Kleinzeit's physical illness and his creative urges are linked in the novel, an identification strengthened by the fact that all the diseases suffered by patients on Kleinzeit's ward (ward A4, like the paper) are literary, geometric or musical terms: he himself has a painful hypotenuse and diapason and develops a faulty stretto, while other patients suffer from hendiadys or ‘imbricated noumena’.
Kleinzeit's physical ailment and his creative impulses are intertwined in the novel, a connection reinforced by the fact that all the illnesses experienced by patients on Kleinzeit's ward (ward A4, like the paper) are literary, geometric, or musical terms: he himself has a painful hypotenuse and diapason and develops a faulty stretto, while other patients suffer from hendiadys or 'imbricated noumena'.