Falling Snowflakes (MM15) (2024) Painting by Noël Van Hoof

Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain – Part 15

Yes, there was something special about this light, loose, powdery white stuff that weighed down the trees, covered the breath of the land, and carried him along on his skis, something that made it different from the sand on the shore at home, of which it had reminded him. It was not made up of tiny grains of rock, but as everyone knew, consisted of myriads of water droplets, violently gathered up and frozen into manifold, symmetrical crystals – little pieces of an inorganic substance, the wellspring of protoplasm, of plants and human beings; and among all those myriads of magical stars in their secret, miniscule splendor never intended for the human eye, no two were alike. It was all the result of an endless delight in invention, in the subtlest variation and embellishment of one basic design: the equilateral, equiangular hexagon. And yet absolute symmetry and icy regularity characterized each item of cold inventory. Yes, that was what was so eerie – it was anti-organic, hostile to life itself. Snowflakes were too regular; when put into the service of life, the same substance was never so regular as that. Life shuddered at such perfect precision, regarded it as something deadly, as the secret of death itself; and Hans Castorp thought he understood why the architects of ancient temples had intentionally and covertly built little deviations from symmetry into their rows of columns.

(English translation by John E. Woods)

Related themes

Thomas MannThe Magic MountainDer ZauberbergSnow