Who He Is
Schoolmate of Hans Castorp, with oblique eyes, to whom he asked to borrow a pencil at thirteen. He does not enter the novel's present: he exists as a memory, and is recognized in the eyes of Clavdia Chauchat.
that in their position, color and expression they resembled, in a surprising and even frightening way, those of Pribislav Hippe. "Resembled" would by no means be the right word: these eyes were the same, Dawning Dread
Trajectory
In Chapter III: The Whole First Day and the Arrival of Settembrini he appears without a name: on the night of the first full day at the Berghof, Hans Castorp dreams that he is in the schoolyard and is about to ask Madame Chauchat for a pencil, and he struggles to wake up and to hold on to whom she reminds him of.
Then Hans Castorp dreamed that he found himself in the schoolyard, where for so many years he had spent the breaks between classes, and that he was about to ask Madame Chauchat, who was likewise present, to lend him a pencil.
he made a violent effort to tear himself from the dream, for now he knew, and wanted to fix in his memory, what event and what person she recalled to him with such intensity
In Chapter IV: The Sense of Time, Hippe, and the Thermometer the name arrives: alone on a walk, dizzy from the climb and stretched out on a bench after bleeding from the nose, Hans Castorp reenacts the memory of asking for the pencil. The same day, he arrives late and exhausted at Dr. Krokowski's lecture on love as a pathogenic factor, and Madame Chauchat, seated in front of him, looks at him with Pribislav's eyes.
In Chapter V: Humaniora, the Analysis, and Walpurgis Night, on Walpurgis Night, Hans Castorp repeats the gesture of school and asks Clavdia for a pencil; in French, he addresses to her the request made in the gymnasium and says that the marks that Dr. Behrens found on his body come from that old love.
Without a pencil (see the pencil) for the Carnival game, Hans Castorp crosses the room in search of one and goes to ask Clavdia Chauchat for it, deliberately repeating the gesture that opened the episode of Pribislav Hippe in the previous chapter; it is the pretext of the pencil that leads him to her and sets him to talking with her alone, largely in French.
It is also in French that Hans Castorp explicitly links the present passion to the schoolroom episode in the previous chapter, the request for a pencil from Pribislav Hippe.Une fois déjà, lorsque j'étais collégien, je t'ai demandé ton crayon [...] parce que je t'aimais irraisonnablement, et c'est de là, sans doute, c'est de mon ancien amour pour toi que ces marques me restent que Behrens a trouvées dans mon corps, et qui indiquent que jadis aussi j'étais malade
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that pass through him are Memory and the Past, Passion, and Illness.
Hippe passes through three states over the course of the novel: a nameless dream in Chapter III, a named memory in IV, and the addressee of a sentence spoken to another person in V. In IV, his memory comes just before the lecture that defines every illness as transformed love; in V, Hans Castorp himself gives the old marks that Behrens found on his body as the inheritance of that schoolboy love.
Relationships
- Hans Castorp: the schoolmate who asked him for a pencil at thirteen and who meets him again in Clavdia's eyes.
- Clavdia Chauchat: the woman of the sanatorium whose eyes are his.
- Symbols connected to him: the pencil, the object that ties him to Clavdia, and the X-ray, where the old places of illness that Hans Castorp attributes to that love appear.