Aw, that Heinrich passage. And as always, their correspondence is highly entertaining. This Thomas detail - he starts a note book titled "Anti-Heinrich" - was new to me and made me laugh. His mix of drama and taking himself too seriously is something else.
But whatever happened to his notes for the Fritz novel - did he burn them, were they lost? Because I remember from another post of yours that he had some - or at least that Heinrich mentioned them, in the context of "if I decided to become a Fritz fan, you'd burn them on the spot".
Otherwise, I only know that Heinrich wrote a Fritz fragment himself, much later, but haven't read it.
But whatever happened to his notes for the Fritz novel - did he burn them, were they lost?
Honestly, I have no idea. They might have gotten lost in 1933. Renember, TM was on a lecture tour abroad when the Nazis arrived and never came back. Erika and Klaus were in Germany. I mean, I know Erika was able to get her father's then current manuscript and some more papers out of their house before leaving, but inevitably this can't have been everything, and she must have prioritized some stuff.
Alternatively, maybe Thomas did throw his notes into the fire when finding out Heinrich in his final years was tackling hte subject!
Re: Heinrich, it was one of the last things he wrote, trying to do it in film script style and wanting it to be an antidote to the Fridericus movies with Gebühr, but he didn't finish it. I have only read quotes so far, though, not everything.
His mix of drama and taking himself too seriously is something else.
More from Thomas' notebooks: Feeling hatred makes me suffer like nothing else does. Compared to Heinrich the Noble, Cold One, I am a soft Plebejan, but I have much more hunger for power in me. Not for nothing is Savanarola my hero. One hates where that achieves power which one despises. I'm not supposed to hate you because my part is to love? No, I hate you all the more, because you awake more hate in me, for most of all I hate those who point out the weaknesses in my character through the emotions they awake in me.
Meanwhile, son Klaus wrote in one of his diaries when reading Dad's "Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen" that if he survives Dad, he'll so write the definite book about Dad and Heinrich. (Yet one more reason to regret his suicide. I'd love to have seen him tackle the two.)
Oh, and I have to give you this quote, from when sister Lula (aka Julia Minor) and her husband Löhr and Thomas are all upset with Heinrich because of Die Jagd nach Liebe, and I have to give it in Thomas' untranslated prose. It's that kind of quote. Written to Heinrich back when they were having it out about "Die Jagd nach Liebe":
Oft kommt jetzt das Gespräch auf Dich bei Löhrs, wo ich zweimal die Woche zu Mittag esse. Wir sitzen dann und machen alle drei sehr ernste, fast leidende Gesichter. Jeder sagt ein halbwegs gescheites Sprüchlein über Dich, Für und Wider, und dann tritt stummes Grübeln ein. Endlich sage ich: "Der Fall Heinrich ist nämlich ein Fall, über den ich stundenlang nachdenken kann." "Ich auch", sagt Lula. "Ich auch", sagt Löhr. Und wiederum nach einer Pause sage ich mit orakelhafter Betonung: "Daß er uns allen so viel zu schaffen macht, beweist, daß er mehr ist, als wir Alle."
Btw, while we don't have Heinrich's pre WWWI letters, we do have a draft for his reply to letter to Thomas' original "Why your latest novel sucks" letter. In said draft, Heinrich repays the compliment by coming up with this line of argumentation:
(Thomas had complained that even when the hero, Claude, is dying, he doesn't just reflect on his beloved Ute's great qualities but also on her thighs, and this is an example for how all the sex stuff ruins Heinrich's writing style.)
(Slightly paraphrased)
1. Claude loves Ute's laughter, and he loves her thighs. Both are part of her, and it would have felt wrong if the erotic aspect of his love for her would have been denied in this farewell. But I'm not surprised you don't get that, because
2. All your female characters are castrated, and with one exception, they just exist to feed your male characters lines.
3. The one exception is Tony Buddenbrook. She's your single female character who exists not just for the benefit of a male character but because you're actually interested in her. But even there, you're just allowing her some romantic notions misguiding her, not sexual longings. Poor Tony is castrated, too.
Yes, he does use the term "kastriert", "all Deine Frauenfiguren sind kastriert" . In the draft, at least; like I said, we don't have the actual letter, and even this draft was lost for eons, which is why it's not in the 1990s edition of the corrspondence, but I've come across it in the later Heinrich biographies. Bearing in mind Heinrich writes this in 1904 - meaning that several important female characters in Thomas Mann's oeuvre are yet to come, including old Lotte in "Lotte in Weimar" - it's, in terms of TM's early works, a palpable hit and that he bothered to make it shows Heinrich wasn't always so above quarelling for non-WWI reasons as he would have wanted to be.
Isn't it just? Shame Loriot never did a sketch about Thomas Mann & Co. On a more serious note, I'm still disgruntled Heinrich Breloer chose to start his tv series Die Manns in the 1920s, thus completely avoiding both the climax of the Thomas/Heinrich drama and the existence of Carla and Lula, instead focusing on Thomas the patriarch and Klaus & Erika, with Heinrich and Nelly occasionally showing up as minor characters. Also the guy who plays Gustav Gründgens has zero charisma, but that's a minor issue. I mean, the series is good for what it is, and he even got the waiter whom Thomas fancied in the 1950s on camera, but seriously, wrong narrative emphasis, Breloer!
Savonarola: he wasn't kidding, either; this was when he was working on his play Fiorenza where Savonarola is the hero. By sheer complete coincidence, this was when Heinrich was having his Renaissance phase, celebrating its sensuality and paganism rediscovery, in his cycle "The Goddesses". Mind you, when Thomas' play became his first flop (after the incredible breakout success of the "Buddenbrooks") (and was negatively reviewed by one of the big critics of the day), Heinrich wrote a "letter to the editor" defense of the play, causing Thomas to write him a "thank coming to my defense! I feel like in he schoolyard; some one has hurt me and my big brother comes and defends me! You're the best!" letter.
The positive Savonarola depiction was part of young Thomas' very fin de siecle idea of the decline of the burgher when said burger becomes a refined artist - this is major theme in Buddenbrooks, of course, but also in Fiorenza, where Lorenzo de' Medici is the decadent in question - whereas Savonarola embodies the ascetisim of true conviction (but is also doomed in the future). Aside from everything else, though, it has to be said young Tommy put something of himself in both characters, feeling split between his burgher and his artist self, and struggling with his sexuality, where he had to be an ascet by default, not allowing himself a sexual relationship wiht another man. But unsurprisingly, after the flop of "Fiorenza" he gave up on the stage and stuck to the novel.
felis already knows this one, but check out Alec Guinness as Heinrich Mann (and Jeremy Irons as Ödön von Horvath, and Sian Cusack as Nelly Mann, Heinrich's wife), in a tv version of Christopher Hampton's play "Tales from Hollywood". The premise of the play is "what if?", in this case "What if Ödön von Horvath hadn't died in 1938 but had emigrated with the rest of the German language exile writers from France to Los Angeles?", and the play is narrated fro his perspective. Some Alex Guinness fan excerpted several of his scenes for this vid here.
Oh. WOW. I stayed up late watching this and the second clip last night and fell in love with Heinrich Mann, Alec Guinness playing him, and the play. (And Jeremy Irons too.) And my heart broke for Heinrich :( I'm kind of toying with the idea of buying the play now... I realize that was probably a lot of the bits with him in it, but still.
It is a great play, imo, one of Christopher Hampton's best. (His most famous one is "Dangerous Liasons", his dramatisation of Les Liasons Dangereuses, as a reminder of who he is.) Here he talks about it a bit, and here is a review of a production. It manages to be both very funny and tragic and deeply emotional, and Brecht steals every scene he shows up in. Hampton worked in many actual quotes ("Whenever I meet Thomas Mann I get the impression of 3000 years looking down on me" - in rl, Brecht wrote this in his diaries), but his invented stuff is wonderful, too, like when he has Nelly tell Ödön von Horvath about why her brother-in-law Thomas despises her so. After saying that TM accused her of disliking him, Nelly narrates: "So I told him, 'Anyone who writes "like all the Krögers, she had natural dignity" can't be all bad.' ÖvH: I don't get it. Nelly: Me maiden name. Kröger. Anyway, he perks up and says "I didn't know you were an admirer of Buddenbrooks. I don't know about admirer, says I, but the first two pages were ever so good."
(Nelly and Heinrich are the emotional centre of the play. When she killed herself, Thomas and Katia were unmistakably relieved, but Thomas' son Klaus wrote Heinrich a truly touching condolence letter which I've held in my hands when I researched Heinrich at USC which has part of his papers. It goes: "My dear Uncle Heinrich, I have been told about your terrible loss. THere is so little to say. All "consoling" phrases - however sincere and well-intended - seem to become futile and frivolous, under such circumstances. Life is bitter beyond words. All I want you to know is that I am thinking of you. And then, of course, I remember...Those pleasant evenings in Nice, when your dear wife cooked such delicious meals for us, and we had a good time together! Even then Europe was already in the midst of convulsions. Yet, retrospectively that period appears peaceful and almost idyllic. How many tragedies, since! How many victims!! Your wife is one of them. May she be able, from the place where she now sojourns, to witness the birth of a new world where good people don't have to kill themselves."
Anyway, if you ever catch the tv version of Alec Guinness somehwere, do watch all of it! It's worth it. Ordering the play is, too. There's also a more recent book in which Heinrich and Nelly feature prominently, reviewed by yours truly here.
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Re: Thomas Mann gets an idea
But whatever happened to his notes for the Fritz novel - did he burn them, were they lost? Because I remember from another post of yours that he had some - or at least that Heinrich mentioned them, in the context of "if I decided to become a Fritz fan, you'd burn them on the spot".
Otherwise, I only know that Heinrich wrote a Fritz fragment himself, much later, but haven't read it.
Re: Thomas Mann gets an idea
Honestly, I have no idea. They might have gotten lost in 1933. Renember, TM was on a lecture tour abroad when the Nazis arrived and never came back. Erika and Klaus were in Germany. I mean, I know Erika was able to get her father's then current manuscript and some more papers out of their house before leaving, but inevitably this can't have been everything, and she must have prioritized some stuff.
Alternatively, maybe Thomas did throw his notes into the fire when finding out Heinrich in his final years was tackling hte subject!
Re: Heinrich, it was one of the last things he wrote, trying to do it in film script style and wanting it to be an antidote to the Fridericus movies with Gebühr, but he didn't finish it. I have only read quotes so far, though, not everything.
His mix of drama and taking himself too seriously is something else.
More from Thomas' notebooks: Feeling hatred makes me suffer like nothing else does. Compared to Heinrich the Noble, Cold One, I am a soft Plebejan, but I have much more hunger for power in me. Not for nothing is Savanarola my hero. One hates where that achieves power which one despises. I'm not supposed to hate you because my part is to love? No, I hate you all the more, because you awake more hate in me, for most of all I hate those who point out the weaknesses in my character through the emotions they awake in me.
Meanwhile, son Klaus wrote in one of his diaries when reading Dad's "Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen" that if he survives Dad, he'll so write the definite book about Dad and Heinrich. (Yet one more reason to regret his suicide. I'd love to have seen him tackle the two.)
Oh, and I have to give you this quote, from when sister Lula (aka Julia Minor) and her husband Löhr and Thomas are all upset with Heinrich because of Die Jagd nach Liebe, and I have to give it in Thomas' untranslated prose. It's that kind of quote. Written to Heinrich back when they were having it out about "Die Jagd nach Liebe":
Oft kommt jetzt das Gespräch auf Dich bei Löhrs, wo ich zweimal die Woche zu Mittag esse. Wir sitzen dann und machen alle drei sehr ernste, fast leidende Gesichter. Jeder sagt ein halbwegs gescheites Sprüchlein über Dich, Für und Wider, und dann tritt stummes Grübeln ein. Endlich sage ich: "Der Fall Heinrich ist nämlich ein Fall, über den ich stundenlang nachdenken kann." "Ich auch", sagt Lula. "Ich auch", sagt Löhr. Und wiederum nach einer Pause sage ich mit orakelhafter Betonung: "Daß er uns allen so viel zu schaffen macht, beweist, daß er mehr ist, als wir Alle."
Btw, while we don't have Heinrich's pre WWWI letters, we do have a draft for his reply to letter to Thomas' original "Why your latest novel sucks" letter. In said draft, Heinrich repays the compliment by coming up with this line of argumentation:
(Thomas had complained that even when the hero, Claude, is dying, he doesn't just reflect on his beloved Ute's great qualities but also on her thighs, and this is an example for how all the sex stuff ruins Heinrich's writing style.)
(Slightly paraphrased)
1. Claude loves Ute's laughter, and he loves her thighs. Both are part of her, and it would have felt wrong if the erotic aspect of his love for her would have been denied in this farewell. But I'm not surprised you don't get that, because
2. All your female characters are castrated, and with one exception, they just exist to feed your male characters lines.
3. The one exception is Tony Buddenbrook. She's your single female character who exists not just for the benefit of a male character but because you're actually interested in her. But even there, you're just allowing her some romantic notions misguiding her, not sexual longings. Poor Tony is castrated, too.
Yes, he does use the term "kastriert", "all Deine Frauenfiguren sind kastriert" . In the draft, at least; like I said, we don't have the actual letter, and even this draft was lost for eons, which is why it's not in the 1990s edition of the corrspondence, but I've come across it in the later Heinrich biographies. Bearing in mind Heinrich writes this in 1904 - meaning that several important female characters in Thomas Mann's oeuvre are yet to come, including old Lotte in "Lotte in Weimar" - it's, in terms of TM's early works, a palpable hit and that he bothered to make it shows Heinrich wasn't always so above quarelling for non-WWI reasons as he would have wanted to be.
Re: Thomas Mann gets an idea
Re: Thomas Mann gets an idea
Re: Thomas Mann gets an idea
Savanarola is his hero! Heh.
Alternatively, maybe Thomas did throw his notes into the fire when finding out Heinrich in his final years was tackling hte subject!
HA.
Re: Thomas Mann gets an idea
The positive Savonarola depiction was part of young Thomas' very fin de siecle idea of the decline of the burgher when said burger becomes a refined artist - this is major theme in Buddenbrooks, of course, but also in Fiorenza, where Lorenzo de' Medici is the decadent in question - whereas Savonarola embodies the ascetisim of true conviction (but is also doomed in the future). Aside from everything else, though, it has to be said young Tommy put something of himself in both characters, feeling split between his burgher and his artist self, and struggling with his sexuality, where he had to be an ascet by default, not allowing himself a sexual relationship wiht another man. But unsurprisingly, after the flop of "Fiorenza" he gave up on the stage and stuck to the novel.
Vid to watch for <lj user="cahn">
Re: Vid to watch for <lj user="cahn">
Re: Vid to watch for <lj user="cahn">
ÖvH: I don't get it.
Nelly: Me maiden name. Kröger. Anyway, he perks up and says "I didn't know you were an admirer of Buddenbrooks. I don't know about admirer, says I, but the first two pages were ever so good."
(Nelly and Heinrich are the emotional centre of the play. When she killed herself, Thomas and Katia were unmistakably relieved, but Thomas' son Klaus wrote Heinrich a truly touching condolence letter which I've held in my hands when I researched Heinrich at USC which has part of his papers. It goes: "My dear Uncle Heinrich, I have been told about your terrible loss. THere is so little to say. All "consoling" phrases - however sincere and well-intended - seem to become futile and frivolous, under such circumstances.
Life is bitter beyond words.
All I want you to know is that I am thinking of you.
And then, of course, I remember...Those pleasant evenings in Nice, when your dear wife cooked such delicious meals for us, and we had a good time together! Even then Europe was already in the midst of convulsions. Yet, retrospectively that period appears peaceful and almost idyllic.
How many tragedies, since! How many victims!!
Your wife is one of them. May she be able, from the place where she now sojourns, to witness the birth of a new world where good people don't have to kill themselves."
Anyway, if you ever catch the tv version of Alec Guinness somehwere, do watch all of it! It's worth it. Ordering the play is, too. There's also a more recent book in which Heinrich and Nelly feature prominently, reviewed by yours truly here.