| raised him up & cast him down | Z.’s description of L. as erhobener und gestürzter Mann anticipates L.’s later self-identification as a “wicked and good Christian” (511/705). |
| | Term borrowed from Nazi propaganda. Z. is perhaps not as immune to the influence of Nazism as he himself would like to believe. |
| | Z.’s metaphor parodies the proems of classical epics and serves as an early indicator that something is amiss with his compositional process. |
| | The day on which TM, too, began with the composition of DF. Owing to an oversight on TM’s part, early editions of DF have “27 May 1943” here. The GKFA follows this tradition. |
| thoroughly even-tempered […] humanely tempered | A metaphor that not only alludes to Z.’s humanism, but also compares him to a musical instrument. |
| | A six- or seven-stringed instrument popular in the Baroque period and distinguished by its use of sympathetic strings, which are not themselves bowed but resonate with the main strings. The relationship between the two sets of strings metaphorically recalls that between L. and Z, although it is left ambiguous whether it is Z. who lives his life in the shadow of L., or rather L. who exists in the novel only in the shape given to him by Z.’s unreliable narration. |
| Letters of the Obscure Men | The Letters of Obscure Men was written by Crotus Rubianus of Dornheim (ca. 1480–ca. 1539) and published anonymously in 1515. It is a satirical attack on the theologian Johannes Pfefferkorn (ca. 1469–ca. 1522), who had called for the public burning of Jewish books. The names that follow are of German humanists who lived between 1455 and 1540 and castigated the excesses of the Lutheran Reformation. |
| attitude has meant sacrifices | Ironically, Z.’s lifelong attempts to resist the temptations of the demonic have been sustained only through “sacrifices,” i.e., precisely the kind of actions one ordinarily performs to placate dark powers. |
| | Z. voluntarily retired from his teaching position at a public university when the Nazis came to power in 1933. |
| | The German adjective used here and in several later passages is verewigt (lit. “eternalized”), a term that might refer both to posthumous reputation and to the sufferings of eternal damnation. |
| divinis influxibus ex alto | Latin: “divine inspiration from above.” |
| | Z. alludes to the fact that the Latin genius and the Greek daimon both originally described minor guardian spirits. The words acquired their modern associations with good and evil only during the early Christian period. |
| | Z. draws a connection between literary and musical composition, reminding us that the biography that we are reading is an artistic, rather than purely factual, construct. |
| | The thematic motif of “coldness” (usually in the sense of “aloof,” “disinterested”) will play a major role in DF. The phrase used here recalls descriptions of the devil in Dante’s Inferno, where he is portrayed as surrounded by an icy chill even amidst the fires of hell. Another possible reference point is chapter 6 of the Chapbook, where Faust needs to heat the blood he will use to sign the infernal contract in a crucible over hot coals. |