4 - Germans

Summary

Realism versus allegory

The relationship between Mann's novel and the history of Germany is in one sense simple to the point of crudity. Adrian Leverkühn is meant as an allegory of modern Germany. Just as Leverkühn ‘broke through’ creative sterility by recourse to the ‘demonic’ means of syphilitic infection, so Germany tried to ‘break through’ the restrictions of liberal institutions and international law by an appeal to myth and instinct as energising forces. And just as Leverkühn turned to the abstract, impersonal discipline of mathematical relationships in order to give his works an order that owed nothing to Romantic conventions, so too Germany contained the potentially anarchic forces of bloodlust by a despotic political order and a reign of internal terror which had no truck with the Rights of Man. In the end, Leverkühn comes to grief as a result of his chosen priorities, and so did Germany.

These notions are unlikely to impress anyone looking for historical explanations, and they raise a serious problem. In the later stages of Leverkühn's career, his ‘pact’ issues into artistic masterpieces of the highest quality and significance, and his collapse is set about with intimations of ‘salvation’. This might be taken allegorically to mean that something that could without obscenity be said to be good came out of Germany's ‘pact’ with dark forces, and that Germany's striving to ‘break through’ limits beyond which lie crimes against humanity deserved some kind of acknowledgement as an heroic venture.