Ohhhh, a wonderful piece, thank you! I haven't read MM but listened to an audio book version last year which I thoroughly enjoyed. While travelling in Estonia earlier in the year I stayed on the Baltic coast and came across a still open Soviet-era sanatorium, I fantasied about meeting up with Hans C for a coffee and a quick cigarette ; )
A beautiful and thought provoking review of a favorite of mine. I’ve been rereading a lot lately so thanks for saving me 1,000+ pages with this gem. ;)
Well, I will disagree with you there. I haven't read Reflections of a Nonpolitical man, so I can't speak to that — it's quite possible, even likely, that the political ideas in it are more interesting than those in TMM. But I don't really approach TMM as primarily a political novel (and will also disagree about the prose, although of course I read it in translation). What makes it fascinating for me are its more novelistic elements: the underlying sexual fucked-up-ness, the fever-dream scenes, the body horror and eroticism. The politics are certainly important but they're not the main course.
I don't know, you don't think it's weird that he's obsessed with her decaying lungs and they exchange their X-ray pictures as love tokens?
I couldn't say about Mann's bisexuality, but with him and Proust sometimes I get the impression that they wish they were attracted to women, for aesthetic reasons. They like the idea of femininity and romanticize it even if it's not how their inclinations lie.
Ohhhh, a wonderful piece, thank you! I haven't read MM but listened to an audio book version last year which I thoroughly enjoyed. While travelling in Estonia earlier in the year I stayed on the Baltic coast and came across a still open Soviet-era sanatorium, I fantasied about meeting up with Hans C for a coffee and a quick cigarette ; )
https://nexus-instituut.nl/en/essay/the-quest-for-vision
A beautiful and thought provoking review of a favorite of mine. I’ve been rereading a lot lately so thanks for saving me 1,000+ pages with this gem. ;)
Well, I will disagree with you there. I haven't read Reflections of a Nonpolitical man, so I can't speak to that — it's quite possible, even likely, that the political ideas in it are more interesting than those in TMM. But I don't really approach TMM as primarily a political novel (and will also disagree about the prose, although of course I read it in translation). What makes it fascinating for me are its more novelistic elements: the underlying sexual fucked-up-ness, the fever-dream scenes, the body horror and eroticism. The politics are certainly important but they're not the main course.
I don't know, you don't think it's weird that he's obsessed with her decaying lungs and they exchange their X-ray pictures as love tokens?
I couldn't say about Mann's bisexuality, but with him and Proust sometimes I get the impression that they wish they were attracted to women, for aesthetic reasons. They like the idea of femininity and romanticize it even if it's not how their inclinations lie.