Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus

[Heteronym]

I detested Doctor Faustus, a book I expected to enjoy very much. The Magic Mountain, a more enjoyable, readable experience, had produced in me high expectations for what people call Mann's magnum opus. Mann obscures the otherwise fascinating premise of a composer selling his soul to the devil in return for musical success through interminable descriptions of musical theory and theology, most of which went over my head and couldn't interest me less. Only towards the end did I find some humanity in the novel, but by then it was too late.

I can't help likening this novel to Günter Grass' The Tin Drum, another novel about an unlikeable musician in search of success while he turns everyone around him miserable, which is just as unbearable as Mann's novel. Both novels are supposed to be alegories of Nazism. For my part, this idea was better executed by Mann's son, Klaus, in his novel Mephisto.

[A Common Reader]

I am surprised that you didn't make similar comments about Magic Mountain - the characters in the novel are incredibly verbose. When they speak, they go on for pages, and you have to picture the other people in the conversations standing politely waiting for the speaker to finish before they launch off into their own equally dense replies. However, this is all part of Mann’s creation of “timelessness” and I would rate Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus as up there with Crime and Punishment etc as "greatest world novels" or whatever.

I actually found Doctor Faustus rather easier to read - with Mann, you just have to skip through some of the diatribes he allows his characters.

Oh dear, you didn't like The Tin Drum? I enjoyed that book greatly.

I think I need to look up Mephisto - a book I have never heard of. There's a new book about the Mann Children -In The Shadow of the Magic Mountain, which may be worth looking at

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle3901238.ece

[Heteronym]

The characters in The Magic Mountain actually have fascinating conversations; in a novel of ideas, discourses will have to cover a lot of pages to get the ideas through. I accept that. But I expect the ideas to have some interest. The 'Mountain' as a microcosmos of pre-WWI Europe interests me, or at least Mann made it interesting; he failed in Doctor Faustus to make musical theory interesting at all.

Crime and Punishment has qualities that I haven't really found in Mann's work, not that this impede my enjoyment of it: a plot, fast-paced action, good storytelling. Dostoyevsky, independently of his high intellectual aspirations, knew how to tell a good story the way only 19th century writers knew.

[A Common Reader]

I think C&P was the first Russian novel I read - when I was about 18 or so. Nothing quite like it really is there. Magic Mountain seems to be a meditative work to me, drawing you in to the strange calm worlds of the sanatorium, where time is of no account. Hard to think of two books (C&P and MM) more unlike each other in a way!

[Heteronym]

I believe it was Nabokov who complained that Dostoyevsky had read too many melodramas and that it showed in his novels. Now I think what he means by that is that Dostoyevsky's novels weave entertaining stories full of colorful characters and exciting sequences; and what must really burn Nabokov is that he does it while still being able to develop complex ideas.

Borges claims that one aspect that distinguishes the 19th century fiction from the modern one is that nowadays writers turn their noses at plot and action. Gore Vidal claims something similar in that modern writers can't write action so they turn to the first person narration, which eliminates the imediacy of what's happening.

Whereas in the past the writer wanted the reader to have pleasure in reading, today writers want to mark their names in history through cheap experimentations, hence the excesses of a plodding, dull, unbearable novel like Doctor Faustus. I'm sure it looks great in a University seminar, but it's not a book written for readers.

[Stewart]

There's a post on the Telegraph's blog in defense of Mann, following on from blogosphere criticism of Doktor Faustus.

[Heteronym]

The blogger obviously likes the novel

I'd like to set something clear: there are 200 pages of annoying musical and theological theory where nothing happens, written in the most realistic style possible, then one day Adrian arrives home and meets the Devil in the living room. And they make a deal. And the Devil disappears again from the novel. It's just such a grating, absurd scene in the novel.

There's a fantastic atmosphere in Marlowe's and Goethe's versions that invites you to accept the Devil at face-value. Neither sought realism. But Mann's contemporary setting just makes it seem so unlikely, like an aftert-thought, "Oh, I'm writing about the Faust legend, that's right, there's a devil in there, isn't there? Oh, I'll just add another chapter and no one will notice."

The Picture of Dorian Gray modernised the Faust legend and got rid of the devil figure. I wish Mann had done the same, if he couldn't find anything better to do with him.

[Sybarite]

But Mann wasn't simply recasting the Faust legend – he was looking at how an apparently civilised people (the Germans) can sell their souls to the devil (Nazism). And for Mann, classical music was hugely important – not least as a high point of western culture.

I'd very much recommend Anthony Heilbut's bigography of Thomas Mann. It is particularly excellent at seeing Mann's work in the context of his historical times, his background and changing politics, and his sexuality.

[Heteronym]

Like I've contended before, Klaus Mann's Mephisto developed that idea with more economy, focus and elegance, while keeping the Faust legend out of the book too. A novel which shows an artist being seduced by Nazism obligatorily needs, in my opinion, actual Nazis in the novel. Thomas Mann's had little of that and too much of rather redundant musical theory. I understand he loved music, but he should have written a monography on it instead.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

... A novel which shows an artist being seduced by Nazism obligatorily needs, in my opinion, actual Nazis in the novel...

You don't care for allegory, I take it?

[Heteronym]

I'd say the metaphor of an artist corrupted by the devil is inadequate for Germany's dealings with Nazism. A true allegory would eliminate Nazism from the novel. In a riddle whose answer is chess the only word you can't use is chess.

For one thing, many artists rejected Nazism. Secondly, the people who celebrated it did it for economic, material reasons. Adrian's high aspirations have no reflection in the poor German workers who just wanted their economy to get back on its feet.

Again, Mephisto showed with more lucidity the story of an artist who becomes enamorated with Nazism because he self-deludedly believes he is important for the Party.

Adrian barters his soul because he wants to compose great music. This may be a great metaphor for what artists will do for immortality, but don't tell me it captures the real relationship between Germans and Nazism.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

... but don't tell me it captures the real relationship between Germans and Nazism.

I think that it captures a relationship. There were more than one.

[Eric]

A think that Heteronym is being a trifle Procrustean in expecting "real Nazis" in a book where the author chose deliberately not to include blond beasts marching around in SS uniforms. Mann didn't want, like too many epigone authors nowadays, to jump on the Holocaust bandwagon. His novels, long-winded or not, often dealt with layers, subtleties, and so on. We don't need any more Marxist analyses of why Nazism is wrong, along with a load of cardboard characters as in Socialist Realist renderings of reality.

When dealing with homosexuality verging on pædophilia, as in "Death in Venice" and "Tonia Kröger", Thomas Mann is too sophisticated to say everything out loud. Klaus also examines homosexuality. Like father, like son. But I still think that history will judge the long-winded dad a greater author than the dissipated son.

Thomas Mann wasn't a "German worker" but a well-off upper-middle-class German, living in Californian exile. I don't think it's right to expect him to do a Zola on a postwar Germany he didn't know. Literature would be much reduced if everyone had to write about downtrodden workers, as did many two-faced hypocritical so-called Communist authors in Stalin's Russia, while they were being pampered by the Party and enjoying a standard of living that real workers could only dream about. And: they didn't dare write about anything else, because they would be sent to Siberia if they were too bourgeois. Thomas Mann was bourgeois. And free to write what he wanted.

The good thing about "The Magic Mountain" is the mixture of a love story (heterosexual, this time, although Clavdia Chauchat has the slit eyes of Tonio Kröger's male crush in the short-story) and the debate between the Marxist dogmat, based on Lukács, and Settembrini, the Italian free spirit. Plus the pompous Dutchman, Mijnheer Peeperkorn. The tension between the everyday narrative and the philosophy is what makes the book.

I will also re-read "Doktor Faustus" one day. One German translator once said it was the Desert Island Book he's take with him.

[Heteronym]

Originally Posted by Eric

We don't need any more Marxist analyses of why Nazism is wrong

How about non-Marxist ones? Are you OK with those?


I didn't want Doctor Faustus to read like a Zola novel; gross exaggeration of reality can be more insightful than naturalism, and for a few pages in The Tin Drum, it actually was. But like Mann's novel, it collapsed under the weight of its inadequate metaphor. You see in an artist selling his soul to the devil a magnificent allegory for Nazism. You have better eyes than me. I only saw hundreds of plodding pages about musical theory, nothing resembling a narrative thread, and the worst use of the Faust legend in any book I've ever read.

Maybe Mann just isn't for me. Like he modestly said, if a reader doesn't like reading a book the first time, he shouldn't bother a second. I'll take that advice and stick to the readers I do know I like, and re-read that Marxist Erich Fromm's The Fear of Freedom for a more interesting analysis of why Naizsm is wrong

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

... I'll take that advice and stick to the readers I do know I like, and re-read that Marxist Erich Fromm's The Fear of Freedom for a more interesting analysis of why Naizsm is wrong

For an analysis that you find "more interesting".

Yet Dr Faustus is not and Mann never intended it to be an analysis of why "Nazism is wrong", so if that's what you're looking for here, then I can understand why you feel shortchanged.

[Eric]

Mann is subtle. Mann is long-winded. Mann is bourgeois. Mann is a novelist. Marxism and Nazism are two sides of the same coin. The face of the coin has Auschwitz, the obverse the GuLag.

If novels are reduced to diatribes, literature will end. That's exactly what happened during the Socialist Realist period of Russia's history, as well as when key German writers sucked up to the Nazis. Literature is only just recovering from the dual onslaught. Everyone in the West saw Nazism coming (except Chamberlain - Neville, not Houston). But those same well-meaning intellectuals worshipped Communism-Marxism. Such as novelist Gide - until he went to Russia to see for himself in the 1930s.

If you want to brainwash yourself into thinking that Communism is best, then the "Communist Manifesto" is much shorter than any novel. But "Animal Farm" and "1984" are almost as short, and rather illuminating. What does Fromm say that is still relevant? Wasn't he dumped years ago onto the pile of "nice try" thinkers? Wasn't Fromm just another one of those strings of gurus from Tony Buzan to Ivan Illich, Slavoj Žižek to Paolo Coelho who mesmerise their audience for a few years, then die and are forgotten?

A Marxist criticising a Nazi is like the pan calling the kettle black.

[Heteronym]

Originally Posted by Eric

Mann is subtle. Mann is long-winded. Mann is bourgeois. Mann is a novelist.

A dreadful list of adjectives, none of which prevented him from writing an entertaining analysis of pre-war European society called The Magic Mountain. I guess in 20 years one's quality can dwindle. Marquez also started with One Hundred Years of Solitude and will likely end with Memories of my Melancholy Whores.

I see the word Marxism really gets you in a rage, Eric. I'm sure you're entitled to it, but I think you treat Fromm unfairly, putting him in the same bag as dictator-loving marxists. Fromm was a great humanist, of the Isaiah Berlin and Bertrand Russell type, who rejected Soviet communism and believed in peace and cooperation. Frankly, the comparison with a cheap fraud like Paulo Coelho is just wrong on infinite levels.

[Eric]

Nothing like a bit of rage. My pet hates include Jelinek, Marxism and gurus. Marxism was invented by an intellectual who was financed to sit in the British Library and invent it by one of the richer capitalists in Lancashire. No one asks what Engels' relations were to his own factory workers.

If you want a bit of fun, read this webpage about kindly old Karl:

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1256082

I don't think that the Russian-born Jewish Latvian Isaiah Berlin had too much time for Communism; he was a Liberal. (I saw him speak once in Oxford about Vico and maybe Herder.) The only thing that Marx, Fromm and Berlin had is a Jewish background in the family. But they were surely rather different types of cosmopolitan.

I agree that we shouldn't tar more sophisticated people with the same brush as those Heteronym terms a "cheap fraud". It was the way people go all weak at the knees for gurus that I was objecting to.

But to return to Thomas Mann, I think he was a great humanist and saw complex issues in a complex way. That what great novels are all about. Mann is not an easy read, as I am the first to admit. But the issues he examines are interesting and worthwhile. He defended Germany's role in the First World War, but realised after the rise of Hitler that things were going badly wrong with Germany. He no doubt had the money, connections and intelligence to get out of Germany with his family while he still could. Others lingered and hoped, and once the borders were shut, had to face the often deadly consequences.

I don't think for one moment that Mann was either naïve or unworldly; he saw all too clearly what was coming. Czech citizenship, Swiss exile in 1933, he knew how to play the system to survive. Mann harboured a certain sympathy for Socialism, even Communism in the 1930s, as I read. But he chose to flee to America via Switzerland, not to the Soviet Union. Ditto Brecht, for that matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Eric

Nothing like a bit of rage. My pet hates include Jelinek, Marxism and gurus. Marxism was invented by an intellectual who was financed to sit in the British Library and invent it by one of the richer capitalists in Lancashire...

That's not to say, however, that Marx's analysis of basic economic relationships does not stand up today. Unless you're going to assert that class does not and never has existed, and plays no role in economic relationships ...

Equally, Marx's writings no more produced the gulags any more than what are supposedly Christ's teachings produced the Inquisition. Indeed, Marx said (rightly) that a revolution born in blood would end that way.

Originally Posted by Eric

... He defended Germany's role in the First World War ...

And changed his mind afterward (at the time, it was the source of huge tension between him and his brother Heinrich).

Originally Posted by Eric

... but realised after the rise of Hitler that things were going badly wrong with Germany...

He realised the danger of the Nazis well before 1933, when he lived in Munich, and warned against that danger consistently, from years before that election.

Originally Posted by Eric

... I don't think for one moment that Mann was either naïve or unworldly; he saw all too clearly what was coming. Czech citizenship, Swiss exile in 1933, he knew how to play the system to survive. Mann harboured a certain sympathy for Socialism, even Communism in the 1930s, as I read. But he chose to flee to America via Switzerland, not to the Soviet Union. Ditto Brecht, for that matter...

Mann fled where a very large community of German intellectuals fled. He was in danger for a number of reasons, not least his history of criticising the Nazis, plus his sexuality.

Did you know, incidentally, that there was a dreadfully high level of suicide and drug/drink-related deaths amongst the German exiles in the US? Anthony Heilbut has written very interestingly and movingly about it.

For Mann, who eventually returned to Europe to live in Switzerland (there were suggestions that he was going to be nominated for the first post-WWII presidency of Germany – that's how highly he was thought of – although he would almost certainly have rejected it), the US started off as promising much in terms of a democratic hope, but proved flawed. You can check out the FBI files on him, together with others. This was, after all, the country that accused Brecht of being "un-American" (to which Brecht helpfully pointed out that, since he wasn't American, that wasn't difficult). Brecht, incidentally, returned to live out the rest of his life in Germany, in east Berlin.

Mann was a great writer. Tragically, he's out of fashion in the UK at present. As you rightly say, he's not easy to read – but he is tremendously rewarding if one persists. Death in Venice is an astounding work.

He was well-to-do – he came from an old Hanseatic family in Lübeck. But so what? He was a decent human being and a great artist.

As I emntioned earlier, if anyone is interested, then Heilbut's biography, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature really is very well worth reading.

[Eric]

Thanks, Sybarite, for the thorough appraisal of Thomas Mann. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like for a middle-class German like Mann, who wrote books and never did anyone any harm, suddenly realising (you suggest in the 1920s already), that his country was being taken over by stealth by crooks and murderers.

I understand the analogy of Christ not bringing on the Inquisition, but the way Communists have organised themselves, in semi-clandestine cells with blind obedience, does suggest that they have a superiority complex, take upon themselves the duty and right to teach the rest of us how to live, and the economics to go with it.

I'm sure Marx identified matters that are valuable, but I am highly suspicious of those intellectuals who try to maintain that Marxism is sound in theory, whereas those silly Russians, Chinese and North Koreans messed it all up, because they were too dumb to do it properly. I suspect there are matters inherent in Marxism which suggest and lead to Communism directly, but have I not had the patience to read Leszek Kolakowski's huge three-volume analysis: "Main Currents of Marxism". Christianity is still a faith big time, whereas only shabby dictatorships such as Belarus and North Korea cling to the remnants of Communism. The Chinese have their cake and eat it: centralised political dictatorship and colonialism coupled with a capitalist-style economy.

As you can, however, see from the rubric at the top of my postings, I am right now reading an interesting novel called, in translation, "Excerpts from the Minutes of Subversive Meetings", by the Finland-Swedish author Henrik Jansson. This describes, in a weft of the 1970s and the present day, how the idealist youth movement of the Finnish "minority Communists" whose adherents wore blue uniform shirts (!), were manipulated by charismatic leaders into voting in certain ways, especially at university students' union meetings. I was a fellow-traveller at the time, so I can vouch for the authenticity of the atmosphere of the novel. It reveals, with hindsight, the naïveté of the genuinely noble, honourable and honest young people who were being manipulated, sometimes with subsidies from Moscow. (This isn't paranoid fantasy, one Finland-Swedish Communist actually told me thirty years ago, when it all still mattered.) Finland has, remember, a very long border with what was then the Soviet Union.

If you are going to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat, you can't afford to have democracy. Otherwise the Revolution will never happen. I believe the seeds of this mentality lie in the teachings of Marx, not only Lenin and Stalin. Centralised planning of the economy is as much of a disaster as a capitalist free-for-all, where everything is competition and rivalry. Two wrongs don't make a right.

But to return to that sophisticated author Thomas Mann, I admire someone on another chatsite who has read the whole of Mann's huge "Joseph and His Brothers". As with Kolakowski, I've never had the stamina. My more humble aim is to finish a second reading of "The Magic Mountain" one day, and re-read "Doktor Faustus" as well. It is the very fact that Mann blends in aspects of everyday life with philosophy that attracts me. I cannot read music, and would maybe be handicapped to an extent with musical theory, but I can handle the Settembrini-Naphta verbal duel.

As for Brecht, I've just translated a novel that sends him up as the male-chauvinist son of a factory owner who escapes Hitler by fleeing to Finland on his way, no, not to the Soviet Union, but to the USA. With his baggage of wife & mistresses, ideas for plays (partly nicked from the equivocal Socialist, Hella Wuolijoki, an Estonian-born Finn, in the case of "Puntila"), and a condescending attitude to the workers he is supposed to represent. I'm hoping that the novel will appear next year sometime with The Dalkey Archive Press in the States. The provisional title is: "Brecht Appears By Night" and is by Mati Unt, whose name you can Google for, as one of my translations, and one by Ants Eert have appeared with Dalkey in English.

You will note that both Mann and Brecht were very bourgeois, but I prefer the former, who never pretended anything else.