The Theme in the Work
Time enters the novel before the plot does. In the Purpose of Chapter I, the narrator says that the story's antiquity is not properly due to time, promises to narrate it with precision and jokes that the narration will surely not reach seven years. On arrival, Hans Castorp fixes the visit at three weeks, and Joachim Ziemssen replies that up there three weeks are almost nothing and, at dinner, that there is no time and no life there.
Chapter II, the great retreat to childhood, gives the theme the form of a sensation: before the family's baptismal font, the boy feels something that changes and yet remains. In Chapter III, Lodovico Settembrini warns that at the sanatorium the smallest unit of time is the month, and Hans Castorp, on the balcony, while his cousin takes his temperature, improvises the thesis that time has no nature of its own and that measurements are conventions. Chapter IV makes theory of it in the narrator's Excursus on the sense of time: habit weakens the sense of time, and boredom is a morbid shortness of time brought on by monotony. At the end of the same chapter the thermometer (see the thermometer) and Dr. Behrens's examination exchange the three weeks for an extended stay. In Chapter V, bedridden, Hans Castorp lives the thesis in the first person: "Eternal Soup" describes the same day repeated, a now that has stopped, a present without extension in which soup is brought to him forever.
Chapter VII opens with another digression, Walk on the Beach: the narrator asks whether it is possible to narrate time itself and concludes that, where uniformity reigns, movement is no longer movement and time ceases to exist. After the death of Pieter Peeperkorn, Hans Castorp sees in the Berghof (see the Berghof) life without time, dead life, and boredom becomes a collective mania. Seven years after his arrival, the thunder of war bursts the mountain open and casts the protagonist back onto the plain.
The novel does not use time as a backdrop; it uses it as the matter that the place corrodes. The theme changes register with each return: a conversation between cousins in Chapter I, a childhood memory in II, improvised philosophy in III, theory in IV, lived experience in V, a confession of impossibility in VII. And the ending says what the theory had prepared: what returns to Hans Castorp the time the mountain suspended is not a decision of his, but an historical event from outside, and it arrives like thunder.
Where It Appears
- Chapter I, Purpose: In the Purpose, the narrator denies that the story's antiquity is properly due to time, promises to narrate it with exactness and thoroughness, and jokes that surely it will not come to seven years.
- Chapter I, The Arrival: Joachim tells Hans Castorp that three weeks are almost nothing for them up there and that returning from here in three weeks is an idea from down there.
- Chapter I, In the Restaurant: At dinner, when Hans Castorp asks whether time passes quickly there, Joachim answers that it does not pass at all and that there is no time and no life there.
- Chapter II, The Baptismal Font and the Two Figures of the Grandfather: Hearing the grandfather repeat the account of three baptisms over the baptismal font, the boy Hans Castorp has the strange impression of something that changes and yet remains, at once reiteration and dizzying monotony.
- Chapter III, Satan: Settembrini warns Hans Castorp that at the Berghof they ignore the week as a unit of time and that the smallest unit of time there is the month.
- Chapter III, Subtlety of Thought: On the balcony, while Joachim takes his temperature, Hans Castorp improvises the thesis that time has no nature of its own and that its measurements are mere conventions.
- Chapter IV, Excursus on the Sense of Time: In the Excursus, the narrator states that habit represents a weakening of the sense of time and that boredom is, in reality, a morbid shortness of time brought on by monotony.
- Chapter IV, The Thermometer: After the thermometer reads 37.6, Dr. Behrens tells Hans Castorp that it is not worth returning, and the three-week visit becomes an extended stay.
- Chapter V, Eternal Soup and Sudden Clarity: Bedridden, Hans Castorp lives time as the same repeated day, a now that has stopped, a present without extension in which soup is brought to him forever.
- Chapter V, Freedom: At the end of September, after seven weeks on the mountain, Hans Castorp can no longer say whether time seems short or long to him.
- Chapter VI, Irascibility. And One More Very Embarrassing Thing: In August, with snow in midsummer, the anniversary of Hans Castorp's arrival at the Berghof passes in silence.
- Chapter VII, Walk on the Beach: The narrator asks whether time itself can be narrated and concludes that, where uniformity reigns, movement is no longer movement and therefore time does not exist.
- Chapter VII, The Great Boredom: With Peeperkorn dead and Clavdia gone, Hans Castorp looks at the Berghof and sees life without time, without cares or hopes, dead life, ruled by the demon of boredom.
- Chapter VII, The Thunder: Seven years after his arrival, Hans Castorp no longer has a working clock or calendar when the thunder of war bursts and shatters the magic mountain.
Passages
At the first dinner, the driest formulation of the place comes from Joachim, and not from any of the pedagogues.
Quickly or slowly, as you please [...] It does not pass at all, you know? Here there is no time and no life; there is simply nothing at all
In childhood, time appears as a repetition that changes nothing.
The grandfather himself repeated each time, over the same basin, the account of three baptisms, that of Hans, that of his father, and that of the grandfather himself, each with the water falling into the same golden hollow, and it is before this identical repetition that the narrator names for the first time the central feeling of the chapter,the strange impression, half dreamy and half anguished, of something that paraded without moving, that changed and yet remained, something that was as much reiteration as dizzying monotony.
On the balcony, Hans Castorp concludes that the measures of time are conventions.
For time to be measurable, it would have to flow in a uniform way; and where is it written that this is so? For our consciousness, it is not. We merely assume it, for the good order of things, and our measurements, allow me this observation, are nothing but conventions…
The Excursus gives the theory of boredom as a shortening of time.
A rich and interesting content is [...] capable of shortening the hour and even the day; but, considered as a whole, it lends breadth, weight, and solidity to the course of time, so that years rich in events pass much more slowly than those others, poor, empty, light, which are swept away by the wind and fly off. What is called boredom is, therefore, in reality rather a morbid brevity of time, brought on by monotony, Excursus on the Sense of Time
Walk on the Beach pushes the thesis to its limit.
The conclusion of the digression is the formula that will justify, pages later, the very boredom of the Berghof:
Here is the same as there, and before is the same as now and after; time drowns in the vast monotony of space, and where uniformity reigns, movement from one point to another is no longer movement. And where movement is no longer movement, time does not exist.