Thomas Mann

Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (eBook, ePUB)

Übersetzer: Morris, Walter D.

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

A classic, provoctive book exploring German culture and identity by the author of Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain, now back in print. When the Great War broke out in August of 1914, Thomas Mann, like so many people on both sides of the conflict, was exhilarated. Finally, the era of decadence that he had anatomized in Death in Venice had come to an end; finally, there was a cause worth fighting and even dying for, or, at least when it came to Mann himself, writing about. Mann dropped the short story he was working on in order to compose a full-throated paean to the German cause. Soon after, his older brother and lifelong rival, the novelist Heinrich Mann, responded with a no less withering denunciation. Thomas took it as this was an almost unforgivable stab in the back. The bitter dispute between two brothers would swell in to the strange, tortured literary monument that is Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, a book that is as blind as it is troubled and full of curious insight. Mann worked on it and added to it throughout the war years, publishing it only when German defeat was inevitable, and these reflections are in a sense a first draft for his later explorations of German destiny in The Magic Mountain and Doktor Faustus. His effort to hold on to a notion of common good that lies beyond politics in the face of growing and inconceivable political disaster is all the more thought-provoking for being fatally flawed.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: New York Review Books
• Seitenzahl: 592
• Erscheinungstermin: 18. Mai 2021
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781681375328
• Artikelnr.: 59645857

Autorenporträt

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was a novelist, critic, and essayist who received the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Germany, he fled to Switzerland and then to California after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, returning to Switzerland in 1952. His most influential works include Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain. Walter D. Morris (1929-2001) was a translator and professor of German literature at Iowa State University. Mark Lilla is a historian and professor of humanities at Columbia University. New York Review Books has published his The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction and The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics. He lives in New York City.

Thomas Mann 1944.© S.Fischer Verlag

Rezensionen

" Reflections makes for a grimly fascinating read. Mann discloses as much of himself in its pages as in any of his autobiographical fiction." Alex Ross, The New Yorker

Nationalist, patriotic, conservative, and spiritually autobiographical . . . it is a strange, enormously, clever (also foolish) and (in an alarming sense) fascinating piece, of sustained, often anguished and sometimes contorted eloquence. D. J. Enright, Times Literary Supplement

Reflections helps us to understand the problem that has not gone away: the dilemma of the intellectual (the writer, the artist) in politics. Walter Laqueur, The New York Times Book Review

At long last, a magnificent full translation of Mann s untimely masterpiece . . . an obviously complex and profound work. Choice

Without the impassioned patriotic document it is impossible to see Mann s artistic and political development in the right perspective. Erich Heller

[Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man] feels not just worthy of our attention but somehow indispensable. . . . The idea that we do damage to life s most important elements when we use them instrumentally, for political ends, poses a real challenge to our moment, obsessed as it is with the political responsibility of the artist. Christopher Beha, The New York Times Book Review

" Reflections makes for a grimly fascinating read. Mann discloses as much of himself in its pages as in any of his autobiographical fiction." Alex Ross, The New Yorker

Nationalist, patriotic, conservative, and spiritually autobiographical . . . it is a strange, enormously, clever (also foolish) and (in an alarming sense) fascinating piece, of sustained, often anguished and sometimes contorted eloquence. D. J. Enright, Times Literary Supplement

Reflections helps us to understand the problem that has not gone away: the dilemma of the intellectual (the writer, the artist) in politics. Walter Laqueur, The New York Times Book Review

At long last, a magnificent full translation of Mann s untimely masterpiece . . . an obviously complex and profound work. Choice

Without the impassioned patriotic document it is impossible to see Mann s artistic and political development in the right perspective. Erich Heller

[Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man] feels not just worthy of our attention but somehow indispensable. . . . The idea that we do damage to life s most important elements when we use them instrumentally, for political ends, poses a real challenge to our moment, obsessed as it is with the political responsibility of the artist. Christopher Beha, The New York Times Book Review