A Companion to the Works of Thomas Mann (review)
- A Companion to the Works of Thomas Mann
In the foreword to this collection of essays, editors Herbert Lehnert and Eva Wessell explain that their Companion to the Works of Thomas Mann is intended to introduce readers to the present state of the scholarship devoted to this author’s œuvre – an ambitious project, considering the voluminous literature on that subject. What they offer is a general but solid introduction to Mann’s work, with an interpretive bent that is strongly biographical. Their readership would thus be scholars, students, and readers who are newcomers to the world of Mann.
Lehnert and Wessell have put together an impressive list of contributors, some of whom are among the best-known European and North American scholars of Mann’s œuvre such as Helmut Koopmann, (the late) Peter Pütz, and Egon Schwarz. Sixteen essays follow Lehnert’s introduction, in which he makes a case for an interpretive approach to literary texts that takes into consideration an author’s biography. Most of the essays in this collection (including three by Lehnert himself) follow his lead with regards to the correlation between an author’s biography and his work – an approach that might be received by contemporary literary scholars with raised eyebrows.
The collection’s essays offer a comprehensive introduction to Mann’s life and work. Lehnert’s essay “Thomas Mann’s Beginnings and Buddenbrooks” looks at Mann’s early literary development, drawing heavily on the author’s biography, setting the tone for many of the subsequent essays. Ehrhard Bahr’s analysis of the relationship of art and society in Mann’s early novellas, highlighting the paradoxes inherent in Mann’s depiction of this relationship, and Clayton Koelb’s introduction to Death in Venice, offering a brief but welcome close-reading of the short story, may not provide the reader with groundbreaking insights. But they are solid, informative pieces. Manfred Dierks’s essay “Thomas Mann’s Late Politics” tackles a topic on which much has been written, but it does so in an interesting and efficient way. Several essays explore Mann’s novellas and short stories, not just the canonical Tonio Kröger, Tristan, and Death in Venice but also the lesser-known “The Transposed Heads” and “The Black Swan,” among others. These essays interpret the novellas in a variety of ways, as contributors examine different recurring themes and motifs. While revealing, this approach nevertheless leads to considerable repetition, which may irritate if one reads the essay collection from cover to cover. In contrast, Mann’s novels receive relatively less attention, as only one essay is devoted to each novel, a fact that, in the case of the [End Page 295] rich prose and ambitious scope of The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers, and Doctor Faustus, for instance, leaves the reader hungry for more. Wessell’s essay “Magic and Reflections: Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and His War Essays” may be informative (although it would have benefited from a sharper focus), Pütz’s essay “Joseph and His Brothers” may be a challenging piece of scholarship, Hans Rudolf Vaget’s essay “‘German’ Music and German Catastrophe: A Re-Reading of Doktor Faustus” may be one of the most thought-provoking contribution of the collection. Yet one has nonetheless the impression that Mann’s formidable novels were not given their due.
This Companion provides a solid introduction to Mann’s life and work. Its essays by leading scholars, its select bibliography, and its extensive index will be appreciated by readers who want to start familiarizing themselves with this author’s œuvre. Contemporary literary scholars who are familiar with “the ironic German” may, however, fault the relatively brief attention accorded the novels as opposed to the novellas, as well as the strongly biographical approach to Mann’s body of work, whose challenging complexity provides adequate grounds for a multitude of literary theories.
