Space, like time, gives birth to forgetfulness, but does so by removing an individual from all relationships and placing him in a free and pristine state — indeed, in but a moment it can turn a pedant and philistine into something like a vagabond. Time, they say, is water from the river Lethe, but alien air is a similar drink; and if its effects are less profound, it works all the more quickly.
German novelist and Nobel Prize laureate (1875–1955)
Paul Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual.
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Paul Thomas Mann
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"The diaries of opium-eaters record how, during the brief period of ecstasy, the drugged person's dreams have a temporal scope of ten, thirty, sometimes sixty years or even surpass all limits of man's ability to experience time — dreams, that is, whose imaginary time span vastly exceeds their actual duration and which are characterized by an incredible diminishment of the experience of time, with images thronging past so swiftly that, as one hashish-smoke puts it, the intoxicated user's brain seems "to have something removed, like the mainspring from a broken watch.
If poets use such expressions it is because they need them, because emotion and experience force them out of them, and so it is, surely, with me, though you think them unbecoming in me. You are wrong. They are becoming to whoever needs them, and he has no fear of them, because they are forced out of him.
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O, čarobna organsko lepoto, koja se ne sastojiš ni iz uljane boje ni iz kamena, već iz materije žive i raspadljive, pune grozničave tajne života i truljenja! Pogledaj divnu simetriju ljudskog sklopa, ramena i bedra i rascvetane bradavice s jedne i s druge strane grudi, i rebra poređana po parovima, i pupak usred mekote trbuha, i tamni pol između butina! Pogledaj samo kako se lopatice miču pod svilastom kožom na leđima i pogledaj kičmu koja se spušta ka dvostrukoj i svežoj bujnosti stražnjice, i velike grane sudova i živaca koje prelaze sa stabla u grane preko pazuha, i pogledaaj kako sklop ruku odgovara sklopu nogu. O da milih predela u udubljenju zgloba na laktu i kolenu, sa njihovim obiljem organskih tananosti obloženih mesom! Kakva neizmerna radost, milovati ta divna mesta ljudskoga tela! Radost posle koje čovek ne žali da umre! Oh, daj da osetim miris kože pod tvojom čašicom, pod kojom večno načinjena zglobna čaura luči svoje mazivo! Pusti me da sneno dodirnem ustima arteriju femoralis koja kuca na vrhu butine i koja se dole deli u dve golenične arterije! Pusti me da osetim isparavanje tvojih pora i da opipam tvoje malje, tu ljudsku sliku vode i belančevine, određenu za anatomiju groba, i pusti me da umrem sa usnama položenim na tvoje.
Yet each, in itself — this was the uncanny, the anti-organic, the life-denying character of them all — each of them was absolutely symmetrical, icily regular in form. They were too regular, as substance adapted to life never was to this degree — the living principle shuddered at this perfect precision, found it deathly, the very marrow of death — Hans Castorp felt he understood now the reason why the builders of antiquity purposely and secretly introduced minute variation from absolute symmetry in their columnar structures.