The Magic Mountain (31 page)

But he was willing to let himself be influenced, in the sense that it was pleasant to experiment, and so he reined in the protests that piety and good taste would have raised against the Settembrinian order of things and decided that what seemed blasphemous to him might be termed bold and what he found in bad taste might, at least in those days and under those conditions, be considered the excesses of a high-minded and noble nature—as, for example, when Grandfather Settembrini called barricades the “people’s throne” or declared it necessary to “consecrate the citizen’s pike on the altar of humanity.”

Hans Castorp knew why he listened to Herr Settembrini, not in so many words, but he knew. It was partly out of a sense of duty—but it was also the irresponsibility of the vacationer and visitor who does not wish to harden himself against new impressions and takes things as they come, well aware that tomorrow or the day after he will spread his wings and return to his accustomed routine. But conscience—or more precisely, the qualms of a conscience uneasy for some reason—demanded that he listen to the Italian, whether he was sitting there with one leg crossed over the other, puffing on his Maria Mancini, or all three of them were on their way back from the English quarter, climbing the hill to the Berghof.

According to the outline Settembrini presented, two principles were locked in combat for the world: might and right, tyranny and freedom, superstition and knowledge, the law of obduracy and the law of ferment, change, and progress. One could call the first the Asiatic principle, the other the European, for Europe was the continent of rebellion, critique, and transforming action, whereas the continent to the east embodied inertia and inactivity. There was no doubt which of these two forces would gain the victory—that of enlightenment, of reasoned advancement toward perfection. Because human progress was always gathering up new nations in the course of its brilliant advance, conquering new continents—indeed all of Europe itself—and had even started to press on into Asia. Yet there was much to be done before total victory, and great and noble efforts would have to be made by those to whom the light had been passed on, if that day were ever to come when monarchies and religions would at last collapse in those European nations that, truth to tell, had experienced neither an eighteenth century nor a 1789. But that day would come, Settembrini said, smiling delicately beneath his moustache—it would come, if not on the feet of doves, then on the pinions of eagles, and would burst as the dawn of universal brotherhood under the emblem of reason, science, and justice; it would bring about a new Holy Alliance of bourgeois democracies, the shining antithesis of that thrice-infamous alliance of princes and ministers whom Grandfather Giuseppe had declared his personal enemies—in a word, the Republic of the World. But to achieve this goal, it was necessary above all to strike at the Asiatic principle of bondage and obduracy at its vital center point, at the very nerve of resistance—in Vienna. One must deal a fatal blow to Austria and crush her, first to avenge past wrongs and second to open the way for the rule of justice and happiness on earth.

This final twist to the melodious torrent of Settembrini’s argument did not interest Hans Castorp at all. He did not like it, in fact, and every time it reappeared he found it embarrassing, as if it were some testy personal or nationalistic prejudice—not to mention the reaction of Joachim Ziemssen, who would refuse to listen whenever the Italian started down that road, would scowl and look away, sometimes diverting the conversation or reminding them that the duties of the rest cure called. Indeed, Hans Castorp did not feel he was required to pay any regard to such aberrations, evidently they lay beyond the limits set by an uneasy conscience demanding that he at least try to be influenced—and its demands were indeed audible, so audible that whenever Herr Settembrini would sit down with them or join them in the open air, he would ask the Italian to expand on his ideas.

These ideas, both as ideals and efforts of the will, Settembrini remarked, had been handed down as a tradition in his family. Three generations had dedicated their lives and intellects to them—grandfather, father, and son, each in his own fashion, the father no less than Grandfather Giuseppe, though unlike him, he had not been a political agitator and freedom-fighter, but a quiet and gentle scholar, a humanist at his desk. But what was humanism? Love of humankind, nothing more, and so it, too, was political, it, too, was a rebellion against everything that had soiled and degraded the ideal of humanity. Humanism had been accused of exaggerating the importance of form; but it cultivated beautiful form purely for the sake of the dignity of man—in brilliant antithesis to the Middle Ages, which had sunk not only into misanthropy and superstition, but also into ignominious formlessness. From the very first, his father had fought for the cause of humanity, for earthly interests, for freedom of thought and the pursuit of happiness, and had firmly believed that we can leave heaven to the birds. Prometheus! He had been the first humanist and was identical with
Satana
, whom Carducci had apostrophized in his hymn. Oh, good God, if only the cousins could have come to Bologna and heard that old enemy of the Church taunting and inveighing against the Christian sensitivities of the Romantics. Against Manzoni’s
Sacred Hymns
. Against the shadowy moonshine of the
Romanticismo
, which he had compared to “Luna, that pallid nun of heaven.”
Per Bacco
, what an exquisite delight it had been! If only they could have also heard Carducci’s interpretation of Dame—celebrating him as a citizen of a great city, who had defended the revolutionary and reforming spirit of human enterprise against asceticism and all denial of the world. Because it had not been the sickly and mystagogic Beatrice whom the poet had honored in his poem with the title of “
donna gentile e pietosa
,” but rather his wife, the embodiment of this-worldly knowledge and practical, lifelong labor.

And so now Hans Castorp had heard a thing or two about Dante, and from the best of sources. Given the fact that it came from a windbag, he did not trust the information entirely, but it was worth hearing about how Dante had been a quick-witted citizen of a great city. And it was likewise worthwhile listening to Settembrini talk about himself, declaring that he, the grandson Lodovico, had united the propensities of his two immediate forebears—the political bent of his grandfather and the humanistic bent of his father—by becoming a man of letters, a free-lance writer. For literature was nothing other than the union of humanism and politics, which could come about all the more easily since humanism was already politics and politics already humanism. Hans Castorp pricked up his ears at this and took pains to understand it, because he had reason to hope that he would now be able to grasp the nature of Magnus the brewer’s crass ignorance and learn in what way literature was something totally different from “beautiful characters.” And had the cousins ever heard of a Signore Brunetto, Settembrini asked, Brunetto Latini, who had become the town clerk of Florence around 1250, and had written a book on virtue and vice? He was the great master who had first given the Florentines their polish and taught them both how to speak and the fine art of guiding their republic by the rules of politics.

“There you have it, gentlemen!” Settembrini cried. “There you have it!” And he spoke now about the “Word,” about the cult of the Word, about eloquence, which he called the triumph of humanity. Because the Word was the glory of humankind, and it alone gave dignity to life. Not just humanism, but humanity itself, man’s dignity and self-respect—they were inseparable from the Word, from literature. (“You see,” Hans Castorp said later to his cousin, “you see? Literature is a matter of beautiful words. I saw that right off. “) And politics were bound up with literature, too—or rather they were derived from the oneness of humanity and literature. For the beautiful Word gave birth to the beautiful deed.

“Two hundred years ago,” Settembrini said, “you had a poet in your own country, a fine old confabulator, who set great store by beautiful handwriting, because he said it leads to a beautiful style. He should have taken that one step further and said that a beautiful style leads to beautiful actions.” Writing beautifully was almost synonymous with thinking beautifully, and from there it was not far to acting beautifully. All moral conduct and all moral perfection emanated from the spirit of literature, from the spirit of human dignity, which simultaneously was also the spirit of humanity and of politics. Yes, they were all one and the same force, one and the same idea, and could be summarized in a
single
word. And what was that word? Well, it consisted of familiar syllables, but the cousins had probably never truly grasped their meaning and majesty. And that word was—civilization! And as Settembrini released the word from his lips, he thrust his small yellow right hand into the air, as if proposing a toast.

Young Hans Castorp found all this well worth listening to—not that he was obliged to, of course, it was more an experiment—but in any case, well worth listening to, and he said as much to Joachim Ziemssen, who had just stuck a thermometer in his mouth and so could only mumble a reply and then became too involved in reading the numbers and entering them on his chart to be able to comment on Settembrini’s views. Hans Castorp, as we have said, took note of them in his kindhearted way and he opened himself to them as a way of testing them—from which it became particularly clear that the waking Hans Castorp was a very different person from the fatuously dreaming Hans Castorp, who had called Settembrini an “organ-grinder” to his face and tried with all his might to push him out of the way because he was “bothering” him. Awake, however, he listened to him politely and attentively and tried to be fair, compensating for or suppressing feelings that he felt rising in opposition to his mentor’s opinions and characterizations. For it cannot be denied that opposition was stirring in his soul—both the sort that had always been there naturally from the start and the sort that arose specifically from the present situation, partly from indirect observation, partly from personal experience among these people up here.

What a piece of work is a man, and how easily conscience betrays him. He listens to the voice of duty—and what he hears is the license of passion. And out of a sense of duty to be fair and balanced, Hans Castorp listened to Herr Settembrini. With the best of intentions he tested the man’s views on reason, the world republic, and beautiful style—and was prepared to be influenced by them. And each time, he found it all the more permissible afterward to let his thoughts and dreams run free in another direction, in the
opposite
direction. To put our suspicions and true understanding of the matter into words—he had probably listened to Herr Settembrini for one purpose only: to be given carte blanche by his conscience, a license it had been unwilling to grant him at first. And what or who stood on the opposing side of patriotism, the dignity of man, and beautiful literature—the side toward which Hans Castorp believed he should direct his thoughts and deeds? There stood . . . Clavdia Chauchat—listless, worm-eaten, Kirghiz-eyed; and whenever Hans Castorp thought of her (although “thought” is an all-too-inhibited word for describing how he turned inwardly toward her), it seemed to him that he was sitting again in that boat on the lake in Holstein and gazing with dazzled and bewildered eyes out of glassy daylight across to the eastern sky and the moonlit night draped in a web of mist.

Hans Castorp’s week here ran from Tuesday to Tuesday, because it was on a Tuesday that he had arrived. A few days had passed since he had gone down to the office and paid his bill for the second week—the modest weekly sum of 160 francs. And it was modest and fair to his mind, even if you disregarded the priceless benefits of his stay—which were not on the bill because they were priceless; but then neither were certain other entertainments, which could very well have been calculated, the band concerts every two weeks, for example, or Dr. Krokowski’s lectures. The bill was solely for room and board, for the basic services of the hotel—comfortable lodging and five prodigious meals.

“It’s not so much, it’s rather cheap. You can’t complain they’re overcharging,” the visitor said to the long-term guest. “You need around six hundred fifty francs a month for room and board, and that’s with medical treatment included. Fine. Let’s assume you give out about thirty francs a month in tips—if you’re a decent fellow and like to see friendly faces. That makes six hundred eighty. Fine. And now you’ll say that there are other fees and expenses. You have to lay out money for drinks, toiletries, cigars, an occasional excursion, a carriage ride if you like, and now and then a bill for the cobbler or tailor. Fine, but even with all that included, try as you will, you’ll still be under a thousand francs a month. That’s not even eight hundred marks! Which adds up to less than ten thousand marks a year. It certainly can’t be more than that. That’s all it costs you.”

“First-rate mental arithmetic,” Joachim said. “I didn’t know you were so good at it. And how generous of you to figure up the charges by the year, too—you’ve definitely learned a thing or two up here. But your figures are on the high side, you know. I don’t smoke cigars, and I hope I won’t need to have any suits made for me up here, thanks all the same.”

“So that was still too high,” Hans Castorp said, slightly confused. And no matter how it had come about that he had included cigars and new suits in his cousin’s bill, as far as the nimble mental arithmetic went, that was nothing more than intentional deception about his natural talents. Because as in everything else, Hans Castorp was somewhat slow and uninspired at that, too; and his quick reckoning in this case was not ad lib, but the result of preparation, with paper and pencil in fact, carried out one evening when he had been taking his rest cure (because he had begun taking it in the evenings now, too, since everyone else did). On a sudden inspiration, he had got up out of his splendid lounge chair and gone back into the room for what he needed to do the figuring. And he had determined that his cousin, or rather, anyone just in general would need, all things considered, twelve thousand francs a year here. Just for the fun of it, he had pointed out to himself that his own funds were more than adequate for a life up here, seeing as he was a man with an annual income of eighteen to nineteen thousand francs.