Hans Castorp surrounded by Nature – Part 2 (MM14) (2024) Peinture par Noël Van Hoof

Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain – Part 14

On Sylt, he had stood dressed in white trousers, safe, elegant, and reverent beside the mighty, rolling surf, as if it were a caged lion, yawning and showing its fearful fangs and cavernous gorge. Then he would go for a swim, and a lifeguard would blow on his little horn to warn those brash enough to venture beyond the first breaking wave, or merely to get too close to its onrushing storm – and even the final thrust of the cataract was like the slap of a giant paw against the back of his neck. As a young man, Hans Castorp had learned the exhilarating thrill of brushing up against powers whose full embrace would destroy you. What he had not learned back then, however, was a taste for extending the thrilling contact with deadly nature until it threatened with its full embrace – had not learned to venture out into the enormity as a weak, if well armed and reasonably well equipped child of civilization, or at least to postpone fleeing before the enormity until contact with it verged on a peril that knew no limits, until it was no longer the last thrust of foam and a soft paw, but the wave itself, the gorge, the sea.

(English translation by John. E. Woods)

Thèmes connexes

Thomas MannThe Magic MountainDer ZauberbergSea