Thomas Mann: what the hell is all the fuss about?

[Vitruvius]

Recently read Doktor Faustus and Lotte in Weimar. Found them both awfully boring - even though the main ideas were, in fact, pretty good. The paradox is that I know they're supposed to be good, even brilliant - Goethe sucking the life out of everyone around him, Leverkuhn being caught up in the old faustian contract - but they were still incredibly insipid and seemed superfluous. Not to mention that Doktor Faustus was a well-disguised pretentious musical treatise and if one did not possess the musical knowledge necessary to understand all the terms, Leverkuhn's philosophy remained largely uncomprehensible.

Therefore I ask you, readers of the all-mighty Nobel-winning Thomas Mann, what fuelled your interest in this, in my opinion, highly overrated author?

PS: Don't throw political arguments at me, because I find that politics should stick to the TV and away from literature.

[The Rainmaker]

I don't think anyone would suggest starting Mann with Lotte in Weimar or Doctor Faustus. Why not give Death in Venice a shot?

[kiki1982]

Was it the translation. I don't think he is particularly boring in German... English tends to be more direct in its style. German is more lyrical and has many more sub-clauses, which, if badly translated, I can imagine becomevery boring.

[mal4mac]

I don't think anyone would suggest starting Mann with Lotte in Weimar or Doctor Faustus. Why not give Death in Venice a shot?

Having started with Doctor Faustus, I agree! I lost interest in Mann after reading that (probably my lack of knowledge at fault!) Eventually I read Buddenbrooks, a superb read. It's a much more straightforward novel than Doctor Faustus. Now I'm tempted to read more by him. Any thoughts on the second novel to read? Magic Mountain? Or should i read his essays or a biography? Or Goethe? I might understand his later works better if I know more about how his mind works...

[The Rainmaker]

I also suffer from the lack of musical knowledge. I am told Magic Mountain is a difficult read... Whatever you read, try to avoid the old Lowe-Porter translations. They contain mistranslated words. Instead look at the John E. Woods translations - much more accurate, widely acclaimed. I know you have reservations about modern translations (from Proust thread), but in this case, do consider.

[rimbaud]

I don't think anyone would suggest starting Mann with Lotte in Weimar or Doctor Faustus. Why not give Death in Venice a shot?

Well I haven't read Doctor Faustus, but I've read Death in Venice, and I don't think that one is so brilliant, although I must say, there was something to it, I would not put it as one of the greatest books I have ever read. It might be a meter of taste and someone might find it good.
Nevertheless I found the obsession of the narrator in the book with beauty and youth rather interesting and the best thing in the whole story actually.

[Barbarous]

The Magic Mountain was a great novel, I enjoyed it. At times, it was tedious but I mostly blame this on the translation, not the actual writer.

[The Rainmaker]

I suggested Death in Venice as a starter, of course it is not the peak of Mann's oeuvre, not by a long shot. I quite like it though.

[Emil Miller]

I agree with Kiki1982 about translations of Thomas Mann, they do read better in German and Doctor Faustus is probably not the best novel to start with. In my view Buddenbrooks is his masterpiece although The Magic Mountain is also one of his best books. The thing to start with are the short stories, including 'Felix Krull: confessions of a confidence man' which is very funny and an interesting tale of incest 'Walsungens Blut' ( Blood of the Walsungs).
'Lotte in Weimar' is probably best enjoyed with some knowledge of the partial French occupation of Germany in the 19th century and Goethe's position in Weimar society at that time.

[Etienne]

Well, in the terms of Calvino, Mann is a "slow" writer. You have to take the time and enjoy the writing and the thought. I personally thought Dr. Faustus was brillant, to each his own, I guess. Of course it's slow at times but if you want action-packed rocket-throwing action, then you should "should stick to the TV and away from literature. " ;)

[mortalterror]

Was it the translation. I don't think he is particularly boring in German... English tends to be more direct in its style. German is more lyrical and has many more sub-clauses, which, if badly translated, I can imagine becomevery boring.

The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,
But in another Countrey, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flowre, but not in this soyl:
-Comus, John Milton

[stlukesguild]

Mann is slow and dense reading... but personally I found it well worth the effort. I came to Mann from Hesse and began with Death in Venice and other shorter fictions but personally I loved Doctor Faustus and Magic Mountain.

[kasie]

I regret to say, The Magic Mountain is one of the few books I have failed to finish. I took it with me to read on a holiday to Switzerland, hoping to pick up something of the spirit of the book by reading it in situ, so to speak. Perhaps it was that Switzerland in springtime was so invigorating and the holiday was so enjoyable and restoring, but I could not cope with the gloom, doom and general despondency in the early part of the book. I had read Death in Venice on the fervent recommendation of a friend who was studying it for A-Level German, and seen the film (Dirk Bogarde...soundtrack by Mahler...mmm) and was disposed to tackle another Mann, but I just could not get on with MM. If someone can tell me that it gets more positive past the half-way mark, then perhaps I'll give it another go, but somewhere in the many housemoves since the early seventies, the copy has 'got lost', so I will have to make a trip to the library to make a new start on it.

[mal4mac]

Timothy Buck in the The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann performs a demolition job on Lowe-Porter.

"Lowe-Porter's English ... can be unidiomatic, ungainly, ungrammatical, even incomprehensible... Doctor Faustus posed special problems for the translator... and the at times intractable subject-matter led Lowe-Porter to produce English that is sometimes barely digestible"

... exactly what I thought of her translation of Dr Faustus. Maybe it wasn't me or Mann at fault :)

But Woods doesn't come out unscathed:

"Leaving aside Luke's faithful renderings of the stories, essentially two Thomas Manns continue to circulate in the English-speaking world: the German originals, read by academics and some students of German, and the Lowe-Porter 'adaptations into English' — now supplemented by the two flawed contributions from Woods — which, unbeknown to the English-speaking reader, constitute a different, a pseudo-Mann. It is a deplorable situation, for which no remedy is in sight."

BUT!

Martin Greenberg (famed Goethe translator) attacks Timothy Buck (& David Luke) in New Criterion, Vol. 17, March 1999 “Their [Buck and Luke’s] understanding of translation is absurdly schoolmasterish. Think of North's Plutarch, Florio's Montaigne. Think how Cervantes in English declined in vivacity as he gained in accuracy, from Motteux and Smollett to Cohen and Putnam, till we got a vigorous translation again, a translation that is a pleasure to read, from Burton Raffel (Norton, 1995). The literary quality of a translation is a primary thing… And quality is more than a matter of fluency; there is more than enough bad fluent writing, especially in England.”

“Translations always contain errors, in Lowe-Porter's case too many. Against this, one should remember how much, in the thousands of pages she translated, she got right.
… there is something to be said for … the way she shortens the text. Mann is the opposite of laconic … transferred faithfully (dutifully) into English, there is a danger of the language losing pace, crowding up and becoming a lot of words… The danger of following Mann's word order too closely is tangled, inept sentences -- translationese.”

“[Lowe-Porter’s] language has distinction; it is not merely translated, it is written. [Luke’s] … is sluggish … disturbed by clumsy phrasing… verbose… unidiomatic… gluey, redundant … banal … isn't English. Literalism, as so often, here verges on the grotesque.”

“Mann's work needs a more correct translation, and time itself in any case is inexorable in its demand for fresh versions. These are now being provided for the novels by John E. Woods. Buck and Luke accused him of incompetence in German, but that is nonsense… when Woods misreads weiss (white) as weit (wide), that's a slip, not ignorance.”

“Yet I found myself turning away from Woods, irritated and often bored, to Lowe-Porter. The irritation, regularly provoked, was with his gross insensitivity to what rhetoricians call decorum. "Nope" he has the elder Buddenbrook, a man of the eighteenth century, say…”

Personally I don’t find such “lack of decorum” too off-putting. Perhaps Greenberg is being a bit stuffy here?

“First translations done enthusiastically out of love have vitality, force. But because they are the first to deal with what is a difficult new thing, they often stumble; or finding the foreign work's strangeness too shocking to the idiomatic expectations of the host language, they sometimes over-English. With the passage of time the foreign work wins acceptance and the professors move in. Scholarship takes over from literary taste and it becomes a chore to read the corrected translations. But finally, it is to be hoped, scholarship and taste unite, as with Burton Raffel's translation of Don Quijote, and the pleasure that is the beating heart of literature is recovered.”

To speak personally, for a moment, I enjoyed the Lowe-Porter translation of Buddenbrooks. I will be reading the first few pages of different translations to see which version of other Mann works I prefer. I’ve found in the past that just reading a few pages of a translation can quickly make up my mind! That’s enough to see if the translator/writer has literary style that suits me. And I think Greenberg is right – the literary qualities are essential - academic, literal translations are to be avoided.

[ElectricCatfish]

might wanna try Felix Krull (the novel, not the short story) if the more ponderous stuff bores you.

[mono]

Only very recently have I read anything by Mann, and I started with Doctor Faustus, the John E. Woods translation, based upon my fascination with the undying Faust/us trilogy, continued on by several writers; for this reason, Goethe and Marlowe brought me to him.
As how bluntly you placed your factual dislike for Mann, Vitruvius, in a literal manner more than by the author's ideas presented, and that you have read more of his material than I have, I take it to heart, and can see what you mean in Doctor Faustus, but I still loved it. Many parts of the novel flaunted with some verbosity in music theory, local German travels, and even some of the nearby businesses of 1930's-40's Germany and Switzerland, described with an almost Dickensian accuracy, breadth, and girth, but more intelligently with ample allusions enough to make Joyce envious. I would never dismiss Doctor Faustus as an easy read, but the largest "fuss" for me, though only by reading one of his novels, relied upon both the story and its composer - from a psychological, sociological, and literary perspective, Mann's storytelling abilities, attention to detail, virtue of allusion to Faust as well as somewhat inconspicuously to the Nazi regime, character development, and placing it all in quite a believable tale - wow, what a feat! Agreed, some parts of the novel dragged on to a near eternity, and one could likely create an abridged version 1/4th of the length without all the details, but, even through the superior English translation by Woods, one could appreciate the poetic prose, driving me to want to read more by Mann.

[chaplin]

Thomas Mann was one of Vladimir Nabokov's "big fakes" that he frequently, and in my opinion rightly, disparaged in his letters, interviews, and, occasionally, in a less direct manner, his fiction. Just a couple of samples:


"...I have been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called "great books". That, for instance, Mann's asinine Death in Venice or Pasternak's melodramatic and vilely written Zhivago or Faulkner's corncobby chronicles can be considered "masterpieces," or at least what journalists call "great books," is to me an absurd delusion, as when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair."

Also, Nabokov "finds Mann's style to be plodding and garrulous, his images...prove to be nothing but cliches (a more ambitious sentence often turning out to be an accumulation of several cliches), and his humor remindful of that of Max & Moritz. Moreover, he finds Mann's psychology artificial and his characters made to develop so as to fit the author's teleological purpose."

[stlukesguild]

Who really cares what Nabokov thought of Mann? His comments on Mann, Faulkner and Pasternak (read the comments of nearly any Russian writer concerning Pasternak)... all easily great... if not greater writers... to say nothing of his comments on Joyce... pretty much puts things in context. He is but a single voice... and there are any number of truly talented writers who equally dismissed Nabokov's work. Can we even tell why Nabokov is critical of Mann and Faulkner, and Pasternak? Perhaps it is out of mere jealousy over that Nobel Prize thing? Of course... if you have professed that your favorite writer is Nabokov, undoubtedly you'll not admit to such a petty possibility. Still... for nearly any writer that you personally like or dislike you can, with little effort, discover any number of writers who will seemingly support your position.

[chaplin]

Who really cares what Nabokov thought of Mann? His comments on Mann, Faulkner and Pasternak (read the comments of nearly any Russian writer concerning Pasternak)... all easily great... if not greater writers... to say nothing of his comments on Joyce... pretty much puts things in context. He is but a single voice... and there are any number of truly talented writers who equally dismissed Nabokov's work. Can we even tell why Nabokov is critical of Mann and Faulkner, and Pasternak? Perhaps it is out of mere jealousy over that Nobel Prize thing? Of course... if you have professed that your favorite writer is Nabokov, undoubtedly you'll not admit to such a petty possibility. Still... for nearly any writer that you personally like or dislike you can, with little effort, discover any number of writers who will seemingly support your position.

We can "tell why Nabokov is critical of Mann and Faulkner, and Pasternak": solely, because he thought little of their work. He said directly what he disliked in Mann's books above. As for jealousy over a prize, when Ivan Bunin won the Nobel Nabokov supported him and spoke highly of his work, and he also very much respected Pasternak's verse, and said so just as publicly as he panned Doctor Zhivago.

As for Joyce, Nabokov stated in that same quote that Ulysses was the best book of the twentieth century. Nabokov said that he admired books not authors, thus he praised Ulysses and simultaneously criticized Finnegans Wake; and the same with Zhivago and Pasternak's poetry. His harsh criticism is literary only. I offered the quotes as one great writer's opinion, just as you said--an opinion I agree with, as you also said.

[stlukesguild]

Nabokov has been equally the target of criticism. His work has been described as a "magnificent, complex, and sterile art" by Danilo Kiš while the great Russian poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko declared that he could hear the clatter of surgical tools in Nabokov's prose. Both of these comments echo the common criticism of Nabokov... that he was an effete master of artifice and "art for art's sake"... an aesthete obsessed with an over-attention to language and detail at the expense of character development and social commentary. Comments about Faulkner's "corncobby chronicles" certainly support this image of a snobbish aesthete. One might even suspect that a novel such as Pasternak's... a traditional, almost Romantic, sprawling novel... quite sincere (as opposed to Nabokov's sophisticated irony and classical reserve) would surely not appeal to him... especially in contrast to Pasternak's more consciously artful poetry. One might also suspect that his own deftly, light and ironic touch would be no less at odds with Faulkner's often brutal... even vulgar black humor and Mann's heavy seriousness and gravitas. Personally I agree that Pasternak was a far more brilliant poet than a novelist, and I am somewhat dismayed that his reputation in the Anglo-world is often based solely upon Dr. Zhivago. On the other hand, I find that Mann and Faulkner are no less brilliant writers than Nabokov, albeit quite different. Certainly I would not want every work of literature to bear Mann's knotty and difficult gravitas... but neither would I wish all of my reading to mirror the mere brilliant surface and artifice of Nabokov.

[Etienne]

Well Nabokov comments on Death in Venice, which gets so much praise, and I can agree that this story is overrated, Dr. Faustus, for instance is much better. Maybe some people just want to read Mann but cannot manage to go through his more (greater) voluminous works, so they fabricated one of his shorter works in being his masterpiece, I don't know.

As for Pasternak, I can only agree with his criticism of Dr. Zhivago. The way all the characters meeting each other randomly and out of the blue quickly becomes ridiculous. The book is only a big deus ex machina. You feel as if the action takes place in a small village, not the biggest country in the world.

I have nothing against Faulkner though.

And don't forget that Nabokov thought that Dostoevsky was a really bad novelist too. It's not because he is a great writer himself that he is necessarily right, you know?

[chaplin]

You're right, Stlukesguild, Nabokov has his critics too, as everyone does. And, as you've written, most of them find it convenient to label his work as all style and someone like Mann's all substance, it's nice and tidy--but it just isn't the case. I would more likely call Mann's writing a mere surface, with his characters stating, or himself narrating, in chapter-length orations, just what his philosophies or views of society are (esp. in The Magic Mountain); I guess one could consider the ideas themselves as substantive depth, but their presentation certainly lacks much artistic depth. Nabokov's depth is in the "texture" of his polished prose, in the complex connections of detail, and thus is not readily apparent on a first reading or explicitly stated anywhere, leading to a charge of sterility, I guess. In my opinion, it isn't as easy as his critics think it is to dismiss him as simply a stylist and nothing more.

[mal4mac]

Does Nabakov have a good word to say about anyone who competes with him? He's also highly critical of Russian translators. I've read at east one work by most writers mentioned in this thread, and Lolita comes bottom of my pile...

[Emil Miller]

I have never read Faulkner but have certainly read quite a lot about him on this forum. I can't help laughing at Nabokov's description of Faulkner's books as "corncobby chronicles" which is yet another illustration of Nabokov's mastery of the English language.

[billl]

I agree Brian Bean. Perhaps this is part of the humor, but I think that the jibe is a little off-target, when I consider Faulkner's prose (which is strikingly modern, and pretty much demands sophistication in the reader), but the stories ARE about the countryside, and it's an absolutely hilarious line!

[chaplin]

Does Nabakov have a good word to say about anyone who competes with him? He's also highly critical of Russian translators.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by competes, but I am guessing you mean 20th century Modernists with perhaps a reputation for complex, precise prose. In that regard he does: "My greatest masterpieces of twentieth century prose are, in this order: Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's Transformation, Biely's Petersburg, and the first half of Proust's fairy tale In Search of Lost Time." All of those authors compete with him in that sense. As for translators, he of course thought himself the best, as every translator probably does, but there have been some terrible translations of Russian classics. Overall, Nabokov was extremely severe in his criticisms, but he was consistent, both in what he attacked and the reasons for attacking it (and he was invariably witty as well). He didn't take random swings just for the fun of it; he had a precise definition of great art and didn't apologize for ignoring everything outside this definition, something which I don't find too contemptible.

[stlukesguild]

Nabokov was certainly witty... not unlike Wilde... and like Wilde the humor of his jibes can make the reader concur with his opinions far too rapidly. In a similar manner J.L. Borges deftly dispensed with his great artistic rival, Pablo Neruda, in his brilliant tale, The Aleph... and while his criticisms may certainly have been on target it in no way undermines Neruda for the very reason that his strengths far outweigh his weaknesses. Mann is certainly heavy going... but so is Dante, Milton, Goethe (at times), Dostoevsky, Faulkner (at times), etc... Nabokov falls more within the tradition of Sterne, Voltaire, Cervantes (albeit of a more urbane nature), Pope, Wilde, Kafka (perhaps), and Borges. I myself lean far more toward this side of the spectrum with Wilde, Kafka, Borges, and Calvino among my favorite Modern writers. While it is fine for Nabokov to stick with his narrow range of what he likes, when what he likes becomes equated to a "precise definition of great art" he is certainly open to criticism of his opinions.

[JCamilo]

I started with Dr.Faustus and had no problem with that and I had little musical knowledge. You do not have to read that book to learn about music, or watever Adorno wanted to talk about music, you have to read the chapter were the deal is done.

[JCamilo]

Nabokov was certainly witty... not unlike Wilde... and like Wilde the humor of his jibes can make the reader concur with his opinions far too rapidly. In a similar manner J.L. Borges deftly dispensed with his great artistic rival, Pablo Neruda, in his brilliant tale, The Aleph... and while his criticisms may certainly have been on target it in no way undermines Neruda for the very reason that his strengths far outweigh his weaknesses. Mann is certainly heavy going... but so is Dante, Milton, Goethe (at times), Dostoevsky, Faulkner (at times), etc... Nabokov falls more within the tradition of Sterne, Voltaire, Cervantes (albeit of a more urbane nature), Pope, Wilde, Kafka (perhaps), and Borges. I myself lean far more toward this side of the spectrum with Wilde, Kafka, Borges, and Calvino among my favorite Modern writers. While it is fine for Nabokov to stick with his narrow range of what he likes, when what he likes becomes equated to a "precise definition of great art" he is certainly open to criticism of his opinions.

Yeah, Nabokov is certainly too radical to not receive criticism. His eternal feud with Dostoievisky is a clear show that we must be careful with him, as much he is very acknowledgeable about literature.
I recall Borges trying to save Nabokov, that did not included any text of Dostoeivisky in an anthology of russian literature and said it was because there was not a single text that could enter there, according to Borges, the entire work of Dostoievisky had to enter, since it was impossible, Nabokov could put neither. Obviously, not Nabokov real reason but since when it is necessary to be the real reason to be the best reason?

I would say, guys like Voltaire, Cervantes (and the latter masters of short stories) are 1001 storytellers. They like the sequence of different stories, hence the unusual change of moods, place, the traveling and the economy of language, since they are not going to remain too much place in the same local, individual ,etc. Guys like Mann, which means Dostoievisky, are torturing us (in a good masochist way) with the slow attempt to reproduce life, to have the sea calm before the storm. Those book are usually like this - you can find a great chapter, and this chapter seems to justify all work. Like the Great Inquisitor in the Brother Karamazov.

[Etienne]

Cervantes

This reminds me, Nabokov also had something against Cervantes. I have to check out... I think I remember Kundera criticizing Nabokov for that... have to check out.

[chaplin]

This reminds me, Nabokov also had something against Cervantes. I have to check out... I think I remember Kundera criticizing Nabokov for that... have to check out.

"Don Quixote has been called the greatest novel ever written. This is, of course, nonsense...but its hero, whose personality is a stroke of genius on the part of Cervantes, looms so wonderfully above the skyline of literature, a gaunt giant on a lean nag, that the book lives and will live through the sheer vitality that Cervantes has injected into the main character of a very patchy haphazard tale..."

"I object to such statements as '[the] perception [of Cervantes] was as sensitive, his mind as supple, his imagination as active, and his humor as subtle as those of Shakespeare.' Oh no--even if we limit Shakespeare to his comedies, Cervantes lags behind in all those things. Don Quixote but squires King Lear--and squires him well. The only matter in which Cervantes and Shakespeare are equals is the matter of influence, of spiritual irrigation--I have in view the long shadow cast upon receptive posterity of a created image which may continue to live independently from the book itself. Shakespeare's plays, however, will continue to live, apart from the shadow they project." (Both from Nabokov's Lectures on Don Quixote)

[JCamilo]

Of course, no writer can have anything against Quixote, they all have against cervantes, which aparently flaw came from his humanity and that fighting windmills looms over even romeo and juliet. The power of this book is such that they all demand perfection from him. Nabokov is not alone there and it is a simple fact, that every single writer is afraid of turning to be Don Quixote. A great horror story...

[stlukesguild]

Nabokov's criticism is certainly on the mark with regard to Cervantes. The Don and Pancho exist beyond the book to an extent that perhaps surpasses any single character invented by Shakespeare... and the invention of such characters... fictional characters that are so real they seem to exist beyond the boundaries of the fictions in which they were born... is among the greatest strength of both writers. Cervantes' novel is indeed indeed "patchy"... "flawed" even as opposed to the almost perfect fictions such as Madame Bovary, The Great Gatsby, or Lolita. J.L. Borges (a far greater critic and writer than Nabokov by my recognizing) admits as much... pointing out the especially egregious inclusion of Cervantes' absolutely horrible (not mediocre... but horrible) poetry. Borges then compares Cervantes' work to the perfect masterpiece... to this or flawless sonnet. He concludes quite rightly that there are certain types of grand sprawling masterpieces that rise above their numerous flaws and attain something transcendent because of the merits of their strongest elements. The humanity of the Don and his unrivaled friendship with Sancho continually redeems the book from the horrible jokes that make one wince to the vulgarities... and even the (:sick:) poetry. Shakespeare, as Borges and endless others have noted, is also not without his crude passages... his awkward transitions... and yet... in spite of these "failings"... who would not prefer to spend time with Hamlet, Lear, MacBeth, Falstaff or any other of Shakespeare's imperfect yet perfectly human characters to any of the perfect inventions of Racine (excepting, perhaps Mortalterror:brow:)? Perhaps only Dante is able to maintain a structural and linguistic perfection over such an extended period and through such complexities of character, narrative, etc...

[stlukesguild]

JCamillo... while you're on line, what is your take on the poetry of Eugenio de Andrade? I've just come across his works recently in translation.

[mortalterror]

who would not prefer to spend time with Hamlet, Lear, MacBeth, Falstaff or any other of Shakespeare's imperfect yet perfectly human characters to any of the perfect inventions of Racine (excepting, perhaps Mortalterror:brow:)?
You silence my objections before I can voice them.

[mal4mac]

Shakespeare, as Borges and endless others have noted, is also not without his crude passages... his awkward transitions... and yet... in spite of these "failings"... who would not prefer to spend time with Hamlet, Lear, MacBeth, Falstaff or any other of Shakespeare's imperfect yet perfectly human characters to any of the perfect inventions of Racine ...

I'm reading Henry IV part 2 at the moment, which is like being given a life transfusion. Where are the awkward transitions and crude passages in his mature masterpieces?

[JCamilo]

JCamillo... while you're on line, what is your take on the poetry of Eugenio de Andrade? I've just come across his works recently in translation.

I am not much familiar with post-pessoa portuguese poetry, because after the modernism brazilian and portuguese poetry had a small division (and in my opinion, the brazilian side had the advantage here, more able to use the portuguese language than Portugal itself) but the little I read in anthologies, I think he is a good, intelectual like poet, but not very original (meaning, nothing that I would not find reading Pessoa or with Carlos Drummond de Andrade or Manoel Bandeira).


Anyways, it is not like Nabokov is right or wrong, I think in the end, it is the thin (and irrelevant) like of style. Classicism and Baroque. Because after all, Romeo and Juliet are bigger than the text - and there is something special about Don and Sancho indeed, their thin relation with readers and writers, obviously the one million dollar question. Cervantes was a master of prose when prose was something clumsy (and yeah, with bad passages in the book, but the key is not writing all great passages, but leading the reader from one to another, and even Shakespeare wrote bad plays and that was his homeground) - this leads to that question about size of work.

Anyways, later Borges said he was wrong about Cervantes (specially his dream to have it written by Quevedo, frankly, it would be a matter of wishing Pope to write One to a Grecian Urn and hoping to have a greater effect) but perhaps it was the old man age talking. If Cervantes had written several versions of Don Quixote, perhaps one century later the editors would have build a flawless book with the better pieces. But he had no such luck...

[Barbarous]

Has anyone read Joseph and His Brothers? I am considering reading it.