Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann, PH.D.

Mann's rendering of the classic Faust legend explores the goals, values, and conflicts of modern man

The Life of the German Composer, Adrian Leverkühn

Doctor Faustus

The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend

Doctor Faustus 

Emmett

'that art is stuck fast and grown too difficult and mocks its very self, that all has grown too difficult and God's poor man in his distress no longer knows up from down, that is surely the guilt of the age. But should a man make the Devil his guest in order thereby to go beyond and break through, he indicts his soul and hangs the guilt of the age round his own neck, so that he be damned. For it is said: be sober, be vigilant! But that is not the business of some, and rather than wisely to attend to what is needful on earth, that it might be better, and prudently to act that among men such order be stablished that may again prepare lively soil and honest accommodation for the beautiful work, man would prefer to play the truant and break out into hellish drunkenness, thus giving his soul to it and ending upon the shambles.' (p. 524)

Mann successfully fuses the triumph of the Faustian overreacher and the tragic nature of his downfall with the national spirit of Nazi Germany and the national guilt at the hour of its defeat. A reader less familiar with musical notation such as this reader may find passages describing the musical pieces less instructive and frankly rather boring. They are probably supposed to illustrate the inventive genius of the fictional musician. Still, even without fully understanding the music, it is possible to appreciate the frenzied energies that surround the cast of characters and the atmosphere in the story is set especially when the reader can take cues from the protagonist (the 'friend'), whose thoughts and emotions relay the texture and weight of the more technical passages. The supernatural is downplayed in this modernised rewriting of Faustus, which is a bit disappointing if one was expecting more than that. The literal Devil only occupies a tiny part of the book and is further diminished by a frame narrative; indeed the introduction of the 'friend' and the structure of the recount serves very well to put these elements at arm's length. Instead, the dark forces are expressed in human acts, responses and tragedies - in untimely illness, death and possibly madness. Despite the protagonist's fundamentally Christian worldview, the lack of the supernatural puts the responsibility of conduct firmly on humanity, the battle for morality and goodness is solely enacted in the contemporary world.

The novel takes the reality of horrors committed and injects a note of poignancy from the perspective of the Germans with its dreadful vision of foreign invasion - 'our shattered and devastated cities fall like ripe plums ... they all obey strangers now' . Shameful defeat is compounded with moral shame. The legacy the Third Reich leaves is a stain on national history and tradition, turning pride in German culture and intellectual thought into a burden. 'Our thick-walled torture chamber ... has been burst open, and our ignominy lies naked before the eyes of the world ... to whom these incredible scenes are displayed on all sides now and who report home that the hideousness of what they have seen exceeds anything the human imagination can conceive. ... is it mere hypochondria to tell oneself that all that is German--even German intellect, German thought, the German word--shares in the disgrace of these revelations and is plunged into profundest doubt? Is it morbid contrition to ask oneself the question: How can "Germany" whichever of its forms it may allowed to take in the future, so much as open its mouth again to speak of mankind's concerns?" It is possible and surprising, thus, to feel not only the terrible discovery of the concentration camps and the shock the world felt, but a shred of pity - for a people deceived by evil.

Doctor Faustus The Life of the German Composer, Adrian Leverkühn

Reviews

Highlights