The Magic Mountain

“On the other hand, it is possible for a narrative’s content-time to exceed its own duration immeasurably. This is accomplished by diminishment…” says the narrator, preparing us for a quick tour of the remainder of Hans’s seven-year stay at the sanatorium, as well as the abstractions the narrator will use to depict it (532). Hans’s internal life has become similarly abstracted by vast ideas and acute grief, which have generated an internal stupor. Clavdia Chauchat returns with a new lover and travelling companion, the Dutch capitalist Mynheer Peeperkorn.

Peeperkorn is 60 years old and wealthy. He is a large man, imposing in body and manner; “suddenly you knew what a personality was,” thinks Hans (551). Hans is jealous of Peeperkorn at first and avoids Clavdia. Soon, a teasing Clavdia introduces them, and over a night of revelry and cards, Hans is as thoroughly under Peeperkorn’s sway as he was under Settembrini’s or Naphta’s.

Peeperkorn’s philosophy is doled out in nearly unintelligible but totally self-assured sentence fragments; it amounts to the sort of libertinism which is only practicable by very rich and generous people. Peeperkorn remains drunk from morning until night, interrupted by occasional flareups of an unnamed, jungle-borne illness.

Over the course of months, a circle of seven is formed with Hans, Clavdia, Settembrini, Naphta, Peeperkorn, as well as Hans’s new companions Ferge and Wehsal. Naphta and Settembrini continue their ongoing debate about the intellectual future and comportment of the Western world. Peeperkorn agrees (with an odd condescension) to everything said, all while commanding occasional interruptions to observe silence, or fragmentary nonsense, or a hunting hawk. In short, his presence is disruptive.

Hans becomes an irritable third wheel to Clavdia’s and Peeperkorn’s relationship. In private, he acts with impertinence, continuing to refer to Clavdia by her informal first name. This, along with Hans’s new intimacy with Peeperkorn, annoys her. Nevertheless, she asks for Hans’s friendship, sealing the arrangement with a confusing kiss. Soon after, Peeperkorn wrangles Hans’s secret crush out of him, though the revelation only brings the two companions closer. Peeperkorn insists that Hans use his informal first name from now on, though Hans has trouble following this direction. 

Led by Peeperkorn, the circle of seven travel to the Flüela Valley. On the way there, Wehsal complains of his broken heart and of the power others wield over him in a way that repulses Hans. Later, Settembrini and Naphta are humbled into intellectual quietude by the romantic beauty of a waterfall. Peeperkorn reaches the apex of his strange command over the group and gives a speech that no one can hear over the onrush of the nearby water. This illegible speech binds the group like a spell. The next day, Peeperkorn commits suicide in his bed, using a bizarre contraption meant to simulate a cobra strike.

Hans remains at the sanatorium for years, falling into a stupor of abstracted thinking and faddish enthusiasms. He burns away months playing solitaire, and still more examining the mechanism of the sanatorium’s new gramophone. He takes pleasure in a recording of an operetta that reminds him of Joachim and of the permanence of death. He participates in a seance led by Doctor Krokowski. Though the staging of this event is totally unconvincing, Hans nevertheless thinks he sees Joachim’s ghost.

As the remainder of seven years pass by, an atmosphere of squabbling and petty violence overtakes the sanatorium. Settembrini and Naphta, both in failing health, begin to irritate one another unbearably. Goaded on by Wehsal, they engage in a close-quarters duel by pistol. Hans finds being neutral in this deadly situation difficult. During the duel, Settembrini fires his gun into the air. Filled with rage at Settembrini’s selflessness, Naphta turns his own pistol on himself.

News of the war reaches the sanatorium. With a dying and broken Settembrini’s tearful encouragement, Hans heads off to fight. Finally, the narrator gives us an impression of Hans in the flatlands, absorbed within a battalion of expendable soldiers, marching through the mud to take a strategic hill: “The wicked dance in which you are caught up will last many a sinful year yet, and we would not wager much that you will come out whole” (706).