Thomas Mann: The Ironic German

by Erich Heller

In this book, which was first published in 1958 and reissued in 1981, Professor Heller sees Mann as the late heir of the central tradition of modern German literature and also as one of the most ironic writers within that tradition. He offers a detailed study of the major works of fiction, Buddenbrooks, Tonio Kroher, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers, Doctor Faustus and Felix Krull, as well as a discussion of Mann's most significant political essay, 'Meditations of a Non-Political Man'. Beyond this, Heller's book is a profound commentary on Mann by a mind attuned to (and mouded by) precisely the intellectual and cultural traditions which are so much part of Mann's creative make-up.

Genres: Germany

314 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1958

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mann faces Schopenhauer’s split of art and life. Because he doesn’t think art is a healthy goal, he’s drawn back to bourgeois life, conservative politics, and artistic irony.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to Thomas Mann after reading The Magic Mountain and loving it. It was a surprise to learn that he also wrote Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, an obsessive political defense of conservatism and WWI Germany. I had figured that you were supposed to laugh at Settembrini, but from an artistic perspective, not from a political one. Settembrini is, I admit, kind of naive about what drives Castorp when he shows interest in the big questions. But there's a big leap from that to a wholesale condemnation of Western democracy! Now I actually kind of think Settembrini was right about everything.

So I came to Heller to learn a little more about how Thomas Mann's philosophy evolved from the Reflections to The Magic Mountain and beyond, to the point of "his first angry refusal to visit Germany in 1946". This is mainly criticism, less so biography.

There's a set of problems that animate Mann's writing, that Heller puts under the heading of Life vs Art. In short, Mann buys Schopenhauer's view of the purpose of art as transcendence, but his attachment to burgherlichkeit conflicts with this view of art. His response to this conflict intimately involves his German patriotism, which quickly becomes problematic. In the Reflections, Mann feels compelled to explain how his views of art and politics are ethical, and do not in fact lead to inhumanity. He walks back his conservatism somewhat, and lands on "irony" as his preferred mode for an artist engaging in life.

I have to say, nothing resembles the way Heller portrays Mann's dilemma so much as Liam Kofi Bright's articulation of two tendencies in philosophy: the "basically pleasant bureaucrat" and the "sexy murder poet". It's almost like Mann wants to be a sexy murder poet, thinks that he ought to be one, tries to be one, but can't get around the basic reasons to be a basically pleasant bureaucrat. He never admits this to himself and that's how you end up in a state of irony.

Heller thinks "Joseph and his Brothers" is the apotheosis of Mann's ironic mode. I found the "Theology of Irony" from this very interesting. I'm going to recap it here. God sends Adam Qadmon into the realm of (formless) matter to fight Evil, but Evil convinces Adam to desire Form. Ignoring his council of Angels (who represent his severe, legalistic aspect) God takes pity on Adam and brings Form to the realm of matter, thus creating the world. In order to rescue Adam, God sends Spirit into the world. Spirit's job is to convince Adam to give up Form and Matter and return to the transcendent realm of God. But Spirit tarries in the world. It's not clear if Spirit is dragging their feet because Spirit knows God's will will be done in the end anyways, or if it's because the worldliness of the world has seduced Spirit. I like this. It shows Mann turning back towards the world from the abyss in the end, if with some ironic detachment.

To Mann's credit, his distaste for liberalism occasionally makes a point: he observes that we live in "a time when the innermost desire of the world, the whole world, is not for still more anarchy through liberty, but for a new binding faith, and when the belief in belief has already reached the point of a psychological readiness to accept a new obscurantism". Can we afford to be basically pleasant bureaucrats when the world demands sexy murder poets? Someone will step in to fill the void!

Heller makes a keen observation here. It doesn't make sense to respond to this state of affairs by separating art from politics. "For the political consciousness is by no means necessarily shut off from the profounder realizations of the human lot. It is even possible to assume that it can and should have something in common with art and literature."

And Mann can't stop himself from basically agreeing. "Could it be that what I am... does not correspond exactly to what I think and believe, and that I am destined to further precisely that which on these pages I have called 'Progress' through the very act of conservatively opposing it- opposing it by means of 'literature'? 'Literature is analysis, intelligence, scepticism, psychology; it is "Democracy", it is the "West". And where it is joined in one person to conservative convictions,
there will be inner conflict. Conservative? Of course, this is not what I am; for even if I wished to believe it, my nature would refute me.'"