A sign, said or image that anticipates, sometimes only for those who reread, something that will happen later in the work.
In The Magic Mountain
Three weeks mean almost nothing to us up here, but for you, who are only visiting and intend to stay just three weeks, it is a considerable portion of time. [...] "Going back in three weeks" is an idea from down below.
Joachim says that "Going back in three weeks" is "an idea from down below," and the phrase already announces what is coming: Hans's short term does not hold on the mountain, and he will stay well beyond the three weeks. Only someone who rereads notices the warning.
Chapter I: The Arrival at the Berghof, Joachim Ziemssen
Afterwards, Hans Castorp dreamed that he found himself in the gymnasium yard [...] and that he was on the point of borrowing a pencil from Madame Chauchat, who was present as well.
Chapter III: The First Full Day and the Arrival of Settembrini, the narrator
Our feeling [...] is the virile force that awakens life [...] feeling, my young friend, is divine. Man is divine, as long as he feels [...] If man fails in feeling, the ignominy of God breaks out, the defeat of God's virility takes place, a cosmic catastrophe, an unimaginable horror
Chapter VII: Peeperkorn, the Great Boredom and the Thunder, Pieter Peeperkorn
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