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Mann’s Other Holy Sinner: Adrian Leverkühn as Faust and Christ

1977; Routledge; Volume: 52; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/19306962.1977.11787240

1930-6962

Harold Gilliam,

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size NotesLetter of June 20, 1949, in reply to the letter of June 16 from Kerényi, in which he observes that the “düsteren Ernst” of Faustus marks it as “ein christliches Werk von außerordentlicher überkonfessioneller Bedeutung.” The exchange is contained in Thomas Mann and Karl Kerényi, Gespräch in Briefen (Zurich: Rhein, 1960), pp. 164, 167.White, Myth and the Modern Novel: A Study of Prefigurative Techniques (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 11.Auerbach, “Figura in the Phenomenal Prophecy of the Church Fathers,” Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (New York: Meridian, 1959), p. 30.See. e.g., Dietrich Assmann, “‘Thomas Manns Faustus-Roman und das Volksbuch von 1587,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Vol. 68 (1967), 130–39: Walter A. Berendsohn, “Faustsage und Faustdichtung bis zu Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus,” Edda, Vol. 50 (1950), 371–82; Gunilla Bergsten, Thomas Mann’s “Doktor Faustus”: The Sources and Structure of the Novel, trans. Krishna Winston (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 45–49; Geneviève Bianquis, “Thomas Mann et le Faustbuch de 1587,” Études Germaniques, Vol. 5 (1950), 54–59; Henri Birven, “Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus und das Faustbuch von 1587,” Blätter der Knittlinger Faust-Gedenkstätten und des Faust-Museums, No. 3 (1956), 36–39; Maurice Blanchot, “Thomas Mann et le mythe de Faust,” Critique, Vol. 6 (1950), 3–21; Eliza M. Butler, “The Traditional Elements in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus,” Publications of the English Goethe Society, Vol. 18 (1949), 1–33; Anni Carlsson, “Das Faustmotiv bei Thomas Mann,” Deutsche Beiträge, Vol. 3 (1949), 343–62; Inge Diersen, “Thomas Manns Faust-Konzeption und ihr Verhältnis zur Faust-tradition,” Weimarer Beiträge, Vol. 1 (1955), 313–30; Erich Kahler, “‘Doctor Faustus from Adam to Sartre, “The Orbit of Thomas Mann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp . 86–116; Birgit S. Nielsen, “‘Adrian Leverkühns Leben als bewußte mythische imitatio des Dr. Faustus,” Orbis Litterarum, Vol. 20 (1965), 128–58; Harry Slochower, “The Devil of Many Faces: Man’s Pact with the Evil One from the Volksbuch to Thomas Mann,” Twelfth Street, Vol. 4 (1949), 196–204; Lieselotte Voss, Die Entstehung von Thomas Manns Roman “Doktor Faustus” (Tübingen : Max Niemeyer, 1975), pp. 24–30.While many critics have mentioned the numerous allusions to Christ, few have attempted to expound their logic. Among the most extended and interesting critical examples are those found in Hildegarde Drexl Hannum’s “Self-Sacrifice in Doktor Faustus,” Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 35 (1974), 294–95; Murray Krieger’s The Tragic Vision: Variations on a Theme in Literary Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 87–102; Theodore Ziolkowski’s Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 149–50; and in Voss’s Die Entstehung von Thomas Manns Roman “Doktor Faustus,” pp. 212–13. Though I want to maintain only that Faustus displays “ultimate concern” or “seriousness” and is therefore religious in Paul Tillich’s sense, several critics have argued that the novel is definitely Christian in orientation. See, e.g., H. Burgert, “Verbor gene Christlichkeit: Eine Anmerkung zu Thomas Mann,” Zeichen der Zeit, Evangelische Monatsschrift, Vol. 7 (1953), 1140; Anna Hellersberg-Wendriner, Mystik der Gottesferne: Eine Interpretation Thomas Manns (Bern: Francke, 1960), pp. 5–6; Pierre-Paul Sagave, Réalité sociale et idéologie religieuse dans les romans de Thomas Mann: “Les Buddenbrook,” “La montagne magique,” “Le Docteur Faustus,” Publications de la faculté des lettres de l’universite de Strasbourg, Fase. 124 (1954), p. 127; and Hans Jürgen Baden, Poesie und Theologie (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1971), pp. 115–24.Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus, Gesammelte Werke in zwölf Bänden (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1960), VI, 47, 530. All subsequent quotations will be from this edition and will be noted in the text by parenthetical page references.A similar conflation occurs during the Oberammergau trip. Schwerdtfeger’s seizing the fiddle is apparently based on an incident in Nikolaus Lenau’s poem, Faust (1835), in which Mephistopheles grabs a violin and sets local villagers to a dance that terminates in love-making. (This episode provided the inspiration for Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz.”) If Schwerdtfeger is Mephistopheles, Faust can be found close by.For the logic of Nietzsche’s association with Christ and Christianity, see Ernst Bertram’s Nietzsche: Versucheiner Mythologie (Berlin: G. Bondi, 1918), one of Mann’s sources for Faustus. Bertram argues that a figure like Nietzsche could have derived only from a Lutheran, Reformist, Northern-Christian context (pp. 53, 55). (Cf. Voss, Die Entstehung von Thomas Manns Roman “Doktor Faustus,” p. 45.) For other connections between Nietzsche and Leverkühn, see Bergseen, Thomas Mann’s “Doktor Faustus,” pp. 55–64; John C. Blankenagel, “A Nietzsche Episode in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus,” Modern Language Notes, Vol. 63 (1948), 389–90; Maurice Colleville, “Nietzsche et le Docteur Faustus de Thomas Mann,” Etudes Germaniques, Vol. 3 (1948), 343–54; Erich Heintel, “Adrian Leverkühn und Friedrich Nietzsche,” Wissenschaft und Weltbild, No. 7 (1950), pp. 297–303; Thomas Mann, Die Entstehung des “Doktor Faustus,” Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1960), XI, 165–66; E. Kunne-Ibsch, “Die Nietzsche-Gestalt in Thomas Manns Dr. Faustus,” Neo philologus, Vol. 53 (1969), 176-89; Jonas Lesser, Thomas Mann in der Epoche· seiner Vollendung (Zurich: Artemis, 1952), pp. 433–42; Hans Mayer, Werk und Entwicklung (Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1950), pp. 322–32; Hubert Mainzer, “Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus – ein Nietzsche Roman?” Wirkendes Wort, Vol. 21 (1971), 24–38; Gerard Schmidt, Zum Formgesetz des “Doktor Faustus” von Thomas Mann (Wiesbaden: Humanitas, 1972), pp. 33–37.For further information on the association of Leverkühn, Dürer, and Christ, see J. Elema, “Thomas Mann, Dürer und Doktor Faustus,” Euphorion, Vol. 59 (1965), 101; Hans Wysling, ed., Bild und Text bei Thomas Mann (Bern: A. Francke, 1975), pp. 402–405; Schmidt, Zum Formgesetz des “Doktor Faustus” von Thomas Mann, pp. 27–30; and one of Mann’s sources, Wilhelm Waetzoldt, Dürer und Seine Zeit (Cologne: Phaidon, 1953), p. 135. (This edition is not the edition Mann used for Faustus, which was unavailable at the time of my recent research in the Thomas-Mann-Archiv, Zurich.) Signi ficantly, Dürer’s works include Christus am Olberg, Ecce Homo, and Abendmahl, which suggest, respectively, Beethoven’s composition Christus am Olberg (78), Christ and the Nietzsche of Ecce Homo, and the Last Supper of both Christ and the Volksbuch Faust as Antichrist. The complex intertwining of Leverkühn’s associations with Faust, Christ, Nietzsche, and Dürer typifies Mann’s multi-layered “montage” technique in Faustus.Peeperkom’s feast parallels the refreshments prepared for Leverkühn’s “Abschied.” (Cf. Der Zauberberg, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. VI, 777; with Doktor Faustus, p. 6511.) Quoting the “Wachet mit mir” of Gethsemane, Peeperkorn anticipates a similar reference by Kretzschmar’s Beethoven which is later reversed by Leverkühn’s Faust. (Cf. Zauberberg, p. 789, with Doktor Faustus, pp. 80 and 650.) For critical commentary on Peeperkorn as Christ and Dionysus, see especially Oskar Seidlin, “The Lofty Game of Num bers: The Mynheer Peeperkom Episode in Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg,” PMLA, Vol. 86 (1971), 927–32; and Ziolkowski, Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus, pp. 11–6. One of Mann’s earliest quotations of Christ occurs in Lorenzo’s spcech in Fiorenza, Act 111, scene iv: “Liebt einander. Denkt an mich” (Gesammelte Werke, VIII, 1039).Some of the Christ references connected with Leverkühn are implicit in the Volksbuch Faust’s serving as a bad Christian, even an Antichrist – the Temptation for example, and the Abendmahl, found in the Weheklag cantata and echoed in Leverkühn’s gathering of friends in Pfeiffering. But most of the others are not present in Mann’s primary literary model, and even those that are, Mann consistently emphasizes. While the references to Faust inevitably predominate in the novel, the logic of the work suggests that Mann attempts a conceptual balance between Leverkühn-Faust and Leverkühn-Christ in order to heighten his daemonic Zweideutigkeit.See Walter L. Reed, Meditations on the Hero: A Study of the Hero in NineteenthCentury Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 198–201.For a discussion of the circuitous journey in Romantic thought, see M. H. Abrams’ Natural Supernaturalism (New York : Norton, 1971), especially pp. 207, 221, 223, 232-33, and 255. Abrams notes that the beginning and the end of the journey in man’s ancestral home is often linked with a female figure (p. 255). In Goethe’s Faust this is das Ewig Weibliche; in Mann, Leverkühn’s mother, Elsbeth. The circuitous journey obviously resembles Nietzsche’s “eternal recurrence.” In his copy of Paul Deussen’s Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1901), now to be found in the Thomas-Mann-Archiv, Mann marked marginally a long passage tracing the concept back to Pythagorean theory (p. 101).The location of his home in Wittenberg, birthplace of Lutheranism, confirms the intimate connection of Faust with Protestantism. The University of Wittenberg, Zeitblom points out, is identical with that of Halle, which Leverkühn attends. See Voss, Die Entstehung von Thomas Manns Roman “Doktor Faustus,” pp. 44, 48, 62, 66.Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History (New York: Random House, 1959), p. 214.Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, Nietzsches Werke. Volume I: Schriften aus den Jahren 1869-1873 (Leipzig: Alfred Kröner, 1922), p. 102. See Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 181, on the equation of “division, separateness, externality,” and “isolation” with evil in Romantic as weil as Neoplatonic thought. Cf. Hellersberg-Wendriner, Mystik der Gottesferne, p. 116.The descent is a striking manifestation of what Oswald Spengler, in his description of the Faustian soul of the West, designates as the egoistic urge to “ent-decken, das was man nicht sieht, in die Lichtwelt des inneren Auges ziehen …,” (Der Untergang des Abendlandes [Munich: C. H. Beck, 1922], p. 627). Leverkühn’s “speculating” the ocean follows the motif of the descent of the mythic hero. It is reminiscent of the Volksbuch Faust’s visit to hell and may bear certain resemblances to the classical Walpurgis Nacht presented in Goethe’s Faust. (See Victor A. Oswald, Jr., “Full Fathom Five: Notes on Some Devices in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus,” Germanic Review, Vol. 24 [1949], 276-77). The trip, as Zeitblom points out, harkens back to the elder Leverkühn’s “die elementa spekulieren,” which itself recalls the Volksbuch Faust’s being a speculator (22).As in Goethe, “Steigerung” suggests that process in the joumey’s middle by which the separated consciousness enhances itself to bring forth a new and higher consciousness at joumey’s end. (See Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 184.).See Monroe K. Spears, Dionysus and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 29 and 33, on the tendency of modern writers to regard “the break with the past as disinheritance or Fall.”.It should be noted that in the Romantic journey the return often, if not typically, represents a transcendence of the beginning such that the unity at the end is far better than that of the beginning. The circuitous journey thus becomes a spiral ascent. (See Abrams, Natural Supematuralism, p. 207, on Schiller. Cf. Zeitblom’s description of the course of Leverkühn’s life as a mounting, an ascent, “dem ihm bestimmten Aufstieg” [37].)See Mircea Eliade, The Two and the One, trans. J. M. Cohen (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 79, on Mephistopheles as the principle of stoppage, halting the flux of life. Cf. Kretzschmar’s stutter (on “Musik” and “Tod’), the later retardation and hesitation of Leverkühn’s speech, and the Devil’s “Begabt, aber lahm ist der Deutsche” (305).Brown, Life Against Death, p. 215. Brown cites Martin Luther, Sämmtliche Schriften, ed. J. G. Walch (St. Louis: Concordia, 1881-1910), III, 256; IV, 990, 1800; IX, 1497; XIV, 956.See Otto, Das Heilige (Breslau: Trewendt and Granier, 1923), pp. 28–35. Though there is no proof that Mann read Das Heilige, he did know of its existence and showed interest in a work similar to it. While collecting material for Doktor Faustus, he read and underlined a two-page review by Walter Rigg of Walter Ehrlich’s Der Mensch und die numinosen Regionen, apparently from a 1943 issue of Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Materialien for Doktor Faustus 6:5, in the Thomas-Mann-Archiv, Zurich). Rigg’s review discusses Das Heilige in the first paragraph.See Emil Schneweis, Angels and Demons According to Lactantius (Washington: Cath olic University of America Press, 1944), pp . 83-84.Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 112-13. Cf. Mann’s probable source for these ideas, Erwin Rohde’s Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen (Freiburg i.B.: J. C. M. Mohr, 1894), p. 312. Rohde describes the Dionysian “Ekstasis” as “eine Hieromanie, ein heiliger Wahnsinn, in welchem die Seele, dem Leibe entflogn, sich mit der Gottheit vereinigt.” Rohde, like Tillich, identifies ecstasy with the condition of “Enthusiasmos”: those who are possessed by this state “leben und sind in dem Gotte.”See Hartmann Grisar, Luther, trans. E. M. Lamond (London: B. Herder, 1913), I, 236, 376; VI, 220; and Brown, Life Against Death, p. 215. Brown cites Luther’s Sämmtliche Schriften, ed. Walch, VII, 304; XII, 544. The Volksbuch Faust, submitting his body to the Devil so that his soul will be left in peace, shares this rationale. Mann apparently encountered the idea in Robert Petsch’s Einleitung to Das Volksbuch vom Doctor Faust, 2nd cd. (Halle: M. Nicmeyer, 1911), pp. xxxi, xxxiv. (For Mann’s notes, see Voss, Die Entstehung von Thomas Manns Roman “Dohtor Faustus,” pp. 27, 28, 204).It is this second kind that Zeitblom indicates when he talks about the German desire, manifested in World War I, to escape national isolation and the stagnant, dull, everyday world in a new “Durchbruch” (398-99, 401, 408).See Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destifly of Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), II, 78; Thomas Mann, Die Entstehung des “Doktor Faustus,” Gesammelte Werke, XI, 162; and Herbert Lehnert, Thomas Mann: Fikti on, Mythos, Religion (Stuttgart: W. Ko hlhammer, 1965), pp. 179-80.“Über das Marionettentheater,” Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Wilhelm Herzog (Leipzig: Im Insel, 1910), Volume V: Gedichte und Essays; Briefe, Erster Teil, pp. 225-26; and Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. 221.Mann’s use of Leverkühn’s first sexual experience to indicate the Fall relies on the age-old association indirectly suggested in. Zeitblom’s reference to his own first sexual expericnce as a tasting “vom Apfel” (196). The traumatic significance of the visit to the Leipzig house of prostitution for Leverkühn and its association with the Reformation and the milieu of the Volksbuch Faust are confirmed by Leverkühn’s switch to the archaic language of the Reformation to describe it.I Cor. 15:21-22, 45-49; Rom. 5:12-21 (Luther translation). See Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon, 1967), pp. 238-61, 271, 274. Significantly, in speaking of the new “Durchbruch” of World War I, Zeitblom refers to the sacrifice of the individual who “mit seinem Blute Sühne zu leisten bereit ist für die Schwächen und Sünd en der Epoche, in die die eigenen eingeschlossen sind; stellt er sich dem Gefühl als ein Opfergang dar, durch den der alte Adam abgestreift und in Einigkeit ein neues, höheres Leben errungen werden soll” (399–400).I Cor. 15:22-24.See Spears, Dionysus and the City, pp. 29-114, for the pervasiveness of the feeling that World War I marked the end of an era, a break with the past, and constituted a kind of Fall.The figures to whom Echo mythically corresponds are numerous: the Echo who loved Narcissus; the Volksbuch’s Justus Faustus; Shakespeare’s Ariel; Goethe’s Euphorion; Nepomuk, patron saint of Bohemia; Mahler’s daughter, Maria, etc. Echo’s fate bears a striking resemblance to rhat of Pierre in Hermann Hesse’s Rosshalde (1914). In the Scheible editions of the Volksbuch, Ariel appears as a demon who is called the “Great Prince” or the “Prince of Hell.” (See Bergsten, Thomas Mann’s “Doktor Faustus,” pp. 22-23n.) Thus Echo, through Leverkühn’s thinking of him as Ariel, is indirectly linked with Satan.See Mann’s letter of May 18, 1943, to Erich Kahler about his grandson, Frido, the model for Echo: “Wenn er von etwas genug hat oder sich darüber trösten will, daß es nicht mehr davon gibt, so sagt er: ‘‘habt!’ … Wenn ich sterbe, werde ich auch ‘Habt!’ sagen” (Blätter der Thomas Mann Gesellschaft, No. 10 [1970], 23).This conversion is found prominently in Hegel and Schelling. (See Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, pp. 223, 232-33.) In Schelling the process bears a remarkable resemblance to the “Sinnverkehrung” of Faust. Schelling sees man as turning back toward God, toward redemption, at the very point of extreme selfhood, extreme alienation from God.Johannis 19:30: “Es ist vollbracht.” Cf. the “Consummatum est” of Marlowe’s Faustus as he completes the pact with Mephistophilis, in The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, in Christopher Marlowe, Plays (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1950), p. 164. Mann read the Marlowe before finishing Doktor Fausttts. (See Mann, Die Entstehung des “Doktor Faustus,” Gesammelte Werke, XI, 186.).Cf. Otto, Das Heilige, p. 88: “Wie das Dunkel und das Schweigen so ist die Leere eine Negation, aber eine solche, die alles ‘Dieses und Hier’ wegschafft, damit das ‘Ganz Andere’ Akt werde.” Otto applies this principle, significantly, to the end of the “In carnatus” section of the Credo in Bach’s B-minor Mass.Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), pp. 164-65. While Mann obviously did not read The Courage to Be before writing Faustus, he did consult Tillich about Leverkühn’s theological training.Lest it be objected that Leverkühn-Faust’s association is not with Christ but with the also apocalyptic Antichrist who is to come in “die letzte Stunde” (1 Johannis 2:18), it should be noted that within the terms of the daemonic logic of Doktor Faustus the opposition between Christ and Antichrist would not be complete. Just as the relationship between the Weheklag and Beethoven’s Ninth is not entirely negative, so even the conception of Leverkühn as Antichrist would depend upon his association with Christ as its ground.Bergsten, Thomas Mann’s “Doktor Faustu s,” pp . 197-98.Galater 2:19-20.Marci 15:31. See Paul Tillich, Der Widerstreit von Raum und Zeit: Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie, Gesammelte Werke, cd. Renete Albrecht (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1963), VI, 60.On the interdependence of good and evil, see Mann’s notes, quoted in Voss, Die Entstehung von Thomas Manns Roman “Doktor Faustus,” p. 147; and his source, Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Institoris, Der Hexenhammer, trans. J. W. R. Schmidt (Berlin: H. Barsdorf, 1906), I, 166.Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, p. 52.Tillich, Der Widerstreit uon Raum und Zeit, Gesammelte Werke, VI, 49.It may also imply a criticism of Mann’s own portrayal of historico-mythic salvation in Joseph und seine Brüder. The bankruptcy (Krida) of the Romantic circuitous return may be suggested by the very name of the Kridwiss Kreis, which Zeitblom describes, appropriately, between the two “end”-chapters on the Apocalypsis and many of whose members ascribe to the idea of the identity of regression and progression.