Giving a thing, an animal or an abstract idea the actions, feelings or speech of a person.
In The Magic Mountain
Two days of travel separate a man [...] from his everyday world, from all that he is accustomed to call his duties, interests, cares and projects; they separate him much more than this young man could imagine while a cab carried him to the station. The space that, whirling and fleeing, creeps between him and his place of origin reveals forces that are usually thought to be the privilege of time
Space acts like someone in motion: "whirling and fleeing, it creeps" between the young man and his origin, and then "reveals forces." By acting like a character, distance gains the power to transform whoever travels.
Chapter I: The Arrival at the Berghof, the narrator
the love that was oppressed was not dead, no; it lived, it continued, in the darkness, in the deepest secrecy, yearning for its fulfillment, it broke the magic circle of chastity and reemerged, though in a metamorphosed form, most difficult to recognize [...] In the form of illness. The symptom of illness is nothing but the disguised manifestation of love's power; and every illness is merely love transformed
Chapter IV: The Sense of Time, Hippe and the Thermometer, Dr. Krokowski
I do not wish to grant death any power over my thoughts! For that is what goodness and philanthropy consist of, and nothing else. [...] Love confronts death; only love, and not reason, is stronger than it
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