Avant-Garde Aesthetics and Fascist Politics: Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus and Theodor W. Adorno's "Philosophy of Modern Music"

Abstract

The preoccupation with theory over the last four decades has made us increasingly aware of the way philosophical discourse and literary practice are mutually constitutive. This awareness is customarily engendered by theoretically informed critics drawing out the philosophical assumptions embedded in literary texts. Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, 1 however, is unusual in that it actually incorporates Theodor W. Adorno's history of musical form, a history permeated by his materialist critique of Hegelian idealism. Both written in the early 1940s, Mann's novel and Adorno's philosophical discourse carry the imprint of the Nazi terror which drove the two authors into exile in California, bringing the novelist and the philosopher together in 1943.2 Adomo provided Mann with a manuscript version of Philosophie der neuen Musik [Philosophy of Modern Music].3 As Mann himself later acknowledged, he found Adorno's philosophical views on music and culture so congenial to his own thinking