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Or, more significant and essential, ranging through the whole book and appearing in many variations, the motif of cold, which is related to the motif of laughter.
In that laughter the devil, the secret hero of the book, is invisibly present.”

Pp 70-71 [Franz Werfel notes Adrian’s laughter in the draft] “with insight and foresight, he thus picked out one of the small motifs of the book, the kind I most enjoy working with—like, say, the erotic motif of the blue and black eyes; the mother motif; the parallelism of the landscapes…

[Mann reading Adorno on Schönberg in the early stages of writing] “Moreover, this reading nourished the musical conception which had long been my ideal of form and for which this time there was a special esthetic necessity. I felt clearly that my book itself would have to become the thing it dealt with: namely, a musical composition.