Anecdote (Thomas Mann)

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Anecdote is a short story by Thomas Mann from 1908.

content

After a good dinner with friends, people speak of Buddha and of the “veil of Maya and its dazzling dazzling work”, of the “sweetness of longing and the bitterness of knowledge”. In this context, one of the guests - as a critical illustration of the question "What is an ideal?" - tells the anecdote of the "heavenly Angela Becker", in whose loveliness and blue, smiling eyes, sweet mouth, delicious dimples and blonde curls all over the world was infatuated.

Forty-year-old, quiet and polite bank director Ernst Becker is married to Angela, who is ten years his junior and whom he “brought with him from abroad” one day. Your marriage remains childless. Angela not only organizes the evening parties at the Becker house, but also contributes to the musical arrangement by singing along on the harp. In her salon, the world of men lies at her feet. However, she has no real friends.

When she was once again admired and envied by all those present one evening and showered with compliments, and when the master of the house was again congratulated on his heavenly wife, it suddenly fell silent, Director Becker stood up, was “pale as death” and with “trembling solemnity he begins to speak ”. He had been silent long enough and now finally has to tell the truth. And to the horror of the guests “this person creates a picture of a marriage in a terrible outburst - his 'hell' of a marriage”. Angela is "devoid of love and desolate", she lies around "limp" all day, even neglecting her body care and torturing the cat. You deceive him with servants and beggars. He only endured it "for the sake of love."

The audience is paralyzed and cannot believe their ears. Two gentlemen take the completely angry husband aside and the company disperses. “A few days later, Becker went to a mental hospital, apparently in accordance with an agreement with his wife. But he was perfectly healthy and only brought to extremes. Later the Beckers moved to another city. "

Remarks

  • The philosophical basis of the story can be found in Schopenhauer . Lifting the veil of the Maya can only be achieved through your own action. Director Becker tries by breaking his long silence.
  • Another pillar of the story, the sweetness of longing, is what the Buddha calls “thirst”. Fritz Mauthner says: “Buddha, the otherworldly, is Savior, Messiah; but he does not speak to us. ” (Dictionary of Philosophy) . Friedrich Nietzsche , whom Thomas Mann admired as much as Schopenhauer, wrote:
    • “The longing for an idyll” is “the belief in a prehistoric existence of the artistic and good person.” (The birth of tragedy. The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music)
    • “Every human being tends to find a limitation in himself, his talent as well as his moral will, which fills him with longing and melancholy; and just as he longs for the sacred out of the feeling of his sinfulness, so he carries, as an intellectual being, a deep desire for genius. " (Untimely reflections, Third Piece, Schopenhauer as educator)
    • "My mind and my longing go for a little, for a long time, for a long distance: what concern of your little, much, short misery!" (Thus spoke Zarathustra. Fourth and last part, On the higher man)

expenditure

  • Thomas Mann: All the stories. Volume 1. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-10-348115-2 , pp. 404-408.

literature