The Magic Mountain

Naphta spoke, could by its means be redressed. On practical as well as on ideal grounds, mankind was now about to redress it. He explained that he was helping prepare for an international congress for the promotion of cremation, the scene of whose labours would probably be Sweden. A model crematorium would be exhibited, planned in accordance with the latest researches and experiments, with a hall of urns; they hoped to rouse widespread interest and enthusiasm. What an effete and obsolete procedure burial was, under our modern conditions⁠—the price of land, the expansion of our cities and consequent shoving of the graveyards out on to the periphery! And the chopfallen funeral processions, with their dignity curtailed by present-day traffic conditions! Herr Settembrini had plenty of disillusioning facts at his command. He made a droll picture of a grief-stricken widower on his daily pilgrimage to the graveside, to hold communion with the beloved departed; and said that the man must have a superfluity of that most precious of human commodities, time; and further, that the rush of business in a large modern burying-ground must surely dash his atavistic bliss. The destruction of the body by fire⁠—what a cleanly, sanitary, dignified, yes, heroic conception that was, compared with abandoning it to the miserable processes of decay and assimilation by the lower forms of life! Yes, the newer method was more satisfying emotionally too, and kinder to the human longing after immortality. For what the fire destroyed was the more perishable part of the body, the elements which even during one’s life were got rid of by metabolism; whereas those which accompanied man through life, taking least share in the process of change, those became the ashes, and with them the survivors possessed the deceased’s imperishable part.

“Oh, charming,” Naphta said. “Oh, really, very good! Man’s imperishable part, his ashes!”

Naphta evidently meant to hold humanity fast to its old, irrational position in the face of established biological fact; meant to force it to remain at the stage of primitive religion, where death was a spectre surrounded by such mysterious terrors that the gaze of reason could not be focused upon it. What barbarism! The fear of death went back to a very low cultural stage, when violent death was the rule, and its horrors thus became associated with the idea of death in general. But now, thanks to the development of hygiene and the increase in personal security, a natural death was the rule, a violent one the exception; modern man had come to think of repose, after exhaustion of his powers, as not at all dreadful, but normal and even desirable. No, death was neither spectre nor mystery. It was a simple, acceptable, and physiologically necessary phenomenon; to dwell upon it longer than decency required was to rob life of its due. Accordingly, the Hall of Death (as the modern crematory and vault for the urns was to be called) would be supplemented by a Hall of Life, where architecture, painting, sculpture, music, and poetry would combine to draw the thoughts of the survivors from the contemplation of death, from weak and unavailing grief, and fix them upon the joys of life.

“On with the dance!” Naphta mocked. “Don’t let them make too much of the funeral rites, don’t let them pay too much respect to such a simple fact as death⁠—but without that simple fact, there would never have been either architecture nor painting, sculpture nor music, poetry nor any other art.”

“He deserts to the colours,” murmured Hans Castorp dreamily.

“Your remark is incomprehensible,” Settembrini answered him, “which doesn’t prevent it from being at the same time silly. Either the experience of death must be the last experience of life, or else it must be a bugaboo, pure and simple.”

“Will there be obscene symbols employed in the Hall of Life, like those on the ancient sarcophagi?” Hans Castorp asked with a serious air.

“By all accounts,” Naphta chimed in, “there will be a fine fat feeding for the senses.” In oils and in marbles, a humanistic taste would celebrate the glories of the senses⁠—of the sinful body whose flesh it had saved from putrefaction. There was nothing surprising about that⁠—it was of a piece with its fastidiousness in the matter of corporal punishment.

Thus they came upon the subject of torture⁠—introduced by Wehsal, to whom, it seemed, it made a particular appeal. “The question,” now⁠—what were the gentlemen’s views about it? He, Ferdinand, when he was “on the road,” liked to visit those quiet retreats in the centres of ancient culture, where such research into the conscience of man used to be carried on. He had seen the torture-chambers of Nuremberg and Regensburg, he had made a study of them, and been edified. They had certainly devised a number of ingenious ways of manhandling the body for the good of the soul. There had never been any outcry⁠—they rammed the famous choke-pear, itself such a very tasty morsel, into the victim’s mouth, and after that silence reigned.

“Porcheria!” Settembrini muttered.

Ferge professed his respect for the choke-pear, and the whole silent activity. But anything worse than the pinning back of his pleura he was sure had never been devised, not even in those times.

That had been done for his good!

The obdurate soul, offended justice, these warranted a temporary lack of mercy. But in fact, the torture was an invention of the human reason.

Settembrini presumed that the speaker was not quite in his senses.

Oh, yes, he was pretty well in possession of them. It was Herr Settembrini, the professed aesthete, who was probably not altogether familiar with the history of the development of medieval jurisprudence. There had been, in fact, a process of continuous rationalization, in the course of which reason had taken the place of God, who had been shoved out of the department of justice. In other words, trial by battle had fallen into disuse, because it had been observed that the stronger man conquered even when he was in the wrong. It had been