Realism Plus Mythology: A Reconsideration of the Problem of "Verfall" in Thomas Mann's"Buddenbrooks"Author(s): Richard SheppardSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Oct., 1994), pp. 916-941Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3733902Accessed: 12/05/2009 00:33

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REALISM PLUS MYTHOLOGY: A RECONSIDERATION

OF THE PROBLEM OF 'VERFALL' IN THOMAS MANN'S

BUDDENBROOKS

On the whole, Buddenbrooks has been read as a classic example of literary realism. In this article I analyse the mythological (that is to say, non-realist) dimension which interpenetrates with the novel's realistic surface and show how the Buddenbrooks' decline is ultimately the work of Fate, despite the plethora of realistic motives which are also at work. In doing this, I show how Mann fuses mythological reference with a complex of interrelated leitmotifs, a technique which is more commonly associated with his Modernist works. I shall also argue that his use of mythology generates a theological debate within Buddenbrooks which has a direct bearing on a central concern of contemporary feminist criticism.

Buddenbrooks and the Limitations of Realist Readings

Nobody would deny that Buddenbrooks is, first and foremost, a realist novel, and I am most certainly not that nobody, given the authority of a critical tradition which has not only established the novel's 'autobiographical and contextual aspects'l but also identified those textual2 and narratological features which make it 'one of the supreme achievements of European novel realism'.3 Indeed, this consensus seems so secure that Buddenbrooks could recently be cited as the paradigmatic 'traditional' German novel of the nineteenth century in contrast with such Modernist 'traveling narratives' as Kafka's Der Verschollene, Musil's Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, and Doblin's montage novels.4

Nevertheless, one does not have to look very far in the immense critical literature surrounding Buddenbrooks to sense that a large number of commentators are not altogether securely at home in their realistically interpreted world. Over and over again, one finds critics either missing aspects which one might legitimately expect to be present in a realist novel, or sensing dimensions which one would not expect to find in a realist novel. Klaus-Jiirgen Rothenburg, for example, in a book whose title states the author's assumptions very clearly,5 misses 'Landschaftsschilderung' from the novel (pp. 8o-90) and calls this a 'Versaumnis' (p. 87). Furst, too, comments that 'external description [... ] is surprisingly [my emphasis] sparse in this novel, certainly compared to the dense proliferation of detail characteristic of Balzac and Zola' (p. 323). And it is a commonplace to remark that Mann never once names Liibeck as the setting for the novel, even though a plethora of other details indicates

1 See Lilian R. Furst,, 'Rereading Buddenbrooks', German Life and Letters, 44 (1990-9I), 31 7-29 (especially pp. 317-18).

2Hugh Ridley, Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 84, 104.

3 Martin Swales, 'Symbolic Patterns or Realistic Plenty? Thomas Mann and the European Novel', Publications of the English Goethe Society, 60 (1989-9o), 8o-95 (p. 8o; see also pp. 83-86).

4 Mark Anderson, 'Kafka and New York: Notes on a Traveling Narrative', in Modernity and the Text: Revisions of German Modernism, ed. by Andreas Huyssen and David Bathrick (New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 142-61 (pp. I52-53).

5 Klaus-Jiirgen Rothenburg, Das Problem des Realismus bei Thomas Mann (Cologne and Vienna: B6hlau, 1969).

RICHARD SHEPPARD 9I7

that that town is the Buddenbrook habitat.6 Conversely, even though Eberhard Lammert7 clearly does not want to see Buddenbrooks as a 'mythische Erzahlung' (p. 224) and contrasts Mann's early naturalism with his later 'Hinneigung zu mythologischem Erzahlen' (p. 223), he has a very acute sense of the inexplicability of the process of'Verfall' which is central to the novel, an insight which is confirmed by the multitude of causes which critics have seen at work in this process. Like the mysterious 'Eingangsfrage' and the enigmatic 'SchluBsentenz', there is something strangely puzzling about the novel as a whole (pp. 205-06). Similarly, T.J. Reed, for whom Buddenbrooks 'comes closest of all Mann's works to fulfilling the basic realist aim of rendering a recognizable reality',8 senses that Gerda does not quite fit that reality (p. 58, n. 29) and sees, in a highly suggestive passage, that reality in the novel is not a simple, but a multi-levelled phenomenon: 'But this ironic revelation of the reality beneath the religious superstructure is for [Mann] only a first stage: socio-economic reality is itself in turn a superstructure, beneath which forces yet more "real" are at work' (pp. 68-69). The inverted commas around the final 'real' are very revealing, for they tacitly point to realms beyond or below a 'recognizable reality', to realms which, in the next paragraph, are described as 'the irresistible force of decline', 'less tangible' causes, 'Fate' in the 'outward dress of commercial occasion', and 'decline [... ] determined by forces to which morality is irrelevant' (p. 68). Ridley ends his study by conceding that Buddenbrooks is more than a straightforward, nineteenth-century novel (p. o05); Jochen Vogt, following Lammert,9 begins from an appreciation of the novel's realism, but rapidly moves to a much more metaphysical reading. Its basic 'Intention' is 'schopenhauerisch' (p. 8 ); the 'Liibecker Topographie und Sozialhistorie' go hand in hand with 'Schopenhauers Weltdeutung und das Dekadenz-Syndrom in Wagners Nachfolge' (p. I 6); the realistic detail points beyond itself (p. I25); the narrator is not the omniscient one of so much nineteenth-century fiction (p. I28); as the novel progresses, it becomes less and less a historical chronicle and less and less concerned with everyday, recogniz- able, outer reality (pp. 130-31). Furst, while firmly rejecting 'an extravagant post-structuralist reading that would conceive the novel purely as an amalgam of verbal, narrational, and communicative strategies wholly divorced from any anterior reality' (p. 3 18), nevertheless identifies a range of features which bring the novel into the Modernist and even, almost, the Post-modernist ambit (p. 320).

But it is perhaps the Buddenbrooks-Handbuch of I98810 which puts the largest question-mark over a straightforwardly realist understanding of the novel, perhaps because all its contributors work in universities in Australia and New Zealand and so can better distance themselves from established European views. Manfred Jiirgensen's subtle and systematic analysis of the extent to which Buddenbrooks departs from the monologic form of classic European realism (pp. o09-27), and appreciation of the active role played by the elements (p. I 2 ); Ernst Keller's careful

6 A similar phenomenon occurs in Joseph Conrad's classically Modernist novel Heart of Darkness (written 1898-99, around the same time as Buddenbrooks), where the narrator never once refers to the Dark Continent as Africa.

7 Eberhard Lammert, 'Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks', in Der deutsche Roman vom Barock zur Gegenwart, ed. by Benno von Wiese, 2 vols (Dusseldorf: Bagel, 1963), II, I90-233.

8 T.J. Reed, Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, I974), p. 37. 9 Jochen Vogt, Thomas Mann: 'Buddenbrooks' (Munich: Fink, 1983), p. 97. 10 Buddenbrooks-Handbuch, ed. by Ken Moulden and Gero von Wilpert (Stuttgart: Kroner, 988).

Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks'

refusal to speak of the causes of the Buddenbrooks' decline, concomitant insistence that he is offering only a symptomatology (pp. 158, 162-63), and elaboration of Gosch's initial description of Gerda (pp. 191-92); James Northcote-Bade's pene- trating account of the contradictory nature of Mann's retrospective statements about Buddenbrooks - these arejust three examples of well-informed contributors to the Handbuch sensing that the dominant consensus has its limitations and that a very different kind of novel may lie behind Buddenbrooks's beguilingly realistic surface.

Accordingly, it is highly appropriate, given what I shall argue below, that it was a scholar who is best known for his work on Baroque literature, Klaus Giinther Just, who should have made explicit what is more or less implicit in so many studies of Mann's novel. Buddenbrooks may derive in the first place from the nineteenth-century tradition of realism, but it also points forward to twentieth-century Modernism."1 I now develop that contention by dwelling on two largely neglected aspects of Buddenbrooks which, while not peculiar to Modernist prose fiction, are highly typical of much Modernist literature in general and such centrally Modernist texts by Mann in particular as Der Tod in Venedig, Felix Krull, Der Zauberberg, and Doktor Faustus. The first is technical and relates to the interweaving of leitmotifs with mythological references.12 The second concerns content and involves the subversion of an apparently stable order by forces which, for the time being, I shall call 'metaphysical'.13 In doing this, I am not, of course, trying to deny the realist consensus. But I am trying to bring into relief aspects of the novel which realist readings ignore, relegate to a subsidiary place, or neutralize in various ways.14

Mythology and Leitmotifs Where the importance of myth for Mann's Modernist works is accepted, its importance for Buddenbrooks is not. Accordingly, a major book on mythology in the modern novel mentions Buddenbrooks only once, and then as an example of a novel whose author 'has successfully managed without myths'.l5 Of the 474 titles of secondary works on Buddenbrooks listed in the Handbuch (pp. 366-93), only five, four of which are dissertations (LI37, L40o, L412, L4I7, Lo56), involve the concept of myth. Of these, three are general studies of Mann and one simply a study of the Wagnerian myths in Mann's early work as a whole. Moreover, it is so uncommon for a critic writing on Buddenbrooks to pick up any mythological reference there that

11 Klaus GintherJust, Von der Griinderzeit bis zur Gegenwart: Geschichte der deutschen Literatur seit i87i (Berne and Munich: Francke, I973), p. I94. 12 Mann's use of leitmotifs in Buddenbrooks has, of course, been extensively documented, but the

interweaving of leitmotifs and mythological reference has not. Thus, Keller's survey essay on leitmotifs in the Handbuch (pp. 129-43) focuses first on their descriptive, characterological function (pp. I30-33) and then on the way in which they denote the process of 'Verfall' at a realistic level (pp. 134-43). Indeed, citing two previous critics, he sees that 'gelb' functions 'als Signal fur Tod und Verfall' and even connects it with Griinlich (p. 134). But he misses the incidence of grey and purple completely and he nowhere makes the connection between leitmotifs, the process of'Verfall', and the use of mythological figures and references. 13 Other major Modernist texts in which this process is central include Andre Gide's L'Immoraliste, Hugo

von Hofmannsthal's Ein Brief, Alfred Kubin's Die andere Seite, Andrey Bely's Petrburg, Thomas Mann's Der Tod in Venedig, D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love, Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausee, and Albert Camus's L 'Etranger. 14 See, for example, Reed's remarks on the set-piece descriptions of minor characters (p. 58). s5 JohnJ. White, Mythology in the Modem Novel: A Study ofPrefigurative Techniques (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, I971), p. I i6, n. 94.

9I8

RICHARD SHEPPARD 919

Keller, when discussing Gosch's initial reaction to Gerda in the Handbuch (pp. I91- 92), cites only two other critics when doing so (L28o, L5o6), even though the references in question are easily the most obvious ones in the novel.

The major mythological complex in the novel is created by means of the colour grey, female triads, references to activities such as sewing and knitting, and the use of the leitmotif of the clock/watch/chain. Grey is probably one of the three most frequent colours to be used implicitly or explicitly. It occurs for the first time on the first page in respect of Tony's 'graublauen Augen' (p. 9)16 and recurs in increasingly darker shadings throughout the first two Parts (when the Buddenbrook world is still relatively 'heil'). OldJohann and his wife are wearing clothes involving a light shade of grey when we first meet them (p. Io). Pastor Wunderlich has cheerful grey eyes (p. I8). Some of the writing in the Buddenbrook family chronicle has been executed 'mit blaBgrauer Tinte' (p. 57). Gotthold Buddenbrook wears a hat which is of an unqualified grey (p. 74). But after Part ii, when the Buddenbrooks' 'Verfall' acceler- ates, the colour is used repeatedly, often in connection with other significant leitmotifs, so that the following examples arejust a fairly random selection. Griinlich wears 'graue[n] Zwirnhandschuhe[n]' (that is, gloves which have been woven) and a 'hellgrauen Hut' when he arrives in the Buddenbrook garden (p. 95). When we first meet Klothilde (p. 15), her hair is simply described as 'aschig', but thereafter the colour grey is used repeatedly in connection with it (for instance, pp. 179, 245, 448, 541). The Konsul's hair and beard (which are blond when we first meet him

(p. 1)) have 'ergraut' by the time of Griinlich's financial collapse (p. 2 I1). Ida Jungmann, whom we first see holding Klothilde by the hand (p. 15), turns grey with preternatural rapidity (pp. 233, 246, 460). Just before young Johann's death, his wife is wearing a grey dress (p. 245). When Justus Kr6ger, whose family's decline parallels that of the Buddenbrooks, comes to hear his brother-in-law's will read out and he is described for the first time, prominence is given to the fact that his beard is grey (p. 250). Gerda's father has a 'graue[n] Spitzbart' (p. 293). The drawing-room of Thomas's and Gerda's first residence is decked out 'in grauem Tuche' (p. 299). Pastor Tiburtius has 'kleine, graue Augen' (p. 398). Christian wears a grey hat (p. 403). When Thomas decides to move, he buys an 'altergraues [... ] Haus' from 'eine steinalteJungfer' (p. 420), the 'graues Gemauer' (p. 424) of which he then has torn down. Hugo Weinschenk's hair is starting to turn grey at the beginning of Part viii (p. 438) and is completely grey after his release from prison (p. 64I). The old Konsulin visits Erika Weinschenk's fated home dressed 'in grau und schwarz gestreifter Seide' (p. 448), that is, a dress involving the same colours she was wearing just before her husband's death. Thomas gradually grows grey as he loses his vitality (p. 466). Kai Graf von M6lln's hands are 'von unveranderlich hellgrauer Farbe' and his father has an 'ungeheuren ergrauten Riibezahlbart[e]' (p. 5I6). When the old Konsulin dies, she is attended by one of the Grey Sisters (p. 560), as is Thomas (p. 683), and her funeral cortege moves through 'die grauen und feuchten StraBen' (p. 591). The Russian cigarettes to which Thomas is addicted and which must, in realistic terms, have contributed to his death, are said to produce 'einen

16 All page references to Buddenbrooks within the text are to the first volume of Gesammelte Werke in zwilf Banden (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1960).

920 Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks'

hellgrauen Strom' and in the very next paragraph, those clouds are implicitly linked with the clouds which will increasingly blot out the sun for the rest of the novel, turning the whole urban ambience grey (p. 6I6). Thus, when Thomas visits Traveminde, everything is said to be 'in Grau gehiillt' (p. 666). During the winter before Thomas's death, everything has become 'grauer, zerkliifteter und por6ser' (p. 672) in the grey-gabled town. When Hanno's schoolday is described at length in Part xi, Chapter 2, everything is shrouded in such dense (grey) fog at the start of the chapter, that he can barely see a thing (p. 705), and when he eventually gets to school, we hear that one of its presiding divinities, Dr Mantelsack of the 'Jupi- terbart', has 'ergraute[s] Haar' and is dressed in a 'Gehrock aus grauem, weichem Stoff' (p. 724).

All this greyness can, of course, be accounted for in terms of descriptive realism, but Mann also exploits another meaning of the German words 'Grauen' ('terror') and 'grauen' ('to feel fear/terror') in such a way as to indicate that the colour grey is intimately linked with a process of inner collapse. When youngJohann is faced with the (diabolic) Griinlich and Kesselmeyer, he experiences 'Grauen' (p. 229), an emotion which breaks the emotional mould of the novel's first two Parts. When the doomed Hanno has his nightmare, the same emotion recurs and the child's cry is said to be 'ein vor Grauen fiberlauter, entriisteter und verzweifelter Protest' (p. 462). A page later, Ida Jungmann says that some of Hanno's favourite poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn are 'graulich'. Hanno reacts to the voice of the dentist's parrot 'mit einem Gemisch von Liebe und Grauen' (p. 512). Hanno's nightmares, related to his 'Zahnbeschwerden', cause him to start up 'als geschahe etwas unsaglich Grauenhaftes' (p. 514). Gerda's and von Throta's putative and probably uncon- summated love-affair causes Thomas to experience 'Grauen' (p. 646). Hanno's alarm-clock, which, by Chapter 2 of Part xi, is ticking out his life, is said half jokingly and half ominously to ring 'pflichttreu und grausam' (p. 700). In other words, as the focus of Buddenbrooks shifts from outer to inner events and from the relatively carefree, uncomplicated existence of the two older Buddenbrooks to the increasingly tortured pathology of Thomas and his family, the greyness, which even in the novel's first half was connected with disease and death, spreads. During the second half of the novel that greyness becomes so intertwined with a dark sense of primal terror that it ceases to be a mere descriptive detail and becomes a fateful and symbolic leitmotif.

Moreover, greyness is increasingly linked with the triads of women who appear in the novel. The very first chapter opens with a partially formed triad (the old Konsulin, her daughter-in-law, and the eight-year-old Tony) and closes with another (Ida, Klothilde, and Tony), and already, as I have said, greyness is present in both groupings, albeit in a muted or implicit way. Gotthold's three unmarried daughters, whom Ridley, sensing that they are more than just realistic characters, calls 'harpy-like' (Ridley, p. 32) and who become increasingly malicious and facially similar (p. 530), appear regularly throughout the novel. Tony has three close female friends in Sesemi Weichbrodt's 'Pension', all of whom will play direct or indirect parts in the Buddenbrooks' 'Verfall'. The Buddenbrooks have three long-standing female 'helpers', Ida, Sesemi, and her sister Madame Kethelsen, the first of whom is continually associated with greyness. The chapter which ends in Johann's death opens with his wife surrounded by three young women, Clara, Klothilde, and Tony, two of whom have spent the day knitting and are explicitly associated with the

RICHARD SHEPPARD

colour grey (pp. 244-45).17 When Hugo Weinschenk arrives to formalize the 'zarte Verbindung, [... ] die sich zwischen [Tonys] Tochter und dem Direktor [that is, Weinschenk] angesponnen [my emphasis] hatte', he is received by 'drei Damen' (p. 439). The eight women who are alive at the end of the novel include two female Buddenbrook triads (Tony, her daughter, and granddaughter on the one hand and Gotthold's three daughters on the other). Moreover, on at least four important occasions in the novel, we see women sewing, knitting, or darning. The Konsulin has been doing embroidery prior to Griinlich's advent (p. 93) and is doing crochet-work when Permaneder first arrives (p. 324). Klothilde and Clara (who knit before the Konsul's death) are also knitting just before the 1848 Revolution comes to Liibeck (p. 179). Ida does so much darning (p. 461) that Tony remarks,just before Hanno is seen to be overcome with 'Grauen' for the first time: 'Du stopfst, Ida. Merkwiirdig, ich kenne dich eigentlich gar nicht anders!' (p. 461).

However, Ida performs one other significant action in the novel. When Hanno is subjected to his first public ordeal, she plays with her watch-chain (p. 484) and nods to him as though tacitly reminding him that his time is running out. Consequently, it is no accident that the chapter immediately following her dismissal should open with the sound of an alarm-clock and repeated references to time hastening past, and that Hanno should now, for the first time, be seen wearing the 'diinne goldene Uhrkette' (pp. 704-05) which he has inherited from his male ancestors and which is similar to the golden chain worn by Pfiffi (p. 446). Ida herself may have been dismissed, but a significant leitmotifwith which she is associated remains.

It is not difficult to see the cumulative mythological significance of this wealth of apparently incidental realistic detail. Throughout Buddenbrooks, we encounter rea- listic characters who simultaneously function as the signifiers of two mythological triads which the novel often conflates in various ways. First, the Moirae (Fates) of classical mythology/Norns of Nordic mythology; second, the Graiae (Phorcids) of classical mythology, otherwise known as the Grey Sisters because they were grey-haired from birth. It is very important to realize, however, that in pre- Christian mythology, both the Moirae (Clotho, Atropos, and Lachesis) and the Norns (Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld) were ambiguous and not wholly negative beings. They were both good and evil, linked with birth (creation) and death (destruction) inasmuch as they spun, measured, and cut the thread of human life. Indeed, they needed to be present at marriages for the union to be a happy one. In contrast, the Graiae, who had only one eye and one tooth between them, were much more unequivocally negative in their nature, being, along with the three Gorgons and the dragon Ladon, the daughters ofCeto (a sea monster) and Phorcys (a sea god who personifies the stormy, destructive, evil side of the sea).

These two mythological triads give significance to several apparently incidental details in Buddenbrooks, though it needs to be stressed that mythological reference and realistic detail are interwoven less systematically and therefore less flawlessly than they would be in Mann's later, Modernist narratives.Just as the Moirae/Norns

17 Interestingly enough, much is made of the fact throughout the novel that the old Konsulin, who is also present on this occasion, refuses to let her hair be seen to turn grey and is, as far as I can see, only twice associated with the word 'grau' (pp. 245, 448) until after her death. In one sense this detail is simply a realistic symptom of her vanity, but an another it connects with her refusal to allow the Buddenbrook family customs and the theology which legitimizes them (see below, p. 936) be eroded by everything which greyness symbolizes in this novel.

92I

922 Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks'

are associated with both good and evil, so Ida Jungmann is both over-protective nurse and, with her general boniness (pp. 15, 247), premature greyness, and watch and chain, Lachesis the measurer, a harbinger of death (KonsulJohann dies on page 249).18 Analogously, the Grey Sister at the death-beds of the Konsulin and Thomas is both a soothing presence and an agent of death. Just as Atropos, 'she who cannot be avoided', is, in some versions of the myth, the smallest and most terrible of the Moirae, so Pfiffi Buddenbrook, linked symbolically with Ida/Lachesis by her golden chain (p. 446), is the smallest and most malevolent of Gotthold's three daughters. Similarly, of the three long-standing female family friends, it is the dwarflike Sesemi who, unwittingly and indirectly, causes the most damage to the Buddenbrooks and has, incidentally, the last, ironic word in the novel. We can also sense the presence of Phorcys both early on in the novel (p. I43), when wind-lashed waves are closely associated with forbidden passion, and near its end (pp. 671-72), when a vision of the sea plays a part in Thomas's inner 'Verfall'. Just as Phorcys's three daughters have only one eye between them, so Gotthold's three daughters appear to have only one set of pince-nez between them (p. 446), and it is perhaps because Hanno can see more deeply into the mythological strata of existence than anyone else in the novel that he is either unable or unwilling to call them by their 'realistic' names (p. 422). Thus when, during his first nightmares, Hanno is said to emit 'ein vor Grauen iiberlauter, entriisteter und verzweifelter Protest' (p. 462), one could read 'Grauen' either as the dative singular of the German word meaning 'terror' or as the dative plural of a German adjectival noun meaning 'grey ones'. It is as though Hanno, with his live sense of the reality of the mythological (pp. 462-65), suffers nightmares because of his awareness of being surrounded by the Grey Women who have brought him into being, are looking after him, and will kill him prematurely. It is surely significant that neither of the major female triads is present at the most corrosively disastrous of the Buddenbrook marriages, that between Thomas and Gerda, which takes place in Amsterdam and about which we hear nothing (p. 297), a strange omission in a novel so full of lengthy accounts of family festivals.

Finally, the Greek XXWkf0tv means 'to spin', and where, according to Paulys Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft,19 Clotho's function is well- defined by virtue of her name, the functions of the other two Moirae are often less well distinguished. Thus, it is entirely appropriate that of all the grey women in Buddenbrooks who knit, sew, and the like, only one, Klothilde, the most consistently grey woman in the novel apart from Ida, should have a name which directly recalls her Greek archetype (Klotho in German). Moreover, Klothilde, whom critics, like the Buddenbrooks themselves, often disregard as a peripheral oddity, graphically personifies the fate which overtakes the family as a whole. At the start of Part II, Chapter I, she is reading a book called Blind, taub, stumm und dennoch glickselig (p. 93). At the level of realism, this is clearly some kind of moral or devotional work, but at another level, its title involves three characteristics which typify Fate. These will be recalled almost verbatim later on, when we see the 'Ratsdiener' in their 'Dreispitz' [my emphasis] on their way to fetch Thomas to the ceremony which will mark both

18 Ida's first name, incidentally, is also suggestive of Iduna, the keeper of the apples which guaranteed the eternal youth of the Nordic gods - a highly ironic association, given her surname and the fact that she presides over the decline of a firm which has deified itself and suffers from this hubris. 19 Neue Bearbeitung, begun by Georg Wissowa and others, ed. by Wilhelm Kroll (Stuttgart: J. B.

Metzlerische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1932), entry headed 'Moira (spinnend)', col. 2481.

RICHARD SHEPPARD 923

the height of his political career and the beginning of his personal decline: 'Sie gehen wie das Schicksal: ernst, stumm, verschlossen, ohne nach rechts oder links zu sehen, mit gesenkten Augen...' (p. 47).20 Like Johann and his wife, Klothilde fatally misjudges Griinlich, calling him 'ein guter Mensch' (p. Ioo). Like the family as a whole, she consumes obsessively but grows no fatter. Towards the end of the novel, after Thomas's death, she could be speaking of her entire clan when, unable to weep, she says of herself: 'Ich habe keine Tranen mehr.. .' (p. 687) (see note 20). As with the Buddenbrooks as a whole, the sap of life has left her. Thus, it is profoundly ironic that the Buddenbrooks, even Hanno (p. 628), should treat her with mockery and derision, for she will survive when most of the rest of them are dead or ruined, and it is the powers of which she is a signifier that govern their lives.

In the middle of Buddenbrooks, Klothilde leaves the Buddenbrook home for a 'wohlfeile Pension' (p. 305) and is finally secured a place in a semi-religious institution. It is as though the Buddenbrooks are unconsciously trying to deal with the signified (Fate) by manipulating its signifier (Klothilde). But almost exactly at the time she leaves the foreground of the novel, Gerda, an equally mythological and even more complex figure, takes up residence within the Buddenbrook household: ironically, for at the realistic level the 'Mutter zukiinftiger Buddenbrooks' (p. 304) is anything but fertile; Gerda's very name combines references to a classical fertility goddess, Gaea (Gaia, the pre-hellenic Magna Mater of the Eastern Mediterranean who, as Demeter, is a triune goddess), and the Nordic earth-goddess Erda who is, in turn, closely associated with the Norns, being their mother. When Gerda comes back to Liibeck, she is referred to by Makler Gosch as 'Here und Aphrodite, Briinnhilde und Melusine in einer Person' (p. 295). In the Handbuch (p. 192), Keller

points out that Hera was simultaneously the sister and husband of Zeus and the daughter of Cronos; he registers that, like Brfinnhilde, she initiates the 'Sippen- dammerung der Buddenbrooks'; he links the epithet Aphrodite with the Venus Anadyomene of Hoffstede's poems (p. 35) and the Tannhauser legend; he sees a direct parallel between her origins in Amsterdam and the water-fairy Melusine of the fourteenth-century prose romance of the same name. But Gosch's epithets are even more mythologically resonant than Keller realizes. It is also important to remember that Hera and Zeus banish their father Cronos, that after her marriage to Zeus Hera bathes regularly in the Spring of Canathus in order to renew her virginity, and that she, like Gaea, is another transformation of the Magna Mater. Moreover, like Melusine, Aphrodite is connected with water and fertility in that she is born from the sea and causes grass and flowers to grow wherever she goes. Finally, the first halfofBriinnhilde's name connects her phonetically with the German word 'Brunnen' ('spring', 'fountain'), and in Wagner's Ring, her act of rebellion sets offa train of events which, like Zeus's and Hera's expulsion of Cronos, culminates in the destruction of the patriarchal Valhalla and leaves Erda as the presiding divinity. It should also not be forgotten that Gerda is proficient with a bow, albeit one which is used to play the violin, and this, together with other attributes, associates her with yet another triune goddess, Artemis, the virgin huntress and moon-goddess of whom the Moirae are aspects.

20 A study of the parenthetical'...' in Buddenbrooks would reveal that this recurrent punctuation mark has several interesting functions. It can prevent closure, leave an informational gap, generate a sense of irony, or prod the reader into asking questions and so, in general, is a way of suggesting that more may be going on under the surface of the narrative than meets the realistically attuned eye.

924 Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks'

This mythological complex brings a series of details surrounding Gerda's person and actions into significant relief. After her arrival, the sense of time ('chronos') which has prevailed in the first half of the novel is increasingly eroded. She mocks Tony's pious suggestion that she should give thanks daily to the (patriarchal) God of Christianity (p. 297); she is instinctively drawn to the inappropriately named Christian (p. 451); she is unwilling to read from the Bible, especially the chapter dealing with the birth of Christ (p. 607). Just as, in a legend which Mann was to exploit in a later novel, hapless men are held unwittingly in enchanted mountains by supernatural seductresses for seven years when they believe that they have been there for a much shorter period, so Gerda keeps Thomas on their honeymoon for seven rather than the intended two months (p. 298). When she appears in the dusk at the end of Part v (p. 304), she is robed, like the Moirae or triune moon-goddess, in white. She prefers darkness to light and does not like going out on a Sunday (p. 343). Nevertheless, she comes to life once the Buddenbrooks, in the company of Permaneder, reach a 'Quelle' ('spring', 'source') and subtly encourages him to propose (p. 350). She does not age, and when we learn that, we also hear that people connect her with water by saying of her 'Stille Wasser waren oft tief' (pp. 643-44). Like the moon, she is cold and pale, and even after giving birth to Hanno, she retains a virginal quality. After the death of Thomas, with whom she has had more of a sisterly than a wifely relationship, she moves to a villa outside the town, 'vorm Tore, im Griinen' (p. 697), a description which is so evocative of two of Schubert's best-known Lieder21 that one instinctively asks oneself whether her new home is 'am Brunnen'. After Hanno's death, she returns to Amsterdam, that northern counter- part to Venice. Having married her, Thomas takes up residence in the Breite Strasse, the broad way on which Gotthold and his daughters live and which will lead to the destruction of the Buddenbrook family; he then moves to the Fischergrube, where, presumably, Gerda will feel more at home in a house built on the site of one which belonged to a 'steinalteJungfer' ('very ancient maiden lady/virgin'). It is no accident that the chapter which ends in Thomas's terminal illness should begin 'auf dem Marktplatz [... ] um den Brunnen herum' (p. 673) and involve a detailed description of the fishwives and their wares. For Thomas has, like the knight Raymond of the romance, unwittingly married a woman who is not completely human (a 'fish-wife') and who, having played a central part in his family's 'Verfall', will depart for more congenial surroundings once her work is done.

But the symbolism surrounding Gerda goes even further than that. On the outing with Permaneder, she wears a purple dress (p. 343), the canonical colour of Lent and Passiontide. This colour then recurs in the irises which surround the 'Springbrun- nen' of Thomas's new house and the 'Johannisbeerstraucher' (p. 428) just after Gerda has been referred to as 'eine Fee'. It is also the colour of the bands on the silken hat worn by Tony at the beginning of the process which culminates in Thomas's disastrous decision to buy the P6ppenrade crop (p. 45 I). Most important, it occurs twice in the passage leading up to Thomas's reading of Schopenhauer, the experience whose final effect is to destroy the factitious sense of selfhood which derives to such an extent from Thomas's conformity to family tradition: Es war der Hochsommer desJahres vierundsiebzig. SilberweiBe, rundliche Wolken zogen am tiefblauen Himmel iiber die zierliche Symmetrie des Stadtgartens hin, in den Zweigen des

21 Das Lied im Griinen (D. 917) and Der Lindenbaum (from Eine Winterreise (D. 91 I) ).

RICHARD SHEPPARD

WalnuBbaumes zwitscherten die V6gel mit fragender Betonung, der Springbrunnen plat- scherte inmitten des Kranzes ['wreath'/'garland'] von hohen, lilafarbenen Schwertlilien, der ihn umgab, und der Duft des Flieders ['lilac'] vermischte sich leider mit dem Sirupgeruch, den ein warmer Luftzug von der nahen Zuckerbrennerei heriibertrug. (p. 653, my emphasis).

After that, the colour purple appears, as far as I can see, only once more: in the violets around Thomas's coffin (p. 689).22 If one then remembers that Iris was Hera's messenger in Greek mythology, and that both the moon and the 'Springbrunnen' help hypnotize Thomas into buying the P6ppenrade crop (p. 472), it is clear that, in an extremely subliminal way, Gerda-as-signifier, like the Moirae/ Graiae figures with whom she is variously connected, has played a central and more than naturalistic part in the Buddenbrooks' 'Verfall'. As if to make that mytho- logical link unmistakable, two of the grey women, Ida and Clara, are actually looking for 'Veilchen'just before Griinlich arrives (p. 93), as though in anticipation of those deathly powers which are signified by Gerda and which will, finally, kill Thomas, subvert the firm and family which he has made his all-too-human gods, and invalidate the religion which has legitimized his family's way of life.

Diabolic Figures The Buddenbrooks are not only subject to assault by powers signified by female mythological figures, they also come under attack by characters who are clearly diabolic but have never been recognized as such: Griinlich (whom the Handbuch discusses in purely realistic terms) and Kesselmeyer (whom the Handbuch barely mentions). Their advent is presaged in Parts I and ii, and although they mysteri- ously disappear after PartIv, Chapter 9, they live on in leitmotifs which recur significantly throughout the rest of the novel. Just as the leitmotif'grey' signals the growing, negative influence of the Moirae/Graiae and that of 'purple' signals the power of Gerda-as-signifier, so a host of others testify to the pervasive power of two apparently minor figures who, on a realist reading of the novel, seem to be nothing more than a pair of grotesque, Dickensian villains. As Reed clearly saw (pp. 63-64), a second reading of the initial Griinlich episode enables us to perceive clues which ought, on the first reading, to have alerted us to the fact that Griinlich is an extremely accomplished con-man. Further readings, I suggest, reveal that he has an even more sinister side to him than that.

His arrival in June 1845 is prefigured by the 'Reseden' ('mignonettes') in the Buddenbrooks' garden (p. 94), a herb whose highly-scented yellowish-green flowers relate directly to his name and to the colour of the suit he is wearing (p. 95). Apart from the 'Zwirnhandschuhe' (p. 95) which link him with the weavings of the Moirae, his other distinguishing marks are 'spirliche[s] Haupthaar', a 'rosig' complexion, 'goldgelb' mutton-chop whiskers which we later see him fingering (p. I6I), and check trousers ('Beinkleider') (p. I99). After reference has been made to those side-whiskers at least three times (pp. 95, I02, I44), we also learn, at the precise juncture when Tony's dowry is being settled and the pious Konsul Buddenbrook is seen to lie in the process (p. I6I), that they are pointed. Griinlich is also uncannily well-informed about the Buddenbrook family, particularly over matters theological,

22 The significance of the purple flowers is, of course, accentuated by the paucity of natural imagery in Buddenbrooks (Rothenberg, p. 8 ).

925

926 Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall'in 'Buddenbrooks'

for he can use the rhetoric of Providentialism so effectively that his words sound like a parody of the Konsul's religiosity (pp. 96-97).

After Tony has rejected Griinlich's suit and gone to Travemiinde, she thinks that she has eluded his power to such an extent that she can suppress all memory of him (p. 124). But on looking out of her window on the first morning after her arrival, she sees the sea 'die rechts im Bogen von der mecklenburgischen Kiiste begrenzt war und sich in grinlichen [my emphasis] und blauen Streifen erstreckte, bis sie mit dem dunstigen Horizont zusammenfloB' (p. 126) - one of the two instances in the book where Griinlich's name is used as a colour adjective. Shortly after that, we hear that the 'Seegras' which grows everywhere and with which, significantly, Tony's mat- tress has been stuffed (p. I27), is 'gelbgriin' (p. I37). Towards the end of Tony's stay, when everything is turning grey (p. 142), and she has fallen in love with Morten and been forcibly reminded of the Griinlich problem, we see her looking at 'die griinen, mit Seegras durchwachsenen Wande der Wellen' (p. 143). In other words, by means of the colour symbolism, Griinlich is directly associated with forbidden passion and the elemental, a connection which is reinforced by the arrival of a letter from him immediately after the emotional outburst which concludes Part II, Chapter 9. The same connection becomes even more obvious at the beginning of Chapter I I. Chapter Io, it will be recalled, consists entirely of letters and is, as a result, devoid of any explanatory narratorial comment. So, when Griinlich arrives at the start of Chapter I I, the reader is taken by surprise and has to surmise how he found out about Tony and Morten. At the realistic level, this question is, of course, easy to answer: the Konsul had told him (as, indeed, we learn later on). But the narratorial decision not to supply that information at the time (Johann makes no mention of his action in his letter to Tony) makes it seem as though Griinlich somehow knew about Tony and Morten without having been told. Thus, the description of the elemental storm which accompanies his arrival reinforces the growing impression that we are dealing with a more than human agency: 'Es regnete in Str6men. Himmel, Erde und Wasser verschwammen ineinander, wahrend der StoBwind in den Regen fuhr und ihn gegen die Fensterscheiben trieb, daB nicht Tropfen, sondern Bache daran hinunterflossen und sie undurchsichtig machten. Klagende und verzweifelte Stimmen redeten in den Ofenr6hren...' (p. 149; see note 20). Griinlich then acts with a force and decisiveness which are so uncharacteristic of the ingratiating, lachrymose wimp of the earlier chapters that the reader experiences something of a shock. Could we be dealing with a descendant of the Green Huntsman of Germanic mythology: that is, the Devil? And why should Tony have fallen in love with a young man whose name, when she learns it (p. 125), so clearly suggests death and murder, who, quite literally, has a skeleton in the cupboard (p. 125), and who sets himself apart from the other bourgeois holidaymakers (p. 136)? Although, at the level of realism, we are very obviously dealing with a Fontanesque episode involving innocent young love and self-dramatizing under- graduate radicalism, at a surreal level the symbolism and narrative gaps have the effect of suggesting that the whole Travemiinde episode has, in a mysterious way, been motivated and pervaded by the diabolic Griinlich for his own ends. So when, on this reading, we finally learn, a few pages later, that Griinlich's side-whiskers are pointed (a piece of information which has been deliberately withheld so that we, like the younger Buddenbrooks, begin by laughing at Griinlich's foppish facial peculiar- ity) those points, like the two furrows on the forehead of the stranger outside the

RICHARD SHEPPARD 927

graveyard in Der Tod in Venedig, begin to suggest the Devil's horns. Moreover, the sinister quality of those pointed side-whiskers is carefully reinforced by the narrator telling us twice that Griinlich plays with the left-hand one: first when negotiating Tony's dowry (p. 161), and again when Kesselmeyer calls him to account (p. 205).

After Griinlich's collapse, he disappears as a person, but leitmotifs associated with him recur throughout the entire novel, as though in tacit admission of the enduring nature of the power which he signifies. To begin with, the points of his side-whiskers are frequently recalled in the complex of German words 'spitz'/ Spitze', and so forth. We hear that Thomas's moustache is 'spitz gedreht' at exactly the same time as we hear about the fateful blue veining around his temples (p. 236), and thereafter, on at least six occasions, we see him playing with the point of his moustache in a way which recalls the way in which Griinlich had played with his side-whiskers (pp. 339, 419, 47I, 555, 582, 6i8). Moritz Hagenstr6m, a prominent member of the family most hostile to the Buddenbrooks, has 'spitzige [... ] Zahne' (p. 239). The three Buddenbrooks cousins/Graiae say '"zo" mit einem z, was sich desto spitziger und unglaubiger ausnahm' (p. 240) and are referred to as 'spitzig' on at least two subsequent occasions (pp. 275, 530). Sesemi Weichbrodt, in exactly the same passage, has to stand 'aufdie Zehenspitzen' (p. 241) in order to kiss Tony 'auf die Stirn', a gesture which exactly replicates Griinlich's kiss when Tony officially became his (p. I63). When Tony plays a rather cruel joke on a clergyman, we hear: 'Und dabei machte sie ein wahrhaft spitzbiibisches Gesicht und lieB ihre Zungen- spitze [... ] leicht an der Oberlippe spielen' (p. 243). The facial gesture has a diabolic quality about it and the adjective applied to it recalls exactly that noun which Kesselmeyer had applied to Griinlich's knaveries a few chapters before (p. 209). The Konsulin wears black 'Spitze' as the beginning of the chapter which ends in her husband's death (p. 245). At the end ofa chapter which is highly satirical of Christian piety, Griinlich has the last word inasmuch as it is his name which rings out 'wie eine Fanfare, wie ein kleiner TrompetenstoB' (p. 283), and in the course of the same chapter 'Tony Griinlichs spitzig sarkastische[r] Redegewandheit' (p. 282) has, once more, been used against a clergyman. Pastor Tiburtius has not only grey eyes, but also ears which are 'so spitz wie die eines Fuchses' (p. 283) and will encourage those religious attitudes in Clara which, it is suggested, cause her prematurely to quit this world. Gerda's father who, like the Devil, is a virtuoso violinist and plays with a wild, gypsy passion which far outstrips the emotional range of the Buddenbrooks (p. 297), has a grey 'Spitzbart' (p. 293). When Tony shows Thomas and Gerda the house she has prepared for them while they were on their honeymoon, she makes a barely concealed sexual reference 'und lieB die Zungenspitze an der Oberlippe spielen'. She then opens a window in order to draw the couple's attention to the ivy, a plant associated with Dionysos, which grows outside (p. 299). The heavily erotic Gerda wears 'Spitzen' through which 'ihre Brust wie Marmor hindurchschimmerte' (p. 306). One of the Bacchic Permaneder's first remarks is 'Geltn S', da spitzen S'!' (p. 326). Old Senator M6llendorpf, presiding over a party of the M6llendorpf- Hagenstr6m clan on the fateful occasion when Tony agrees to marry Permaneder, is said to have 'weiBe[n], dfinnen[n], spitze[n] Koteletten'23 and is accompanied not only by a grey-haired woman but also by Moritz of the pointed teeth (p. 348). At the climax of the whole episode, reference is made to a flower-bed in which 'Reseden' are

23 'Koteletten' is another word for the 'Favoris' which adorn Griinlich's face.

928 Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks

growing (compare p. 94) 'und dessen schwarze Erde Frau Griinlich [...] ungeheuer eifrig mit der Spitze ihres Sonnenschirms pfliigte' (p. 354). At his christening, Hanno wears a 'Spitzenhaubchen' which is reminiscent of the 'Haube [... ] aus Spitzen und steifem Tiill' (p. 245) worn by the Konsulin just before her husband's death. The fate-like 'Ratsdiener' (see above, p. 922) combine two leit- motifs by wearing a 'Dreispitz' (p. 417). Hanno's first milk tooth, the harbinger of so much suffering, is called 'die erste weiBe Spitze' (p. 423), and even his best friend, Kai Graf M6lln, bears the mark of the beast in that he has 'lange[n], spitz zulaufende[n] Nagel[n]' (pp. 516, 709). Young Dr Langhals, a relative not only of Senator Mollendorpf's grey-haired wife (p. 348) but also of old Dr Langhals, the mayor with grey side-whiskers (p. 489), has a 'spitzgeschnitten[en] Bart' (p. 555) and presides over the final years of Thomas, Hanno, and the old Konsulin (whose nose, in Hanno's eyes at least, is said to become 'spitz' after her death (p. 588)). Makler Gosch, who plays the part of the stage Devil (pp. 182, 295; compare p. 665),24 and, it is suggested, cheats the Buddenbrooks over the sale of the Mengstrasse house despite having been described earlier as 'der ehrlichste und gutmiitigste Mensch von der Welt' (p. 182), has a 'spitz hervorspringendes Kinn' (pp. 182, 592) like Mr Punch, that diminutive descendant of Dionysos. The 'spitzes, blutiges Messer' (p. 673) with which the fateful fishwives finish off those fish who try to get away from the slabs in the market appears at the beginning of the chapter in which Thomas, by now a poor fish himself, is finished off by Herr Brecht's ministrations. The maid who takes over from IdaJungmann has a 'spitze[r] Nase' (p. 705) like the dead Konsulin. One of Hanno's teachers, Dr Goldener, whose name and 'blonde[m] Spitzbart' (p. 7I8) clearly recall Griinlich, also wears 'spitz zulaufende[n] Kn6pfstiefeln' (p. 719), and his headmaster, Dr Wulicke, has a 'spitzen Bauch[e]' (p. 721). The point is, I hope, well-made. The diabolic hint involved in Griinlich's pointed side-whiskers is very clearly associated with death, malice, fearful passion, disease, treachery, and irresistible and capricious authority, and the recurrence of the relevant leitmotif within and outside the Buddenbrook family indicates the extent to which their 'Verfall' is brought about by a diabolic agency.

But this is not the only form in which Griinlich's diabolic influence persists after his disappearance from the foreground of the novel. Christian inherits his check trousers (pp. 258, 664). Like Griinlich's 'Wagen' and the Venetian blinds in his and Tony's house (pp. I72-73), Moritz Hagenstrom's face is yellow (p. 239), as are Christian's suit, stick, the filter tip of Thomas's beloved cigarettes, and the 'Tagelicht' in Hanno's room in Travemiinde (pp.258, 316, I 8, 630). Konsul Kr6ger's pate, like Griinlich's face, is described as 'rosig' (p. 250). The Budden- brook 'Erb-Siegelring', which Hanno finally inherits (p. 705), has a green stone set in it, as though to emphasize the fact that demonic Nature, symbolized by the colour green, plays an important and active role in the Buddenbrooks' decline. Herr Marcus, whom we hear for the first time immediately after the Konsul's death (p. 255) and whose increasing pedantry not only contributes to the Buddenbrooks' 'Verfall' but is actually transmitted to Thomas by the end of his life (p. 6I 2), speaks in a sycophantic tone which is reminiscent of Griinlich's in the opening chapters of

24 The words used when Thomas sells the Mengstrasse house to Makler Gosch (p. 596) very obviously recalls Faust's pact with Mephistopheles in Faust I.

RICHARD SHEPPARD

Part III. Christian causes uproar in the Buddenbrooks' office by igniting a 'grfinliches Pulver' (p. 312) which has been prescribed by the quack Dr Grabow, thereby implicitly expressing his contempt for the business world and showing how easily it can be disrupted by all that Griinlich signifies. Permaneder wears a 'Beinkleid' which combines the colours green and grey (p. 325) and has a green hat (p. 354) to cover his sparse hair (p. 325). The infant Hanno has 'sparliches Haar' (p. 399), a phrase which recalls Grfinlich verbatim. The shiny gold of Griinlich's side-whiskers is picked up in the gold paint and shiny gold candelabra (p. 427) which adorn Thomas's new house, an edifice which will, like Griinlich's integrity, prove to be built on a massive lie. In like manner, shortly after that the colour green is linked with Christian's vice and betrayal of his friend (pp. 443-44) and thereafter associated with death (pp. 587, 59 ), the sea (p. 592), and, consequently, Thomas's inner collapse. When Hermann Hagenstr6m, whose nose becomes more diabolically hooked as the novel progresses, visits the Mengstrasse house with a view to purchase, he wears Griinlich's 'grfingelben Anzug' and sports a 'blonde[n] Vollbart' (p. 60 ). Oberlehrer Ballerstedt, a failed clergyman who administers religious instruction in so careless and capricious a manner that it mocks what is being ostensibly taught, has a bald head, a 'rosige[m] Teint' and a beard which can look 'hellgelb' (pp. 712-I 3).

The pervasiveness of what Griinlich stands for is evident above all in the imagery of the elements and the recurrent importance of the month of June. As I have said, Griinlich arrives at Travemfinde amid an elemental storm which blots out conven- tional human distinctions. Subsequently, the elements are involved inJohann's death (p. 248), Permaneder's engagement to Tony (p. 355), the fateful centenary celebra- tions (when an unexpected storm not only destroys the P6ppenrade crop, but is

replicated inside the house by the cacophonous music (pp.491-94)), and, most

significantly, the storm experienced by Hanno while on holiday in Travemfinde which is described in exactly the same words (p. 635) as those used to describe the storm which accompanied Griinlich's advent there all those years before. It also seems to have escaped critics' notice that six events which adversely affect the Buddenbrook family take place inJune, the month in which Griinlich first arrives (p. 93). One might expect June, a summer month, to involve happy events, and so, on the surface, it

frequently does. But like so much in Buddenbrooks, appearance is at variance with reality. Thus, Thomas leaves for Amsterdam (where he will meet Gerda) inJune 856 (p. 277). Judging by the date given (p. 286), Tiburtius, with all his Griinlich-like features, must also have arrived inJune I856. Permaneder makes his first call a year later, in June 1857 (p. 323). Thomas decides to build a new house in Summer 1863 (p. 420), moves inJune 1864 (p. 426), and travels to Rostock on 30 May I868 in order to conclude the P6ppenrade deal in earlyJune (pp. 475-76). Having tempted Fate, it is a mark of his hubris that on returning home in high spirits, one of the first things he does is tease Klothilde....

From the evidence assembled above, all of which can, of course, be accounted for in realistic terms, it should now be clear that Griinlich, like the female mythological figures, is the signifier of secret powers which are highly malevolent and frustrate the Buddenbrooks' attempts to control their destiny. So when Tony tells Permaneder on the occasion of their engagement that she no longer knows where Griinlich is (p. 353), the irony is multiple and profound. For he, or rather what he represents, is all around her: in her fiance, the members of her family, the month of the year, the M6llendorpf- Hagenstr6m clan, the 'Reseden', and the impending storm!

929

930 Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks'

The banker Kesselmeyer is an equally interesting figure. His white waistcoat and black suit, together with his 'schwarz-weiBe diinne Haare' (pp. I72, 202), clearly link him not only with other figures who are described in terms of a black and white combination, but also with Griinlich's check trousers and thinning hair. But Kesselmeyer also 'biickt [... ] sich' as he walks along; 'rudert mit den Armen' (p. 172), possesses 'eine lange, diinne Uhrkette mit zwei oder drei Kneiferschnfiren' (p. 202), has only two 'kegelf'rmige[n] Eckzahne' (that is to say, pointed fangs) in his lower jaw (p. 202), laughs most uproariously when he is at his most dangerous and there is nothing to laugh about (p. 203), rolls his 'r's in a peculiar way (p. 203), opens his mouth in a way which causes his nose to wrinkle up (p. 204), and walks with 'sonderbaren, schlfirfenden Schritte[n]' (p. 2 I o). If the fangs and the limp were not enough to associate him with the Devil, then it should be recalled that Griinlich asks him not to keep laughing 'so gottverflucht' (p. 207) and to speak more softly 'in Teufels Namen' (p. 209)! Moreover, his desire to ruin Grfinlich seems to be motivated by sheer diabolic Schadenfreude, since, on his own admission, he is going to break even whatever happens (p. 2 o). His ability to implicate respectable firms in the conspiracy against the Buddenbrooks involves an almost supernatural ability to bring out the worst in people. His sarcastic cruelty to Griinlich and the Konsul has a terrible and gratuitous quality about it. His increasing hilarity in Part iv, Chapter 8, transforms his face into an unmistakably demonic mask (p. 228). All in all, it is significant that the encounter with Grfinlich and Kesselmeyer should cause the Konsul to experience that sense of 'Grauen' (p. 229) which, as I have argued above, will not surface again until Hanno's nightmares in the second half of the novel, when the process of'Verfall' is well advanced. Finally, it is also worth noting that having put Griinlich on the spot, Kesselmeyer inserts his thumbs into the arm-holes of his waistcoat in order, as it were, to play the piano on his shoulders with his other fingers (p. 223), and that the Konsul asks himself whether 'dieser Bajazz' ('clown') has a conscience (p. 225).

As with Griinlich, traces of Kesselmeyer recur throughout the novel even when he himself has vanished. Moritz Hagenstr6m begins to look like him in that his teeth are both pointed and 'liickenhaft' (pp. 239, 348). Kesselmeyer's pince-nez reappear on the noses of Pfiffi Buddenbrook (p. 446), Thomas (p. 454), and Tony (p. 606). Several characters make animal noises which recall his 'r's. Permaneder makes 'sonderbare knurrende und achzende Laute' (p. 375) during the events which end his marriage to Tony. Pastor Pringsheim (who often appears wearing black and white) rolls his 'r's (p. 397), a characteristic which becomes particularly prominent at Thomas's death-bed (p. 684). Over the years, Tony develops the habit of making a strange guttural sound. Even little Elisabeth Buddenbrook, the youngest survivor of the family, at one stage makes 'einen kurzen, knarrenden Laut' (p. 532), as though to emphasize that no one, not even the innocent, is safe from diabolic ingression. Then again, when Thomas decides to make the fateful Poppenrade investment, he puts his pince-nez into the pocket of his waistcoat and then walks up and down his room 'mit raschen, starken und freien Bewegungen' (p. 457) which recall Kessel- meyer's gait. Shortly after that, Hanno's attack of 'Grauen' discussed above is connected with his vision of the 'bucklicht Mannlein' (p. 463) of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, who, Ida tells Tony, 'steht iiberall', wreaking mayhem (p. 463). When the Poppenrade crop is destroyed, the news is brought to Thomas by a 'buckligen Lehrling' (p. 493, twice) who makes two 'Bucklinge' as he does so: clear suggestions

RICHARD SHEPPARD

that the diabolic powers of which Kesselmeyer is a signifier have played their part in Thomas's financial nightmare as well as Hanno's real ones. We also hear Kessel- meyer's tread on several occasions. The cacophonous orchestra which plays at the Buddenbrook centenary enters from below (!), making a 'stampfendes und schliir- fendes Gerausch' immediately after we have glimpsed Moritz Hagenstrom's25 fangs (pp. 489-90). During the Advent festivities leading up to the last family Christmas in which the old Konsulin is involved, and in a paragraph whose first words are, ominously, 'Die Vorzeichen mehrten sich...' (p. 528; see note 20), Knecht Ruprecht, whose real identity is only hinted at by the narrator ('vielleicht bloB Barbier Wenzel' (p. 528)) and whose beard is the same colour as Kesselmeyer's, enters 'schliirfenden Schrittes' with a bag over his left shoulder from which to distribute the presents. The crowd which follows Thomas's coffin to the graveyard does so 'schlurfend' (p. 691). When the crowd of schoolboys pours into the class- room where Hanno and Kai are hiding, the text reads: 'Es kam heran, mit Schliirfen, Stampfen und einem Gewirr von mannlichen Stimmen, Diskanten und sich iiber- schlagenden Wechselorganen, flutete uber die Treppen heraus, ergoB sich fiber den Korridor und str6mte auch in dieses Zimmer, das plotzlich von Leben, Bewegung und Gerausch erfuillt ward' (p. 711). Not only are there four references here to Kesselmeyer's attributes and the discordant music which accompanies the centen- ary celebrations, but the nature of the 'Es' is left indeterminate. Only in the next sentence is that sinister 'Es' naturalized into 'Sie kamen herein, die jungen Leute, die Kameraden Hanno's und Kais' (p. 711). One of these, the 'Primus', turns out, however, to be called AdolfTodtenhaupt. He not only has a 'gebuckelten Schadel', grey eyes, a smile which is 'sanft und ein wenig tfickisch', and slim fingers which are suspiciously like Hanno's own, but he is also said to know everything and to keep an impeccably correct register (p. 712)!

Kesselmeyer's maliciously inappropriate, demonic laughter is also audible throughout the novel. Madame Kethelsen (whose surname contains traces of Kesselmeyer's and Gerda's) laughs for no reason 'bei immer unpassenderen Gelegenheiten' (p. 24I) (a habit which worsens as the narrative develops). To express her jealousy of the Hagenstr6ms, Tony says, with uncharacteristic mali- ciousness: 'Ha! ich muB lachen, weiBt du, ich muB laut lachen...' (p. 266). Pastor Pringsheim, who, as I have already said, is marked by two other features which recall Kesselmeyer, has a strangely discordant laugh (p. 400). Permaneder is prone to paroxysms of excessive laughter (p. 35 ). The 'behagliches' laughter with which the Buddenbrook centenary begins (p. 489) becomes increasingly hollow in Thomas's ears (pp. 49 -92) as it mingles with the cacophonous music and worsens the emptiness of the whole occasion. Hanno begins to laugh at Klothilde with the rest of his family for no good reason under the influence of drink (p. 628) and subsequently laughs uproariously and totally inappropriately when helping to write the invitations to his father's funeral (p. 688). Increasingly then, after the good- humoured laughter of the family feast which is described in the novel's opening chapters, the laughter is either malicious or inappropriate, or, beginning with Christian (p. 273) and ending with Thomas (pp. 645-46), at the Buddenbrooks' expense.

25 At this point it is perhaps worth pointing out that Moritz's first name involves the word 'mort' and that his surname is not all that far removed from the German word 'Hagelsturm' ('hail storm').

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Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks'

But the character who most clearly displays Kesselmeyer's traits is undoubtedly the ironically named Christian, whose traits, as Ridley says, 'contribute sub- stantially to the decline of the family' in a more than material sense (Ridley, p. 33). One of the first things we see him do after his return from abroad is to screw up his face, causing his nose, like Kesselmeyer's, to dissolve 'in unzahlige Faltchen' (p. 260). Shortly after that, he repeats another of Kesselmeyer's actions by imitating a piano virtuoso (p. 264), thus making a very clear connection at an early stage of the novel between diabolic forces, music, and the Buddenbrook family. At an early age he looks like a death's head and has prematurely sparse hair (pp. 261, 404), and the real or imagined infirmity in his left leg (which spreads and worsens as the novel progresses (pp. 29I, 663)) presumably causes his gait to resemble Kesselmeyer's (though we are never told so in as many words). By the middle of the book, Christian looks like the classic circus clown (p. 442) and is likened by Thomas to 'ein Hans Quast, ein lacherlicher Mensch' (p. 275) and Harlequin (p. 3I9). These compari- sons not only link him with Kesselmeyer the 'Bajazz', they also recall the black-and- white costume of Harlequin, himself a descendant of diabolic ancestors,26 and thus the black-and-white mixture which characterizes Kesselmeyer. Christian may be able to make people laugh, but he is diseased, and the symbolism which connects him with both Griinlich and Kesselmeyer suggests that the origins of that disease are more than physiological, psychological, or moral.

Once the recurrence of traits associated with Griinlich and Kesselmeyer have been noticed, a reading of the first two parts of Buddenbrooks reveals their hidden presence amidst the apparently 'heile Welt' whose image is the eighteenth-century painting on the wall of the 'Landschaftszimmer' (p. 12). Indeed, 'den Diiwel' is the answer to the very question with which the book opens! OldJohann mocks religion, has a 'rosig uberhauchtes' face like Griinlich (p. Io), and plays the Dionysiac flute (p. 38). Thomas has yellowish teeth right from the outset (p. I8). YoungJohann has 'blonde, lockige Bartstreifen' (p. I I) which run to the middle of his cheeks, forming, presumably, an undisclosed 'Spitze'. Justus Kroger has a 'spitz emporgedrehten Schnurrbart' (p. I9). The predominant colour of the 'Landschaftszimmer' is an autumnal yellow (p. I2). Ida Jungmann speaks with Kesselmeyer's guttural 'r' (p. 5). Gotthold Buddenbrook not only wears check trousers and has 'aschblonde [... ] Koteletts', but those side-whiskers are said to be shot through with 'weiBe[n] Faden' (p. 74), a very significant detail, given that he is the father of the Moirae-like Buddenbrook cousins. Sesemi Weichbrodt is 'bucklig' (p. 85), and when Lebrecht Kr6ger dies (p. 197), his face, prefiguring those of the dead Konsul (p. 260) and Konsulin (p. 588), is yellow. In other words, a diabolic presence is discernible within the Buddenbrook household even during that period when all appears to be for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and it is seen to work in and through people who, from the realistic point of view, are loyal members or good-hearted friends of the family.

Fate and the Subversion of Patriarchy The motivation behind the Buddenbrooks' 'Verfall' is not only multi-levelled (see Vogt, pp. 27-28), it also escalates, with one level of error generating, interacting, and merging with another. Old Johann's complacency; young Johann's hypocrisy, 26 Otto Driessen, Der Ursprung des Harlekin: Ein kulturgeschichtliches Problem (Berlin: Duncker, I904).

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RICHARD SHEPPARD

hyper-religiosity, and lack of human insight; Tony's willingness to be commodified (see p. 163) and her resultant bad marriages; the hypostatization of the firm, 'diese[m] vergotterten Begriff' (p. 77), by the family in general; Christian's un- balanced vice; Thomas's unbalanced virtue; Gerda's decadence; physical sickness, real or imagined (Handbuch, p. 162); Hanno's physical weakness; bad weather; unscrupulous rogues; false friends; inefficient employees; 'intellektuelle und kul- turelle Verfeinerung';27 the crushing weight of tradition which prevents the firm from modernizing itself; the leakage of capital28- these arejust some of the complex motives which, at the level of realism, cause the family's decline. But the discussion above suggests, to me at least, that those metaphysical powers which are familiar from Mann's later writings are already at work beneath Buddenbrooks's realistic surface, constituting the ultimate cause of the family's decline. These powers not only interpenetrate with the complex realistic motivation, they also lend an enig- matic quality to the text and, during the novel's second half, burst into the foreground of the narrative in an ever more violent and dramatic way.

Given the mythological imagery identified above, one might call these powers by many names: the Devil, the elemental, Schopenhauer's Will, Nietzsche's Dionysos even (Handbuch, pp. I67-69). Precisely because Buddenbrooks is first and foremost a realistic novel, the narrator eschews an overtly metaphysical vocabulary with which to describe the deepest levels of the process of decline. But to me, the name which best suits the powers which govern Buddenbrooks is, quite simply, Fate. In the 'heile Welt' of the novel's first two Parts, 'das Walten irgendeines finsteren Schicksals' (p. 69) involves nothing more than the unexplained discovery of a minor piece of deception on the part of two adolescents. But from Part II onwards, Fate is mentioned less explicitly and becomes all the more powerful and destructive for that, involving a symbolism of wheels and circular motion, often in connection with the words 'Gerausch' and 'Knirschen'. Indeed, the structure of the novel is, as so many critics have noted, cyclical or circular (see Handbuch, pp. I60-6 ), with entire passages from the earlier chapters being repeated verbatim in the later ones (see pp. I49, 635; 155, 636; 213-14, 640), and events, like Hanno's dental problems and

Tony's disastrous marriages, being replicated in the latter half of the novel. The image of the wheel first occurs when Tony is returning home from

Travemiinde and hears Morten's voice 'in dem Gerausch der Rader', not realizing, of course, that his 'ein wenig schwerfaillig knarrende[n] Stimme' contains a hint of Kesselmeyer's gutturals (p. I56). A cognate image occurs in the roulette wheels in Christian's seedy club (p. 272) and the Kursaal at Travemiinde which he frequents

27 Handbuch, pp. I58-6I. For the extent to which this reason for the Buddenbrooks' 'Verfall' was programmed by Mann's own retrospective understanding of the novel, see Vogt, p. I I, and Handbuch, P.359. 28 From a mythological perspective, it becomes relatively easy to resolve the debate about whether Buddenbrooks is a 'Schopenhauerian' novel in the way that Vogt, following several earlier critics, proposes. We know that Mann read Schopenhauer only when 'the composition of Buddenbrooks was already far advanced' (Reed, p.8i), that the chapter of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung read by Thomas is unrepresentative of that work (p. 83), that Mann's own accounts 'wholly dispose of' Schopenhauerian readings (p. 82), and that in any case, as Mann himself realized, Thomas responds to Schopenhauer in a way which would have been more appropriate to a reading of Nietzsche (with whom Mann was already familiar). But if it is true that Buddenbrooks is governed at a very deep level by a sense of Fate which comes increasingly nearer the novel's surface during its second half, then it is surely plausible to suggest that Mann's reading of Schopenhauer, combined with what he already knew about Dionysos from Nietzsche, helped him to emphasize that sense of Fate/Dionysos/the Will which, as I have argued, had been subliminally and actively present behind the novel's realist surface right from the outset.

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Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks' 934

with the other 'Suitiers' (p. 291). One of these, Peter Dohlmann, has a surname suggestive of a black-and-grey bird ('Dohle'/'jackdaw') which, like the black-and- white [thieving] magpie with which Tony had compared Kesselmeyer (p. I72), is a member of the crow family. Moreover, in both instances when the narrative mentions this particular wheel of fortune, it is significant that we also hear hollow laughter: at Christian's expense in the first case (p. 273) and in the second, a burst of laughter which 'echoes' along the beach (p. 29I). Given this, it is highly significant that it should be gambling which causes Herr von Maiboom to get into serious debt and that he should then, via Tony, embroil Thomas in a form of commercial gambling, at which he, of course, loses. Within the novel's symbolism then, both men are puppets ('Puppen') who are moved and ultimately destroyed by the wheel ('Rad') of Fate. With a certain symmetry, the wheel imagery occurs again when Thomas and Christian, by now, in effect, mirror images of one another (pp. 614, 643),29 revisit Travemiinde towards the end of the novel and hear the wheels of their coach 'knirschen' on the gravel of the 'totenstill' Kurgarten (p. 665). Thomas will shortly hear that sound again, during the events which culminate in his death. The dentist, Herr Brecht, it will be recalled, keeps a parrot whose voice, significantly, is like that of a 'wiitenden alten Weibes' (p. 512) and lives in the Miihlenstrasse (literally Mill Street). The wheels which turn and grind there are those of the drill and extraction tools (p. 512) which make a 'Geriusch' which Thomas will finally experience as a 'Knirschen in seinem Munde' (p. 678) just before he collapses. Shortly after that, in the closing chapters of the book, the hoarse 'Gerausch' of the revolving face ofHanno's alarm-clock will usher in a day which, in terms ofHanno's life as that is narrated in the novel, is one of his last.

The contention that Buddenbrooks is, at a very deep level, governed by the wheel of Fate contradicts the Marxist idea that it is simply 'die Regeln und Mechanismen biirgerlicher Gesellschaft selbst' which generate those forces which subvert and destroy the Buddenbrook family (Vogt, p. 52). It also casts a new light on several apparently incidental episodes, and exposes a range of ironies the depth of which a realist reading will inevitably ignore. First, during the novel's opening chapters, we hear about the decline of the Ratenkamp firm which, quite obviously, prefigures that of the Buddenbrooks. But oddly enough, as Vogt saw (Vogt, p. 2 ), none of those present at the dinner can explain that decline. Makler Gritjens and the Konsul ask why it happened, and the Konsul simply concludes: 'Diese Firma hat abgewirt- schaftet, diese alte Familie war passee' (p. 24), and when Pastor Wunderlich then tries to identify the cause of the decline more precisely, the Konsul becomes thoughtful and adds: 'Aber ich glaube, daB Dietrich Ratenkamp sich notwendig und unvermeidlich mit Geel- maack verbinden muBte, damit das Schicksal erfuillt wiirde [... ] Er muB unter dem Druck einer unerbittlichen Notwendigkeit gehandelt haben [... ] Ach, ich bin iiberzeugt, daB er das Treiben seines Associ6s halb und halb gekannt hat, daB er auch iiber die Zustiinde in seinem Lager nicht so vollstindig unwissend war. Aber er war erstarrt...' (p. 25)

Thereupon his father, the metaphysically sceptical OldJohann, who has kept out of the discussion so far, intervenes to change the subject, but without being able to offer any better explanation from a rational, commonsense point of view. Conversely, the

29 See also Vogt, pp. 66-67.

RICHARD SHEPPARD

novel provides no reason for the Hagenstr6ms' success in the rat-race ('Ratten- kampf') of life. As modern research has shown, the Hagenstr6ms run a very similar kind of business to that of the Buddenbrooks,30 so that their growing success cannot be explained in terms of a more modern kind of capitalism replacing an older mode: Fate is simply on their side, but only for the moment, for, as Ernst Keller has pointed out (see Handbuch, p. I6o), and as the symbolism which connects Griinlich, Kessel- meyer, and Moritz Hagenstr6m clearly suggests, the Hagenstr6m family, even at the moment of its greatest success, has been marked down by Fate as a potential candidate for 'Verfall'. Indeed, the fact that they have the temerity to add their name to the Latin motto on the Mengstrasse house (p. 609), as though they were on a par with the God who provides, may well indicate that they are guilty of even greater hubris than the Buddenbrooks.

It is well known that the moment when the Buddenbrooks seem to be at the height of their prosperity is also the moment when their 'Verfall' begins to accelerate, for Thomas himself is conscious of that fact (p. 431). Indeed, in that respect, the structure of Buddenbrooks is very like that of Simplicissimus, where the rhetoric of Fate is used much more overtly. It is that structure which makes Anna, the flower-shop girl with whom Thomas had had an affair in his youth, a signifier of the process. Not only does she make the 'Richtkrone' (p. 426) for Thomas's new house (which turns out to be a wreath as much as a garland), but when she arrives at his death-bed (p. 689), she is pregnant, as though in testimony to the fact that in a Fate-governed world, life and death are simply two aspects of one random process.

Finally, it is a matter of intense irony that in a world where Fate has the last word, would-be helpers (such as Ida and Sesemi) become unwitting signifiers and even agents of its destructive side; that people who stand, in realistic terms, for positive ideals (clergymen, doctors, teachers, and dentists) are moved to act in a way which conflict with those ideals; that patterns repeat themselves unbeknown to the people involved; that close relatives become locked in conflicts for reasons which lie outside their control and, for the best of motives, assist in the destruction of what they most revere; that men of good will, conscious that they are burdened by tradition, cause even greater disorder when they try to break with tradition; but perhaps above all, that apparently peripheral characters who are laughed at or condescended to by the main characters and overlooked by critics, should turn out to be signifiers or agents of the powers which make the world go round. No wonder, as one critic remarked, that the young Mann was defensive towards the powers which he was conjuring up in Buddenbrooks (Handbuch, p. I 23).

Over the past two decades, feminist criticism has, rightly in my view, shown how readily Western male literature has made the equation between the demonic woman, elemental Nature, and the diabolic. Given Mann's tendency to conflate the Graiae and the Moirae figures (Ida and Pfiffi, for example, can be seen as aspects of both triads) and to emphasize the negative aspects of the Moirae/Norns and the female mythological signifiers who are associated with them, Buddenbrooks is clearly the product of an imagination which is steeped in that tradition. Indeed, the power of destructive Fate which is predominantly signified by the female mythological characters, the power of Evil which is signified by the diabolical male characters, and the elemental powers which are associated with both groups all interact and

30 See Vogt, pp. 62-63, 74, 78; Handbuch, p. i60.

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conspire to erode a cultured, patriarchal family from within and without. From this it follows that Buddenbrooks is not simply a complex diagnosis of the 'Verfall einer Familie' but also an investigation into the validity and power of the ideology, or rather the theology, which has sustained and legitimized both that family and, as the motto adorning the Mengstrasse house since 1682 makes clear, the whole way of life it encapsulates. In other words, Buddenbrooks is, pace Reed, a novel of ideas, albeit one where these ideas are indeed 'buried in that rich substance, fused with it successfully if involuntarily' (Reed, p. 84).

The link between religious orthodoxy, commercial life, and material prosperity is evident on the novel's first page, when Tony is required to recite the catechism which, as the narrator drily remarks, 'soeben, anno 1835 unter Genehmigung eines hohen und wohlweisen Senates neu herausgegeben war' (p. 9), and which, as old Johann sees, has more to do with property and possessions than matters spiritual. Now, although old Johann is a metaphysical sceptic, his son is not, and his whole way of thinking and speaking indicates that for him 'Dominus providebit' means more than 'God will provide'. For as his diary entries clearly show (pp. 53-57), Konsul Buddenbrook is saturated in an anomalous providentialist theology (see Vogt, p. 44) which has its roots in the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff (and which, incidentally, is still pictorialized today on the back of the American one-dollar bill as a tacit profession of faith in the self-regulating nature of the free market). According to this theology, a benevolent (male) God has created the best of all possible worlds which is rationally ordered, which contains the maximum amount of Good and the minimum amount of Evil, and in which people must find their proper place ('sich fuigen') by the exercise of their reason and the control of their passions (something which the Konsul has, apparently, had some difficulty in doing (p. 56)). If, so the theology runs, one manages to 'sich fugen' and works at one's appointed task, then one will be rewarded by material blessings. Conversely, if one fails to 'sich figen', then punishment will follow in the shape of material deprivation.

The inadequacies of this kind of theologizing are implicit from the novel's outset: first, in the very obsessiveness of the Konsul's piety (which may well be the reflex of the difficulties he has had in subduing his passionate side); second, in the difficulty which he continually experiences in reconciling the concept of'Christ' with that of 'Geschaftsmann' (pp. 46-49). The inadequacies become even more patent as soon as Griinlich arrives, for Griinlich, being a well-trained Devil, is versed in theology and uses the rhetoric of providentialist theology with such ease that he sounds like a parody of the Konsul (pp. 96-97, 109). Indeed, it is precisely because Griinlich appears to have succeeded in reconciling the concepts of 'Christ' and 'Geschaftsmann' that the Konsul is so impressed with him as a potential husband for Tony. So, when he has to justify his decision both to his daughter and to himself, he has recourse once again to a mode of thinking which clearly derives from and is legitimized by a providentialist theology. Just as a benevolent, all-seeing God has our future mapped out for us in the best of all possible worlds, so Tony should 'den Kopf often halten fur die Zuspriiche erfahrener Leute, die planvoll fur unser Gliick sorgen...' (p. Io5). Moreover, the Konsul continues with his usual ingenuousness as follows: although 'treue Arbeit' is 'redlich belohnt', although God has poured out his blessings on the Buddenbrook family, and although the Konsul has behaved, like his God, 'mit iuBerster Vorsicht' (p. I 14), things have gone perplexingly quiet on the economic front, so that the family cannot miss this godsent opportunity of a

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match which 'allen Leuten als vorteilhaft und riihmlich in die Augen springt' (p. I 14) and which will, incidentally, be a potentially fruitful investment. Finally, in his letter to Tony at Travemiinde, the Konsul makes explicit, albeit secularized, use ofprovidentialist thought-forms in order to break her will: Wir sind, meine liebe Tochter, nicht dafiir geboren, was wir mit kurzsichtigen Augen fuir unser eigenes, kleines, pers6nliches Gliick halten, denn wir sind nicht lose, unabhingige und f'ir sich bestehende Einzelwesen, sondern wie Glieder in einer Kette, und wir waren, so wie wir sind, nicht denkbar ohne die Reihe derjenigen, die uns vorangingen und uns die Wege wiesen, indem sie ihrerseits mit Strenge und ohne nach rechts oder links zu blicken einer erprobten und ehrwiirdigen Uberlieferung folgten. (pp. I48-49)

The letter has the desired effect, for it is precisely this passage which motivates Tony's decision to marry Grfinlich (p. I60), with all the fateful consequences for her, the firm, andJohann himself.

By the middle of the novel, the inadequacies of providentialist theology have become even more evident, not least because of the poor figures which are cut by nearly all the representatives of Christian orthodoxy who are encountered. After the death of her baby, the narrator writes of Tony: 'Sie begriff nicht, womit sie Leid verdient habe; denn obgleich sie sich iiber die groBe Fr6mmigkeit ihrer Mutter mokierte, war sie selbst so voll davon, daB sie an Verdienst und Gerechtigkeit auf Erden inbriinstig glaubte... arme Tony!' (p. 370). Similarly, at precisely that point when the blessings of a providentialist God appear to be showering down upon Thomas, he admits to Tony that he is losing his faith in 'die Gefiugigkeit des Lebens zu meinen Gunsten.. .' (p. 430). Although Thomas subsequently tries to salvage something from the religion of his childhood (p. 660), he cannot return either to the 'behagliche[n] Oberflachlichkeit' (p. 652) of his grandfather or to the eighteenth- century piety of his father, and so goes as far as to toy with the explicitly anti-providentialist idea that 'diese[r] beste[n] aller denkbaren Welten' might in fact be 'die schlechteste aller denkbaren' (p. 654).31 Thus, within this theological context, the fire at Sesemi's house during the penultimate Christmas before the Konsulin's death is more than an amusing accident. Not only does it portend the end of the old-style Buddenbrook family Christmas, it also has a profoundly theological significance. While Sesemi is reading 'Und abermals sage ich: Freue euch!', an 'umkranztes' banner reading 'Ehre sei Gott in der H6he' bursts into flames 'mit einem puffenden, fauchenden und knisternden Geriusch' (pp. 548-49; my emphasis), apparently spontaneously, since the narrator provides no explanation for the event. Clearly, the providentialist God whose goodness has brought joy and prosperity to the Buddenbrook household and whose last serious disciple is the old Konsulin (compare pp. 545-46) is about to be supplanted by more fateful, elemental powers.

The growing incredibility of providentialist theology is accompanied on the one hand by the escalating physical decadence of the male characters, and on the other by the increasing importance of the women characters, until, by the end of the novel, it is only women members of the Buddenbrook clan who are still alive (apart, of course, from the certified Christian). Moreover, because Mann plays down the positive aspects which were ascribed to the Moirae/Norns in ancient mythology and tacitly associates the female mythological characters in Buddenbrooks with the diabolic and the destructively elemental, the growing importance of the women characters

31 See Vogt, pp. 88, 14I (n. 122).

938 Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks'

(and the Female in general) is largely negative. Indeed, both as realistic characters and as signifiers of malevolent powers, they operate a process of attrition at the material, the psychological, and the metaphysical level.

The part played by women in the process of economic attrition first becomes visible on the periphery of the core narrative, when, in Part II, the Konsul blames his wife's side of the family (that is, the Kr6gers) for being spendthrift (p. 176). Thereafter, throughout the rest of the novel, we hear sporadically of the slow but insidious financial haemorrhage from the Kr6ger's family because of the indulgence ofJustus's wife towards their profligate sonJakob (see p. 237). Later on in Part III, a similar process begins to affect the core narrative when Tony freely admits to Griinlich and Kesselmeyer that she, too, is spendthrift, and this she does, we are told, 'mit einem beinahe fatalistischen Gleichmut' and without any desire to correct this tendency because of her 'ausgepragte[r] Familiensinn' (pp. 204-05). Similarly, we learn that the prematurely grey and bony Ida assumes ever greater control of the Buddenbrook household (p. 246) so that the narrator's comment, later on in the novel, that her 'Treue und Hingebung [... ] war ja mit Gold nicht zu bezahlen' (pp. 520-2 ), while true at the realistic level, is highly ironic when one remembers her affinity with Lachesis and the negative connotations of gold in this novel. Then again, two of Tony's three school-friends, one of whom is, significantly, called Eva, damage the Buddenbrook household materially or psychologically. The P6ppen- rade affair is a direct result of Tony's friendship with Armgard von Schilling, and Tony meets Permaneder while she is visiting Eva Ewers in Munich. The old Konsulin, too, plays a part in the process of attrition. She causes a major financial loss by insisting that Clara's last wish be honoured (p. 433), and when she embraces Thomas during the centenary celebrations, she contributes to Thomas's psycho- logical decline by causing a weakness to overcome him 'als ob in seinem Inneren sich etwas 16ste und ihn verlieB' (p. 48 ). Moreover, after her death, what is left of her chattels in the semi-ruined Mengstrasse house is plundered by Riekchen Severin and the maids without anyone being able to stop them (pp. 569-70). As a realistic character, Gerda, who also comes into the Buddenbrook family by way of Sesemi's 'Pension', helps push Thomas to breaking-point through her coldness towards him and her sublimated musical affair with von Throta of the demonic eyes (p. 645). After Aline Puvogel has finally married Christian towards the end of the novel, she has him locked away as insane and lives off his share of the Buddenbrook legacy.

But in the second half of the novel, that is after Gerda's arrival and Thomas's decision to build a new house in the Fischergrube, even profounder damage is done to the Buddenbrook household by subversive, non-material powers which operate through the women as signifiers of malevolent Fate. Indeed, the way in which Gerda-as-signifier affects the Buddenbrook family (see above) graphically illus- trates Julia Kristeva's description of the way in which the 'semiotic' dismantles the vertically stratified 'symbolic'.32 Thus, where the 'Landschaftszimmer' in the Mengstrasse house is hung with two-dimensional tapestries between its pillars from which 'weiBe G6tterbilder fast plastisch [my emphasis] hervor[treten]' (p. 22, see p. 524), the front of Thomas's new house is supported by three-dimensional 'Sandstein- Karyatiden' (p. 424): that is to say, petrified goddesses who, especially in the person

32 Compare The Kristeva Reader, ed. by Toril Moi (Oxford: Blackwell, i986), pp. I3- 7 (p. I 5).

RICHARD SHEPPARD

of Gerda-as-signifier, will gradually stop supporting the splendid facades of Thomas's house and ego and allow both to collapse. Where Konsul Buddenbrook had assumed that the chain to which he referred in his letter to Tony was secure in the hands of a benevolent (male) Providence, that chain increasingly turns out to be one which links the diabolic Kesselmeyer (p. 175), Pfiffi/Atropos, and Ida/Lachesis.

As a result of this process of attrition, increasingly fateful, fatal, and violent powers actually invade the foreground of the novel, generating passages whose affective force marks them out from the rest of the text, and confronting the increasingly decadent Buddenbrook men with experiences with which they are unable to deal (see Handbuch, p. 122). The first such passage, involving a description of cacophonous and elemental music and 'den aberwitzigen Pfiffen' of the dionysiac 'Pikkoloflote' (p. 494), comes at the end of the Buddenbrook centenary celebrations and involves a clear reference to Pfiffi/Atropos, who, as I have said, is the smallest and most malevolent of the three Buddenbrook cousins/Moirae. The second one comes shortly after that, when little Hanno performs a piece of his own music. This performance is described in unmistakably erotic terms and so involves an intensity of emotion which is, in terms of realism, far beyond Hanno's years (pp. 505-07). The third one involves Thomas's ecstatic (mis-)reading33 of Schopenhauer (pp. 656-59), and the fourth his vision of the sea (pp. 67 -72), during both of which experiences his 'old stable ego'34 is, as in so many major Modernist texts, fundamentally damaged. The final passage occurs when Hanno performs what amounts to a miniaturized version of the 'Liebestod' from Tristan und Isolde (pp. 749-50), a musical experience over which, the narrator tells us, Hanno has no control. It is no accident that during this intoxicated performance, Hanno is said to cause 'Dornhecken' to open up and 'Flammen- mauern' to collapse, for, in the world of mythology, it is a sleeping woman who lies behind those barriers, and it is she whom Hanno metaphorically discovers and awakens by his playing. Here at last then, in an experience which is described as an orgasm of ecstatic sound, Hanno succeeds in giving artistic form to all those fatal, fateful, Dionysiac, diabolic, and elemental powers which his forebears had largely ignored, which, as a result, have been eating them away from within, and which will hasten Hanno's own death (see Vogt, pp. I4-15).

Accordingly, within Buddenbrooks's chiastic theological structure, the chapter which culminates in Hanno's final performance involves more than a satirical portrait of a Prussianized school. Hanno's school is a model of the Fate-governed, anti-providentialist universe which has come to replace the providentially legiti- mized one in which his grandfather was still able to exist and his father grew up. Just as Thomas replaced the old grey house in the Fischergrube with a bright, new, modern one, so Hanno's school has been erected on the site of 'die grauen und altersmorschen Teile der ehemaligen Klosterschule' (p. 707) attended by his father and uncle. But surface modernization cannot abolish all those powers symbolized in this novel by 'greyness' andjust as Thomas's house is infiltrated from within by Fate and its signifiers, so Hanno's school, for all its surface Prussianized order, is in reality governed by powers connected with chance, Fate, and Death. The gatekeeper/caretaker is called Herr Schlemiel (p. 707), a name whose intertextual

33 See Reed, p. 83; Vogt, pp. 93-95. 34 The reference is to D. H. Lawrence's famous letter to Edward Garnett of 5June I914, in The Collected

Letters ofD. H. Lawrence, ed. by Harry T. Moore, 2 vols (London: Heinemann, 1970), I, 281-82.

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Realism plus Mythology: 'Verfall' in 'Buddenbrooks'

connection with luck, chance, greyness, and diabolic temptation needs no explana- tion. The 'Primus' of Hanno's class is called AdolfTodtenhaupt (see above, p. 931). The man who teaches religion is a roue and we see him taking Hanno's class perfunctorily through the Book ofJob: that book in the Bible which, notwithstand- ing its tacked-on ending, is centrally concerned with the invalidity of a naively providentialist understanding of God (p. 714) and involves an inscrutable God who deprives a righteous man of precisely those worldly goods which the Lubeck catechism of 1835 had seemed to guarantee the godly (p. 9). During the same lesson, Kai secretly reads Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, a book which ends with a house mysteriously cracking asunder and being swallowed up by water (p. 716). Dr Goldener is, as has been said, reminiscent of the diabolic Griinlich. The headmaster, Dr Wulicke, is, like the Old Testament God who torments Job, explicitly said to be 'von der ritselhaften, zweideutigen, eigensinnigen und eifersiichtigen Schrecklich- keit des alttestamentarischen Gottes', and is, like Kesselmeyer, capable of saying 'etwas Scherzhaftes' and acting 'fiirchterlich' (pp. 722-23). Of Dr Mantelsack, who also behaves like a capricious God (pp. 724-25), it is said: 'Er war von einer ganz ausnehmenden, grenzenlosen naiven Ungerechtigkeit, und seine Gunst war hold und flatterhaft wie das Gliick', a description which makes it all the more ironic that he should encourage his pupils by quoting the famous words of Goethe's angel in 'Bergschluchten', echoing the providentialist God of the 'Prolog im Himmel' of Fausti ('und wer immer strebend sich bemiiht...'), but without the all-important 'den k6nnen wir erl6sen'. Finally, Kandidat Modersohn punishes Hanno unjustly, thus making impossible his 'Avancement' at Easter, the time of resurrection and rebirth (p. 741): yet another example of a minor and peripheral character causing disproportionate damage. Hanno, with a wisdom surpassing his years, perceives all this, and in a passage which could be either the narrator speaking or Hanno thinking in 'erlebte Rede', we are told: 'Ja, so war es immer. Wenn man am meisten angstigte, so ging es einem, wie aus Hohn, beinahe gut; aber wenn man nichts iibles gewartigte, so kam das Ungliick' (p. 741). It is this insight, rather than straight- forward biological weakness in the Naturalist sense, which, as Ridley sees (Ridley, pp. 53-54), finally helps to sap Hanno's will to participate in life.

Vogt claims that Hanno is not productive (Vogt, p. 102). I disagree, for it seems to me that Hanno's productivity consists in his ability, at the end of the chapter in question, to pictorialize those powers which govern his school world and which other members of his family could or would not confront. His great-grandfather, for all his flute-playing, chose to remain ignorant of them. His grandfather defended himself against them by means of an obsessive religiosity. His aunt was incapable of living 'dort unten' (p. 387), a more than geographical inability, and so remained an eternal child. His father locked away in a drawer his copy of Schopenhauer, together with all the profound joy and suffering which his encounter with that thinker had involved. But Hanno, like so many major figures in Modernist fiction, penetrates to those mysterious, ambiguous powers which lie at the heart of things and, for all his physical weakness, translates them into art, albeit uncomprehendingly and for a moment only. As Ridley perceives, the novel 'follows Thomas's search for ultimate answers without suggesting alternative routes he should follow' (Ridley, p. 6I), and so it is once more deeply ironic that when his son hits on the beginnings of an answer, he is prevented from living with his hard-won vision. Like Hans Castorp in the 'Schnee' chapter and Gustav von Aschenbach by the dried-up fountain in Venice,

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RICHARD SHEPPARD

Hanno has neither the time nor the stamina to translate what he has seen into anything more enduring or substantial.

Would Mann himself have conceded the existence of the mythological references, complex interweaving of leitmotifs, and the role which is played in the Budden- brooks' 'Verfall' by an almost Baroque sense of Fate? Possibly not, since none of his retrospective remarks indicates that he was aware of these dimensions. Neverthe- less, critics who have studied those remarks with some care point out that they are '6fters von einer wenig hilfreichen Widerspriichlichkeit' (Vogt, p. 72) and 'keines- wegs unproblematisch' (Handbuch, p. 353). It is generally accepted that many if not most of Mann's later major works involve those dimensions to a greater or lesser degree. Moreover, as James Northcote-Bade has pointed out (Handbuch, p. 360), Mann conceded, in a 'gestrichene Stelle' in the manuscript of'Liibeck als geistige Lebensform' (1926) and in the I939 introduction to Der Zauberberg that he was not always in control of his works when he wrote them and could learn from what critics had to say about them. So if what I have argued above is not sheer fantasy, then the complex patterns which, in my view, are embedded in Buddenbrooks add to rather than detract from the novel's literary merit. While he was still a novice, Mann's imagination was already intuitively working with techniques and ideas which would later become part of his conscious repertoire. The result of this was, I suggest, to endow Buddenbrooks with an even greater density and richness and an even more complex substructure of irony than has hitherto been appreciated.

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RICHARD SHEPPARD MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD