“… he noted to his horror that his words, gestures, and expressions, too, had succumbed to an infection no one in the place could escape.
What was it, then? What was in the air? A love of quarrels. Acute petulance. Nameless impatience. A universal penchant for nasty verbal exchanges and outbursts of rage, even for fisticuffs. Every day fierce arguments, out-of-control shouting-matches would erupt between individuals and among entire groups; but the distinguishing mark was that bystanders, instead of being disgusted by those caught up in it or trying to intervene, found their sympathies aroused and abandoned themselves emotionally to the frenzy. They turned pale and quivered. Eyes flashed insults, mouths wrenched with passion. They envied the active participants their right to use the occasion to shout. An aching lust to join them tormented both body and soul, and whoever lacked the strength to flee to solitude was drawn into the vortex, beyond all help. …
(One man came who) was an anti-Semite, in principle and as a matter of sport. His opposition to Jews was a cheerful obsession—this acquired hostility was the pride and content of his life . He had been a business man, he was one no more, he was nothing in this world, but he had remained an anti-Semite… He subscribed to a newspaper called The Aryan Light ... The erroneous belief that possessed him had become an itch of mistrust, a restless paranoia that drove him to pluck out any uncleanliness that lay hidden or disguised in his vicinity, to hold it up to public disgrace. He taunted, he cast suspicions, he foamed at the mouth wherever he went. And, in short, his days were filled with exposing to ridicule every form of life that did not possess the one merit he could call his own.”
from The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann, John E Woods translation, 1995. Though Mann’s Der Zauberberg was originally published in 1924, he had worked on it from 1913, that is, through the run-up to, and duration of “The Great War.” I take this passage as a reminder of the warning shimmers that appear before most great, deadly conflagrations, when “fisticuffs” have not yet turned to armed assault on a national capitol, by its own citizens, or to the slaughter of thousands, by small arms or thousand pound bombs.