Thomas Mann's Last Work

Thomas Mann's last book, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, is a study of a young man's education. Both the young man and the education are exceptional.

Felix Krull is a man of talent and a man of desire. He uses the first to gain the second with a total disregard for social or ethical mores. He achieves his ends with a remarkable facility and lack of effort.

Felix's education began some early day in the perpetual childhood that was to be his life. It was then that he delighted to muse to himself, "I (can) not conceal from myself that I am made of superior stuff or, as people say, of finer clay." From this time on his life consisted of varying attempts to prove and demonstrate this thesis. His education consisted in learning new techniques for these attempts.

His first approach was to envelop himself in clouds of unbridled imagination. He was the Kaiser, he was a dashing young prince, he was even a lover, he was anything he could or would think of. Occasionally, costumes that his godfather supplied gave material wings for these flights of fancy.

After his supply of idols was exhausted, young Felix turned to learning the healing arts. By suitable applications he was able to create sickness which convinced even degree-holders that he should carefully avoid school. In the free time thus afforded, he discovered the great splendors candy stores held within their often unguarded doors. These two newly acquired skills were never to be forgotten by the apt student.

There were, of course, some things that Felix could not teach himself. A housemaid with exciting green eyes and an audacious lady of the evening supplied ample instruction.

Above all else Felix developed the ability to change his nature and his wit to profit from any situation. He could be French, Italian or English at the drop of his handsome lower lip. He could entertain monarchs with homely stories about house pets or penetrating analyses of the social-economic state of the nation.

Armed with these basic tools and propelled by the collapse of his father's wine-making interests, Felix stopped into the world of fashion. Though at first only an elevator operator, he quickly changed his station. There followed a dazzling set of conquests for Felix which satisfied him immeasurably. Women young and old fell before his polished manners and Greek grace. They delighted in his thievery of both their riches and their virtue. Men begged for his fellowship. He was supremely happy to have the liberty of refusing or granting these favors as he wished. He achieved his grand triumph by "becoming" a Marquis. He was perfectly at home in the position, captivated nearly everyone he came in contact with, and was in fact a tribute to the title he assumed.

This entire story is presented to us in the first person; Felix himself tells us in a supercillious tone that he finally achieved the fantasies of his babyhood. By the honesty of his confessions the reader is constantly aware that his actions do not deserve their rewards. But one recognizes that Mann is not criticizing Felix Krull. Rather he is criticizing or perhaps laughing at the institution which allows Krull to survive. In every one of his triumphs the polite society of Europe suffers.

The reader is forced to sympathize with Krull; he represents a little of the dream, of the desire to make something out of nothing which is in every man, he succeeded in his dream; he is so very, very clever. Yet a moment's thought shows that Mann is quite as clever as his character; the reader is forced to criticize an institution which perhaps he once admired. Mann is a propagandist here--more subtle perhaps than the violent dialogues stop Der Zauberberg, but just as effective.

Mann's familiar style supports his efforts as well as ever. There is the firm German repetition of motif. We are constantly reminded of Krull's nakedness and his false drapery of forms and decorum. His costumes--which bolstered his youthful fancies--become foreign tongues and social manners. His adaptability constantly recurs so that we even expect him to talk like a paleontologist within minutes after meeting him.

The reader is happy to find a recurrence of Mann's keen scientific analysis--his love for medical description and insight. The scene in which Krull evades military conscription by a self-induced epileptic fit is one of the most genuinely penetrating in the bok. The vividness induced by this scene glows with the reader for the remainder of Krull's fortunes, constantly assuring him that this man can indeed do anything.

Some slightly new notes are found in Mann's writing in the volume. There is a marked shift to the sensual. Krull's delight in candies and women and circuses are far beyond even the despest inner longings of Hans Castorp. The insistent attention to clothes, though possibly dictated by the content are a material-sensual innovation. Humor too is introduced in these confessions. Conscious irony, conscious humiliation of foolish people by a foolish man force chuckles from any reader.

The Confessions of Felix Krull is successful. It presents the reader with a simple thesis well supported. It is only unfortunate that we have but a fragment of a projected work which its great author was never to complete