JUST SIX NUMBERS
Martin Rees
1
OUR COSMIC HABITAT I PLANETS STARS AND LIFE
Page 24
"A proton is 1,836 times heavier than an electron, and the
number 1,836 would have the same connotations to any 'intelligence'
"
Page 24 /25 '
" A manifestly artificial signal-even if it were as boring as lists
of prime numbers, or the digits of 'pi' - would imply that ntelli- gence'
wasn't unique to the Earth and had evolved elsewhere. The nearest potential
sites are so far away that signals would take many years in transit.
For this reason alone, transmission would be primarily one-way.
There would be time to send a measured response, but no scope for quick
repartee! any remote beings who could communicate with us would have
some concepts of mathematics and logic that paralleled our own. And
they would also share a knowledge of the basic particles and forces
that govern our universe. Their habitat may be very different (and the
biosphere even more different) from ours here on Earth; but they, and
their planet, would be made of atoms just like those on Earth. For them,
as for us, the most important particles would be protons and electrons:
one electron orbiting a proton makes a hydrogen atom, and electric currents
and radio transmitters involve streams of electrons. A proton is 1,836
times heavier than an electron, and the number 1,836 would
have the same connotations to any 'intelligence' able and motivated
to transmit radio signals. All the basic forces and natural laws would
be the same. Indeed, this uniformity - without which our universe would
be a far more baffling place - seems to extend to the remotest galaxies
that astronomers can study.
Later chapters in this book will, however, speculate about other
'universes', forever beyond range of our telescopes, where different
laws may prevail.)
Clearly, alien beings wouldn't use metres, kilograms or seconds. But
we could exchange information about the ratios of two masses (such as
thc ratio of proton and electron masses) or of two lengths, which are
'pure numbers' that don't depend on what units are used: the statement
that one rod is ten times as long as another is true (or false) whether
we measure lengths/ 1feet or metres or some alien units"
"A proton is 1,836 times
heavier than an electron, and the number 1,836 would have the
same connotations to any 'intelligence' "
HARMONIC 288
Bruce Cathie
1977
EIGHT
THE MEASURE
OF LIGHT : I
Page 95
"The search for this particular value was a lengthy one and the
clue that led me finally to a possible solution was a study of the construction
of the Grand Gallery. The height of the Gallery was the first indication
that it was not just an elaborate access passage. Previous measurements
made by scientific investigators pointed to some interesting possibilities.
"
Page 95
"The value that I calculated for length was extremely close to
that of the one published in Davidson and Aldersmith's book, their value
being 1836 inches,"
Page 95/97
"A search of my physics books revealed that 1836 was the
closest approximation the scientists have calculated to the mass / ratio
of the positive hydrogen ion, i.e. the proton, to the electron."
THE GREAT PYRAMID
ITS
DIVINE MESSAGE
D.Davidson and H. Alderson
Page 279
"The resulting length for the Grand
Gallery roof is 1836 p', an important Pyramid dimension dealt
with later"
THE TUTANKHAMUN PROPHECIES
Maurice Cotterell
Page194
Anderson's Constitutions of the Freemasons (In3) comments:
", . . the Tillest structures of Tyre and Sidon could not be compared
with the Etemal God's T emple at Jerusalem. , ,
there were employed 3,600 Princes, or Master Masons',
to conduct the work according to Solomon's directions,
with 80000 hewers of stone in the mountains ('Fellow Craftsmen')and
70000 labourers in all 153600 besides
the levy under Adoniram to work In the mountains of Lebanon by turns
with the Sidonians, viz 30,000 being in all
183,600.
Page 190
"The holy number of sun-worshippers
is 9, the highest number that can be reached before becoming one
(10) with the creator. This is why Tutankhamun was entombed in
nine layers of coffin. This is why the pyramid skirts of the
two statues, guarding the entrance to the Burial Chamber, were triangular
(base 3), when the all-seeing eye-skirt of Mereruka contained
a pyramid skirt with a base of four sides. The message concealed
here is that the 3 should be squared, which equals 9.
Freemasons" for reasons we shall see, are said to be 'on the square'."
THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH
Lyall Watson 1974
Page 49
"AS long ago as 1836, in a Manual of Medical Jurisprudence,
this was said: Individuals who are apparently destroyed in a sudden
manner, by certain wounds, diseases , or even decapitation are not really
dead, but are only in conditions incompat-ible with the persistence
life."
THE JUPITER EFFECT
John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann
l977
Page 122
: "Seventeen 'major historical earthquakes' are referred to in
the report all of which occurred since
1836
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI
Paramahansa Yogananda
1946
Page 275
"In the gigantic concepts of Einstein,
the velocity of light - 1863 miles per second - dominates the whole
theory of relativity"
1863 - 1836
GODS OF THE DAWN
THE MESSAGE OF THE PYRAMIDS
AND
THE TRUE STARGATE MYSTERY
Peter Lemesurier 1997
Page 118
"With the entry into the Grand Gallery,
all kinds of extraordinary things now start to happen"
while the 1836P" long roof (-code equivalent: 153 x 12)
ALBERT EINSTEIN = 153 1+5+3 = 9
PHARAOHPYRAMID = 153 - 81 - 9
153 FISH x 12 DISCIPLES = 1836
EIGHTEENTHIRTYSIX = 99 9+9 = 181+8
= 9
THE NEW VIEW OVER ATLANTIS
John Michell 1983
Page160
"MERCURY, known to the Greeks as HERMES
and to the Egyptians as THOTH,
was the deity of speech and communication, in which
aspect he was the patron saint of travellers, of roads and paths and
the pillars marking their course"
"MERCURY
was also god of revelation and of the'hermetic mysteries
which were held within a dark, buried chamber, similar to the kings
/ Page 161 / chamber buried deep within the masonry of
the GREAT PYRAMID. The use of the Pyramid's inner chambers for
rituals of initiation and rebirth is implied in Pyramid legend, in the
impressions of modern mystics, and in the traditional dedication of
the Pyramid to the principle of MERCURY.
On page 124 are displayed the magic squares relating to the various
planets. These figures were highly regarded by the mathematicians of
antiquity, who took them as paradigms of universal laws. Every ritual
centre or temple was laid out according to one of the geometrical designs
which are inherent in the structure of magic squares. Thus the ancient
world was laid out to a cosmological pattern within which smaller patterns
were formed, all radiating from certain points on the earth's surface,
the natural centres of terrestrial current. Each of these centres, and
each individual group and cluster of groups, was known by an astrological
symbol and related to a magic square, expressing the influence to which
it was found most susceptible...."
"...The association of the Pyramid
with the magic square of Mercury links it also to the number 2080, which
is the sum of all numbers from 1 to 64 and thus the sum of all the numbers
within Mercury's magic square. 2080 is also the number of (Greek
word omitted) the first-born, an epithet of Christ. {Revelation,
i, 5), and the same number is prodqced by the Greek phrase which describes
the 'fire' which Prometheus, a type of Mercury, stole from the gods
- the 'artificers' fire' (Greek word omitted 2080). The combination
of light (Greek word omitted) and fire (Greek word omitted)
also gives 2080. This
number and 1080 appear to have similar meanings, 1080 representing
Mercury in the character of the earth spirit (Greek word omitted
= 1080)..."
THE NEW VIEW OVER ATLANTIS
John Michell 1983
Page 161
"The association of the pyramid with the magic square
of MERCURY links it also to the number 2080, which is the sum
of all numbers from 1 to 64 and
thus the sum of all the numbers within
MERCURY'S MAGIC SQUARE"
Page 161
"Symbolism in the ancient world was always related
to function, and the symbolic numbers associated with or expressed in
the dimensions / Page 162 / of
the Great Pyramid give clear indications of its general purpose:
to bring about the fertile union of the two elements in nature referred
to as sulphur, 666, and mercury, 1080. Their offspring was that
spirit which the alchemists in their technical language referred to
as the animated Mercurius, fertility-bearer, revealer of knowledge and
guide between life and death, representing in one aspect the spirit
of the living earth, and in another the' Mercury of the Philosophers'
enshrined within the initiatory chambers of the Pyramid.
The Order of Art and Science Seen in a Flash
Questions which inevitably follow upon our recognition of the
great universal civilization in deep prehistory, and the highly developed
code of magic and science on which it was based, are those which ask
its origin, how it spread across the earth and why it declined and vanished.
Such questions have been asked in vain since at1east the time of Plato,
who attributed the origins of culture to the appearance of gods or god-like
individuals, in other words, to the mysterious principle of revelation.
The existence of similar or identical features in the cosmologies, myths,
names, ceremonies, artefacts and even units of measure of such widely
separated countries as China, Egypt, Britain and America
implies that their cultures were derived from a common source, from
some greater tradition of which they each preserved certain relics.
An academic fad of the last century was to try to locate that source
in India, Babylon or some other matrix, Egypt being a popular
favourite.
It has, however, often been observed that the Great Pyramid is
not apparently of native Egyptian construction. Like the earliest and
most perfect temples of Mexico, it relates to world geography in a way
which indicates that it belonged to some universal system in the forgotten
past. Ever and again, studies of ancient civilizations trace them back
from their declines to their high origins beyond which the trail ends,
with no trace of any previous period of cultural development. The great
riddle in the quest for the origin of human culture is that civilizations
appear suddenly, at their peak, as if ready-made. The version of history
that constantly suggests itself is Plato's, given in his account
of that long-vanished world which he called Atlantis."
9 x 6 = 54
6 |
HERMES |
68 |
32 |
5 |
7 |
MERCURY |
103 |
40 |
4 |
131 |
|
171 |
72 |
9 |
|
|
|
|
|
6 |
DIVINE |
63 |
36 |
9 |
3 |
LAW |
36 |
9 |
9 |
|
|
99 |
45 |
18 |
|
|
9+9 |
4+5 |
1+8 |
|
|
18 |
9 |
9 |
|
|
1+8 |
|
|
9 |
|
9 |
9 |
9 |
14 |
THE HOLY QABALAH |
135 |
63 |
9 |
12 |
THE HOLY KORAN |
152 |
62 |
8 |
12 |
THE HOLY BIBLE |
123 |
60 |
6 |
6 |
TALMUD |
71 |
17 |
8 |
5 |
KORAN |
59 |
23 |
5 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11 |
KING SOLOMON |
144 |
54 |
9 |
10 |
KING OF EDOM |
99 |
54 |
9 |
9 |
KING HIRAM |
90 |
54 |
9 |
3 |
THE |
33 |
15 |
6 |
4 |
HOLY |
60 |
24 |
6 |
7 |
QABALAH |
42 |
24 |
6 |
|
|
|
|
|
8 |
ESOTERIC |
94 |
40 |
4 |
8 |
EXOTERIC |
99 |
45 |
9 |
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Thomas Mann
1875 1955
FOREWORD
"THE STORY of Hans Castorp, which
we would here set forth, not on his own account, for in him the reader
will make acquaintance with a simple-minded though pleasing young man,
but for the sake of the story itself, which seems to us highly worth
telling- though it must needs be borne in mind, in Hans Castorp's behalf,
that it is his story, and not every story happens to everybody- this
story, we say, belongs to the long ago; is already, so to speak, covered
with historic mould, and unquestionably to be presented in the tense
best suited to a narrative out of the depth of the past.
That should be no drawback to a story, but rather the reverse. Since
histories must be in the past, then the more past the better, it would
seem, for them in their character as histories, and for him, the teller
of them, rounding wizard of times gone by. With this story, moreover,
it stands as it does to-day with human beings, not least among them
writers of tales: it is far older than its years; its age may not be
measured by length of days, nor the weight of time on its head reckoned
by the rising or setting of suns. In a word, the degree of its antiquity
has noways to do with the pas-sage of time - in which statement the
author intentionally touches upon the strange and questionable double
nature of that riddling element.
But we would not wilfully obscure a plain matter. The exag-gerated
pastness of our narrative is due to its taking place before the epoch
when a certain crisis shattered its way through life and consciousness
and left a deep chasm behind. It takes place - or, rather, deliberately
to avoid the present tense, it took place, and had taken place - in
the long ago, in the old days, the days of the world before the Great
War, in the beginning of which so much began that has scarcely yet left
off beginning. Yes, it took place before that; yet not so long before.
Is not the pastness of the past the profounder, the completer, the more
legendary, the more im-mediately before the present it falls? More than
that, our story has, of its own nature, something of the legend about
it now and again.
We shall tell it at length, thoroughly,
in detail-for when did a narrative seem too long or too short by reason
of the actual time or space it took up? We do not fear being called
meticulous, in-clining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive
can be truly interesting.
Not all in a minute, then, will the narrator be finished with the story
of our Hans. The seven days of a week will not suffice, no,
nor seven months either. Best not too soon make too plain how
much mortal time must pass over his head while he sits spun round in
his spell. Heaven forbid it should be seven years!
And now we begin"
The Thunderbolt
Page 706
"SEVEN years Hans Castorp remained amongst those up
here. Par-tisans of the decimal system might prefer a round number,
though seven is a good handy figure in its way, picturesque,
with a savour of the mythical; one might even say that it is more filling
to the spirit than a dull academic half-dozen. Our hero had sat at all
seven of the tables in the dining-room, at each about a year,
the last being the "bad" Russian table, and his company there
two Ar-menians, two Finns, a Bokharian, and a Kurd. He sat at the "
bad " Russian table, wearing a recent little blond beard, vaguish
in cut, which we are disposed to regard as a sign of philosophic indiffer-ence
to his own outer man. Yes, we will even go further, and relate his carelessness
of his person to the carelessness of the rest of the world regarding
him. The authorities had ceased to devise him distractions. There was
the morning inquiry, as to, whether he had slept well, itself purely
rhetorical and summary; and that aside, the Hofrat did not address him
with any particularity; while Adriatica von Mylendonk-she had, at the
time of which we write, a stye in a perfect state of maturity - did
so seldom, in fact scarcely ever. They let him be. He was like the scholar
in the peculiarly happy state of never being "asked" any more;
of never having a task, of being left to sit, since the fact of his
being left behind is established, and no one troubles about him further
- an orgiastic kind of freedom, but we ask ourselves whether, in-deed,
freedom ever is or can be of any other kind. At all events, here was
one on whom the authorities no longer needed to keep an eye, being assured
that no wild or defiant resolves were ripen-ing in his breast. He was
" settled," established. Long ago he had ceased to know where
else he should go, long ago he had ceased to be capable of a resolve
to return to the flat-land. Pid not the very fact that he was sitting
at the " bad " Russian table witness a certain-abandon? No
slightest adverse comment upon the said table being intended by the
remark! Among all the seven, no single one could be said to possess
definite tangible advantages or / Page 707 / disadvantages.
We make bold to say that here was a democracy of tables, all honourable
alike. T:he same tremendous meals were served here, as at the others;
Rhadamanthus himself occasionally folded his huge hands before the doctor's
place at the head; and the nations who ate there were respectable members
of the human race, even though they boasted no Latin, and were not exag-geratedly
dainty at their feeding.
Time - yet not the time told by the station clock, moving with- a jerk
five minutes at once, but rather the time of a tiny timepiece, the hand
of which one cannot see move, or the time the grass keeps when it grows,
so unobservably one would say it does not grow at all, until some morning
the fact is undeni- able - time, a line composed of a succession
of dimensionless points (and now we are sure the unhappy deceased Naphta
would interrupt us to ask how dimensionless points, no matter how many
of them, can constitute a line), time, we say, had gone on, in its furtive,
unobservable, competent way, bringing about changes. For example, the
boy Teddy was discovered, one day- not one single day, of course, but
only rather indefinitely from which day - to be a boy no longeer. No
more might ladies take him on their laps, when, on occasion, he left
his bed, changed his pyjamas for his knickerbockers, and came downstairs.
Im-perceptibly that leaf had turned. Now, on such occasions, he took
them. on- his instead, and both sides were as well, or even better pleased.
He was become a youth; scarcely could we say he had bloomed into a youth;
but he had shot up. Hans Castorp had not noticed it happening, and then,
suddenlyy, he did. The shooting-up, however, did not suit the lad Teddy;
the temporal became him not. In his twenty-first year he departed this
life; dying of the disease for which he had proved receptive; and they
cleansed and fumigated after him. The fact makes little claim upon our
emotions, the change being so slight between his one state and his next.
But there were other deaths, and more important; deaths down in the
flat-land, which touched, or would once have touched, our hero more
nearly. We are thinking of the recent decease of old .Consul Tienappel,
Hans's great-uncle and foster-father, of faded memory. He had carefully
avoided unfavourable conditions of atmospheric pressure, and left it
to Uncle James to stultify him-self; yet .an apoplexy carried him off
after all; and a telegram, couched m brief but feelmg terms - feeling
more for the departed than for the recipient of the wire - was one day
brought to Hans Castorp where he lay.in his excellent chair. He acquired
/ Page 708 / some black-bordered note-paper, and wrote to his uncle-cousins:
he, the doubly, now, so to say, triply orphaned, expressed him- self
as being the more distressed over the sad news, for that cir- cumstances
forbade him interrupting his present sojourn even to pay his great-uncle
the last respects.
To speak of sorrow would be disingenuous. Yet in these days Hans Castorp's
eyes did wear an expression more musing than common. This death, which
could at no time have moved him greatly, and after the lapse of years
could scarcely move him at all, meant the sundering of yet another bond
with the life be-low; gave to what he rightly called his freedom the
final seal. In the time of which we speak, all contact between him and
the flatland had ceased. He sent no letters thither, and received none
thence. He no longer ordered Maria Mancini, having found a brand up
here to his liking, to which he was now as faithful as once to his old-time
charmer: a brand that must have carried even a polar explorer through
the sorest and severest trials; armed with which, and no other solace,
Hans Castorp could lie and bear it out indefinitely, as one does at
the sea-shore. It was an especially well cured brand, with the best
leaf wrapper, named "Light of Asia "; rather more compact
than Maria, mouse-grey in colour with a blue band, very tractable and
mild, and evenly consuming to a snow-white ash, that held its shape
and still showed traces of the veining on the wrapper; so evenly and
regularly that it might have served the smoker for an hour-glass, and
did so, at need, for he no longer carried a timepiece. His watch had
fallen from his night-table; it did not go, and he had neglected to
have it regulated, perhaps on the same grounds as had made him long
since give up using a calendar, whether to keep track of the day, or
to look out an approaching feast: the grounds, namely, of his freedom."
Thus he did honour to his abiding-everlasting, his walk by the ocean
of time, the hermetic enchantment to which he had proved so extraordinarily
susceptible that it had become tlle fundamental adventure ofhis life,
in which all the alchemisti-cal processes of his simple substance had
found full play.
Thus he lay; and thus, in high summer, the year was once more rounding
out, the seventh year, though he knew it not, of his sojourn
up here.
Then, like a thunder-peal-
But God forbid and modesty withhold us from speaking over- much of what
the thunder-peal bore us on its wave of sound! Here rodomontade is out
of place. Rather let us lower our voice to say that then came the peal
of thunder we all know so well; / Page 709 / that
deafening explosion of long-gathering magazines of passion and spleen.
That historic thunder-peal, of which we speak with bated breath, made
the foundations of the earth to shake; but for us it was the shock that
fired the mine beneath the magic mountain, and set our sleeper ungently
outside the gates. Dazed he sits in the long grass and rubs his eyes
- a man who, despite many warnings, had neglected to read the papers.
His Mediterranean friend and mentor had ever tried to prompt him; had
felt it incumbent upon him to instruct his nurslmg, the object of his
solicitude, in what was going on down below; but his pupil had lent
no ear. The young man had indeed, in a stock- taking way, preoccupied
himself. with this or that among the subjective shadows of things; but
the things themselves he had heeded not at all, having a wilful tendency
to take the shadow for the substance, and in the substance to see only
shadow. For this, however, we must not judge him harshly, since the
relation between'substance and shadow has never been defined once and
for all.
Long ago it had been Herr Settembrini who brought sudden illumination
into the room, sat down beside the horizontal Hans and sought to influence
and instruct him upon matters of life and death. But now it was the
pupil, who, seated with his hands between his knees, at the bedside
of the humanist, or near his couch in the cosy and retired little mansard,
study, with the car- bonaro chairs and the water-bottle, kept
him company and listened courteously to his utterances upon the state
of Europe - for in these days Herr Ludovico was seldom on his legs.
Naphta's vio-lent end, the terroristic deed of that desperat~ antagonist,
had dealt his sensitive nature a blow from which it could scarcely rally;
weakness and infirmity had since been his portion. He could
no longer work on the Sociological Pathology; the League waited
in vain for that lexicon of all the masterpieces of letters having human
suffering for their central theme. Herr Ludovico had per-force to limit
to oral efforts his contribution to the organization of progress; and
even so much he must have foregone had not Hans Castorp's visits given
him opportunity to spread his gospel.
His voice was weak, but he spoke with conviction, at length and beautifully,
upon the self-perfecting of the human spirit through social betterment.
Softly, as though on the wings of doves, came the words of Herr Ludovico.
Yet again, when he came to speak of the unification and universal well
being of the liberated peoples, there mingled a sound - he neither knew
nor willed it, of course - as of the rushing pinions of eagles. That
/ was the political key, the grandfatherly inheritance that united in
him with the humanistic gift of the father, to make up the litterateur
- precisely as humanism and politics united in the lofty ideal of
civilization, an ideal wherein were blended the mildness of doves and
the boldness of eagles. That ideal was only biding its time, until the
day dawned, the Day of the People, when,. the principle of reaction
should be laid low, and the Holy Alliance of civic democracIes take
Its place. Yes, here seemed to sound two voices, with differing counsels.
For Herr Settembrini was a hu-manitarian, yet at the same time, half
explicitly, he was warlike too. In the duel with the outrageous little
Naphta he had borne himself like a man. But in general it still remained
rather vague what his position was to be, when humanity in an outburst
of enthusiasm united itself with politics in support of a triumphant
and dominating world-civilization, and the burgher's pike was dedicated
upon the altar of humanity. There was some doubt whether he would then
hold back his hand from the shedding of blood. Yes, it seemed the prevailing
temper more and more held sway in the Italian's mind and view; the boldness
of the eagle was gradually outbidding the mildness of the dove.
Not infrequently his attitude toward the existing great political systems
was divided, embarrassed, disturbed by scruples. The. diplomatic rapprochement
between his country and Austria, their co-operation in Albania,
had reflected itself in his conversation: a co-operation that raised
his spirits in that it was directed against Latinless half-Asia - knout,
Schlusselburg, and all- yet tormented them in that it was a misbegotten
alliance with the hereditary foe, with the principle of reaction and
subjugated nationalities. The autumn previous, the great French loan
to Russia, for the purpose of building a network of railways in Poland,
had awakened in him similar misgivings. For Herr Settembrini belonged
to the Fran-cophile party in his own country, which was not surprising
when one recalled that his grandfather had compared the six days of
the July Revolution to the six days of the creation, and seen that they
were as good. But the understanding between the en-lightened republic
and Byzantine Scythia was too much for him, it oppressed his breast,
and at the same time made him breathe quicker for hope and joy at the
thought of the strategic meaning of that network of railways. Then came
the Serajevo murder, for everyone excepting German Seven-Sleepers
a storm-signal; de-cisive for the informed ones, among whom we may reckon
Herr Settembrini. Hans Castorp saw him shudder as a private citizen
at the frightful deed, while in the same moment his breast heaved /
Page 711 / with the knowledge that this was a deed of popular liberation,
directed against the citadel of his loathing. On the other hand, was
it not also the fruit of Muscovite activity, and as such giving rise
to great heart.;searchings? Which did not hinder him, three weeks later,
from characterizing the extreme demands of the monarchy upon Servia
as a hideous crime and an insult to human dignity, the consequences
of which he could forese well enough, and awaited in breathless excitement.
In short, Herr Settembrini's feelings were as complex as the fatality
he saw fast rolling up, for which he sought by hints and half-words
to prepare his pupil, a sort of national courtesy and compunction preventIng
him from speaking out. In the first days of mobilization, the first
declaration of war, he had a way of putting out both hands to his visitor;
taking Hans Castorp's own and pressing them, that fairly went to our
young noodle's heart, if not precisely to his head. " My friend,"
the Italian would say, " gunpowder, the printing-press, yes, you
have certainly given us all that. but if you think we could march against
the Revolution-Caro. . . .
During those days of stifling expectation, when the nerves of Europe
were on the rack, Hans Castorp did not see Herr Settembrini. The newspapers
with their wild, chaotic contents pressed up out of the depths to his
very balcony, they disorganized the house, filled the dining-room with
their sulphurous, stifling breath, even penetrated the chambers of the
dying. These were the moments when the "Seven-Sleeper,"
not knowing what had hap-pened, was slowly stirring himself in the grass,
before he sat up, rubbed his eyes - yes, let us carry the figure to
the end, in order to do justice to the movement of our hero's mind:
he drew up his legs, stood up, looked about him. He saw himself released,
freed from enchantment -not of his own motion; he was fain to confess,
but by the operation of exterior powers, of whose activities his own
liberation was a minor incident Indeed! Yet though his tiny destiny
fainted to nothing in the face of the general, was there not some hint
of a personal mercy and grace for him, a manifestation of divine goodness
and justice? Would Life receive again her erring and " delicate
" child-not by a cheap and easy slipping back to her arms, but
sternly, solemnly, peni-entially - perhaps not even among the living,
but only with three salvoes fired over the grave of him a sinner? Thus
might he return. He sank on his knees, raising face and hands to a heaven
that howsoever dark and sulphurous was no longer the gloomy grotto of
his state of sin.
Page 712
And in this attitude Herr Settembrini found
him - figura-tively and most figuratively spoken, for full well we know
our hero's traditional reserve would render such theatricality im-possible.
Herr Settembrini, in fact, found him packing his trunk. For since the
moment of his sudden awakening, Hans Castorp had been caught up in the
hurry and scurry of a "wild" de-parture, brought about by
the thunder-peal. "Home" - the Berghof - was the picture of
an ant-hill in a panic: its little popu- lation was flinging itself,
heels over head, five thousand feet downwards to the catastrophe-smitten
flat-land. They stormed the little trains, they crowded them to the
footboard -luggageless, if needs must, and the stacks of luggage piled
high the station platform, the seething platform, to the height of which
the scorching breath from the flat-land seemed to mount - and Hans Castorp
stormed with them. In the heart of the tumult Ludovico embraced him,
quite literally enfolded him in his arms and kissed him, like a southerner
- but like a Russian too - on both his cheeks; and this, despite his
own emotion, took our wild traveller no little aback. But he nearly
lost his composure. when, at t.he very last, Herr Settembnm called him
" Giovanni" and, laying aside the form, of address common
to the cultured West, spoke to him with the thou!
"E cosi in giu," he said. "Cosi vai in giu
finalmente - add-io, Giovanni mio! Quite otherwise had I
thought to see thee go. But be it so, the gods have willed it thus and
not otherwise. I hoped to discharge you to go down to your work, and
now you go to fight among your kindred. My God, it was given to you
and not to your cousin, our Tenente! What tricks life plays!
Go, then, It is your blood 'that calls, go and fight bravely. More than
that can no man. But forgive me if I devote the remnant of my powers
to incite my country to fight where the Spirit and sacra egoismo
point the way. Addio! " .
Hans Castorp thrust out his head among ten others, filling
the little open window-frame. He waved.. And Herr Settembrini waved
back, with his right hand, while with the ring-finger of his left he
delicately touched the comer of his eye.
What is it? Where are we? Whither has the
dream snatched us? Twilight, rain, filth. Fiery glow of the overcast
sky, ceaseless booming of heavy thunder; the moist air rent by a sharp
singing whine, a raging, swelling howl as of some hound of hell, that
ends its course in a splitting, a splintering and sprinkling, a crackling,
a coruscation; by groans and shrieks, by trumpets blowing fit to /
Page 713 / burst, by
the beat of a drum coming faster, faster- There is a wood, discharging
drab hordes, that come on, fall, spring up again, come on - Beyond,
a line of hill stands out against the fiery sky, whose glow turns now
and again to blowing flames. About us is rolling plough-land, all upheaved
and trodden into mud; athwart it a bemired high road, disguised with
broken branches and from it again a deeply furrowed, boggy field-path
leading off in curves toward the distant hills. Nude, branchless trunks
of trees meet the eye, a cold rain falls. Ah, a signpost! Useless, though,
to question it, even despite the half-dark, for it is shattered, illegible.
East, west? It is the flat-land, it is the war. And we are shrinking
shadows by the way-side, shamed by the security of our shadowdom, and
noways minded to indulge in any rodomontade; merely led hither by the
spirit of our nar-rative, merely to see again, among those running,
stumbling, drum- mustered grey comrades that swarm out of yonder wood,
one we know; merely to look once more in the simple face of our one-time
fellow of so many years, the genial sinner whose voice we know so well,
before we lose him from our sight.
They have been brought forward, these comrades, for a final thrust in
a fight that has already lasted all day long, whose ob-jective is the
retaking of the hill position and the burning villages beyond, lost
two days since to the enemy. It is a volunteer regi-ment, fresh young
blood and mostly students, not long in the field. They were roused in
the night, brought up in trains to morning, then marched in the rain
on wretched roads - on no roads at all, for the roads were blocked,
and they went over moor and ploughed land with full kit for seven
hours, their coats. sodden. It was no pleasure excursion. If one did
not care to lose one's boots, one stooped at every second step, clutched
with one's fingers into the straps and pulled them out of the quaking
mire. It took an hour of such work to cover one meadow. But at last
they have reached the appointed spot, exhausted, on edge, yet the reserve
strength of their youthful bodies has kept them tense, they crave neither
the sleep nor the food they have been denied. Their wet, mud-bespattered
faces, framed between strap and grey-covered helmet, are flushed with
exertion - perhaps too with the sight of the losses they suffered on
their march through that boggy wood. For the enemy, aware of their advance,
have concentrated a barrage of shrapnel and large-calibre grenades upon
.the way they must come; it crashed among them in the wood, and howling,
flaming, splashing, lashed the wide ploughed land.
They must get through, these three thousand ardent youths; /
Page 714 / they must reinforce with their bayonets the
attack on the burning villages, and the trenches in front of and behind
the line of hills; they must help to advance their line to a point indicated
in the dispatch their leader has in his pocket. They are three thousand,
that they may be two thousand when the hills, the villages are reached;
that is the meaning of their number. They are a body of troops calculated
as sufficierit, even after great losses, to attack and carry a position
and greet their triumph with a thousand-voiced huzza - not counting
the stragglers that fall out by the way. Many a one has thus fallen
out on the forced march, for which he proved too young and weak; paler
he grew, staggered, set his teeth, drove himself on - and after all
he could do fell out notwithstanding. Awhile he dragged himself in the
rear of the marching column, overaken and passed by company after company;
at length he remained on the ground, lying where it was not good to
lie. Then came the shattering wood. But there are so many of them, swarming
on - they can survive a blood-letting and still come on in hosts. They
have already overflowed the level, rain-lashed land; the high road,
the field road, the boggy ploughed land; we shadows stand amid and among
them. At the edge of the wood they fix their bayonets, with the practised
grips; the horns enforce them, the drums roll deepest bass, and forward
they stumble, as best they can, with shrill cries; night- marishly,
for clods of earth cling to their heavy boots and fetter them.
They fling themselves down before the projectiles that come howling
on, then they leap up again and hurry forward; they exult, in their
young, breaking voices as they run, to discover themselves still unhit.
Or they are hit, they fall, fighting the air with their arms, shot through
the forehead, the heart, the belly; They lie, their faces in the mire,
and are motionless. They lie, their backs elevated by the knapsack,
the crowns of their heads pressed into the mud, and clutch and claw
in the air. But the wood emits new swarms, who fling themselves down,
who spring up, who, shrieking or silent, blunder forward over the fallen.
Ah, this young blood, with its knapsacks and bayonets, its mud-befouled
boots and clothing! We look at it, our humanistic- aesthetic eye pictures
it among scenes far other than these: we see these youths watering horses
on a sunny arm of the sea; roving with the beloved one along the strand,
the lover's lips to the ear of the yielding bride; in happiest rivalry
bending the bow. Alas, no, here they lie, their noses in fiery filth:
They are glad to be here - albeit with boundless anguish, with unspeakable
/ Page 715 / sickness for home; and this, of itself, is a noble and
a shaming thing - but no good reason for bringing them to such a pass.
There is our friend, there is Hans Castorp! We recognize him at a distance,
by the little beard he assumed while sitting at the bad" Russian
table. Like all the others, he is wet through and glowing.. He is running,
his feet heavy with mould, the bayonet swinging in his hand. Look! He
treads on the hand of a fallen comrade; with his hobnailed boot he treads
the hand deep into the slimy, branch-strewn ground. But it is he. What,
singing? As one sings, unaware, staring stark ahead, yes, thus he spends
his hurrying breath, to sing half soundlessly:
"And loving words I've carven
Upon its branches fair - "
He stumbles, No, he has flung himself
down, a hell-hound is coming howling, a huge explosive shell, a disgusting
sugar-loaf from the infernal regions. He lies wIth his face In the cool
mire, legs sprawled out, feet twisted, heels turned down. The product
of a perverted science, laden with death, slopes earth-ward thirty paces
in front of him. and buries its nose in the ground;. explodes InsIde
there, wIth hideous expense of power, and raises up a fountain high
as a house, of mud, fire, iron, molten metal, scattered fragments of
humanity. Where it fell, two youths had lain, friends who in their need
flung themselves down together - now they are scattered, commingled
and gone.
Shame of our shadow-safety! Away! No more! - But our friend? Was he
hit? He thought so, for the moment. A great clod of earth struck him
on the shin, it hurt, but he smiles at it. Up he gets, and staggers
on, limping on his earth-bound feet, all un-consciously singing:
"Its waving branches whi-ispered
A mess-age in my ear-"
and thus, in the tumult, in the rain,
in the dusk, vanishes out of our sight.
Farewell, honest Hans Castorp, farewell, Life's delicate child!
Your tale is told. We have told it to the end, and it was neither
short nor long, but hermetic. We have told it for its own sake, not
for yours, for you were simple. But after all, it was
your story, it befell you, you must have more
in you than we thought; we will not disclaim the pedagogic weakness
we conceived for / Page 716 / you in the telling; which could
even lead us to press a finger deli-cately to our eyes at the
thought that we shall see you no more, hear you no
more for ever.
Farewell- and if thou livest or diest! Thy prospects are poor.
The desperate dance, in which thy fortunes are caught up, will last
yet many a sinful year; we should not care to set a high stake on thy
life by the time it ends. We even confess that it is without great concern
we leave the question open. Adventures of the flesh and
in the spirit, while enhancing thy simplicity, granted
thee to know in the spirit what in the flesh
thou scarcely couldst have done. Moments there were, when
out of death, and the rebellion of the flesh, there came to thee, as
thou tookest stock of thyself, a dream of love. Out of this universal
feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed
evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?
FINIS OPERIS
BY THE OCEAN OF TIME
CHAPTER SEVEN
Page 541
By the Ocean of Time.
"CAN one tell - that is to say, narrate
- time, time itself', as such, for its own sake? That would
surely be an absurd undertaking. A story which read: "Time
passed, It ran on, the time. flowed on-ward"
and so forth - no one in his senses could consider that a narrative. It
would be as though one .held a single note or chord fora whole hour, and
called it music. For narration resembles music
in this, that it fills up the time. It "
fills it in " and " breaks it up." so that there's
something to it," " something going on"
- to quote, with due and mouriiful piety, those casual phrases of our
departed Joachim, all echo of which so long ago died away. So long ago,
indeed, that we wonder if the reader is clear how long ago it was. For
time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium
of life. Both are in extricably bound up with it, as inextricably
as are bodies in space. Similarly, time is the medium of music; music
divides, measures, articulates time, and can shorten it, yet enhance
its value, both at once. Thus music and narration are
alike, in that they can only present themselves as a flowing, as a succession
in time, as one thing after another; and both differ from the plastic
arts, which are complete in the present, and unrelated to time save as
all bodies are, whereas narration - like music - even
if it should try to be completely present at any given moment, would need
time to do it in.
So much is clear. But it is just as clear that we have
also a dif-ference to deal with. For the time element in music
is single. Into a section of mortal time music pours itself, thereby
inexpressibly' enhancing and ennobling what it fills. But a narrative
must have two kinds of time: first, its own, like music,
actual time, condi- tioning its presentation and course; and second,
the time of its con-tent, which is relative, so extremely relative
that the imaginary time of the narrative can either coincide nearly
or completely with the actual, or musical, time, or can be a world away.
A piece of music called a "Five-minute Waltz "lasts
five minutes, and this is / Page 542 / its sole relation to the
time element. But a narrative which con-cerned itself
with the events of five minutes, might, by extraor-dinary conscientiousness
in the telling, take up a thousand times five minutes, and even then seem
very short, though long in relation to its imaginary time. On the other
hand, the contentual time of a story can shrink its actual time out of
all measure. We put it in this way on purpose, in order to suggest another
element, an illusory, even, to speak plainly, a morbid element, which
is quite definitely a factor in the situation. I am speaking of cases
where the story practises a hermetical magic, a temporal distortion of
perspective reminding one of certain abnormal and transcendental experiences
in actual life. We have records of opium dreams in which the dreamer,
during a brief narcotic sleep, had experiences stretching over a period
or ten, thirty, sixty years, or even passing the extreme limit of man's
temporal capacity for experience: dreams whose contentual time
was enormously greater than their actual or mu-sical time, and
in which there obtained an incredible foreshortening of events; the images
pressing one upon another with such rapidity that it was as though "somethmg
had been taken away, like the - spring from a broken watch" from
the brain of the sleeper. Such is the descriftion of a hashish eater.
Thus, or in some such way as in these sinister dreams, can the
narrative go to work with time; in some such way can time be dealt
with in a tale. And if this be so, then it is clear that time, while-
the medium of the narrative, can also become its subject. There-fore,
if it is too much to say that one can tell a tale of time, it is
none the less true that a desire to tell a tale about time
is not such an absurd idea as it just now seemed. We freely admit
that, in bring-ing up the question as to whether the time can be narrated
or not, we have done so only to confess that we had something like that
in view.in the present work. And if we touched upon the. further question,
whether our readers were clear how .much time had passed since
the upnght Joachim, deceased in the mterval, had in-troduced into the
conversation the above-quoted phrases about music and time
- remarks indicating a certain alchemlstical height-ning of his nature,
which, in its goodness and simpliciry, was, of its own unaided power,
incapable of any such ideas - we should not have been dismayed to hear
that they were not clear. We might even have been gratified, on the plain
ground that a thorough-go-ing sympathy with the experiences of our hero
is precisely what :" we wish to arouse, and he, Hans Castorp, was
himself not clear upon the point in question, no, nor had been for a very
long time - a fact that has conditioned his romantic adventures up here,
to an / Page 543 / extent which has made of them,
in more than one sense, a "time-romance."
How long Joachim had lived here with his cousin, up to the time
of his fateful departure, or taken all in all; what had been the date
of his going, how long he "had been gone, when he had come
back; how long Hans Castorp himself had been up here when his
cousin returned and then bade time farewell; how long - dismissing Joachim
from our calculations - Frau Chauchat had been absent; how long, since
what date, she had been back again (for she did come back); how much mortal
time Hans Castorp himself had spent in House Berghof by the time she returned;
no one asked him all these questions, and he probably shrank from asking
him- self. If they had been put him, he would have tapped his forehead
with the tips of his fingers, and most certainly not have known - a phenomenon
as disquieting as his incapacity to answer Herr Set-tembrini, that long-ago
first evening, when the latter had asked him his age.
All which may sound preposterous; yet there are conditions under which
nothing could keep us from losing account of the passage of time,
losing account -even of our own age; lacking, as we do, any trace of an
inner time-organ, and being absolutely in- capable of fixing it even with
an approach to accuracy by our-selves, without any outward fixed pomts
as guides. There is a case of a party of miners, buried and shut off from
every possibility of knowing the passage of day or night, who told their
rescuers that they estimated the time they had spent in darkness, flickering
be-tween hope and fear, to be some three days, It had actually been ten.
Their high state of suspense might, one would think, have made the
time seem longer to them than it actually was, whereas it shrank to
less than a third of its objective length. It would ap-pear, then, that
under conditions of bewilderment man is likely to under-rather than over-estimate
time.
No doubt Hans Castorp, were he wishful to do so, could with-out a great
trouble have reckoned himself into certainty; just as the reader can,
in case all this vagueness and involvedness are re-pugnant to his healthy
sense. Perhaps our hero himself was not quite comfortable either; though
he refused to give himself any trouble to wrestle clear of vagueness and
involution and arrive at certainty of how much time had gone over his
head since he came up here. His scruple was of the conscience
- yet surely it is a want
of conscientiousness most flagrant of all not to pay heed to the time.
We do not know whether we may count it in his favour that /Page
544 / circumstances advantaged his lack of inclination,
or perhaps we ought to say his disinclination. When Frau Chauchat
came back - under circumstances very different from those Hans Castorp
had imagined, but of that in its place - when she came back, it was the
Advent season again, and the shortest day of the year; the begin-ning;
of winter, astronomically speaking, was at hand. Apart. from arbitrary
time-divisions, and with reference to the quantity of snow and cold, it
had been winter for God knows how long, in-terrupted, as always all too
briefly, by burning hot summer days, with a sky of an exaggerated depth
of blueness, well-nigh shading into black; real summer days, such as one
often had even in the winter, aside from the snow - and the snow one might
also have in the summer! This confusion in the seasons, how often had
Hans Castorp discussed it with the departed Joachim! It robbed the year
of its articulation, made it tediously brief, or briefly tedious,as one
chose to put it; and confirmed another of Joachim's disgusted utter-ances,
to the effect that there was no time up here to speak of, either long
or short. The great confusion played havoc, moreover, with emotional conceptions,
or states of consciousness like "still " and "again ";
and this was one of the very most gruesome, bewil-dering, uncanny features
of the case. Hans Castorp, on his first day up here, had discovered in
himself a hankering to dabble in that uncanny, during the five mighty
meals in the gaily stenciled dining- room; when a first faint giddiness,
as yet quite blameless, had made itself felt.
Since then, however, the deception upon his senses and his mind had assumed
much larger proportions. Time, however weakened the subjective perception
of it has become, has objective reality in that it brings things to pass.
It is a question for professional think- ers - Hans Castorp, in his youthful
arrogance, nad one time been led to consider it - whether the hermetically
sealed conserve upon its shelf is outside of time. We know that time does
its work, even upon Seven-Sleepers. A physician cites a case of
a twelve-year- old-girl, who felf asleep and slept thirteen years; assuredly
she did not remain thereby a twelve-year-old girl; but bloomed into ripe
womanhood while she slept. How could it be otherwise? The dead man - is
dead; he has closed his eyes on time. He has plenty of time, or personally
speaking, he is timeless. Which does not prevent his hair and nails from
growing, or, all in all- but no, we shall not repeat those free-and-easy
expressions used once by Joachim, to which Hans Castorp, newly arrived
from the flat-land, had taken exception. Hans Castorp's hair and nails
grew too, grew rather fast. He sat very often in the barber's chair m
the main street of the / Page 545 / Dorf, wrapped in a white sheet; and
the barber, chatting obsequi-ously the while, deftly performed upon the
fringes of his hair, growing too long behind his ears. First time; then
the barber, per-formed their office upon our hero. When he sat there,
or when he stood at the door of his loggia and pared his nails and groomed
them, with the accessories from his aainty velvet case, he would suddenly
be over-powered by a mixture of terror and eager joy that made him fairly
giddy. And this giddiness was in both senses of the word: rendering our
hero not only dazed and dizzy, but flighty and light-headed, incapable
of distinguishing between "now" and "then, " and prone
to mingle these together in a time-less eternity.
As we have repeatedly .said, we wish to make him out neither better nor
worse than he was; accordingly we must report that he often tried to atone
for his reprehensible indulgence in attacks of mysticism, by virtuously
and painstakingly stnving to counteract them. He would sit with his watch
open in his hand, his thin gold watch with the engraved. monogram on the
lid, looking at the porcelain face with the double row of black and red
Arabic fig-ures running round it, the two fine and delicately curved gold
hands moving in and out over it, and the little second-hand
taking its busy ticking course round its own small circle. Hans Castorp,
watching the second-hand, essayed to hold time by the tail, to
cling to and prolong the passing moments. The little hand tripped
on its way, Unheeding the figures it reached,
passed over, left be-hind, left far behind, approached,
and came on to again. It had no feeling for time limits, divisions,
or measurements of time. Should it not pause on the sixty, or give some
small sign that this was the end of one thing and the beginning of the
next? But the way it passed over the intervening unmarked strokes showed
that the figures and divisons on its path were.simply beneath
it, that it moved on, and on. - Hans Castorp
shoved his product of the Glashutte works back in his waistcoat pocket,
and left time to take care of itself.
How make plain to the sober intelligence of the flat-land the changes
that took place in the inner economy of our young adven-turer? The dizzying
problem of identities grew grander in its scale.
If to-day's now - even with decent goodwill-was not easy to distinguish
from yesterday's, the day before's or the day before
that's, which were all as like each other as the same number of peas,
was it not also capable of being confused. with the now which: had been
in force a month or a year ago, was it not also likely to be mingled and
rolled round in the course of that other, to blend with / Page 546 / it
into the always? However one might still differentiate between the ordinary
states of consciousness which we attached to the words .. still,"
.. again," .. next," there was always the temptation to extend
the sigificance of such descriptive words as "to-morrow,"yesterday,"
by which "to-day" holds at bay" the past
" and" the future." It would not be hard to imagine
the exist-ence of creatures, perhaps upon smaller planets than ours, practis-ing
a miniature time-economy, in whose brief span the brisk trip-ping gait
of our second-hand would possess the tenacious spatial economy of our
hand that marks the hours. And, contrariwise, one can conceive of a world
so spacious that its time system too has a majestic stride, and the distinctions
between .. still," ., in a little while," " yesterday,"
.. to-morrow,'? are, in its economy, possessed of hugely extended
significance. That, we say, would be not only conceivable, but, viewed
in the spirit of a tolerant relativity, and in the light of an already-quoted
proverb, might be considered legiti- mate, sound, even estimable. Yet
what shall one say of a son of earth, and of our time to boot, for whom
a day, a week, a month, a semester, ought to play such an important role,
and bring so many changes, so much progress in its !:rain, who one day
falls into the vicious habit -,- or perhaps we should say, yields
sometimes to the desire - to say" yesterday"
when he means a year ago, and .. next year " when he means to-morrow?
Certainly we must deem him lost and undone, and the object of our just
concern.
There is a state, in our human life, there are certain scenic sur-roundings
- if one may use that adjective to describe the surround-ings
we have in mind - within which such a confusion and obliteration of distances
in time and space is in a measure justified, and temporary submersion
in them, say for the term of a holiday, not reprehensible. Hans Castorp,
for his part, could never without the greatest longing think of a stroll
along the ocean's edge. We know how he loved to have the snowy wastes
remind him of his native landscape of broad ocean dunes; we hope the reader's
recol-lections will bear us out when we speak of the joys of that straying.
You walk, and walk - never will you come
home at the right time, for you are of time, and
time is vanished. O ocean, far from thee we sit and spin our tale;
we turn toward thee our thoughts, our love, loud and expressly we
call on thee, that thou mayst be present in the tale we spin, as in secret
thou ever wast and shalt be! - A sing-ing solitude, spanned by a sky
of palest grey; full of stinging damp that leaves a salty tang upon the
lips. - We walk along the springy floor, strewn with seaweed and tiny
mussel-shells. Our ears are wrapped about by the great mild, ample wind,
that comes / Page 547 / sweeping untrammelled blandly through space, and
gently blunts our senses. We wander - wander - watching the tongues
of foam lick upward toward our feet and sink back again. The surf is seething;
wave after wave, with high, hollow sound, rears up, re-bounds,
and runs with a silken rustle out over the flat strand: here one,
there one, and more beyond, out on the bar. The dull; perva-sive,
sonorous roar loses our ears against all the sounds of the world. O deep
content, O wilful bliss of sheer forgetfulness! Let us shut our eyes,
safe in eternity! No - for there in the flaming grey- green waste that
stretches Wlth uncanny foreshortenIng to lose it-self in the horizon,.
look, there is a sail. There? Where is there? How
far, how near? You cannot tell. Dizzyingly it escapes
your measurement. In order to know how far that ship is from the shore,
you would need to know how much room it occupies, as a body in
space.1s it large and far off, or is it small and near? Your eye grows
dim with uncertainty, for in yourself you have no sense-organ to help.
you judge of time or space. - We Walk, walk. How long, how far?
Who knows? Nothing is changed by our pacing, there is the same as here,
once on a time the same as now, or then; time is drowning in the measureless
monotony of space, motion from point-to point is
no motion more, where uniformity rules; and where motion
is no more motion, time is no longer time.
The schoolmen of the Middle Ages would have it that time is an
illusion; that its flow in sequence and causality is only the result of
a sensory device, and the real existence of things in an abiding pres-ent.
Was he walking by the sea, the philosopher to whom this thought first
came, walking by the sea, with the faint bitterness of eternity upon his
lips? We must repeat that, as for us, we have been speaking only of the
lawful licence of a holiday, of fantasies born of leisure, of which the
well-conducted mind wearies as quickly as a vigorous man does of lying
in the warm sand. To call into question our human means and powers of
perception, to ques-tion their validity, would be absurd; dishonourable,
arbitrary, if it were done in any other spirit than to set bounds to reason,
which
she may not overstep without incurring the reproach of neglecting her
own task. We can only be grateful to a man like Herr Settem- brini, who
with pedagogic dogmatism characterized metaphysics as the " evil
principle," to the young man in whose fate we are in- terested, and
whom he had once subtly called "life's delicate child."
We shall best honour the memory of one departed, who was dear to us, if
we say plainly that the meaning, the end and aim of the critical principle
can and may be but one thing: the thought
of duty, the law of life. Yes, law-giving wisdom,
in marking off the / Page548 / limits of reason, planted precisely at
those limits the banner of life, and proclaimed it man's soldierly
duty to serve under that banner. May we set it down on the credit side
of Hans Castorp's account, that he had been strengthened in his vicious
time-economy, his baleful traffic with eternity, by seeing that
all his cousin's zeal, called doggedness by a certain melancholy blusterer,
had but the more surely brought him to a fatal end?"
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Thomas Mann
1875 1955
MOUNTING MISGIVINGS
Page 147 Quoted in full
"other
he mentally summoned up various people, the thought of whom might serve
him as some sort of mental support.
There was the good, the upright Joachim, firm as a rock-yet
whose eyes in these past months had come to hold such a tragic Shadow,
and who had never used to shrug his shoulders, as he did so often now.
Joachim, with the "Blue Peter" in his pocket, as Frau
Stohr called the receptacle. When Hans Castorp thought of her
hard, crabbed face it made him shiver. Yes, there was Joa-chim
- who kept constandy at Hofrat Behrens to let him get away and
go down to the longed-for service in the " plain "- the "
flat-land," as the healthy, normal world was called up here, with
a faint yet perceptible nuance of contempt. Joachim served
the cure single-mindedly, to the end that he might arrive sooner at
his goal and save some of the time which "those up here "
so wantonly flung away; served it unquestioningly for the sake of speedy
re-covery - but also, Hans Castorp detected, for the sake of
the cure'
itself, which, after all, was a service, like another; and was not duty
duty, wherever performed? Joachim invatiably went upstairs after
only a quarter-hour in the drawing-rooms; and this military precision
of his was a crop to the civilian laxity of his cousin, who would otherwise
be likely to loiter unprofitably below, with his eye on the company
in the small salon. But Hans Castorp was con-vinced there was
another and private reason why Joachim with-drew so early; he
had known it since the time he saw his cousin's face take on the mottleled
pallor, and his mouth assume the pathetic twist. He perfectly understood.
For Marusja was almost always there in the evening -laughter-loving
Marusja, with the little ruby on her charming hand, the handkerchief
with the orange scent, and the swelling bosom, tainted within - Hans
Castorp com-prehended that it. was her presence which drove
Joachim away, precisely because it so strongly, so fearfully
drew him toward her.
Was Joachim too "immured " - and even worse off than
him-self, in that, he had five times a day to sit at the same table
with Marusja and her orange-scented handkerchief? However that
might be, it was clear that Joachim was preoccupied with his
own troubles; the thought of him could afford his cousin no mental support.
That he took refuge in daily flight was a credit to him; but that he
had to flee was anything but reassuring to Hans Ca-storp, who
even began to feel that Joachim's good example of faithful service
of the cure and the initiation which he owed to his cousin's experience
might have also their bad side.
Hans Castorp had not been up here three weeks. But it seemed
longer; and the daily routine which Joachim so piously observed"
BEHRENS |
7 |
occurs |
x |
1 |
= |
7 |
|
7 |
CASTORP |
7 |
occurs |
x |
6 |
= |
42 |
4+2 |
6 |
JOACHIM |
7 |
occurs |
x |
11 |
= |
77 |
7+7 |
5 |
MARUSJA |
7 |
occurs |
x |
3 |
= |
21 |
2+1 |
3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
147 |
|
|
Page 147 containing seven lettered names
of characters
Page 147 Penguin edition 1979 contains 43 lines
Joachim x 10
Joachim's x1
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN
Thomas Mann
1875 1955
Page 711
"These were the moments when the
"Seven-Sleeper," not knowing what had happened, was slowly
stirring himself in the grass, before he sat up, rubbed his eyes - yes,
let us carry the figure to the end, in order to do justice to the movement
of our hero's mind: he drew up his legs, stood up, looked about him.
He saw himself released, freed from enchantment -not of his own motion;
he was fain to confess, but by the operation of exterior powers' of
whose activities his own liberation was a minor incident Indeed! Yet
though his tiny destiny fainted to nothing in the face of the general,
was there not some hint of a personal mercy and grace for him, a manifestation
of divine goodness and justice? Would Life receive again her erring
and " delicate " child-not by a cheap and easy slipping back
to her arms, but sternly, solemnly, penentially - perhaps not even among
the living, but only with three salvoes fired over the grave of him
a sinner? Thus might he return. He sank on his knees, raising face and
hands to a heaven that howsoever dark and sulphurous was no longer the
gloomy grotto of his state of sin."
THE KORAN
Everyman
Translated from the Arabic by
J. M. Rodwell
1909
INTRODUCTION
Page xxiii
"In addition Sura 18
includes two stories from the Christian periphery to the north of Arabia;
the so-called legend of the
Seven Sleepers"
Page 189 (omitted)
SURA 18 - THE CAVE
MECCA - 110 VERSES
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
"Praise be to God, who hath sent down the Book to his servant,
and hath not made it tortuous1
But direct; that it may warn of a grievous woe from him, and announce
to the faithful who do the things that are right, that a goodly reward,
wherein they shall abide for ever, awaiteth them;
And that it may warn those who say, 'God hath begotten a Son.'
No knowledge of this have either they or their fathers! A grievous saying
to come out of their mouths! They speak no other than a lie!
And haply, if they believe not in this new revelation, thou
wilt slay thyself, on their very footsteps, out of vexation.
Verily, we have made all that is on earth as its adornment, that we might
make trial who among mankind would excel in works:
But we are surely about to reduce all that is thereon to dust! Hast thou
reflected that the Inmates of THE CAVE and of Al
Rakim2 were one of our wondrous signs?
When the youths betook them to the cave they said, 'O our Lord! grant
us mercy from before thee, and order for us our affair aright.'
10 Then struck we upon their ears with deafness in the cave
for many a year:
Then we awaked them that we might know which of the two parties could
best reckon the space of their abiding.
We will relate to thee their tale with truth. They were youths who had
believed in their Lord, and in guidance had we increased them;
And we had made them stout of heart, when they stood up and said, 'Our
Lord is Lord of the Heavens and of the Earth: we will call on no other
God than him; for in that case we had said a thing outrageous.
These our people have taken other gods beside Him, though / Page 190 /
they bring no clear proof for them; but, who more iniquitous than he who
forgeth a lie of God?
So when ye shall have separated you from them and from that which they
worship beside God, then betake you to the cave: Your Lord will unfold
his mercy to you, and will order your affairs for you for the best.'
And thou mightest have seen the sun when it arose, pass on the right of
their cave, and when it set, leave them on the left, while they were in
its spacious chamber. This is one of the signs of God. Guided indeed is
he whom God guideth; but for him whom He misleadeth, thou shalt by no
means find a patron, director.
And thou wouldst have deemed them awake,3 though they
were sleeping: and we turned them to the right and to the left. And in
the entry lay their dog with paws outstretched.4 Hadst
thou come suddenly upon them, thou wouldst surely have turned thy back
on them in flight, and have been filled with fear at them.
So we awaked them that they might question one another. Said one of them,
'How long have ye tarried here?' They said, 'We have tarried a day or
part of a day.' They said, 'Your Lord knoweth best how long ye have tarried:
Send now one of you with this your coin into the city, and let his mark
who therein hath purest food, and from him let him bring you a supply:
and let him be courteous, and not discover you to anyone.
For they, if they find you out, will stone you or turn you back to
their faith, and in that case it will fare ill with you for ever.'
20 And thus made we their adventure known to their fellow citizens, that
they might learn that the promise of God is true, and that as to 'the
Hour' there is no doubt of its coming. When they disputed among themselves
concerning what had befallen them, some said, 'Build a building over them;
their Lord knoweth best about them.' Those who prevailed in the matter
said, 'A place of worship will we surely raise over them.'
Some say, 'They were three; their dog the fourth:'
others say, 'Five; their dog the sixth,' guessing at the
secret: others say, 'Seven; and their dog the eighth.'
SAY: My Lord best knoweth the number: none, save a few,
shall know them.
Therefore be clear in thy discussions about them,5 and ask
not any Christian concerning them.
Say not thou of a thing, 'I will surely do it to-morrow;' / Page
191 / without, 'If God will.,6 And
when thou hast forgotten, call thy Lord to mind; and say, 'Haply my Lord
will guide me, that I may come near to the truth of this story with correctness.'
And they tarried in their cave 300 years, and 9 years
over.7"
3 |
SAY |
45 |
9 |
9 |
9 |
SUSTAINER |
126 |
36 |
9 |
|