Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain
Although the sanatorium is the primary setting of the book, and it is there that time takes on its most relative and warping and indefinite qualities, we are pointed to other times ways in which time is warped in our everyday lives.
- Boredom and tedium.
- Chapter IV, "Excursus on the Sense of Time"
- It is commonly thought that time slows down with boredom/tedium. Here it is suggested this is a misconception: "vacuity, monotony" can make smaller units of time seem drawn out (minutes, hours), but larger units of time may be "contracted and dissipated ... to the point of reducing them to nothing at all." At the same time, particularly busy periods can seem to move quickly in the immediate sense, but in the larger scope have a "breadth and solidity" that makes them "pass far more slowly" than "empty" periods.
- "Great spaces of time passed in unbroken uniformity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear; when one day is like all the others, then they are all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares."
- This is why a change of scenery is sought as a resetting/renewing of time, which functions as a renewing of "our perception of life itself."
- It is commonly thought that time slows down with boredom/tedium. Here it is suggested this is a misconception: "vacuity, monotony" can make smaller units of time seem drawn out (minutes, hours), but larger units of time may be "contracted and dissipated ... to the point of reducing them to nothing at all." At the same time, particularly busy periods can seem to move quickly in the immediate sense, but in the larger scope have a "breadth and solidity" that makes them "pass far more slowly" than "empty" periods.
- Chapter IV, "Excursus on the Sense of Time"
- Youth and/or love.
- Hans's affair with Hippe. Chapter IV, "Hippe"
- In remembering a long and unrequited crush from his youth, a love for a boy named Hippe, Hans cannot remember the precise beginning or end of the affair. He carries this obsession for Hippe for about a year - which the narrator notes is "a great space of time" when you are young - then talks to him once, then carries the torch for a year beyond that. Hippe entered his life as though from a mist, took something closer to definite form for a brief time, then receded again (dissolved) back into mist.
- Hans keeps some pencil shavings from his one encounter with Hippe. After being transported back in time through memory to this affair, Hans wonders if those pencil shavings still exist --- as though he is imagining finding them.
- This is the first time we see some real emotion and life from Hans, something that doesn't seem bound to formalities and manners and expectations. The whole affair seems very pure in part because of its apparent irrationality.
- Hans's affair with Hippe. Chapter IV, "Hippe"