Death (man)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Death is a prose sketch by Thomas Mann from 1897. It has the structure of a diary note.

content

The narrator, a 40-year-old count from Kronshafen, lives alone with his 12-year-old daughter Asuncion in a house by the sea. The Portuguese mother died giving birth to the child.

In 15 entries in his diary - dating from September 10th to October 11th - the count deals with the thought of his death. Since he was 20 years old, he has had the idea of ​​being able to foresee his death exactly on October 12th when he is 40 years old. In a mixture of fear, a depressive mood, but also concentrated awe, the count began his social retreat; he feels sick in body and soul, rarely leaves his house, and when he does, he stands for hours by the stormy sea. The worsening weather as the season progresses reflects the protagonist's increasing distress.

Memories of the happy past, expressions of love for his daughter and fear of the presumed impending day of death run through his mind. In the tenth entry in his diary - October 3 - the count first discussed suicide after he had previously clarified - using the example of Emperor Frederick - that a prophecy to which one submits in unreserved faith must inevitably come true.

In the count's imagination, death is personified as " great and beautiful and of a wild majesty "; on the penultimate day (note from October 10th), feverishly ill, the count feels the figure, however, as " so sober, so boring, so bourgeois ", who " behaved [..] like a dentist ": " It is on best if we deal with it right away. “The count has accepted his self-conjured fate; death has lost its fascination, but also its horror.

The day before (October 9th) the count had understood that his daughter would weep for him. On the last day (October 11th) he realizes that he “ cannot leave this child ”. At 11 p.m. he writes his last entry in his diary in front of his daughter's corpse. It is unclear how Asuncion died in the previous hour and a half since a neighbor called him to the child's bed. The doctor diagnosed a heartbeat. The child may have been sick before, having spent hours out by the sea in the cold. The extent to which the count “helped” is not explained. It has been learned that bromine is in the house (note dated September 27), but a connection would be speculation. Death due to failure to provide assistance is also conceivable (" I [...] did nothing and thought nothing "). The Count's insight that death “ had to obey his knowledge and belief ” suggests the interpretation that the Count killed the child.

We do not find out whether the count actually dies at the end of that day. Since no further notes follow, it seems reasonable to assume that the imaginary prophecy will be fulfilled. Whether natural death from feverish cold after spending nights out by the sea or suicide remains hidden.

Third-party negligence (double murder) is not explicitly excluded, but there are no indications for it.

Remarks

Thomas Mann had chosen the little novella Death for a competition in Simplicissimus ; the award went to someone else, but the story was printed there anyway. It is one of the artist's lesser-known early narratives, in which he addresses the characteristic fin de siècle conflict between the morbidity of the mind and the aesthetics of the external world.

According to Vaget, Thomas Mann, who adored Friedrich Nietzsche from his youth, practiced the field of decadence . The perfect spot can be found in the Twilight of the Idols. In it Nietzsche writes "Death, chosen of his own free will, death at the right time, with brightness and joy, carried out in the midst of children and witnesses ..." And further: "You never perish by anyone other than yourself." Thomas Mann's prose sketch appeared eight years after Nietzsche's book.

It is noteworthy that Mann himself prophesied his own death around the age of seventy. When he received a critical comment after this event had not occurred, he emphasized that at least at this point in time he had been through a serious life crisis - the lung operation fell in the year - and please do not like the literal fulfillment of the prediction from him desire.

expenditure

  • Thomas Mann: All the stories. Volume 1. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-10-348115-2 , pp. 59-65

literature

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer. In it: Forays into something untimely, 36