Doktor Faustus is a novel which appears in the red-hot climate of the end of the second world war. There are huge
controversies, which are caused by its appearance. The critics wondered: Thomas Mann was wishing the fall of his country? Is he glad for the dramatic destiny of his Germany? How could he remain cold thus, and not hope about a possible triumph of the hitlerian Germany? For the most of german critics, Thomas Mann showed himself as a traitor, or at least some kind of opportunist. Today he is instead the face of the German culture that survived to the diktat of the Third Reich regime.
Let''s give a look now to the content of the work. The novel describes the life of a brilliant artist, Adrian
Leverkuhn, and his rise to the highest mastership as composer, till the dramatic fall in the solitary madness. According to the author''s intentions, the human walk (which is perfectly related in the parallel artistic walk) of the protagonist goes accorded to another parallel way: the political walk undertaken by Germany under nazi regime.
Central, in the story, is the meeting of Leverkuhn with a devil, who proposes to get the man soul in exchange of years of great creative activity. Leverkuhn decision marks his walk, along the rest of his life.
In the convergence of the man''s and the nation''s walks, we have therefore three distances: a human, artistic and a politician one. These three walks get crossed and interlaced without division possibility.
To inspire the maturation of the composer Leverkuhn, his stilysh evolution, it''s a constant and growing refining of his performances, which leads the composer to produce a music that nobody has ever heard before. But it''s a music that nobody likes. It scares, arouses unpleasant emotions, sounds like the cacophony produced by a machine. The result of his research is a style which has lost any human foundation. Herein, Thomas Mann clearly refers back to dodecaphonic music created by Schönberg, who was actually considered as a genius of the composition, also producing music that still today remains hard to listen and appreciate. Thomas Mann, who lived during the american exile in the same road where other prominent german intellectual Theodor W. Adorno was settled, refers also to the competence and help of this great musical aesthetics scholar.
Mann notes that contemporary nihilism is the result of the last romanticism, and it''s the last step of the western thought development: at last, philosophy has abandoned the man and has oriented merely to the object, so treating the same man as an object and as the result of a mechanical process. It''s also interesting the dialogue held by Leverkuhn with the devil: here the man discusses about the destiny of God in a world where the people have decided to bet just on science, so not caring anymore about super-human truths. Thomas Mann states here that "our modern theology is an absurd thing, a
contradictio in adiecto": this is the last proof which demonstrates the frailty of religious attitude of modern societies, as well it makes preannounce the destiny of christian religion.
Like in all its works, Thomas Mann stirs many ingredients, and the result is always interesting. Of course this book won''t be easily read and understood by everybody; quite hard is the access to the plurality of hidden meanings and references to Mann''s readings or details of the cultural life that encircled Mann at the age of his plotting. Although this, it''s a book with its own appeal, because it doesn''t need to be "comprehended" in order to cause reader''s emotions.
There are echoes of Spengler''s, Kierkegaard''s, Nietzsche''s thought and works, but these are not the essential part: simply they compose the frame, and they offer some more keys of comprehension that some more erudite reader can recognize; but even without these keys the novel is accessible.
Main representative novel of its age,
Doktor Faustus is a novel of unique importance in the last century literature, and also a recollection of all the culture survival produced by european and western
Kultur (this is a german word meaning both "culture" and "civilization", accorded to Thomas Mann''s use) at its highest peak of evolution - so just before its further descending and dramatic development.