Walking in Cirkels (MM16) (2024) Pintura por Noël Van Hoof

Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain – Part 16

Although it took all his energy to climb against the wind, he made for that chimerical something, which often vanished entirely in the gloom, and when he finally arrived he realized – in dizzy outrage, amazement, and terror – that it was the familiar hut, the hayshed with its roof weighted down by stones, which he had now reconquered after many a detour and so much upright exertion.
What a hell of a state of affairs! From Hans Castorp's frozen lips came formidable curses, though with the labial sounds omitted. In order to get his bearings, he stomped his way around the hut and determined that he had arrived at the back end of it after a good hour – or so he estimated – of pure, futile folly. But that's what the books said would happen. You ran around in a circle, toiling onward, with the feeling in your heart of doing something useful, when in fact you were tracing a wide, foolish arc that led back on itself, just as the teasing year came full circle. And so you wandered around and never found your way home. Hans Castorp took a certain satisfaction in recognizing the standard phenomenon, though it frightened him, too, and he slapped his thighs in rage and astonishment that something so universal had arrived right on schedule even in his own unique, individual situation.

(English translation by John E. Woods)

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