”Luonnollinen”, konventionaalinen, kulttuurinen

Abstract

The “Natural”, the Conventional, the Cultural: Problematics of Narration and Sense-giving in the Modernism of Thomas Mann In this article, I appraise the relevance of the narratological distinction between “natural” and “unnatural” narration in the analysis of a specific narrative (such as a novel) by comparing it with Thomas Mann’s understanding of the ”natural”, the cultural and the conventional – especially as they appear in his novel Doctor Faustus. It will be shown how these concepts play a crucial role not only in Thomas Mann’s thinking in general, but also the manner in which he constructs (“composes”) his novels. For Thomas Mann, narration in a realist novel is only apparently natural; in actuality, there is no way of organizing a novel’s materials which could be considered as “natural”. In a sense, the most “artificial” manner in which the entire novel is constructed as a “musical” composition of themes comes closest to the irrational basis of human existence that precedes culture and its conventions: that is, Nature. As a whole, Thomas Mann’s concepts of nature and the natural, the conventional and the cultural are much more complicated and much more deeply attached to German and European thinking in philosophy, the arts, history, politics and religion than the abstractly defined narratological concepts of “natural” and “unnatural” narration which prove to be of little relevance in the interpretation of his complex novels.