The Origin of Doctor Faustus

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Original cover of the first edition in 1949

The Genesis of Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann was published in 1949. The text contains autobiographical material and important self-comments on Doctor Faustus . In describing the autobiographical references, Thomas Mann draws on his diary entries.

Doctor Faustus is Thomas Mann's first novel that did not develop from an originally smaller project, but was conceived as a novel from the very beginning of work on the manuscript. Therefore - and because it presented particular difficulties, namely as a life confession, as an "epoch novel" about the world wars, especially about the time of National Socialism , as a redesign of the Faust myth exemplified by Goethe , as a poetic attempt to reproduce music with language, thus as a work of art theory, and as (as he assumed) the last of his works - Mann saw a special occasion to justify this undertaking to himself and to posterity. In the motto of origin, he refers to a passage in Goethe's Poetry and Truth , in which the latter explains that, in contrast to others, in order to provide them with a “historical value”, some works need “to talk to benevolent connoisseurs about their creation ".

Mann reports on the particular inner emptiness that arose in him after the conclusion of his novel tetralogy Joseph and his brothers and its sequel The Law , and then on the first plans, his preliminary studies - and a. Reading Hugo Wolf's letters , the literary references (especially to Shakespeare) and again and again about the autobiographical circumstances, especially about which political and essayistic writings interrupted work on the novel.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ on June 25, 1948 to Peter Suhrkamp
  2. ↑ December 15, 1947 to Erich von Kahler
  3. ↑ on July 14, 1948 to Friedrich Sell
  4. ↑ Ambiguity as a system - Thomas Mann's demands on art [1]
  5. ↑ The Origin of Doctor Faustus , Section III "because I have always considered it my last "
  6. ↑ cf. Creation of section IV

Bibliographical information

Mann, Thomas: The emergence of Doctor Faustus , Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1984, unabridged edition.