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.