6
PARTISAN REVIEW
an intellectual frame of mind, a state of the human soul which implies
justice, liberty, knowledge and tolerance; doubt too, not as an end in
itself, but as a means of seeking truth; solicitous effort to
free
this
truth from all the presumptions of those who try to hide it under a
bushel. ... Would it not
be
best and simplest to consider humanism
as the
contrary of fanaticism?"
Christianity, however, is subject to the mutations of its institu–
tional life; and humanism is but a principle. It is, therefore, natural
for Mann, who thinks of society as a mass of individuals, who are
unfortunately not the subject but the object of history, and from
whose grasp the ideas of order and light are constantly slipping, to
conceive of the artist as destined by the very laws of his being to
preserve the values of our civilization.
This conflict
between
the artist and society is in fact
one
of the
basic conceptions of Mann's novels and stories.
We see
it especially
in Tonio Kroger, who felt that
"one
must die to life to
be
utterly a
creator," and in Aschenbach, who looks to the external world to
compensate for his artistic sclitude, only to find that he has thereby
destroyed all the fruits of his life. Why? In his essay on
Goethe and
T olstoy,
Mann contrasts the idea of
folk
with that of
humanity,
describing the Nazi pagan-collectivity as folk-barbarism. Folk is the
principle of collectivity on a physical, animal basis. Humanity, on the
other hand, is the striving of man to transcend
his
animalism: it is
the bond of dignity and culture and
freedom
which unites men. It is
the ideal of the world-city, the spiritual home of man. Since humanity,
however, is the special property of the artist, he inevitably comes into
conflict with the growing folk-tendencies of
society.
Paradoxically, though, Mann regards art as a disease, for the
ailments of man
come
from his attempt to assert his humanity. Health,
in its animal
sense,
is the automatic adjustment to envirQnment; while
the diseases of the mind lie in its restlessness, its dissatisfactions, in the
fact that it contantly hovers between the ecstasies of discovery and
the agonies of doubt. "The genius of disease," says Mann, "is
more
human than the genius of health." To-day the conflict is sharper, with
all the advantages on the side of barbarism; and if this is but the
operation of a universal law, as Mann apparently conceives it to be,
there can be little hope that the values of the artist will ever triumph.
His martyrdom is his constant struggle against odds: the pathology
of art involves a belief in the essential barbarism of man. There is a
striking confirmation of this principle of doom in
The Magic Moun–
tain,
where Settembrini, the humanist, for all his splendid moments,
is essentially a stricken being.
