"Room 34", the second chapter of Part I of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
12/6/09
What do you think about numbers?
Do you believe in numerology?
Do you believe in coincidence?
Kismet?
Fate?
Would you like to do a numerological reading of chapter 2 of Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" with me?
I think it might be interesting. Join me.
Let's go through the plot together, specifically focusing on the descriptions of rooms/locations/whatnot. (But maybe then giving up and doing something else.)
Hans Castorp has arrived at the sanatorium in the alps to visit his cousin Joachim. They are just walking inside. Poor Hans has been on the train for quite some time--it's been a long trip and he's tired, but he's also quite thrilled for a change of speed, a vacation.
The whole chapter consists of them getting to Room 34 and then leaving again to go to the restaurant for dinner. Room 34 is where Hans will be staying during his visit. Let's do a little quoting.
They passed soundlessly down the coconut runners of the narrow corridor. Cool light came from the milk-glass shades of lamps set in the ceiling. The walls were painted with a hard, glistening white enamel. A nurse in a white cap appeared from somewhere, a pince-nez set on her nose, its cord tucked behind one ear. She had the look of a Protestant nurse, of someone with no real devotion to her profession, but kept restless by curiosity and the burden of boredom. Some balloon-shaped objects had been set out in the corridor, beside two of the white-enameled doors--large, potbellied containers with short necks. Hans Castorp was going to ask their purpose, and just as quickly forgot the question. (10)
They're being eaten! They're walking down the throat of the beast--passed the teeth ("enamel") and down into the very stomach, or maybe the very heart. What could those balloon shaped objects be--lungs? And, of course, let's note it: there's two of them next to two doors. The nurse might be a tongue: "kept restless by curiosity and the burden of boredom" (10). That's as good a description of the way my tongue moves around during non-eating periods as any I've heard (but of course, they're currently being eaten so you wouldn't expect "restless curiosity"--or would you?). When I first read this book I thought that those two "balloon shaped objects" by the "two doors" were tonsils. They might be, I don't know. But they're being consumed, definitely.
They get to the room. They have to walk through two doors (again, two?) to get inside:
There was a double door, with clothes hooks in the space between the two. Joachim had turned on the ceiling light, and its sharp luster revealed a room that was both cheerful and restful, with white, practical furniture; heavy, washable wallpaper, likewise white; a floor covered with spotless linoleum; and linen curtains, embroidered with a simple, cheerful pattern of modern design. The door to the balcony stood open to a glimpse of lights in the valley and the sound of distant dance music. Joachim had thoughtfully placed a few wildflowers in a small vase on the dresser--some yarrow and a couple of bluebells, in their second bloom this summer, that he had picked on the slope.
I imagine the double door to be the valves of the heart (but I guess it could be the colon, stomach--whatever). I like the idea that they are in the heart because of the traditional symbolism of the heart as a center of meaning. But who knows? Maybe digestion is more apt. Everything is white, washable, modern: the center of Hans's new world is a modern piece of practical simplicity, cheery enough but completely temporary. Well, so what do they do in Room 34?
We should first note that Joachim had thoughtfully placed two types of wildflowers, one of which is in its "second bloom this summer," in a vase for Hans's arrival. How nice, thanks Joachim. You really are true blue.
Hans thanks him: "'How kind of you,' Hans Castorp [says], 'What a nice room. I'll have no trouble putting up here for a week or two.'" You'll have a great two weeks, Hans. Hats off to you.
Joachim, being the military sort, doesn't just accept the pleasantries and move on with the small talk. He's got something to say. Let's quote him.
"An American woman died here the day before yesterday," Joachim said. "Behrens [the director of the Sanatorium] told me he was sure it would be all over with her before you arrived, and that you could have the room. Her fiancé was with her, an English naval officer, but he didn't exactly keep a stiff upper lip…The evening before last, the American woman had two first-class hemorrhages, and that was that…" (11). [You really know how to bring us down, eh Joachim?]
An American woman died here two days ago from two hemorrhages. Are you sensing a theme here? No? Well, anyway, thanks Joachim for giving keeping the small talk going. Would you rather move on?
Should we just list everything that has a two attached to it? (Neglecting or possibly forgetting some of the earlier occurrences we've already gone over.)
The room itself, after the American woman died, was fumigated with H2CO.
Hans Castorp brought 200 cigars with him.
Double doors into/out of his room.
Double doors into/out of the Sanatorium itself, actually.
Hans alternates between two different types of razors.
Two Russians are staying in the room next to Hans.
A two hour "rest cure" every day.
Two types of wildflowers, one of which is in its second bloom.
Two white doors.
Two balloon-objects.
An American woman died from two hemorrhages two days ago. (The fact that she's American is interesting too. She's so out of place.)
Joachim + Hans = two people, a pair.
They run into that damn nurse-tongue a second time on the way back downstairs from the room.
Hans mentions two types of coughs: dry barks and loose ones. (Read below for a case of coughing that transcends this binary.)
This is the second chapter. Which is interesting in itself: the room is numbered "34," and, as the theme seems to be "2," maybe we should connect these two concepts. When I count upwards, I count "1, 2, 3, 4..." It's as if his room/this chapter is directing us forward, directing us onwards and upwards into the realm of numbers. The numerical coincidences really jump out at you, and I don't think you can read this book without thinking through it's numerological aspect. It actually gets extremely annoying when numbers like "2, 3, 5, 7" all start showing up repeatedly in everything everyone does and says. You just can't get it out of your mind because it's everywhere. To the point where it's hard to focus on other themes.
As they walk to dinner they have to go down a floor, to the second floor, and on that floor they encounter a noise so "ghastly" and "so decidedly repulsive" that they had to stop "in their tracks" (12). It was a cough "devoid of any zest for life or love, which didn't come in spasms, but sounded as if someone were stirring feebly in in a terrible mush of decomposing organic material" (12). As Hans would say, that's just spiffing. Hans says of the cough/noise: "It's as if you were looking right down inside and could see it all--the mucus and the slime" (12). Yummy. He can't get the idea of "looking right down inside" out of his mind, which is, of course, a continuation of the symbol of being consumed by the Sanatorium.
So, after that, they go to dinner.
End chapter.
What's the significance? Conclusions?
I don't know. Part of the point of the book seems to be that right before WWI there was this crashing together of worlds. Tradition was being taken over by modernity (alchemy by chemistry, traditional medicine by modern medicine, Galilean relativity by special relativity). And actually the whole theme of the relativity of time becomes essential to any reading of the book. You're experience of time changes with a change of place. Numerology, spiritualism, psychoanalysis, medicine, germs, nihilism, humanism, enlightenment, democracy, autocracy, relativity--all these crash together in a way that is maddening, frustrating, and in a sense inescapable.
I think the significance of the number 2 in this chapter is that of initiation/invitation. We're being led into a world of conflicting ideas, where we can still interpret our world in terms of numerological signs and actually get some type of meaning out of it (who knows what that would be, though), while also being shown into a world of white-walled linoleum that shuns traditions such as numerology. (While also, perhaps, replacing it with something just as insane--the "modern" Sanatorium.)
The number 2 acts in relation to the title of the chapter. We're being led to count, to move forward into a world of numbers--a world where numbers take on an ever-present, if ambiguous meaning.
A strict historical reading would lead us to conclude that the book describes a specific place and setting in the early 20th century before WWI, but such a reading ignores the actual reality and experience of that world itself. It ignores it in that we need an invitation to that world, to that description, which is exactly what this book is, and exactly what this chapter is (it's what the number 2 is! An invitation to keep counting! An invitation into the world). As a result, an historical interpretation would be only superficially correct--a reduction of a whole world to a mere description.
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