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The Magic Mountain · Chapter III

The First Full Day and the Arrival of Settembrini

IllnessPassionReasonTime

Chapter summary

The chapter installs the cast and the method of the novel: the machinery of the sanatorium, the Italian humanist Lodovico Settembrini, the ruler of time that does not coincide with the ruler of space, and the first of the many doors that slam.

Settembrini enters as a pedagogue from his first line, and his irony about doctors as judges of the hereafter and about patients as "fallen people" already denies, before any formal thesis, the romantic cult of illness.

The glass door that Mrs. Clavdia Chauchat lets slam is the first sign of what the book will name only in the next chapter: the irritation of Hans Castorp is out of proportion to the noise, and the narrator already indicates that it hides something else.

Analysis

Mr. Albin shows a knife and a loaded revolver to the ladies on the veranda, and Hans Castorp's reaction (envy of the freedom that shame affords) anticipates the fascination with irresponsibility that will grow in the novel.

The chapter closes on the body: palpitations for no reason, the heat in the face that will not subside, the laughter no one controls. It is a symptom without a name yet.

Modest Shadowing

Section summary

Hans Castorp gets up early for his first full day, shaves and goes out to the balcony, from where he sees in the garden a lady dressed in black who walks without stopping, to the rhythm of a march that comes from far away. Through the wall of the next room he hears the Russian couple in full amorous dispute, and reacts with a modesty that the narrator himself does not treat as simple virtue: his face darkens, he blushes, and he feels the dry ardor of the day before return. This is how Joachim Ziemssen finds him, in a bad mood.

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Breakfast

Section summary

The next morning, on the way to breakfast, Joachim explains to Hans Castorp who the woman in black he saw in the garden is: a Mexican woman nicknamed "Tous-les-deux," because she says only those two words, who is there on account of two sons, the elder in a desperate state and the younger, who came to see him and promptly fell ill with a high fever. Hans Castorp asks to be introduced to her, but not to the rude Russian couple who live beside his room. In the room of the seven tables he sits between a "seamstress" who speaks in an erudite manner and confesses a physical unease (she will turn out to be Mrs. Engelhart), an elderly English woman and Mrs. Stöhr, and a dwarf maidservant waits on him. He had feared a funereal atmosphere and finds tanned young people chatting and swapping photographs and stamps. A bang of a glass door, which he hates on principle, irritates him, but he does not see who slammed it.

On the way out, the cousins nearly bump into Dr. Behrens, enormous, in a white coat with bluish cheeks, and Dr. Krokowski, who follows him in a black coat. Behrens calls Hans Castorp a "civilian" (as opposed to a soldier), declares him anemic, and advises, "sine pecunia" (free of charge), that he live there as though he had a slight tuberculosis and build up his protein, taking his temperature with the "mercury cigar," that is, the thermometer.

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A Joke in Bad Taste. Viaticum. Interrupted Hilarity

Death

Section summary

The cousins set out for their first walk. Hans Castorp lights a Maria Mancini cigar (see the Maria Mancini Cigars) and explains to Joachim, who does not smoke, that a good cigar makes him feel protected. On the climb he passes a laughing group of tanned patients coming down, and a girl in a green sweater whistles as she goes by without moving her lips; the group laughs at his fright. Joachim explains that it is Hermine Kleefeld, who whistles "with the pneumothorax": the doctor injects gas into the flank to rest a very diseased lung, and whoever undergoes this treatment belongs to the "Half-Lung Society." Hans Castorp laughs without stopping and asks why they are so cheerful; Joachim replies that time means nothing to them and that illness and death seem almost a relaxation, since seriousness exists only down below. The cigar has no flavor at all, and he throws it away.

Seated on a bench, Hans Castorp asks about the dead of the sanatorium, and Joachim says that everything is done discreetly. He then recounts that he saw the priest bring the viaticum and last rites to the young Barbara Hujus, who screamed and kicked in terror, hidden under the blankets, until she was anointed; and that Dr. Behrens, faced with another terrified dying man, told him not to make "such a fuss," and the man died calmly. Hans Castorp rebels, since a dying man seems sacred to him, nobler than someone who strolls, laughs, and earns money, but he dissolves into uncontrollable laughter, until Joachim nudges him because a stranger with a twisted mustache is approaching.

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Satan

IllnessFormationReasonTime

Section summary

The stranger who approaches the bench is between thirty and forty years old, has thin hair, worn clothes, and noble, musical manners, and Hans Castorp takes him for a street organ grinder until Joachim introduces him as Mr. Lodovico Settembrini. The Italian, elegant and ironic in speech, asks how many months "our Minos and Rhadamanthus" have pinned on him, as he calls the doctors, the judges of the realm of the dead. On learning that Hans Castorp is only there for three weeks, he says that in the sanatorium nobody counts by weeks, the smallest unit is the month. Joachim explains that Settembrini is a man of letters and wrote the obituary of Carducci, and the Italian confirms that he was the poet's disciple. When Hans Castorp says that the engineer's work is "as difficult as the devil," Settembrini quotes the opening of Carducci's hymn to Satan, which he says is sung in Italy on certain solemn occasions, which greets him as the avenging force of Reason ("O salute, o Satana, o Ribellione, o forza vindice della Ragione"), and notes that this devil is a friend of work, unlike the one Hans Castorp invoked.

Hans Castorp admits that work exhausts him and that he only feels well when he does nothing, and he recounts that Dr. Behrens advised him to live as his cousin does. Settembrini laughs heartily and starts speaking ill of Behrens, of the head nurse, Adriatica von Mylendonk, whom he compares to a Venus with a crucifix in place of breasts, and of the other doctors in Davos, defending slander as a weapon of reason and the origin of criticism and progress. Upon seeing Behrens and Dr. Krokowski, he says Krokowski dresses in black because his field of study is the night, and that he has a single, sordid thought in his head. Hans Castorp replies that he prefers to look at people rather than judge them, and Settembrini calls this apathy and holds forth on humanism and pedagogy: the humanist has replaced the priest in the education of youth and keeps the tradition of the dignity and beauty of the human.

Settembrini takes his leave in the elevator, still holding forth, and heads for his little room on the third floor. Joachim tells Hans Castorp that he is a man of letters, son and grandson of men of letters, a chronic patient with little money beyond what is needed to pay the board.

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Subtlety of Thought

Time

Section summary

On the balcony, Joachim places the thermometer under his tongue, where it stays for seven minutes, and records the temperature on a chart while he studies Russian grammar. Hans Castorp, his eyes streaked with red, improvises a philosophy of time: time seems long or short according to what we feel, measuring it by the hands of a clock is measuring it by space, and no one has an organ to perceive time, so its measures are nothing but convention. Joachim replies, irritated, that then it is also a convention that the marks on his thermometer keep him from a military career; he has 37.5, after nearly 38 the day before, on account of the visit. Hans Castorp lies down in a deck chair he is very fond of, asks softly whether the maid who served them is a dwarf, and the rest hour passes, neither long nor short, until the gong sounds.

At second breakfast he refuses the milk, drinks Kulmbach beer, and begins to recognize the guests: the young Russian woman Marusja, before whom Joachim lowers his eyes with a stern air, the thin girl with the yogurt, the members of the Half-Lung Society, Settembrini, who comes in and makes the table laugh, and the rude Russian couple. The beer stuns him: he barely answers his English neighbor, feels the ardor in his face again and his heart hammering, and perceives, as if in a dream, that Dr. Krokowski has sat down in front of him. When the glass door slams again, he no longer starts. On leaving, he asks Joachim when the next rest period will be.

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One Word Too Many

Illness

Section summary

The cousins walk down to Davos-Platz before lunch, and Hans Castorp, dazed, forgets the theory of time and speaks only of the body, of the palpitations that seem independent of the soul, which Joachim, after reproving the expression, accepts as similar to fever. Joachim names their table companions and turns pale when Marusja is mentioned. Facing the tennis courts, he says that here one only lies down, the "horizontal life" that Settembrini mocks, and he takes his exhausted cousin back to the room.

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A Female, Of Course!

Passion

Section summary

Hans Castorp goes down to lunch for the third time that day, and Mrs. Stöhr reels off gossip about Captain Miklosich and the wife of the consul-general Wurmbrand. The meal has six courses; the glass door bangs while they eat the fish, and Hans Castorp sees for the first time who slams it: a young woman in a white sweater, whom Mrs. Engelhart identifies as Madame Chauchat. Dr. Blumenkohl leaves the table, and Mrs. Stöhr remarks that he needs to speak again with "Little Blue Johnny." During the rest after lunch, Hans Castorp notices bloodstains on his handkerchief and smokes the Maria Mancini down to the end.

The chapter counts the meals the way one marks the hours of a trade, and lunch alone adds up to six courses.

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Mr. Albin

Illness

Section summary

On the rest veranda, Mr. Albin, a young man just out of pneumonia, shows the ladies a knife and a loaded revolver and says he keeps the revolver for the day the illness begins to bore him. He justifies himself with the image of the schoolboy who failed a year and therefore is no longer examined, and Hans Castorp, who had repeated the sixth year of gymnasium, feels envy, not revulsion.

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Satan Makes Dishonorable Proposals

PassionReason

Section summary

Hans Castorp dozes during the afternoon rest and is woken, at half past three, by the round of Dr. Krokowski, who speaks Russian with the neighboring couple and goes around his compartment, which offends him, since a healthy person holds no interest there. On the way to tea, he and Joachim comment on Mr. Albin, who during the rest showed a revolver to the ladies and said he kept it for the day the illness bored him; Joachim recalls that a student hanged himself in the forest shortly before his arrival. The day is measured by meals: tea is the fourth time Hans Castorp has sat down at the table that day, dinner the fifth. At dinner, feverish and overfull, he hears Mrs. Stöhr boast that she knows how to make twenty-eight sauces for fish.

After dinner, the patients gather in the vestibule and the salons, and Hans Castorp sees, among the "distinguished Russians," face to face, Madame Clavdia Chauchat, who reminds him of someone he cannot identify. Lodovico Settembrini asks how his first day went; Hans Castorp, dazed, confesses that he took him for a street organ grinder, has trouble remembering his own age, and asks whether Mrs. Stöhr really said that about the sauces. Settembrini, between irritation and exhortation, suggests he pack his bags and leave on tomorrow's train. Hans Castorp refuses, ashamed of seeming cowardly, and Settembrini tells the story of Miss Kneifer: cured, she did not want to leave the sanatorium, faked a fever, was exposed by the "mute sister," a thermometer without a scale that the doctor reads in person, and went away distraught. He then hands the young man over to Joachim to be put to bed.

In Joachim's room, Hans Castorp shivers while smoking a Maria Mancini cigar that tastes of glue to him, and his cousin wraps himself in blankets on the balcony. In bed, feverish, he recalls Joachim's face going pale when Marusja was mentioned; he understands what it means, and again feels a strange joy. The night brings dreams: Behrens walking on bent knees and pulling down his eyelid; Madame Chauchat lending him a red pencil in the schoolyard, resembling someone he wants to fix in his memory; Krokowski pursuing him to dissect his soul; Settembrini, whom he sends away by calling him a street organ grinder, and the idea that time is a "mute sister"; and Madame Chauchat holding out her palm for him to kiss.

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Reading of the Chapter

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