Hans Castorp's Liberation – Part 1 (MM21) (2024) Painting by Noël Van Hoof

Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain – Part 21

My heart is beating strong and knows why. It beats not for purely physical reasons, the way fingernails grow on a corpse. It beats for human reasons and because my spirit is truly happy. The truth of my dream has refreshed me – better than port or ale, it courses through my veins like love and life, so that I may tear myself out of my dreaming sleep, which I know only too well can be fatal to my young life. Awake, awake! Open your eyes. Those are your limbs, your legs there in the snow. Pull yourself together and stand up! Look – good weather!”
It turned out to be very difficult to liberate himself from the bonds that had woven around him and still tried to hold him down; but the impulse to counter them proved stronger. Hans Castorp propped himself on his elbows, valiantly pulled his knees up, tugged, shoved, wriggled himself to his feet. He stamped the snow with his skis, hugged himself, beat his ribs, shook his shoulders, while his eyes searched excitedly and eagerly here, there, everywhere in the sky, as soft blue peered through the gray-blue gauze of the clouds, now drifting aside to reveal the narrow sickle of the moon.

(English translation by John E. Woods

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Thomas MannThe Magic MountainDer Zauberberg