The dream is over. While the loss of Humanism may be the true tragedy of The Magic Mountain, more emotionally affecting is Hans' crushing transformation from enlightened romantic back into an ordinary young man—a soldier whose death rattle goes unreported.  Without closure, Hans is simply lost. The narrator last observes his mud-splattered detachment running out into gas, mud, fire, and smoke, with Hans' voice ringing out in song. His erasure is not only unseen, but unremarkable in the midst of this fiery, noisy "worldwide festival of death." He is but one of millions of souls snuffed between the trenches, a life outshined by the magnitude of WWI.  

The singularity of the supernova brings most to bear here amidst shrapnel, yellow gas and the night-borne flashes of machine gun fire. Obliteration has its own beauty, one that only reveals itself over the distance of light-years or through the pebbled glass of modern history. Nothing is ever completely erased. Left behind is an artifact, be it a shimmering cloud of dust, a skeleton or the ghost of an era pressed between the covers of a novel.