The Magic Mountain (47 page)

“Absolutely,” Hans Castorp hastened to reply with some vehemence. As he said it, he felt like a man who has lost his footing but luckily catches himself just in time.

Herr Settembrini seemed satisfied. “I assume these are new and surprising vistas for you, are they not?”

“Yes, I must admit this is the first time I’ve heard about these . . . these efforts.”

“If only,” Settembrini exclaimed softly, “if only you had heard of them before! But perhaps it is not yet too late for you to hear. Now, as to these flyers—you would like to know what they are about. I shall explain. This past spring the league was called together in solemn convention in Barcelona. You know, I’m sure, that city boasts of a special affinity for ideas of political progress. The convention lasted one whole week and included banquets and ceremonies. Good God, how I wanted to go, how I yearned to take part in its deliberations. But that scoundrel of a director forbade me, threatened me with death. What was I to do? Fearing death, I did not go. I was, as you can well imagine, in despair over the trick my imperfect health had played on me. Nothing is more painful than when our organic, animal component prevents us from serving the cause of reason. All the more intense, then, was my satisfaction upon receiving this letter from the office in Lugano. You are curious about its content, are you? I can well believe it. But first, some quick background information. Heedful of the truth that its task is to further human happiness, or in other words, finally to eradicate human suffering by combating it with practical social work; heedful, further, of the truth that this noble mission can be completed only with the help of social science, whose ultimate goal is the perfect state—the League for the Organization of Progress resolved in Barcelona to publish a multivolumed work, which is to bear the title
The Sociology of Suffering
and in which human sufferings of all classes and species will be treated in detailed, exhaustive, systematic fashion. You will object: What good are classes, species, and systems? And I reply: Order and classification are the beginning of mastery, whereas the truly dreadful enemy is the unknown. The human race must be led out of the primitive stage of fear and long-suffering vacuity and into a phase of purposeful activity. Humankind must be informed that certain effects can be diminished only when one first recognizes their causes and negates them, and that almost all sufferings of the individual are illnesses of the social organism. Fine! This is the purpose of our
Sociological Pathology
, an encyclopedia of some twenty or so volumes that will list and discuss all conceivable instances of human suffering, from the most personal and intimate to the large-scale conflicts of groups that arise out of class hostility and international strife. In short, it will list the chemical elements that serve as the basis for all the many mixtures and compounds of human suffering. Taking as its plumb line the dignity and happiness of humankind, it will supply for each and every instance of suffering the means and measures that seem most appropriate for eliminating its causes. Renowned scholars and experts from all over Europe—medical doctors, economists, psychologists—will participate in drafting this encyclopedia, and the general editorial offices in Lugano will act as the reservoir into which all articles will flow. I can read the question in your eyes: What will be my role in all of this? Let me finish first. This immense work does not wish to see belles-lettres neglected, either, at least to the extent that they speak of human suffering. Literature is therefore to have its own volume, which is to contain, as solace and advice for those who suffer, a synopsis and short analysis of all masterpieces of world literature dealing with every such conflict. And—that is the task with which the letter you see here entrusts your humble servant.”

“You don’t say, Herr Settembrini! Well, allow me then to offer my most heartfelt congratulations. What a spectacular assignment—simply made for you, I’d say. I’m not the least bit surprised that the league thought of you. And how happy it must make you that you can be helpful in eradicating human suffering.”

“It is a very complex task,” Herr Settembrini said, musing, “demanding much prudence and vast reading. Especially,” he added now, his gaze seemingly lost in the immensity of his mission, “especially because literature has regularly chosen suffering as its topic. Even masterpieces of only second or third rank have been concerned with it in one way or another. But no matter—all the better! However complex the task, it is the sort of work that I can manage even in this cursed place, if need be, although I would hope that I shall not be forced to complete it here. One cannot say,” he went on, stepping closer to Hans Castorp again and dampening his voice almost to a whisper, “one cannot say the same of the duties nature has imposed upon
you
, my good engineer. And that is my point, that is what I wanted to warn you about. You know how very much I admire your chosen profession, but because it is practical, and not intellectual, you cannot, unlike myself, pursue that profession anywhere but in the world below. You can be a European only in the flatlands—actively combating suffering in your own fashion, advancing progress, using time well. I have told you of the task that has come my way only to remind you of this, to bring you to yourself, to set your thoughts straight, which are evidently beginning to become confused under these atmospheric conditions. I urge you: Consider your self-respect, your pride. Do not lose yourself in an alien world. Avoid that swamp, that isle of Circe—for you are not Odysseus enough to dwell there unharmed. You will walk on all fours, you are tipping down onto your front limbs already, and will soon begin to grunt—beware!”

While he whispered his warnings, the humanist shook his head urgently back and forth. He fell silent now, scowling, with eyes lowered. It was impossible to reply with a quip or some other evasion, as was Hans

Castorp’s usual method—though he did weigh the possibility for just a moment. His eyes were directed at the floor, too. Lifting his shoulders, he asked just as softly, “What should I do?”

“What I told you before.”

“You mean leave?”

Herr Settembrini did not reply.

“You mean that I should go back home, is that it?”

“I told you that the very first evening, my good engineer.”

“Yes, and at the time I was free to do so, although I thought it unreasonable to throw in the towel just because the local air was a little hard on me. Since then, however, the situation has changed. Since then I’ve gone for an examination, as a result of which Director Behrens told me flat out that it would not pay for me to return home, that I would have to come back in very short order, and that if I were to continue my life just as before down below, the whole pulmonary lobe would go, willy-nilly, to the devil.”

“I know, and now you have your membership card in your pocket.”

“Yes, and you say it so ironically—with the right kind of irony, of course, whose purpose cannot be doubted for a moment and which is meant to serve as an honest, classical device of rhetoric—you see, I do pay attention to your words. But after the results of the X-ray, after this photograph here, after the director’s diagnosis, will you take the responsibility for sending me back home?”

Herr Settembrini hesitated for a moment. Then he stood up tall, opened his black eyes wide, fixing them firmly on Hans Castorp, and responded with an emphasis that did not lack a certain dramatic, theatrical tone, “Yes, my good engineer. I will take the responsibility.”

But Hans Castorp’s posture had stiffened as well now. He had put his heels together and was looking just as directly at Herr Settembrini. The battle had been engaged. Hans Castorp stood his ground. He was “strengthened” by forces close-by. Here was a pedagogue—but just outside was a narrow-eyed woman. He did not apologize for what he now said, did not even bother to preface it with, “No offense.” He replied, “Then you are more cautious about yourself than you are about other people.
You
did not go to Barcelona against your doctor’s orders. Fearing death, you stayed here.”

There was no doubt that to some extent this had a disruptive effect on Herr Settembrini’s pose. He smiled, but not without difficulty, and said, “I can appreciate a quick answer when I hear one, even when its logic borders on sophistry. I loathe the idea of engaging in that disgusting contest so typical here, otherwise I would reply that my illness is significantly more serious than yours—indeed, I am unfortunately so ill that only by a little artistic self-deception can I eke out the hope of ever being able to leave this place again and return to the world below. Come the day it should be proved totally improper of me to maintain that deception, I shall turn my back on this institution and spend the rest of my days in private lodgings somewhere in the valley. That will be sad, but since the sphere of my work is of the freest, most purely intellectual sort, it will not prevent me from serving the cause of humankind, from defying the spirit of disease to my last dying breath. I have already called to your attention the difference between us in that regard. My good engineer, you are not a man to sustain your better self here—I saw that the first time we met. You reproach me for not having gone to Barcelona. I submitted to that injunction so that I might not destroy myself prematurely. But I did it with gravest reservations, under the proudest, most excruciating protest of my spirit against the dictates of my wretched body. Whether that protest still lives within you as well, seeing that you are following the bidding of the local powers—or whether it is not, rather, the
body
and its evil proclivities that you all too willingly obey . . .”

“What do you have against the body?” Hans Castorp interrupted quickly, staring at him with large blue eyes, the whites broken with bloodshot veins. He was giddy with his own foolhardiness, as was only too obvious. (“What am I saying?” he thought. “This is ghastly. But I’ve declared war on him, and if at all possible I’m not going to let him have the last word. He’ll have it, of course, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll use it to my advantage all the same. I’ll provoke him.”) And now he completed his objection by asking, “But you are a humanist, are you not? And if you are, how can you say such bad things about the body?”

Settembrini’s smile was not forced this time; he was sure of himself. “ ‘What do you have against analysis?’ ” he quoted, his head tilted to one shoulder. “ ‘Don’t you approve of analysis?’—You will always find me ready to provide you with an answer, my good engineer,” he said with a bow and a deferential downward sweep of his hand, “particularly when your objections show some wit. You parry my thrusts not without elegance. Humanist—certainly I am that. You will never find me guilty of ascetic tendencies. I affirm, I respect, I love the body, just as I affirm, respect, and love form, beauty, freedom, mirth, and pleasure—just as I champion the ‘world,’ the interests of life against sentimental flight from the world,
classicismo
against
romanticismo
. I believe my position is perfectly clear. But there is one force, one principle that is the object of my highest affirmation, my highest and ultimate respect and love, and that force, that principle, is the mind. However much I detest seeing that dubious construct of moonshine and cobwebs that goes by the name of ‘soul’ played off against the body, within the antithesis of body
and
mind, it is the body that is the evil, devilish principle, because the body is nature, and nature—as an opposing force, I repeat, to mind, to reason—is evil, mystical and evil. ‘But you are a humanist!’ Most certainly I am that, because I am a friend of humankind, just as Prometheus was a lover of humankind and its nobility. That nobility, however, is contained within the mind, within reason, and therefore you will level the charge of Christian obscurantism against me quite in vain.”

Hans Castorp waved this off.

“You will,” Settembrini insisted, “level that charge quite in vain, simply because in due time, noble humanistic pride comes to see the tie that binds the mind to the physical body, to nature, as a debasement and a curse. Did you know that the great Plotinus is recorded to have said that he was ashamed to have a body?” Settembrini asked, and with such earnest expectation of an answer that Hans Castorp found himself forced to admit that this was the first he had heard of it.

“Porphyrius has recorded it for us. An absurd statement, if you like. But absurdity is an intellectually honorable position, and nothing could be more fundamentally pitiful than to raise the objection of absurdity when the mind attempts to maintain its dignity against nature and refuses to submit to her. Do you know about the Lisbon earthquake?”

“No . . . an earthquake? I’ve not been reading newspapers here . . .”

“You misunderstand me. Nevertheless, I would note that it is regrettable—though characteristic of the institution—that you have neglected to read what the press has to say. But you have misunderstood me, the natural phenomenon of which I speak is not a current event; it took place, incidentally, some one hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Oh, yes! Wait a moment—right! I read somewhere that Goethe said something in his bedroom one night to his valet—”

“Oh—I don’t wish to talk about that,” Settembrini broke in, closing his eyes and waving one little brown hand in the air. “Besides, you’re getting your catastrophes mixed up. You’re thinking of the earthquake in Messina. I’m talking about the one that ravaged Lisbon in the year 1755.”

“Beg your pardon.”

“Well, it was Voltaire who rose up against it.”

“What do you mean ‘rose up’? What did he do?”

“He rebelled, that’s what. He would not accept this stroke of fate, the brutal fact of it. He refused to submit to it. He protested in the name of the mind and reason against this scandalous offense of nature, which destroyed three-quarters of a flourishing city and took thousands of human lives. That astounds you, does it? Amuses you? You may be as astounded as you like, but I shall make so bold as to rebuke you for the smile. Voltaire’s position was that of a true descendent of those ancient Gauls who shot their arrows against heaven. You see, my good engineer, there you behold the mind’s enmity toward nature, its proud mistrust of her, its greathearted insistence on the right to criticize her and her evil, irrational power. Because she is a power, and it is servile to accept her, to reconcile oneself to her—that is, to reconcile oneself to her
inwardly
. There you see the kind of humanism that absolutely does not become ensnared in contradictions, that is in no way guilty of a retreat into Christian toadying, even though it resolves to see in the body the evil force, the antagonist. The contradiction that you believe you see is always one and the same. ‘What do you have against analysis?’ Nothing, when it serves the cause of education, liberation, and progress. Everything, when it comes wrapped in the ghastly, gamy odor of the grave. It is no different with the body. One must respect and defend it, when it serves the cause of emancipation and beauty, of freedom of the senses, of happiness and desire. One must despise it insofar as it is the principle of gravity and inertia opposing the flow toward the light, insofar-as it represents the principle of disease and death, insofar as its quintessence is a matter of perversity, of corruption, of lust and disgrace.”