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Excursus on the Sense of Time

When they came back up from eating, the package with the blankets was already lying in Hans Castorp's room on a chair, and for the first time that day he made use of them - the practiced Joachim gave him instruction in the art of packing oneself in, as everyone up here did it and every newcomer had to learn it at once. One spread the blankets, one and then the other, over the chair-bed, so that at the foot end a generous piece hung down onto the floor. Then one took one's place and began to strike the inner one around oneself: first lengthwise up under the armpit, then from below over the feet, for which one had to bend while sitting and take double hold of the folded end, and then from the other side, whereby the doubled foot-corner had to fit well against the long edge if the greatest possible smoothness and regularity was to be achieved. After that one observed exactly the same procedure with the outer blanket - its handling was somewhat more difficult, and Hans Castorp, as bungler and beginner, groaned not a little as, bending and stretching himself out again, he practiced the grips he was taught. Only a few veterans, Joachim said, could fling both blankets around themselves at the same time with three sure movements, but that was a rare and envied skill, to which not only many years of practice but also a natural aptitude belonged. At this word Hans Castorp had to laugh, while with aching back he let himself fall backward, and Joachim, who did not at once understand what was comic here, looked at him uncertainly, but then laughed too.

"There," he said, when Hans Castorp lay unarticulated and cylindrical in the chair, the yielding roll at his neck and exhausted by all the gymnastics, "if it were now twenty degrees below zero, nothing could happen to you either." And then he went behind the glass wall in order to pack himself in as well.

Hans Castorp doubted the business with twenty degrees below zero, for he was decidedly cold; shivers repeatedly ran over him while through the wooden arches he looked into the seeping, drizzling wetness out there, which seemed at any moment on the point of turning back into snowfall. How strange, incidentally, that with all the dampness he still had such dry-hot cheeks, as if he were sitting in an overheated room. He also felt himself ridiculously attacked by the exercises with the blankets - truly, Ocean Steamships trembled in his hands as soon as he brought it before his eyes. After all, he was not so exceedingly healthy either - totally anemic, as Hofrat Behrens had said, and that was probably why he was so inclined to chill. The unpleasant sensations, however, were outweighed by the great comfort of his position, the hard-to-analyze and almost mysterious properties of the reclining chair, which Hans Castorp had already felt with the highest approval on the first trial and which proved themselves again and again most happily. Whether it lay in the nature of the cushions, the correct inclination of the backrest, the suitable height and breadth of the arm supports, or even only the practical consistency of the neck roll, enough: no more humane provision could possibly be made for the well-being of resting limbs than by this excellent reclining chair. And so there was satisfaction in Hans Castorp's heart that two empty and surely pacified hours lay before him, these hours of the main rest cure sanctified by the house rules, which, although he was only a guest up here, he felt to be an arrangement quite suited to him. For he was patient by nature, could long exist comfortably without occupation, and loved, as we remember, free time that is not made forgotten, consumed, and chased away by stupefying activity. At four came vesper tea with cake and preserves, then some movement in the open air, after that again rest in the chair, at seven the evening meal, which, like meals in general, brought with it certain tensions and sights to which one could look forward, afterward one or another glance into the stereoscopic peep-box, the kaleidoscopic telescope, and the cinematographic drum… Hans Castorp already had the course of the day on a string, even if it would be saying far too much that he was already "settled in," as one calls it.

Fundamentally there is a curious state of affairs with this settling-in at a strange place, this - even if laborious - adaptation and reaccustoming, to which one subjects oneself almost for its own sake and with the definite intention of giving it up again, scarcely once it is complete, or at least soon afterward, and returning to the previous condition. One inserts such a thing as interruption and interlude into the main coherence of life, and indeed for the purpose of "recreation," that is: the renewing, overturning exercise of the organism, which ran the danger, and was already on the point, of growing pampered, slack, and dull in the unarticulated sameness of the conduct of life. But on what, then, does this slackening and dulling with too long unbroken regularity rest? It is not so much physical-spiritual fatigue and wear through the demands of life on which it rests (for simple rest would be the restorative remedy for that); rather it is something psychic, it is the experience of time - which, under uninterrupted uniformity, threatens to go astray, and which is so closely related and bound to the feeling of life itself that the one cannot be weakened without the other suffering a pitiful impairment as well. Many erroneous notions are spread about the nature of boredom. On the whole one believes that interestingness and novelty of content "drive away" time, that is, shorten it, while monotony and emptiness weigh down and hinder its course. That is not unconditionally true. Emptiness and monotony may indeed stretch the moment and the hour and make them "boring," but great and greatest masses of time they shorten and volatilize even to nothingness. Conversely, a rich and interesting content is quite capable of shortening and winging the hour and even the day, yet reckoned on the large scale it lends breadth, weight, and solidity to the passage of time, so that eventful years pass much more slowly than those poor, empty, light ones that the wind blows before it and that fly away. What one calls boredom is therefore actually much more a morbid brevity of time as a result of monotony: large spaces of time shrink, under uninterrupted uniformity, in a way that frightens the heart to death; if one day is like all, then all are like one; and under perfect sameness the longest life would be experienced as quite short and would have flown away unawares. Habit is a falling asleep, or at least a growing dull, of the sense of time, and if the years of youth are experienced slowly, but later life runs and hastens ever more quickly, then this too must rest on habit. We know well that the insertion of changes and new accustomings is the only means of holding our life, of refreshing our sense of time, of achieving a rejuvenation, strengthening, and slowing of our experience of time, and thereby the renewal of our feeling of life in general. This is the purpose of change of place and air, the spa journey, the recreative quality of variation and episode. The first days at a new residence have a youthful, that is, strong and broad gait - there are perhaps six to eight of them. Then, in the measure that one "settles in," gradual shortening makes itself noticeable: whoever clings to life or, better said, would like to cling to life, may observe with horror how the days begin again to become light and to flit; and the last week, of perhaps four, has uncanny rapidity and fugitive character. To be sure, the refreshment of the time-sense then works beyond the insertion, makes itself felt anew when one has returned to regularity: the first days at home too, after the variation, are again experienced as new, broad, and youthful, but only a few: for one settles back into regularity more quickly than into its suspension, and if the sense of time is already tired through age or - a sign of original weakness of life - was never strongly developed, then it falls asleep again very quickly, and after only twenty-four hours it is as if one had never been away, and as if the journey were the dream of a night.

These remarks are inserted here only because young Hans Castorp had something similar in mind when, after a few days, he said to his cousin (and looked at him with red-veined eyes as he did so):

"It is and remains funny how time becomes long for one at the beginning, in a strange place. That is… Of course there can be no question that I am bored; on the contrary, I can well say that I am amusing myself royally. But when I look around, retrospectively, that is, understand me properly, it seems to me as if I had been up here already for who knows how long, and back to that point where I arrived and did not at once understand that I was there, and you were still saying: 'Just get out!' - do you remember? - that seems to me a whole eternity. This has absolutely nothing to do with measuring and in general with the understanding; it is a pure matter of feeling. Naturally it would be silly to say: 'I believe I have already been here two months' - that would be nonsense. Rather I can only say: 'Very long.'"

"Yes," answered Joachim, the thermometer in his mouth, "I profit by it too; since you have been here I can, in a certain sense, hold on to you." And Hans Castorp laughed because Joachim said this so simply, without explanation.