“You’re a writer,” Hans Castorp said, “a literary man. You really should be able to understand and appreciate how under such circumstances a person might not be so tough-minded or find it perfectly natural for people to be so cruel–normal people, you know, who stroll about and laugh and make money and stuff their bellies. I don’t know if I’m expressing myself…”
Settembrini bowed. “You wish to say,” he explained, “that early and repeated contacts with death give rise to a basic mindset against the cruelties and crudities of life as it is thoughtlessly lived out in the world. Or, let us say, it makes one aware of and sensitive to its cynicism.”
“Precisely,” Hans Castorp exclaimed with genuine enthusiasm. “You’ve put it perfectly, dotted the i and crossed the t, Herr Settembrini. Contacts with death!”
–From The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Certain experiences change one’s point of view: travel, sickness, grief. It is only at a few paces back from the canvas that you get any sort of perspective. Is that why they call it a “mid-life crisis”? As one edges closer to death and further away from the rulebook of life, most everything is a waste of time except for the present moment. What I love about The Magic Mountain is that it passes like a dream and yet it is swarming with enthusiasm for life in every detail. Its gift is to begin to see one’s own life’s journey as enchanting and beautiful as if it were seen through the eyes of someone already dead. And isn’t that the message of art in general? To show life in all its naked blessings and to teach us what it feels like to be alive…
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