24
Mar
What does the text most strongly suggest about the story of Hans Castorp?
The following text is from Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, translated by John E. Woods in 1995.
The story of Hans Castorp that we intend to tell here—not for his sake (for the reader will come to know him as a perfectly ordinary, if engaging young man), but for the sake of the story itself, which seems to us to be very much worth telling (although in Hans Castorp’s favor it should be noted that it is his story, and that every story happens to everybody)—is a story that took place long ago, and is, so to speak, covered with the patina of history and must necessarily be told with verbs whose tense is that of the deepest past.
