Pribislav

"He with whom Hans Castorp spoke was called Hippe, Pribislav Hippe. A
peculiarity of this given name was that you were to pronounce it as though it were
spelled Pschibislav; and the singularity of the appellation suited the lad’s appearance,
which did indeed have something exotic about it. Hippe was the son of a scholar and
history professor in the gymnasium. He was, by consequence, a notorious model
pupil, and, though not much older than Hans Castorp, already a form higher up. He
came from Mecklenburg and was in his person obviously the product of an ancient
mixture of races, a grafting of Germanic stock with Slavic, or the reverse. True, his
close-shorn round pate was blond; but the eyes were a grey-blue, or a blue-grey—an
indefinite, ambiguous colour, like the hue of far-distant mountain ranges—and of an
odd, narrow shape; were even, to be precise, a little slanting, with strongly marked,
prominent cheek-bones directly under them. It was a type of face which in this
instance, far from seeming an abnormality, was distinctly pleasing, though odd
enough to have won for him the nickname of “the Kirghiz” among his schoolmates.
Hippe already wore long trousers, and a blue jacket belted in at the back and closed to
the throat, the collar of which was usually whitened by a few scales of dandruff.

Now, the thing was that Hans Castorp, for a long time, had had his eye upon this
Pribislav; had chosen him out of the whole host, known and unknown, in the courtyard
of the school, taken an interest in him, followed him with his eyes—shall we say
admired him?—at all events observed him with peculiar sympathy. Even on the way
to school he looked forward with pleasure to watching him among his fellows, seeing
him speak and laugh, singling out his voice from the others by its pleasantly veiled,
husky quality. Granted that there was no sufficient ground for his preference, unless
one might refer it to Hippe’s heathenish name, his character as model pupil—this
latter was, of course, out of the question—or to the “Kirghiz” eyes, whose grey-blue
glance could sometimes melt into a mystery of darkness when one caught it musing
sidewise; whichever it might be, or none of these, Hans Castorp troubled not a whit to
justify his feelings, or even to question by what name they might suitably be called.
For, since he did not “know” Hippe, the relation could hardly be one of friendship.
But in the first place there was not the faintest need of calling it anything; it could
never be a subject of discussion; that would be out of place, and he had no desire for
it; and, in the second, giving a thing a name implies, if not passing judgment on it, at
least defining it; that is to say, classifying it among the familiar and habitual; whereas
Hans Castorp was penetrated by the unconscious conviction that an inward good of
this sort was above all to be guarded from definition and classification.

But whether well or ill founded, and however far from being the subject of
conversation, or even from being touched on in Hans Castorp’s own mind, these
feelings of his flourished there in great strength, as they had done for almost a year
now—or a year as nearly as one could fix the time, for it was hard to be precise about
their beginnings. For about a year, then, he had carried them about in secret, which
spoke for the loyalty and constancy of his character, when one reflects what a great
space of time a year is at that age. But alas, every characterization of this kind
involves a moral judgment, whether favourable or unfavourable—though, to be sure,
each trait of character has its two sides. Thus Hans Castorp’s “loyalty”—upon which,
be it said, he was not prone to plume himself—consisted, baldly, in a certain temperamental
heaviness, sluggishness, and quiescence, a fundamental tendency to feel
respect for conditions of duration and stability; and the more respect, the longer they
lasted. He inclined to believe in the permanence of the particular state or
circumstances in which he for the moment found himself; prized it for that very
quality, and was not bent on change. Thus he had grown used to his silent and remote
relation to Pribislav Hippe, and considered it a regular feature of his life; loved the
emotions it brought in its train, the suspense as to whether he was likely to meet him
that day, whether Pribislav would pass close by him, even look at him; loved the
subtle and wordless satisfaction imparted by his secret, loved even the
disappointments inseparable from it—the greatest of which was Pribislav’s absence
from school. When this happened, the school yard became a desert, the day lacked all
charm, hope alone lingered.

The affair had lasted a year, up to that intrepid and culminating moment; after
which, thanks to Hans Castorp’s constancy of spirit, it lasted another. Then it was
over. And it is a fact that he marked no more the loosening and dissolving of the bond
which united him to Pribislav than he had previously marked its beginnings.
Moreover, in consequence of his father’s taking another position, Pribislav left the
school and the city; but that was all one to Hans Castorp; he had already forgotten him
before he went. One may put it that the figure of the “Kirghiz” had glided out of the
mist into Hans Castorp’s life, and slowly grown vivid and tangible there, up to that
moment of the greatest nearness and corporeity, in the school court; had stood awhile
thus in the foreground, then slowly receded, and, with no pain of parting, dissolved
again into the mist.

Mann em The Magic Mountain, para aproveitar o .pdf. este rapaz eslavo de olhos cinzentos retorna no rosto de Mme. Chautchat, nome fantástico. a sua relação com Tadzio é evidente mas a Pribislav Mann põe caspa no ombro do casaco.

Sobre Tadzio, isto diz Katia Mann nas suas Unwritten Memories:
"All the details of the story, beginning with the man at the cemetery, are taken from experience … In the dining-room, on the very first day, we saw the Polish family, which looked exactly the way my husband described them: the girls were dressed rather stiffly and severely, and the very charming, beautiful boy of about 13 was wearing a sailor suit with an open collar and very pretty lacings. He caught my husband's attention immediately. This boy was tremendously attractive, and my husband was always watching him with his companions on the beach. He didn't pursue him through all of Venice—that he didn't do—but the boy did fascinate him, and he thought of him often … I still remember that my uncle, Privy Counsellor Friedberg, a famous professor of canon law in Leipzig, was outraged: "What a story! And a married man with a family!"

e isto o próprio Thomas Mann:
"Nothing is invented in Death in Venice. The 'pilgrim' at the North Cemetery, the dreary Pola boat, the grey-haired rake, the sinister gondolier, Tadzio and his family, the journey interrupted by a mistake about the luggage, the cholera, the upright clerk at the travel bureau, the rascally ballad singer, all that and anything else you like, they were all there. I had only to arrange them when they showed at once and in the oddest way their capacity as elements of composition."

não sei onde disse ele isto, que retirei daqui. fascinante é o jogo das escondidas e o controlo com que é jogado. manipulação tão perfeita. ("How should we interpret the fact that Mann chose to alter the factual age, so to speak, of not one but both of these fictional characters?", hilarious question)