The Thomas Mann Group discussion

This is for the discussion of the section until the end of the book and Part XI.

In the last thread, there was some discussion about Mann's description of Hanno's day at school. As Jonathan pointed out, it belongs in this thread so I jumped over here. While it did seem interminable (which reminded me of some of my own days in high school) and I was tempted to skim also, I think it deserves a lot more attention. Seeing Hanno outside of the family is an important indicator of just how detached he is from reality. There is also the suggestion that his relationship with Kai, which has aroused the suspicions of outsiders, as evolved into an intimacy which is probably physical. This seems to be also connected to Hanno's improvising at the piano, which was described earlier as a orgasmic release for him. I read it late last night so I think I need to take another look.

Gary wrote: "In the last thread, there was some discussion about Mann's description of Hanno's day at school. As Jonathan pointed out, it belongs in this thread so I jumped over here. While it did seem intermin..."

Thank you Gary for putting us in the straight path...

I found the treatment of Hanno, both the day at school, and what follows as most peculiar. No redemption here.

Unlike poor Hanno, I'm trying to follow the rules. Is it significant that Hanno saw Lohengrin the night before? I'm not familiar with the plot. (Jan-Maat, where are you?)

Yes, yes... Jan-Maat, where are you?

I am not a Wagnerite yet.. not ready.

Oh I'm still with Tom being depressed at Travemunde...

Lohengrin - Wagner opera featuring the Swan Knight, I didn't know much about it either - had a look at wikipedia, I saw it was first performed in 1850 so Lubeck again a bit behind the times here, interestingly this was apparently the opera that inspired King Ludwig of Bavaria to start having Neuschwanstein built and to withdraw into his fantasy world.

I don't know if Mann at the time of writing would have been aware of rumours about Ludwig's sexuality, but Wagner was significant for Mann and the inspiring a withdrawl into a self-absorbed fantasy world seems significant too...

Thank you for leaving the beach to clear this up for us.

I made it to the dentist and what followed on from that :( so not sure if it was a wise move!

Nothing good after the dentist.

Gary wrote: "Unlike poor Hanno, I'm trying to follow the rules. Is it significant that Hanno saw Lohengrin the night before? I'm not familiar with the plot. (Jan-Maat, where are you?)"

One of the main points of Lohengrin is that Elsa has been told not to ask, not to enquire after her husband's (the swan knight's name), and of course she does, with tragic consequences. Sorry, it's been ages since I saw that opera (I'll have to research the story-line a bit more).

By the way, the bridal chorus from Lohengrin is famous the world over and probably second only to Mendelssohn's Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here comes the Bride (that's the beginning of the English version of the bridal chorus from Lohengrin).

An often important theme with many of Wagner's operas seems to be the issue of illicit, dangerous love or the breaking certain set rules. In Tristan and Isolde, Tristan and Isolde's love affair is not only wrong and adulterous, but more importantly, it is so ecstatic, so all encompassing that it leads to their deaths. In The Flying Dutchman, Selma falls in love with what might be a ghost and sacrifices herself (to be loyal to the Flying Dutchman until death) in order to save him from a famous (or infamous) curse, although there is actually always some doubt wether the apparition of the Dutchman is real or wether Selma has imagined it all and basically sacrifices herself for something quite unreal. And in Lohengrin, Elsa breaks the one rule set by her husband (Lohengrin), not to ask, not to enquire after his name.

Thanks everyone for the sharing specific knowledge about the opera, but after reading through your comments, I can't pinpoint any obvious connections to Hanno. Mmmmm. Hanno was eccentric and musical but I'm not so sure I would say love had much to do with that detailed school day or the events afterward. To me, he seemed more self-absorbed and stereotypically adolescent than anything. Unfortunately, he never gets the chance to mature beyond that. Breaking the rules as an adolescent isn't particularly interesting or epoch-making, I don't think, so that can't be it. Mmmmm.

The withdrawal into the fantasy world is a significant connection though, I can definitely agree with that. What disturbs me is that death is very different from that.

Gary wrote: "There is also the suggestion that his relationship with Kai, which has aroused the suspicions of outsiders, as evolved into an intimacy which is probably physical. This seems to be also connected to Hanno's improvising at the piano, which was described earlier as a orgasmic release for him"

I was wondering about this and how explicit or guessable it might have seemed when the book was published, then I remembered the play Spring's Awakening by Wedekind which was first performed in Munich in 1891 and featured a homosexual kiss between schoolboys (as well as suicide, masochism and I think abortion too certainly pregnancy among schoolchildren). That they were called outlaws by their school fellows might be significant too if the subtext is that the physical expression of their feelings would be illegal.

Perhaps unplanned on Mann's part but I found it ironic that Kai was reading Poe as his escape from the Bible and Ovid and I am reading this in an edition of Buddenbrooks in which the lines are also numbered in fives. Today's escapism is tomorrow's classic to be inflicted on school children!

Jonathan wrote: "Thanks everyone for the sharing specific knowledge about the opera, but after reading through your comments, I can't pinpoint any obvious connections to Hanno. Mmmmm. Hanno was eccentric and musica..."

I think that Mann always considered Wagner's music to be quite decadent, and the fact that Hanno himself is considered decadent and thus easily influenced by Wagner's music is the main point here.

In a short story by Tomas Mann, Tristan,, a decadent musician/artist staying at a medical spa, woos the frail and artistic wife of an industrialist with the music of Wagner (specifically Tristan and Isolde) and causes her decline and death.

Thomas Mann considered himself a Wagnerian, but he always viewed Wagner's music as somewhat dangerous, especially for and to those of an artistic temperament.

In general, I see Mann using just a few small telling details to narrate his plot (transformative wars are just glimpsed indirectly by the narrator as soldiers are quartered in town, steal silver or flirt with a wife...) and he uses one or two carefully selected attributes to describe his characters. (Klothilde taking an extra helping at table). Then in contrast there are passages where the narrator changes gears completely and slows down almost to real time with richly decorated moment by moment descriptions. So Hanno enjoying the seaside vacation is one,--beautiful, lyrical, poetic. But two such slow motion scenes form a diptych at the end, Hanno at the opera blissfully swept away by music, and then Hanno the next day as school destroys his will to live. The day at school is one of the most excruciating things I have ever read. I can so understand why some readers have trouble finishing that passage, -- painful to read. Without the scenes of sea and music I could not have finished the novel.

Elena, I couldn't agree more. I reread that chapter yesterday and then read straight through to the end. Devastating doesn't come close to describing its impact. Even though I knew what was coming, I was blindsided. I put my head down and sobbed. I think Hanno's short life was one the saddest things I've ever read.

I'm glad that you brought up Spring Awakening, Jan-Maat. The chapter about Hanno's day at school also reminded me of that. I saw the musical which was based on that play a few years ago, and I recall all the things you've mentioned happening.

The description of Hanno's day at school, followed by the walk home with Kai and Kai's warning (unspecified, but referring to his music or to sex?) then his sinking into the dream state followed by the discussion of typhus. So much happened so quickly. My thoughts were heading one way and the words in the book led me another. I agree re the orgiastic quality of Hanno's playing. Mann seemed to draw that out fairly strongly in the end. I'm thinking I should add the 5th star to the rating since it was this last section that lost it for me.

Gundula wrote: "Gary wrote: "Unlike poor Hanno, I'm trying to follow the rules. Is it significant that Hanno saw Lohengrin the night before? I'm not familiar with the plot. (Jan-Maat, where are you?)"

One of the ..."

Thank you for this information Gundula... (I almost wrote Gerda...!!)

Jan-Maat wrote: "Gary wrote: "There is also the suggestion that his relationship with Kai, which has aroused the suspicions of outsiders, as evolved into an intimacy which is probably physical. This seems to be als..."

With Gary, I am also happy you brought up Wedekind's play, even though I have not read/watched it. It helps us to put ourselves into that period and read better the signs.

Elena wrote: "In general, I see Mann using just a few small telling details to narrate his plot (transformative wars are just glimpsed indirectly by the narrator as soldiers are quartered in town, steal silver o..."

Great post, Elena..

And yes, may be you got the key to this difficult chapter.. if it is excruciating to read, it was excruciating to Hanno himself.. and Mann is precisely recreating the tediousness of the day.

Gundula wrote: "Thomas Mann considered himself a Wagnerian, but he always viewed Wagner's music as somewhat dangerous, especially for and to those of an artistic temperament. "

Okay. This notion is so foreign to me. I assume that's the reason it's hard for me fully appreciate how the opera illuminates his themes.

Thank you Gundula for moving forward with the link to Wagner's music. It goes a long way toward explaining the mysterious Gerda...dangerous seems like a apt description for her.

Mann's early powers of observation are stunning. How could he know in 1900 that Wagner's aesthetic was so dangerous? It is just music after all...Maybe Wagner's influence on Ludwig II? I must read Mann's diaries, but I understand the early ones, that would be so important, were destroyed...

Elena wrote: "Mann's early powers of observation are stunning. How could he know in 1900 that Wagner's aesthetic was so dangerous? It is just music after all...Maybe Wagner's influence on Ludwig II? I must read..."

Wagner's music had already created quite a stir during the nineteenth century and that was just based on its musical aspects (new harmonies, instrumentation, etc). If a particular political movement also chose it as emblematic of their own beliefs later in the twentieth century, I see it more as a phenomenon of how politics likes to absorb and adopt cultural elements and dress their politics with them.

Elena wrote: "Mann's early powers of observation are stunning. How could he know in 1900 that Wagner's aesthetic was so dangerous? It is just music after all...Maybe Wagner's influence on Ludwig II? I must read..."

iirc Wagner was fairly scandalous (politically and personally) in his own lifetime, which I suppose was reflected in some of the passionate/erotic themes in the operas - perhaps dangerous in the sense of Mann thinking this was strong stuff and not suitable for everybody?

Jan-Maat wrote: "Elena wrote: "Mann's early powers of observation are stunning. How could he know in 1900 that Wagner's aesthetic was so dangerous? It is just music after all...Maybe Wagner's influence on Ludwig II..."

Yes, I agree with this (posted similarly in previous comment).. Even without taking into account the textual elements (i.e. stories in operas), but just the purely musical. And it was even within Germany that the debate and rivalry between the Brahms-Wagner arouse.

What do we make of Gerda described as "the mother of future Buddenbrooks"....given that there was only one? Just Mann being ironic?

Hayman notes that as a teenager Mann "became addicted to Wagner, whose music helped him to sublimate erotic passion."

"There was an autoerotic element in his artistic sublimation of sexual energy, and it was connected with the fascination Wagner's music had held for him since 1892, when Tannhäuser and Lohengrin were staged in Lubeck...Lohengrin had brought him to an almost feverish pitch of emotional excitement, and in Munich he rarely missed a new production of a Wagner opera. The sensuality of Wagner's music seems to have had a catalytic effect on Thomas's youthful sexuality, at once intensifying the flow of desire and helping him to sublimate it dreamily into the kind of fantasy he could distill into fiction."

His structuring of Buddenbrooks also was connected in a way to Wagner: instead of concentrating the whole story on Hanno and Thomas, "everything I had been expecting to use as pre-history took on a very independent, autonomous form, and my concern about the way the material was growing rather reminded me of Wagner's experience with Der Ring, which had grown from his idea for 'Siegfried's Death' into a cycle of four operas with Leitmotifs running through them." (Hayman)

When Hanno tells Kai that Pastor Pringsheim "said they might as well give up on me, that I came from a degenerate family," that phrase is based in historical fact. Hayman writes that "the family's loss of local popularity was exacerbated by the clergyman who'd preached at the senator's [Thomas Mann's father, who died in 1891] funeral, Pastor Ranke, vicar of the Marienkirche. He spoke openly of "this decadent family.""

Lobstergirl wrote: "When Hanno tells Kai that Pastor Pringsheim "said they might as well give up on me, that I came from a degenerate family," that phrase is based in historical fact. Hayman writes that "the family's..."
Thanks for that important but very sad detail...

Lobstergirl, Thanks so much for your posts. I agree.

Yes, thanks for the background information. It adds so much to the novel.

I found it interesting like Elena noted above, how he focus on one aspect of a person to tell us about that person, like Clotildas eating etc. About Kai we always hear how refined his features were but also how dirty he was.
Thyphoid is mainly contagious via lice in dirty clothing, perhaps Kai's dirtiness (in more way then one) was what killed poor Hanno.

About Kai we always hear how refined his features were but also how dirty he was.
Thyphoid is mainly contagious via lice in dirty clothing, perhaps Kai's dirtiness (in more way then one) was what killed poor Hanno.

That is an intriguing theory. Was Mann making a comment on his own sexuality? As a young man who craved a "normal" life, he must have had a great deal of ambivalence-even self-loathing-about his desires.

Kai was based on a real person, a childhood friend of Mann's.

Thanks, Lobstergirl, that is a facinating piece of information that adds a lot to the understanding of the novel. Kai was one of my favorite characters; a real person with no pretense or ulterior motives.

Kai and Hanno were written so sensitively. Sometimes literary children seem phony or stiff, but these two never do.

Lobstergirl wrote: "Kai and Hanno were written so sensitively. Sometimes literary children seem phony or stiff, but these two never do."

I agree, Kai and Anna are the two characters treated with a genuine affection, free of the irony doused on the BBs. Kai is a wonderful tribute to Mann's childhood friend. When Hanno succumbs Kai kisses his hands, not your ordinary childhood friendship, but noble in its own way. Kai's refinement to me seems very Scandinavian like his name, non-Prussian. For me his reaction to Hanno's death was a positive moment in a way because I felt Kai would transform Hanno's memory into literature that would live on. He's a classic nordic type but Anna is apparently part Asian. She too will live on in her children. I think Mann is turning the vulgar theories of his age inside out...

Was anyone else surprised at how depressing the end of this book was? I suppose I should have been tipped off by the subtitle, but I assumed the "decline" would be something less all encompassing -- showing how the younger generation's focus changed in a way that the older generation would find to be "lesser," or how growing up with riches took away the younger generation's urge to work, or something like that. In a book written in 1900 -- the progress-oriented time before the world wars -- I didn't expect an outlook that viewed the world in such dismal terms. I felt like the ending message was one that stressed both the impotence of religion and the meaninglessness of a life based on reason -- an outlook that I associate far more with post-WWI thought.

Lobstergirl wrote: "Kai and Hanno were written so sensitively. Sometimes literary children seem phony or stiff, but these two never do."

Good point! I hadn't really thought about that.

Beth wrote: "Was anyone else surprised at how depressing the end of this book was?"

I wasn't surprised. I didn't expect Hanno to die, I expected him to become a lot like his uncle, Christian. His death moved me more than that would have, so I guess my sadness was more grief, more pity?, than despair.

Beth wrote: " In a book written in 1900 -- the progress-oriented time before the world wars -- I didn't expect an outlook that viewed the world in such dismal terms. I felt like the ending message was one that stressed both the impotence of religion and the meaninglessness of a life based on reason -- an outlook that I associate far more with post-WWI thought. "

Dunno, that ending is pretty well sign posted - or a negative ending for the family is well sign posted. It is interesting that people who are moving up in the world like the Hagenstroms or Morten are kept away from the Buddenbrooks and their story, with Kai and his father apparently utterly decayed and impoverished (though noble) and so on. If there are happy endings - they are not for the likes of the Buddenbrooks.

Trying to think now if that fin de siecle pessimism was rare or not, **wracks brains**

Henry James, Edith Wharton and Theodore Dreiser were pretty pessimistic. I think Thomas Hardy wrote Jude only a few years before. I agree that Mann gave us fair warning about the ending. It was an act of kindness that Hanno's death came abruptly, because I couldn't have stood another day with him at school. To quote Elena, it was excruciating.

I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of War and Peace -- with tendrils of hope rising out of the ashes. But I do agree that Hanno's death was a mercy. I was beginning to wonder if he was going to commit suicide by the end of his day at school. Especially after the scene of improvisation at the piano -- that was so powerful and emotionally volatile.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction with other fin de siècle pessimistic novels, Gary. It's still surprising to me, though, that he ended up writing a book with this tone as a 25 year old.

Beth wrote: "I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of War and Peace -- with tendrils of hope rising out of the ashes. But I do agree that Hanno's death was a mercy. I was beginning to wonder if..."Actually the happy ending in War and Peace is just superficial and temporary. The world was about to change. Tolstoy knew that the aristocrats with Pierre's views ended up supporting the Decembrists, and landed in Siberia, often with loyal wives like Natasha. In BB there is also a sense that something has to give, a Schopenhauer thing...and empires did crash not so long after BB was published. Mann was also on to something...unlike Tolstoy, he just didn't yet know what it was..

Considering that Thomas Mann, while criticising decadence and the decadent, also somewhat believed that it was the decadent that caused society to move forward and to change, Hanno's death is even more poignant and wrenching (for he might have had an artistic, decadent temperament, but he never really gets a chance to develop this). When one then compares Hanno Buddenbrook to Tonio Kröger (who might also be artistic and somewhat decadent, but who creates and although often unhappy, is at least proud of his endeavours and realises that it is in him not to experience the standard happiness he craves but to create a mirror of this by and through his art, his writing), you realise just how abysmally negative Hanno's life is (there is no chance at all for him, not even as an artist or a musician).

Beth wrote: "I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of War and Peace -- with tendrils of hope rising out of the ashes. But I do agree that Hanno's death was a mercy. I was beginning to wonder if..."

I also was expecting suicide from Hanno after that school day then that exposition at the piano. It seemed as if he gave that performance all he had. That he died didn't surprise me as much as the cause.

Sue wrote: "Beth wrote: "I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of War and Peace -- with tendrils of hope rising out of the ashes. But I do agree that Hanno's death was a mercy. I was beginning..."
Interesting point, both Hanno and Tom die from "natural causes" ...but we read something into it...The women survive it all...and I rather expect Tony in Luebeck and Gerda in Amsterdam to go on to do something interesting once freed of all the BB expectations...

Elena wrote: "Sue wrote: "Beth wrote: "I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of War and Peace -- with tendrils of hope rising out of the ashes. But I do agree that Hanno's death was a mercy. I w..."

I agree that I would expect something from Gerda, but Tony seemed crushed in the end. Do you think she would be able to rebound with no one to "care for" since that seems to have sustained her in the past.