Thomas Mann's Treatment of the Marked Man

Extract

It is doubtful whether even in so highly subjective a literature as that of modern Germany can be found an example of more consistent concern with the writer's self and his own particular problems than is furnished by the recently published ten volumes that comprise the collected works of Thomas Mann. From the first volume, Buddenbrooks, for which the author's own family's life and home-town quite frankly furnish setting and subject matter, to the last volume, Bemühungen, whose characteristic title would imply to what pains its author has been put to present his personal reaction upon the world and its problems, there is scarcely a page or paragraph that does not treat situations or sentiments which Mann experienced in his own life. Thus, Volume IX, Rede und Antwort, shows how ready Mann is to expose himself to public scrutiny, to give an account of himself and his ideas—“Rede und Antwort zu stehen.” Similarly, Volume VIII, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, is a personal confession of faith, wrung from his heart by the untoward incidents of the war, attempting to define his relations, as a man and an artist, to his native land. And, finally, the five remaining volumes contain short stories or novels, which, when analyzed even cursorily as here, show themselves to be endless variations on the same theme, which is in its essentials the problem of Thomas Mann's own life.