Thomas Mann

The title and nineteenth-century framework suggest a great social novel centered on the decline of an upper-bourgeois mercantile family. As often happens with great books, as one delves deeper into the reading (and we imagine the same occurred for the author while writing it), another theme emerges: the unstoppable force driving toward dissolution, decay, and death. To express the novel’s profound meaning, Mann makes brilliant use of music. The adolescent Hanno, the last descendant of an entrepreneurial dynasty, plays “one of his improvisations” on the piano. He plays a motif > extremely simple, (...) a short-breathed invention, a meager invention, which nonetheless acquired a strange, mysterious, and significant value . At first the motif remains in the background, submerged by “bustling runs,” vigorous, as if urging on to “ever new efforts.” Then the first > sweet, wandering, tormenting motif, that first mysterious motif , takes over. > The tide of surfacing cacophonies fell upon her, gathering threateningly, surging forward, retreating, climbing, sinking, and straining once more toward an ineffable goal that had to arrive, to arrive at once, in that very instant, at the dreadful climax where the yearning torment had become intolerable. And it arrived: it could no longer be stopped, the convulsions of longing could be prolonged no more; it came as if a curtain were torn aside, as if gates were flung open (...) it was the motif, the first motif! What brought about the end of the Buddenbrooks was not ruinous speculations, the squandering of wealth through disastrous marriages, or competition from rival merchant families; it was an internal decay, a weariness, a slow yet inexorable loss of the founders’ primal energy. We are in Lübeck, a Hanseatic city on the Baltic Sea, and the story unfolds between 1835 and 1877. The firm of Johann Buddenbrook (founded in 1768) is at the height of its wealth and prestige. The novel centers on the siblings Antoine and Thomas. The first three hundred pages recount how the young Antoine, clever and restless, renounces love out of loyalty to the “firm,” in order to contribute through a marriage of convenience to the family’s good name and prosperity. Already betrothed to a Hamburg merchant, she falls in love with a young man, but upon reading the thick ledger recording the Buddenbrook genealogy, she feels > like a shiver, (...) like a link in a chain, her father had written. Yes, precisely as a link in that chain, she held great importance and responsibility: she was called upon to contribute with deeds and resolve to the history of the family . Antoine unhesitatingly devotes herself to being the vestal virgin of the family, the custodian of an upper-bourgeois decorum. Then emerges the figure of Thomas, who reaches the pinnacle of the social ladder with his election to the city senate. > Thomas Buddenbrook (...) showed in his face and carriage a pronounced sense of dignity; yet he was pale, and his hands especially (...) were as white as the cuffs emerging from his black sleeves, with an icy pallor that betrayed how cold and dry they were. Those hands, whose well-tended oval nails bordered on a bluish tint, could assume at certain moments, in certain postures of convulsive unconsciousness, an indescribable expression of hostile sensitivity and almost morbid reserve—an expression that hitherto had been alien and ill-suited to the rather broad, bourgeois, even if shapely, hands of the Buddenbrooks . From his very appearance, the inner suffering of Thomas is evident—one for whom shouldering the firm and the family is a duty, not a pleasure. > He felt a void in his soul. (...) But his need for action, his restlessness, his activity had been fundamentally different from the tenacious, steady industriousness of his fathers: an artificial thing, then, a craving of the nerves, a narcotic, (...) a martyrdom . Now ill, Thomas confesses to his sister how he has grown increasingly fond of the sea. > Long waves rolling in and breaking, one after another, endlessly, aimlessly, wild and desolate . His sister falls silent: > but one does not say such things! she thought, looking away so as not to meet her brother’s eyes . And so, when in its final pages the novel descends into long descriptions of the deaths of Thomas and Hanno, with sorrowful scenes of the few surviving women, helpless and stunned by the tragedies that have destroyed the Buddenbrooks, we are not surprised; for we are well aware that the vitality, the sense of sacrifice, and the allegiance to a great dynasty have all withered away. The anticipation of death lies at the center of Thomas Mann’s world, and this novel is no exception. At first, death seems distant, for prosperity fosters an atmosphere of placid bourgeois serenity; only the depictions of the characters and their surroundings are soft, ambiguous, decadent. And yet we are in the triumphant nineteenth century! More than the plot, it is the writing that skillfully, subtly conveys the sense of decay. Then, past a certain point, the narrative becomes explicit: the accounts of agony and illness (even of visits to the dentist) are meticulous, attentive to every physical and moral suffering; the settings turn dull, gray, joyless; the characters grow ever sadder. It is neither a social nor a psychological novel; the context always lingers in the background, the characters are drawn through their physical appearance without delving into their emotions or existential conditions: they are brushed in rather than delineated. It is the writing itself that speaks to us, creating the atmosphere, conveying the overall meaning of the novel. Why read it? It is long, at times redundant, but one must let oneself be carried by the words.

What mystery lies behind this novel that accompanied Thomas Mann throughout his entire life? Begun in 1910 and later abandoned, it was taken up again in 1954, a year before the author's death. Thomas Mann imagines a singular character—an enchanter or mere charlatan—recounting his life, and does so beginning with an emblematic episode of his youth. Still a boy, he is taken by his father to the circus, where he marvels at the performance of a renowned clown, whose demeanor, even through varied situations, whether scandalous or comic, > preserved a grace free from all vulgarity and neglect... free and witty, radiating the joy of life, if one can denote by this expression that exquisite and painful sense of envy, nostalgia, hope, and need for affection ignited in the human soul at the sight of what is beautiful and blithely perfect . At the end of the show, the father takes the child backstage to meet the famous clown, and before the boy appears a "revolting sight": a vulgar man, smothered in hideous little pustules, in an atmosphere heavy with ointments and stage paint. > But did the adults, the worldly people who surrendered so willingly, indeed so passionately, to his charms, not know they were being deceived, or, by tacit agreement, did they simply refuse to regard that deception as deceit? Perhaps that was it, when one thinks about it: at what moment does the firefly reveal its true nature—when it glides through the summer night as a poetic spark, or when it squirms in the palm of our hand, reduced to a wretched insect? The theme is thus that of man's dual personality, of his ambiguous and perpetual disguise, whereby one assumes the guise of whatever pleases: life is a deception practiced upon others and upon oneself. Felix Krull is the son of a petty German industrialist, a fraudulent producer of counterfeit sparkling wine. Graceful without being handsome, > fair and dark at once, with the light of blue eyes... the veiled charm of the voice, the silky sheen of the hair , Felix would gladly have prolonged the indolent rhythm of his adolescence, had he not been forced, at the age of nineteen, to seek employment following his father's bankruptcy and suicide. A family friend secures him a post at a grand hotel in Paris. Here the young man leads a dual existence: lift boy and apprentice waiter during working hours, an elegant and refined Parisian in his leisure time, living off the money of the hotel's wealthy female guests, upon whom he bestows his amorous favors. He had attained his deepest aspiration, "permutability": merely by changing his attire and his hair, he could be, at will, either servant or gentleman. It is a life that suits him, until a wealthy young man, infatuated with an operetta singer, proposes that Felix take his place on a voyage around the world, forced upon him by his parents in the hope that he might forget his scandalous mistress. It is the great leap: > I was seized with a thrill of joy at the thought of the reconciliation between being and semblance that life was willing to grant me, of the appearance that it wished to add to being . One might expect a Pirandellian situation; instead, Thomas Mann leads us through philosophical and sociological digressions that overlay the narration of the principal stages of Felix's social conquest. The first leg of the journey is Lisbon, where the protagonist is readily embraced by high society. What attracts him in particular are the wife and daughter of the Director of the Science Museum: the former a buxom and rigid noblewoman ("not pretty, but handsome"), the latter a young maiden, "with lips proudly compressed," possessing the typical austerity of the South. It is the "double image" of feminine allure: haughty nobility alongside graceful, callow youth. Felix would like to savor both; he even dreams of marriage, but it is the noblewoman who urges him not to "seek fortune in childish fancies" and instead allow himself to be swept away by the "whirlwind of primeval forces" unleashed by a regal, mature bosom. And here the first part of Felix Krull's memoirs breaks off, leaving us to assume that the young man abandons any pretensions to a solid bourgeois horizon—which is, in any case, precluded by living under an assumed identity—to press on with his life as an adventurer and a swindler. Yet we shall never know, for the account of Felix's life remains unfinished. The novel is divided into two parts. Up until the substitution between Felix and the wealthy youth, we recognize the style of the great Thomas Mann: the narrative unfolds linearly, the treatment of episodes and characters is brilliant, even mildly ironic, and the "caprices" (the digressions, the chronological disruptions, the analytical elaborations) are functional to an overall understanding. In the second part, the structure of the narrative becomes rambling and disordered. It is unquestionably clever to relate and gloss the events through the letters of the putative son, Felix, to the putative parents—who are, moreover, bewildered by what is recounted, suspecting, quite rightly, that it is a figment of the imagination. This literary device demonstrates Mann's mastery, yet it fails to restore the novel to even a minimum of compactness and lucidity. It seems as though the author is chasing, with the last vestiges of his strength, the completion of a work very dear to him. Yet his momentum gets the better of him, and an excess of themes and reflections crowd together without order. Why not read it? It is simply not worth the trouble.

The protagonist is a renowned man of letters. > He had never known idleness, never the carefree negligence of youth . He had led > a life of self-conquest and of "in spite of all," a harsh, tenacious, and temperate life, which he had shaped into a symbol of a delicate heroism commensurate with the times . Yet deep within him there had always been an inner restlessness, “a strange expansion of the soul,” channeled by an unyielding daily discipline toward ideal perfection in art and the representation of elevated moral values. Now in his sixties, at the pinnacle of his fame, during a walk through the city streets he happens upon a foreigner whose gypsy-like, exotic features leave a deep impression on him, stirring within him > a youthful thirst for distant lands, a longing so intense, so new, or at least so long set aside and unlearned... he questioned his heavy, weary heart to discover whether a new enthusiasm, a new perturbation, a belated adventure of the sensibilities might still be in store for the indolent traveler . It is therefore not merely a desire to travel, but a dream-like vision of > all the wonders and horrors of the multiform terrestrial globe . With this “enigmatic desire,” his destination could only be Venice, > the flattering beauty, the city, half fairy-tale, half foreigner’s trap, in whose miasmas art once bloomed in voluptuous profusion, and which inspired musicians with lulling, caressingly languorous notes . He takes up lodging in an elegant hotel, frequented by the wealthy and variegated bourgeoisie of early twentieth-century Europe. He spends his days contemplating the sea, visiting “on warm nights” St. Mark’s Square and the *calli* of that marvelous city. > The pleasantly constant rhythm of that existence had already held him in its thrall, the soft and luxurious sweetness of that way of life had swiftly seduced him . When, as he lost himself in the “vast expanses of the sea,” > the horizontal line that marked the boundary of the earth was suddenly intersected by a human figure... he saw the beautiful boy pass before him on the sand and from that moment > mind and heart were intoxicated; the demon that delights in trampling human reason and dignity guided his steps . He, an aging man, a man of letters acclaimed for his classicism and for the rigorous rules of his art, becomes infatuated with, and ultimately falls in love with, the splendid youth, and > his soul savored the lust and the frenzy of dissolution . After all, > what value could he still ascribe to art and virtue, faced with the advantages of chaos? Falling in love is accompanied by the draining of energy in an already frail body, by “an ever more violent anguish,” by a “sense of the absence of any way out and of all hope”: he moves toward a voluptuous death. Before the expanse of the sea and the beloved boy gazing at the horizon, “an absolutely isolated and unrelated figure,” the protagonist lets himself die, as if absorbed in a deep slumber, “hovering into an immensity full of promise.” The novella, clearly autobiographical, can be interpreted in three distinct ways. The first interpretive key is the simplest. An elderly gentleman discovers, at the end of his life, his own homosexual orientation, perpetually repressed to conform to narrow-minded bourgeois norms. The author seems intent on lending this revelation the sense of a moral dissolution, yet in truth the protagonist willingly lets himself be carried away by passion, seeing it even as a liberation. > Joy, surprise, admiration could openly depict themselves there when his gaze met... the beloved image . And he was overcome by the desire > to kiss the sweet lips of his shadow, coquettish, curious and faintly anguished, seduced and seducing . It is an explicitly erotic and sexual desire. The second interpretive key, conversely, regards the novella as a spiritual construct, a sort of meditation on the author’s artistic journey. We will never know whether Thomas Mann was homosexual, but it is clear that the dichotomy of “reflection and restlessness,” “order and eros,” constituted the undercurrent that gave life to a literary oeuvre outwardly nestled within the riverbed of the typical bourgeois novel. In this sense, the boy embodies this contradiction between classical beauty and decadent disorder: the failure of that civilizing mission (we are, after all, on the eve of the First World War) which the writer entrusted to Germany. Yet this was also a phase in which the bourgeois novel was opening itself to new ventures, searching for innovative forms capable of narrating the European conscience, now in crisis. > The face, pale and gracefully impenetrable, framed by ringlets of honey-colored hair, with its straight-descending nose, charming mouth, and expression of sweet and divine gravity, recalled Greek sculptures of the golden age , but > care had been taken never to touch with scissors his beautiful hair, which curled over his forehead, above his ears, and even more thickly at the nape of his neck . And finally, the last interpretive strand, undoubtedly the most complex, is the oneiric, composed of dreams and imagery. Here the author abandons himself to fantastical visions, which find their transposition into reality through the description of Venice. And what if Venice were the synthesis of these three interpretive strands? Voluptuous decay, forms both classical and unbound at once, dreamlike wonders—these are the traits that make the city the mirror of the poet’s disheveled soul. Venice is not merely a background context, but the dominant protagonist of the narrative. Why read it? It is magnificent, above all for its writing—alluring, baroque, multiform, yet wholly consistent with the novella’s aims and its overarching narrative design. A true masterpiece!