What It Is
The pencil that Hans Castorp borrowed at thirteen from Pribislav Hippe, a schoolmate with slanted eyes, and which returns twice in the novel: in a dream on the second night at the Berghof and on Walpurgis Night, requested from Clavdia Chauchat.
Where It Appears
In Chapter III: The First Full Day and the Arrival of Settembrini, Hans Castorp dreams that he is about to ask Madame Chauchat for a pencil in the schoolyard, and he struggles to wake up and to hold on to whom she reminds him of.
Afterward, Hans Castorp dreamed that he found himself in the gymnasium yard, where for so many years he had spent the breaks between classes, and that he was on the point of borrowing a pencil from Madame Chauchat, who was present as well.
he made a violent effort to tear himself from the dream, for now he knew, and wanted to fix in 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 memory of Hippe supplies the name that was missing: Clavdia's eyes are his.
that in their position, color and expression resembled, in a surprising and even alarming way, those of Pribislav Hippe. "Resembled" would by no means be the right word - these eyes were the same, Dawning Dread
The scene answers a dream that Hans Castorp had already had on the second night, and the previous chapter recounts it in full without saying whom it concerned:
In Chapter V: Humaniora, the Analysis and Walpurgis Night, the pencil is the pretext for the declaration, and the scene begins and ends with it.
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 brings him to her and sets him talking alone with her, largely in French.
It is also in French that Hans Castorp explicitly links the present passion to the school episode of 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
Clavdia answers by calling him a handsome bourgeois with the damp little spot in his lung, puts her Carnival paper cap on his head, and leaves, predicting a bad fever curve for him that night; the last sentence she addresses to him, already at the door, closes the episode with the same object that opened it.N'oubliez pas de me rendre mon crayon.
What It Means
The pencil is the thread that binds the three people whom the novel joins in a single passion: the schoolmate, the woman of the sanatorium, and Hans Castorp himself, who on Walpurgis Night says that the marks Behrens found in his body come from that old love. The object is small and borrowed, and it is precisely because it is borrowed that it demands a second encounter: returning it.
Relationships
- Core themes: Passion, Memory and the Past, Desire.
- Characters: Hans Castorp, Clavdia Chauchat.
- Neighbor: the X-ray, where the marks that Hans Castorp connects to the pencil appear.