The Magic Mountain: Part 5, Chapter 4: Mercury’s Moods Summary & Analysis

The first few days of October are cold and gloomy, but then the weather turns summery again. Hans feels as though he has a whole summer ahead of him. He fails to notice the many trees that have already shed their leaves. But Hans’s observations are just as capricious and fleeting as his body temperature, which is simultaneously “chilled and feverish.” These days he exists in a fog and can’t imagine what it’d feel like to be “sober” again. He loves to look at Clavdia, not because she is particularly beautiful, but because she increases this fogginess in him.  

As Hans looks at Clavdia, he considers her poor manners and slovenly appearance, and he thinks about what Settembrini said about sickness and depravity being the same thing. Surely Clavdia is sick—she’s here so often, after all—and so her illness must be “of a moral nature.”

Yet Hans has started to feel less offended by Clavdia’s brand of bad manners—now, it’s Settembrini who most irritates him. Yes, the people at the Bad Russian table might not have great table manners, but what right has anyone to lay down a divide between good and bad? Gradually, Hans starts to experiment with poor manners himself. When he slumps over at meals, he finds that it actually feels quite good in his belly. And when he lets the door to the dining hall slam shut behind him without latching it properly, he finds that it’s rather convenient. But all these changes really show, the narrator points out, is that Hans has fallen in love with Clavdia, falling into a “reckless and unpolished” type of love that confounds and “degrad[es]” Hans. 

Hans feels a great thrill whenever Clavdia merely says “merci” when he lets her walk through a doorway before him. Another time, he adjusts a window in the dining hall so that the sun doesn’t shine so brightly on Clavdia, who silently thanks him from across the hall once he has returned to his seat. These events might seem ordinary and inconsequential, but they convey a broader motion of “tension and of gratifying release of tension”—though it remains unclear if they affect Clavdia as deeply as they affect Hans.

One day, while Hans is sitting outside with Joachim, he sees Clavdia sitting across the way, smoking a cigarette. Wanting to make her jealous, he begins chatting with Hermine Kleefeld—but his plan backfires when Clavdia responds with defiant indifference. Flustered, Hans takes Joachim up on his suggestion that they retire to their rooms for a rest cure. After this, Clavdia ignores Hans for two whole days. On the third day, the weather is nice, and so Joachim and Hans go outside to take a stroll. During the walk, Hans sees Clavdia on the path ahead of them. Hans deliberately walks faster. When he reaches her, he says good morning, and she replies in her own language, with happy and receptive eyes.

Hans returns to Joachim, who didn’t bother to run ahead with him. Joachim, looking annoyed, tells Hans he looks flushed and that his temperature is probably raised again. But Hans remains overjoyed, even when he returns to his room and finds that Joachim was right—his temperature is 100.4 degrees.