Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state…. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.

Mann draws an analogy between temporal distance and physical distance as forces that loosen memory’s grip. Time is traditionally figured as Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, but Mann suggests that travel—“change of air”—can produce a comparable amnesia by removing the body from the cues, routines, and social pressures that keep the past vivid. The phrase “primitive, unattached state” implies a regression to a more elemental self, temporarily unmoored from obligations and identity as shaped by place. The insight is double-edged: liberation can be restorative, yet it also risks moral or emotional evasion, as forgetting arrives not only slowly through years but quickly through displacement.