The Magic Mountain: Part 4, Chapter 6: Analysis Summary & Analysis

Hans sits down at a seat near the door and tries to act like he’s been there the whole time. Hardly anybody notices him, which is good—he’s pale, bloody, and looks generally awful. However, Madame Chauchat is in front of him—and she turns around to face him when he walks in. She looks just like Hippe. He looks at her horrible posture—so unlike the graceful way the women in his usual social circle hold themselves—with disgust. But in that moment, he recognizes in her the same freedom from honor he saw in Herr Albin. As he looks at her, his thoughts grow jumbled, and he can’t pay attention to Krokowski’s words.

Hans tries to focus. The subject of Krokowski’s lecture is “the force of love,” Krokowski’s specialty. Krokowski’s speech is both lyrical and intellectual, and it seems to affect both the men and women of the audience—but not Hans—emotionally. Hans hasn’t heard anyone say the word “love” so much in his entire life, and he starts to feel uncomfortable. Krokowski says love is among the most puzzling, discomforting of all human instincts. He presents passion and chastity as  dueling forces, suggesting that fear seems to cause chastity to triumph in society. But this is merely an illusion, and beneath the surface, repressed love and passion linger. And the way this repressed passion presents itself on the surface, Krokowski explains, is as illness. The room collectively sighs as he voices this conclusion.

Hans watches Frau Chauchat fix her hair and becomes distracted by her stubby, unrefined hands. He thinks about Krokowski’s theory about bourgeois forces stifling love. Hans thinks about how enticingly women dress, and he suddenly feels overcome with zeal for life. He realizes that to truly enjoy one’s life, one must consciously remember that it is “magical.” Of course, Hans counters, there’s a logical explanation for why women dress the way they do: to entice men in order to procreate and bring about the next generation. Hans thinks that sickly women like Madame Chauchat should really be forbidden from dressing this way. It’s illogical for a man to be attracted to a sick woman—just as it was illogical for Hans to be attracted to Hippe. Hans looks up at Krokowski just then and thinks he looks like Jesus on the cross.

Krokowski ends his lecture by raising his arms toward the crowd and praising “psychic dissection,” urging his audience to come to him and let him relieve them, through analysis, of “hidden suffering, of shame and affliction.”

After the lecture, Krokowski heads out to the lobby. The residents follow him, crowding around him as though in a trance. Hans thinks he looks like the Pied Piper. Hans reminds himself that he’s only a visitor at the sanatorium and has no use or interest in Krokowski’s analysis. Hans wonders if Frau Chauchat lets Krokowski dissect her mind, too.  

Joachim finds Hans and asks him how his walk went. Hans admits that he walked a bit too far and that the walk might have harmed more than helped him. They do not discuss the lecture—and they never will.