Thomas Mann - Where to Begin

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

So, I was wanting to read something by Thomas Mann. Where should I start? This board has yet to steer me wrong.

[mal4mac]

So, I was wanting to read something by Thomas Mann. Where should I start? This board has yet to steer me wrong.

I started with Dr Faustus, which put me off reading Mann for a while. Then I read Buddenbrooks - great book! Now I want to read more.

[Manchegan]

I bought a copy of his novella, "Death in Venice," that came with a handful of other shorter stories. I've always found that to be a good way to dive into a new other - small bites. He has a very peculiar style that took me a while to get comfortable with, but by he's one of my favorites now.

[Helga]

his short stories are really good! I would start with them My favorite are Mr. Friedeman, Death, Gladius dei and Death in Venice. I have dr. Faustus but haven't read it yet.

[Emil Miller]

I started with Dr Faustus, which put me off reading Mann for a while. Then I read Buddenbrooks - great book! Now I want to read more.

Yes, a fairly typical error I should imagine, The Magic Mountain should also be avoided to start with although it's a marvellous book. Buddenbrooks is the best novel to begin with but Death in Venice is much shorter and also worth reading. My own recommendation would be for Confessions of the Confidence Man Felix Krull. Sometimes referred to as simply Felix Krull.

[Bustrofedon]

I did start with Doctor Faustus and really enjoyed it. He has been off my radar for a while but Magic Mountain is on my to-do list. But I hear, as in this thread, that you can't go wrong with Buddenbrooks.

[Desolation]

My recommendation for diving into a new author is to look up his books on Amazon, and read the reviews to see which one looks the most appealing to you.

People have a tendency to recommend starting with an author's shorter/simpler books, which I don't think is always the way to go. But I don't really care much for short stories, and prefer longer novels, so maybe that's just me.

I've got The Magic Mountain at the top of my to-read list.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Cool, thanks for the recs, all. Leaning towards "Death and Venice," which also comes with seven other short stories on Amazon.

[arrytus]

Tonio Kroeger.

[stlukesguild]

I would concur with the suggestions to begin with one of the short stories/novellas: Tonio Kroeger, Felix Krull Confidence Man, or A Death in Venice. On the other hand, I began reading The Magic Mountain, and Doctor Faustus (which I loved). I was obsessed at the time with reading all the great European tomes which I had never been exposed to in high school, including Les Miserables, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, The Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game, The Tin Drum, Don Quixote, Goethe's Faust, The Three Musketeers, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, etc... This was at a time when before my focus in reading shifted more toward poetry.

[Jozanny]

Methinks I was exposed to a full critical analysis of Death In Venice in school, but I read Buddenbrooks on my own and concluded Mann is simply too transitional for me. He illustrates how exhausted Romanticism is in his mature phase, how the 20th century was ready for the Modernists. I'm reading his short stories, and though I can appreciate his skill, his voice is repugnant, and injects like a bad case of heartburn; however, if one likes Germanic catch up plays to the rest of what is going on in European literary circles, Buddenbrooks is your standard bourgeois decliner.

[Bustrofedon]

Is that vitriol dripping down on me from above? ;)

[stlukesguild]

Um... JoZ... Buddenbrooks was not mature Mann. That was his first novel. Doctor Faustus, Magic Mountain, etc.. are far more mature works and every bit as Modernist as anything going on in the rest of European Modernism. Indeed, you seem to forget that Germany was a leading force in Modernism from the start with Freud and Nietzsche and Buchner, Kleist, and Hoffmann on through Expressionism in film (Nosferatu, M, The Cabinet of Dr, Caligari) painting (Max Beckmann, E.L. Kirchner, Grosz, Dix, Schiele), music (Zemlinsky, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Kurt Weill, and Richard Strauss), theater and literature (Kafka, Rilke, Walser, Trakl, Roth, Walter Benjamen, Brecht, Wedekind, Hofmannsthal, Hesse, Mann, etc...) and on through the post-war period with Mann, Hesse, Gunter Grass, Max Frisch, Friederich Durrenmatt, Heinrich Boll, Paul Celan, Gunter Eich, etc... The Germans were far from playing catch-up. Indeed, had it not been for the rise of Hitler their cultural impact quite likely might have surpassed that of France and the US... let alone Spain, Italy, Russia, or Britain.

As for the exhaustion of Romanticism... a nice idea... but I doubt it is at all true or at all relevant to the development of art. The greatest American contribution to the art of painting: Abstract Expressionism, was a distinctly Romantic art... as were a great many American novels of the same era. If anything, it is the theory-driven notion that art follows a single dominant superior direction (Romanticism to Modernism to Post Modernism... however these may be defined) that is dated. James Joyce', T.S. Eliot's, and Ezra Pound's Modernism is no more or less relevant than Proust's, Rilke's, Montale's and Neruda's... rooted as they may be in Romanticism.

[Jozanny]

I have not read his Doctor Faustus or Magic Mountain, but perhaps I will browse them one day in the library. I am not partial to Mann, however, even having read Venice.

I like Musil. Mann not so much.

[OrphanPip]

Kafka was Austro-Hungarian/Czech though.

Edit: As were several of those composers too. Poor Austria, all the credit for its cultural legacy gets absorbed by Germany.

[stlukesguild]

And Celan was Romanian Jewish... but all wrote in German. I follow the usual manner of dividing artists/writers according to their linguistic background rather than by the ever-changing borders of nation-states. There was no Germany until 1871, Austria and it's territories were part of the old Holy Roman Empire until 1806, and even Italy did not exist as a nation until 1861. Of course I have no personal preferences for Germany or Austria... I have grandparents from both.

Poor Austria, all the credit for its cultural legacy gets absorbed by Germany.

I don't think of it that way... Many of the artists/composers/writers moved freely among the various Germanic/German-speaking states: Austria, Bohemia, Bavaria, Prussia, etc... It makes more sense to me to assume that Mozart was German and Bach were German for the simple reason that they wrote and spoke in German and lived in one one of the Germanic states, rather than to try to discern what the borders were when they were born (Bach in the Electorate of Saxony, and Mozart in the Bishopric of Salzburg and not the Kingdom of Bohemia... which included much of present-day Austria. Just look at the various divisions of the Holy Roman Empire at the time of Mozart:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5299/5449386265_8c4c5c6428_b.jpg

[OrphanPip]

I don't think of it that way... Many of the artists/composers/writers moved freely among the various Germanic/German-speaking states: Austria, Bohemia, Bavaria, Prussia, etc... It makes more sense to me to assume that Mozart was German and Bach were German for the simple reason that they wrote and spoke in German and lived in one one of the Germanic states, rather than to try to discern what the borders were when they were born (Bach in the Electorate of Saxony, and Mozart in the Bishopric of Salzburg and not the Kingdom of Bohemia... which included much of present-day Austria. Just look at the various divisions of the Holy Roman Empire at the time of Mozart:


Except that we're talking about 20th century figures here, and the Second Viennese School composers were nationally Austrians, so the distinction isn't ambiguous. They were also part of a movement in musical modernism that didn't occur in Germany, so it's a little silly to speak of them as German composers, since Austria today as a cultural/national identity is contiguous with the Austria those composers grew up in.

Edit: Anyway, it's not even important.

[stlukesguild]

Except that we're talking about 20th century figures here, and the Second Viennese School composers were nationally Austrians, so the distinction isn't ambiguous.

How is it any more or less "ambiguous" than it was during Mozart's time? The borders have simply changed to something a bit simpler, but the division of the German-speaking people into two distinct nations has nothing to do with culture and language and everything to do with the whims of history.

Not to include Kafka or Hesse among German literature seems as inane as to exclude Sir Walter Scott, Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, and Samuel Beckett from the history of British literature.

Balkanization didn't seem of much success politically, and I doubt its value in cultural terms. To include Oscar Wilde in British literature, Haydn in German music, and Salvador Dali among Spanish painters in no way ignores the contributions of distinct smaller cultures (Ireland, Austria, Catalonia) within the larger whole. Even within American arts and culture we can still recognize distinctions between the arts and culture of New England vs the Gulf Coast vs NYC or California.

[OrphanPip]

How is it any more or less "ambiguous" than it was during Mozart's time? The borders have simply changed to something a bit simpler, but the division of the German-speaking people into two distinct nations has nothing to do with culture and language and everything to do with the whims of history.

Because they had a distinct sense of nationalism apart from Germany. They actually had a notion of Austria's distinction from Germany. To obscure this is to ignore the influence the German national ideal had, or the influence of the Habsburgs legacy on Austria.



Not to include Kafka or Hesse among German literature seems as inane as to exclude Sir Walter Scott, Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, and Samuel Beckett from the history of British literature.

At what point do we draw the line when it's no longer appropriate for a dominant culture to expropriate the cultural legacies of other cultures. The English imposed their language on the Irish, thus by virtue all Irish literature is now British? Should Chinua Achebe be considered a British author? He's writing in English after all.



Balkanization didn't seem of much success politically, and I doubt its value in cultural terms. To include Oscar Wilde in British literature, Haydn in German music, and Salvador Dali among Spanish painters in no way ignores the contributions of distinct smaller cultures (Ireland, Austria, Catalonia) within the larger whole. Even within American arts and culture we can still recognize distinctions between the arts and culture of New England vs the Gulf Coast vs NYC or California.

No, that's exactly what it does, it erases the impact of the smaller cultures by placing them as a subcategory of the larger.

We might as well not even bother speaking of American arts and culture, since they're merely part of English culture anyway.

[Jozanny]

It may be as Hitchens has recently published, that ethnic divisions between very similar groups leads to intense rivalry. I am part Austrian, something I don't often let out of the bag, and that may go toward my preferences toward Vienna over Berlin. I don't hate Mann, as I said, I see his merit, but reading him is disjunctive. "Little Herr Friedemann" is rather savage, for such a placid story line. Servant cripples child. Child lives life of abstraction. Likes a girl. Drowns self when married flame flings him off. This same sort of brutality threads itself through most of his work that I know, to date.

[mal4mac]

Um... JoZ... Buddenbrooks was not mature Mann. That was his first novel. Doctor Faustus, Magic Mountain, etc.. are far more mature works and every bit as Modernist as anything going on in the rest of European Modernism.

He was 26 years old when he published Buddenbrooks, that's mature enough for me! Although I agree the work isn't Modernist, that doesn't mean the work is immature - otherwise where does that leave Dickens and Tolstoy?

That extreme Modernist Faulkner thought Buddenbrooks was "the greatest novel of the century" - it was published in 1901 so I assume he meant 20th! (Or was he being a "clever Modernist" and leaving the actual century he meant in a Modernist fog?)

It has some very mature themes, including the protagonists encounter with Schopenhauer's philosophy, as wikipedia points out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddenbrooks#Literary_significance_and_criticism

Although I found dr faustus "difficult" I did not find it as difficult/modernist as Proust or late Joyce, and may attempt it again at some time, maybe in a "better" translation. John E. Woods seems to be the flavour of the month, I might try his translation.

[Emil Miller]

He was 26 years old when he published Buddenbrooks, that's mature enough for me! Although I agree the work isn't Modernist, that doesn't mean the work is immature - otherwise where does that leave Dickens and Tolstoy?

That extreme Modernist Faulkner thought Buddenbrooks was "the greatest novel of the century" - it was published in 1901 so I assume he meant 20th! (Or was he being a "clever Modernist" and leaving the actual century he meant in a Modernist fog?)

It has some very mature themes, including the protagonists encounter with Schopenhauer's philosophy, as wikipedia points out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddenbrooks#Literary_significance_and_criticism

Although I found dr faustus "difficult" I did not find it as difficult as late Proust or late Joyce, and am likely to attempt it again at some time, maybe in a "better" translation. John E. Woods seems to be the flavour of the month in Mann translator. Any thoughts on favourite translations?

I didn't know that Mann was only 26 when he wrote Buddenbrooks, I thought it was written when he was older because it is so masterly. An interesting insight into its powerful presentation of a family's decline was that it was one of the books that was burned by the National Socialists on the grounds that 'Deutsche Familien gehen nicht zugrunde', German families don't go to ruin.
One of Mann's books that I particularly enjoyed was Lotte in Weimar which deals with Goethe living in Weimar when he is visited by the woman he was in love with 50 years previously. It makes a for a more lightweight read than much of Mann's work.
I don't know about translations, as I have only read Mann in German, but most of his books have been translated into English and I should think that Dr. Faustus would have at least one reasonable translation.

[Ghuyuran]

I have read John E. Woods translation of Dr. Faustus and liked it. It is a very difficult book if you are not well-versed in musical jargon, however. I found I was struggling and I did not understand a lot of passages where the narrator describes his friend`s musical genius. You will need a dictionary for this translation if you cannot read french --there is a few sentences every now and then in french which are not translated by the translator. Of course, some basic knowledge of German culture and language is also primordial.

It was my first Thomas Mann book and though it took me some time to read it, I really enjoyed the experience.

[mortalterror]

That extreme Modernist Faulkner thought Buddenbrooks was "the greatest novel of the century" - it was published in 1901 so I assume he meant 20th! (Or was he being a "clever Modernist" and leaving the actual century he meant in a Modernist fog?)

"Mice: Do you think Thomas Mann is a great writer?
Y.C.: He would be a great writer if he had never written another thing than Buddenbrooks."- Ernest Hemingway, Esquire, October 1935

[Jozanny]

I think lukes misunderstood me, so let me rephrase without overly investing, and then I'll go away, as beyond abusing Mann for my own ends on my blog, I am not running around in circles to read more of his oeuvre than I currently own: He is too transitional for me, in his early development as a writer, between an exhausted Romantic era and the Modernism that was then brewing. I know Buddenbrooks was an early effort and for what it is it's fine, but every novel in the traditional didactic sense is Buddenbrooks or follows it and I frankly get bored with the plot points of ever impending material doom.

[sixsmith]

Balkanization didn't seem of much success politically, and I doubt its value in cultural terms. To include Oscar Wilde in British literature, Haydn in German music, and Salvador Dali among Spanish painters in no way ignores the contributions of distinct smaller cultures (Ireland, Austria, Catalonia) within the larger whole. Even within American arts and culture we can still recognize distinctions between the arts and culture of New England vs the Gulf Coast vs NYC or California.

I must disagree here St Lukes. I imagine that in some cases, cultural distinctions are of little consequence. However, it seems to me culturally inaccurate, for example, to call Yeats a British poet, or Joyce a British novelist. The independence of the Republic of Ireland has everthing to do with culture and language.

[stlukesguild]

I must disagree here St Lukes. I imagine that in some cases, cultural distinctions are of little consequence. However, it seems to me culturally inaccurate, for example, to call Yeats a British poet, or Joyce a British novelist. The independence of the Republic of Ireland has everything to do with culture and language.

I don't think I would call Yeats a British poet and certainly not an English poet, however he is most certainly listed along with Wilde, Swift, Scott, etc... under the heading of "British Literature"... even on a resource as "reliable" as Wikipedia.:rolleyes5:

By the same token Mahler may certainly be Austrian, Bach a Saxon, and Mozart a Salzburger (or however he might have defined himself) but all are part of the history of German music.

SLG quote-How is it any more or less "ambiguous" than it was during Mozart's time? The borders have simply changed to something a bit simpler, but the division of the German-speaking people into two distinct nations has nothing to do with culture and language and everything to do with the whims of history.

Because they had a distinct sense of nationalism apart from Germany. They actually had a notion of Austria's distinction from Germany. To obscure this is to ignore the influence the German national ideal had, or the influence of the Habsburgs legacy on Austria.

Did they? You are certain that Mahler and Zemlinsky were nationalists who thought of themselves as distinctly different from the Germans? You know this for a fact? Or you're just winging it? The reality is that Brahms, born in what is today Germany and Mahler, a Jew, born in what is today Austria clearly thought of themselves as part of the same Germanic tradition of music. Both composers struggled with and were profoundly inspired by the German-born Beethoven as well as the Salzburgian Mozart. Brahms (the German-born) rebelled against the innovations of the very German Wagner, while Mahler, Bruckner, Zemlinsky, Strauss, Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg were all profoundly impacted by Wagner.

At what point do we draw the line when it's no longer appropriate for a dominant culture to expropriate the cultural legacies of other cultures. The English imposed their language on the Irish, thus by virtue all Irish literature is now British? Should Chinua Achebe be considered a British author? He's writing in English after all.

And one might ask, at what point do we draw the line when hacking artists into Balkanized sub-groups? Are we to refer to Leonardo as a Florentine and Titian as a Venetian and pretend they were not also both Italians because Italy didn't exist? Of course as one delves into the history of these cultures one recognizes that Florence, Milan, Pisa, Rome, Venice, etc... were all distinct cultural centers just as Salzburg, Vienna, Leipzig, Dresden, Mannheim, Weimar etc... each were distinct musical centers within the larger German musical tradition. When you stretch to former colonies in Africa, Asia, or the Americas you are simply taking the argument to the absurdly illogical end. The differences between Salzburg, Vienna, and Dresden are not quite on the same scale as the differences between London and New York or New Delhi. We have vast distances between such cultures, huge geographical distances, and vastly different cultures.

it erases the impact of the smaller cultures by placing them as a subcategory of the larger.

Nonsense. There is no erasure of the differences between Venetian and Florentine painting... regardless of the fact that both are commonly gathered under the larger category of "Italian Painting". There is no erasure of the impact of Vienna upon the arts (and let's face it... it is the large cultural centers which matter... Salzburg, Dresden, Paris, London, Milan, Venice, Florence, etc...) It was a major music center for most of the German-speaking world... whether the individuals were born in Saxony, Prussia, Salzburg, Austria, or Hungary. Neither am I alone in so categorizing art/music/and literature. Most books I've come across join Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler, etc... all under the heading of "German", "Germanic", or "German/Austrian" composers. Once again, Wikipedia defines German literature as literature written in the German language by authors from Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, etc...

We might as well not even bother speaking of American arts and culture, since they're merely part of English culture anyway.

Again, you are being intentionally obtuse. American literature through the revolutionary period would undoubtedly be seen as little more than an extension of British literature... and the manner in which British literature is taught in the US one gets the notion that American literature builds upon the British tradition more than any other... to the point that one might sometime hear of the term Anglo-American tradition. At a certain point, however, American culture becomes increasingly independent and distinct from that of Britain... due to the vast geographical distances, due to huge differences in history, and due, undoubtedly, to the influx of different cultures: Africans, Chinese, Japanese, French, Germans, Eastern Europeans, Hispanics, etc...

But certainly... by all means feel free to organize your library as you see fit. I'm fine with "German Literature" without the need to split writers and composers into smaller groups: Austrian, Salzburgian, Saxon, Swiss, Bavarian, Bohemian, etc... nor my Latin-American writers into anything other than one grouping for those writing in Spanish and another for those writing in Portuguese. I don't have time to split them all into Brazilian, Costa-Rican, Uruguayan, Chilean, Argentinian, Andean, etc... but certainly... feel free.

[OrphanPip]

Did they? You are certain that Mahler and Zemlinsky were nationalists who thought of themselves as distinctly different from the Germans? You know this for a fact? Or you're just winging it? The reality is that Brahms, born in what is today Germany and Mahler, a Jew, born in what is today Austria clearly thought of themselves as part of the same Germanic tradition of music. Both composers struggled with and were profoundly inspired by the German-born Beethoven as well as the Salzburgian Mozart. Brahms (the German-born) rebelled against the innovations of the very German Wagner, while Mahler, Bruckner, Zemlinsky, Strauss, Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg were all profoundly impacted by Wagner.

I was speaking specifically of the 20th century figures we were speaking of before. Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg certainly identified as Austrians. And we can equally look to Rossini responding to Wagner, just as Webern does in his operas, does that make responding to Wagner itself a determination of Germaness. I don't think we can find many composers in the 20th century, especially in opera, that were not influenced by Wagner. The Second Viennese school as an academy wasn't just distinct from German arts, it was also crushed by Germans, declared "decadent" by the Nazis when they annexed Austria.



And one might ask, at what point do we draw the line when hacking artists into Balkanized sub-groups? Are we to refer to Leonardo as a Florentine and Titian as a Venetian and pretend they were not also both Italians because Italy didn't exist? Of course as one delves into the history of these cultures one recognizes that Florence, Milan, Pisa, Rome, Venice, etc... were all distinct cultural centers just as Salzburg, Vienna, Leipzig, Dresden, Mannheim, Weimar etc... each were distinct musical centers within the larger German musical tradition. When you stretch to former colonies in Africa, Asia, or the Americas you are simply taking the argument to the absurdly illogical end. The differences between Salzburg, Vienna, and Dresden are not quite on the same scale as the differences between London and New York or New Delhi. We have vast distances between such cultures, huge geographical distances, and vastly different cultures.

You're ignoring context. To speak of Mozart being Austrian is different from speaking of Berg as Austrian. The difference being that Berg was a product of a time of Nation-States, national identity, and carried an Austrian passport.

What makes you the grand arbiter of when some cultural distinctions are major and when others aren't. London and New York are more different than Berlin and Vienna? They speak different dialects of German, Austria is a predominantly Catholic country with a small number of Lutherans and a larger number of Calvinist, whereas Germany is a country with a much larger influence of protestantism. The autocracy of the Habsburgs itself can't be ignored, being the center of one of the largest empires in the world makes Austria a very different center of power than the relatively youthful German nation state.

There is enough cultural distinction to at least make Austrians assert themselves as a group apart from Germany. And even cultural divisions within Germany are still significant, at least that's what my ex tells me, and he has done a lot of his graduate work in Germany and spent a few years living there.



Nonsense. There is no erasure of the differences between Venetian and Florentine painting... regardless of the fact that both are commonly gathered under the larger category of "Italian Painting". There is no erasure of the impact of Vienna upon the arts (and let's face it... it is the large cultural centers which matter... Salzburg, Dresden, Paris, London, Milan, Venice, Florence, etc...) It was a major music center for most of the German-speaking world... whether the individuals were born in Saxony, Prussia, Salzburg, Austria, or Hungary. Neither am I alone in so categorizing art/music/and literature. Most books I've come across join Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler, etc... all under the heading of "German", "Germanic", or "German/Austrian" composers. Once again, Wikipedia defines German literature as literature written in the German language by authors from Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, etc...

Certainly sometimes broad categories are useful, and sometimes narrow ones are more useful. Although, I think here you're making more out of the two denotations of "German Literature" than what it is, you're ignoring the fact that the term can be used as short hand for German language lit, but it can also be used to refer to the national literature of Germany. Kafka is a German language writer, but that doesn't erase his national status as a Czech/Austro-Hungarian writer.



Again, you are being intentionally obtuse. American literature through the revolutionary period would undoubtedly be seen as little more than an extension of British literature... and the manner in which British literature is taught in the US one gets the notion that American literature builds upon the British tradition more than any other... to the point that one might sometime hear of the term Anglo-American tradition. At a certain point, however, American culture becomes increasingly independent and distinct from that of Britain... due to the vast geographical distances, due to huge differences in history, and due, undoubtedly, to the influx of different cultures: Africans, Chinese, Japanese, French, Germans, Eastern Europeans, Hispanics, etc...

And the Austro-Hungarian empire contained Slovenes, Bulgarian, Hungarians, Austrians, Croats, and Serbs. That doesn't make their culture distinct from Germany? We can equally say that Kafka builds on German literature, but that he is a distinctly Czech writer, because he was responding to the harsh conservatism of the late Habsburg dynasty, and the influence of his Czech speaking Jewish heritage. He is certainly the product of a multi-ethnic heritage, being the child of Czech speaking Jews that raised him German speaking.

[the facade]

I read "Death in Venice" a while ago and I found it riveting.