HERESY AND ORTHODOXY: A TEXTUAL VARIANT IN THOMAS MANN'S DOKTOR FAUSTUS

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article draws upon a textual variant in Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus, and proceeds to investigate the issue which it raises: the role of heresy in the novel, and the question of whether the heretical in art is more accessible or inaccessible than the orthodox. Heresy and its opposite, the orthodox or the ‘pious’, as Mann normally describes it, are categories of religious thought, used by Mann in a transferred sense to convey the spiritual and intellectual dilemma of the modern artist. Given that Adrian Leverkühn is a composer, and that the reader therefore needs to take Mann's description (through the narrator Zeitblom) of his music ‘on trust’, the thesis of this article is that an understanding of the sources within the Christian heretical tradition upon which Leverkühn draws for his compositions is necessary for the reader's understanding of the nature of his music and its relationship to the artistic tradition which it both acknowledges and rejects. The article also posits the decisive influence upon Doktor Faustus of the treatment of heresy in Dostoevsky's major novels. It concludes by considering a further associated textual detail with regard to the question of salvation.