94
PARTISAN R.EVIEW
brother Heinrich, whose own inclinatiollS were entirely dissimilar-to "cre–
ate a regimen" for hilllself Even in his youth the austere younger brother
was driven to achieve. In one of his later diaries he wrote that one had
to
elevate one's life subjectively If this were done with f:1Iltasy and intensity
others would be induced
"to
play along." After all, why should anyone con–
fi-onted with such devotion be a spoilsport) He was lucky and knew it early
on: even as a boy he hopped through the house wearing winged shoes made
of paper; as a youth he had a bust of "the conqueror Napoleon" on his desk
and conducted readings sitting in ;1 tuxedo in a large chair between two can–
delabra. A century earlier, as a boy, Honore de L3alzac is said to have cried
out as he saw Napoleon riding across the Champ de Mars that he, like the
emperor, would one day conquer the world. These great writers began full
of self-assurance. In the Joseph novels we find the path of the chosen one
"blessed with blessings from Heaven above, with blessings tI-om the depths,
which lie below."
A lot came from below, to be sure, and it required the strictest self–
supervision to become blessed. Tonio Kroger's maxim that a writer, already
adventurous enough on the inside, should always dress well and behave
properly
to
others was Thomas Mann's guiding principle
;lS
well. Their rad–
ical difference on this point, more than anything else, caused the rift between
Mann and his brother and, later, between Mann and his son. He felt nause–
ated by the "boring shamelessness of IHeinrich'sJ eroticism, by his
sensuality's mindless and soulless obsession with groping." It was suspected
that deep down he was envious of this and of his son's casual homosexual
lifestyle. After all, he orieilted his entire life tow;1n.is his writing and, if his
diaries are to be believed, all lasting joy was the product of one's industry.
But how could Klaus Mann, who, as he himself confesses, experienced
everything save remorse, who gratefully accepted "pederasty" as an "intox–
icant," as an "intensification of life," who never said no to drugs or
"anything else," and for whom "intimacy with death" was an essential ele–
ment in an "awareness of Iite"- how could he find a solid fiJumiatioll on
which to erect great works of literature) The t;lther rakes his son to task.
After reading Klaus Mann's posthul11ously released
The 'Iitrning Point,
an
"agonizing" task, Thomas Mann writes in his diaries of "a diseased literary
existence, attracted to all that is indolent," with no sense ttlr "that which is
blessed in life, that which is holy." Klaus Mann was proof of the maxim that
great men should have
110
sons.
L3ut the children-six in all- were part of the picture of bourgeois
norl11alcy, of the regimen Thomas Mann had created t{)r himseW Even his
l11arriage to a "f1iry-tak bride," who brought with her the promise of a
"stern joy" and whose childhood portrait by K;llIlbach hung in his rool11
when he was a boy in Li.ibeck, was Cllcubted to teed the ever-present
