| The Document to which repeated reference has been made […] | The narrative device of the found document allows Z. to assume a position of skeptical distance to L.’s conversation, but it also recalls a similar found text in chapter 25 (!) of the Chapbook. |
| He apparently used music paper because […] | Plausible, but L.’s choice of writing material also reminds us how closely intertwined musical and textual composition are in DF (compare L.’s description of twelve-tone rows as “words” on 174/238). It also moves L. and Z., the composer and the author, closer together. In German, the word for musical notes (Noten) is not the same as the one for textual notes (Notizen), but they are nevertheless related, a fact that TM’s musical advisor Theodor W. Adorno would later also exploit in his essay collection Noten zur Literatur (Notes to Literature, 1958). |
| | The German Weistu was so schweig is a quotation from chapter 65 of the Chapbook, which in turn quotes a phrase allegedly used by Martin Luther. There are several other quotations from the Chapbook scattered throughout the following paragraphs. |
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| | Latin: “in the desert.” Another phrase used by Luther. |
| Kierkegaard on Mozart’s Don Juan | Part I, chapter 2 of Either—Or (1843) by Søren Kierkegaard. Don Juan, of course, is another story about a character doomed to hell. Kierkegaard explicitly contrasts it with the Faust myth. |
| seated upon the horsehair couch | L.’s vision is closely patterned on Ivan Karamazov’s conversation with the devil in Book XI, chapter 9 of The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881). |
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| Who speaks familiarly with me? | In the original, the devil uses informal pronouns, a form of address that would have been grossly insulting in this context. A similar exchange takes place in The Brothers Karamazov. |
| | The external appearance of the devil in this first part of the vision is partly inspired by The Brothers Karamazov, but also recalls the porter in XVI. |
| | Bavarian dialect for “pimp.” |
| | A cold wind “from beyond the mountains.” |
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| You say only such things as are in me | The question whether L.’s interlocutor is real or only a product of a fevered imagination is central to The Brothers Karamazov as well. |
| shoved Holy Writ under the door | Expression from the Chapbook, already used on 140/192. |
| Master Dicis-et-non-facis | |
| | Latin: “You say it and [yet] don’t exist.” |
| Where I am, there is Kaisersaschern | An ironic self-quotation by TM, who, when he arrived in the United States in 1938, had self-confidently announced “Where I am, there is Germany” in response to the question whether he missed his home country when he arrived in the United States in 1938. |
| German to the core […] cosmopolitan at heart | The idea that true German identity implied a cosmopolitan component was central to many of Mann’s political writings of the 1930s and 1940s. |
| in good Dürer fashion, freeze to pursue the sun | Albrecht Dürer, like many other great German writers and artists, spent time in Italy. The phrase “freeze to pursue the sun” is taken from one of his letters. |
| | Terms taken from chapter 16 of the Chapbook, in which the devil explains the nature of hell to Faustus. |
| hour-glass […] square of numbers | |
| Black Kesperlin […] Samiel | See 106/145 and 86/118. Samiel is the name of the demonic figure in Der Freischütz. |
| | A sixteenth-century printer infamous for the many mistakes he introduced into his books. The German verb verballhornen (= to corrupt a text) derives from his name. |
| Sammael […] Angel of poison | |
| Conformation […] leaf butterfly | See 17/27 and the surrounding discussion. |
| song with its alphabetical symbol | L.’s “Oh Sweet Maiden” from his Brentano song cycle. See 166/227. |
| | Latin: “with all due respect.” |
| | A common euphemism for syphilis. |
| | In the original, L. first uses the informal address with the devil, then switches to formal address after being mocked for it. |
| silence soon these five years | Evidence that the conversation takes place in 1911, not 1912. |
| | Latin: “Consider the end.” The phrase occurs in the apocryphal Sir. 7:40, but also in the medieval collection of tales Gesta Romanorum, which will come to play a main role in DF. |
| | See the conversation between L. and Z. on 202/275 and surrounding. |
| twenty-four years, shall we say | The traditional timespan already accorded to Faustus in the Chapbook. |
| he may plainly and honestly deem himself a god | The mood swings described in this paragraph are indeed characteristic of syphilitic infection, but may also point to two of Mann’s specific references, the composer Hugo Wolf (1860–1903) and Friedrich Nietzsche. |
| pains as one knows from a fairy tale | Reference to “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), another text that deals with themes of coldness vs. warmth as well as art vs. life. The mermaid’s tail also anticipates the reference to flagellates on 247/338. |
| I am not of the family Schweigestill | A pun on the name Schweigestill (“say nothing in silence”) |
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| small delicate folk […] the flagellants | Actually “flagellates.” A flagellate is a bacterium with a whip-like tail. The devil is jokingly comparing these to the “flagellants” of the Middle Ages, who mortified their flesh with whips and other instruments. In both German and English, the term scourge is similarly applied both literally to flails and metaphorically to deadly diseases. |
| | Now outdated Latin name for the bacterium that causes syphilis. |
| flagellum haereticorum fascinariorum | |
| | Latin: “bewitchers.” Derived from a name for bronze castings of a phallus, often worn around the neck as a token of divine protection. |
| | Latin: “fig faun.” A term used in the Malleus Maleficarum to designate incubi and other demonly creatures. Zink was already compared to a faun on 213/289. |
| | A reference to the fact that not all syphilitic infections penetrate the blood-brain barrier. |
| | A term apparently of TM’s invention. |
| | A set of three membranes that envelop the brain and spinal cord. |
| dura mater […] tentorium […] pia | The dura mater (Latin: “tough mother”) is the outermost of the meninges, the tentorium cerebelli (Latin: “brain tent”) its extension into the brain. The pia mater (already mentioned on 232/316) is the innermost of the meninges. |
| | Greek: Soft tissue on the inside of an organ. |
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| | Woods’s literal translation of the perfectly ordinary German term Fieberherd (“infected spot”). |
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| | Singular of “meninges” (249/340). |
| If in a rapture a man […] | A reference to a letter by Hugo Wolf dated February 22, 1888. |
| All they give, do the gods […] | Lines of verse from a letter by Goethe, written in 1777. |
| Si Diabolus non esset mendax […] | |
| | Latin: “That is not given.” |
| The artist is the brother of the felon | An idea taken from Nietzsche, but also characteristic of TM’s own oeuvre, such as his novella Tonio Kröger (1903), in which a writer is briefly mistaken for a felon. |
| | Another possible translation would be “inspiration.” For this recurring motif see especially 192/263. |
| | French: “better.” The question whether great art has to be an original creation or can instead “improve” upon found materials is central also to Mann’s own modernist aesthetics. |
| spectacles rimmed in horn | The devil’s second guise bears a marked resemblance to TM’s musical advisor Theodor W. Adorno. When Adorno inquired about this, TM sent him a cheeky denial, asking “do you even wear glasses?” Somewhat incredibly, Adorno, who nearly always wore horn-rimmed glasses, seems to have been satisfied by this deflective maneuver. |
| folklorists and seekers of neoclassical asylum | This attack on musical neoclassicists (such as Igor Stravinsky) as well as on ethnologically minded modernists (such as Béla Bartók [1886–1945]) owes a lot to Adorno’s Philosophy of New Music, which TM consulted extensively in manuscript form while he was writing this chapter. |
| Composition itself has grown too difficult | This paragraph, too, summarizes and quotes ideas from Philosophy of New Music. It furthermore refers back to Kretzschmar’s Beethoven lectures in VIII, with their interpretation of “late style” as a return to musical convention, though under the sign of parody. |
| the diminished seventh […] at the opening of Opus 111 | Another reference that links this part of the conversation to Kretzschmar’s Beethoven lecture in VIII. However, the devil is referring to the opening chord of the first movement, which Kretzschmar’s lecture didn’t cover. |
| lend the chord its specific weight | |
| In every bar he dares conceive, the general technical problem […] | The devil is claiming (again summarizing and quoting from Philosophy of New Music) that modern music leaves no room for subjective expression, since the aesthetics of genius have themselves become a cliché by the end of the nineteenth century. Instead, composers in the twentieth century are reduced to solving mere technical puzzles placed upon them by their material—a return to the “objectivity” that also characterized early modern polyphony. |
| Criticism of ornament, of convention, of abstract generality […] all one and the same. | According to the devil (and Adorno), musical Romanticism began as a revolt against the “ornament” and “convention” that characterized musical classicism,—that is, the prevalence of set motifs and musical forms, such as the rondo or minuet. But by the dawn of the twentieth century, the “abstract generality” to which its subjective aesthetics laid claim have become conventional as well. |
| Parody […] so very woebegone | TM had begun to see his own art as a parody of nineteenth-century forms even before the First World War. This back-and-forth can thus also be read on the metaliterary level as an engagement with James Joyce (1882–1941), whose radical modernism TM both feared and admired as possibly superior to his own craft. |
| the Christian enamoured of aesthetics | Kierkegaard, whom L. was reading at the beginning of the chapter. This entire paragraph is saturated with allusions to Kierkegaard. |
| to intimate that you should break through it | The first mention of the important theme of “breaking through,” which will henceforth recur multiple times in a threefold sense: in the aesthetic sense of a “breakthrough towards new music,” in a military sense as a penetration of enemy lines, and in the socio-political sense of a departure from democracy and creation of a fascist state. |
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| You will lead, you will set the march | The German for “lead” is führen, which connects L. to Hitler. The devil’s promises here also raise questions about the narrative as a whole, for despite Z.’s assurances to the contrary, we never get any sense that L. does indeed set the tone for the future. |
| you will break through the laming difficulties of the age | Another reference to “breaking through,” this time in an at least dual cultural and social sense. The term “laming difficulties” is possibly also a punning allusion to the devil, whose clubfoot is the subject of several jokes in DF. |
| Yet again the look of the fellow on the couch was changed | The devil’s third iteration resembles Eberhard Schleppfuss from chapter XIII. |
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| | Terms describing hell, which the devil previously used on 243/331. |
| that it lies hidden from language […] “hopelessness” | In his diary entry for February 20, 1945, TM makes clear that his description of hell was inspired by the torture chambers of the Gestapo. |
| attritio cordis […] contritio | Latin: “Attrition of the heart … contrition.” See 140/192. |
| choice between extreme cold and fire | This aspect of hell is already mentioned in chapter 16 of the Chapbook. It also relates to L.’s innate coldness and ironically to Rev. 3:16. |
| prideful remorse—that of Cain | In Genesis 4:13, also discussed in chapter 68 of the Chapbook. |
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| once again […] as the male bawd | |
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| figuris, characteribus […] incantationibus | Latin: “figures, characters, and incantations.” Traditional elements of black magic, here applied to music. |
| | Forest in central Germany, about twenty miles east of Frankfurt, where Faust first encounters the devil in chapter 2 of the Chapbook. |
| | Traditional figure of incantation, but also reference to the circle of fifths. |
| | In most Christian denominations, the confirmation reinforces the covenant between the individual and God created by baptism—just like this second appearance of the devil reinforces the pact drawn up by L.’s pursuit of Hetaera Esmeralda. |
| | Latin: “from the day of the contract.” |
| you must renounce all who live […]. You may not love | This clause is already mentioned in chapter 6 of the Chapbook. In DF, it is foreshadowed by L.’s obsession with Love’s Labour’s Lost. |
| | Latin: “charity.” Theologically speaking, non-sensual love. |
| | Italian: “newspapers.” By withdrawing into his inner conversation with the devil, L. has missed out on traditional activities of the liberal nineteenth-century public sphere: debates about government and the study of newspapers. |