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Tristan ist eine Novelle Thomas Manns, angelegt als Burleske, die den Zusammensto von skurrilem Schonheitssinn mit der praktischen Realitat beschreibtEntstehungszeit: Herbst 1902.

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the text that can both be accessed online and used to create new print copies. This book and thousands of others can be found in the digital collections of the University of Michigan Library. The University Library also understands and values the utility of print, and makes reprints available through its Scholarly Publishing Office. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

My first Thomas Mann-- seems like a good place to start.
I was interested in reading Thomas Mann-- it was a big hole in my knowledge of German literature. A friend of mine who is something in the way of a Mann scholar recommended that I begin with Royal Highness.

I loved it. I have seen it compared to a fairy tale, but if so it is a fairy tale for modern times. The Prince is heir to a line of helplessness and theater and the Princess is a railroad heiress driven from US society because of mixed racial heritage.

I have also heard the theme of the book described as the US providing the necessary energy and change to a decaying European nation. While that is true, it is also worth bearing in mind that it is only in Europe that the railroad baron can find a place to rid himself of his legacy of exploitation. It is also only in Europe that he finds his daughter can be accepted despite her Native American grandmother. Royal Highness is the optimistic marriage of two cultures which leads to cultural renewal as much as it does a love affair.

The Curtis/McNab translation seemed very well done-- it had none of that strange stiffness than can often characterize German prose translated into English. I do not know how this will compare to other Mann books, but it was a big success as a first experience.

Mann's fairy tale
Here is an early Mann work that might be an excellent introduction to those who are interested in his work. It is witty, the story flows naturally and it is much less sombre than many of his later works.

The plot centers around a small German town that is a "throwback" to the days of royalty.It maintains a monarch, although the position is mainly just for show. A young Prince is promoted to being a "virtual" monarch when his lazy older brother feels he has better things to do with his time than be king.

The Prince, then, does his best to use his "exalted" (albeit symbolic) position to better the quality of life of his people.Unfortunately, the financial ministers of the kingdom are incompetent enough to make the ENRON executives proud with their mis-dealings.

For a refreshing look back at 19th (and perhaps early 20th) century Germany, this is a truly wonderful book. Mann's prose is exquisite and he always manages to poke fun at "royalty" in the most subtle ways.So, if you're looking for a fairy tale for grownups, the great Thomas Mann just MIGHT be the place to look!

Not for the Mann novice, but a great book.
Thomas Mann is an excellent author, but if you've never read anything by him before, begin with "Magic Mountain" and "Death in Venice," followed by "Buddenbrooks" and "Felix Krull" before tackling this book. This is Mann's second novel and a bit of a letdown from "Buddenbrooks."Mann uses the literary technique he would later exploit in such marvelous fashion with "Magic Mountain" -- that is, examining a small, isolated part of society as a microcosm of the larger whole, namely Europe.

Without giving away any of the surprises, this book is about a rather idealistic female's impact on a small village.Mann poses thoughtful questions about the usefulness of artistic values in a bourgeois society while revealing the inner nuances of his characters as he does so artfully, as in "Buddenbrooks" and "Felix Krull."

To top it all off, this Mann novel is probably his most humorous.For those not knowledgable on Mann, he is not readily identifyable for the humour in his works, making this one rather noteworthy. ... Read more

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Nobel Prize-winner Thomas Mann (1875-1955) is not only one of the leading German novelists of the twentieth century, but also one of the few to transcend national and language boundaries to achieve major stature in the English-speaking world. Famous from the time that he published his first novel in 1901, Mann became an iconic figure, seen as the living embodiment of German national culture. Leading scholar Todd Kontje provides a succinct introduction to Mann's life and work, discussing key moments in Mann's personal life and his career as a public intellectual, and giving readers a sense of why he is considered such an important - and controversial - writer. At the heart of the book is an informed appreciation of Mann's great literary achievements, including the novel The Magic Mountain and the haunting short story Death in Venice. ... Read more

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First published in 1951, The Holy Sinner explores a subject that fascinated Thomas Mann to the end of his life--the origins of evil and evil's connection with magic. Here Mann uses a medieval legend about 'the exceeding mercy of God and the birth of the blessed Pope Gregory' as he used the Biblical account of Joseph as the basis for Joseph and His Brothers--illuminating with his ironic sensibility the notion of original sin and transcendence of evil. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A high point in Western literature
These lines are, for me, among the most powerful I've ever read:

[The pope-elect has been found on his little rock in the middle of a lake, where he exiled himself.]

"'Ah, holy lord," she sobbed, "I merit not your remembrance or your praise, for God knows my sin.When I protected you that day from the fisher's harsh words, he taxed me with wantonness and fleshly feeling for you and I denied the charge, falsely, as I now confess.For my eyes did really have to do with your limbs in the beggar's rags and with your noble features, and wantonness was at the bottom of the good I did you, depraved lost soul that I am!'
'That is a small matter," answered Gregorius, "and not worth talking about.Seldom is one wholly wrong in pointing out the sinful in the good, but God graciously looks at the good deed even though its root is in fleshliness.Absolvo te.' These were his words.It was the first instance of the extraordinary clemency he was to display as Pope, so consoling to all men and only offensive to the draconians."

There's nothing more important to me, to you, to any of us, than attaining this understanding.We all get it too late.

Of all the literature that I know, only Adalbert Stifter expresses this idea with more transparency, and yet, I have to admit that Mann's work has much greater scope than Stifter's.Mann's conception in this book and in others has the devil in it.(I'm not saying he's a satanist, but that his stuff is Faustian.)Stifter was much more careful.He had to be, in his careful age.

In Goethe, Novalis, Stifter, others, and here in Mann, this theme is treated in various ways-- our civilization is built on a natural foundation that is beyond good and evil, and sex is natural, and likewise beyond good and evil.That our values get their initial impulse from something as dubious as sex is something we all have to come to terms with.

The bible makes this point nicely too, but I don't know that book well enough to comment.German literature after Goethe seeks to reconcile the pantheistic focus on nature with Christian values.This process begins with Goethe's famous quote,""In natural science, we are pantheists; in poetry, polytheists; morally, monotheists".

A small, beautifully carved gem by German genius Mann
You don't have to plow through monster works like "The Magic Mountain" or "Buddenbrooks" to gain an appreciation for the art of Thomas Mann. "The Holy Sinner" is a short novel (for Mann) about the medieval legend of St. Gregory. This is a story of sin and redemption, with the horrors of the sins, incest and unbridled lust, making the redemption all the more spectacular.

The style is elegant, stylishly mocking the medieval archaic German which is well-rendered into a stylized antique English by the talented Mrs. Lowe.The story is as gripping as any soap opera but the artistry with which it is told is exquisite. As usual, Mann blends his story-telling ability with his genius as a writer of ideas. I can hardly think of another writer who comes close to being able to combine a good yarn with incredible style and deep concepts (maybe Melville and Nabokov, perhaps.)

This is a good preparatory book for "Joseph and his Brothers"--a monumental book about the biblical story of Joseph in Egypt.

Modern Mythology takes a look at Redemption...
"The Holy Sinner," on a literal level is a story about a multi-generational incestuous family, and their reconcilliation of their sins.Read as such, "The Holy Sinner" is a disturbing account with a semi-satirical take on the religious rituals of redemption, incest, nepotism and penance.

On a deeper level, "The Holy Sinner" comes forth as a contemporary myth.There is a definite straining in this book for a sense of redemption, forgiveness, and the search for meaning.Ripe with symbolism, and exploring a kind of "less-violent" Oedipal storyline, you can feel Mann's struggle over the contemporary situation in Germany in the late 40s and early 50s.

Though not what I would call a "sequel" to "Doctor Faustus," in the allegorical way you can catch a glimpse of Germany in the pages of "The Holy Sinner," I would nevertheless point out that the theme of "penance and change instead of murder and vengeance" seems very contemporarily bound.

However, the story itself hinges on one coincidence too many, and there are passages that nearly grind to a halt in speed and direction.I did come away from the novel with a new respect for Thomas Mann, but this was not an easy read, and, at times, not even enjoyable.The alliteration and sometimes near-poetry of the writing was in some passages immaculate, and then a few pages later almost clumsy and awkward.

I would consider this book one meant more for study than outright enjoyment, though I did enjoy it more often than I didn't.It was work to finish it, however, and more work to digest and attempt to understand it.If you are in the mood for something serious and allegorical, pick up "The Holy Sinner."But if you're looking for something lighter or entertaining, I'd suggest you pass this one by.

A minor work by a major writer
Thomas Mann (1875-1955), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is one of the great German writers of the 20th century. His best works rely on an exquisite sense of irony, erudition and multiple layers of meaning to explore some of the burning moral issues of our time. "The Holy Sinner" is one of his last works and was written immediately after what many consider his masterpiece, "Doctor Faustus".

In "The Holy Sinner" Mann retells a medieval legend about the life of Pope Gregory in plush,tongue-in-cheek, bejewelled language reminiscent of knightly chronicles. The translator, H. T. Lowe-Porter, has done an excellent job in translating the romance-like pastiches spoken or written by the different characters --in particular if you have a smattering of French, Latin, Spanish, Catalan, Middle English or Provenzal, you will enjoy these light-hearted and occasional romps. However, as is usual with Mann, the glittering surface-story is not the most interesting one. This book is also a Christianized version of Sophocles' Oedipus tragedies and an optimistic commentary on the possibilties of European reconstruction in the aftermath of the second world war.

Unfortunately I feel the three levels do not resonate with the power you find in his masterpieces ("The Magical Mountain", "Doctor Faustus"). Russell Berman, who wrote the introduction to the book does not agree: "In the Holy Sinner, Thomas Mann unfolds an ornate depiction of the Middle Ages, replete with courtly love and jousting knights, illiterate peasants and papal magnificence. This fascinating setting, which the author embellishes with all his linguistic and confabulatory powers, is equally a backdrop for weighty matters of the mind: religious questions of sin and grace, psychoanalytical inquiries into incestous desire, political investigations into the distribution of power."

If you have never read Thomas Mann, I would recommend you start with his novelette "Death in Venice&quo! t; and then go on to "Doctor Faustus" and "The Magic Mountain". If you have read his masterpieces be warned: this is, in Graham Greene's nomenclature, more of an entertainment than a novel.

The Holy Sinner
Fantastic story of transformation and forgiveness.Mann uses the pen like a master. ... Read more

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Tobias Mindernickel was published in 1987 by German novelist Thomas Mann. ... Read more

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Thomas Mann, author of "Death in Venice", "The Magic Mountain", and "Buddenbrooks" was a man with secrets. This biography offers a portrait of the Nobel Prize-winning German novelist, drawing on Mann's unexpurgated diaries. It uncovers a brilliant writer's mask to reveal the private man: his bisexuality, his obsession with preserving appearances and the deep guilt which plagued him for nearly fifty years. The sanitized self-image Mann strove to maintain is revealed as a fragile veneer. Drawing on the diaries that he stipulated should remain under seal for twenty years after his death, and on interviews with Mann's children, the author depicts a man subject to nervous trembling, convulsive sobbing and moments of sexual embarrassment. When his novels are reread from this perspective, new meanings emerge and interconnections between the problems of the author and his characters become apparent. As Mann wrote to a friend, he devised "novelistic forms and masks which can be displayed in public as a means of relaying my love, my hatred, my sympathy, my contempt, my pride, my scorn and the accusations I want to make".Ronald Hayman is the biographer of Proust, Sartre, Kafka, Nietzche, Brecht and Sylvia Plath. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Bio of GREAT Writer!!
If you're looking to find the connection between T Mann's great books and his amazing life, this is the book to read! Though this book does emphasize his bisexual tendencies, this is really done in a limited way, mainly in explaining his real experiences in "Death in Venice", and the very late edition to "Felix Krull", easily his most amusing book! Oddly, this man of phenomenal powers of observation was duped at a seance, the experience leading to spiritualist scene (Highly Questionable) in the Magic Mountain. The author does not mention Mann's own observations on this odd subject. in his Essays for 3 Decades. Even more than Hemingway, his family had severe suicidal tendencies, including his sister, sister in law, and two children, including Klaus, a renowned author in his own right. T. Mann was surely an imperious father, distant and aloof, and had his disputes with his older brother , Heinrich, mainly during the great war. Thomas was a great defender of German Kulture, Heinrich an international socialist. Still, his leading role as an anti-Nazi "Good German" cannot be denied, and after the war, he was subject to anti-communist hysteria rumor-mongering in the USA, so he moved back to Switzerland. He was an inveterate traveller, often ill, but still managed to find the time to write some of the greatest literature ever. In sum, an excellent bio of a rare, though flawed, genius!

exquisite bio by an exquisite writer
This is clearly the definitive biography of Thomas Mann ...by perhaps this era's leading biographer .....to be sure there are several bios out there ....but having read themost recent two ....i must say they were merely anexcursus compared to Mr. Heymansoutstanding effort ! his is bothcomprehensive and perspicuous ....not an easy task when being an exegete ofMann's life and works ....Mann was both an accomplishedauthor andprescient political analyst .....and led a long and complicatedlife.....which Mr. Heyman documents with unusual clarity and verve!.. of thethree major biographies on T.Mann recently published ....his (heymans) isthe best of the trio ....the other two being discursive andgarbled thusconfusing to the common reader by all means read this edition if you haveany interest in T. Mann's work and life...it's COMPLEAT ! thankyou Mr.Heyman ! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

A solid addition to any literary fiction collection
To present the foundation of law for half the world is no simple task. "The Tables of the Law" is a historical title following Moses as he is tasked by God to present the Ten Commandments, providing a human and much different insight on the role of Moses as the Prophet of God. Expertly translated, "The Tables of the Law" is a solid addition to any literary fiction collection.

Moses and monotheism
Thomas Mann was one of the great writers to arise during the twentieth century. He was awarded the Nobel prize in literature in 1929. Mann is best known for Buddenbrooks, his first and perhaps most characteristic novel; although, in this country, The Magic Mountain may be more widely read, and Death in Venice most often assigned. Yet among his best work is also some of his least known.

Later in life, Mann turned to biblical sources, and produced what some consider his greatest work, Joseph and His Brothers, which came out as a tetralogy. Here, after Mann had finished Joseph, we find a novelette, The Tables of the Law.

It begins, "His birth was irregular, hence it was he passionately loved order, the absolute, the shalt and shalt not." It ends, "Then he descended the hill with the Law under his arms." What happened in between left its mark on Western civilization.

In passing, it should be said that if you were to read Mann's work in German, then as translated into English by Helen Lowe-Porter, you might find that you are not missing much.

As produced by Knopf, The Tables of the Law is a slim, elegant hardcover book with unusual typography and layout. It is readily available on the used-book market.

Note: The Tables of the Law has been out of print for many years. However, Paul Dry Books has commissioned a new translation for publication.
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Thomas Mann was the first writer since Goethe to attract a large international audience to stories written in German, bringing German fiction into the mainstream of European literature. His second major work, The Magic Mountain (1924), explores the heady intellectual culture of the chaotic and broken Germany that emerged from the First World War, and, along with the earlier Buddenbrooks, earned him a Nobel Prize for literature in 1929. Mann himself considered The Magic Mountain to be his greatest novel, and few in his own day doubted the preeminence of this modernist classic; however, many have argued that the age of literary modernism has passed. If this is so, how might we best understand Mann's masterpiece now? Topics covered in this volume, which aims to provide both a survey of and new research into important aspects of the work, include Mann's comic vision, his homosexuality, his fraught attitude toward Jews, the place of his novel in the landscape of postmodern life, the theme of solitude, music in the novel, and technology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Outstanding Literary Criticism
Hi, y'all.I've read the first three articles in this companion book, and they're all excellent so far.It's just exactly what I was hoping for--a book that would open up the world of the novel and the deeper meanings of Hans' experience.

The Magic Mountain itself is a book that has called to me ever since I saw it in its ponderous hard-backed, plastic-protected glory sitting on the (dusty) shelf of my highschool's library.For some reason, although I never got around to reading it, I've always known it would a worthwhile read.Well, now I'm 41, and I just finished it a couple of months ago.I very much enjoyed it--but I also knew I was missing half the fun of what Mann was really trying to do.So I ordered this companion.

GREAT CHOICE, me!The articles are deep and interesting without being too jargon-y (although #3 comes close to that dangerous border without--quite--crossing over), and they have opened up my mind to the nuances and philosophical and cultural underpinnings of the book in a most interesting way.

Highly recommended--now I'm gonna stop typing and go read essay #4!

A Post Novel Companion
This volume, edited by Stephen D. Dowden, is a collection of excellent, scholarly articles on "The Magic Mountain" and Thomas Mann's writing in general. The misleading word 'companion' in the title actually means that the novel should be read first. The reader of Mann's work should enjoy and learn from the novel first without any filter of other experiences. Then the reader can compare her thoughts with those of the authors of the articles. The reader is in the cat-bird seat agreeing with some ideas and dismissing others in the "Companion". In particular, I liked the articles by Snowden ("Mann's Ethical Style"), Goodheart ("Thomas Mann's Comic Spirit") and Engelberg ("Ambiguous Solitude"). I agreed with most of the comments in these articles and disagreed with a few points in each one. The book reinforces the reader's insight gained from "The Magic Mountain."

A Companion to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain
I feel that it is essential to a better understanding of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain.

Not a Cliff's Notes, a real climbing buddy for this mountain
The eleven critical essays in "A Companion" are some of the best literary essays on the monumental novel by Mann "The Magic Mountain." The essays actually range wider than just this huge book and take in themes throughout Mann's fiction, both novels and short stories and novellas.

Some are specific; Mann and his conflicted view on Jews (he was almost anti-Semitic in some instances, yet married a Jewish woman and wrote a supremely Jewish book "Joseph and his Brothers.") Others cover themes that are general to his writing--sickness, music, decline, art. After reading these essays, my mind was teeming with new ideas and I began to see entirely new threads in all Mann's books. For example, the use of teeth as a symbol in "Buddenbrooks." An essay discusses the weak teeth of Thomas Buddenbrooks (which cause his death) and his son Hanno, a symbol of decline and decay, literally. And carrying that thread forward, one notices the description of abundantly, almost unnaturally healthy teeth (Gerda Buddenbrooks and the dubious Aline Puvogel, the courtesan who marries Christian, Tom's brother, who have teeth that are described as incredibly white and strong.) Detlef Spinel ("Tristan") has teeth that are large and decayed--the outward manifestation of some inward decay, perhaps what has drawn to stay at an elegant sanatorium.

Though the essays deal mainly with "Magic Mountain" I found them insightful as well for "Dr. Faustus." In short, if you love the fiction of Thomas Mann, reading these essays is time well and pleasurably spent.

Eleven essays by articulate scholars
Thomas Mann brought German fiction into the mainstream of European literature beginning with the publication of his novel "Buddenbrooks" in 1901 to his death in 1955. Before his literary work, German novels were rarely read outside of the German-speaking countries. He was the first since Goethe to attract a large international audience to stories written in the German language. Mann considered the single greatest novel of his literary career to be "The Magic Mountain", a true modernist classic. Very highly recommended, informative, and insightful reading for Thomas Mann enthusiasts and German Literary studies, A Companion To Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain is an impressive collection of eleven essays by articulate scholars addressing the contributions of Thomas Mann in a post-modernist era, with particular reference to his comic vision, homosexuality, attitude toward Jews, his novel within the landscape of postmodern life; the theme of solitude, music in the novel, technology, and more. ... Read more

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Key dimensions of Thomas Mann's writing and life are explored in this collection of specially commissioned essays. In addition to introductory chapters on all the main works of fiction and the essays and diaries, there are four chapters examining Mann's oeuvre in relation to major themes. A final chapter looks at the pitfalls of translating Mann into English. The essays are well supported by supplementary material including a chronology of the period and detailed guides to further reading. ... Read more

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Erstausgabe aus dem Jahre 1922. ... Read more

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'Death in Venice' is a novella written by the German author Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1912 as Der Tod in Venedig. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

no title
He's done it again!What a read!How Mann manages to pull suspense out of a story that everyone knows is just amazing.But it's a page turner from start to finish - all 664 pages of the two volumes.I love the way, every now and then, he makes reference to an occurence in the first two volumes, thus tieing things together.And how Joseph matures - even here we see his pride that still needs a fall - thus he goes to prison.And the sexual explicitness was quite a surprise.But I see also here the seeds of our Christian and Judaic hang-up with sex - Joseph could not bed the mistress because he felt himself consecrated to his God.There was also loyalty to his master, of course, but I don't think that was his prime reason.And how Mut changed!Mann has used passion as an overwhelming evil thing when it is thwarted. ... Read more

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Over the last twenty years, much critical discussion of Thomas Mann has highlighted his homosexuality. This not only is presented as a dynamic underlying Mann's creative work, but also is the supposed reason for the theme of guilt and redemption that grew ever stronger in Mann's fiction, and for his panic in 1933 that his early diaries would fall into the hands of the Nazis.

Michael Maar mounts a devastating forensic challenge to this consensus: Mann was remarkably open about his sexual orientation, which he saw as no reason for guilt. But sexuality in Mann's work is inextricably bound up with an eruption of violence. Maar pursues this trail through Mann's writings and traces its origins back to Mann's second visit to Italy, during which the Devil appeared to him in Palestrina. Something happened to the twenty-one-year-old Thomas Mann in Naples that marked him for life with a burdensome sense of guilt...but what exactly was it? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

In a dark alleyway in Naples in the late 1890s...
...something may or may not have happenened involving the young Thomas Mann.

We'll never know, because, among other things, Mann burned all of his early diaries.But to author Marr, an unrelenting literary sleuth, it sure feels like something must have happened.Why?Because of the steady sub-current of references, throughout Mann's work, to sex and violence, specifically to sexually violent acts.Because Mann insists throughout his life that everything he wrote was essentially autobiographical.And because around 1896/97, Mann made references to some darkness he had witnessed or felt, prompting a new, more pessimistic worldview.

Tracing backwards, Marr arrives at late 1896, and a trip to Italy, as the possible point when "something happened."Satanic rituals (which were then quite the thing in hothouse Naples)?Maybe a foiled assignation with a prostitute?It's all lost in the mists of time, now, unless some grandson of a Neapolitan comes forward with Grandmama's scandalous diaries, which happen to mention a visiting young German author.

Meanwhile, we'll have to follow Marr's twisting trail.This short, intriguing book is absolutely worth the hour or two it'll take for any Mann-ophile. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

no title
What can I say? - every bit as marvelous as "The Alexandria Quartet" by Durrell.What a feat by Mann!As much about Jacob as about Joseph.Marvelous details of Egypt and the Pharoh Akenahten, who tried to impose his one-god religion on the pantheistic Egyptians. ... Read more

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This vivid, sometimes tragic, and often humorous literary biography brings to life as never before the extraordinary talent and complex person who was Thomas Mann.

Engrossing vignettes enable us to enter Mann's life and work from unique angles. We meet the difficult, even unsavory private man: hypochondriac and nervous, narcissistic and vainglorious, isolated and greedy for love, shy and often ungenerous. But we are also introduced to a man who lived an eventful life, was capable of great kindness, loved dogs, doted on his daughters, and listened to Jack Benny.

We experience Mann's tragedy as the quintessential German forced by the rise of National Socialism first into inner exile and then into real exile in Switzerland, Princeton, and California. His letters from this time reveal the torment that exile represented for a writer whose work, indeed whose very self, was inextricably bound up with the German language.

The book provides fresh and sometimes startling insights into both famous and little-known episodes in Mann's life and into his writing--the only realm in which he ever felt free. It shows how love, death, religion, and politics were not merely themes in Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and other works, but were woven into the fabric of his existence and preoccupied him unrelentingly. It also teases out what is known about what Mann considered his celibate homoeroticism and what others have labeled closeted homosexuality. In particular, we learn about his affection for the young man who inspired the character of Tadzio in Death in Venice. And, against the unfocused accusations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled at Mann, the book examines in human detail his relationships with Jewish writers, friends, and family members.

This is the richest available portrait of Thomas Mann as man and writer--the place to start for anyone wanting to know anything about his life, work, or times. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Dissensio?
I must beg to differ with my colleague in academia.

If it is sophomoric to assume that an author's life is completely mirrored in his novels, than it is the greater fool's error to believe that there is such a thing as an objective biography -- compiled from some sort of secret correspondence, some sort of puzzle contained in the actions of author's life, which will englighten a literary work further.

Kurzke respects a profound idea in his work: Mann wished to remembered by his fiction, and those letters which amplify his career.

Frankly, Thomas Mann is a figure in world literature who respected the idea of leaving for posterity exactly what he wished to said about him. Apparently, this is insufficient to repeat. It seems better to do what Joseph Frank did with his five volume Dostoevsky biography (everyone applauds this biography) -- to pour over the notes and sketches of rough drafts, as well as his surly day-to-day complaints about neighbors and his hemorrhoids. Frank admonishes Anna Dostoevskaya for trying to etch out and destroy parts of the notebooks that she did not wish to be public. Mann obviously succeeded in protecting himself from vulture professors and writers who would years down the road be searching for material to publish to advance their curriculum vitae.

As Settembrini might have said, a fixation on the concrete banal and prosaic facts about an author's life is an (intellectual) disease typical of the century just past. Kurzke's attitude and approach share nothing of this.

Still Waiting
For decades, fans of Thomas Mann have been waiting for a definitive biography, frustrated by the fact that Mann's will sealed all his private papers after his death. Unfortunately, we must continue our wait.

Herman Kurzke's Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art, A Biography, is a hoax, for it simply is not a biography. The book is instead nearly 600 pages of literacy criticism, and sophomoric literary criticism at that. Kurzke makes the classic undergraduate error of assuming that the artist's work perfectly mirrors his life and that the artist is his characters. Again and again Kurzke strives--and fails--to provide insight into the life of Mann merely by delving into Mann's writing. Consider this passage from page 73: "Thomas Mann's favorite flower was the Marshall Niel rose. He 'is' [Little Herr] Friedemann, the reading and violin-playing ascetic who has succeeded in chaining up the dogs in the cellar. The basic motif for his life and actions is fear of passion, fear that the carefully tended equilibrium of his life could tip over, fear of the return of what was repressed and the collapse of true construction of art. The psycholoanalyst Krowkowski in The Magic Mountain knows with pleasure how to make it perfectly clear."So we learn what Mann's favorite flower was, but nothing more, and the unmistakable tone of undergraduate assertion here makes us shudder.

The absolute dearth of information about Mann is inexcusable, and those who are familiar with Mann's works, as certainly all who would buy this book must be, do not need someone of Kurzke's limited skills to tell us what those works are about. One need only read "Death in Venice," for example, to know it is about suppressed homosexuality, and one need only read Mann's 1918-1939 published diaries (1982) to know that Mann is addressing his own suppressed (or not) sexual inclinations.

In sum, this book is a waste of time, .... ... Read more

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