Doktor Faustus
Encyclopedia

Doctor Faustus is a German novel written by Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

, begun in 1943 and published in 1947 as Doktor Faustus. Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde ("Doctor Faustus. The Life of the German composer Adrian Leverkühn, told by a friend").

Outline

The novel is a re-shaping of the Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...

 legend set in the context of the first half of the twentieth century and the turmoil of Germany in that period. The story centers on the life and work of the [fictitious] composer Adrian Leverkühn; his extraordinary intellect and creativity as a young man mark him as destined for success, but Leverkühn desires true greatness. Leverkühn strikes a Faustian bargain for creative genius: he intentionally contracts syphilis, which deepens his artistic inspiration through madness. In a scene strongly reminiscent of Ivan Karamazov's breakdown in Dostoevsky's novel, Leverkühn is subsequently visited by a very clever devil who says, in effect, "that you can only see me because you are mad, does not mean that I do not really exist." Leverkühn forges a deal with this Mephistophelean
Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore...

 character: his soul, in exchange for twenty-four years of genius. His madness - his daemonic inspiration - leads to extraordinary musical creativity that parallels the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

.

Leverkühn's last creative years are increasingly occupied by his obsession with the Apocalypse
Apocalypse
An Apocalypse is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted. The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament...

 and the Last Judgment
Last Judgment
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, or The Day of the Lord in Christian theology, is the final and eternal judgment by God of every nation. The concept is found in all the Canonical gospels, particularly the Gospel of Matthew. It will purportedly take place after the...

. Leverkühn feels the inexorable progress of his neuro-syphilitic madness leading towards complete breakdown; in self-conscious imitation of certain of the Faust legends, Leverkühn calls together his closest friends to witness his final demise: at a chamber reading of his cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....

 "The Lamentation of Doctor Faust," he ravingly confesses his demonic pact before collapsing, incoherent. His madness reduces him to an infantile state in which he lives under the care of his relatives for another ten years.

The story is narrated by Leverkühn's childhood friend Serenus Zeitblom. Much like Settembrini and Naphta in “The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature....

” the “serene” humanist Zeitblom and the tragical Leverkühn represent the dualism of the German character, its Apollonian (reason, democracy, progress) and Dionysian (passion, tragedy, fate) aspects. Writing in Germany between 1943 and 1946, Zeitblom describes the rise and downfall of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 in parallel with his account of Leverkühn's life. Clearly Leverkühn's pact with the devil symbolizes Germany's "selling of its soul" to Hitler, and vice versa.

The interplay of layers between the narrator's historical situation (the demise of Nazi Germany), the progressive madness of Leverkühn, and the medieval legends with which Leverkühn self-consciously connects himself makes for an overwhelmingly rich symbolic network. The novel is not, however, mere political allegory, though readers have sometimes tried to reduce it to that; while it is doubtless a commentary on the madness of extremist politics, it is also a commentary on the artistic process, creativity, and the artistic life. Most of all, it is an extremely powerful piece of fiction whose power lies precisely in an ambiguous complexity that cannot be meaningfully reduced to a single interpretation.

Plot

The origins of the narrator and the hero in the (fictitious) small town of Kaisersaschern on the (Thuringian) Saale
Saale
The Saale, also known as the Saxon Saale and Thuringian Saale , is a river in Germany and a left-bank tributary of the Elbe. It is not to be confused with the smaller Franconian Saale, a right-bank tributary of the Main, or the Saale in Lower Saxony, a tributary of the Leine.-Course:The Saale...

, the name of Zeitblom's apothecary father (Wohlgemut, 'welltempered'), and the description of Jonathan Leverkühn as an old-fashioned German type, with a cast of features 'from a time before the Thirty Years War', evoke the old post-medieval Germany: in their respective Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 and Lutheran origins, and theological studies, they are heirs to the German Renaissance
German Renaissance
The German Renaissance, part of the Northern Renaissance, was a cultural and artistic movement that spread among German thinkers in the 15th and 16th centuries, which originated from the Italian Renaissance in Italy...

 and the world of Dürer and Bach
Bạch
Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...

, but sympathetic to, and admired by, the 'keen-scented receptivity of Jewish circles.'

They are awakened to musical knowledge by Wendell Kretzschmar, a German American
German American
German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry and comprise about 51 million people, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group...

 lecturer and musicologist who visits Kaisersaschern. After schooling together, both boys study at Halle
Halle, Saxony-Anhalt
Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...

 - Adrian studies theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

; Zeitblom does not, but participates in discussions with the theological students - but Adrian becomes absorbed in musical harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

, counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...

 and polyphony
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

 as a key to metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

 and mystic numbers
Numerology
Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...

, and follows Kretzschmar to Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 to study with him.

Zeitblom describes 'with a religious shudder' Adrian's embrace with the woman ('Esmeralda') who gave him syphilis, how he worked her name in note-ciphers into his compositions, and how the medics who sought to heal him were all prevented from effecting a cure by mysterious circumstances. Zeitblom begins to perceive the demonic, as Adrian develops other friendships, first with the translator Rüdiger Schildknapp ('Shield-bearer') (a loyal friend), and then after his move to Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 with the handsome young violinist Rudi Schwerdtfeger ('Sword-polisher', i.e. swordsmith), Frau Rodde and her doomed daughters Clarissa and Ines, Dr. Kranich ('crane') the numismatist, Leo Zink and Baptist Spengler (two artists).

Zeitblom insists, however, on the unique closeness of his own relationship to Adrian, who addresses only him as 'du' (rather than the more formal 'Sie'). Adrian also meets the Schweigestill ('silence-peace') family at Pfeiffering, in the country an hour from Munich, which later becomes his permanent home and retreat.

He lives at Palestrina
Palestrina
Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 18,000, in Lazio, c. 35 km east of Rome...

 in Italy with Schildknapp (as in reality Thomas Mann did 15 years earlier, with his brother Heinrich
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...

) in 1912, and Zeitblom visits them there. And it is there that Adrian, working on music for Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost
Love's Labour's Lost
Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s, and first published in 1598.-Title:...

, has his long dialogue with a Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore...

 figure who appears either objectively or out of his own afflicted soul. These are the central pages of the novel, corresponding also to its central part.

Zeitblom transcribes Adrian's manuscript of the conversation, in which the demon claims Esmeralda as the instrument of his entrapment of Adrian's vainglory, ingenium and memoriam, and offers him twenty-four years of time gifted with genius (geniale Zeit), a time of incubation (hochtragende Zeit) from the date of his sexual embrace, if he will now renounce the warmth of love. This dialogue reveals the anatomy of Leverkühn's thought.

Adrian then moves permanently to Pfeiffering, and in conversations with Zeitblom reveals a darker view of life than his. Figures of a demonic type appear, such as Dr. Chaim Breisacher, 'a racial and intellectual type of reckless development and fascinating ugliness,' to cast down the idols of the older generation.

In 1915 Ines Rodde marries, but forms an adulterous love for Rudi Schwerdtfeger. Adrian begins to experience illnesses of retching, headaches and migraines, but is producing new and finer music, preparing the way for his great work Apocalypsis cum figuris. Schwerdtfeger woos himself into Adrian's solitude, asking for a violin concerto that would be like the offspring of their platonic union.

By August 1919 Adrian has completed the sketch of Apocalypse
Apocalypse
An Apocalypse is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted. The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament...

. There is also a new circle of intellectual friends, including Sextus Kridwiß ('kreideweiß = chalk-white') the art-expert, Chaim Breisacher, Dr. Egon Unruhe ('Unrest') the palaeozoologist, Georg Vogler ('fowler') (literary historian), Dr. Holzschuher ('Clogs') (a Dürer scholar), and the saturnine poet Daniel zur Höhe ('to height'). In their 'torturingly clever' discussions they declare the need for the renunciation of bourgeois softness and a preparation for an age of pre-medieval
Migration Period
The Migration Period, also called the Barbarian Invasions , was a period of intensified human migration in Europe that occurred from c. 400 to 800 CE. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages...

 harshness. Adrian writes to Zeitblom that collectivism
Collectivism
Collectivism is any philosophic, political, economic, mystical or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence of every human in some collective group and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists usually focus on community, society, or nation...

 is the true antithesis of Bourgeois culture: Zeitblom observes that aestheticism
Aestheticism
Aestheticism was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design...

 is the herald of barbarism
Societal collapse
Societal collapse broadly includes both quite abrupt societal failures typified by collapses , as well as more extended gradual declines of superpowers...

.

Apocalypse is performed in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 in 1926 under Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century.-Biography:Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany...

 with Erbe (an allusion to Karl Erb
Karl Erb
Karl Erb was a German tenor vocalist who made his career first in opera and then in oratorio and lieder recital. He excelled in all these genres, and before 1920 gave classic performances of key roles in modern works, and created lead roles in those of Hans Pfitzner...

, the famous Evangelist
Evangelist (Bach)
The Evangelist in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is the tenor part in his oratorios and Passions who narrates the exact words of the Bible, translated by Martin Luther, in recitative, namely in the works St John Passion, St Matthew Passion, and the Christmas Oratorio, also in the St Mark...

 of Bach's St Matthew Passion) as the St John narrator. (As a music reviewer Thomas Mann had been witness to Erb's oratorio debuts in around 1916.) Zeitblom describes the work as filled with longing without hope, with hellish laughter transposed and transfigured even into the searing tones of spheres and angels.

Adrian attempts to obtain a wife by employing Rudi (who gets his concerto) as the messenger of his love, but she prefers Rudi himself, and not Adrian. Soon afterwards Rudi is shot dead in a tram by Ines, because of jealousy. As Adrian begins to plan the second oratorio The Lamentation of Doctor Faustus, in 1928, his sister's child Nepomuk is sent to live with him. This beautiful boy, who calls himself 'Echo', is beloved by all.

As the work of gigantic dimensions develops in Adrian's mind, the child falls ill and dies, and Adrian, despairing, believes that by gazing at him with love (contrary to his contract) he has killed him with poisonous and hellish influences.

The score of the Lamentation is completed in 1930, Adrian summons his friends and guests, and instead of playing the music he relates the story of his infernal contract, and descends into the brain disease which lasts until his death ten years later.

Zeitblom visits him occasionally, and survives to witness the collapse of Germany's 'dissolute triumphs' as he tells the story of his friend.

Allusions and sources

Doctor Faustus is constructed in richly allusive and symbolic terms. H.T. Lowe-Porter
H. T. Lowe-Porter
Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter was an American translator, most celebrated for her translations of the works of Thomas Mann....

 refers to the three strands of the book:

'the German scene from within, and its broader, its universal origins; the depiction of an art not German alone but vital to our whole civilization; music as one instance of the arts and the state in which the arts find themselves today [sc. 1949]; and, finally, the invocation of the daemonic.' (Translator's note, vi.)

Mann wrote a book about the writing of this novel, 'The Genesis of Doctor Faustus' (1949).

Models for the composer-legend

In naming Leverkühn's projected work The Lamentation of Dr Faustus, Mann was echoing Ernst Krenek
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...

's Lamentatio Jeremiae prophetae, an oratorio of 1941-1942 which combines the Schoenbergian twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...

 with modal counterpoint.

Although Leverkühn's visit to Palestrina
Palestrina
Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 18,000, in Lazio, c. 35 km east of Rome...

 with Schildknapp fully evokes the great early polyphonist
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...

 named for this birthpace, (and Adrian's absorption in polyphonic theory), it also alludes to the opera Palestrina
Palestrina (opera)
Palestrina is an opera by the German composer Hans Pfitzner, first performed in 1917. The composer referred to it as a Musikalische Legende , and wrote the libretto himself, based on a legend about the Renaissance musician Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who saves the art of contrapuntal music ...

, premiered at Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 in 1917, and written by Hans Pfitzner
Hans Pfitzner
Hans Erich Pfitzner was a German composer and self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera Palestrina, loosely based on the life of the great sixteenth-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.-Biography:Pfitzner was born in Moscow, Russia, where his...

. That opera is (outwardly) precisely about polyphonic music in relation to political environment, and Palestrina's attempt to hold together the diverging worlds of the Reformation epoch. Mann described Erb's 1917 debut as Palestrina
Palestrina (opera)
Palestrina is an opera by the German composer Hans Pfitzner, first performed in 1917. The composer referred to it as a Musikalische Legende , and wrote the libretto himself, based on a legend about the Renaissance musician Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who saves the art of contrapuntal music ...

 in almost exactly the terms used for 'Erbe' in Apocalypse. Mann therefore also had Pfitzner in mind.

Palestrina is one of three characteristic German-language operas of the early 20th century, outside the main stream of opera, which deal with the isolation of the creative individual, two others being Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

's Mathis der Maler (about Matthias Grünewald
Matthias Grünewald
Matthias Grünewald or "Mathis" , "Gothart" or "Neithardt" , , was a German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.Only ten paintings—several consisting...

), completed 1935, and the Berlin-based Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...

's Doktor Faust
Doktor Faust
Doktor Faust is an opera by Ferruccio Busoni with a German libretto by the composer himself, based on the myth of Faust. Busoni worked on the opera, which he intended as his masterpiece, between 1916 and 1924, but it was still incomplete at the time of his death. His pupil Philipp Jarnach finished it...

, which was left unfinished in 1924. All are concerned with the German Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

, as the root point leading to the ethical, spiritual and artistic crises confronting early 20th century creativity . Mann's Doctor Faustus strongly reflects this theme in German musical theatre.

Allusive naming; title

Names are important throughout. Serenus Zeitblom's father's forename Wohlgemut echoes the artist Michael Wohlgemuth, teacher of Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

. The name of Wendell Kretzschmar is probably borrowed from that of Hermann Kretzschmar
Hermann Kretzschmar
August Ferdinand Hermann Kretzschmar was a German musicologist and writer, and is considered a founder of interpretation in musical study.- Career :...

, a founder of interpretative musical analysis, whose essays 'Guides to the Concert Hall' were widely read. Kretzschmar is half-American to indicate the world-historic context of musical culture. The names of other key characters reflect their roles, as in a morality play like Everyman
Everyman (play)
The Somonyng of Everyman , usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century English morality play. Like John Bunyan's novel Pilgrim's Progress, Everyman examines the question of Christian salvation by use of allegorical characters, and what Man must do to attain it...

, a mannerism suited to the Faust genre and its allegorical purposes.

The doomed child's name Nepomuk
Nepomuk
Nepomuk is a town in the Pilsen Region of the Czech Republic. It lies on the Mihovka River, some to the south-southwest from the region capital of Pilsen....

, in the 19th century quite popular in Austria and southern Germany and middle name of the composer Hummel
Johann Nepomuk Hummel
Johann Nepomuk Hummel or Jan Nepomuk Hummel was an Austrian composer and virtuoso pianist. His music reflects the transition from the Classical to the Romantic musical era.- Life :...

 and the playwright Johann Nestroy
Johann Nestroy
Johann Nepomuk Eduard Ambrosius Nestroy was a singer, actor and playwright in the popular Austrian tradition of the Biedermeier period and its immediate aftermath...

, can be seen as an allusion to the high rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

, the 're-echoing of movement', in the St John Nepomuk Church
Asamkirche (München)
St. Johann Nepomuk, better known as the Asam Church is a church in Munich, southern Germany, built from 1733 to 1746 by the brothers Egid Quirin Asam and Cosmas Damian Asam as their private church. Due to resistance of the citizens, the brothers were forced to make the church accessible to the...

 architecture by the Asam brothers
Asam brothers
The Asam Brothers were sculptors, workers in stucco, painters, and architects, who worked mostly together and in southern Germany...

 in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 (as described and interpreted by Heinrich Wölfflin
Heinrich Wölfflin
Heinrich Wölfflin was a famous Swiss art critic, whose objective classifying principles were influential in the development of formal analysis in the history of art during the 20th century. He taught at Basel, Berlin and Munich in the generation that raised German art history to pre-eminence...

).

The title of the novel connects it of course with the most famous work, Faust I
Faust Part One
Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy is the first part of Goethe's Faust. It was first published in 1808.-Synopsis:The first part of Faust is not divided into acts, but is structured as a sequence of scenes in a variety of settings...

 and Faust II
Faust Part Two
Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy is the second part of Goethe's Faust. It was published in 1832, the year of Goethe's death. Because of its complexity in form and content, it is usually not read in German schools, although the first part commonly is. It can be seen as one of the most...

, of the German poet Goethe, generally considered the absolute, unsurpassable climax of all German literature and the most deep and most true exploration and depiction of the German character. The relation with this work is indirect, mainly the Faustian character of Adrian Leverkühn, Faustian through his abnormal ambition. Moreover, the abnormality of Adrian Leverkühn is related to that of the German culture in view of Nazism.

Other composite elements

Mann's characters are composites, not specific counterparts to individuals. Where names do seem to allude to real persons (such as Spengler, to Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...

, or Kridwiß, to Ernst Kris
Ernst Kris
Ernst Kris was an Austrian psychoanalyst and art historian. Kris was the son of Leopold Kris, a lawyer, and Rosa Schick.Born in Vienna, Austria in 1900, died in New York City, New York in 1957....

) Mann is echoing in their names the philosophies and intellectual standpoints of their time (of which he was a part) without intending portraits or impersonations of the real persons. The homoerotic character of the violinist Rudi Schwerdtfeger is modelled on Paul Ehrenberg
Paul Ehrenberg
Paul Ehrenberg was a German violinist and impressionist painter, brother of Carl Ehrenberg and half-brother of Hilde Distel.Ehrenberg was a student of the painter Heinrich von Zügel. He was a member of the Luitpoldsgruppe and Künstlergenossenschaft. His work, shown in many Munich exhibitions,...

 of Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, an admired friend of Thomas Mann's.

In preparation for the work, Mann studied musicology and biographies of major composers including Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

, Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

, Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...

, Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but utterly unrelated in...

, Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker was an Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and administrator. Primarily a composer of operas, his style is characterized by aesthetic plurality , timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and...

 and Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

. He communicated with living composers, including Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

 (see below), and Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...

. He also made a study of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

, whose career including the supposed contracting of syphilis followed by complete mental collapse in 1889 at the height of his creative life prophesying the 'Anti-Christ', and his death in 1900, do present a pattern imitated in Leverkühn. The illnesses of Delius
Delius
Delius is a surname. It may refer to:* Ernst von Delius - German racing car driver* Frederick Delius - English composer* Nicolaus Delius - German philologist* Tobias Delius Delius is a surname. It may refer to:* Ernst von Delius (1912–1937) - German racing car driver* Frederick Delius...

 and Wolf also resonate here. In the death of the child there is an echo (appropriately) of the death of Mahler's daughter, after he had (in Alma
Alma Mahler
Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel was a Viennese-born socialite well known in her youth for her beauty and vivacity. She became the wife, successively, of composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, and novelist Franz Werfel, as well as the consort of several other prominent men...

's opinion) tempted fate by setting the Kindertotenlieder
Kindertotenlieder
Kindertotenlieder is a song cycle for voice and orchestra by Gustav Mahler...

.

In Chapter XXII Leverkühn develops the twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...

 or row system, which was actually invented by Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

. Schoenberg lived near Mann in Los Angeles as the novel was being written. He was very annoyed by this appropriation without his consent, and later editions of the novel included an Author's Note at the end acknowledging that the technique was Schoenberg's intellectual property, and that passages of the book dealing with musical theory are indebted in many details to Schoenberg's Harmonielehre.

Guidance

A most important and direct contribution came from the philosopher and music critic Theodor Adorno, who acted as Mann's adviser and encouraged him to rewrite large sections of the book. Mann also read chapters to groups of invited friends (a method also used by Kafka) to test the effect of the text. He wrote, "Zeitblom is a parody of myself. Adrian's mood is closer to my own than one might – and ought to – think."

Themes

As a re-telling of the Faust myth, the novel is concerned with themes such as pride, temptation, the cost of greatness, loss of humanity and so on. Another concern is with the intellectual fall of Germany in the time leading up to World War II. Leverkühn's own moods and ideology mimic the change from humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

 to irrational nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...

 found in Germany's intellectual life in the 1930s. Leverkühn becomes increasingly corrupt of body and of mind, ridden by syphilis and insanity. In the novel, all of these thematic threads – Germany's intellectual fall, Leverkühn's spiritual fall, and the physical corruption of his body – directly correspond to the national disaster of fascist Germany. In Mann's published version of his 1938 United States lecture tour, The Coming Victory of Democracy
The Coming Victory of Democracy
The Coming Victory of Democracy is a book published in 1938 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. It contains the abbreviated text of a lecture series delivered by Thomas Mann from February to May of that year, all across the United States. Mann's intent was to rally support in America for fighting the Nazi...

, he said, "I must regretfully own that in my younger years I shared that dangerous German habit of thought which regards life and intellect, art and politics as totally separate worlds." He now realised that they were inseparable. In Doktor Faustus, Leverkühn's personal history, his artistic development, and the shifting German political climate are tied together by the narrator Zeitblom as he feels out and worries over the moral health of his nation (just as he had worried over the spiritual health of his friend, Leverkühn).

Adaptations

  • Franz Seitz’s 1982 adaptation of the novel for West German television starred Jon Finch
    Jon Finch
    Jon Finch is an English actor noted for many Shakespearean roles. Perhaps his most notable role was the title role in Roman Polanski's 1971 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. His other famous role was as a down-and-out ex-RAF pilot wrongly accused of murder in Alfred Hitchcock's...

     as Adrian Leverkühn.
    • Alexander Sokurov
      Alexander Sokurov
      Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov is a Russian filmmaker. His most significant works include a semi-documentary, Russian Ark , filmed in a single unedited shot, and Faust , which was honoured with the Golden Lion, the highest prize for the best film at the Venice Film Festival.- Life and work...

      's film Faust
      Faust (2011 film)
      Faust is a 2011 Russian film directed by Alexander Sokurov. Set in the 19th century, it is a free interpretation of the Faust legend and its literary adaptations by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Thomas Mann. The dialogue is in German...

      (2011)

English translations

  • H. T. Lowe-Porter
    H. T. Lowe-Porter
    Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter was an American translator, most celebrated for her translations of the works of Thomas Mann....

     translated many of Mann's works, including Doctor Faustus, almost contemporaneously with their composition. Mann completed Doctor Faustus in 1947, and in 1948 Alfred A. Knopf
    Alfred A. Knopf
    Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...

     published Lowe-Porter's English translation (referenced below). The translator in her note remarked 'Grievous difficulties do indeed confront anyone essaying the role of copyist to this vast canvas, this cathedral of a book, this woven tapestry of symbolism.' She described her translation as 'a version which cannot lay claim to being beautiful, though in every intent it is deeply faithful.' She found a linguistic spirit comparable to Mann's intended authorial 'voice', and employed medieval English vocabulary and phrasing to correspond with those sections of the text in which characters speak in Early New High German
    Early New High German
    Early New High German is a term for the period in the history of the German language, generally defined, following Wilhelm Scherer, as the period 1350 to 1650.Alternative periodisations take the period to begin later; e.g...

    .
  • John E. Woods
    John E. Woods
    John E. Woods is a translator who specializes in translating German literature, since about 1978. His work includes much of the fictional prose of Arno Schmidt and the works of contemporary authors such as Ingo Schulze and Christoph Ransmayr...

    ' translation of 1997 is in a more modern vein, and does not attempt to mirror the original in this way.

Sources

  1. Giordano, Diego. Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus and the twelve-tone technique. From the Myth to the Alienation, in Calixtilia (n.3), Lampi di Stampa, 2010. ISBN 9-788848-811507.
  2. Mann, Thomas. Doktor Faustus. Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn erzählt von einem Freunde (S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1947).
  3. Mann, Thomas; translation by Lowe-Porter, H.T. (Helen Tracy). Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948. ISBN 0-679-60042-6.
  4. Mann, Thomas. The Story of a Novel: The Genesis of Doctor Faustus (Alfred Knopf, New York 1961).
  5. Mann, Thomas; translation by Woods, John E. (John Edwin). Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend. Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. ISBN 0-375-40054-0.
  6. Reed, T.J. (Terence James). Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition. Oxford University Press, 1974. ISBN 0-19-815742-8 (cased). ISBN 0-19-815747-9 (paperback).
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