From Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus:
Every collaborative venture with nature, every attempt to tease phenomena out of her, to "tempt" her by exposing her workings through experiment-it all comes very close to sorcery, indeed is already within its realm and is the work of the "Tempter," or so earlier epochs were convinced, and a very respectable view it is, if you ask me.
In earlier epochs also, certain strains of knowledge were viewed as sacred and indeed dangerous, and to be kept far from the eyes of the profane. It could be said that knowledge doesn't get much more dangerous than that of nuclear energy, nor does life get much more profane than the political field. What a lovely couple these two make.
The scientist as sorcerer to those calling themselves "the State"; that in itself a piece of verbal sorcery where the skilful manipulation of words invokes powers from without.
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8 comments:
funny, i was just reading Mann's Genesis of a Novel, a slim book relating how he came to write Dr Faustus. Great book, interestingly different Satan to Dostoevsky's, though obviously influenced thereby.
Just 150 pages into it, but very impressed...a book I'd been thinking of getting for quite a while. I'm getting ahead of myself but you'd recommend The Magic Mountain next?
I thought Dr Faustus was totally brilliant up to page 37, gents. I mean it was so so good, offering something more than the russian, english and american lit I am used to reading.
But the other 500 pages were a complete nightmare, got through tortuously at a snails pace and to be honest i just skim-read it in the end. The book was just about savaged by the end as if a dog had eaten it because I'd thrown it about so much, and I vowed at the time to hate Thomas Mann for eternity.
That said I read an extract from 'Man and Dog' (or something like that), and I'm tempted to read it.
Boys! Vhat an interesting discussion.
wow! zha western men so clever, no?
Sasha
I actually pay someone else to write clever stuff for me, Sahsa, as I haven't a thought in my head- not even this one, as this is also being written by someone else. Welcome, and glad you enjoy what you see.
I can understand why someone might find it heavy and tedious, MNW, but I suppose there's a depth of intelligence there, and something of a key to seeing the death of an old cultured pre WW1 Europe, and what follows on in the book...Maybe El will explain more/better/not bother.
i didn't like it on my first read - when i was about 20 - i re-read it when i was 24 as part of my dissertation on Satan, and was blown away. i think it's very much a writer's book, or an artist's book - being a writer of sorts, and i suppose obsessed with Satan, i found a book about an musician compacting with the Devil fascinating.
You can also read it as being about the way the German state was possessed by that sorceror Hitler (c.f. Mann's short story 'Mario & the Magician').
i think you do have to be interested in what goes towards the act of creation to really 'get' the novel. There were so many parallels between the novel & my life up to that point (aged 24) that i couldn't but be absorbed by it.
The Magic Mountain is great but again another book i didn't get when i first read it (aged 20 or so), but i thought was great when re-read a few years later.
The 1000-page epic Joseph and his Brothers is very good - the Old Testament as seen through Jung.
Probably - for its length - the best Mann is his short story 'Death in Venice'.
Interesting discussion chaps.
I guess my problem with Dr F was that it seemed as if written in a foriegn language. Even classics that I didn't enjoy that much (e.g. Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, or The portrait of a lady) I was able to understand and read. But Dr F was like chewing leather.
I rememebr I read DHL's 'The Plumed Serpent' simultaneously;an impossibly difficult and infuriating book, full of long desrciptive passages of Mexico. All the same it's an exceptional book and I was glad I read it.
But for Dr F I can only say that the handful of chapters I could understand were exceptional.
I know nothing about music or philosophy or the history of Europe, so perhaps I was lacking cultural references.
All the same Mann is a great writer. Thanks for the guide Elberry. Of course I think I got the novel. I think I understood for example, what was meant by the fact that both of the protaganist's Doctors died before meeting him.
Yeah, thinking it over it IS a brilliant book; just spoilt by its inaccesabilty. World war's 1 and 2, Hitler -- it's all there. It's a collossus. Perhaps if I re-read it now it might be easier. I will put Death in Venice at the top of my reading list.
I am reading a newish John Woods translation, which seems to be accepted as far superior to the old Lowe-Porter one, also- seen as much stiffer.
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