Transcript Adrian is denied love

Music, Math, and Motion
Doktor Faustus, by Thomas Mann
Dr. E.J. Zita (with Dr. Arun Chandra)
The Evergreen St. College
Winter week 8
Tuesday 25.Feb. 2008
Outline
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Adrian’s deal with the devil
Some names and relationships
Adrian is denied love
Women in Faust
Adrian’s collapse and Fascism’s rise
Music in Mann’s Faustus
Durer’s magic square and Schoenberg’s 12-tone
rows
• Other themes
• Looking ahead
Opening quote from Dante’s Inferno
Dante's invocation of the Muses at the beginning of his account
of his descent into Hell, guided by the soul of the poet Virgil.
The day was now departing; the dark air
released the living beings of the earth
from work and weariness; and I myself
alone prepared to undergo the battle
both of the journeying and of the pity,
which memory, mistaking not, shall show.
O Muses, O high genius, help me now;
O memory that set down what I saw,
here shall your excellence reveal itself!
Courtesy of Thad Curtzt
Adrian’s deal with the Devil
• Adrian’s deal with the Devil – or was it just
• Syphilitic hallucinations?
• Classical Faustian deal: 24 years of power in
exchange for one’s soul (then fiery death)
• b. 1885, d. 1950
• Adrian counts the deal starting with Esmeralda, not
meeting the Devil: productive from age 21-45.
• 1906 encounter with Esmeralda (age 21 + 24 = age
45  his breakdown)
• 1912 encounter with Satan? in Palestrina (age 27 +
24 = 51  persistive vegetative state)
• Adrian lived until age 55, but WITHOUT LOVE
Some names and relationships
• Adrian Leverkühn (“living boldly”)
• Serenus Zeitblom (“serene blooming of the age”; father is
Wohlgemut, “merry”), childhood friend, the only friend Adrian
calls “du” (until Rudi, later…), more like family than beloved;
devoted to A, with unrequited love
• Rudi Schwerdtfeger (“swordsmith”), brilliant violinist, flirt;
close (platonic homoerotic?) friendship with Adrian; they call
each other “du” after their Hungarian vacation
• Marie Godeau: sensible, talented, black-eyed beauty,
beloved of A and R. She rejects A, and R is killed before he
can join her.
• Nepomuk (Nepo; “Echo”): Adrian’s heavenly nephew,
tragically died young after two months with A.
Women in Faust
• Elspeth Leverkühn : sensible, beautiful farmwife with melodic voice,
very dark hair when young (A’s mother, in Kaisersachern)
• Marie Godeau: sensible, talented dark-eyed beauty, with Elspeth’s voice
(whom A would have married)
• Frau Schweigestill (“peace and quiet”): sensible, devoted farmwife at
Pfeiffering near Waldshut (“forest keep”) (second home, second mother)
• Esmeralda: A’s first (and only?) sexual experience, from which he
contracted syphilus.
• Madame de Tolna: secret admirer, rich Hungarian widow and patroness,
whom A never meets? Some suggest she is Esmeralda.
• Little Mermaid: Adrian empathizes with her pain, and imagines that she
(as Esmeralda?) is the mother of their child, Echo (his nephew)
• Jeannette Scheurl: sensible, intelligent author and novelist, she is
present at many key scenes, and later helps A work 17th C music into his
compositions. No hint of romance. What is her role?
• Rodde sisters, Inez and Clarice: pathetic characters, representing (as
do many of the men in the salons) weaknesses of German bourgeoisie
and fascists
The little mermaid (Denmark)
Adrian is denied love
• Devil (or hallucination plus A’s sardonic nature) tells Adrian that part of
his Faustian deal (of brilliant productivity for limited time) is that he will
be denied love.
• First love: Esmeralda, the “nut-brown lass” or hetera (concubine).
Smitten, A embraces her (once) despite her warning, and later
incorporates her initials into his compositions: H(B)-E-A-A-Es(E-flat).
• Rudi: their close friendship deepen, Rudi warms A’s cold heart so that
he becomes capable of love. This shatters when A falls for Marie and
asks R to approach her for him: R is hurt, jealous (of both?), and wants
M for himself.
• Marie, the only woman A has loved since E, rejects him (and arranges to
meet R in Paris).
• Rudi is killed by rejected Inez. Adrian loses his most beloved friend.
• Beautiful little Nepo / Echo appears on A’s doorstep. Despite himself, A
warms to him. Nepo soon dies horribly. A blames his cursed love for
killing N.
• What about Serenus and the circle of devoted women who cared for A?
Adrian’s collapse and Fascism’s rise
Adrian b.1885, d. 1940
1906 Esmeralda (age 21) “wed
Satan”
A will not fight in WWI (CH.XXX)
Until age 45 (1930) Productive but
increasingly unstable.
(Kridwiss (“bankrupt knowledge”
salon rises in Munich – nationalists)
1929: A writes Lament as Hitler rises
1930: A’s physical and mental
collapse at Schweigestill
1930-1940: worsening vegetative
state
1940: death in mother’s home at
Kaisersachern
Hitler b. 1889 (Austria), d. 1945
WWI vet, Nazi leader 1921
1923 imprisoned after failed coup
Popularity grows – martyr – Mein
Kampf
Released from prison 1928
Chancellor 1933 (president)
Austrian Anschluss 1938 violates
WW I treaty
Polish invasion 1939  WW II
(over 6 million Jews ... murdered)
Conquered much of Europe til 1942
1942-1945: Germany loses again
Music in Mann’s Faustus
Some music in Faustus may be related to real pieces:
Apocalypse: Franz Schmidt's Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln,
performed 1938 (shortly after the Anschluss)
The Lamentation of Dr Faustus: Ernst Krenek's Lamentatio
Jeremiae prophetae, an oratorio of 1941-1942 (using
Schonberg’s 12-tone style))
Adrian’s “Apocalypse” inspired by Dürer prints
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
St John the Martyr
http://www.conncoll.edu/visual/Durer-prints/
Magic square and 12-tone rows
http://faculty.matcmadison.edu/mbertrand/
mab/eureka/images/MagicSquare.gif
http://www.kickylittlething.com/images/magic%20square.jpg
Many themes to discuss in seminar
• Germany and nationalism; Jews and internationalism
• Protestant reformation as a source of ethical, spiritual and
artistic crises confronting early 20th century creativity
• Appearances of or allusions to Satan or Mephistopheles:
Porter (pimp), visitor in Palestrina, Saul Fitelberg?, characters in salons?
• Humanism & theology
• Aesthetics & art
• Music & politics; Music as metaphor: people singing
along but not together; harmony, polyphony, or
dissonance; …
• A’s (and father’s) waxing and waning migraines; childhood
and adult measles, meningitis, and other afflictions in other
characters – metaphors, meanings?
• Zeitblom as Mann’s proxy (“if I were a novelist….”)
Mann 1938: "I must regretfully own that in my younger years I shared that
dangerous German habit of thought which regards life and intellect,
art and politics as totally separate worlds."
SignupSheets:
Your Essays due on Saturday
(Two responses the week after your essay)
Zita’s Seminar:
Arun’s Seminar:
Sources
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Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann
Notes from Thad Curtzt
Conversations with Arun
Google and Wikipedia (I hate to admit it)
German dictionary