The tradition of family romance in Western European literature at the beginning of the 20th century (based on the novel by Thomas Mann "Buddenbrooks"). Excerpts from Thomas Mann's novel "Death in Venice"

67. Genre and composition of the novel "Buddenbrooks" by T. Mann.
The novel ends with a chapter in which the old women - the remnants of the Buddenbrook family - mourn the death of the family. And the words of Christian consolation muttered by one of them sound like a powerless mockery of the inevitable law of life, the law of society, according to which the old is doomed to perish. If we recall that the novel begins with a scene of a solemn weekly evening, an image of Buddenbrook's "Thursday", when the whole large family gathered together, then overall composition novel.
At its beginning, the life of a family of many intertwined lines. This is a living portrait gallery, where the faces of old people, young people, children's faces flicker. T. Mann will tell about each of them in the course of the development of the novel, diligently tracing each of the individual lines and individual destinies in relation to the fate of the whole family. And at the end of the novel, we have a group of women in mourning, united by a common grief. None of them have a future, just as the deceased Buddenbrook family does not.
The revolutionary events of 1848 are consecrated in the novel not without irony. But it refers not so much to the people who demand their rights from the masters, but to the form in which these demands are clothed: the working people, talking about their needs with the "fathers of the Lord", are still full of patriarchal respect for all these consuls and senators who , however, are pretty frightened by the possibility of revolutionary indignation in their city.
The novelty of T. Mann was dominated by conciseness, a concentrated image with a combination of major social problems and individual aspects of private life.

68. The system of images and symbolism of the novel "Buddenbrooks" by T. Mann.
"The story of the death of a family" - this is the subtitle of this novel. Its action is played out in one of those beautiful old houses about which T. Mann wrote so often.
Analyzing the process of impoverishment and decline of the burghers he loved as a natural and inevitable process, T. Mann created a realistic picture of German society from the first third of the 19th century to its end. The reader gets acquainted with four generations of Buddenbrooks. The elders gradually die, those who were the “middle generation” take their place, the younger ones grow up, their children, whose birth we learn in the course of the novel and whose fates go to the end of the novel.
In the eldest B. - Johann, who in 1813 darted in a carriage "train" through Germany, supplying food to the Prussian army, like his girlfriend "Antoinette B., nee Duchamp", the "good old" XVIII century is still alive. The writer speaks of this couple in a touching and loving way. T. Mann creates on the pages devoted to the older generation of B., a clearly idealized idea of ​​​​the patriarchal generation of the family and those who were the founder of its power.
The second generation is the son of the eldest B., "consul" Johann B. For all that he is a businessman, he is no longer like old B. It is not for nothing that he allows himself to condemn his free-thinking. “Papa, you are making fun of religion again,” he remarks about the very free quotation of the Bible with which old Johann amuses himself. And this well-intentioned remark is very characteristic: Consul B. not only lacks his own mind, inherent in his father, but also lacks his broad enterprise. "Patrician" by position in the burgher environment of his native city, he is already deprived of that aristocratic brilliance that his cheerful and cheerful father has. The second generation also includes prodigal son family B. - Gotthold. By marrying a bourgeois against his father's will, he violated B.'s aristocratic pretensions and broke an age-old tradition.
In the third generation - in the four children of the consul, in the sons Thomas and Christian, in the daughters - Tony and Clara - the beginning decline makes itself felt to a large extent. Close-minded, though highly appreciative of her origins, Tony, with all the external data that promises success in society, fails after failure. The features of Tony's frivolity are found in a much more pronounced degree in Christian, a talkative loser. Plus, he's sick. Taking advantage of his illness, in which, probably, T. Mann wanted to show a symptom of B.'s physical degeneration, his wife locks Christian in a mental hospital. Religious sentiments, to which the consul showed an inclination, turn into a religious mania for Clara. B.'s money is scattered in failed scams and unsuccessful marriages, goes to the side.
Only Thomas B. maintains the former glory of the family and even increases it by achieving the high rank of senator in the old city. But participation in commercial activities, maintaining the "case of B." is given to Thomas at the cost of the enormous effort he makes on himself. The activity, so loved by his grandfather and father, for Thomas often turns out to be a hateful webbing, an obstacle that does not allow him to devote himself to a different life - philosophy, reflection. Reading Schopenhauer, he often forgets about his duties as a businessman, a merchant.
These traits are exacerbated in Ganno B., the son of Thomas, representing the fourth generation of the family. All his feelings are given to music. In a small descendant of businessmen and merchants, an artist awakens, full of distrust of the reality around him, early noticing lies, hypocrisy, the power of conventions. But physical degeneration does its job, and when a serious illness falls on Ganno, his weak organism, undermined by illness, cannot resist it. The forces of destruction, the forces of decline are taking over.

A special place in the novel is occupied by Morten Schwarzkopf, an energetic commoner who dares to condemn the life of the German burghers in a conversation with Tony B.. Morten expresses the aspirations and traditions of the German radical intelligentsia of the middle of the last century. He is depicted by the author with obvious sympathy. If there is a drop of irony in his portrait, it is a friendly irony.
T. Mann was looking for ideals that he could oppose to the domination of the philistines. In those years, he found these ideals in art, in a life devoted to the service of beauty. Already in Buddenbrooks, T. Mann puts forward, next to the image of the little musician Ganno, the figure of his friend, Count Kai von Meln, a descendant of an impoverished northern family. Kai and Ganno were brought together by a passion for art. Count Meln prefers poetry, his favorite is Edgar Allan Poe. Together with Ganno, Kai formed a kind of opposition to other boys of his class, "who absorbed the warlike and victorious spirit of a rejuvenated homeland with their mother's milk."

69. The ratio of everyday life, psychologism and philosophy in the novel "Buddenbrooks".
The story of the death of the B. family is shown against a broad background of social and cultural life in Germany. Starting from the 30s of the 19th century - from the first "Thursday" that opens the narrative - and until the day of Hanno's funeral - this is the story of the rise of bourgeois Germany, vulgar, importunate, unscrupulous, the story of the death of everything that embodied German culture in T. Mann's understanding . Predators of Hagenstrem, speculators and suspicious businessmen replace decent, decent, impeccable B. The great historical events that shook Germany, however, remain beyond the writer's interest. For T. Mann, this is only an external manifestation of a complex and multilateral process taking place in society and leading to the establishment of the power of the vulgar and merciless bourgeois.

The skill of T. Mann, who created a group of images traced in a complex living development, is especially evident in the structure of a literary portrait. The authenticity of the image is achieved by a harmonious combination of means used to describe the appearance of the character and reveal his inner life. The growing fatigue of Senator Thomas B. is felt especially acutely, as the writer speaks both of his physical withering and of painful moods clouding the ordinary train of thought. The further the twists and turns of an unsuccessful family life Tony B., the more ordinary and banal her appearance becomes, once attractive and poetic, the more vulgar her speech becomes; before the reader is no longer the patrician B., but the bourgeois Permaneder.

In the work of T. Mann, the image of an exceptional person is outlined, who discovered the world of art and therefore saved from the vulgarity and barbarism of philistine Germany. There is a theme of the artist, which was destined to play a big role in the work of the writer.
Philosopher: The decline of the family in the novel is not depicted in a naturalistic way - it is caused not by the influence of the environment, heredity, but by general patterns understood in terms of a certain philosopher. metaphysics, the sources of which are the teachings of A. Schopenhauer and, in part, F. Nietzsche. The movement of the burghers from a healthy life to illness takes on in Buddenbrooks not only disgusting and ridiculous forms (Christian), but also leads to greater spirituality, makes a person an artist (Thomas, Hanno).
Psychogism - revealing images
Life writing - in the details of life

70. Themes and poetics of the novel "Death in Venice" by Mann.
IN early work T. Mann's mature realism is most fully anticipated by the short story "Death in Venice" (1912). It is in this short story that it is most noticeable how the relationship between the artist and life begins to mean much more than what they seem to contain. A pair of opposing and at the same time related concepts "art" - "life", as well as many other oppositions that constantly arise under the writer's pen: order - chaos, mind - an uncontrollable element of passions, health - illness, repeatedly highlighted from different sides, in the abundance of their possible positive and negative meanings, they eventually form a densely woven network of differently charged images and concepts, which “catches” much more reality than is expressed in the plot. The technique of Mann's writing, which first took shape in "Death in Venice", and then masterfully developed by him in the novels "Magic Mountain" and "Doctor Faustus", can be defined as writing with a second layer, on top of the written, on the primer of the plot. Only on a superficial reading can one perceive "Death in Venice" simply as a story about an aged writer suddenly seized with a passion for the beautiful Tadzio. This story means so much more. “I can’t forget the feeling of satisfaction, not to say happiness,” Thomas Mann wrote many years after the publication of this novel in 1912, “which sometimes overwhelmed me then while writing. Everything suddenly converged, everything linked, and the crystal was pure.
Mann creates an image of a writer-modernist, the author of "Insignificant", striking in artistry and power of exposure. Characteristically, Mann chose just such a title for Aschenbach's masterpiece. Aschenbach is the one who “cast his rejection of boegma, the muddy depths of being, into such exemplary pure forms, the one who resisted the temptation of the abyss and despised the contemptible.”
The protagonist of the novel, the writer Gustav Aschenbach, is an internally devastated person, but every day, by an effort of will and self-discipline, he encourages himself to hard, painstaking work. Aschenbach's endurance and self-control make him look like Thomas Buddenbrock. However, his stoicism, devoid of moral support, reveals its failure. In Venice, the writer falls under the irresistible power of a humiliating unnatural passion. Internal decay breaks through the fragile shell of endurance and integrity. But the theme of decay and chaos is connected not only with the protagonist of the novel. Cholera breaks out in Venice. A sweet smell of decay hangs over the city. The motionless outlines of beautiful palaces and cathedrals hide infection, disease and death. In this kind of "thematic" paintings and details, engraving "according to what has already been written" T. Mann achieved a unique, sophisticated skill.
The figure of the artist turns out to be an indispensable focus, capable of bringing internal and external processes to unity. Death in Venice is not only the death of Aschenbach, it is a revelry of death, which also means the catastrophic nature of all European reality on the eve of the First World War. It is not for nothing that the first sentence of the novel refers to "19.. the year, which for such long months gazed at our continent with a menacing eye...".
Art and artist theme- the main one in the short story "Death in Venice" (1912). In the center of the novel is a psychologically complex image of the decadent writer Gustav von Aschenbach. At the same time, it is wrong to believe that Aschenbach is almost the quintessence of decadent moods. Aschenbach casts in "exemplary pure forms his rejection of bohemia." For Aschenbach, positive values ​​are important, he wants to help himself and others. In the form of ch. ger. there are autobiographical features, for example, in the description of his life habits, features of work, a tendency to irony and doubt. Aschenbach is a renowned master who claims to be spiritual aristocracy, and selected pages from his writings are included in school anthologies.
On the pages of the novel, Aschenbach appears at the moment when he is overwhelmed by the blues. And hence - the need to run away, to find some peace. Aschenbach leaves Munich, center German art, and goes to Venice, "the world famous corner in the gentle south."
In Venice, Aschenbach stays at a luxurious hotel, but pleasant idleness does not save him from inner turmoil and longing, which caused a painful passion for the handsome boy Tadzio. Aschenbach begins to be ashamed of his old age, tries to rejuvenate with the help of cosmetic tricks. His self-esteem comes into conflict with dark attraction; nightmares and visions do not leave him. Aschenbach is even pleased with the cholera epidemic that has begun, plunging tourists and townspeople into panic. Pursuing Tadzio, Ashenbach forgets about precautions and falls ill with cholera ("there are stinky berries" - note Z.) Death overtakes him on the seashore when he cannot take his eyes off Tadzio.
At the end of the novel, a subtle sense of anxiety, something elusive and terrible, is poured.

71. Features of the structure of Hamsun's story "Hunger"

Attention - the question intersects with No. 72, because structural features are subject to the tasks of psychological analysis

In "Hunger" we see a breakdown of the usual genre form. This story was called "an epic in prose, the Odyssey of the starving." Hamsun himself said in his letters that "Hunger" is not a novel in the usual sense, and even suggested calling it a "series of analyzes" of the hero's state of mind. Many scholars believe that Hamsun's narrative style in The Hunger anticipates the "stream of consciousness" technique.

The artistic originality of the novel, which was based on Hamsun's personal experiences, primarily lies in the fact that the narration in it is completely subordinated to the tasks of psychological analysis.

Hamsun writes about a starving person, but unlike the authors who addressed this topic before him (among them, he names Hjellanna and Zola), he shifts the emphasis from the external to the internal, from the conditions of a person’s life to the “secrets and mysteries” of his soul. The object of the author's research is the split consciousness of the hero, his perception of the events for Hamsun is more important than the events themselves.

The hero rebels against the humiliating conditions of life, recreated in the spirit of Zola with terrifying naturalistic details, angrily attacks God, declaring the misfortunes that haunt him "the work of God", but never says that society is to blame for his desperate need.

72. Psychologism and symbolism of K. Hamsun's story "Hunger"

Aesthetic principles of Hamsun:

Hamsun proposed his own program for the renewal of national art. He criticized domestic literature mainly for the lack of psychological depth. “This materialistic literature was essentially more interested in morals than in people, and therefore in social issues more than in human souls.” “The thing is,” he emphasized, “that our literature followed the democratic principle and, leaving aside poetry and psychologism, was intended for people who were spiritually insufficiently developed.”

Rejecting art focused on the creation of "types" and "characters", Hamsun referred to artistic experience Dostoevsky and Strindberg. Hamsun said: “It is not enough for me to describe the sum of actions that my characters perform. I need to illuminate their souls, examine them from all points of view, penetrate into all their hiding places, examine them under a microscope.

Hunger

Having found himself at the very bottom, at every step faced with humiliation and ridicule, painfully injuring his vanity and pride, he still feels himself, thanks to the power of his imagination and talent, a higher being who does not need public compassion, He is surrounded by a world that is extremely narrowed by possibilities his personal perception.

Chaos reigns in this mysterious incomprehensible world, which has almost lost its real outlines, causing the hero a feeling of inner discomfort, which erupts in his uncontrolled associations, a sharp change of mood, spontaneous reactions and actions. The hero's rare spiritual susceptibility is further exacerbated by the "joyful madness of hunger", awakening in him "some strange, unprecedented sensations", "the most sophisticated thoughts".

Imagination bizarrely paints reality: a newspaper bundle in the hands of an unfamiliar old man becomes “dangerous papers”, a young woman she likes becomes an unearthly beauty with exotic name"Ilayali". Even the sound of names should help create an image, Hamsun believed. Imagination carries the hero into marvelous and beautiful dreams, only in dreams does he indulge in an almost static feeling of the fullness of life, at least for a while forgetting about that gloomy disgusting world that encroaches on his spiritual freedom and where he feels like an outsider, like the hero Camus.

73. THE THEME OF LOVE AND ITS FIGURATIVE SOLUTION IN HAMSUN'S STORY "PAN"

Heroes:
thirty-year-old Lieutenant Thomas Glan
local rich merchant Mak s
daughter Edward and
doctor from the neighboring parish
Eva (allegedly the daughter of a blacksmith, in fact, someone else's wife)
baron

The problems of love and sex are the most important problems of life for Hamsun; according to G. - love is a struggle between the sexes, a fatal and inevitable evil, because there is no happy love. She is the basis of life. “Love is the first word spoken by God, the first thought that dawned on him” (“Pan”).

In the story "Pan" Hamsun, in his words, "tried to sing the cult of nature, the sensitivity and hypersensitivity of her admirer in the spirit of Rousseau."

Thomas Glan, a hunter and a dreamer who changed his military uniform to "Robinson's clothes", is unable to forget the "unsunset days" of one short northern summer. The desire to fill the soul with sweet moments of the past mixed with pain makes him take up the pen. This is how a poetic story about love is born, one of the most incomprehensible mysteries of the universe.

The forest for Glan is not just a corner of nature, but a truly promised land. Only in the forest does he “feel strong and healthy” and nothing darkens his soul. The lie that has soaked through all the pores of society disgusts him. Here he can be himself and live a truly full life, inseparable from fabulous visions and dreams.

It is the sensual comprehension of the world that reveals to Glan the wisdom of life, inaccessible to bare rationalism. It seems to him that he has penetrated the soul of nature, found himself alone with the deity, on which the course of earthly life depends. This pantheism, merging with nature gives him a sense of freedom, inaccessible to urban people.

Admiration for nature resonates in Glan's soul with even more strong feeling love for Edward. Having fallen in love, he perceives the beauty of the world even more sharply, merges even more fully with nature: “What am I so happy about? A thought, a memory, a forest noise, a person? I think about her, I close my eyes and stand quietly and quietly and think about her, I count the minutes. Love experiences highlight the most secret, innermost in the soul of the hero. His impulses are unaccountable, almost inexplicable. They push Glan to unexpected actions for himself and those around him. The emotional storms raging in him are reflected in his strange behavior.

Hamsun focuses on tragic side love, when accusations and insults make it impossible for the union of two hearts, dooming those who love to suffering. The dominant theme of "love-suffering" in the novel culminates in the parting episode, when Edward asks to leave her his dog as a keepsake. In the madness of love, Glan does not spare Aesop either: Edward is brought a dead dog - Glan does not want Aesop to be tortured in the same way as him.

The original, working title of the novel was "Edward", after the name of the main character, but it did not reflect Hamsun's intention. And when the novel was already completed, in a letter to his publisher, he said that he decided to call it "Pan".

With Pan (the pagan "god of all") the hero of the novel is connected by many invisible threads. Glan himself has a heavy "animal" look, riveting the attention of women to him. The figurine of Pan on a powder flask - is it not a hint that Glan owes his success in hunting and in love to his patronage? When it seemed to Glan that Pan, shaking with laughter, was secretly watching him, he immediately realized that he could not control his love for Edward.

Pan is the embodiment of the elemental life beginning, which lives in each of the heroes: in Glan, and in Edward, and in Eva. This feature of the novel was noted by A. I. Kuprin: “... the main person remains almost unnamed - this is the mighty force of nature, the great Pan, whose breath is heard both in the sea storm and in the white nights with the northern lights ... and in the secret of love irresistibly connecting people, animals and flowers"

74. Themes and images of Rilke's early poetry.

The most significant role in Rilke's works belongs to two thematic complexes - "things" and "God". Under the “thing” (Ding), R. understands both natural phenomena (stones, mountains, trees) and objects created by man (towers, houses, a sarcophagus, stained-glass windows of a cathedral), which are alive and animated in his image. In his lyrics, Rilke gives a number of masterful images of the "thing". However, even in such emphatically “material” tendencies of the poet, his hypertrophied subjectivism is reflected: not a thing in its objective existence or in its significance for the practical needs of a person, but a thing in the subjective perception of an individual, in his emotional self-disclosure is the main value of this “gospel of things”. In his book

about Rodin Rilke theoretically defends such a subjective value of "things". However, in the cult of “things”, not only general individualistic, but also direct anti-social aspirations of the poet affected. According to R., "things", not opposing the subject themselves, the feelings of the subject - their "anti-feelings" (Gegengefühl), thereby arouse his trust and help him overcome loneliness (Nichtalleinsein). However, it is obvious that such overcoming of "loneliness" is only a fiction, only a way to get away from people, from their "counterfeelings", one of the types of self-closure of the subject. Another thematic complex of Rilke's lyrics - god - is closely connected with the first: for Rilke, god is "a wave passing through all things"; the entire Book of Hours (Das Stundenbuch, 1905), Rilke's finest collection, is devoted to this interpenetration of God and things. However, the theme of God is not a way out of R.'s individualism, but only a deepening of it, and God himself arises as an object of mystical creativity (Schaffen) of the subject: “With my maturation, your kingdom ripens,” the poet addresses his god. IN

Two strong external impressions will give particular sharpness to this poetic dilemma.
Until the spring of 1899, the poet lives mainly in the hothouse atmosphere of literary bohemia, now in Prague, now in Munich, now in Berlin. The spirit of the "end of the century" settles in the early lyrics with fashionable moods of loneliness, fatigue, longing for the past - moods so far mostly secondary, borrowed. But little by little, one’s own, unborrowed, is also developed: first of all, a fundamental orientation towards “silence”, towards introspection. This self-absorption did not mean for Rilke narcissism, an arrogant denial of the external world; he sought to remove from himself only what he considered vain, unreal and transient; first of all - the modern bourgeois-industrial urban world, this is the focus, so to speak, of existential "noise", to which he opposed the principle of "silence". As a poetic and life position, this principle took shape in the poet and quite consciously: Rilke was never a militant, “propaganda” nature. The complex of silence (up to silence, to silence), attention to the silent language of gesture - all this will become one of the most essential features of Rilke's poetics.

Rilke's early lyrics are typical of neo-romantic poetry. His collection Crowned with Dreams (1897), filled with obscure dreams with a hint of mysticism, revealed vivid imagery and an outstanding command of rhythm, meter, alliteration and melodic speech. A thorough study of the heritage of the Danish poet J.P. Jacobsen inspired and filled him with a strict sense of responsibility. Two trips to Russia, to his “spiritual homeland” (1899 and 1900), resulted in a collection of Books of Hours (1899-1903), in which a prayer addressed to the undogmatically understood God of the future sounds like an unceasing melody. Stories about a good God (1900) became a prosaic addition to the Book of Hours.

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Introduction

Thomas Mann - a writer-thinker - has come a difficult way. He grew up in an environment of wealthy, conservative burghers; for a long time philosophers of a reactionary, irrationalist warehouse - Schopenhauer, Nietzsche - had a considerable attractive force for him for a long time. the first world war he perceived in the light of nationalist ideas, this was reflected in his journalism book Reflections of the Apolitical. In the 1920s, Thomas Mann - not without difficulty - revised his former views; he opposed the impending fascist barbarism with a noble but abstract preaching of humanism and justice. During the period of Hitler's dictatorship, Thomas Mann, having left his country, became one of the most prominent representatives of the German anti-fascist intelligentsia.

Thomas Mann loved Russian literature from a young age, she participated in his ideological and creative searches throughout his intellectual life for a decade. Among Western writers of the XX century. Thomas Mann is one of the best connoisseurs and connoisseurs of Russian classics. The circle of his readings included Pushkin, Gogol Goncharov, Turgenev, Chekhov, later - Gorky - as well as a number of other writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. And above all - Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

The history of Thomas Mann's creative development cannot be seriously understood if one does not take into account his deep attachment to Russian literature. Several works have been written about Thomas Mann's attitude towards Russian writers. The most serious view of this issue is the well-known Czech scientist Alois Hoffman. In 1959 he published the book Thomas Mann and Russia in Czech, and in 1967 he published in the German, his extensive work "Thomas Mann and the World of Russian Literature". Both of these books, controversial in certain particulars, are rich in factual material and valuable observations. However, the topic has not been exhausted, especially since thanks to posthumous publications, letters of Thomas Mann, we can penetrate deeper into the laboratory of his thought.

Thomas Mann's letters contain many interesting, generalizing judgments about how he treated Russian literature, how much it meant to him.

Four years before his death, in 1951, Thomas Mann wrote to his Hungarian correspondent Jena Tamas Gemeri: “I don’t know a word of Russian, and the German translations in which I read the great Russian authors of the 19th century in my younger years were very are weak. And yet I rank this reading as one of the most important experiences that shaped my personality ”(Doronin - p. - 58).

A few years earlier - on February 26, 1948 - Thomas Mann wrote to his school friend Hermann Lange: “You are right in assuming that I have long been devotedly grateful to Russian literature, which I called in my youthful novel Tonio Kroeger“ holy Russian literature. At the age of 23 or 24, I would never have coped with the work on Buddenbrooks if I had not drawn strength and courage from constant reading of Tolstoy. Russian literature late XVIII and XIX centuries. indeed one of the wonders of spiritual culture, and I have always deeply regretted that Pushkin's poetry remained almost inaccessible to me, since I did not have enough time and excess energy to learn the Russian language. However, Pushkin's stories also give enough reason to admire him. Needless to say, how much I bow before Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev. But I would like to mention Nikolai Leskov, who is not known, although he is a great master of storytelling, almost equal to Dostoevsky... You can find traces of Maxim Gorky in my essay on Goethe and Tolstoy, which, perhaps, sometime you came across. I wrote about Tolstoy more than once, most recently in the preface to the American edition of Anna Karenina. I also wrote a preface to the edition of Dostoevsky's stories, which was published in New York in 1945 ... ".

Russian literature evoked responses of various kinds in the work of Thomas Mann, in his novels and essays. With his beloved Russian classics, Thomas Mann sometimes mentally consulted, sometimes argued with them, relied on their experience and example - at different times in different ways - explaining their works to Western readers and drawing conclusions from these works that are relevant for himself and for others. .

As we can see, we can say that Russian literature, in the person of its greatest masters, influenced Thomas Mann, based on his own testimonies. He was a deeply German writer in his spirit, traditions, and problems. And, of course, he - like all truly great writers - was an artist of individual originality. In an article written for the centenary of the birth of L.N. Tolstoy, he very subtly defined the nature of the influence that a great writer can have on his fellow writers in other countries:

“The impressive power of his narrative art is incomparable to anything, any contact with him pours into the soul of a receptive talent (but there are no other talents) a living stream of energy, freshness, primitive creative joy ... This is not about imitation. And is it possible to imitate force? Under its influence, works can arise both in spirit and in form that are very dissimilar to each other, and, most importantly, completely different from the works of Tolstoy himself.

The influence of Russian literature on Thomas Mann (and on many other foreign writers) cannot be measured and appreciated by means of "chasing after parallels", as is often practiced in Western literary science. The point is not at all to look for features of external resemblance to the Russian classics in the books of Thomas Mann, to find coincidences or closeness of individual episodes, figures, details. Such coincidences are sometimes indeed found and, so to speak, lie on the surface. But they are not the point. Our task is to turn to the works of Thomas Mann, and to his statements and testimonies, to find out what and how he used realistic elements.

The work of T. Mann is of interest for research, especially because it has not been studied in detail. There are a number of works devoted to Mann, but the structure of his works, his connection with real events and elements.

The purpose of this work is to study the realistic elements in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks.

1. identify the time and place of writing the work,

2. study the events that took place in Germany at the time of writing the work,

3. explore realistic elements (place, time, etc.) that are present in the work.

This work consists of 3 chapters. In chapter 1, the time and place of writing the work of T. Mann were considered. Chapter 2 explores the historical events that took place in Germany during the creation of T. Mann "Buddenbrooks". Chapter 3 reveals the realistic elements present in the work, in particular, the place where the action takes place, the family, as part of the real world.

As mentioned above, this topic is of interest due to its lack of study. Therefore, today it is quite interesting material that will help to understand the essence of the events that take place in the novel, through consideration of the details.

The following literary sources were used in the work: History of foreign literature of the XX century; History of German Literature; Kalashnikov A.A.; Literature of writers of Germany; World history; Motyleva T.L.; Starostin V.V.; Tolstoy L.N.; Fadeeva V.S.; Reader on foreign literature. As well as information from the sites: http://www.eduhmao.ru.; http://www.litera.edu.ru.; http://www.cultinfo.ru.; http:// www.bookz.ru.

1 . Time and place of writing the work "Buddenbrooks"

In the eighties XIX years century, when Thomas Mann and his older brother Heinrich were children, the reading public of Western Europe was just beginning to become widely acquainted with Russian literature. Crime and Punishment first appeared in German translation in 1882, War and Peace in 1885.

In the nineties, when the Mann brothers - each in his own way - made their first steps in literature, the names of the greatest Russian novelists were already known in the West to every educated person. Books by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, as well as Gogol, Goncharov, Turgenev appeared one after another, causing lively responses in the press.

All or almost all of the major German writers who entered conscious life at the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century knew Russian literature, took a keen interest in it, and learned from it in one form or another. Gergart Hauptmann wrote his first famous realist plays under the direct influence of Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness. Bernhard Kellermann in the novel "Der Tor" ("Fool" or "Idiot") created the image of a strange and beautiful-hearted preacher, in many ways close to Prince Myshkin. Rainer Maria Rilke was drawn to Russian culture, tried to write poetry in Russian, visited Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. Leonhard Frank, who wrote one of the first books of anti-militarist prose, A Good Man, during the First World War, considered Dostoevsky his teacher. However, we can safely say that Thomas Mann, in terms of the depth of perception of Russian classical literature, in the completeness of his spiritual ties with it, surpassed all German writers of his generation.

Heinrich Mann, who was much less close to Russian literature than his brother, wrote in his book of memoirs "Review of the Century" several bright pages about how the books of Russian writers were perceived in Western Europe at the end of the last century. Heinrich Mann is talking here about the interaction between literature and the liberation movement in Russia.

Russian literature of the 19th century, writes Heinrich Mann, “is an event of incredible importance and such enlightening power that we, accustomed to the phenomena of decline and breakage, can hardly believe that we were its contemporaries… How was Dostoevsky read, how was Tolstoy read?

They read with trepidation. They were read - and the eyes opened wider to perceive all this abundance of images, all this abundance of thought, and tears flowed as a gift in return. These novels, from Pushkin to Gorky, link by link in an impeccably soldered chain, taught us to get to know a person more deeply, his weaknesses, his formidable power, his unfulfilled vocation - and they were accepted as a lesson.

In another chapter of the same book, Heinrich Mann recalls how differently he and his brother Thomas spent their years of literary apprenticeship. “When my brother entered the twenties of his life, he was devoted to the Russian masters, while for me a good half of my existence was determined by French literature. Both of us learned to write in German - that's why, I think.

Heinrich and Thomas Mann both occupied an exceptionally important place in the history of their national culture. Both of them raised the art of German realistic prose to a great height, laid the foundations of the German novel of the 20th century, this became their common cause, one might even say - a common creative feat. And at the same time, they were very different in their spiritual make-up, - this was also reflected in the choice of those artistic traditions that they followed. Heinrich Mann gravitated toward satire and, at the same time, toward a concrete social study of Reality: he found a lot of value for himself in Voltaire, and in Balzac, and in Zola. Thomas Mann, as an artist, felt a penchant for psychological and philosophical prose; partly from this came his heightened interest in the masters of the Russian novel (Motyleva 1982:12).

Heinrich Mann surpassed his brother in political radicalism, already in his youth he broke away from the burgher environment, its traditional views and mores. Thomas Mann remained closely associated with this milieu for a long time.

The early stories of Thomas Mann - "Disappointment", "Little Mr. Friedemann", "Louischen", "Clown", "Tobias Mindernickel" - are studies on the theme of human suffering. People rise in them, offended by fate, physically or spiritually handicapped, internally alienated from the world around them. From the very first creative steps, the young writer was attracted by acute psychological collisions: with their help, he revealed the hidden tragedy of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois life.

Already in the sketch story "Disappointment" (1896), a kind of "anti-hero" appears - a middle-aged lonely man: in a conversation with a casual acquaintance, he pours out his disgust for life, for society, for "high words" with which people deceive each other.

A more clearly delineated figure of the "anti-hero" appears in the story "Clown" (1897). It is written in the first person, in that confessional manner, which was first tried by Dostoevsky (in the world literature of the 20th century, this manner was widely developed, but for the West late XIX V. it was still completely new) (Samovalov 1981:166).

In the story of the "clown" about himself, buffoonery is combined with genuine anger, insecurity with narcissism, arrogance with humiliation; before us is the image of a split, torn consciousness.

The outlook of the "buffoon", the whole range of his experiences, is incomparably narrower compared to the tragic hero of Notes from the Underground. However, the story breathes with sincere hostility towards the world of successful "large-scale businessmen": the restless "buffoon", one way or another, is spiritually much higher than the environment from which he voluntarily broke away.

At the turn of the new century, Thomas Mann was working on the novel Buddenbrooks, which was published in 1901. The book was originally conceived as the story of a burgher family, built on the material of domestic traditions, a novel about older relatives, nothing more. A beginner, the writer could not imagine that this book would mark the beginning of his world fame, and that the Nobel Prize (he received it in 1920) would be awarded to him precisely as the author of The Buddenbrooks (Fadeeva 1982:154).

"Buddenbrooks" by T. Mann are written in the manner of a broad, unhurried narrative, with the mention of many details, with a detailed image of individual episodes, with many dialogues and internal monologues. The impetus for writing was an acquaintance with the novel by the Goncourt brothers Rene Mauperin. T. Mann was delighted with the grace and structural clarity of this work, quite small in volume, but saturated with significant psychological content. Previously, he believed that his genre was a short psychological novel, now it seemed to him that he could try his hand at a psychological novel of the Goncourt type. However, from the idea of ​​a small novel about modernity, about a “problematic” hero of the end of the century, weak and helpless in the face of a ruthless life, a huge epic novel has turned out, covering the fate of four generations (http://litera.edu.ru).

Many years later, in the essay “My Time,” Thomas Mann testified: “I really wrote a novel about my own family ... But in fact, I myself did not realize that, talking about the collapse of a burgher family, I heralded much deeper processes of disintegration and dying, the beginning of a much more significant cultural and socio-historical breakdown. The novel is based on Mann's observations of his family, friends, the customs of his native city, the decline of a family belonging to a hereditary middle class. Realistic in method and detail, the novel, in fact, symbolically depicts the relationship between the burgher world and the spiritual world.

The pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer suggested to the young writer the idea of ​​decay and dying as an inevitable fatal law of being. But the sobriety of the artistic vision of life prompted him to paint the decline of the Buddenbrook family. in the light of the concrete, determined by the laws of history, the fate of the bourgeois, proprietary way of life.

When Mann was working on the novel, he was asked what he was writing about. “Ah, this is a boring burgher matter,” he replied, “but it is a matter of decline, and this is why it is literary.” The idea of ​​decline generalizes the whole huge material of everyday life of the novel. It traces the fate of four generations of wealthy burghers, whose entrepreneurial activity and will to live weaken from generation to generation. At the same time, the picture of gradual economic impoverishment and biological degradation, deployed on the example of one family, turns out to be “typical of the entire European burghers” - an obsolete, unviable class.

As the author himself admitted, his work, in order to take place, “had to carefully study and master the techniques of a naturalistic novel, having won the right to use them with hard work.” A case from Mann's life at that time is indicative: one of his acquaintances once noticed that the writer was watching him through binoculars. So - as if with the help of a magnifying glass - Mann studied the burgher life, composing an epic canvas from accurately noticed trifles.

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was only 25 years old when The Buddenbrooks appeared. His success was so impressive that in 1929 he brought Mann the Nobel Prize (http://www.eduhmao.ru.).

In the 1947 article "On a Chapter from the Buddenbrooks", Thomas Mann recalls how he relied in his work on the experience of writers from other countries and not only Russian ones. “The influences that determined the appearance of this book as a work of art came from everywhere: from France, England, Russia, from the Scandinavian North, - the young author absorbed them eagerly, with the zealous zeal of a student, feeling that the ode could not do without them in his work on the work , psychological in its innermost thoughts and intentions, because it sought to convey the psychology of those who are tired of living, to portray the complication of spiritual life and the sharpening of susceptibility to beauty that accompanies biological decline.

And - on the same page - T. Mann clarifies his thought: "... under my gaze, a socio-critical novel hidden under the guise of a family chronicle appeared ...". The motif of "biological decline" is ultimately pushed aside in "Buddenbrooks" by a large socio-critical theme.

It is worth considering another important testimony of Thomas Mann - from his book "Reflections of the Apolitical". There, the memory of the "Buddenbrooks" pops up for an unexpected reason - in connection with the name of Nietzsche. To this philosopher, so influential in Kaiser's Germany, Thomas Mann treated with great respect, highly appreciated his literary gift. However, in "Reflections of the Apolitical" T. Mann partially dissociates himself from Nietzsche. He claims that he never, even in his youth, shared the cult of brute force and the aestheticization of “brutal instincts” that comes from Nietzsche. On the contrary, the artistic reference points for him were works generated by "highly moral, sacrificial and Christian-conscientious natures." Michelangelo's The Last Judgment is named here, and then the novel Anna Karenina, "which gave me strength when I wrote Buddenbrooks."

It can be assumed that Tolstoy's work - both with its realism and its moral pathos - could "give strength" to the young Thomas Mann in his - not yet fully conscious - opposition to reactionary philosophical teachings.

Working on a story about the fate of a burgher family, Thomas Mann studied the rich experience of European " family romance". In this regard, too, Anna Karenina, a novel in which Tolstoy, in his own words, loved "the thought of the family," should have attracted him. He should have been attracted along with the fact that in Anna Karenina the history of personal destinies, personal relationships of the characters is inextricably linked with the history of society - and contains a strong charge of social criticism directed against the very foundations of a proprietary way of life.

Thomas Mann did not feel a penchant for satirical grotesque, a sharp sharpening of characters and situations. The closer he was to be Tolstoy's way of depicting - irreproachably reliable and at the same time uncompromisingly sober. In "Buddenbrooks" he - like the author of "Anna Karenina" - depicts that class, that social environment, which is vitally close to him. He loves his Buddenbrooks, he himself is flesh of their flesh. But at the same time, he is uncompromisingly frank. Each of the main characters of the story is depicted in the "fluidity" of living inconsistency, the interweaving of good and bad (Mitrofanov 1987:301).

The Buddenbrook clan has its own cultural and moral foundations, its own firm concepts of decency and honesty, about what is possible and what is not. However, the novelist calmly, gently, without pressure, but, in essence, ruthlessly demonstrates the wrong side of this Buddenbrookian morality - the latent antagonism that corrodes the relationship of parents and children, brothers and sisters, those running manifestations of selfishness, hypocrisy, self-interest that flow from the very essence of bourgeois- proprietary relationships.

In the novel by T. Mann, the action begins in 1835 and is brought to the end of the 19th century - four generations of Buddenbrooks pass before the reader. However, the fate of the third generation - Thomas, Christian, Tony - is depicted in close-up with the author's greatest attention. The sunset of their life falls on the years that followed the reunification of Germany. In the first years of the Hohenzollern Empire, as in post-reform Russia, everything "turned upside down and only fits in." No matter how dissimilar the social situations depicted in Anna Karenina and in the last parts of Buddenbrooks, both here and there we are talking about the rapid breaking of the old social foundations. Tolstoy recreated the collapse of patriarchal-landowner Russia; Thomas Mann, using the material of his national reality, showed the collapse of the ancient foundations of the German patriarchal-burgher way of life. That life fatigue, a sense of doom, from which Senator Thomas Buddenbrock suffers, and then his fragile and gifted son Hanno, find an explanation not in some metaphysical laws of being, but in the laws of German and world history.

Thomas Mann masterfully conveys the atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty in which his characters live in the last parts of the novel. Through the fate of his heroes, he feels and reproduces not only the collapse of the old burghers, the commercial "patriciate" of the North German cities, but also something much more significant: the fragility of the rule of the bourgeois, the owners, the precariousness of the foundations on which capitalist society is built.

The theme of death appears several times in Buddenbrooks. And here the creative connection between Thomas Mann and Tolstoy is very noticeable. Here we can recall not only Anna Karenina (and, in particular, the paintings of the dying of Nikolai Levin), but also The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Talking about recent weeks life of Senator Thomas Buddenbrock, T. Mann reveals the spiritual drama of this smart and energetic bourgeois, who, in the face of imminent death, faces new, painfully difficult questions for him about the meaning of being, doubts are growing whether he lived his life correctly.

However, the content of the Buddenbrooks is by no means reduced to the theme of dying and decay, or to satirical motifs, which in places, as if imperceptibly, are interspersed in the narrative. The artistic charm and originality of "Buddenbrooks" is largely based on the fact that the author is spiritually attached to his characters, to their way of life, their family traditions. With all its sobriety and irony, with all the social criticism that constitutes ideological basis novel, the writer draws the outgoing Buddenbrook world with sympathy and restrained sadness, "from within".

Buddenbrooks showed the young novelist's amazing ability to depict people and the circumstances of their lives visually, visibly, with great artistic plasticity, in an abundance of aptly grasped details. And in the brilliance of everyday episodes, genre scenes, interiors, in the accuracy and richness of psychological characteristics, in the realistic full-bloodedness of the general family-group portrait of the Buddenbrooks, connected by a common family resemblance and yet so dissimilar to each other in many ways - the original and mature talent of Thomas Mann.

T. Mann's "Buddenbrooks" are written in the manner of a broad, unhurried narration, with the mention of many details, with a detailed image of individual episodes, with many dialogues and internal monologues.

The book was originally conceived as the story of a burgher family, built on the material of domestic traditions - a novel about older relatives, nothing more. A beginner, the writer could not imagine that this book would mark the beginning of his world fame, and that the Nobel Prize (he received it in 1920) would be awarded to him precisely as the author of Buddenbrooks.

Through the fate of his heroes, he feels and reproduces not only the collapse of the old burghers, the commercial "patriciate" of the North German cities, but also something much more significant: the fragility of the rule of the bourgeois, the owners, the precariousness of the foundations on which capitalist society is built.

2 . Historical events in Germany during the creation of "Buddenbrooks"

The collapse of attempts to suppress the labor movement and failures in foreign policy predetermined the resignation of Bismarck (1890). Disagreements between Bismarck and the new German Emperor Wilhelm II (who ascended the throne in 1888) also played a significant role in this. Bismarck's successor as Chancellor L. Caprivi began to move away from the policy of agrarian protectionism in the interests of industrial magnates. Trade agreements were concluded with a number of states, which facilitated, thanks to the mutual reduction of duties, the sale of German industrial goods. This led to the penetration of foreign grain into the German market and caused strong dissatisfaction among the Junkers. In 1894, the post of chancellor was taken over by H. Hohenlohe, who, like Bismarck, tried to stop the continued consolidation of the forces of the German proletariat with the help of repression.

An indicator of the maturity of the German Social Democracy was its adoption in 1891 of the Erfurt Program, which was a step forward in comparison with the Gotha Program. This program contained provisions on the mastery of political power by the working class, on the abolition of classes and class rule as the ultimate goal of the party. But even in this program there was no mention of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the demand democratic republic How nearest target. In 1893, the Social Democrats got 44 deputies into the Reichstag, and in 1898, 56 deputies. The labor movement became a serious factor in the political life of the country. The German Social Democracy at that time played a leading role in the international labor movement. But already at the end of the 19th century. opportunists declared themselves, led by E. Bernstein with a revision of Marxism. The backbone of opportunism was the labor aristocracy, with which the bourgeoisie shared part of the profits, and people from the petty-bourgeois strata (World History 16:256-258).

Germany entered the 20th century as an imperialist power with a highly developed economy. In terms of industrial production, Germany advanced by the beginning of the 20th century. to 1st place in Europe, overtaking the recent "workshop of the world" Great Britain. Under the sign of militarism, the entire economic and political social structure of Germany was restructured. The German imperialist bourgeoisie, which was late in its development, made extensive use of dumping in its struggle for markets; at the same time, it sought to compensate for “losses” by raising prices in the domestic market. The dominant form of monopoly associations in Germany were cartels; their number grew rapidly (in 1890 - 210, in 1911 - 550-600). A characteristic feature of German imperialism was the wide coverage of the entire economy of the country by monopolies. The big banks have become of great importance; this was due to the paramount role they played in the process of folding the monopolies. Therefore, the merging of industrial and banking capital proceeded more intensively in Germany than in other countries. Along with this, in Germany, where the direct influence of the state on economic life was significant even in previous decades, state-monopoly tendencies appeared early.

German imperialism was characterized by a class alliance between the Junkers and the big bourgeoisie. At the beginning of the 20th century the export of capital intensified in Germany. In 1902, German investments abroad amounted to 12.5 billion francs, and in 1914 already 44 billion francs. The monopolies persistently pushed the government to war for the redivision of the world.

Imperialist Germany was constantly building up its armaments. From 1879 to 1914, military spending increased 5 times, exceeding 1,600 million marks, which was more than half state budget. The size of the peacetime army increased every year; by 1914 it had reached 800,000; The German army was equipped with the most modern weapons for that time. Programs for the construction of warships have been repeatedly revised upwards. By the beginning of World War I, Germany had 41 battleships, including 15 heavy-duty "dreadnoughts". The ruling circles carried out intensive indoctrination of the population in the spirit of chauvinism.

Early 20th century marked by a new upsurge in the labor movement. The Revolution of 1905-07 in Russia had a great influence on the German proletariat. In 1905-1906, more than 800,000 people took part in strikes in Germany; almost the same as in the previous 15 years. On January 17, 1906, the first mass political strike in the history of the German labor movement took place in Hamburg. The leaders of the left-wing Social Democrats R. Luxemburg, K. Liebknecht, K. Zetkin, F. Mehring, and others propagated the Russian revolutionary experience. Right-wing Social Democrats (E. Bernstein, K. Legin, G. Vollmar, F. , F. Ebert) promoted "class peace". After the defeat of the Russian Revolution of 1905-07, a reactionary course intensified in German policy. In 1907, the Reichstag voted credits for the suppression of tribal uprisings in South West Africa and additional funds for building a fleet. Under these conditions, an enormous responsibility fell on the Social Democratic Party as a force that could prevent the onset of reaction and plans to unleash a world war. If at the beginning of the 20th century German Social Democracy as a whole still stood on the positions of the class struggle, was "... ahead of everyone in its organization, in the integrity and cohesion of the movement", then in the subsequent leadership everything greater influence acquired by the right opportunists. The centrist group led by K. Kautsky also brought great harm. Figures of the left wing of the Social Democracy, to whom A. Bebel was close in a number of issues, defended the principles of Marxism, waged an active struggle against militarism, and exposed the opportunism of the right-wing leaders. But even the Left Social Democrats did not fully understand the tasks arising from the new conditions of the class struggle, did not dare to break organizationally with the opportunists.

In the years preceding World War I, the working-class movement began to grow again in Germany (in 1910-13, an average of 300,000-400,000 workers went on strike a year). On March 6, 1910, a mass workers' demonstration took place in Berlin under the slogan of introducing universal suffrage in Prussia, which was dispersed by the mounted police ("German Bloody Sunday"). In September-October 1910, in the proletarian district of Berlin, Moabite, barricade battles between strikers and the police unfolded. In March 1912, a strike of 250,000 Ruhr miners began; in the summer of 1913 there were major strikes in Hamburg, Kiel, Stettin, and Bremen. The indignation of the oppressed population of Alsace grew. A political crisis was brewing in Germany. However, the numerous Social Democratic Party (about 1 million in 1912) and the trade unions (more than 2.5 million in 1912-13) failed to lead the working class to storm imperialism and to launch an effective struggle against the threat of war.

In preparing for war, the German government sought to undermine the Franco-Russian alliance and isolate France (Wilhelm II concluded the Treaty of Bjork in 1905 with Nicholas II), and also to liquidate the Anglo-French agreement of 1904. But G. failed to tear Russia or Great Britain away from France; in 1907 these three countries created the Entente, which opposed the Triple Alliance. Overestimating your military power and believing that Great Britain would not support Russia, imperialist Germany unleashed World War I. As a pretext, she used the assassination by Serbian nationalists on June 28, 1914 of the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand (the so-called Sarajevo assassination) (http://www.cultinfo.ru).

Germany entered the 20th century as an imperialist power with a highly developed economy. A characteristic feature of German imperialism was the wide coverage of the entire economy of the country by monopolies. The big banks have become of great importance; this was due to the paramount role they played in the process of folding the monopolies. Therefore, the merging of industrial and banking capital proceeded more intensively in Germany than in other countries. Along with this, in Germany, where the direct influence of the state on economic life was significant even in previous decades, state-monopoly tendencies appeared early.

Along with this, in Germany, where the direct influence of the state on economic life was significant even in previous decades, state-monopoly tendencies appeared early.

3. Realistic elements in Buddenbrooks T. Manna

Family and main characters of the novel

The very title of the novel shows that it describes the life of an entire family. The fate of the Buddenbrook family is a story of gradual decline and decay. "The Decline of a Family" is the subtitle of the novel. The fall of the Buddenbrooks is not a continuous process. Periods of stagnation are replaced by periods of a new upsurge, but still, on the whole, the family gradually weakens and dies.

"Buddenbrooks" - a work that raises great social problems giving a clear and true picture historical development bourgeoisie as a class from the 18th (since the Napoleonic wars) until the end of the 19th century. This is a novel about 4 generations of a bourgeois family. The material in this book is inspired by the history of the Mann family. The gradual destruction of the material well-being of the Buddenbrooks, from generation to generation, is combined with their spiritual impoverishment (Starostin 1980: 4.)

Johann Buddenbrock Sr. is a typical burgher of the 18th century, an optimistic and moderate freethinker who optimistically believes in the strength of bourgeois life.

Johann Buddenbrock, Jr., is a man of a different caste, his consciousness is shaken by the approach of the revolutionary events of 1848, he is seized by anxiety and uncertainty, he seeks solace in religion. With his ostentatious strictly patrician morality, he no longer manages to reconcile his commercial activities with purely human relations, even with family members.

Thomas and Christian no longer feel like an integral part of their class, "the best part of the nation", like grandfather. Thomas, at the cost of terrible efforts of will, still forces himself to wear a mask of imaginary efficiency, imaginary self-confidence, but he no longer feels in himself the ability to compete with entrepreneurs of a new predatory type. Behind his ostentatious restraint lies fatigue, a misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of his own existence, fear of the future.

Christian is a devastated person, a renegade, a person capable of only buffoonery. The degeneration of the Buddenbrooks for Thomas Mann marks the death of that seemingly indestructible foundation on which the burgher culture was based. The origins of the destruction of the family in the objective appearance among the German burghers of "grunders" - unscrupulous predatory businessmen who abandoned the notorious conscientiousness in matters that broke solid established business ties. The strength and thoroughness of the way of life recede before the insatiable thirst for wealth, the cruel grip of entrepreneurs of the new formation.

Drawing the history of the Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann simultaneously shows the history of bourgeois thought, its evolution from the philosophy of the Enlightenment to reactionary decadent views. The Voltairian Buddenbrook, the elder, is replaced by the hypocrite Buddenbrock, the younger, and his son Thomas is fond of the philosophy of Schopenhauer (Timofeev 1983:254).

From generation to generation, the spiritual strength of the family dries up. The rudely good-natured founders of the dynasty are finally replaced by refined neuropathic creatures whose fear of life kills their activity, makes them the inevitable victims of history. The last offspring of Hanno Buddenbrook - the son of Thomas - inherited from his mother a passion for music alien to his ancestors, imbued with disgust not only for his father's prosaic activities, but also for everything that is not music, art.
This is how the most important theme for Mann crystallizes: the sharp opposition of any art to bourgeois reality, any mental activity- base practice of the bourgeois.

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer have a certain influence on Thomas Mann here. Like the first, Mann considers morbidity to elevate a person above mediocrity, making his worldview sharper and deeper. The bearer of ill health - most often an artist - opposes the selfish and narcissistic world of the bourgeois. The pessimism of Schopenhauer, who sang about the beauty of dying, seemed natural to Mann, who saw in the dying culture of the burghers the death of all human culture.

Ganno, possessed by the "demon" of music, simultaneously symbolizes the spiritual exaltation of the Buddenbrook family and its tragic end. The novel is invaded by the decadent idea that art is linked to biological degeneration.

So, the novel "Buddenbrooks", published, marked a new phase in the creative development of Thomas Mann. It is based on a lot of autobiography. The writer carefully studied family papers, got acquainted with the business correspondence of his father and grandfather, delved into the details of the domestic environment, the home way of his ancestors. Mann's personal memories thus form the main outline of the novel, which makes it even more concrete.

The family chronicle of the Buddenbrooks is an epic tale of the past rise and fall of the once powerful elite of the German merchant bourgeoisie. In this regard, the writer, on the one hand, continues the traditions of German realistic prose of the 70s of the last century, on the other hand, anticipates the emergence of the Western European, social chronicle novel of the 20th century. (Galsworthy - "The Saga of the Forsytes", Roger Martin Du Gard - "The Thibault Family"). Thomas Mann begins the history of the Buddenbrook family with mid-nineteenth V. and traces her fate for three generations. The former economic power and spiritual greatness of this kind are embodied in the image of the old Johann Buddenbrock. His whole appearance, his spiritual physiognomy was formed in the atmosphere of the Enlightenment. Full of inexhaustible life optimism, he is unshakably confident in his personal strengths and in the power of his class. His son Consul Johann Buddenbrock is already deprived of his father's optimism; mature years his life is already taking place in different historical conditions, in a turning point, when the patriarchal burghers are being replaced by a new generation of capitalist entrepreneurs.

In the light of new social conditions For the consul Johann Buddenbrook, and after him and for his son Thomas, the old firm of Buddenbrooks becomes not just a commercial enterprise, but a symbol of the greatness of the family, a kind of fetish to which the personal interests of each family member must obey.

Representing the first generation, Johann Buddenbrock embodies the strength of the burgher way of life, which has not lost touch with the people's environment. He is energetic, assertive, initiative, successful in business. His son, Consul Johann Buddenbrook, is a solid and balanced man, he does business well, but as a person he is less ambitious. After the revolution of 1848, he was not so sure of the inviolability of traditional foundations. For the representatives of the third generation of Thomas and Christian, the firm becomes something internally alien. They develop a tendency to reflection - a phenomenon unusual in the Buddenbrook family. Senator Thomas Buddenbrook maintains a semblance of calm. But internally he is tired and broken. From others and from himself, he tries to hide the decline of the company. Ganno, the only representative of the fourth generation, the son of Thomas, himself draws a line under his name in the family book as a sign that after him the family will cease to exist. The boy is in poor health, but he is musically gifted. Life inspires him with horror and disgust.

Location of the novel

In the opening chapters of the novel, the two chiefs of the firm, old Johann and his son, are depicted with truly epic breadth. The narrative flows smoothly, unhurriedly, lingering for a long time on the material world surrounding the Buddenbrooks. The description of their new home, rich furnishings, decoration emphasizes the solid wealth, heavy life of the top of the patrician bourgeoisie. The “gold-edged notebook with embossed binding”, in which outstanding events in the history of the family were recorded, should, according to Mann, embody the importance of the historical role of the German merchant bourgeoisie.

The epic-genre description acquires a dramatic character only with the advent of eldest daughter Consul - Tony. It's not about her, of course. This cheerful young girl is infinitely devoted to her family and its traditions. The disturbing beginning enters the novel along with Tony's fiancé, Mr. Grunlich, described by the author in an acutely grotesque tone. Yielding to the persuasion of people close to her, Tony makes a "profitable game", she marries a man who is not dear to her, who in turn marries a rich bride to pay her debts. Grunlich, this clever, unscrupulous businessman, who even resorts to forging the trading books of his office, undermines the former prestige of the Buddenbrooks firm, destroys the halo of patriarchy that previously surrounded it.

Another image is woven into Tony's emotional drama, completely opposite to Grunlich. This is Morten Schwarzkopf, the pilot's son, a medical student. This simple and honest young man, estranged from the society of rich merchant sons, rises to a sharp protest against police Junker Germany. It is no coincidence that in his modest little room in Göttingen, where he studies medicine, he "puts on" a policeman's uniform over the skeleton. In conversations with Tony, Morten Schwarzkopf opens the veil of a different life for a young girl, full of tireless work, the struggle for existence. In this difficult but rich life, Morten calls Tony, whom he passionately fell in love with. Tony responds to his feeling. But the power of tradition is so great that the girl is unable to overcome it. She breaks with Morten and marries someone who in the eyes of her family was a good match.

The tragic fate of Tony sheds light on the personal drama of her brother, Consul Thomas. This cultured, enlightened, sensitive man sees the approaching collapse of the Buddenbrooks firm. Trying to keep up with the times, Thomas throws himself into speculation, but, not possessing the qualities necessary for a capitalist of a new formation, he is forced to give way to predatory businessmen like Hagenstrem.

The death of Thomas is not aesthetically pleasing. Leaving the office of an ignorant dentist, he dies on the street, falling face down into the mud that floods his snow-white gloves and flawless muffler.

From the writer's point of view, the ugly and sudden death of Consul Buddenbrock is the completion of that internal process of disintegration to which his class, the class of the German patriarchal burghers, was doomed.

Thomas Mann perceives the death of the old burgher culture as the physical and spiritual degradation of the descendants of the patrician bourgeoisie. This degradation leads to a weakening of the will, to the loss of vital optimism and, ultimately, to inevitable death. In the novel, Consul Thomas and his son Ganno become the bearers of death. Painfully refined, fragile young man, esthete, musician, far from real life, Ganno is associated with decadence with all his external appearance and internal essence. The seal of decadence lies on the last chapters of the novel. If the first part of the family chronicle is characterized by a deliberately old-fashioned manner of epic writing, then the last chapters of the second part are distinguished by a different style: convulsive impulsiveness, a combination of lyricism and musicality, painful psychologization, and subtle elegance of language (http://bookz.ru.).

The novel "Buddenbrooks" was of great importance for everything further development problems of Thomas Mann. In it, as in a focus, those vital problems for Mann are collected, which he will then begin to develop in short stories about artists and in the novel The Magic Mountain. Thus, the image of the musician, the aesthete Hanno, is the first link in a long chain of Mann artists, refined decadent natures, painfully experiencing the tragedy of loneliness in the world.

In creating an image of reality, Mann is, in fact, realistic. Anyone who has read the Buddenbrooks, when asked if he can recognize the streets, houses described by the author in the novel, will answer this question positively. The author himself attaches great importance to the impression of the reality of the events described in the novel. So, for example, in the report, T. Mann recalls the words of one of his technical assistants in Munich: “Now I know how it all really happened!”. T. Mann took this remark as a compliment. The idea of ​​the completeness and objectivity of the reality depicted in T. Mann's novels is also inherent in many researchers of his work. Yu. Bonke notes, for example, that “the accuracy of spatial and temporal characteristics in T. Mann ... is supported by psychological observations, minute-by-minute depiction of gestures, clothes, speech turns and typical habits of heroes, careful study of the “environment”, the use of dialects ... "The researcher emphasizes precisely minute , thoroughness of the image, its, so to speak, naturalism (Kalashnikov 2000:29).

The old town of Lübeck is located on an island, several bridges lead there. Perhaps the most famous of them is the bridge in front of the Holstentor gate. Two massive gate towers built in the 15th century have become a symbol of Lübeck. The old town in Lübeck is extremely complete, without any modern inserts, and all of red brick.

Lübeck also has non-medieval sights. More precisely, one main attraction is the Buddenbrooks house from the famous novel by Thomas Mann "Buddenbrooks", which in fact was the family home of Heinrich and Thomas Mann. It is now the Mann family museum.

For example, let's turn to the image of a landscape room. In the spatial structure of the novel, landscape plays exclusively important role: after all, "according to routine, the Buddenbrooks got together every second Thursday" right here. Here they received guests, gave dinner parties, etc. The landscape room is, therefore, the room where the idle life of the heroes takes place, devoid of the rigor and expediency to which their working, everyday life, the life of politicians and businessmen, should be subordinated. From the point of view of the completeness and reliability of the plot depiction of the events of the novel, the representation of the characters' characters, it would be logical to assume that the text of the novel contains equally detailed descriptions of the premises in which the characters work or spend hours of solitude. However, this is exactly what is not happening. In the text of the novel, we find only mentions of the existence of office premises and private chambers of the characters. From a quantitative point of view, the images of these premises are quite widely represented in the text, but in the absence of a more detailed description of them, they remain for the reader a kind of only markers of reality, a kind of mask, an external plan, the content of which is hidden and unclear. Office spaces and bedrooms are deliberately "omitted" spaces.

An analysis of the plot of the novel also reveals the fact that the overwhelming majority of events that are the key plot points of the narrative take place precisely in the landscape room. The fateful visit of Grunlich for Tony Buddenbrook, who seeks her hand and heart, the revolutionary unrest of October 1848, and finally the death of the old consul Johann Buddenbrook - the heroes of the novel experience all these important events in this room. The rest of the space of the house (for example, office space or bedrooms) is, as it were, pushed back from the main axis. plot development narration, is devoid of its independent meaning: Consul Buddenbrock experiences even the presence of his wife Elizabeth and the newborn daughter from the room adjacent to the landscape room - the dining room, which forms a functional-semantic, as well as spatial unity with the landscape in the novel. The impression of impenetrability, unpreparedness for self-disclosure of the repressed space of the characters’ private lives is enhanced in the novel by the introduction of the motif of curtains that always separate, for example, the characters’ bedroom from the outside world: “Johann Buddenbrock ... quietly rocked the cradle with green silk curtains, almost close to the high bed under the canopy, on which lay the consul"; "The green curtains on the open windows in Mrs. Grunlich's bedroom swayed a little from easy breathing clear July night”, “the walls of this room were upholstered with dark matter in large colors… The light barely broke through the closed curtains”, etc. From the point of view of comprehending the plot material, these spaces turn out to be closed to the reader; by themselves, they do not tell us anything new either about the characters or about the events that happen to them. They are an objective image of reality, which the artist, according to Mann, is called upon to subject to "subjective deepening" (Kalashnikov 2000:34).

As the narrative acquires more and more realistic details (new characters appear, old ones leave, even partly the narrative space associated with the acquisition of a new house by the family changes), the symbolic content deepens, which organizes them into a kind of semantic unity - unity catastrophe, the death of a family. The landscape image gradually acquires the ability to reorganize the meaning of the events depicted in the novel, to predetermine the course of their development.

"Buddenbrooks" is a work that raises great social problems, giving a vivid and truthful picture of the historical development of the bourgeoisie as a class from the 18th to the end of the 19th century. This is a novel about 4 generations of a bourgeois family. The material in this book is inspired by the history of the Mann family. The gradual destruction of the material well-being of the Buddenbrooks, from generation to generation, is combined with their spiritual impoverishment.

From generation to generation, the spiritual strength of the family dries up. The rudely good-natured founders of the dynasty are finally replaced by refined neuropathic creatures whose fear of life kills their activity, makes them the inevitable victims of history.

Thomas Mann perceives the death of the old burgher culture as the physical and spiritual degradation of the descendants of the patrician bourgeoisie. This degradation leads to a weakening of the will, to the loss of vital optimism and, ultimately, to inevitable death. In the novel, Consul Thomas and his son Ganno become the bearers of death.

From a quantitative point of view, the images of the premises, which are, as it were, quite widely represented in the text, but in the absence of their more detailed description, they remain for the reader a kind of only marking signs of reality, a kind of mask, an external plan, the content of which is hidden and unclear. Office spaces and bedrooms are deliberately "omitted" spaces. The space of the house is, as it were, pushed aside from the main axis of the plot development of the narrative, deprived of its independent meaning. But this only enhances the overall impression of realism.

Features of the novel "The Loyal Subject". The image of Diderich Gesling in the work. The formation of the personality of the protagonist. Gesling's attitude to power and its representatives. comic in the novel. "Loyal Subject" is an excellent example of a socio-satirical novel.

abstract, added 02/23/2010

History of writing the novel "Crime and Punishment". The main characters of Dostoevsky's work: a description of their appearance, inner world, character traits and place in the novel. The storyline of the novel, the main philosophical, moral and moral problems.

abstract, added 05/31/2009

Romani and novels by the great German writer Thomas Mann. The lack of sociality of Mann's works, revealing cultural, historical and psychological problems in them. The burghers are the main theme of the writer's work. Analysis of the short story "Mario and the Charmer".

abstract, added 01/16/2010

"King's Highness" - a novel-autobiography, de Thomas Mann depicts a life similar to that of a real life: one with a brother, fathers, named. The problems of spіvvіdnoshnja zhittya i spirit razkryvaє conflict between specialties and bourgeois sospіlstvo.

term paper, added 05/19/2009

Brief retelling of Jerome D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. The image of the protagonist, his character and place in the novel. Features of the translation of the work. The transfer of slang in the translation of the work. Editorial analysis in accordance with GOST 7.60-2003.

term paper, added 08/31/2014

The history and main stages of writing Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago", the main political and social reasons for the rejection of this work. The structure of the novel and its main parts, the idea and meaning, the fate of the hero in the wars he went through.

presentation, added 01/25/2012

Features of the study of the epic work. Methods and techniques for studying the epic work of a large form. Methodology for studying the novel by M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" Two points of view on the method of teaching the novel.

term paper, added 12/28/2006

Characteristics of Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard", the role of art and literature. The theme of honor as the basis of the work. A fragment from the revelation of I. Theologian as a kind of timeless point of view on the events taking place in the novel. Features of the novel "War and Peace".

Thomas Mann's first novel, The Buddenbrooks, depicts the decline of a 19th-century patriarchal merchant family from the city of Lübeck. The action of the novel covers the time from 1835 to 1877 and describes four generations of this family. The novel was published in 1901, when Mann was only 25 years old, and in 1929 the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work.

The Buddenbrooks is partly autobiographical, partly depicting the history of the author's family. The image of one of the three brothers, Thomas, resembles the personality of the German writer's father, in the image of Christian one can find the features of his uncle - Friedrich Wilhelm, and Tony is similar to Thomas Mann's aunt, Elisabeth. The tension between Thomas and Christian was typified by the rivalry between Thomas Mann and his older brother Gernich.

The novel goes back to the realism of the 19th century, but includes modernist elements and traits of decadence, pessimism, which was widespread in Germany in the 1900s. and was a reaction to the rapid industrialization of Germany after unification in 1871.

The writer was inspired by the philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Both of them believed that historical progress is an illusion, and the only true reality is will. One of the highlights of the novel is at the end of Part 10, when Thomas Buddenbrock reads Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. That is, the work "Buddenbrooks", published at the turn of the century, marks a transition, when realistic narration acquires the features of reflection.

A parallel can be drawn between the decline of the Buddenbrook family and the decline of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. At the end of the 19th century, many medium-sized German cities lost their economic importance, while the large cities of Hamburg and Berlin grew rapidly. But besides the reference to historical events, another dimension is also implied - fundamental, timeless, mythological. For example, the fate of the Buddenbrooks repeats the fate of the former owners of their house, the Rathenkamps, who gradually lost their competitiveness.

Thus, it is hardly possible to explain the reason for the decline of the Buddenbrooks with one thing. It can be both in unwillingness to adapt to changing external historical circumstances, and in an internal crisis associated with psychological and biological factors. Each subsequent generation of Buddenbrooks becomes weaker, more indecisive and more and more inclined towards aestheticism. The last man in the family, Hanno, is wasting his last energy playing variations on Wagner's themes on the piano. Is this a reflection of broad socio-historical trends, or have the Buddenbrooks simply squandered all their strength and are doomed to close the next circle of the cycle?

The tension between historical and non-historical interpretations of the novel is reflected in the debate and rivalry between the Buddenbrooks and the Hagenströms. The Marxist critic Georg Lukács interpreted this rivalry as a symbol historical transition from the burghers to the bourgeoisie, that is, from old-fashioned paternalism to ruthless, impersonal capitalism. According to this reading, the Buddenbrooks are unable to adapt to the new way of doing business that the Hagenströms represent, based on credit, high risk, and relentless speculation.

However, Thomas Mann is not on the side of the bourgeoisie, he criticizes it. The social critique of the bourgeoisie is especially evident in the characterization of the third generation of the Buddenbrock family: Antonia, Christian and Thomas, as well as in the themes that are the leitmotifs of the novel.

In the fate of Antonia Buddenbrook, we find the author's criticism of society's views on the place of women in it. Since childhood, Antonia, or Tonya, as she is affectionately called, has been expected to marry not for love, but for convenience, and thereby support the family business. Toni's parents convince her to marry entrepreneur Grunlich, a man much older than her. And if, before the engagement, he showed some interest in her, or at least tried to show it, then after marriage, the attitude of this gentleman to Tony becomes simply the attitude of the owner (see quote 1). This marriage is a very vivid illustration of what cold calculation, the greed for profit and the deceit of the bourgeoisie lead to, on the one hand, and the obsolete attitude towards a woman as a creature devoid of will, obliged to meekly obey and act only in the interests of the family - on the other. The next marriage with Mr. Permaneder, who cheated on her, also does not bring happiness to Tony, and as a result she remains a lonely embittered woman with a scandalous reputation.

The central figure of the novel is Thomas Buddenbrook Sr. Thomas selflessly continues the family business, as the eldest son should. At first, he is energetic, eager to keep up with the times. But gradually the driving force of his actions weakens. This driving force is essentially the same force that made Tony marry Herr Grunlich - family pride and a sense of self-importance. Towards the end of his life, Thomas realizes that in his quest for greatness he has lost his "true self" (see quotation 2). The social values ​​and norms of the bourgeoisie, which contributed to its flourishing, in the long run, will themselves lead to its loss. life force and death.

At the same time, the decline of the Buddenbrook family is not only to blame for external factors, but also for internal ones - the desire to meet standards. In order to survive, according to the members of the Buddenbrook family, two things were necessary: ​​money and an heir. Thomas Mann emphasizes how important material wealth was to the family. The author describes in detail the details of the interior of the Buddenbrooks' house. (see quote 3). The interior of the rooms should indicate wealth and belonging to the upper class. The family continued to flaunt luxury goods even when business was bad and money was tight. Commitment to material goods also characterizes the episode when Tony cannot refuse the servants, despite the lack of funds for their maintenance. (see quote 4). This old-fashioned devotion to luxury in the 19th century, the century of modernisation, coupled with an unwillingness to change their way of life and their outlook on the world, makes the Buddenbrooks completely uncompetitive. At the end of the novel (at the end of the 19th century), together with the emergence of stock markets and joint-stock companies, the accumulation of capital began to take on an impersonal character, and the economy passed from the hands of individual family firms into the hands of these companies.

Another feature of contemporary society, which the author criticizes, is the class difference. Thomas Mann illustrates this in several scenes. One of them is a description of people waiting outside the meeting room to find out the result of elections for the local Senate. The difference between the lower class and the middle class is striking. The lower classes are more crudely and poorly dressed, while the clothes of the middle class are much better. (see quote 5). The language of the lower class is simple, while that of the middle class is refined, which speaks of the difference in education between them. Another illustration of this difference is the relationship between Tony and Morten, a student, the son of a sea captain. Toni is in love with the young man, which she herself confessed to him (see quote 6), but nevertheless marries Grunlich, since Morten does not have the necessary social status.

The historical morals and ideas of this work may seem somewhat outdated. However, the theme of the family will always be relevant, since the family is a social institution that has a great influence on people's lives at any time.

Quote 1:

“His treatment of the bride was filled with precautionary delicacy - which, however, was expected from him - without excessive ceremony, but also without obtrusiveness, without any inappropriate tenderness. A modest and affectionate kiss on the forehead in the presence of his parents sealed the betrothal ceremony At times, Tony wondered how little his joy matched the desperation he had shown at her refusal.Now in his eyes, when he looked at her, one could read only the contentment of the owner.But occasionally, when they were alone, he found a cheerful mood : he teased her, tried to seat her on his knees and in a voice breaking from playfulness, asked:

Well, after all, I caught you, grabbed you, huh?

To which Tony replied:

Sir, you are forgetting yourself, - and was in a hurry to free yourself.

Quote 2:

"Ups of fantasy, faith in the best ideals - all this has gone along with youth. Joking while working and working jokingly, half-seriously, half-mockingly referring to your own ambitious plans, striving for a goal that you attach a purely symbolic meaning - for such fervently skeptical compromises, for such intelligent half-heartedness needs freshness, humor, peace of mind, and Thomas Buddenbrock felt immensely tired, broken. he himself, on such an ordinary and base path one can generally speak of heights.

Quote 3.

Description of the dining room of the Buddenbrooks' house: "The statues of the gods against the sky-blue background of the tapestries protruded almost in relief between the slender columns. The heavy red curtains on the windows were tightly pushed. In all four corners of the room, in high gilded candelabra, eight candles burned, not counting those that were over a bulky sideboard, opposite the door to the landscaped room, hung a large picture - some kind of Italian bay, the misty blue distances of which looked especially beautiful in this light. Along the walls were large sofas with straight backs, upholstered in red Damascus ".

Quote 4:

"You're a bad mother, Antonia.

Bad mother? Yeah, I just can't. Housekeeping takes all my time! I wake up with twenty ideas in my head that need to be carried out in a day, and go to bed with forty new ones that I have not yet begun to execute! ..

We have two servants. Such a young woman...

Two servants? That's cute! The teen washes the dishes, cleans the dress, puts it away, serves it to the table. The cook's business is above her head: you've been eating cutlets since morning... Think a little, Grünlich! Sooner or later, Erica will have to take a bonna-tutor.

We cannot afford to keep a special person for her from these years.

Out of our means? Oh my God! No, you are really funny! What are we, beggars, to deny ourselves the most necessary things?

<...>- And you? You ruin me.

Am I... Am I ruining you?

Yes. You ruin me with your laziness, your desire to do everything with someone else's hands, unreasonable costs.

Oh, please don't reproach me for my good upbringing! In my parents' house, I didn't have to lift a finger. Now - and it was not easy for me - I got used to the duties of a hostess, I have no right to demand that you do not refuse me what is necessary. My father is a rich man: it could never have occurred to him that I would have a lack of servants ... "

Quote 5:

"- Here, on the street, representatives of all classes of society have gathered. Sailors with open tattooed necks stand with their hands in wide and deep pockets of their trousers; porters in blouses and short trousers made of black oiled canvas, with courageous and ingenuous faces; draymen with whips in hands — they climbed down from their carts loaded to the top with sacks to find out the results of the elections; maids in kerchiefs tied at their chests, in aprons over thick striped skirts, in little white caps on the back of their heads, with baskets in their bare hands; sellers of fish and herbs, even a few cute flower girls in Dutch caps, short skirts and white blouses with wide pleated sleeves flowing from embroidered bodices; there are also merchants, who jumped out of nearby shops without hats; lively exchanging opinions and well-dressed young people - the sons of wealthy merchants, being trained in offices their fathers or their buddies, even schoolchildren with bookbags in their hands or knapsacks over their shoulders."

Quote 6:

- I know, Morten. - She quietly interrupted him, not taking her eyes off her hand, slowly pouring thin, almost white sand through her fingers.

You know!.. And you... Fraulein Tony...

Yes Morten. I believe in you. And I really like you. More than anyone I know."

The very title of the novel shows that it describes the life of an entire family. The fate of the Buddenbrook family is a story of gradual decline and decay. "The Decline of a Family" is the subtitle of the novel. The fall of the Buddenbrooks is not a continuous process. Periods of stagnation are replaced by periods of a new upsurge, but still, on the whole, the family gradually weakens and dies.

Johann Buddenbrock Sr. is a typical burgher of the 18th century, an optimistic and moderate freethinker who optimistically believes in the strength of bourgeois existence.

Johann Buddenbrock, the younger, is a man of a different caste, his consciousness is shaken by the approach of the revolutionary events of 1848, he is seized by anxiety and uncertainty, he seeks solace in religion. With his ostentatious strictly patrician morality, he no longer manages to reconcile his commercial activities with purely human relations, even with family members.

Thomas and Christian no longer feel like an integral part of their class, "the best part of the nation", like grandfather. Thomas, at the cost of terrible efforts of will, still forces himself to wear a mask of imaginary efficiency, imaginary self-confidence, but he no longer feels in himself the ability to compete with entrepreneurs of a new predatory type. Behind his ostentatious restraint lies fatigue, a misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of his own existence, fear of the future.

Christian is a devastated person, a renegade, a person capable of only buffoonery. The degeneration of the Buddenbrooks for Thomas Mann marks the death of that seemingly indestructible foundation on which the burgher culture was based. The origins of the destruction of the family in the objective appearance among the German burghers of "grunders" - unscrupulous predatory businessmen who abandoned the notorious conscientiousness in matters that broke solid established business ties. The strength and thoroughness of the way of life recede before the insatiable thirst for wealth, the cruel grip of entrepreneurs of the new formation.

Drawing the history of the Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann simultaneously shows the history of bourgeois thought, its evolution from the philosophy of the Enlightenment to reactionary decadent views. Voltairian Buddenbrook, the elder, is replaced by the hypocrite Buddenbrock, the younger, and his son Thomas is fond of the philosophy of Schopenhauer (Timofeev 1983:254).

From generation to generation, the spiritual strength of the family dries up. The rudely good-natured founders of the dynasty are finally replaced by refined neuropathic creatures whose fear of life kills their activity, makes them the inevitable victims of history. The last offspring of Hanno Buddenbrook, the son of Thomas, inherited from his mother a passion for music alien to his ancestors, imbued with disgust not only for the prosaic activities of his father, but also for everything that is not music, art. Thus, the most important theme for Mann crystallizes: the sharp opposition of all art to bourgeois reality, all mental activity - to the base practice of the bourgeois.

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer have a certain influence on Thomas Mann here. Like the first, Mann considers morbidity to elevate a person above mediocrity, making his worldview sharper and deeper. The carrier of ill-health - most often an artist - opposes the selfish and narcissistic world of the bourgeois. The pessimism of Schopenhauer, who sang about the beauty of dying, seemed natural to Mann, who saw in the dying culture of the burghers the death of all human culture.

Ganno, possessed by the "demon" of music, simultaneously symbolizes the spiritual exaltation of the Buddenbrook family and its tragic end. The novel is invaded by the decadent idea that art is linked to biological degeneration.

So, the novel "Buddenbrooks", published, marked a new phase in the creative development of Thomas Mann. It is based on a lot of autobiography. The writer carefully studied family papers, got acquainted with the business correspondence of his father and grandfather, delved into the details of the domestic environment, the home way of his ancestors. Mann's personal memories thus form the main outline of the novel, which makes it even more concrete.

The family chronicle of the Buddenbrooks is an epic tale of the past rise and fall of the once powerful elite of the German merchant bourgeoisie. In this regard, the writer, on the one hand, continues the traditions of German realistic prose of the 70s of the last century, on the other hand, anticipates the emergence of the Western European, social chronicle novel of the 20th century. (Galsworthy - "The Saga of the Forsytes", Roger Martin Du Gard - "The Thibaut Family"). Thomas Mann begins the history of the Buddenbrook family from the middle of the 19th century. and traces her fate for three generations. The former economic power and spiritual greatness of this kind are embodied in the image of the old Johann Buddenbrock. His whole appearance, his spiritual physiognomy was formed in the atmosphere of the Enlightenment. Full of inexhaustible life optimism, he is unshakably confident in his personal strengths and in the power of his class. His son Consul Johann Buddenbrock is already deprived of his father's optimism; the mature years of his life are already passing in different historical conditions, in a turning point, when a new generation of capitalist entrepreneurs is replacing the patriarchal burghers.

In the light of new social conditions, the old Buddenbrook firm becomes for the consul Johann Buddenbrook, and after him and for his son Thomas, not just a commercial enterprise, but a symbol of the greatness of the family, a kind of fetish, to which the personal interests of each family member must obey.

Representing the first generation, Johann Buddenbrock embodies the strength of the burgher way of life, which has not lost touch with the people's environment. He is energetic, assertive, initiative, successful in business. His son, Consul Johann Buddenbrook, is a solid and balanced man, he does business well, but as a person he is less ambitious. After the revolution of 1848, he was not so sure of the inviolability of traditional foundations. For the representatives of the third generation of Thomas and Christian, the firm becomes something internally alien. They develop a tendency to reflection - a phenomenon unusual in the Buddenbrook family. Senator Thomas Buddenbrook maintains a semblance of calm. But internally he is tired and broken. From others and from himself, he tries to hide the decline of the company. Ganno, the only representative of the fourth generation, the son of Thomas, himself draws a line under his name in the family book as a sign that after him the family will cease to exist. The boy is in poor health, but he is musically gifted. Life inspires him with horror and disgust.

The novel Buddenbrooks (1901)

The work contains many genre characteristics reminiscent of a family chronicle: the story of several (four) generations of one family is told, the history of the whole of Germany is depicted for more than a century, biographical moments are reflected (the Mann family even objected to the publication), a leisurely epic style of narration prevails. At the same time, "Buddenbrooks" is not only a chronicle of the family and the burghers in general, but also a cultural turning point in Germany at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In a nutshell, the essence of this change is that stability and confidence are replaced by instability and anxiety. The spirit of business, calculation, clear moral guidelines are being replaced by spirit of music philosophical doubts about the meaning of life, interest in art, the invasion of a whirlwind of passions and at the same time despondency, sadness, dissatisfaction, vague impulses and dreams. It is not for nothing that Ganno, the last representative of the Buddenbrooks, a born musician, unable to run the business of the firm, leaves the world at the age of only fifteen. The apparent cause of his death is typhus, but Thomas Mann remarks at the end of the story that he did not die of typhus, but because he did not answer the call of life.

The first generation (Johann Sr.) and the second (Johann Jr.) were still quite viable, physically healthy and morally stable. They died in old age from diseases - it was a natural death. The turning point begins with the third generation (Thomas, Tony, Clara, Christian). And it is no coincidence that it is they who fall into the center of the author's attention and become the main characters of the story. Christian Buddenbrook is not interested in the affairs of the company, but in the theater; he chooses a girl not of his own circle as his wife and, in fact, goes beyond the family; in addition, he is mentally unstable, obsessed with various phobias and manias. Tony is one of the most charming characters, but she is also a representative of a new age that bears the stamp of destruction: she is unlucky in her personal life, she is unhappy in love. Although Tony, more than many others, is aware of his duty to the family and is trying to fulfill it. Clara - too correct and rather colorless, having married a priest, she determines her fate until the end of her days - and safely disappears from sight. The most interesting is Thomas Buddenbrook. In this image, the author has invested a lot of personal. Thomas has to be stoic: the company's business is going badly, and he is making a gigantic effort to fix it. But not everything depends on him. New times and new people have come - these are the Haggenstrems, clever, unscrupulous businessmen who, for the sake of money, go to any deals and any speculations. Thomas is unhappy in his marriage: his wife Gerda lives in the world of music and has little interest in her husband's life, he feels lonely in his family. His son Ganno also does not live up to expectations, he probably will not do business, from his mother he inherited a detachment from everyday life and a passion for art.

Along with physical decline in late Buddenbrooks, there is spiritual uplift: they are more interested in culture than their ancestors, think about death and look for the meaning of life. So Thomas buys some book from a second-hand book dealer (and this is the chapter on death from Arthur Schopenhauer's famous work "The World as Will and Representation"), which changes his previous ideas and calms him in a strange way. Schopenhauer convinces him that the essence of life is suffering, so it is pointless to look for happiness here. And after death, we will get rid of suffering, as we will get rid of our individuality and unite with the world Will. Thomas dies stupidly, absurdly (“from a tooth”), right on the street, falling face down into a dirty puddle. His death is not like the death of a philosopher, and Schopenhauer does not have the last word.

At the end of the novel, we see the female representatives of the Buddenbrook family: all the men (including the young Ganno) are dead. However, faith and hope have not died, they are heard in the mouth of the "humpbacked prophetess" Zesemi Weichbrodt, who is sure that after death each of us will meet those whom we loved. This does not mean that this is precisely the point of view of Thomas Mann himself, but it is important that it sounds here, and at the very end of the story.

M A T E R I A L S S H S T O M U Z A N I T I Y

From Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy

“And what if the Greeks, precisely in the wealth of their youth, possessed will to tragedy and were pessimists? What if it was madness, using the word of Plato, that brought Hellas greatest blessings? And what if, on the other hand, and vice versa, it was precisely in the times of their decay and weakness that the Greeks became more and more optimistic, more superficial, more and more infected with acting, and also ardently strove for logic and the logicization of the world, i.e. were at the same time both "happier" and "scientific"? And what if, despite all the "modern ideas" and prejudices of democratic taste, victory optimism dominance stepped forward reasonableness, practical and theoretical utilitarianism, and even democracy itself, contemporary to it, are, perhaps, only a symptom of a sinking strength, an approaching, physiological fatigue?

“And morality itself - what if it is the “will to deny life”, the hidden instinct of destruction, the principle of decline, humiliation, slander, the beginning of the end? And consequently, the danger of dangers?.. And so, with this dubious book, my instinct turned against morality then, as an intercessory instinct of life, and invented for itself a radically opposite teaching and an opposite assessment of life, purely artistic, anti-Christian... I christened her after one of the Greek gods: I named her Dionysian".

From the main body of the book -

“With their two deities of the arts, Apollo and Dionysus, is connected our knowledge of that great opposition in origin and goals that we meet in the Greek world between the art of plastic images - Apollonian - and the non-plastic art of music - the art of Dionysus; these two very different strivings operate side by side with one another…”.

“In order to make clear to ourselves both of these strivings, let us first imagine them as disjointed artistic worlds. dreams And drunkenness". In Apollo "a complete sense of proportion, self-restraint, freedom from wild impulses, the wise peace of God - the creator of images." In Apollo, "all the great joy and wisdom of illusion, along with all its beauty," speaks to us.

In Dionysian, "the subjective disappears into complete self-forgetfulness." "The reality of intoxication pays no attention to the individual, but rather seeks to destroy the individual and free him with a mystical sense of unity."

"The Apollonian consciousness is only a veil that hides the Dionysian world."

"... the choir of satyrs - reflects being with great fullness, reality and truth than a cultured person who usually imagines himself to be the only reality."

"... the Dionysian Greek seeks truth and nature in its highest power - he feels himself enchanted by satire."

«… mystical doctrine of tragedy- the basic knowledge of the unity of everything that exists, a look at individuation as the original cause of evil, and art - as a joyful hope for the possibility of breaking the spell of individuation, as a premonition of a newly restored unity.

“It will suffice to imagine all the consequences of Socratic propositions: “virtue is knowledge”, “one sins only out of ignorance”, “there is a virtuous person and a happy one” - in these three main forms of optimism lies the death of tragedy.

"Optimistic dialectics drives the scourge of its syllogisms music from tragedy, i.e. destroys the essence of tragedy.

“Socrates is the prototype of theoretical optimism, which, relying on the aforementioned belief in the knowability of the nature of things, ascribes to knowledge and knowledge the power of a universal remedy, and in error sees evil as such.”

“For music ... differs from all other arts in that it is not a reflection of a phenomenon, or rather, an adequate objectivity of the will, but a direct image of the will itself and therefore represents in relation to every physical principle of the world - a metaphysical principle, to every phenomenon - a thing in itself. Accordingly, the world could with equal right be called both embodied music and embodied will.

"...only as an aesthetic phenomenon, existence and the world seem justified."

"Music and tragic myth are equally the expression of the Dionysian ability of the people and are inseparable from each other."

From Thomas Mann's article "Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Light of Our Experience"

“Developing in line with Schopenhauer’s philosophy, remaining a student of Schopenhauer even after an ideological break with him, Nietzsche, throughout his life, in fact, only varied, developed and tirelessly repeated one and only, the thought that is everywhere present in him ...

What kind of thought is this? ... Here are its elements: life, culture, consciousness or knowledge, art, aristocracy, morality, instinct ... The dominant concept in this complex of ideas is the concept culture. It is almost equal in rights with life: culture is everything that is in the life of the aristocratic; art and instinct are closely connected with it, they are the sources of culture, its indispensable condition; as the mortal enemies of culture and life are consciousness and knowledge, science and, finally, morality - morality, which, being the keeper of truth, thereby kills all living things in life, for life is largely based on appearance, art, self-deception, hope, illusions, and everything that lives is brought into being by delusion.”

“Science is declared an enemy, for it sees and knows nothing but becoming, except historical process... And therefore life under the dominion of science is much less worthy of the name of life than life, subject not to science, but to instinct and powerful illusions».

Moral criticism of Nietzsche, according to Mann, lies not only in his personal predilections, but also in the characteristics of the era. Mann compares Nietzsche with Oscar Wilde, finding much in common between them.

“Nietzsche's philosophy, it seems to me, was most perniciously, even fatally, influenced by two delusions. The first of these lies in the fact that he decisively and, presumably, deliberately distorted the real balance of forces existing in this world between instinct and intellect, portraying the matter in such a way that the terrible times of the domination of the intellect had already arrived and it was necessary, before it was too late, to save from him instincts .... Has the world ever been threatened by the slightest danger of perishing from an excess of reason? ..

Nietzsche's second error is that he interprets life and morality as two opposites and thus completely distorts their true relationship. Meanwhile, morality and life are a single whole. Ethics is the support of life, and a moral person is a true citizen of life ... The contradiction in reality exists not between life and ethics, but between ethics and aesthetics."

“We have before us the story of Hamlet, the tragic fate of a man who was not up to his knowledge.”

“Nietzsche’s aestheticism is a violent denial of everything spiritual in the name of a beautiful, powerful, shameless life…”.

Excerpts from Thomas Mann's novel "Death in Venice"

Description of a passerby who made Aschenbach want to wander - “Medium height, skinny, beardless and very snub-nosed, this man belonged to the red-haired type with his characteristic milky-white freckled skin. His appearance was by no means Bavarian, and the wide-brimmed bass hat that covered his head gave him the appearance of a foreigner, an alien from distant lands .... Throwing his head back so that his lean neck, protruding from the turn-down collars of his sports shirt, clearly and sharply showed an Adam's apple, he looked into the distance with his whitish, red-lashed eyes, between which, in strange correspondence with an upturned nose. There were two vertical energy folds. There was something arrogantly contemplative, bold, even wild, in his posture - perhaps this was facilitated by his lofty and uplifting location. And either he made a grimace, blinded by the setting sun, or his face was generally characterized by a certain strangeness, only his lips seemed too short, drawn up and down to such an extent that they exposed the gums, from which white long teeth protruded .... Aschenbach, to his surprise, suddenly felt how incredibly expanded his soul; an inexplicable languor took possession of him, a youthful thirst for a change of place, a feeling so alive, so new ... that he froze in place ... ".

“But his favorite word was “to hold out,” and in his novel about Frederick of Prussia, he saw, first of all, the apotheosis of this word-order, which, in his opinion, personified the essence and meaning of heroic stoicism.”

“After all, steadfastness in the face of fate, good looks in torment mean not only passion-bearing; it is an active action, a positive triumph, and Saint Sebastian is the most beautiful symbol, if not of art in general. That, of course, is the art we are talking about. It is worth looking into this world ... and we will see: elegant self-control, hiding its inner emptiness, its biological decay from human eyes until the last breath; physically damaged yellow ugliness that knows how to inflate its smoldering heat into a pure flame and soar to full power in the realm of beauty; a pale infirmity that drew its strength from the flaming bowels of the spirit and was able to plunge a whole puffed-up people to the foot of the cross, to its foot; a pleasant manner with an empty but strict service to the form; a false life full of dangers, a destructive longing and the art of a natural deceiver.

The one who peered into these and similar fates involuntarily had a doubt whether there is any other heroism in the world, except for the heroism of the weak.

“Where he was pulling, he didn’t know exactly, and the question“ so where is it? remained open to him.

“Who has not experienced instant trepidation, secret timidity and spiritual embarrassment, for the first time or after a long break, getting into a Venetian gondola? An amazing ship, passed down to us from fabulous times without the slightest change, and so black, which of all things in the world are only coffins - it reminds us of inaudible and criminal adventures in a softly splashing night, but even more of death, of dredges, funeral service and the last silent journey.

“The boy entered the glass door and, in the midst of complete silence, obliquely crossed the hall ... Aschenbach, seeing his clear profile, was again amazed and even frightened by the god-like beauty of this youth ... from this collar ... the flower of his head grew in incomparable beauty - the head of Eros in the yellowish shimmer of Parian marble , - with thin severe eyebrows, with a transparent shadow on the temples, with ears closed by soft waves of curls falling at a right angle.

"The atmosphere of the city, the rotten smell of the sea and the swamp that drove him away, he now inhaled slowly, with tenderness and pain."

“His brain and heart were intoxicated. He stepped forward, obeying the instructions of the demon, who knows no better fun than trampling the mind and dignity of a person with his feet.

From Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks

“Guests and hosts sat on heavy chairs with high backs, ate heavy, good-quality meals with heavy silver forks, washed them down with thick, good wine, and slowly exchanged words.”

The testaments of old Johann - "My son, go about your daily business with pleasure, but only take on those that will not disturb your rest at night."

About Toni Buddenbrook - "She was well aware of her duties towards the family and the company, moreover, she was proud of them ... Her mission was to, having entered into a profitable and worthy marriage, contribute to the brilliance of the family and the company."

Toni's explanation with her father after receiving the news of Grunlich's bankruptcy -

“... for my part, I must openly admit that the step that seemed so good and reasonable to me four years ago now seems to me erroneous ... But you don’t blame me, do you?

Of course not, dad! And why do you say that? You take all this too close to your heart, my poor daddy ... you have turned pale! .. I will run upstairs and bring you stomach drops. She threw her arms around her father's neck and kissed him on both cheeks.

"... Tony had a happy gift to quickly and enthusiastically, rejoicing in novelty from the bottom of his heart, to adapt to any life change."

"Christian is too preoccupied with himself, he listens too much to what is going on inside him."

“...Thomas Buddenbrock began to think, to delve into himself, to test his attitude to death, to the other world. And as soon as he made this attempt, he comprehended all the hopeless immaturity and unpreparedness of his soul for death.

Ritual faith, sentimental traditional Christianity ... was always alien to Thomas Buddenbrook; he treated the beginning and the end of things all his life with the secular skepticism of his grandfather. But, being a man of deeper inquiries, a more flexible mind, and gravitating toward metaphysics, he could not be satisfied with the superficial zest for life of old Johann Buddenbrock.

Thomas Buddenbrock about Schopenhauer's book "The World as Will and Representation" - "An unknown feeling of joy, great and grateful, took possession of him. He felt an incomparable satisfaction, learning how this powerful mind conquered life, a domineering, evil, mocking life - conquered in order to condemn. It was the satisfaction of a sufferer, still bashfully, like a man with a bad conscience, hiding his suffering in the face of the cold cruelty of life, a sufferer who suddenly received a solemnly justified right to suffer in this world from the hands of a great sage ...

What is death? The answer to this question appeared to him not in pitiful, imaginary words: he felt it, this answer, inwardly possessed it. Death is happiness, so deep that it is even possible to measure it only in minutes, overshadowed, as now by grace. She is a return after an unspeakably painful path, the correction of a grave mistake, liberation from vile bonds and fetters. She will come - and the whole fatal combination of circumstances, no matter how it happened.

End and decay? Pitiful is he who is terrified by these insignificant concepts! What run out and What will fall apart? This is his body ... His personality, his individuality, is heavy, difficult to move, erroneous and hated an obstacle to becoming something different, better!

Isn't every person a mistake, the fruit of a misunderstanding? Doesn't he go to prison as soon as he is born? Jail! Jail! Everywhere fetters, walls! Through the barred windows of his individuality, a person looks hopelessly at the ramparts of external circumstances until death calls him to return to his homeland, to freedom ...

Individuality!.. Ah, what we are. What we can and what we have seems to us pathetic, gray, insufficient and boring; but what we are not, what we cannot, what we do not have, we look with dreary envy, which is called love. - at least for fear of becoming hatred ....

Organism! Blind, thoughtless, miserable flash of a struggling will! Indeed, it would be better for this will to soar freely in the night, not limited by space and time, than to languish in a prison dimly lit by a flickering, trembling light of intellect!

I hoped to continue life in the son? In a person even more timid, weak, unstable? Childhood, stupidity and folly! What is my son? I don't need no son! .. Where will I be when I die? I will be in everyone who has ever said, says or will say "I"; and above all in those who say this “I” stronger, more joyfully ...

Somewhere in the world a young man is growing up, talented, endowed with everything that is needed for life, capable of developing his inclinations, stately, not knowing sadness, pure, cruel, cheerful, - one of those whose personality makes the happy even happier, and plunges the unfortunate in despair - this is my son! It's me soon, soon - as soon as death frees me from the miserable, insane delusion that I am not so much he as I ... ".

The ending of the novel (female representatives of the Buddenbrook family remember dear people who have passed away) - “Ah, there are moments when nothing consoles, when - Lord, forgive me a sinner! - you begin to doubt justice, goodness ... everything. Life breaks a lot in us, even - faith ... Meeting! Oh, if only it came true!

But then Zesemi Weichbrodt soared over the table. She stood on tiptoe, stretched out her neck, and banged her fist so that the cap shook on her head.

It will come true! - she said at the top of her voice and looked defiantly at her interlocutors.

So she stood - the winner in a righteous dispute, which she led all her life with the sober arguments of her mind, experienced in the sciences - a tiny, trembling with conviction, inspired humpbacked prophetess.

About the work of Thomas Mann

From the Preface to the collected works of T. Mann in 10 volumes

(Moscow, GIHL, 1959) / ed. Boris Suchkov

“He felt himself the heir to the great humanistic tradition fostered by Goethe and Schiller, and - at the same time - a triad of names stood above his spiritual horizon - Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wagner ... "

“Thomas Mann's prose is clearly analytic. The artistic image arises for him as a generalization of the conscious, is born on the soil, already deeply plowed by the work of thought. Mann is par excellence a thinking writer, for whom the intellect is always a guide in wandering through the unknown labyrinths of life.

About the novel “Buddenbrooks” - “The atmosphere of the novel is permeated by a gloomy melancholy, brought into it not only by life experience. Thomas Mann repeatedly pointed out that he received "the right to be pessimistic" from Schopenhauer, whose admirer he was. But it was a dangerous right."

"A sober mind and a sense of reality saved Thomas Mann from deifying the Buddenbrooks, but the pessimistic conception of being as a process of dying, and not development, borrowed by him from Schopenhauer, makes him give the passing fact of history - the death of the bourgeois class - the features of some kind of cosmic catastrophe."

“In the novelistics, Thomas Mann appears par excellence as an epic artist. He deliberately neglects the main genre feature of the novel - plot - and builds it on a different basis - on a detailed description of the characters. actors, on opening them inner drama- a consequence of discord with life, the cruelty and inhumanity of which lurks behind the colorless prosaic nature of bourgeois life.

“The non-bourgeois nature of the characters in his novels manifests itself in an extremely paradoxical form. Separates them from ordinary people or the curse of talent or illness... The idea that illness brings liberation from dull everyday life, Mann borrowed from Nietzsche.

About the novel "Death in Venice" - "Thomas Mann likens Aschenbach and people of his type to Saint Sebastian, who overcomes the torment of torture with the power of faith and conviction."

From an article by T.L. Motyleva "Thomas Mann (until 1918)" ("History of German Literature" in five volumes.

Publishing house "Nauka", Moscow, 1968, V.4).

"The juxtaposition and conflict of two socio-psychological types - the "burgher" and the "artist" - run through the entire work of Thomas Mann."

“Buddenbrooks are burghers. Thomas Mann always put a very serious, not only social, but, perhaps, philosophical meaning into this concept. The burgher, according to the writer, is not just the owner, but also the bearer of certain, very valuable traditions of German culture, the color and foundation of the nation. With this concept, T. Mann associates the idea of ​​impeccable honesty, the strength of family and moral principles, diligence, a sense of duty... Thomas Mann was a positive concept."

"The decline of the family is interpreted to a certain extent as the action of fatal hereditary doom."

“Pictures of family festivities form the key points in the plot of the novel, and the “secret crack” that is revealed each time gives these episodes a touch of persistent bitterness. So the very plot of the novel reveals the fragility of the foundations on which the happiness and power of the Buddenbrooks are based. The theme of decline, which develops especially in the second half of the novel, is, in essence, prepared by the entire development of the action.

“Thomas Mann has repeatedly noted his penchant for leitmotifs. They are for him not just a means of characterizing the characters, but also something more significant: it is an integral element of his artistic style. In "Buddenbrooks" we find an exceptional abundance of portrait and speech leitmotifs.

About the short story "Death in Venice" - its construction - "growing psychological tension and an unexpected denouement-catastrophe, revealing the hidden tragedy of human destinies and relationships ... A painstaking analysis of the irrational vicious feelings of the hero partly brings Thomas Mann's short story closer to the literature of decadence. But the main thrust of the novel is sharply hostile to decadence.

Questions for discussion

Why does Nietzsche hate Socrates? What is Thomas Mann's attitude to Socrates?

The Aestheticism of Nietzsche and the Aestheticism of Thomas Mann. Are there similarities?

What is the attitude of Thomas Mann to Christian values ​​(on the example of the story "Death in Venice" and the novel "Buddenbrooks")

Why did Gustav Aschenbach die?

Why is the third generation of Buddenbrooks chosen as the main characters in The Buddenbrooks?

Actual aspects of the topic (for term papers and theses)

Dialogues of Socrates and dialogism of Thomas Mann's work

Oscar Wilde as one of the prototypes of the hero of the story "Death in Venice" by Gustav von Aschenbach

The city as a symbol (Death in Venice by Thomas Mann)

The theme of antiquity in Thomas Mann's story "Death in Venice"

The Theme of Music and Youth in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks

Apollonian and Dionysian in Thomas Mann's story "Death in Venice"

Keywords for this lesson: APOLLONISTIC, DIONYSSIAN, SOCRATIC, DEMONIC, DEATH, BEAUTY, ART, SYMBOLS, VENICE, SCHOPENHAUER, NIETZSCHE, FAMILY CHRONICLE, BURGERSHIP,

L I T E R A T U R A

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music. St. Petersburg, "Azbuka", 2000.

Sokolov B.G. "Passion" according to Nietzsche // ibid., pp. 5 - 30.

Mann, Thomas. Philosophy of Nietzsche in the light of our experience // Mann, Thomas. Sobr. Op. in 10 volumes. Moscow, GIHL, 1959. V.10.

Mann, Thomas. Buddenbrooks // ibid., T.1.

Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice // ibid., T.7.

Suchkov B. Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955) // ibid., T.1. P.5 - 62.

Motyleva T.L. Thomas Mann (until 1918) // History of German literature in 5 volumes, M., "Nauka", 1968. V.4. P.477 - 495.

Kurginyan M. The novels of Thomas Mann. Forms and method. M., "Higher School", 1967.

XX century. And suddenly... literature? - -Already in the phrase "entertaining literature" ...