Mann

[Daniel Wolf]

Otto wrote:

"no, I've never met anybody of my generation who has read a book of him, I
gave him up after several attempts. To me he's absolutely uninteresting,
wasted time."

I am not generally enthusiastic about Mann, a writer who is usually seriously
uptight. However, in _Doctor Faustus_, he did manage to loosen up enough to
return the Faust tale to the puppet stage. The narrator of the novel, Serenus
Zeitblom, perhaps the only "personality" in the story (the "Faust"-figure,
Lerverkühn, with his "steel gray eyes" and progressively archaic language is
just too gray to have a personality), is a comic triumph. Zeitblom, a humanist,
a man who plays the viola d'amore, and mentions, in passing, having married his
wife because her name was Helen, is the individual least suited to write a
biography of Leverkühn. It's a very funny book, but that's not often been
recognized by the critics.

Daniel Wolf
Budapest