Thomas Mann--In General and In Particular

(The name of Thomas Mann is nowhere near as famous in this country as that of Schnitzler or Wassermann; but in Germany, Herr Mann's novels rank as easily the peers of any written by these other men of a more cosmopolitan appeal. The recent appearance of four of his works in English translations has aroused some interest among discerning readers. The following article was written especially for the BOOKSHELF by a family friend and fellow-townsman of Herr Mann's.-Editor's Note.)

GOETHE says in his old age that all his works were but parts of one great confession. It has been claimed that this was true of every artist and it probably is, though the dramas or Schiller and the Epics of Homer may offer some difficulties to the interpreter, and the works of Shakespeare, seen under this view, have not yet given the last answer to the question, whether Bacon or Shakespeare. There are, however, writers whose life and work proceed hand in hand in such a way that each new work is on its face a distinct confession of the author's artistic creed and his experience in a certain period of his life. That is the case of a German author, who has within the last few years entered America with several translations: Thomas Mann.

As a young man in his twenties he made his appearance with a bulky novel of two volumes, quite an unmodern thing to do early in this century when everybody was proud of being in haste and having no time for long tales, only for the "short" story. But he made his public sit down and read what he had to say. "Buddenbrooks, Decline of a Family." Knopf, New York, was the title of the book. He covered the whole nineteenth century with the history of a merchant family in an old Hanseatic City, spoke "partly in a sombre, partly in a comical vein of the things of life, of births, christenings, weddings, and bitter deaths". The first outstanding figure in the family line bears still a light touch of eightteenth-century-grace and sprightliness; his-still successful-son is of Victorian solidity, not without a note of religious and general hypocrisy. The third generation consists of one sister of energetic, lively character, and of two brothers; one an entirely useless person, given to a frivolous life much to the sorrow of his parents, and yet-poor Christian-a good companion and a likeable fellow! His elder brother keeps better in line with the family tradition. He brings the name to full splendor by becoming a senator; he erects a new home for the old firm and the family.

But it is splendor only in outside appearance. The old strength is gone, not much is left of the shrewd, hard-working builders of the family fortune. One of the finest episodes of the book is the one where Senator Buddenbrook finds by chance a philosophical book and becomes enchanted by it-no name is given, but it is unmistakably Schopenhauer's pessimism, entering upon the tired mind of the last member to a hitherto romantic, Victorian, uncomplicated tribe. For, last he is, the last grown-up at least. His son dies as a boy; we accompany him to school, suffer with him the heartaches and the thousand natural shocks that he is heir to. But the first serious attack on Hanno's health severs the thin thread that holds him to life.

When Thomas Mann had thus finished the arduous task of getting clear with his ancestry, he started immediately on the next step in his autobiographic way of dealing with problems.

"Tonio Kroeger" begins where "Buddenbrooks" ended. Again a boy in school, his first friendship and love, and then the author's actual experience, the passions and suffering of artistic life. It is not the romantic southern sky, the "Bellaza" that he cares for. He cannot suppress his northern inclinations, his preference for Denmark rather than Italy; and artist though he may be by profession, and may feel himself to be-his closest friend tells him that at the bottom of his heart he is not an artist-but a bourgeois gone astray. It is a hard judgement, but he accepts it and its consequences.

"Tonio Kroeger" Knopf, New York, is a short novel, perhaps the best one Thomas Mann has ever written, certainly the one which hit most remarkably right into the center of all problems that vexed the younger generation of Germany at the beginning of this century, the generation which was morbidly inclined to believe that they were all decadents, and devoted to nothing but art for art's sake.

They were wrong; they were soldiers and fighters as well. They stood with courage the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune of the decade that followed. And at the time they did perhaps not fully perceive that Tonio Kroeger's last word was not the same hopeless gesture as was the one at the end of "Buddenbrooks". There was something quite hopeful and very determined about it. And this positive feature became apparent also in the author's future production.

There was first to follow "Royal Highness," which had a lighter air and more elegance than any of Mann's previous works. It reflected the happy time of courtship and marriage. Then dramatic sketches and short stories, and then an exception to the positive turn of mind; "Death in Venice." Knopf, New York.

There are two periods in man's life, or at least in an artist's life, Thomas Mann claims, the productive, active period, and the didactic, reflective period. One does not pass from one to the other without mental pain. That is the problem of Gustav Achenbach who dies a rather ignominious death in Venice. This work, though morbid and bitter in tendency, shows Thomas Mann at the height of this career in handling words, in mastering the language. There are few pages in German literature comparable with some in "Death in Venice", particularly those which are transcribed from Plato.

The war brought further progress in the transition of the author's creative tendencies. It turned his mind to history and the affairs of state. "Frederic and the Great Coalition" is more than a fascinating historical sketch, is a psychological treatise of a historical subject, only too rare in biographical writing. The bulky volume. "The Reflections of an Unpolitical Mind" was the first attempt in Germany to wield into a unit the political ideas and aspirations of Prussia and the philosophical and artistic "Weltanschauung" of the country of "poets and dreamers".

There appear side-lights on family life and every-day occurence like "Bashan and I", (Henry Holt and Co.) a dog story. But not until 1925 was there definite proof that Thomas Mann had entered into the didactic and reflective period of his life. "The Enchanted Mountain" has nothing to do anymore with actions and happenings of which Buddenbrooks are as full as an old chronicle. It is purely experience of the soul, action-or not even that,-reflection of the mind. Seven years, spent in a sanitarium in the Swiss Mountains-what can you expect of such an absurd period in a man's life? But that is what the book is written around, a wonderful book, full of contemplative thought, of dialectic discussion, of wisdom. It is the ripest of the author's works, it is his most German work. It may well be questioned whether it will ever be worthwhile to translate it-so much of art in language can hardly be transcribed into a foreign tongue. And yet it would be interesting to see how it would appeal to a foreign audience, this "Wilhelm Meister" among Thomas Mann's works, this most comprehensive part of his "great confession".