Doctor Faustus Thomas Mann Review

Whereas kafka was little known in his own lifetime and never managed to live from his writing mann was the prototype of the successful internationally celebrated novelist.

Doctor faustus thomas mann review. In 1943 klaus s father thomas mann began a novel doctor faustus in which he re shaped the faust legend to comment on the politics of nazi germany from which he was in exile. Sub clauses spawn other sub clauses and sometimes a single sentence will spiral halfway down the page before finding a period. Lying at the heart of mann s concern is the central figure of adrian leverkuhn theologian turned composer. In doctor faustus arguably his greatest book if not the greatest book ever all of mann s formidable gifts come together.

I had to reread sentences constantly for i was forever losing the train of thought. A work written in old age and suffused with mann s moral despair over his country s complacent embrace of nazism doctor faustus unrelentingly details the rise and fall of adrian leverkåhn a gifted musician modeled as mann admitted on modernist innovator arnold schoenberg who effectively sells his soul to the devil for a generation of renown as the greatest living composer. Their authors artistic lives were similarly opposed. Thomas mann writes in an incredibly convoluted way.

In him all the warring impulses all the contradictions of our age are focused. The book was completed and published in 1947 after the collapse of the regime. Yet paradoxically the story of a former divinity student who bargains his soul and body to become a musician of genius is set in the wrong historical era. Friday 28 august 2009 00 00 thomas mann s doktor faustus is a work of exile written in the us 1943 1947 a bold and sometimes terrifying retelling of the faust legend through the life of a.

Kafka s castle and mann s doctor faustus mark the two poles of novelistic style in german modernism. Like son like father. As all mann readers know his books can be terribly slow and sometimes maddeningly ponderous but i invariably reach the final page having resisted the inclination to throw the book aside forever feeling that my time has been i hardly ever give up on a novel. It was to prove his last completed novel.