Music, Math, and Motion

Doktor Faustus, by Thomas Mann

Dr. E.J. Zita (with Dr. Arun Chandra)The Evergreen St. College

Winter week 8

Tuesday 25.Feb. 2008

Outline

• Adrian’s deal with the devil• Some names and relationships• Adrian is denied love• Women in Faust• Adrian’s collapse and Fascism’s rise• Music in Mann’s Faustus• Durer’s magic square and Schoenberg’s 12-tone

rows• Other themes• Looking ahead

Opening quote from Dante’s Inferno

The day was now departing; the dark airreleased the living beings of the earthfrom work and weariness; and I myselfalone prepared to undergo the battleboth of the journeying and of the pity,

which memory, mistaking not, shall show.O Muses, O high genius, help me now;O memory that set down what I saw,

here shall your excellence reveal itself!

Courtesy of Thad Curtzt

Dante's invocation of the Muses at the beginning of his account of his descent into Hell, guided by the soul of the poet Virgil.

Adrian’s deal with the Devil

• Adrian’s deal with the Devil – or was it just• Syphilitic hallucinations?• Classical Faustian deal: 24 years of power in

exchange for one’s soul (then fiery death)• b. 1885, d. 1950• Adrian counts the deal starting with Esmeralda, not

meeting the Devil: productive from age 21-45.• 1906 encounter with Esmeralda (age 21 + 24 = age

45 his breakdown)• 1912 encounter with Satan? in Palestrina (age 27 +

24 = 51 persistive vegetative state) • Adrian lived until age 55, but WITHOUT LOVE

Some names and relationships

• Adrian Leverkühn (“living boldly”)• Serenus Zeitblom (“serene blooming of the age”; father is

Wohlgemut, “merry”), childhood friend, the only friend Adrian calls “du” (until Rudi, later…), more like family than beloved; devoted to A, with unrequited love

• Rudi Schwerdtfeger (“swordsmith”), brilliant violinist, flirt; close (platonic homoerotic?) friendship with Adrian; they call each other “du” after their Hungarian vacation

• Marie Godeau: sensible, talented, black-eyed beauty, beloved of A and R. She rejects A, and R is killed before he can join her.

• Nepomuk (Nepo; “Echo”): Adrian’s heavenly nephew, tragically died young after two months with A.

Women in Faust• Elspeth Leverkühn : sensible, beautiful farmwife with melodic voice,

very dark hair when young (A’s mother, in Kaisersachern)

• Marie Godeau: sensible, talented dark-eyed beauty, with Elspeth’s voice (whom A would have married)

• Frau Schweigestill (“peace and quiet”): sensible, devoted farmwife at Pfeiffering near Waldshut (“forest keep”) (second home, second mother)

• Esmeralda: A’s first (and only?) sexual experience, from which he contracted syphilus.

• Madame de Tolna: secret admirer, rich Hungarian widow and patroness, whom A never meets? Some suggest she is Esmeralda.

• Little Mermaid: Adrian empathizes with her pain, and imagines that she (as Esmeralda?) is the mother of their child, Echo (his nephew)

• Jeannette Scheurl: sensible, intelligent author and novelist, she is present at many key scenes, and later helps A work 17th C music into his compositions. No hint of romance. What is her role?

• Rodde sisters, Inez and Clarice: pathetic characters, representing (as do many of the men in the salons) weaknesses of German bourgeoisie and fascists

The little mermaid (Denmark)

Adrian is denied love• Devil (or hallucination plus A’s sardonic nature) tells Adrian that part of

his Faustian deal (of brilliant productivity for limited time) is that he will be denied love.

• First love: Esmeralda, the “nut-brown lass” or hetera (concubine). Smitten, A embraces her (once) despite her warning, and later incorporates her initials into his compositions: H(B)-E-A-A-Es(E-flat).

• Rudi: their close friendship deepen, Rudi warms A’s cold heart so that he becomes capable of love. This shatters when A falls for Marie and asks R to approach her for him: R is hurt, jealous (of both?), and wants M for himself.

• Marie, the only woman A has loved since E, rejects him (and arranges to meet R in Paris).

• Rudi is killed by rejected Inez. Adrian loses his most beloved friend.

• Beautiful little Nepo / Echo appears on A’s doorstep. Despite himself, A warms to him. Nepo soon dies horribly. A blames his cursed love for killing N.

• What about Serenus and the circle of devoted women who cared for A?

Adrian’s collapse and Fascism’s riseAdrian b.1885, d. 1940

1906 Esmeralda (age 21) “wed Satan”

A will not fight in WWI (CH.XXX)

Until age 45 (1930) Productive but increasingly unstable.

(Kridwiss (“bankrupt knowledge” salon rises in Munich – nationalists)

1929: A writes Lament as Hitler rises

1930: A’s physical and mental collapse at Schweigestill

1930-1940: worsening vegetative state

1940: death in mother’s home at Kaisersachern

Hitler b. 1889 (Austria), d. 1945

WWI vet, Nazi leader 1921

1923 imprisoned after failed coup

Popularity grows – martyr – Mein Kampf

Released from prison 1928

Chancellor 1933 (president)

Austrian Anschluss 1938 violates WW I treaty

Polish invasion 1939 WW II

(over 6 million Jews ... murdered)

Conquered much of Europe til 1942

1942-1945: Germany loses again

Music in Mann’s Faustus

Some music in Faustus may be related to real pieces:

Apocalypse: Franz Schmidt's Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, performed 1938 (shortly after the Anschluss)

The Lamentation of Dr Faustus: Ernst Krenek's Lamentatio Jeremiae prophetae, an oratorio of 1941-1942 (using Schonberg’s 12-tone style))

Adrian’s “Apocalypse” inspired by Dürer prints

http://www.conncoll.edu/visual/Durer-prints/

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse St John the Martyr

Magic square and 12-tone rows

http://www.kickylittlething.com/images/magic%20square.jpg

http://faculty.matcmadison.edu/mbertrand/mab/eureka/images/MagicSquare.gif

Many themes to discuss in seminar• Germany and nationalism; Jews and internationalism• Protestant reformation as a source of ethical, spiritual and

artistic crises confronting early 20th century creativity • Appearances of or allusions to Satan or Mephistopheles:

Porter (pimp), visitor in Palestrina, Saul Fitelberg?, characters in salons?

• Humanism & theology• Aesthetics & art• Music & politics; Music as metaphor: people singing

along but not together; harmony, polyphony, or dissonance; …

• A’s (and father’s) waxing and waning migraines; childhood and adult measles, meningitis, and other afflictions in other characters – metaphors, meanings?

• Zeitblom as Mann’s proxy (“if I were a novelist….”)

Mann 1938: "I must regretfully own that in my younger years I shared that dangerous German habit of thought which regards life and intellect, art and politics as totally separate worlds."

Zita’s Seminar:

Arun’s Seminar:

SignupSheets:

Your Essays due on Saturday

(Two responses the week after your essay)

Sources

• Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann• Notes from Thad Curtzt• Conversations with Arun• Google and Wikipedia (I hate to admit it)• German dictionary