The Magic Mountain

“I really am surprised to learn that I’m a little ill, but I’ll just have to get used to being a patient here, to actually being one of you, instead of merely the visitor I’ve been until now,” says Hans to his cousin (182). Joachim doesn’t approve. “You come up here to visit me, and I introduce you to life up here, and now here you sit, and no one knows when you’ll be able to get away again and start your career,” Joachim protests (182).

Hans is bedridden with fever for several days afterward. He writes letters home and receives the few clothes and things he left behind. In the second week of his convalescence, Settembrini stops by Hans’s room and warns him against getting too absorbed in Behren’s diagnosis or in fetishizing medical paraphernalia like his new thermometer. Hans states that “the air down there is cruel, ruthless. Lying here and watching from a distance, it almost makes me shudder” (195), which Settembrini dismisses as sentimental. Death, says the older man, is of a piece with life; considered separately, as is the custom at the sanatorium, death takes on an unhealthy and decadent power.