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PARTISAN REVIEW
thought. Much as we were asked to see in his inarticulate impressiveness,
his drunken balance, and his cohesive and inspiring effect upon a crowd,
a Dionysius disguised as a Dutch businessman, still Peeperkorn remained
a Dionysius reeling in a grove of categories. For he lacked an objective
drama commensurate with his size irr his author's mind.
Tradition supplies this lack in the case of Joseph. Joseph has a
stage on which to be great. He is an actual historical and legendary
Provider, whose matchless talents for dreams and management altered
the historical course of at least two nations. Joseph is a figure with a
great human purpose, in addition to the human-and-divine Being of
Peeperkorn. In fact, so obvious is his greatness that Mann does not have
to insist on it, as he did with Peeperkorn-he can even afford to run
him down a little and put him in his place.
Joseph also had a remarkably picturesque and coherent personal
history, involving a doting father, jealous brothers, crimes, seductions,
and sudden reversals of fortune. While Peeperkorn's uniqueness remains
a mystery of intuition, Joseph identifies himself more tangibly by the
unique story he has to tell about his ancestors and himself. Thus in
finding a story for his hero, Mann arrives at a more profound and con–
crete conception of greatness- that it is not merely a metaphysical
quality belonging to the isolated individual, but that it comes from
the human tradition which the individual repeats in himself and renews
as the story of his own life.
But though the
Joseph
series is in many ways more philosophical
than
The Magic Mountain,
it is less perfect as a literary work and
actually smaller though it has many more pages.
The Magic Mountain,
just because it lacked the great story and had to rely on a flying frame–
work of analogies, was superior in formal tension, imagery and the com–
pression of ideas. Mann felt the need for the Story to fill out his con–
ception of human greatness-but this too shows that he was not inter–
ested in the story as a story but in its systematic dialectical possibilities.
Mann is the St. Thomas of the humanist Whole Man rather than his
Shakespeare or Tolstoy.
HARoLD RosENBERG
CROCE, THE CABBAGE AND THE GOAT
GERMANY AND EuROPE.
By Benedetto Croce. Translated and with an
introduction by Vincent Sheean. Random House.
$1.50
«CROCE," says Vincent Sheean, "is an Italian Socrates"--a Socrates,
one might add, who answers his own questions. The monologue is
at times brilliant, but very often its conclusions make sense only to peo–
ple who already accept its premises.
I wonder how much sense Croce's reflections on Germany will make
