Thomas Mann’s Fiction in the Early Twentieth Century: (1896 1914)
AlRaee, Aziza;
Abstract
Thomas Mann is a prolific and difficult writer. No thesis can cover the vast, colorful and changing nature of his fictional world. A distinct phase of his development has to be shown for study and I opted for the first recording of the early beginnings of his work as a creative writer up till the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. This phase shows unity and variety and sets all important themes which would recur again and again in his following work. This phase has also its unique characteristics which would undergo modification as Mann delves into historical and legendry bounds leaving behind every day contemporary social reality. The changes which reveal themselves later in Mann’s development as a writer of fiction, are, moreover, present in seminal form in his first stage of development ending with the outbreak of the First World War, which changed the sensibility not only of Mann but of almost all European writers.
The thesis deals with Mann’s fiction from 1896-1914 in four main chapters and a conclusion. Chapter One deals widely with Buddenbrooks (1901) as Mann’s most realistic masterpiece. In Buddenbrooks, Mann deals with a typically realistic theme : the moral as well as the physical decline of the Buddenbrooks, the heroic fight of its members against its inevitable ruin and the replacement of the Buddenbrooks by another inferior family. Buddenrooks, therefore, tells the story of social change in German society and represents social reality as dynamic in a process of change. The element of historicism is thus emphasized through four generations. A changing social reality is depicted and the portrayal of the effect of environment and heredity on man’s behavior is outstanding. A convincing background is, therefore, amply presented and the reader becomes fully acquainted with physical, the social as well as the historical traits of this background. Moreover a close relationship between the environment and the destiny of the characters is established.
All the characters in Buddenbrooks are depicted from within as well as from without. Internal reality is well balanced with external reality. The outside appearance and behavior of the characters is represented as a reflection of inner conflicts and struggles and both the physical and psychological act and re-act against each other and blend beautifully to consolidate the artistic effect.
Mann’s realism is well motivated realism, both convincing and artistically effective. It transcends the outer layers to the depth of reality maintaining all the time its strong motivation. In Buddenbrooks the development of action is always governed by the laws of cause and effect. It, therefore, develops objectively in accordance with its internal laws without any interference on the part of the writer.
(2)
Chapter Two, entitled Royal Highness (1909), is a study of the novel as combining realism and symbolism. It is a realistic novel in so far as it represents a changing social reality. It depicts precisely the decline of an old stratified society, and then the rebirth of a new life in response to the influence of the new forces at the beginning of the Twentieth century. Though the novel is essentially realistic, yet Mann manages to create the atmosphere of a fairytale or rather that of a light comedy to render the happy ending of the novel convincing. The element of parallelism is skillfully used and established on more than one level, to enrich the novel and to enhance the atmosphere of a light comedy.
The symbolic and representational formal existence of the hero and heroine is emphasized in Royal Highness. Their marriage symbolizes the new happy life which replaces former deterioration. It also typifies the firm alliance between Germany and the West. Thus Royal Highness has political intentions. The rationalized aristocracy has learned to be democratic and the novel itself is regarded by Mann as democratic, simply because the Prince loves his own people and is friendly with hem.
The happy ending of Royal Highness is closely related to the form of the novel as semi-phantasy. That happy solution is characteristic of a fairytale and is not the sum total of the beginning and middle of the story which establishes decline without any gleam of possible redemption. Royal Highness has thus a semi-phantastic background which concentrates on the problem of composure formerly depicted in Buddenbrooks and later to be stressed in Death in Venice. Royal Highness is, therefore, a postscript to Buddenbrooks and a prologue to Death in Venice.
Chapter Three treats Mann’s well known novellas, Tonio Kroger (1903) and Death in Venice (1911) and depicts the inner life of the artist as drawn by Thomas Mann. Mann’s concern with the inner life of his characters is stressed in both Tonio Kroger and Death in Venice. But because he is a great realist, inner reality is well balanced with external reality. Both Tonio Kroger and Aschenbach are embedded in their place and time as a segment of a certain social reality. Moreover they are complex characters and, therefore, typically realistic. They both suffer a great deal from an inner conflict between life and art, body and soul, but they do not submit to their destiny easily. They fight bravely, suffer and then accept their fate.
In both Tonio Kroger and Death in Venice, life is portrayed in its totality. The two novellas bear, therefore, resemblance with a difference. Both are centered round the artist, his artistic objectives and his difficulty in adapting himself, as well as his art, to external reality. Throughout the two novellas Mann conveys the idea that the artist should be reconciled with life in order to avoid failure and ruin. The only difference between the two novellas lies in the fact that whereas Aschenbach represents the main traits of his society, Tonio Kroger stands in opposition to his bourgeois society.
(3)
Symbolism in its realistic fashion is amply stressed in the two novellas. Tonio Kroger, for instance, expresses the doctrines that prevailed in his own age in Germany. His belief that knowledge kills life and that art is a melancholy business which unmans the artist is typically German. For him genius leads one to degeneration instead of regeneration. The duality in his character between his bourgeois origin and his artistic inclination is a symbol of the permanent conflict between the world and the spirit. Though unhappy yet he survives the conflict.
In a typically realistic fashion Thomas Mann portrays the main character in Death in Venice as deeply rooted in his own environment, as an integral part of his own society. The artist thus typifies the bourgeois society at large. He combines strength with weakness, rationalism with irrationalism and he is made a representative of the burgher’s ethic. He stands as a symbol of Russianized Germany which would soon come to an end despite signs of strength and power. His final collapse which is marked by irrationalism and decay predicts the breakdown of Prussianized Germany. Through the novella mentions nothing directly about politics, yet it essentially represents the uneasiness from which Europe had been suffering especially during the years that precede the First World War.
The minor characters in Death in Venice exist in their own right for they represent an objective external reality. They are modified by Mann to represent this aspect or the other, thus used as symbols, bit they are not mere projections of the hero’s inner self. Being a realist, Mann always maintains an exchange between internal as well as external life, and a balance between the two realities. This balance can never be reached if the minor characters are regarded as just projections of the hero’s inner self.
In short Mann’s inborn realism is quite obvious in Death in Venice. He had no social or ideological intentions in writing the novella. Though he seems to be far removed from social reality, yet he comes near to the embodiment of its social truth.
Mann is a realistic writer whose works embody the realities of his own age and society. Life, both internal and external is portrayed in Death in Venice precisely and the character of Aschenbach is depicted from within and from without. The external reality which Mann presents reveals the inner soul of Aschenbach and arouses within him certain emotions and feelings.
Chapter Four, entitled Other Novellas and Short Stories, covers the rest of Mann’s fictional works in this period in a chronological order. They also deal with recurrent realistic themes. Even the novellas which are essentially mythical are handled realistically.
(4)
Taken chronologically Little Herr Friedemann, Disillusionment, Thr Dilettante, Tobias Mindernickel, Tristian, The Hungry, A Weary Hour, and The blood of the Walsungs deal directly or symbolically with the artist who suffers from the gulf between life and art, body and soul, illusion and reality. The artist is, therefore, represented as deformed physically, mentally or spiritually. As a result he is regarded as an outcast from society. He is a lonely, serious and exceptional man differing from his neighbors and suffering as a result of this difference. He longs for the pleasures of the bourgeois people but to no avail. He avoids the struggle with life and, therefore, he is completely defeated by it. In Little Lizzy, Mann expects destruction as the doom of the artist who seeks to satisfy his inner desires. In The Hungry, Mann adds something new to his recurrent conception of the artist. He identifies the artist with the beggar. Both are regarded as outcasts craving to satisfy, without success, their hunger, the artist for belonging and the beggar for food. In The Infant Prodigy the artist’s sinister nature is revealed and art is related for the first time to childhood, sexuality and fraud.
The Wardrobe is a different story, though it bears similarity to the other short stories which Mann wrote. It is a phantasia containing a dreamlike action. It is, therefore, divorced from the realm of actuality and in this sense it is different. At the same time Mann attempts to sustain realism at the end of the story almost dismissing action as a dream. Moreover the small realistic details bring the phantastic experience back to reality. The main character’s phantastic experience symbolizes the artist’s trip from birth to death. In short The Wardrobe depicts the hopeless and abstracted longings of the artist for the joys of life in the form of unfulfilled dreams.
The Way to the Churchyard acquires its importance from the symbolic bearings’ which the two main characters bear. Symbolic bearings’ are well established by Mann in the choice of place selected for action, the appearance of the two personalities, and the nature of their encounter. The character that stands for life, represents the average man who can easily cope with life and becomes finally an outsider and an outcast. He represents all those who through severe suffering, fail to cope with life, and are as a result dispelled from life. Again these symbolic bearings are well balanced with many realistic details.
Gladius Dei, on the other hand, is a polemic weapon directed against the excessive, almost immoral cult of beauty, and against the affinity between art on the one hand and between elegance, decoration and illusion on the other hand. According to the monk, art should be based on spiritual knowledge and the negation of what is vicious in man. At the Prophet’s is also an attack against the aesthetic bohemian artists and the hermetic cults that impose both philosophy and politics on art considering violence the only way to redeem the world.
(5)
Both Tristan and The Blood of the Walsungs are essentially mythical novellas. Through both of them Mann succeeds in evoking the soul of the legend. Both are parodies of Wagnerian material in so far as they make use of music which plays an important part in the development of the two stories. The mythic element characteristic of the two novellas, is well balanced with the realistic details which Mann amply uses.
The Blood of the Walsungs portrays the incestuous passion and other themes that are closely associated with Wagnerian music. Mann places his characters in their true environment, and he realistically points the strong relationship between the environment and their behavior, between cause and effect. Moreover The Blood of the Walsungs represents the intermingling of realism with symbolism. It symbolizes in a typically realistic fashion, the inevitable decay and collapse of the bourgeoisie in general.
Railway Accident and The Fight between Jappe and Do Escobar are two simple short stories. Railway Accident points out the discrepancy in the attitude of a strange character before and during a train accident. The Fight between Jappe and Do Escobar, on the other hand, has a political significance. The four different nationalities of the boys symbolize the conflicting tensions characteristic of the years preceding the First World War. The conclusion is an evaluation of the nature and extent of Mann’s contribution to realism and the art of fiction up till the outbreak of the First World War.
The thesis deals with Mann’s fiction from 1896-1914 in four main chapters and a conclusion. Chapter One deals widely with Buddenbrooks (1901) as Mann’s most realistic masterpiece. In Buddenbrooks, Mann deals with a typically realistic theme : the moral as well as the physical decline of the Buddenbrooks, the heroic fight of its members against its inevitable ruin and the replacement of the Buddenbrooks by another inferior family. Buddenrooks, therefore, tells the story of social change in German society and represents social reality as dynamic in a process of change. The element of historicism is thus emphasized through four generations. A changing social reality is depicted and the portrayal of the effect of environment and heredity on man’s behavior is outstanding. A convincing background is, therefore, amply presented and the reader becomes fully acquainted with physical, the social as well as the historical traits of this background. Moreover a close relationship between the environment and the destiny of the characters is established.
All the characters in Buddenbrooks are depicted from within as well as from without. Internal reality is well balanced with external reality. The outside appearance and behavior of the characters is represented as a reflection of inner conflicts and struggles and both the physical and psychological act and re-act against each other and blend beautifully to consolidate the artistic effect.
Mann’s realism is well motivated realism, both convincing and artistically effective. It transcends the outer layers to the depth of reality maintaining all the time its strong motivation. In Buddenbrooks the development of action is always governed by the laws of cause and effect. It, therefore, develops objectively in accordance with its internal laws without any interference on the part of the writer.
(2)
Chapter Two, entitled Royal Highness (1909), is a study of the novel as combining realism and symbolism. It is a realistic novel in so far as it represents a changing social reality. It depicts precisely the decline of an old stratified society, and then the rebirth of a new life in response to the influence of the new forces at the beginning of the Twentieth century. Though the novel is essentially realistic, yet Mann manages to create the atmosphere of a fairytale or rather that of a light comedy to render the happy ending of the novel convincing. The element of parallelism is skillfully used and established on more than one level, to enrich the novel and to enhance the atmosphere of a light comedy.
The symbolic and representational formal existence of the hero and heroine is emphasized in Royal Highness. Their marriage symbolizes the new happy life which replaces former deterioration. It also typifies the firm alliance between Germany and the West. Thus Royal Highness has political intentions. The rationalized aristocracy has learned to be democratic and the novel itself is regarded by Mann as democratic, simply because the Prince loves his own people and is friendly with hem.
The happy ending of Royal Highness is closely related to the form of the novel as semi-phantasy. That happy solution is characteristic of a fairytale and is not the sum total of the beginning and middle of the story which establishes decline without any gleam of possible redemption. Royal Highness has thus a semi-phantastic background which concentrates on the problem of composure formerly depicted in Buddenbrooks and later to be stressed in Death in Venice. Royal Highness is, therefore, a postscript to Buddenbrooks and a prologue to Death in Venice.
Chapter Three treats Mann’s well known novellas, Tonio Kroger (1903) and Death in Venice (1911) and depicts the inner life of the artist as drawn by Thomas Mann. Mann’s concern with the inner life of his characters is stressed in both Tonio Kroger and Death in Venice. But because he is a great realist, inner reality is well balanced with external reality. Both Tonio Kroger and Aschenbach are embedded in their place and time as a segment of a certain social reality. Moreover they are complex characters and, therefore, typically realistic. They both suffer a great deal from an inner conflict between life and art, body and soul, but they do not submit to their destiny easily. They fight bravely, suffer and then accept their fate.
In both Tonio Kroger and Death in Venice, life is portrayed in its totality. The two novellas bear, therefore, resemblance with a difference. Both are centered round the artist, his artistic objectives and his difficulty in adapting himself, as well as his art, to external reality. Throughout the two novellas Mann conveys the idea that the artist should be reconciled with life in order to avoid failure and ruin. The only difference between the two novellas lies in the fact that whereas Aschenbach represents the main traits of his society, Tonio Kroger stands in opposition to his bourgeois society.
(3)
Symbolism in its realistic fashion is amply stressed in the two novellas. Tonio Kroger, for instance, expresses the doctrines that prevailed in his own age in Germany. His belief that knowledge kills life and that art is a melancholy business which unmans the artist is typically German. For him genius leads one to degeneration instead of regeneration. The duality in his character between his bourgeois origin and his artistic inclination is a symbol of the permanent conflict between the world and the spirit. Though unhappy yet he survives the conflict.
In a typically realistic fashion Thomas Mann portrays the main character in Death in Venice as deeply rooted in his own environment, as an integral part of his own society. The artist thus typifies the bourgeois society at large. He combines strength with weakness, rationalism with irrationalism and he is made a representative of the burgher’s ethic. He stands as a symbol of Russianized Germany which would soon come to an end despite signs of strength and power. His final collapse which is marked by irrationalism and decay predicts the breakdown of Prussianized Germany. Through the novella mentions nothing directly about politics, yet it essentially represents the uneasiness from which Europe had been suffering especially during the years that precede the First World War.
The minor characters in Death in Venice exist in their own right for they represent an objective external reality. They are modified by Mann to represent this aspect or the other, thus used as symbols, bit they are not mere projections of the hero’s inner self. Being a realist, Mann always maintains an exchange between internal as well as external life, and a balance between the two realities. This balance can never be reached if the minor characters are regarded as just projections of the hero’s inner self.
In short Mann’s inborn realism is quite obvious in Death in Venice. He had no social or ideological intentions in writing the novella. Though he seems to be far removed from social reality, yet he comes near to the embodiment of its social truth.
Mann is a realistic writer whose works embody the realities of his own age and society. Life, both internal and external is portrayed in Death in Venice precisely and the character of Aschenbach is depicted from within and from without. The external reality which Mann presents reveals the inner soul of Aschenbach and arouses within him certain emotions and feelings.
Chapter Four, entitled Other Novellas and Short Stories, covers the rest of Mann’s fictional works in this period in a chronological order. They also deal with recurrent realistic themes. Even the novellas which are essentially mythical are handled realistically.
(4)
Taken chronologically Little Herr Friedemann, Disillusionment, Thr Dilettante, Tobias Mindernickel, Tristian, The Hungry, A Weary Hour, and The blood of the Walsungs deal directly or symbolically with the artist who suffers from the gulf between life and art, body and soul, illusion and reality. The artist is, therefore, represented as deformed physically, mentally or spiritually. As a result he is regarded as an outcast from society. He is a lonely, serious and exceptional man differing from his neighbors and suffering as a result of this difference. He longs for the pleasures of the bourgeois people but to no avail. He avoids the struggle with life and, therefore, he is completely defeated by it. In Little Lizzy, Mann expects destruction as the doom of the artist who seeks to satisfy his inner desires. In The Hungry, Mann adds something new to his recurrent conception of the artist. He identifies the artist with the beggar. Both are regarded as outcasts craving to satisfy, without success, their hunger, the artist for belonging and the beggar for food. In The Infant Prodigy the artist’s sinister nature is revealed and art is related for the first time to childhood, sexuality and fraud.
The Wardrobe is a different story, though it bears similarity to the other short stories which Mann wrote. It is a phantasia containing a dreamlike action. It is, therefore, divorced from the realm of actuality and in this sense it is different. At the same time Mann attempts to sustain realism at the end of the story almost dismissing action as a dream. Moreover the small realistic details bring the phantastic experience back to reality. The main character’s phantastic experience symbolizes the artist’s trip from birth to death. In short The Wardrobe depicts the hopeless and abstracted longings of the artist for the joys of life in the form of unfulfilled dreams.
The Way to the Churchyard acquires its importance from the symbolic bearings’ which the two main characters bear. Symbolic bearings’ are well established by Mann in the choice of place selected for action, the appearance of the two personalities, and the nature of their encounter. The character that stands for life, represents the average man who can easily cope with life and becomes finally an outsider and an outcast. He represents all those who through severe suffering, fail to cope with life, and are as a result dispelled from life. Again these symbolic bearings are well balanced with many realistic details.
Gladius Dei, on the other hand, is a polemic weapon directed against the excessive, almost immoral cult of beauty, and against the affinity between art on the one hand and between elegance, decoration and illusion on the other hand. According to the monk, art should be based on spiritual knowledge and the negation of what is vicious in man. At the Prophet’s is also an attack against the aesthetic bohemian artists and the hermetic cults that impose both philosophy and politics on art considering violence the only way to redeem the world.
(5)
Both Tristan and The Blood of the Walsungs are essentially mythical novellas. Through both of them Mann succeeds in evoking the soul of the legend. Both are parodies of Wagnerian material in so far as they make use of music which plays an important part in the development of the two stories. The mythic element characteristic of the two novellas, is well balanced with the realistic details which Mann amply uses.
The Blood of the Walsungs portrays the incestuous passion and other themes that are closely associated with Wagnerian music. Mann places his characters in their true environment, and he realistically points the strong relationship between the environment and their behavior, between cause and effect. Moreover The Blood of the Walsungs represents the intermingling of realism with symbolism. It symbolizes in a typically realistic fashion, the inevitable decay and collapse of the bourgeoisie in general.
Railway Accident and The Fight between Jappe and Do Escobar are two simple short stories. Railway Accident points out the discrepancy in the attitude of a strange character before and during a train accident. The Fight between Jappe and Do Escobar, on the other hand, has a political significance. The four different nationalities of the boys symbolize the conflicting tensions characteristic of the years preceding the First World War. The conclusion is an evaluation of the nature and extent of Mann’s contribution to realism and the art of fiction up till the outbreak of the First World War.
Other data
| Title | Thomas Mann’s Fiction in the Early Twentieth Century: (1896 1914) | Authors | AlRaee, Aziza | Issue Date | 1980 |
Recommend this item
Similar Items from Core Recommender Database
Items in Ain Shams Scholar are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.