Vertigo

 “After setting off at a moderate pace over fairly level ground, he began to climb again, and the slope was quite steep. It was possible that he had not lost his way, for the path leading down into the valley also had to rise in places; and as for the wind, it had doubtless shifted capriciously, for Hans Castorp now had it at his back again, which he found advantageous. Was it the storm that bent him forward, or was it this sloping plane, veiled by a snowy twilight, white and gentle, that exerted an attraction upon his body? One would only have had to yield to it, to abandon oneself to this pull, and the temptation was great—just as great, dangerous, and typical as it was reputed to be; yet this awareness did nothing to diminish its living, effective force. This attraction laid claim to special rights; it refused to be classed among the general data of experience, refused to recognize itself there; it declared itself unique and incomparable in its insistence—while not being able, it is true, to deny that it was an inspiration emanating from a certain quarter, a suggestion coming from a being clad in Spanish black, with a round, pleated collar of snow-white brilliance, an image to which were attached all kinds of dark, Jesuitical, sharp, and anti-human impressions, all kinds of memories of torture and flogging—things that Mr. Settembrini abhorred, but by which he merely made himself ridiculous with his barrel-organ refrain and his ‘ragione’…
But Hans Castorp behaved bravely and resisted the temptation to let himself go. He saw nothing; he struggled on and advanced. Usefully or not, he labored on his own behalf and moved forward in defiance of the bonds that weighed upon him and with which the icy storm increasingly burdened his limbs. When the ascent became too steep, he turned aside, without really being aware of it, and thus followed the slope for some time. Opening his convulsively clenched eyelids was an effort whose futility he had already experienced, which hardly encouraged him to repeat it.
Nevertheless, from time to time he did see something: pine trees drawing closer, a stream or a ditch whose darkness stood out between the snow-covered banks that overhung it; and when, for a change, he descended another slope, once again facing the wind, he caught sight ahead of him, at some distance, floating freely, as it were swept by confused veils, of the shadow of a human building. A welcome and comforting sight! He had bravely struggled on despite every obstacle until he once again saw structures fashioned by human hands, which warned him that the inhabited valley must be near.
Perhaps there were people over there; perhaps one could enter their dwelling, wait out the end of the storm under their roof, and, if necessary, find a companion or a guide should natural darkness have fallen in the meantime. He walked toward this almost chimerical object, which often seemed on the verge of vanishing into the gloom of the hour. He still had to make an exhausting climb against the wind to reach it, and upon arriving there he realized, with feelings of revolt, astonishment, terror, and vertigo, that it was the familiar hut, the hay barn with the stone-weighted roof that, by all kinds of detours and at the cost of the most valiant efforts, he had regained.
The devil! Heavy curses fell from the stiffened lips of Hans Castorp, who omitted the labial sounds.
To orient himself, he walked around the hut, using his stick, and established that he had reached it once again from behind and that consequently, for a good hour by his estimation, he had been engaged in the purest and most useless folly.
But that was how it happened; that was how one could read it in books. One went around in circles, wore oneself out imagining one was advancing, while in reality one was tracing wide and foolish detours that brought one back to the starting point, like the deceptive orbit of the year. That was how one lost one’s way; that was how one failed to find oneself again. Hans Castorp recognized the traditional phenomenon with a certain satisfaction, though also with dread. He struck his thighs in anger and astonishment, because the experience had reproduced itself so punctually in his own particular, individual, and present case.”

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

A new day dawns. Félix prepares his next session with Lucian, which will take place shortly.

Félix’s notebook

In preparation for our meeting, Lucian sent me a drawing. If I am honest, this image placed me in a particular and somewhat difficult position. I lingered over it… not without a certain vertigo. Literally, I found myself getting lost in it… until a small voice said to me: do not try to bring down what is still up high.
It took me time to understand what that meant… and then I understood, and from that moment on, it became easier.

I told myself that I must not push Lucian toward a conclusion. And there again, difficulties began. How can one not “push” Lucian when, in my own mind, my conclusions are already pressing at the gate? Even before the session begins, I already find it hard to hold myself back. To do so, I return to the image that speaks to me:
Do not close the landscape too quickly.
I identify the landscape with the framed image: a black line, an almost impassable boundary. But immediately, I hear that “he” has returned.
Who is “he”? Returned from where?
He has both feet on the ground, on the soil, even if that soil is both solid and fragile. I therefore prepare myself for a session in which the danger is no longer collapse, but perhaps the temptation to explain everything. And I tell myself that my role here may simply be to maintain the right distance between the low and the high… the low being the ground, and vertigo the high.
I am prone to vertigo… at times I find myself halfway between the dragon that has been slain and the dragon still breathing fire. I know full well that this is pure imagination, and yet, in those moments, I truly travel between life and death… Fortunately, it does not last. Sweating, I dream that I cling with both hands to the staff, lift it, and strike the ground violently… The impact brings me back to my desk…
One last thought comes to me before entering the session…
This image is not one of victory. It is that of a precarious balance, but one that remains inhabitable despite the path being swept away by an avalanche.
I tell myself, as I close this analysis, that if I have been able to return to the ground without losing sight of the mountain, then something rare is at stake. With Lucian, we will need to walk carefully.
Like on those ridges. Without staring too long into the depths. Without wanting to reach the summit too quickly. Just holding on… as if we were holding a staff… similar to the one in the drawing.
That staff, now, I see it differently. In this universe that is almost entirely mineral, made of hard rock fractured on all sides, the staff is the only vegetal element. A fragment of life torn from the forest, carried to a place where nothing grows. It does not come from the mountain. It comes from elsewhere. And it is precisely for that reason that it speaks.
It does not speak to indicate the lost path, nor to promise a future passage, but to say something much simpler, much more fundamental:
the ground is here. Here only. Where the foot can still be placed.
I then notice that the walker’s body is itself traversed by this same logic of layers, like the mountain. The coat, on the outside, is blue-violet, dark, almost nocturnal, the color of rock, of shadow, of what protects and conceals. But its interior is pink. Pink like living flesh. Pink like dawn. Pink like a discreet beginning. It is fragile, still hidden. I cannot help thinking of Anatole and of what, in him, belongs to a possible birth. Through his revolt, he could be a passage toward something else.
The trousers are green. Spring green. The green of spring and of genesis. The green of what grows, of what rises again after winter. It covers the sex, not to deny it, but to inscribe it within a temporality, toward a deferred promise. Life is not suppressed; it is held. And then there is that little cord, at the level of the navel. The place of the bond, the primary attachment par excellence. The place of original dependence. That cord which connected, and which precisely has broken, or come loose, between Don Carotte and Sang Chaud. Not in a spectacular gesture, but through silent wear. A slipping, like a slow avalanche. I then understand that everything is there. The vegetal staff in the mineral world. The hidden pink interior beneath the dark coat. The contained green of life. And the broken cord that reminds us that no bond is ever acquired once and for all.
The staff does not say “go forward!” Nor does it say “join the other.” It simply says “stand here. Feel with all your senses! Walk if you can, but do not force the ground to become a path.”
And I tell myself, almost whispering to my own consciousness, that perhaps the task is not to repair what has broken, but to endure the break without drying up. To remain alive in a landscape of stone, with a single piece of wood as a guide—that is the trial. This simple branch, once attached to the trunk of a tree that may have been part of a forest, is an accessible facet of the memory of the living.
That is enough… for today.