The Magic Mountain: Part 7, Chapter 4: Mynheer Peeperkorn (Continued) Summary & Analysis

Mynheer Peeperkorn stays at the Berghof into the spring. The longer Hans knows him, the more his two former mentors’ influence fades. In time, he starts to refer to Settembrini and Naphta as “little chatterboxes,” which is what Peeperkorn calls them. Hans makes it a point not to judge Peeperkorn unfairly simply because he’s Clavdia’s “traveling companion.” After all, Hans only borrowed a pencil from Clavdia at a holiday party—that’s all they are to each other.

The day after Peeperkorn’s grand party, all the residents who attended feel quite ill, Peeperkorn included. Hans goes to visit Peeperkorn in his room, which is separated from Clavdia’s by a parlor, and he notices that Peeperkorn’s room is much more elaborately decorated than most rooms at the sanatorium. He finds Peeperkorn lying in bed, wearing a long wool shirt with an open collar. Strikingly, the clothing makes him look less bourgeois and more working class. Peeperkorn, in his characteristically rambling manner, apologizes for overdoing it last night.

Peeperkorn offers Hans some of the leftover sparkling wine—it’s the best thing for a swift recovery. Hans accepts, and they clink glasses. Clavdia appears and urges Peeperkorn to take some brown, syrupy medicine on his counter. Peeperkorn offers Hans some, too, explaining that it revitalizes the system. Hans accepts and soon finds that the cordial, “china-bark,” also has quite the intoxicating effect. Peeperkorn talks of “medicines and poisons” and of love potions that “primitive peoples” on the islands of New Guinea would make from various barks, leaves, and herbs.

From that point forward, Hans sits and listens to Peeperkorn talk. Sometimes, Wehsal and Ferge accompany him to Peeperkorn’s room, as do Settembrini and Naphta. Hans is glad to introduce everyone to Peeperkorn, and to Clavdia, as well. As Hans expected, his friends all get used to each other, though there’s a lot of lingering tension among them. But, perhaps due to his “life-affirming […] nature, which allowed him to find everything ‘worth listening to,’” Hans manages to keep the group together. Hans remains foolishly in love with Clavdia, though this love is tempered by a caution of “what his devotion was worth […] to the slinking patient with the enchanting ‘Tartar slits[.]’” 

In his bedroom, Mynheer Peeperkorn doesn’t seem quite as grand as he does in an open space. He seems smaller and more “compressed,” though he’s still a great deal larger than Naphta or Settembrini. One day, Settembrini confronts Hans about his apparent worship of Peeperkorn, who is “just a stupid old man.” Settembrini could understand if Hans were just using Peeperkorn to get close to Clavdia, but it’s clear that Hans is far more interested in Peeperkorn. Settembrini mockingly mimics Peeperkorn’s exaggerated, “cultured” gestures. Hans merely laughs and replies that Peeperkorn may be stupid, but “cleverness” is a kind of stupidity, too. Settembrini tells Hans that what he’s most concerned about is Hans’s fixation with Peeperkorn’s “personality.” He thinks it’s a grave mistake to “turn[] personality into an enigma,” which quickly turns into “idol-worship.” Settembrini lectures Hans a bit, but they part on mostly good terms.

Meanwhile, Naphta and Settembrini continue to engage in impassioned intellectual debates. In one, Settembrini condemns the Church as antidemocratic and disrespecting of human individuality. Naphta retorts that canon law (unlike earthly law) requires of members “orthodoxy and membership in the ecclesiastical community.” One can’t say the same of Roman law, or Germanic law. The argument continues as all their arguments do, with either side debating the superior nobility of their position and the inferiority of the other’s.

The narrator notes how Peeperkorn’s presence has a “neutraliz[ing]” effect on Settembrini and Naphta’s intellectualism. While Naphta and Settembrini flourish when arguing about abstract, theoretical concepts, they wither when forced to confront “earthy, practical affairs”—the practical realm is all Peeperkorn’s. On one occasion, he brushes aside their talk of “asceticism” and “indulgence” and enthusiastically redirects their focus upward, toward an eagle he has just spotted in the sky.

One night, the lobby has mostly emptied, with most residents having retired to their rooms to take their final rest cure. But Clavdia has lingered behind in the reading room, and so Hans lingers in the lobby. She approaches him from behind wearing a dark silk gown. She explains that the concierge is gone and asks Hans if he’ll lend her a postage stamp, but he doesn’t have any. In reply, she sits down next to him and asks if she can at least have a cigarette. Hans offers her one, explaining that he always has them. He’s not a passionate man, he admits, but he does allow for some “detached passions,” like smoking. Clavdia says she wouldn’t expect Hans to be passionate—the Germans, after all, believe that life is about “experience,” whereas passion is about “forget[ting] oneself.” She thinks this perspective makes Hans “the enemy of humankind.”

Clavdia’s observation upsets Hans, who gets up to leave. She begs him to stay, mockingly lamenting not being able to rely on an unpassionate man such as Hans. Hans and Clavdia have a strained conversation. Clavdia criticizes Hans for sticking around the Berghof and waiting for her. Hans defends his choice, explaining that he’s a civilian, unlike Joachim, and that it would be an act of desert[ion]” to return to the flatlands prematurely. Hans admits that he now feels confident that “the love of death leads to the love of life and humanity.” Clavdia listens to his philosophical musings and mockingly deems him a “genius.”

Hans talks about how difficult it has been to see Clavdia in the company of Peeperkorn. He tells Clavdia he can understand why she loves a “personality” like Peeperkorn and asks her to confirm that this is so—that she loves him. Clavdia playfully refuses to answer, but then she admits that Peeperkorn’s love for her is what makes her “proud and grateful and devoted to him.” She thinks this is a human thing, this not being able “to disregard his feelings[.]” She adds that there is something “fearful” about his love for her. She thinks it's an innately feminine trait to “risk being demeaned for the sake of a man,” and Hans agrees that there’s a sort of nobility in “being demeaned.”

Clavdia admits that she finds Hans’s “detachment” frustrating, and thus in contrast to Peeperkorn’s effusive passion. Even so, she’s glad that Hans has been respectful toward Peeperkorn rather than hating him for being with Clavdia. At this point, Clavdia turns to Hans, looks him in the eye, and asks if they might begin a friendship. She’s a bit wary of giving all her emotions to Peeperkorn. She would “love to have some good person on [her] side,” she explains, and perhaps this is why she returned to the Berghof. Hans starts to protest, but then Clavdia moves in and kisses him on the mouth, with the great emotion of “one of those Russian kisses.” The narrator can’t help but compare this kiss to one of Krokowski’s lectures about love, in which it’s never clear whether he’s talking about spiritual love or earthly, lustful love.

Sometime later, Hans pays Peeperkorn a visit at his bedside, effusively proclaiming what an honor it is that Peeperkorn allows Hans to be in his company. They talk about their trip to town yesterday and about the lavish food they ate. Settembrini was there too, and Peeperkorn notes Settembrini and Clavdia’s mutual disdain for each other. Hans changes the subject to talk about love, musing about how naturally a woman, when asked if she loves a man, speaks of the man in question’s love for her. He thinks it would be ludicrous to imagine such an exchange if the genders were reversed. Peeperkorn agrees.

Suddenly, Peeperkorn turns to Hans and asks if Hans loves Clavdia. The question flusters Hans, but Peeperkorn remains calm. He acknowledges that Hans has a history with Clavdia. He also knows that while Clavdia is a young, charming woman, he himself is merely a sick, old man. Hans tries to respond honestly but respectfully. Peeperkorn grows increasingly upset as he wonders whether Clavdia returns Hans’s love, suspecting that Clavdia has “followed her feelings” back to the Berghof. He admits that he knew the truth about Hans and Clavdia’s history the moment Hans very purposefully chose not to kiss Clavdia on the brow the night of Peeperkorn’s party.

Hans backtracks and asks Peeperkorn if he may take a moment to complain about his “life and fate.” Peeperkorn agrees and gestures for Hans to speak. Hans begins, explaining that he’s been at the Berghof for years now. He describes the onset of his gradual fixation with Clavdia, and of his eternal refusal to address her with formal pronouns. He also explains how, despite Settembrini’s warnings, he became obsessed with “irrationality,” all out of his love for Clavdia. When Clavdia left, Hans remained at the Berghof, waiting for her to return. He waited so long, in fact, that he no longer writes home, and “the flatlands is entirely lost to [him] now, and in its eyes [he is] as good as dead.” 

Hans finishes his speech. Peeperkorn looks at Hans meaningfully and expresses regret for the pain that his and Clavdia’s arrival has caused Hans. Then he asks Hans to recall the moment, early in their acquaintanceship, when he told Hans that he wasn’t yet ready to use informal pronouns with each other. Now, Peeperkorn declares, that time has passed: they will address each other informally, as brothers. Hans is beyond elated and tells Peeperkorn it’s an honor. They drink together, and then Peeperkorn urges Hans to get going—“our beloved” may return soon, and it would probably be a bit awkward for them to all be together just now.