Both Uses of
acumen
in
The Magic Mountain
- Little Hans Castorp had often studied it, not with any artistic acumen of course, but with a certain more general, even penetrating understanding; and although he had only once seen his grandfather in real life in the fashion pictured there on canvas—just for a brief moment as part of a dignified procession into the town hall—he could not help, as we have said, regarding this pictorial presence as his authentic and real grandfather, seeing in the everyday one a temporary, imperfectly adapted improvisation, so to speak.†
Chpt 2.1
- And then he scoffed at the other sanatoriums in town and sarcastically praised the business acumen of their owners.†
Chpt 3.4 *
Definition:
uncommon ability to make good decisions