Hans Castorp's Awakening (MM20) (2024) Painting by Noël Van Hoof

Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain – Part 20

“I will be good. I will grant death no domination over my thoughts. For in that is found goodness and brotherly love, and in that alone. Death is a great power. You take off your hat and tiptoe past his presence, rocking your way forward. He wears the ceremonial ruff of what has been, and you put on austere black in his honor. Reason stands foolish before him, for reason is only virtue, but death is freedom and kicking over the traces, chaos and lust. Lust, my dream says, not love. Death and love – there is no rhyming them, that is a preposterous rhyme, a false rhyme. Love stands opposed to death – it alone, and no reason, is stronger than death. Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts. And form, too, comes only from love and goodness: form and the cultivated manners of man's fair state, of a reasonable, genial community – out of silent regard for the bloody banquet. Oh, what a clear dream I've dreamed, how well I've 'played king'! I will remember it. I will keep faith with death in my heart, but I will clearly remember that if faithfulness to death and to what is past rules our thoughts and deeds, that leads only to wickedness, dark lust, and hatred of humankind. For the sake of goodness and love, man shall grant death no domination over his thoughts. And with that I shall awaken.”

(English translation by John E. Woods

Related themes

Thomas MannThe Magic MountainDer Zauberberg