Status Updates From La montaña mágica

“Music quickens time. She quickens us to the finest enjoyment of time. She quickens, and insofar, she has moral value. Art has moral value insofar as it quickens. But what if it does the opposite? What if it dulls us, sends us to sleep, works against action and progress? . . . There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is by her nature equivocal.”