Thomas Mann

[Sybarite]

There are not a great many novelists who have been considered as presidential material, but Thomas Mann is just such one.

At the end of WWII, President Roosevelt apparently considered the idea of putting forward Mann as the president of post-war Germany, yet this 'good' German, who had started warning against the Nazis as early as the 1920s, was at the same time being spied on by the FBI.

He had been an ardent supporter of the Germany monarchy and WWI – and had fallen out with brother Heinrich as a result – but had moved from his conservative position in the wake of the Great War to calling for support for the Weimar Republic, and then further as the years passed to a left-wing politics (although not at all like that of Bertolt Brecht, who detested him).

In 1933, with the ascent of Hitler, he moved to Switzerland and from there, in 1939, to the US, before returning to Zürich in 1952, where he spent the last years of his life.

It was light years away from the world of the well-to-do Hanseatic family that he'd portrayed so successfully in Buddenbrooks, the 1901 family saga that was on his Nobel citation in 1929.

But Mann's life was full of these contradictions; these moves from the rules and forms that he was expected to adhere to, to more radical, individual positions.

Frequently perceived and portrayed as an up-tight, starchy, professorial, difficult individual, the real Mann takes as much dissecting as some of his works.

Anthony Heilbut did an excellent job in Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, and he rightly places the issue of sexuality at the heart of understanding Mann.

It's not clear whether he was gay or bisexual – he had six children by his wife Katia – and it's difficult to say for certain how he himself would have identified (although quite possibly, with the lack of option at the time for bisexuality, it would have been gay).

Underscoring this, perhaps the most important of Mann's works, in terms of revealing its author, is Death in Venice.

The 1912 novella is most frequently viewed in terms of being about pederasty/paedophilia, but as with Mann's serious works, this is a novella of ideas and there's far more to it than meets the eye.

Death in Venice is also about beauty and sensuality and the pleasure to be taken in both of those – but that pleasure is also a temptation away from the straight-and-narrow path that Mann had set himself as an artist.

Aschenbach, the central character in the novella, has the same puritanical approach to his craft. In the end, he dies because he sacrifices that approach to his work – and, therefore, to life – in order to follow beauty; to enjoy a sensual experience, even to begin to explore in his own mind the question of his sexuality.

On the one hand, Death in Venice is a warning of what can happen if we sacrifice the discipline of work, but on the other, there is a hint at the very end that Aschenbach, in gaining a moment of true happiness through acknowledging beauty, is not disappointed as he dies.

Is an almost monastic denial of the sensual life – even of who we are at core – essential to create art? Is such a sacrifice worthwhile?

Like Aschenbach, Mann pursued his art with an almost religious determination; the Protestant work ethic (religious fervour for the secular world) of the Hanseatic states was writ large in both their real and imagined lives. Could Mann have written as he did if he'd explored his own being more?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

But what we have, revealed best here, is the clash and the contradictions and the internal struggle. And, as Heilbut presented him, Mann is a far more sympathetic and understandable figure than that which has been traditionally presented, once we see these things.

Mann is currently out of fashion in the UK. It's a shame – not least because all that clash and contradiction and struggle is a mirror of northern European culture: the battle between the sensual and the puritanical; the pure and the profane.

To comprehend Mann is to comprehend a great deal of our part of the world and our own heritage.


Major works of fiction

Buddenbrooks 1901
Royal Highness 1909
Death in Venice 1912
The Magic Mountain 1924
Joseph and His Brothers 1933-43
Lotte in Weimar 1939
Doctor Faustus 1947
Confessions of Felix Krull Confidence Man: the Early Years 1954


For further reading

Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature by Anthony Heilbut

The Letters of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1900-1949

Wikipedia entry


The German drama-documentary, Die Manns – Ein Jahrhundertroman (The Manns). is also well worth seeing if you have the chance, and includes a superb performance from Armin Mueller-Stahl as Thomas. The dramatic sequences are interwoven with interview footage with his daughter, Elisabeth Mann-Borgese.

[Mirabell]

To comprehend Mann is to comprehend a great deal of our part of the world and our own heritage.

Mostly because little in Mann is original. Most of it is competently cobbled together from the body of german literature, if not outright prewritten for Mann, as Adorno did with Doktor Faustus. so yes, it would help comprehend things, and more quickly than reading all the other books would. trivial.

Mann is a competent writer and I still marvel at the Joseph novels, which, while I don't like them, I admire, in a way.

[Heteronym]

Oh, you're going have to tell me more about Adorno and Doctor Faustus, Mirabell.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

Mostly because little in Mann is original. Most of it is competently cobbled together from the body of german literature, if not outright prewritten for Mann, as Adorno did with Doktor Faustus. so yes, it would help comprehend things, and more quickly than reading all the other books would. trivial.

Mann is a competent writer and I still marvel at the Joseph novels, which, while I don't like them, I admire, in a way.

Little in Shakespeare is original, Mirabell – but it doesn't mean that Shakespeare has no value.

Let's face it – there are supposedly only seven plots in the entire world, so it seems rather likely that some major themes might get repeated.

For me, who 'discovered' Mann some 10 years ago, his work made a substantial difference to my life. When I first read him, I had encountered nothing similar. It's really that simple. And I haven't found anything comparable since. And whether or not he had reworked themes that others had done before (and, as I said, there are supposedly only seven stories in the world, so he – like Shakespeare, like Schiller, like any other writer, will have written about the same basic things), makes little difefrence: it's a question of how well he did it.

In Mann's case, I'd say that he did it very well indeed.

[Mirabell]

Mann needed pieces on zwölftonmusik (no idea how that's in English), Adorno complied, handing over the typoscript of Philosophie der Neuen Musik, although I am not sure whether he complied or Mann just took it, yes, he later said he complied, but you never know. Then Mann mannized them, Schönberg was offended. He actually was afraid that Mann would be known as the invetor of the whole thing, so well done were the passages in DF. Mann added an explanatory note. The Mann/Adorno letters reveal Mann's thorough cluelessness, Adorno's strangely subservient behavior towards figures of authority (now what was the name of that study again?), and that Mann was the better letter writer. Funny, since their work has revealed Adorno to be the better prose stylist. Doesn't extend to letters, apparently.

[spooooool]

I would rather read Adorno than Mann, and i'm not sure that Shakespeare serves as an analogy, Mann might be a monolith, to that extent i can at least see from the little I've read what Mirabelle means by "cobbled". Shakespeare's world, whatever's made of it, fan or no, is of an entirely different order

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by spooooool

I would rather read Adorno than Mann, and i'm not sure that Shakespeare serves as an analogy, Mann might be a monolith, to that extent i can at least see from the little I've read what Mirabelle means by "cobbled". Shakespeare's world, whatever's made of it, fan or no, is of an entirely different order

you are right in preferring the genius to the cobbler, and isn't it sad that Adorno is slowly falling out of favor, while Mann continues to thrive?


oh, to the changing his mind in the wake of the great war. he changed his mind (he used to praise German-ness (used the expression "Third Reich" early on to describe his vision of you know what kind of a state) and attack cosmpolitanism and the french (don't ask) in disgusting ways) when the intellectual tide turned. It was more a political move against Hofmannsthal (and towards the Nobel! Don't you talk to me again abou 'recently' politically informed Nobel awards) than any change of conscience. That may have come later, his letters from the 30s are, as far as I read parts of them (small parts), convincing.

I like me a guy like Borchardt, a flawed but burning, brilliant jewish genius of a poet, who was sorta right wing when Mann was, and stayed that way, until he had to flee. Never was a Nazi, too uppity for that. He had convictions. Mann didn't. It shows in his work. Borchardt: Artist. Mann: Artisan. And you're lucky you read him in translation. He's even more unbearable in German.


That said, I will reread the whole of his novellistic work in october/november. Anyone join me? We don't have to do it chronologically. I will be sorting through secondary lit., so I can keep you informed. Tempting? I tend to want to start with the horriblest, which is Königliche Hoheit, or with a Joseph novel, spreading them evenly over the course. Well?

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Sybarite

Little in Shakespeare is original, Mirabell – but it doesn't mean that Shakespeare has no value.

Let's face it – there are supposedly only seven plots in the entire world, so it seems rather likely that some major themes might get repeated.

For me, who 'discovered' Mann some 10 years ago, his work made a substantial difference to my life. When I first read him, I had encountered nothing similar. It's really that simple. And I haven't found anything comparable since. And whether or not he had reworked themes that others had done before (and, as I said, there are supposedly only seven stories in the world, so he – like Shakespeare, like Schiller, like any other writer, will have written about the same basic things), makes little difefrence: it's a question of how well he did it.

In Mann's case, I'd say that he did it very well indeed.

Not themes. He is veering close to plagiarism. There are whole Adorno phrases lifted from the PdnM. When I say cobbled I mean that. Not themes, plots yadda yadda. There is an originality in shakespeare which transcends plot. Not with Mann. Phrases, ideas, these things, they are not from Mann. Mann has a distinctive style which masks his dependence on other writers sometimes, but his work so often feels like a smoothed cutup of German lit. This is a whole other kind of unoriginal we're talking about here.

[Eric]

Let's get this thing sorted out. Did (Thomas) Mann plagiarise (i.e. steal) themes, etc., from Adorno, or not?

I am fully aware of the Frankfurt School, but the core question is: did Mann add something, as a novelist, to what Adorno, Horkheimer, etc., etc., said, and weave the ideas into a novel or two, or is he simply a crook that nicked their ideas and dressed them up in fictional guise?

There have been rather a lot of literary character assassinations during the 20th century, so this question is relevant.

[Jayaprakash]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

zwölftonmusik (no idea how that's in English),

12-tone music.

It's interesting to note that one of the aspects the devil assumes during Leverkuhn's little talk with him is of a musical scholar who sometimes composes, essentially a caricature of Adorno himself.

[titania7]

Thanks for making such a good point about Shakespeare, Sybarite. The majority of his work wasn't original.

Ever since I first read Mann (and incidentally, Doctor Faustus was the first work I read), he has been among my favorite authors. I think if we start picking writers apart so assiduously, there will never be an end to it. Whether or not one likes an author is an entirely personal issue. Mann's work means a great deal to me. I think he was brilliant. If he did steal his ideas from someone else, it doesn't make me appreciate him any less. It's the way a writer puts his ideas together that ultimately makes the difference in whether he is great or merely mediocre. A writer of Mann's
genius wouldn't have had to take anyone else's ideas. If he did so, it was purely by choice. I oftentimes notice that one writer's work uncannily resembles another writer's. For example, Radiguet's Comte d'Orgel is very similar to Flaubert's Sentimental Education. I still think both writers are magnificent, and I enjoy both books for what they are.

Maybe Thomas Mann isn't to everyone's taste. And that's fine. But to suggest that he was "crook" who "nicked ideas" is a little demeaning.

Just my thoughts....

titania7

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your
heart's desire. The other is to get it."
~George Bernard Shaw

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Eric

Let's get this thing sorted out. Did (Thomas) Mann plagiarise (i.e. steal) themes, etc., from Adorno, or not?

I am fully aware of the Frankfurt School, but the core question is: did Mann add something, as a novelist, to what Adorno, Horkheimer, etc., etc., said, and weave the ideas into a novel or two, or is he simply a crook that nicked their ideas and dressed them up in fictional guise?

There have been rather a lot of literary character assassinations during the 20th century, so this question is relevant.

The official version is that they collaborated. And it's not themes in this case, but the passages about music in Doctor Faustus, taken sometimes literally, sometimes paraphrased, from Adorno's Philosophie der neuen Musik, a book on 12-tone music.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by titania7

But to suggest that he was "crook" who "nicked ideas" is a little demeaning.

It is and I would never have said that. Most writers borrow, it's the nature of it. Mann didn't add anything original to the mix, except, especially from the 20s on, his particular style.

A writer of Mann's
genius wouldn't have had to take anyone else's ideas. If he did so, it was purely by choice.

Yes, choice. I'm not saying he did so by accident. Mann was a decent literary critic, he knew what he was doing. The letters I know, however, do show him as being rather clueless in many respects. Mann wasn't a genius. He was a craftsman. Compared to many writers of his time, the difference is obvious. Not saying that being a craftsman is bad, I like crafty writers, I do.

[Jayaprakash]

Having read a bit of Adorno and tried to fathom aspects of 20th century music theory, I would call Mann a synthesist rather than a cobbler.

I think Mann's writing is well compared to craft rather than art - he wrote with specific dialectical purposes and philsophical motivations, and used the tools and techniques at hand to put together work that would serve these purposes. One could say every writer does that, but clearly, someone like Kafka, who some have described as having actually written the new literature that Mann only dreamed of and wished for, is clearly more in the character of an artist than a craftsman.

Is that a fair conclusion?

And Mirabell, I'd be happy to join you in reading Königliche Hoheit, in translation of course in my case.

[Mirabell]

And Mirabell, I'd be happy to join you in reading Königliche Hoheit, in translation of course in my case.

glad to hear that. anyone join us?

[titania7]

Mirabell,
Ah....

I think I am to blame for unintentionally attributing something Eric said to you. Indeed, you never did say Thomas Mann was a crook nor that he "nicked ideas."
I apologize.

The works I have read by Mann are _Buddenbrooks_, _Doctor Faustus_ and some short fiction. I read nearly half the _Magic Mountain_ but didn't finish it. I found it to be strangely oppressive. But perhaps it was the wrong time in my life to read it. I've bought a new and better translation now. Thus, when I sit down to read it, I trust I
will find it much more enjoyable than I did previously.

I confess I have a terrrible habit. I read too many books at a time and then I have to end up starting some of them over again. Actually, this may have happened with _The Magic Mountain_. I can't remember, for it's been many years.

Mann is definitely a "crafty" writer, as you say. There is nothing spontaneous about him. Then again, he was not particularly a conformist. Perhaps I was too loose in my usage of the term "genius." However, if I borrow Nabokov's quote and view "genius" as "non-conformity," then, on some level, at least, Mann is a genius. So am I, for that matter. And not just because I don't own a cell phone, either .

For the record, I don't hand out the term "genius" flippantly. And, were I to read more of Mann's work, as well as the letters you speak of, I might have a different opinion of him entirely. I am very open-minded and remain flexible in my views on literature.

titania7


"I shut my eyes in order to see."
~Paul Gaugin

[waalkwriter]

I agree with you mirabell, Thomas Mann is not a pleasant writer to read. Reading his masterpiece Der Zauberburg was incredibly awful, it set the record for the most droll book I have ever read. God Awful.

[beelzebubbles]

'Droll?' Could you expand on this?

[waalkwriter]

Okay, stoic young man goes to sanitarium filled with melodramatic people, he interacts with them icily, I never wish to read again about how straight and erect someone sits, or how they have their collar, or how they take out their handkerchief. That's barely scratching the surface though, the constant intellectual discoveries and the constant poorly written, boring, stylistically dead, philosophical discussions. That is what I mean by the Magic Mountain being droll.

[beelzebubbles]

Oh, I know what you mean. I have just never heard the word 'droll' used to mean boring and pretentious. I understood your judgment of the book but I didn't really appreciate your use of the word 'droll.'