HEIDI URBAHN DE JAUREGUI
The Art of Getting
By
Before placing the taped up bundle of diaries into the safe-deposi t box of
a California bank, Tholllas Mann wrote on it, in English, "Daily notes
from '33 to '51. No literary va lu e" and added that no one was to open it
until twenty years after his death. He knew well what he was doing. He
had always been a clever steward of his fame and understood the steps that
had to be taken to ensure that it survived him. Anything that was not
advantageous to it he routinely destroyed. Thus we are missing a number
of his diaries, particularly those of his youth. Yet, it seems to have been
important
to
him that the diaries in the bank, these "all-too-human"
records, lIlake their way to readers. A concern for literary form is clearly
evident, even more so than in many of his letters. These diaries were more
than an attempt to siphon ofT the trivial in order to prevent it from mak–
in g its way into his literary works-they were evidence of Mann's view of
himself as the last representative of a vanishing, bourgeois artistic age; a fos–
si l whose every action was worth documenting and shou ld be considered
in relation to the entire work-indeed, the epoch. He was right when he
referred to the period from 1875 to I<J50 as " my age." And, because he
was the symbol of an age, we still find the much-maligned snippe ts from
his diaries fascinating ( "abdominal stoppage," "rectal irritation," "trips to
the hairdresser.") When we read these things, we don' t ignore them. On
the contrary: we greedily take them in and are thankful, self-righteously
pleased to discover that such a man's feet , if not made of clay, are firmly
planted in the humus of the all -too-human. These are the small satisfac–
tions: we want this so that we too can join in the discussion, have our say.
That we can feel this way attests to Thomas Mann's symbo li c existence and
to the canny precautions he took to ensure that he would contin ue to ex ist
in such a way. Thus, an entry like that of August 6, 1945 does not seem
quite so audac ious: " into Westwood to shop for white shoes and colored
shirts.- First attack on Japan, with bombs demonstrating the power of the
split atom (uranium)." C lea rl y we find these entries interesting on ly
because of who wrote thelll. And if we desire, we can take pleasure fi'om
the fact that the g iants seem to be as helpless in the face of the moment as
the rest of us.
All detail is boring if it lacks ideational clarity, said the young Thomas
Mann, and in order to achieve that clarity he resolved-as he put it to his
