Between Autobiography and Fiction: Thomas Mann’s Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus: Roman eines Romans

Abstract

Between Autobiography and Fiction: Thomas Mann’s Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus: Roman eines Romans Sean Ireton In 1949, two years after the appearance of Doktor Faustus, Thomas Mann published a roughly 150-page account of the novel’s genesis, which he titled: Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus: Roman eines Romans. On the surface, this text appears to be an autobiographical record of the four years that he spent working on the novel. With the aid of his journals from the period, Mann seeks to reconstruct, “die Geschichte des Faustus, eingebettet wie sie ist in den Drang und Tumult der äußeren Ereignisse” (GW 11: 148).1 Such “tumultuous events” include his bouts with various illnesses and the ongoing war in Europe, which he followed closely in the news. Despite the countless autobiographical details provided in the Entstehung, the secondary title that Mann chose, Roman eines Romans, suggests more than just a factual memoir. The implication of this subtitle is that the Entstehung can also be read as a work of literature in its own right and perhaps as a kind of “metanovel”: that is, as a text that reflects not only on the making of its specific predecessor, Doktor Faustus, but also on the transcendental question of the novel as a literary genre. Taking the subtitle, Roman eines Romans, as a cue, the present interpretation of Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus explores the aesthetic dimension of this so-called “novel,” probing its taxonomic limits and relating it to Mann’s own view of what constitutes modern literature. Mann in effect constructs a thematically coherent work that transcends autobiography and approaches fiction, a work in which he himself functions as both reflected character and reflective narrator. The amount of scholarship devoted to the Entstehung is negligible compared to the critical interest in Doktor Faustus. The fact that Mann’s thematically and stylistically complex Faust epic, which he conceived as no less than “den Roman meiner Epoche” (GW 11: 169), should overshadow the relatively prosaic narrative of its genesis is hardly surprising. In fact, almost all discussions of the Entstehung occur only marginally in analyses of Faustus. The main question put to the former text concerns Mann’s motivation for writing it in the first place. Mann claimed that the impetus behind the book was to give credit to Theodor Adorno, whose [End Page 210] contribution in matters pertaining to musicology was not given proper due in the novel itself (Briefe, 1948–1955 und Nachlese 225, 240). Further reasons include: a reluctance to put his grandiose Faustus project fully behind him; an attempt to produce a miniature Dichtung und Wahrheit as part of his ongoing Goethe imitatio; and the desire to render an “account” (in the sense of a Rechenschaftsbericht) of his novel given the controversy it was beginning to raise in Germany. A summary of these motives can be found in “Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus: Thomas Mann’s Narrated Poetics,” a published lecture by Rüdiger Görner, who also addresses but does not fully explore the element of aesthetic theory in the text. For instance, Görner never develops his initial characterization of the Entstehung as a “metanarration,” no doubt because he tends to dismiss Mann’s deliberations as a mere parody of poetics. Though obviously not a novel in the strict generic sense of the term, the Entstehung nevertheless distorts the boundaries of literary taxonomy, particularly the dividing lines between fiction and nonfiction. Indeed, Mann bends the taxonomic limits of his entire Faustus project, hinting that Doktor Faustus can just as well be read as a biography and the Entstehung as a novel. Doktor Faustus not only lacks the conventional label “Roman,” but further purports to be the biography of a German composer, as indicated in the subtitle (Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn erzählt von einem Freunde) and emphasized by Serenus Zeitblom several times throughout the narrative. In the Entstehung, Mann makes similar remarks about the formal status of Faustus: “folglich keinen Roman, sondern eine Biographie mit allen Charakteristiken einer solchen zu schreiben” (GW 11: 164). And more than halfway through his near seven-hundred-page book, he is still struck by its...