'Doktor Faustus' zwischen Tradition und Moderne: Eine quellenkritische und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu Thomas Manns literarischem Selbstbild (review)

Abstract

MLR, 100.2, 2005 565 arguments increasingly critical?so that the best chapter is the last, on Jeder stirbtfur sich allein. But Wilkes remains too literal and too unliterary in his readings. He looks, forexample, forexplicit 'evidence' of attitudes in Kleiner Mann ? was nun?, whereas in fact, although the point of view is not consistently that of the Pinnebergs, the tale is largely told within a deliberately restricted petty bourgeois mind-set which must appear at least sweetly naive, ifnot downright misguided, to many a more intelligent or more informed reader. One of the charms of the novel is that it thus permits a glimpse of perspectives way beyond the horizons of the Pinnebergs, without, how? ever, making anything explicit. 'Sehen Sie,' Fallada wrote to Bernhard von Brentano in July 1932, 'der Leser zieht ja doch seine Schlusse' (quoted p. 55). St Hugh's College, Oxford Tom Kuhn 'Doktor Faustus' zwischen Tradition und Moderne: Eine quellenkritischeund rezeptionsgeschichtlicheUntersuchung zu Thomas Manns literarischem Selbstbild. By Eva Schmidt-Schutz. (Thomas-Mann-Studien, 28) Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann. 2003. 357 PP- ?58. ISBN 3-465-03212-8. Was Thomas Mann a 'classicist' or a 'modernist'? Or is this now an obsolete, and obfuscating, question? Eva Schmidt-Schutz begins her study of Doktor Faustus by tracing the shiftin the critical reception over the last three decades from an emphasis on Mann as a 'traditionalist' (Piitz, Reed, Lange) to one on the 'modernist' (Heftrich, Lehnert, Vaget, Hansen, Dierks) or even 'postmodernist' (Roberts, Renner) aspects of his work. (Oddly, she neglects to mention Franz Zeder's study of the 'sceptical reflexivity' of Doktor Faustus, published under the title Studienratsmusik (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1995).) The author suggests that Mann's relationship to Joyce of? fers a perspective on his own 'modernity', noting that Hermann Broch saw a similar 'claim to religious totality' (whatever that means) at work in the novels of both writers, while Arno Schirokauer was particularly sensitive to the presence of mythic structures at work in Lotte in Weimar, and Harry Levin's critical study of Joyce made a deep impression, as Mann's Die Entstehung des 'Doktor Faustus' makes clear. Levin was right in thinking that Joyce and Eliot were looking for ways of 'making the modern world possible in art' (quoted p. 85); since modernity is, as Baudelaire wrote in 1863, 'le transitoire, le fugitif,le contingent' (the other half, frequently forgotten, being Teternel et l'immuable'). Mann was upset, however, by Levin's failure to understand Doktor Faustus, an incomprehension that has gone on to enjoy a long, if not always distinguished, history. In Mann's letter to Klaus of 27 April 1943, describing Faus? tus as 'eine Kiinstler- (Musiker-) und moderne Teufelsverschreibungsgeschichte aus der Schicksalsgegend Maupassant, Nietzsche, Hugo Wolf ete.', incorporating 'die Idee des Rausches iiberhaupt und der Anti-Vernunft damit verquickt, dadurch auch das Politische, Faschistische, und damit das traurige Schicksal Deutschlands' (cited p. 115 n. 3), Schmidt-Schutz sees an accurate summary of its plot. Yet, as she shows in detail, the context of the novel goes back to Mann's much earlier short story 'Beim Propheten' (1904), with its caricature of Ludwig Derleth; to his general suspicion of the George Circle; to his distinction in Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (1918) between 'reiner und frecher Asthetizismus' and 'der politisierte und moralisierende Asthetizismus' (quoted p. 134); and, of course, his engagement with Nietzsche. De? spite, or rather because of, his doubts concerning the George Circle, represented in the novel by the 'KridwiG-Kreis', it enabled Mann, so the author argues, 'den Weg von alternativen asthetischen Entwiirfen in Opposition zum Biirgertum und allgemeiner Kulturkritik zu praefaschistischem Rigorismus und faszinierter Gewaltverherrlichung zu rekonstruieren' (p. 139). The most densely argued chapter of this 566 Reviews study, however, reconstructs a far more direct intervention in the genesis of Mann's text, the now famous discussions with Adorno about Schoenberg and twelve-tone music theory. For Adorno helped Mann understand how the dodecaphonic system could open up new musical possibilities, as well as running the risk of being a new form of musical totalitarianism. As a result, Mann, far from trying to construct his novel on twelve-tone principles, or offeringa postmodern pot-pourri, conceived...