THOMAS MANN'S FAUST
questionable and problematic. All we can be sure of (and set down in
a chronicle such as this) is that this society has ceased to exist, that the
artist is lost, and that perhaps even the creative act itself is doomed to
failure. Perhaps we might still ask: what kind of human existence can
we
envisage after reaching the limits (and the negation) of bourgeois
society as in the recent history of Germany; or, what kind of art can we
envisage after reaching the lirnits (and the negation) of art in the works
of-Leverkiihn? But
Doctor Faustus
raising these questions does not
answer them. The man writing this book no longer seems to know the
answers. This-though not a novel theme in contemporary
literature-is certainly a significant sumrning-up of Mr. Mann's own
credo
as a writer.
It
also refutes the charge that the book is ponderous
and pontifical. On the contrary: this is one book where Mr. Mann is
anything but the high-priest of art, morals, and society as he has fre–
quently been presented to the public.
The same inconclusive, personal element intrudes into Mr. Mann's
attitude towards the German problem; for the latter, too is treated on
a level different from the "Faustian" allegory. This level appears
through the interposition of the narrator, Serenus Zeitblom. By using a
narrator the author is both involved in and detached from the events he
is describing. He is partly engaged through the comments of the narrator,
partly detached-in ironic self-parody-through creating the figure of
Zeitblom as a character in the novel. Zeitblom is a peculiar representa–
tive of the humanist tradition which has loomed so large in other writings
of Thomas Mann. While earnest and learned, he is also naive, pedantic,
snobbish, narrow, and highly ineffectual; while lamenting the tragic fate
of Leverkiihn and Germany, he is also fascinated by it and loyal to this
fascination to the bitter end. This humanist--or the tradition he repre–
sents-is more than an impartial spectator; he is also an actor in the
tragedy he records; for surely Germany was not only the country of
great musical geniuses, but also of great scientists, writers, and scholars.
But then the dual role Zeitblom plays lends a double meaning to
his
own moralizing reflections. They reveal not only the guilt of others,
but also his own; and at the end he seems to realize this himself in words
which might well be interpreted as the author's own
apologia
for having
undertaken this work: "Germany herself," Zeitblom laments, "the un–
happy nation is strange to me, utterly strange and that because, con–
vinced of her awful end, I drew from her sins and hid from them in
seclusion. Must I not ask myself whether or not I did right? And again:
did I actually do it? I have clung to one man, one suffering, significant
human being, clung unto death; and I have depicted his life, which
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