Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers Chapter XXII – XXVIII, p. 198 – 300


To avoid spoilers, please limit your comments to p. 3 - 300

I had forgotten just how ínsanely complex this novel is, how everything, but really everything plays out on various literal / metaphorical / philosophical levels, and how each of those levels then interconnect with each other to form an intricate web where it is pretty much impossible to lift a single strand without pulling the whole texture along with it.

So I am not going to even try to say anything meaningful here (I really should have taken more time reading this novel and given a lot more attention to details, and really should have known better, having read it before) and just remark on how vivid a picture Thomas Mann paints of the intellctual bohème in early twentieth century Germany. Admittedly, this realistic level is just about the least interesting thing about Doktor Faustus, but still, it is there, and it is extremely well done. It really is a bygone age now, and as contemporary reader (in particular, I suspect, as a contemporary German reader) one is at the same time charmed by the naiveté and the intellectual daring with which the most extreme ideas are discussed, and at the same, knowing what all this will lead to, utterly horrified by it.

Much like Zeitblom's retrospective point of view, coming to think about it, and in spite (or possibly because?) of his cluelessness and his tendency to miss everything of importance going on around him, I find myself more and more touched by that character as the novel progresses.

(Btw., what do people think how naive Zeitblom actually is? I've been wondering about his recurring and profuse apologies for being ahead of himself, for introducing and hinting at character's before they are fully developed - surely he must be aware that he is imitating musical structuring there?)