[OK, there's actually no such thing as
"Thomas Mann Appreciation Day," but there damn well should
be, people! The following is the speech I'd give at an event
celebrating the immortal author]:
As my
friends and family know well, I am a bit obsessed with Thomas Mann.
I've read all of his major novels (that have been translated into
English- I know, don't say it), all of his short stories, a book of
his essays, and the most recent biography by
Hermann Kurzke (Thomas Mann: Life as
a Work of Art, A Biography; 2002).
I've even read the tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers,
all 1,492 pages of it. And I say to The Black Swan
and Lotte in Weimar:
you're next!
I hear all you
Comparative Lit people snorting with disdain and I see you German Lit
people raising angry eyebrows, but read on, and you might just
forgive me.
Of
course, it started with a crush. Not on old Tommy, poor thing, but on
a high-school teacher (let's call him Mr. P). He was my school's book
club advisor, and therefore I had to join, just to be able to gawk at
him outside of school hours. The last text we read for the semester
was Mann's novella, Death in Venice.
Now, when I heard we were reading Mann, I at first sighed miserably
because I had read "Tonio Kruger" a couple of years before
and actually thought it sucked. But for you, Mr. P.? Anything!
Death
in Venice was read in a single
night, and all thoughts of Mr. P. faded into the background as Thomas
Mann stepped forward, my newly-annointed Favorite Author. It's still
almost impossible to explain exactly what it is that I love about his
books, novellas, and stories. I could identify with his often
angst-ridden artist characters, since I too have imagined myself as a
kind of Artist (you know, I'm a Writer in that fantasyland of my
mind. It's a nice place). I'm forced to think deeply about the
characters' conversations in order to understand what they are really
trying to communicate, and their inner lives are so nuanced and
complicated, just like the rest of us mortals.
Only later did I
start to think about the issue of translation. I admit that I've
never read Mann in the original German. I've always meant to study
German, but French, Italian, and Russian just happened to come first.
And it doesn't look like learning German will be an option in the
near future (twin boys- yeah, I know!) However, I decided that
getting my Mann second-hand was better than no Mann at all (here I
want to give a shout-out to translator John E. Woods- thank you, man,
for making it possible for me to read Thomas Mann even though I'm
lazy and didn't get my Rosetta Stone on).
Finally,
we are still talking about Mann in 2013. Earlier this month, on the
58th anniversary of his death, the New Republic
reprinted a statement by its editors supporting Mann's denunciation
of Nazism
(http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114269/thomas-mann-stands-anti-semitism-stacks).
The writer's novels, essays, articles, and stories continue to remain
relevant, even in a new century.
So, if Dr. Who
ever landed in my backyard and beckoned me into the TARDIS, I'd
happily enter and demand that he take me to 1950s Switzerland so I
could listen to Mann talk about...well, anything really. I'll bet
that his conversation was as melifluous and as passionate as his
texts.
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