Contents

1 Synopsis 2 Structure 2.1 Narrator 3 Style 3.1 English translations from the original German 4 Political Implications 4.1 'Healthy Nations' 5 Story 6 References

Synopsis

Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus documents the life of its fictional hero, Adrian Leverkühn, from his early childhood to his early death. Leverkühn--a musical prodigy, an early twentieth-century German--intentionally plays out his own life-story along mythic lines resembling the German medieval morality tale of Faust, who sold himself to Mephistopheles. As Leverkühn, impassioned by demons, develops artistically toward a fated reckoning day, German society simultaneously develops politically toward its catastrophic, fascistic fate.

Structure

Doktor Faustus consists of a vast array of characters, fables, world events, theories, memories, ideas, and places, sometimes directly and sometimes tangentially linked to the story of Adrian Leverkühn's life. A single narrator character threads these items together to the best of his ability and energy.

Narrator

(Serenus Zeitblom...)

Style

English translations from the original German

1. [Helen Lowe-Porter] translated many of Mann's works, including Doktor Faustus, almost contemporaneously to their composition. Mann completed Doctor Faustus in 1947, and in 1948 [Alfred A. Knopf] published Lowe-Porter's English translation (referenced below). It is quite serviceable, and if in certain instances Lowe-Porter's rendering becomes convoluted or arcane, it yet preserves most deeply the linguistic spirit of the author's own era (a stylistic sensiblitity so difficult to reproduce in subsequent generations).
2. [John E. Woods]' translation of 1997 is a competent, intellible, English version. Necessarily, in achieving its goal of unified readability by English speakers of its own generation, it sacrifices a good deal in those sections of the text where characters speak in Early New High German.

Political Implications

To understand the politics of Doktor Faustus one must read it himself. However, the complexity of Mann's omniform artistic program--while it approximates well the multifarious reality of political forces resulting from the Second Industrial Revolution-- by its intricacy assumes the risk of incomprehensibility. Here follows, therefore, a clarifying introduction to the political themes a reader will encounter in Doktor Faustus.

'Healthy Nations'

By what criteria can one judge a nation healthy or unhealthy? Any analytic technique here must have methods for viewing the nation in both granular detail and abstract overview. Top-down, one might follow The Republic's strategy of identifying a singular force (in that book, "Justice") which completely embodies the political good; then analyze the nation's current status regarding, and policies promoting, that one Idea. A top-down approach in 2005 might measure Gross National Product, or perhaps Gross National Happiness, tracking the country's percentage increase year-by-year in that index. Bottom-up, alternatively, one could interview or poll inhabitants from a sample of demographic swatches and, after accumulating enough case studies, make judgments about the nation's overall health. Mann works the question from both ends, interleaving them. Top-down, the narrator, Zeitblom, directly states his own judgments on Germany at regular intervals; yet bottom-up, characters from hundreds of niches in German society are given ample room to speak their minds. Unifying these two approaches is an ever-present intuitive sense that a nation's general health might consist rootly in its moral health.

Story

(Story summary...)

References

1. Doktor Faustus (German language Wikipedia entry)
2. Mann, Thomas; translation by Lowe-Porter, H.T. (Helen Tracy). Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend. Alfred A. Knopf, 1948. ISBN 0-679-60042-6.
3. Mann, Thomas; translation by Woods, John E. (John Edwin). Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend. Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. ISBN 0-375-40054-0.
4. Reed, T.J. (Terence James). Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition. Oxford University Press, 1974. ISBN 0-198-15742-8 (cased). ISBN 0-198-15747-9 (paperback).