Luckily, a free corner seat beckoned near the door. He stole sideways on it and assumed an expression as if he had always sat here. The audience, with first attention to Dr. Krokowski’s lips drooped, barely paying attention to him; and that was good, because he looked awful. His face was as pale as linen and his suit stained with blood so that he resembled a red-handed murderer. The lady in front of him, however, turned her head as he sat down and examined him with narrowed eyes. It was Madame Chauchat, he recognized her with a kind of bitterness. But that was the devil! Shouldn’t he just rest? He had thought that he could sit here quietly at his destination and recover a little, and now he had to have her right in front of his nose – a coincidence, which he might have been happy about under other circumstances, but tired and harried as he was, what was the point of that? It only made new demands on his heart and would keep him on edge throughout the lecture. She had looked at him with Pribislav’s eyes, looking at his face and the bloodstains on his suit – quite ruthlessly and importunately, by the way, as befitted the manners of a woman who threw doors. How badly she was holding up! Not like the women in Hans Castorp’s home sphere, who, with their backs erect, turned their heads towards their table master while speaking with the tips of their lips. Mrs. Chauchat sat slumped and limp, her back was round, her shoulders slumped forward, and she also held her head forward, so that the what should he do there? It only made new demands on his heart and would keep him on edge throughout the lecture. She had looked at him with Pribislav’s eyes, looking at his face and the bloodstains on his suit – quite ruthlessly and importunately, by the way, as befitted the manners of a woman who threw doors. How badly she was holding up! Not like the women in Hans Castorp’s home sphere, who, with their backs erect, turned their heads towards their table master while speaking with the tips of their lips. Mrs. Chauchat sat slumped and limp, her back was round, her shoulders slumped forward, and she also held her head forward, so that the what should he do there? It only made new demands on his heart and would keep him on edge throughout the lecture. She had looked at him with Pribislav’s eyes, looking at his face and the bloodstains on his suit – quite ruthlessly and importunately, by the way, as befitted the manners of a woman who threw doors. How badly she was holding up! Not like the women in Hans Castorp’s home sphere, who, with their backs erect, turned their heads towards their table master while speaking with the tips of their lips. Mrs. Chauchat sat slumped and limp, her back was round, her shoulders slumped forward, and she also held her head forward, so that the She had looked at him with Pribislav’s eyes, looking at his face and the bloodstains on his suit – quite ruthlessly and importunately, by the way, as befitted the manners of a woman who threw doors. How badly she was holding up! Not like the women in Hans Castorp’s home sphere, who, with their backs erect, turned their heads towards their table master while speaking with the tips of their lips. Mrs. Chauchat sat slumped and limp, her back was round, her shoulders slumped forward, and she also held her head forward, so that the She had looked at him with Pribislav’s eyes, looking at his face and the bloodstains on his suit – quite ruthlessly and importunately, by the way, as befitted the manners of a woman who threw doors. How badly she was holding up! Not like the women in Hans Castorp’s home sphere, who, with their backs erect, turned their heads towards their table master while speaking with the tips of their lips. Mrs. Chauchat sat slumped and limp, her back was round, her shoulders slumped forward, and she also held her head forward, so that the Not like the women in Hans Castorp’s home sphere, who, with their backs erect, turned their heads towards their table master while speaking with the tips of their lips. Mrs. Chauchat sat slumped and limp, her back was round, her shoulders slumped forward, and she also held her head forward, so that the Not like the women in Hans Castorp’s home sphere, who, with their backs erect, turned their heads towards their table master while speaking with the tips of their lips. Mrs. Chauchat sat slumped and limp, her back was round, her shoulders slumped forward, and she also held her head forward, so that thevertebrae in the neckline of her white blouse. Pribislav too had held his head in a similar way; he, however, had been a model pupil, living with honor (although that was not the reason why Hans Castorp had borrowed the pencil from him), – while it was plain and plain that Mrs. Chauchat’s careless attitude, her doors-throwing, the inconsiderateness of her gaze was connected with her illness, yes, it expressed the independence, those not honorable but almost limitless advantages of which young Herr Albin had boasted …

Hans Castorp’s thoughts became confused as he looked at Mrs. Chauchat’s slack back, they ceased to be thoughts and became a reverie into which Dr. Krokowski’s sluggish baritone, his softly struck r as if sounded in from afar. But the silence in the hall, the deep attention that kept everything around spellbound, had an effect on him, it literally woke him from his twilight. He looked around … Beside him sat the thin-haired pianist, his head thrown back and listening with his mouth open and his arms crossed. The teacher, Miss Engelhart, over there, had greedy eyes and reddish spots on both cheeks – a heat that was reflected on the faces of other ladies whom Hans Castorp eyed, also on that of Frau Salomon there, next to Herr Albin , and the brewer’s wife Mrs. Magnus, the same that lost albumen. On Frau Stöhr’s face, a little further back, such an illiterate enthusiasm was painted that it was a pity, while the ivory-colored Levi, with half-closed eyes and resting her hands on her lap on the back of the chair,would have resembled a corpse completely had not her breasts risen and fallen so sharply and rhythmically, reminding Hans Castorp rather of a female wax figure he had once seen in the panopticon, which had a mechanical engine in its bosom. Several guests cupped their hands to their ears, or at least indicated so by raising their hands halfway to their ears, as if frozen in mid-movement with attention. Prosecutor Paravant, a brown, seemingly primitive man, even shook one ear with his index finger to make it more sensitive to hearing, and then held it back to Dr. Krokowski’s flow of speech.

What was Dr. talking about? Krokowski? In what line of thought was he moving? Hans Castorp used his wits to get the current running, which he didn’t manage to do right away, since he hadn’t heard the beginning and had missed more when thinking about Frau Chauchat’s sagging back. It was a power…that power…in short, it was the power of love that was the issue. Of course! The topic lay in the general title of the lecture cycle, and what should Dr. Krokowski then probably speak otherwise, since this was after all his area. It was a bit odd, all of a sudden, to hear a lecture on love, when otherwise there had only been talk of things like transmission gears in shipbuilding. How did you start to discuss a subject of such a brittle and secret nature in the broad daylight before ladies and gentlemen? dr Krokowski discussed it in a mixed mode of expression, in a style at once poetic and scholarly, ruthlessly scientific but at the same time lyrically swingingTones, which struck young Hans Castorp as somewhat untidy, although that may be the reason why the ladies had flushed cheeks and the gentlemen shook their ears. In particular, the speaker used the word “love” constantly in a slightly vacillating sense, so that one never quite knew where one stood with it, and whether it meant pious or passionately carnal – which produced a slight feeling of seasickness. Never in his life had Hans Castorp heard this word uttered so often in succession as here and now, yes, when he thought about it, it seemed to him that he himself had never uttered it or heard it from someone else’s mouth. That might have been a mistake – at any rate he did not think that so frequent repetition would do the word any good. On the contrary, these slippery one and a half syllables with the tongue, the lip sound and the thin vowel in the middle became really repugnant to him in the long run, an image connected with it as of watered milk – something white-bluish, limp, especially in comparison with all that Strengthen what Dr. Krokowski actually spoke about it. For so much became clear that one could say strong pieces without driving people out of the hall, if one started like he did. He was by no means content to broach, with a kind of intoxicating tact, things that were well known but commonly shrouded in silence; he shattered illusions, he relentlessly honored knowledge, he left no room for sensitive belief in the dignity of the silver hair and the angelic purity of the tender child.made a fundamental and idealistic impression, even if Hans Castorp was a little shocked. By using books and loose sheets lying on the table in front of him, supporting his statements with all sorts of examples and anecdotes and even reciting verses several times, Dr. Krokowski of frightening forms of love, wondrous, painful and uncanny variations of its appearance and omnipotence. Of all natural instincts, he said, it is the most vacillating and endangered, fundamentally inclined to go astray and hopelessly wrong, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise. For this mighty impulse is nothing simple, it is by its very nature multifaceted, and no matter how legitimate it may be as a whole, it is composed of sheer perversities. But now that you and rightly so, Dr. Krokowski continues, but since one correctly refuses to infer the wrongness of the whole from the wrongness of the components, one is inevitably forced to claim a part of the legality of the whole, if not its entire legality, also for the individual wrongness gain weight. That is a requirement of logic, and he asks his listeners to stick to it. Mental resistances and correctives are there, decent and orderly instincts of – he might almost have said bourgeois kind, under whose balancing and restricting effect the wrong components merge into a regular and useful whole – a process that is nevertheless frequent and welcome, the result of which (like dr Krokowski added somewhat dismissively) was none of the doctor and thinker’s concern. In another case, on the other hand, this process does not succeed, it wants and shouldhe didn’t succeed, and who, asked Dr. Krokowski, are you able to say whether this does not perhaps mean the nobler, spiritually more precious case? In this case, both groups of forces, the urge to love as well as those opposing impulses, among which shame and disgust are to be mentioned in particular, have an extraordinary tension and passion that exceeds the usual bourgeois level, and, guided in the depths of the soul, prevent the Struggle between them that containment, security and morality of the erring instincts, which lead to the usual harmony, to the love life according to the rules. This conflict between the powers of chastity and love – for that is what it is about – how does it end? It seems to end with the victory of chastity. fear, prosperity, chaste abhorrence, trembling need for purity, they suppressed love, kept it chained to obscurity, at best only partially admitted its confused demands, but by no means allowed their full variety and power to enter consciousness and act. But this victory of chastity is only an illusion and a Pyrrhic victory, because the love command cannot be gagged, it cannot be violated, suppressed love is not dead, it is alive, it continues to strive in the dark and deep secret to fulfill itself, it breaks through the spell of chastity and reappear, albeit in a transformed, unrecognizable form… And what then, then, is the form and mask in which the forbidden and suppressed love reappears? So asked Dr. Krokowski and looked down the rows as if earnestly awaiting the answer from his listeners. Yes, he now had to say that himself, after he had already said so many things. Nobody excepthe knew it, but he would definitely know that too, you could see that in his face. With his glowing eyes, waxy pallor, and black beard, wearing monk’s sandals over gray woolen socks, he himself seemed to embody the struggle between chastity and passion of which he had spoken. At least that was Hans Castorp’s impression while he, like everyone else, awaited with great excitement the answer as to the form in which illicit love would return. The women hardly breathed. Prosecutor Paravant quickly shook his ear again so that it would be open and receptive at the crucial moment. Then said Dr. Krokowski: In the form of the disease! The symptom of illness is disguised love activity and all illness transformed love.

Now it was known, even if not everyone was able to fully appreciate it. A sigh went through the room and Prosecutor Paravant nodded significant applause while Dr. Krokowski went on to develop his thesis. For his part, Hans Castorp bowed his head to consider what he had heard and to see if he understood. But untrained as he was in such trains of thought, and besides his lack of mental strength as a result of his unwholesome walk, he was easily distracted and was then immediately distracted by the back in front of him and the accompanying arm, which rose and bent backwards, around with the hand , close to Hans Castorp’s eyes, to support the plaited hair from below.

It was oppressive to have your hand so close to your eyes – you had to look at it, whether you wanted to or not, study it in all the flaws and humanity that clung to it,like having them under a magnifying glass. No, there was nothing aristocratic about her, this oversized schoolgirl hand with the badly trimmed nails – one wasn’t even sure if the outer knuckles were completely clean, and the skin next to the nails was bitten, nobody could do that subject to doubt. Hans Castorp’s mouth twisted, but his eyes lingered on Madame Chauchat’s hand, and a half and vague recollection of what Dr. Krokowski had said about the bourgeois resistance that opposed love … The arm was prettier, this arm gently bent behind the head, which was hardly clothed, because the material of the sleeves was thinner than that of the blouse – the lightest Gauze, so that the arm only experienced a certain fragrant transfiguration and would probably have been less graceful without the covering. It was tender and full at the same time – and cool, by all accounts. With regard to him, there could be no question of any bourgeois resistance.

Hans Castorp was dreaming, looking at Frau Chauchat’s arm. How the women dressed! They showed this and that of their necks and breasts, they transfigured their arms with transparent gauze… They did this all over the world to arouse our longing desire. My god, life was beautiful! It was beautiful precisely because it was so natural that the women dressed seductively – because of course it was so common and accepted that one hardly thought of it and unconsciously and without fuss put up with it. But you should think about it, thought Hans Castorp inwardly, about yourselfto really enjoy life and to realize that it was a happy and basically almost fairytale arrangement. It goes without saying that it was for the sake of a certain purpose that women were allowed to dress like fairy tales and make them happy without thereby infringing on propriety; it was about the next generation, about the procreation of the human race, yes. But what if the woman was sick inside, so that she was not at all fit for motherhood – what then? Was there any point in her wearing gauze sleeves to arouse men’s curiosity about her body—her sick body inside? Apparently it did n’t have anySense and should actually have been considered improper and should have been prohibited. For a man to be interested in a sick woman was definitely no more sensible than … well, than Hans Castorp’s silent interest in Pribislav Hippe had been at the time. A silly comparison, a somewhat embarrassing memory. But she had turned up unbidden and without his doing. Incidentally, his dreamy contemplation broke off at this point, chiefly because his attention was again drawn to Dr. Krokowski, whose voice had risen conspicuously. Truly, he was standing behind his little table with his arms outstretched and his head tilted to one side, and despite his frock coat he almost looked like the Lord Jesus on the cross!

It turned out that dr. At the end of his lecture, Krokowski made great propaganda for the dissection of the soul and invited everyone to come to him with open arms. Come to me, he said in other words, you who are weary and heavy laden! And he left no doubthis conviction that all without exception were weary and burdened. He spoke of hidden suffering, of shame and grief, of the redeeming effect of analysis; he praised the x-raying of the unconscious, taught how to transform illness into conscious affect, urged trust, and promised recovery. Then he lowered his arms, straightened his head, gathered up the pamphlets that had served him in his lecture, and, leaning the packet with his left hand on his shoulder, like a teacher, he rose and walked away head through the walkway.

Everyone got up, pushed their chairs and began to move slowly toward the same exit the doctor had used to exit the room. It looked as if they were pressing concentrically after him from all sides, hesitantly but without will and in dazed unanimity, like the crowd behind the Pied Piper. Hans Castorp remained standing in the stream, the back of his chair in his hand. I’m just visiting, he thought; I’m healthy and, thank God, out of the question, and I won’t see the next lecture here at all. He saw Mrs. Chauchat go out, stealthily, with her head thrust forward. Can it also be dissected? he thought, and his heart began to pound . . . He didn’t notice that Joachim was walking towards him between the chairs, and jumped nervously when his cousin spoke to him.

“But you came at the last moment,” said Joachim. “Have you been far? How was it?”

“Oh, nice,” replied Hans Castorp. “Yes, I was quite far. But I have to admit it didn’t do me any goodthan i expected. It was probably premature or missed altogether. I will not do it again for the time being.”

Joachim did not ask whether he liked the lecture, and Hans Castorp did not comment on it. As if by silent agreement, they did not mention a word of the lecture afterwards.