38
PARTISAN REVIEW
art and literature-since banned by Hitler as degenerate-as springing
from the same "dark forces" as the Nazis themselves. The social
changes that forced the art of Europe in the direction of expression–
ism were ignored in the name of the higher tempo of
Art.
Of course,
in acting thus Mann did not save himself from being "a child of time."
Mann's idealism, inventing its own political and social limits as
it invents its psychological ones, rests its antiradical antifascism on the
assumption that a conservative solution is possible for the radical
problems of modem society. Momentarily, he reasons, Germany has
lost its human measure, because of its dubious "political gift," its
traditional "pessimism on the score of politics"; but through this very
loss it undergoes the experiences of suffering which, leading once more
to the search for measure, make its recovery of equilibrium inevitable.
The causes of the political tipping of the cultural scale remain a
psychological mystery, an Irrational, an incapacity buried in the
heart of the Folk. A wave of madness and evil accounts for Germany's
present tragedy. Wicked and disproportionate Ideas suddenly took
root in its humanity, destroyed its balanced forward movement, and
worked havoc with its accomplishments. And therefore it is not anal–
ysis and the understanding of the people everywhere that will destroy
fascism, but
righteousn~-a
righteousness backed by the armies and
navies of England, France, and the United States.
Thus does Mann in his politics as in his art systematically turn
everything inside out. In a speech at Carnegie Hall, he . anticipates
the rise of socialism through the development of "the bourgeois revo–
lution not only politically but also economically."- (is it necessary
to be Marxist to understand that the bourgeois revolution perfected
itself economically with the consolidation of the reign of
private
property?) He calls for a "spiritual renewal" of democracy, and
urges present democratic governments to an increased military bellig·
erency that can result only in the destruction of both democracy and
spirit. To discourage support of the Nazis among the business men in
his audience, he himself lends support to one of their most powerful
lies in stating: "In certain respects, particularly economically, Na·
tional-Socialism is nothing but bolshevism." Throughout, he argues
as if history were a seminar, in wh1ch the best-i.e. least active–
theory of change were being sought in order that it might be applied
to the alteration of bourgeois institutions.
The boundaries of the earth's surface haunt Thomas Mann,
as
they once fascinated the merchant society whose culture he so proudly
represents. In his frequent essays in spiritualism he has tried to peep
over the edges. As for the future of mankind, it is an eternal terrain
