr Kasimir Japoll fell rather flat. The substance of it was that Zutawski had been perfectly well aware that he, Japoll, had been declared incapable of giving satisfaction by some conceited puppy in Lemberg, once on a time, and that his whole proceeding had been a pretence, since he knew full well it would not issue in a duel. Furthermore, the sole and only reason Zutawski had declined to institute proceedings was that all the world, himself included, was aware that his wife Jadwiga had provided him with a complete assortment of horns; as to the truth of which fact Japoll would have found nothing easier than to give evidence; and that lastly the appearance of the Kryloff before a court would have been little edifying for anybody concerned. Anyhow, it was only his own honour that had been impeached, not that of his partner in the famous conversation; von Zutawski had entrenched himself behind the fact in order not to involve himself in any danger. As for the role played by Herr von Asarapetian in the whole affair, he preferred not to speak of it, but for the encounter in the Kurhaus bar, he, Japoll, though ready of tongue and wit, was admittedly of very feeble strength; he was at a great physical disadvantage with Zutawski and his friends and the uncommonly powerful Zutawska; while the two young ladies who were in his and Lenart’s society were lively creatures enough, but timid as rabbits. Under the circumstances, and in order to avoid a free fight and public scandal, he had compelled Lenart, who would have put himself on the defensive, to be quiet, and to suffer in God’s name the transient social contact with MM. von Zutawski and Lodygowski, which had not hurt them at all, and which had been regarded in the light of a pleasantry by the bystanders.
Thus Japoll, for whom, of course, not much could be said. His defence did not greatly invalidate the elegant contrast of honour with pusillanimity presented by the document on the other side; the less because he had not the manifolding facilities disposed of by his opponents, and could only distribute a few typed duplicates of his reply. The protocol, on the contrary, everyone received, even the most uninterested. Naphta and Settembrini, for instance, had copies sent them, which Hans Castorp saw in their hands, and remarked, to his surprise, that they too perused them with bitter concentration. For him the ruling temper of the Berghof was too much — he was powerless to dissipate its mood by a burst of blithe and cleansing laughter, but this he had confidently expected to hear from Herr Settembrini. Alas, no, even the unclouded eye of the Freemason was dimmed by the pre vailing spleen; it weighed on his spirit, stilling his mirth; it made him susceptible to the rasping provocation of the tale of the earboxing. Moreover he, the protagonist of Life, was suffering in spirit from the state of his health. Slowly, remorselessly, with deceptive interludes of brighter hope, it grew worse. He despised, he scorned it, and himself; but had reached the point where it obliged him, every few days, to take to his bed.
His housemate and antagonist was no better off. The organic
disease which had been the cause — or must we say pretext — for the untimely end to his activities within his order, made rapid progress; even the high and thin conditions of life up here could not give it pause. Naphta too was often confined to his bed; the crack in his voice was more cracked than ever when he talked* and as his fever increased he talked more, and more malignantly, than ever. That ideal opposition to the forces of disease and death, the forced surrender of which before the superior power of abject nature gave Herr Settembrini such pain, was foreign to little Naphta. His way of taking the deterioration of his physical part was not with sorrow or aversion, but with a sort of jeering levity, an unnatural lust of combat, a mania of intellectual doubt, denial, and distraction, that was a sore irritant to the other’s melancholy, and daily embittered more the intellectual quarrel between them. Hans Castorp, of course, could only speak of those at which he was present; but he felt tolerably sure he did not miss any; that his presence, the presence of the bone of pedagogic contention, was necessary, to give rise to a disputation of any magnitu e. And though he did not spare Herr Settembrini the pain of finding Naphta’s gibes worth hearing, he had to admit that these were latterly going beyond all bounds and often enough overstepping
the border-line of mental sanity. …
For this sufferer possessed neither the power nor the good will to rise above his illness; but rather saw all the world in its sign and image. In the presence of Herr Settembrini’s quivering resentment, who would sooner have drawn his nursling away from the room or even stopped his ears, Naphta declared that matter was so bad a material that the spirit could not be realized within it. Any effort in that direction was sheer folly; nothing could come of it but distortion and fatuity. What had been the net result of the vainglorious French Revolution — what but the capitalistic bourgeois State? A magnificent outcome, truly! And one it was hoped to improve upon, forsooth, by making the horror universal! A world-republic! That would bring happiness, beyond a doubt. Progress? It was the cry of the patient who constantly changes his position thinking each new one will bring relief. The unconfessed but secretly quite general desire for war was another manifestation of the same condition. It would come, this war, and it would be a good thing, though the consequences of it would not be those anticipated by its authors. Naphta sneered at the security of the bourgeois State. He took occasion to animadvert upon it one day in autumn as they were walking on the main street. It came on to rain, and suddenly, as though at the word of command, all the world put up its umbrellas. Which served Naphta as a symbol of the cowardice and vulgar softness engendered by civilized life. An incident like the going-down of the Titanic was like the writing on the wallit flung people back upon primitive conditions and fears, and thus was salutary. Afterwards, of course, came the great outcry tha r : transportation must be safeguarded. Always the greatest outcry whenever security was threatened. It was pathetic; and the flabby humanitarianism of it went hand in hand with the wolfish cruelty and baseness of the economic conflict within the bourgeois State. War, war! For his part, he was for it; the general hankering seemed to him comparatively creditable.
Herr Settembrini introduced the word justice into the discussion, and sought to apply this lofty principle as a preventive measure against political catastrophes both foreign and domestic. But as soon as he did so, Naphta, who just previously had found the spiritual too high ever to succeed in manifesting itself in material form, now set to work to cast doubts on, to derogate from, that very spiritual. Justice! Was it, as a conception, worth worshipping? Was it first-class? Was it of divine origin? God and Nature were not even-handed, they played favourites, they exercised the right of choice, they graced one individual with dangerous distinction, to another granted the easy common lot. And as for the man of action — for him justice was on the one hand a paralysing weakness, doubt itself, on the other a trumpetcall to unscrupulous deeds. And since, in order to remain within the moral code, such a man had always to correct “ justice ” in the second sense by “ justice ” in the first, where then was the Absolute, the radical, in the conception? Moreover, one was “ just ” according to one standard or according to the other. All the rest was liberalism — in which nobody nowadays took any stock. Justice, in short, was an empty husk, a stock-in-trade of bourgeois rhetoric; to get down to business, one had always to know which justice one was dealing with: the one which would give a man his own, or the one which would give evervbodv alike.
Out of his shoreless stream of words, we have hit upon these in illustration of the way he sought to confound the reason. But even worse was the way he talked about science — m which he did not believe. He did not believe, he said, in it, because it was permissible to exercise choice, whether to believe in it or not. It was a belief, like any other, only worse, stupider than any, the word science was the expression of the silliest realism, which did not blush to take at their face value the more than dubious reflections of objects in the human intellect; to pass them current, and to shape out of them the sorriest, most spiritless dogma ever imposed upon umanity. Was not the idea of a material world existing by and for itself the most laughable of all self-contradictions? But the modf in natural sciences, as dogma, rested upon the metaphysical postulate that time, space, and causality, the forms of cognition, in which all phenomena are enacted, are actual conditions, existing independently of our knowledge of them. This monistic position was an insult to the spirit. Space, time, and causality — in monistic language, evolution: here was the central dogma of a free-thinking, atheistical, bastard religion, by virtue of which one thought to supersede the first book of Moses, and oppose the pure light of knowledge to a stultifying fable — as though Haeckel had been present at the creation! Empiricism’ The universal ether — based on exact knowledge, of course ‘ The atom, that pretty mathematical joke of the smallest, the indivisible particle of matter — its existence had been demonstrated, undoubtedly? The doctrine of the illimitability of time and space was, surely, based on experience? In fact, anybody with a very little logic could make very merry over the theory of the endlessness and the reality of space and time; and could arrive at the result of — nothing: that is, at the view that realism is your true nihilism. How? Quite simply; since the relation to infinity of any size you chose to postulate was as zero. There was no size to the infinite; in eternity was neither duration nor change. In the spatially infinite, since every distance was, mathematically, as zero, there could not even be two points close together, to say nothing of two bodies, or of motion as such. He, Naphta, stated this, in order to counter the arrogance of materialistic science, which gave out for absolute knowledge its astronomical quackery, its windbaggery about the universe. Pitiable human kind, that by a vain mustering of meaningless figures have let themselves be driven to a conclusion of their own insignificance, to the destruction of any emphasis upon their own importance! It might be tolerable that human reason and knowledge should coniine themselves to the terrestrial, and within this sphere treat as actual their experience with the subjective object. But let them go beyond that, let them once attempt to grapple with the riddle of eternity, and invent so-called cosmologies and cosmogonies, and it was beyond a jest; the presumptuousness of it reached a climax. What blasphemous rubbish, to reckon the “ distance ” of any star from the earth in terms of trillions of kilometres, or in light years, and to imagine that with such a parade of figures the human spirit was gaining an insight into the essence of infinity and eternity — whereas infinity had absolutely nothing whatever to do with size, nor yet eternity with duration or distance in time; they had nothing in common with natural science, being, as they were, the abrogation of that which we called nature! Verily, the simplicity of a child, who thinks the stars are holes in the tent of heaven, through which the eternal brightness shines, was a thousand times more to his mind than the whole hollow, preposterous, overweening drivel of monistic science on the subject of the “ universe. 7 ’
Settembrini asked him if that about the stars represented his own personal belief. He answered that on this point he reserved to himself the freedom, and the humble-mindedness, of doubt. From which again it might be seen what he understood by freedom, and whither such a conception of it might lead. If only Herr Settembrini had not ground for the fear that Hans Castorp found all this highly worth listening to!
Naphta’s malicious wit lay in ambush, to spy out the weaknesses of the nature-compelling forces of progress, and convict its standard-bearers and pioneers of human relapses into the inrational. Aviators, flying men, he said, were mostly a bad lot, untrustworthy, above all exceedingly superstitious. They carried mascots on board with them, pigs and ravens and such-like; they spat three times in different directions, they wore the gloves of lucky flyers. How could such primitive unreason be reconciled with the conception of the universe which underlay their calling 5 The contradiction diverted him, he held forth upon it in exte?i$o. But such illustrations of Naphta’s malevolence are without number — let us abandon them for the all-too-pertinent tale we have to tell.
One afternoon in February, the gentlemen arranged an excursion to Monstein, some hour and a half from the village by sleigh. The party consisted of Naphta and Settembrini, Hans Castorp, Ferge and Wehsal. In two one-horse sleighs, Hans Castorp with the humanist, Naphta with Ferge and Wehsal, the lastnamed sitting with the coachman, they left the greengrocer’s at about three o’clock in the afternoon, and well bundled up drove off to the friendly music of bells, that sounds so pleasant through still, snowy air. They took the right-hand road, past Frauenkirch and Glaris, southwards. Storm-clouds pushed up rapidly from that direction, and soon the only streak of blue in the sky lay behind them, over the Rhatikon. The cold was severe, the mountains misty. The road, a narrow, railingless shelf between mountain wall and abyss, rose steeply into the fir forests. They went at a foot-pace. Coasting-parties rode downhill toward them, and had to dismount as they met. Sometimes from round a bend in the road would come the clear and warning sound of other bells; sleighs driven tandem would be approaching and some skill was required to pass in the narrow road. Near their destination was a beautiful view of a rocky stretch of the Zugenstrasse. They disentangled themselves from their wraps and climbed out in front of the little Monstein inn, that called itself a Kurhaus, and went on foot a few steps further to get the view south-west toward the Stulsergrat. The gigantic wall, three thousand metres high, was shrouded in vapours. Only one jagged tooth reared itself heavenward out of the mist — superterrestrial, Valhallan, far and faint and awesomely inaccessible. Hans Castorp admired it immensely, and summoned the others to follow suit. It was he who with due respect dubbed it inaccessible — and afforded Herr Settembrini the chance of saying that this particular rock was considerably frequented. And, in general, that there were few spots where man had not set his foot. That was rather tall talk, retorted Naphta; and mentioned Mount Everest, which to date had ic y re use to surrender to man’s importunity, and seemed like y to continue to do so. The humanist was put out. They returned to the Kurhaus, before which stood other unharnessed sleighs beside their own. One might have lodgment here; in the upper story were numbered rooms, and on the same floor the dining-room, furnished in peasant style, and well heated. They ordered a bite from the obliging landlady: coffee, honey, white bread and “ pear bread,” a sort of sweetmeat, the speciality of the place; red wine was sent out to the coachman. At the other tables were sitting Swiss and Dutch visitors.
We should have been glad to relate that our friends, being warmed and cheered by the hot and excellent coffee, proceeded to elevating discourse. But the statement would be inexact. For the discourse, after the first few words, took the form of a monologue by Naphta, and even as a monologue was conducted in a manner singularly offensive, from the social point of view; the ex-Jesuit flatly turning his back on Herr Settembrini, completely ignoring the other two gentlemen, and devoting himself to Hans Castorp, to whom he held forth with marked affability.
It would have been hard to give a name to the subject of this discourse, to which Hans Castorp listened, nodding from time to time as though in partial agreement. We may presume that it was scarcely a connected argument, but rather moved loosely in the realms of the intellectual; in general pointing out, with an accompanying comment which we may characterize as cheerless, the equivocal nature of the spiritual phenomena of life, the changeful aspects and contentious unserviceability of the great abstract conceptions man has based on them, and indicating in what a rainbowhued garment the Absolute appears upon this earth.
At any rate, we might take as the nucleus of his lecture the problem of freedom, which he treated in the sense of confusion. He spoke, among other matters, of the Romantic movement, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and its fascinating double meaning; pointing out how before it the conceptions of reaction and revolution went down, in so far as they were not incorporated in a new and higher one. For it was of course utterly absurd to try to associate the conception of revolution solely with progress and victoriously advancing enlightenment. The Romantic movement in Europe had been above all a movement of liberation: anticlassic, anti-academic, directed against French classicism, the old school of reason, whose defenders it derided as “ powdered wigs.”
And Naphta began upon wars of liberation, talked of Fichtean enthusiasms, of a singing, frenzied popular uprising against that unbearable tyranny, as which, unfortunately — he tittered — freedom, that is to say the revolutionary idea, had taken shape. Very droll it was: singing loudly, the people had set out to shatter the revolutionary tyranny for the benefit of reactionary princely authority — and this they did in the name of freedom.
The youthful listener would perceive the distinction, even the opposition, between foreign and domestic freedom; also note the ticklish question, which unfreedom was soonest — he he! — which least compatible with a nation’s honour.
Freedom, indeed, was a conception rather romantic than illuminating. Like romanticism, it inevitably limited the human impulse to expansion; and the passionate individuahsm in them both had similar repressive results. Individualistic thirst for freedom had produced the historic and romantic cult of nationalism, which was warlike in character, and was called sinister by humanitarian liberalism, though the latter also preached individualism, only the other way about. Individualism was romantic-mediaeval, in its conviction of the infinite, the cosmic, importance of the single human being, whence was deduced the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, the geocentric doctrine, and astrology. But on the other hand, individualism was an aspect of liberalizing humanism, which inclined to anarchy and would in any case protect the precious individual from being offered up on the altar of the general. Such was individualism, in its two aspects — all things unto all men.
One had to admit that the hze&om-pathos had produced the most brilliant enemies of freedom, the most brilliant knights-errant of tradition at war with irreverent, destructive progress. Naphta cited Arndt, who cursed industrialism and glorified the nobility; and Gorres, the author of Christian mysticism. Perhaps his hearer would ask what mysticism had to do with progress? Had it not been anti-scholastic, anti-dogmatic, anti-priestly? One was, indeed, compelled to recognize in the Hierarchy a force making for freedom: had it not set limits to the boundless pretensions of monarchy? But the mysticism of the end of the Middle Ages had shown its liberal character as forerunner of the Reformation — he he! – which in its turn had been an inextricable and tangled weave, a weft of freedom with a warp of medievalism.
Oh, yes, what Luther did possessed the merit of demonstrating crudely and vividly the dubious character of the deed itself, the deed in general. Did Naphta’s listener know what a deed was? A deed, for example, was the murder of Councillor Kotzebue by Sand, the theological student and member of the Burse he?isc haft. What was it, to speak the language of criminology, had put the weapon into the hand of young Sand? Enthusiasm for freedom, o course. But looked at more nearly, it had rather been moral fanaticism, and the hatred of light foreign ways. Kotzebue had been in the employ of Russia, in the service of the Holy Alliance, and thus Sand’s shot had presumably been fired for freedom; which again declined into improbability by virtue of the circumstance that there were several Jesuits among his nearest friends. In short, whatever the “ deed ” might be, it was in any case a poor way of making one’s meaning clear; as also it contributed little toward the clarification of intellectual problems.
“ Might I take the liberty of inquiring if you will be bringing these scurrilities of yours to an end before long? ”
Herr Settembrini put the question in withering tones. He had been drumming on the table, and twisting his moustaches. But now his patience was exhausted. It was too much. He sat upright, and more than upright, he sat, so to speak, on tiptoe, for only his shanks touched the chair; and with flashing black eyes faced the enemy, who turned toward him in assumed surprise.
“ What, may I ask, was the expression you were pleased to use? ” Naphta countered.
‘T was pleased to say,” said the Italian, swallowing, “ I am pleased to say, that I am resolved to prevent you from continuing to molest a defenceless youth with your equivocations.”
“ I invite you, sir, to take heed to your words.”
“The reminder, sir, is unnecessary. I am accustomed to take heed to my words. They will precisely fit the fact if I say that your way of misleading unsettled youth, of dissipating and undermining his moral and intellectual powers, is infamous , and cannot receive a stronger chastisement than it merits.”
With the word infamous, Settembrini struck the table with the flat of his hand, and pushing back his chair, stood up. It was a signal for the rest to do likewise. People looked across from the other tables — or, rather, from one, as the Swiss guests had left and only the Dutchmen remained, listening in amazement.
At our table they all stood there stiffly: Hans Castorp and the two antagonists, with Ferge and Wehsal opposite. All five were pale and wide-eyed, with twitching lips. Might not the three onlookers have made an effort to calm the troubled waters, to lighten the atmosphere with a jest, or bring affairs to a peaceful conclusion with some kind of human appeaP They did not try. The prevailing temper prevented them. They stood, all trembling, with hands that clenched involuntarily into fists. Even A. K. Ferge, to whom all elevated thoughts were foreign, who disclaimed from its inception any power to measure the seriousness of the dispute — even he was convinced that this was a quarrel a outrcmce , and that there was nothing to do but let it take its course. His good-natured moustaches worked violently up and down.
There was a stillness, in which could be heard the gnashing of Naphta s teeth. To Hans Castorp, this was an experience like^ the one with Wiedemann’s hair. He had supposed it to be a figure of speech, something which did not actually occur. Yet here was Naphta, and in the silence his teeth could be heard to grate; a horribly unpleasant, a wild, incredible sound, vhich yet evinced a self-control equally fearsome, for he did not storm, but said in quite a low voice, though with a sort of cackling half-laugh: “ Infamous? Chastisement^ Ah, so the bleating sheep have taken to butting? Have we driven the policemen of civilization so far that they draw their weapons? That is a triumph; won in passing, I must say, considering what mild provocation sufficed to summon to arms the guardians of our morality! As for the rest, sir, it will follow in due course. The chastisement too. I hope your civilian principles will not prevent you from knowing what you owe me — else I shall be forced to put these principles to a test that — ”
Herr Settembrini drew himself up; the movement was so expressive that Naphta went on: “ Ah, I see, that will not be necessary. I am in your way, you are in mine — good. We will transfer the settlement of our differences to a suitable place. For the moment, only this: your sentimental solicitude for the scholastic interpretation of the Jacobin Revolution envisages a pedagogic crime in my manner of leading youth to doubt, of throwing categories to the winds, of robbing ideas of their academic dignity. And your anxiety is justified; for it happens on account of your humanity, be assured of that — happens and is done. For your humanity is to-day nothing but a tail end, a stale classicistic survival, a spiritual ennui; it is yawning its head off, while the new Revolution, our Revolution, my dear sir, is coming on apace to give it its quietus. We, when we sow the seeds of doubt deeper than the most up-to-date and modish free-thought has ever dreamed of doing, we well know what we are about. Only out of radical scepsis, out of moral chaos, can the Absolute spring, the anointed Terror of which the time has need. This for your instruction, and my justification. For the rest we must turn over the page. You will hear from me.”
“ And you will find a hearing, sir,” Settembrini called after him, as the Jesuit left his place and hurried to the hat-stand to seek his cloak. Then the Freemason let himself fall back with a thud on his hard chair, and pressed both hands to his heart. “ Distruttore! Cane arabbiato! Bisogna ammazzarlo! ” burst from him, pantingly.
The others still stood at the table. Ferge’s moustaches went on wagging up and down. Wehsal’s jaw was set hard awry. Hans Castorp was imitating his grandfather’s famous attitude, for his neck was all a-tremble. They were thinking how little they had expected such an outcome as this to their excursion. And all of them, even Herr Settembrini, felt how fortunate it was that they had come in two sleighs. It simplified the return. But afterwards?
“ He challenged you,” Hans Castorp said, heavily.
“ Undoubtedly,” answered Herr Settembrini, and cast a glance upward at his neighbour, only to turn away again at once and lean his head on his hand.
“ Shall you take it up? ” Wehsal wanted to know.
“ Can you ask? ” answered Settembrini, and looked a moment at him too. “ Gentlemen,” he said then, and sat up, having brought himself again to perfect control, “ I regret the outcome of our pleasure excursion; but in life one must be prepared to reckon with such events. Theoretically I disapprove of the duel, I am of a law-abiding temper. In practice, however, it is another matter. There are situations where — quarrels that — in short, I am at this man’s service. It is well that in my youth I fenced a little. A few hours’ practice will make my wrist supple again. Shall we go? The rendezvous will have to be made. I assume our gentleman will already have ordered them to put to the horses.”
Hans Castorp had moments, during the drive home, and afterwards, when he became giddy in contemplation of what lay before them. Still more, when it subsequently appeared that Naphta would not hear of cut and thrust, but insisted on a duel with pistols. And he, as the injured party, had the choice of weapons. There were moments, we say, when Hans Castorp was able, to a certain extent, to free himself from embroilment with the prevailing temper and tell himself that all this was madness, and must be prevented.
“ If even there were a real injury,” he cried, in discussion with Herr Settembrini, Ferge and Wehsal — Naphta, on the way home, had invited the last-named to be his second, and he acted as intermediary between the factions. “ An affront like that, purely civilian and social! If one of them had dragged the other’s good name in the dirt, if it was a question of a woman, or anything else really momentous, that you could take hold of, so that you felt there was no possibility of reconciliation! For such cases the duel is the last resort; and when honour is satisfied and the affair has gone off with credit to all parties, and the antagonists part friends, as they say, why, then it seems a very good arrangement, quite useful and practical, too, in complicated cases. But what was it he did- I don’t mean to stand up for him, I only ask what the insult consisted in. He threw the categories to the winds, as you say, and robbed conceptions of their academic dignity. And you felt you r self insulted thereby — justifiably, let us assume – ”
“ Assume? ” repeated Herr Settembrini, and looked at him.
“ Oh, justifiably, quite justifiably! He affromed you. But he did not insult you. There is a difference. Permit me to say so. It v 7 as a matter of abstractions, an intellectual disagreement. On intellectual topics he could affront you, perhaps, but not insult you. That is axiomatic, any court of honour would tell you the same, I swear to God they would. And so neither was your answer to him, about infamy and chastisement an insult; because it was in an intellectual sense, the whole affair was in the intellectual sphere, and has nothing to do with the personal, and an insult can only be personal. The intellectual can never be personal, that is the conclusion and the explanation of the axiom, and therefore — ”
“ You err, my friend,” answered Settembrini, with closed eyes. “ You err first of all in the assumption that the intellectual cannot assume a personal character. You should not think that,” he said, and smiled a peculiarly fine and painful smile. “ The point at which you go wrong is in your estimation of the things of the mind, in general. You obviously 7 think they are too feeble to engender conflicts and passions comparable for sternness with those real life brings forth, the only issue of which can be the appeal to force. AIV incontro! The abstract, the refined-upon, the ideal, is at the same time the Absolute — it is sternness itself, it contains within it more possibilities of deep and radical hatred, of unconditional and irreconcilable hostility, than any relation of social life can. It astonishes you to hear that it leads, far more directly and inexorably than these, to radical intimacy, to grips, to the duel and actual physical struggle 5 The duel, my friend, is not an “ arrangement,” like another. It is the ultimate, the return to a state of nature, slightly mitigated by regulations which are chivalrous in character, but extremely superficial. The essential nature of the thing remains the primitive, the physical struggle; and however civilized a man is, it is his duty to be ready for such a contingency, which may any day arise. Whoever is unable to offer his person, his arm, his blood, in the service of the ideal, is unworthy of it; however intellectualized, it is the duty of a man to remain a man.
Thus was Hans Castorp put in his place. What should he answer.”
Part 29 of 30