THOMAS MANN
59
reahn where progress is possible-the realm of the human. For what
is the "pact" with God, of which we are told so much, but the pact
that man makes with that part of himself which he has projected into
the Deity and which later theology will erect into an absolute system
of dogma? In other words, Joseph belongs to the stage at which man
is
still occupied in "making"
his
God. As the half-crazed Cardan said
of himself, he is
in extremitate humanae substantiae conditionisque,
but not yet among the immortals.
Although Joseph remains a man, he is a
superior
man. And this
leads to the consideration that must have been the most profound
source of Mann's attraction toward him. For what is he but the ancient
prototype of that modern individual whose marked superiority both
of experience and insight has incurred the hostility of all right-thi.nking
people, forced into the lonely pit of humiliation, and driven into a
bitter exile? Joseph will be many things before we are through with
him--slave-gardener, overseer, diplomat and prophet-but he is first
and foremost "the man of words." To his exceptional gift of language
he owes, in the first place, his inheritance of the "blessing" over the
heads of his older brothers. To the same gift he owes the fateful inter–
est in him taken by the Maonite merchant who leads him into Egypt,
by the overseer Montakaw in the house of Potiphar, and by the im–
pressionable Potiphar himself. And through
his
ability to give beautiful
and prophetic expression to his dreams he will undoubtedly attract the
attention of Pharaoh and earn his deliverance from the pit a second
time. In Joseph the suffering artist of the early tales will undergo a
purgation by which all that knowledge of the abyss, all that sympathy
with disease and death becomes translated on the higher plane of
moral and social responsibility.
In our very first glimpse of him Joseph betrays what we have
seen as the inherent narcissism of the type. Moreover, this time it is
a narcissim of the body as well as of the mind or spirit, for as
<:
mythi–
cal character Joseph can be as beautiful as he is wise- the 'mion of
Tadzio and Aschenbach in a single person. Again physical beauty is
the outward and visible sign of a superior moral and spiritual nature.
&
the child of Rachel and Jacob, he is the fruit of the marriage be–
tween beauty and spirit. But it is his too casual and unreflecting as–
sumption of the role, the naive conviction that everyone must love him
as
he loves himself, the inevitable arrogance of the wearer of the
ketonet that leads to his brutal treatment at the hands of the brothers.
Like Aschenbach, he must pay for his sensuous relaxation into his own
image-the moon; like Tadzio, he must be pushed into the earth by
his
more coarse-grained fellows . Before his descent into the well Joseph
is
hardly a person; he is no longer a child but not yet a man; he has
no status in his social group. He exists only in the light of his infantile
