The Magic Mountain: Part 5, Chapter 7: Research Summary & Analysis

Winter arrives, and its intensity alarms Hans even though he has sufficiently prepared for it—he now has a sleeping bag to shield him from the cold, just like all the other residents of the Berghof. Eventually Hans realizes that he’ll be spending Christmas here, and the thought troubles him. Residents take Christmas very seriously, putting lots of thought into the communal gift they plan to give to Behrens on Christmas Eve. Settembrini suggests a book-in-progress called Sociology of Suffering, but nobody other than a bookseller resident agrees with him. As of yet, the residents haven’t reached a consensus, with the Russian residents wanting to give Behrens a gift of their own.

Despite the toll the intense cold takes on his body, Hans stays out on his balcony late into the night, enjoying the winter night. During the day, Hans and Joachim take walks in the snow, and Hans is more prone to indulgent rambling than he was when he was down in the flatlands. 

Lots of residents read at the Berghof, though it’s mostly new or short-term residents, since people who’ve been there a long time have long since learned how to pass the time without intellectual stimulation. Currently, a pamphlet that Herr Albin introduced to the population, The Art of Seduction, is circulating among the residents. Magnus, the brewer resident, claims that the book gives women “immodest ideas,” and this only makes the book more coveted. But other than Settembrini (who consumes himself with writing about how to eliminate suffering) and Joachim (who studies his Russian textbooks), most residents don’t use their rest cures to exercise their brains.

Hans, having lost interest in Ocean Steamships, the only book he packed, acquires new books about anatomy and biology, his new primary interests. He spends hours reading about the mystery of life. Ultimately, the books teach Hans that nobody knows what life really is or where it comes from—it seems to be born of itself. But since that would be a “miracle,” scientists hypothesize about organic matter originating from inorganic matter—the most basic and lifeless of all substances.

Life, Hans muses, is warmth: it is the warmth that happens as the physical body tries to “preserve form.” This process, he reflects, is “existence in its lewd form.” It is not the ideal, beautiful form found in works of visual art and poetry. Instead, it is that which comes from “substances awakened to lust via means unknown, by decomposing and composing organic matter itself, by reeking flesh.” Hans thinks about all this as he sits on his balcony, wrapped tightly in his blankets, and gazes out upon the wintery night that lays before him.

Hans pores over textbooks about asexual and sexual reproduction, about the mysteries of certain anatomical processes, and about pathological anatomy. He reads about “parasitic cell fusion and infectious tumors,” and about how they take over formerly healthy, functioning bodies. Hans comes to wonder if life is merely “an infectious disease of matter” itself. “The first step toward evil, toward lust and death,” Hans muses,  comes about when an outside source—a parasite—takes hold of the body. It happens when the inorganic becomes organic, which is really just “the sad progression of corporeality into consciousness.” And this, Hans notes, is no different than a disease taking hold of a living being and making it hyperaware of “its own corporeality.”

The weight of these heavy textbooks on Hans’s chest as he reads them makes it difficult for him to breathe. He imagines a personified version of his own life facing him while he reads, her arms parting to reveal the intricate anatomical systems hidden beneath her flesh. He smells her organic smell, and he feels a mixture of “lust and dismay” as she kisses him on his lips.