"Germany is free, in so far as one may apply the word to a land prostrate and proscribed."
DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Thomas Mann
Working through a backlog of canonical texts borrowed from a friend with a weightier and more ponderous bookshelf than I could ever hope for. Intrigued by the premise of this particular work, and because the only Thomas Mann I'd read until then was Death in Venice and because I wanted to populate this year's reading list with longer books, I was eager for the chance to give this a whirl.
The tale, narrated by Serenus Zeitblom, Ph.D, recounts the meteoric rise and calamitous, syphilitic fall of his childhood friend, German composer Adrian Leverkühn. At the center of Adrian's story is a so-called pact Adrian enters into with the Devil or an emissary, in keeping with the Faust mythology, where he is guaranteed 24 years of transcendent professional success, but in exchange may never love another living soul. (That particular price is revealed in immensely tragic and surprising detail towards the end.) Mirrored against this is the rise and fall of Germany during the World Wars. Serenus writes during the Second World War where Hitler and dogma rein and the term 'German' has become synonymous with delusion and unsurpassed despicableness of a time before, during, and immediately after World War I where a German nationalism, tied intimately to the development of its artistic life, was robust and healthy and which commanded a loyalty one was not remiss in giving.
The parallels become all the more poignantly realized towards the end, but the whole text is written in a dry, clinical language almost completely devoid of emotional attachment. Or rather, the mind weighs so heavy in the text that there is no room for the heart.
And Serenus, ever the judging type, is hardly the most sympathetic character in the whole lot. His anti-semitism leaks through often enough and his schtick of being so easily appalled by things struck me as gross hypocrisy. It isn't towards the end, when the lamentation for what befalls his best friend and his fatherland reaches its apotheosis that the precise and at times otherworldly beauty of the prose gains dramatic emotional heft.
Nonetheless, I'm glad for the chance to have given this a read.
Thomas Mann
Working through a backlog of canonical texts borrowed from a friend with a weightier and more ponderous bookshelf than I could ever hope for. Intrigued by the premise of this particular work, and because the only Thomas Mann I'd read until then was Death in Venice and because I wanted to populate this year's reading list with longer books, I was eager for the chance to give this a whirl.
The tale, narrated by Serenus Zeitblom, Ph.D, recounts the meteoric rise and calamitous, syphilitic fall of his childhood friend, German composer Adrian Leverkühn. At the center of Adrian's story is a so-called pact Adrian enters into with the Devil or an emissary, in keeping with the Faust mythology, where he is guaranteed 24 years of transcendent professional success, but in exchange may never love another living soul. (That particular price is revealed in immensely tragic and surprising detail towards the end.) Mirrored against this is the rise and fall of Germany during the World Wars. Serenus writes during the Second World War where Hitler and dogma rein and the term 'German' has become synonymous with delusion and unsurpassed despicableness of a time before, during, and immediately after World War I where a German nationalism, tied intimately to the development of its artistic life, was robust and healthy and which commanded a loyalty one was not remiss in giving.
The parallels become all the more poignantly realized towards the end, but the whole text is written in a dry, clinical language almost completely devoid of emotional attachment. Or rather, the mind weighs so heavy in the text that there is no room for the heart.
And Serenus, ever the judging type, is hardly the most sympathetic character in the whole lot. His anti-semitism leaks through often enough and his schtick of being so easily appalled by things struck me as gross hypocrisy. It isn't towards the end, when the lamentation for what befalls his best friend and his fatherland reaches its apotheosis that the precise and at times otherworldly beauty of the prose gains dramatic emotional heft.
Nonetheless, I'm glad for the chance to have given this a read.