Disappointment (Thomas Mann)

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St. Mark's Square in Venice (1881), the place of the action, painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir at the time of the action

Disappointment is one of Thomas Mann's earliest stories . It was created in 1896 and first appeared in 1898 in the anthology of short stories Der kleine Herr Friedemann .

content

On St. Mark's Square in Venice , the narrator observes a strange gentleman who seems to be busy for days with nothing else “than walking up and down the piazza thirty to fifty times in good and bad weather, mornings and afternoons, always alone and always with the same strange demeanor ”: he has his eyes fixed on the floor, is absorbed in self-talk, only looks up now and then, shakes his head and smiles confused at the“ incomparably light and festive beauty ”of the square.

One evening, when the narrator has sat down at a table in the middle of the piazza and the tourists have already lost their way, he is approached by the stranger. With a "strange openness" he asks for a few minutes to listen. And while the night is slowly falling over Venice and the air is gradually getting cooler, he begins to tell of the nature of disappointment.

He grew up in a pastor's house, whose “scholarly optimism” and “pulpit rhetoric” with their “big words for good and bad, beautiful and ugly” (which he now “bitterly hate”) were to blame for his suffering. That language aroused expectations in him, the intensity of which overshadowed the “mediocre, uninteresting and dull” reality he later experienced. Even great suffering and great happiness seemed to him only stale and disappointing compared with the promises in the works of the poets.

  • As a child, he barely survived a nightly conflagration in which the entire father's house sank to rubble and ashes. Disappointed, he asked himself: Shouldn't the traumatic experience have seemed much worse on him?
  • The well-traveled stranger reacted disillusioned when looking at the most sublime art in the world's great museums: “Isn't it more beautiful? Is that the whole thing? "
  • Even the most dangerous phenomena of nature, a deep gorge in the mountains and the suicidal vision of falling into the roaring depth, left him cold: “If it happened, I would say to myself: Now you are falling down, now it is a fact . What is that actually? "
  • He once loved a girl, but was never met. However, the thought was always “sadder and more tormenting” than the painful, painful, cruel pain of love: “This is the great pain! Now I am experiencing it! - What is that actually? "
  • The first time he saw the vast expanse of the sea, it had by no means given him the liberation he had hoped for. Because “there was the horizon over there”, but he had expected the infinite from life.

In the struggle against such disappointments, the stranger had once tried to become a poet and to tune into "the big words" before he recognized them as the language of "cowardice and lies", so that "this vanity also collapsed". Only his “favorite pastime, looking at the starry sky at night” has remained with him - as the best way to disregard the limited and disappointing existence on earth and to dream of a liberated life. “I dream of it and I expect death.” In view of this last experience, however, the stranger is also under no illusions: “Oh, I already know it so well, death, this last disappointment!”

On the physiognomy of disappointment

Although this prose sketch is kept short, the author puts the reader to a severe test. Apart from the introduction to the philosophical subject, Thomas Mann does not allow anyone, except the unknown, to have their say. In connection with the philosophical background of the prose sketch, Vaget refers to the “Nietzsche features” that Thomas Mann “also externally gave to the stranger in need of conversation on St. Mark's Square”. Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a pastor and stayed in Venice. The stranger holds a walking stick "with both hands on his back". When leafing through the chronicle of Benders and Oettermann there is no such picture. Of the philosophers, however, Thomas Mann also admired Arthur Schopenhauer . There is a woodcut on which Schopenhauer is immortalized with his poodle. The philosopher holds a stick on his back - but only with his left hand. The great thinker supports his chin with his right hand. Schopenhauer was in Venice, but is not the son of a pastor. The clean-shaven face in Thomas Mann's prose sketch is confused. Nietzsche's mustache is missing. There are photos of Nietzsche with a clean-shaven face. The most recent was probably recorded in September 1864. But the philosopher was only 20 years old. However, Thomas Mann describes a 30 to 50 year old stranger. The “stupid smile” does not apply to Schopenhauer, and actually not to Nietzsche either. After his collapse in 1889, Nietzsche stared dull with blind eyes in madness.

On the philosophy of disappointment

Schopenhauer

  • Thomas Mann's stranger simply missed the right path. “Because if you look for something the wrong way; that is why one has left the right one and in the end will never achieve anything other than late disappointment, ”writes Schopenhauer.
  • Apart from the fact that the stranger probably didn’t get enough pleasure from his girl, he and we can even learn about sexual love from the inveterate bachelor Schopenhauer . It "will, after the enjoyment finally achieved, every lover experience a miraculous disappointment, and astonish that what is so longingly desired no longer achieves anything."
  • The stranger does not have to be angry at all, not even about the fact that he was not lucky. All of this is quite normal. “Life, with its hourly, daily, weekly and annual, minor, major and major adversities, with its disappointed hopes and its accidents that thwart all calculations, so clearly bears the stamp of something that is to be spoiled for us that it is difficult to do To understand is how one has been able to misjudge this and allow oneself to be persuaded that it is there to be gratefully enjoyed and the person to be happy. "
  • After reading Schopenhauer there is some consolation. Disappointment is part of life. "That is why many a big head, unrecognized, dishonored, unrewarded, has to drag itself through life panting, until finally after his death the world was disappointed with him, and he with her."

Nietzsche

  • It seems that the stranger who "has to live so without courage and confidence, denying, doubting, gnawing, dissatisfied, in half hope, in expected disappointment, calls out:" No dog would like to live that longer! ""
  • With Thomas Mann, the stranger is the unfortunate one because the girl does not love him. Nietzsche, however, observed that there are also relationships between men and women where the observer regrets the woman. "What, despite all fear, makes" woman "pity for this dangerous and beautiful cat, is that it appears more suffering, more vulnerable, more in need of love and more condemned to disappointment than any animal."
  • Nietzsche agrees with Schopenhauer that the stranger did something wrong in life. “We've probably all sat at tables where we didn't belong; And just the most spiritual of us, who are the hardest to nourish, know that dangerous dyspepsia which arises from a sudden insight and disappointment about our food and table neighbors - the dessert disgust. "

expenditure

  • Thomas Mann: Little Mr. Friedemann and other short stories . S. Fischer, Berlin 1909. 171 pages, content: The will to happiness / disappointment / the Bajazzo / Tobias Mindernickel / Luischen / the hungry / the railway accident.
  • Thomas Mann: Selected stories . Bermann-Fischer, Stockholm 1948. 6. – 12. Edition, 860 pages. Thin print, linen (Stockholm Complete Edition). Contents: Little Mr Friedemann / Disappointment / Tristan / Tobias Mindernickel / Tonio Kröger / The way to the cemetery / Mr and dog / The wardrobe / Confessions of the impostor Felix Krull / Death in Venice / With the prophet / Disorder and early suffering / Difficult hour / Mario and the magician / The child prodigy / The swapped heads / The law.
  • Thomas Mann: All the stories. Volume 1. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-10-348115-2 , pp. 95-101

Edits

The lyrics inspired the producer and songwriter duo Leiber / Stoller to write the song Is That All There Is? , which they recorded in 1969 with singer Peggy Lee .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Mann: The little Mr. Friedemann. Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag (1898).
  2. ^ Hans R. Vaget in: Helmut Koopmann (Ed.): Thomas-Mann-Handbuch. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-82803-0 , p. 547
  3. ^ Raymond J. Benders and Stephan Oettermann: Friedrich Nietzsche. Chronicle in pictures and texts. dtv, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-423-30771-4
  4. ↑ Hermann Kurzke: Thomas Mann. Life as a work of art. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 2001, ISBN 3-596-14872-3 , pp. 74 ff.
  5. ↑ Walter Abendroth : Arthur Schopenhauer in self-testimonies and image documents. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1967, ISBN 3-499-50133-3 , p. 95
  6. ^ Raymond J. Benders and Stephan Oettermann: Friedrich Nietzsche. Chronicle in pictures and texts. dtv, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-423-30771-4 , p. 109
  7. ↑ The world as will and idea . Second volume, chapter 41.53: On death and its relation to the indestructibility of our being in itself
  8. ↑ The world as will and idea . Volume Two, Chapter 44: Metaphysics of Sex Love
  9. ↑ The world as will and idea . Second volume, chapter 46.71: On the nothingness and suffering of life
  10. ↑ The world as will and idea . Second volume, chapter 17.16: On the metaphysical need of man
  11. ↑ Untimely considerations. Third piece: Schopenhauer as an educator
  12. ↑ Beyond good and evil . Seventh main piece: Our virtues
  13. ↑ Beyond good and evil. Chapter ninth: what is noble?