XXXV
In 1922, Clarissa Rodde, who has tried to trade in her unsuccessful acting career for a bourgeois marriage to an Alsatian merchant, commits suicide when she is blackmailed by a former lover with a devilish appearance. At her funeral, Z. observes Inez who has been driven into morphine addiction by her own unhappy love life.
Time of composition: June 12–25, 1946. Time of narration: In or after July 1944. Narrated time: 1922.
| resolutely took her life with […] poison | The events of this chapter are closely modeled on the final weeks in the life of TM’s sister Carla Mann (1881–1910), who poisoned herself in her mother’s house in Polling in 1910. |
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| | French: derogatory term for a German. |
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| | Carla Mann did indeed kill herself with cyanide, though in the context of 1946, it’s hard not to also think of the high-ranking Nazis who killed themselves with cyanide pills. |
| Je t’aime […] mais je t’aime | French: “I love you. Once, I cheated on you, but I love you.” The actual wording of Clara Mann’s suicide note. |
| | French: “desolated.” Z. is referring to the fact that the phrase je suis désolé is often used euphemistically to simply mean “I am sorry” and therefore does not necessarily imply the emotional devastation Henri is presumably trying to evoke here. |
| | French: “And now—just like that!” |
| a divorced Romanian authoress from Transylvania | Ms. Binder-Majoresku, whose name doesn’t appear until 431/595 |