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A Major Literary Event: a brilliant new translation of Thomas Mann's first great novel, one of the two for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1929. Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1900, when Mann was only twenty-five, has become a classic of modem literature -- the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany. With consummate skill, Mann draws a rounded picture of middle-class life: births and christenings; marriages, divorces, and deaths; successes and failures. These commonplace occurrences, intrinsically the same, vary slightly as they recur in each succeeding generation. Yet as the Buddenbrooks family eventually succumbs to the seductions of modernity -- seductions that are at variance with its own traditions -- its downfall becomes certain. In immensity of scope, richness of detail, and fullness of humanity, Buddenbrooks surpasses all other modem family chronicles; it has, indeed, proved a model for most of them. Judged as the greatest of Mann's novels by some critics, it is ranked as among the greatest by all. Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929.… (more)
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The best thing about Buddenbrooks though is the interesting
When we first meet the family one is immediately impressed by their conservatism and traditional ways. It is set in the 1830s in a northern German trading city and the fine mansion where they live and everything else about them exudes the feeling of haute bourgeoisie. The central characters are introduced, Johann and Elisabeth the father and mother with three children, Antonie (Tony), Thomas, and his younger brother Christian. It is their lives that form the center of the story for the first half of the novel.
With Thomas Mann every detail is important, so as time goes by (and it seems to fly by decade after decade) the background of the changes resulting from both the Industrial Revolution and the politics of the German states is as important as the family social struggles. And struggles they have as the Grandfather dies and the firm passes on to Johann who too few years later passes the firm on to his eldest son Thomas. If there is one central figure in the family saga it is TOny who first marries an older man rather than her young love as her father demands only to see that marriage end in divorce due to the bankruptcy of her husband who (wrongly) assumed the Buddenbrook family would bail him out. I hope you are beginning to get a feeling for the theme of decline.
Buddenbrooks reminds me a bit of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, a noel about another family who fails to change with the times and struggles to maintain their social standing. Mann's satirical side is borought home often and is best seen in a set piece when the workers challenge the leaders of the Town. The mini-revolt (it pales in comparison to the real revolution of 1848) is defused by Consul Johann while one of the town elders is parodied as he shows more concern for his carriage than anything the workers (who like children should be silent) might have to say.
One of the keenest issues for me is the position of women in the Buddenbrooks family and society in general. That is the lack of standing and choice that they have. This is evident not only in Tony's failed marriages (she has a second divorce before the midpoint in the novel) but also in other female members of the family, particularly Tony's younger sister Clara who is considered unmarriageable until a Minister, Sievert Tiburtius, takes an interest in her. Most woman in this society are prepared for nothing in life with limited choices and the prospect of life as second class citizens.
Throughout the novel Mann develops themes through the use of lietmotifs. These stem from his admiration for the operas of Richard Wagner, in the case of Buddenbrooks an example can be found in the description of the color – blue and yellow, respectively – of the skin and the teeth of the characters. Each such description alludes to different states of health, personality and even the destiny of the characters.
Aspects of Thomas Mann's own personality are manifest in the two brothers, Thomas and Christian, whose find it difficult to live together. Christian is much the free spirit who cannot be happy working in the family firm, the leadership of which Thomas has inherited as the eldest son. It should not be considered a coincidence that Mann shared the same first name with one of them. The influence of Schopenhauer is also present and it is through the brothers that both Buddenbrooks reflect a conflict lived by the author: departure from a conventional bourgeois life to pursue an artistic one, although without rejecting bourgeois ethics.
The reader sees the family’s decline in Christian’s worsening pain, in Thomas’s gloom, in Hanno’s unhealthy teeth, and in the failed marriages of Tony, Thomas’s sister. Although Tony tried to leverage her and her daughter’s marriages to uplift the family status, their failures pointed toward the finale, where Christian was permanently institutionalize and Hanno died without children. Not only had the wealthy dissipated, but also there was no heir.
Buddenbrooks is a monumental family saga.
I have read comments about the style of prose of Thomas Mann. Even though the translation into English was of the finest, I would still like read Thomas Mann in German to get the full impact of his prosody. I cannot put my finger on it exactly, but there is something unique about the German idiom that is unavailable to me as an English reader. Must bring out my high school German tutors and get back at them.
We always hear about the mood of Germany from 1870 up to 1914. I wonder what it was really like. Reading books like this one is what can really make that period come alive. Will try to read this one again, and then contrast it with the Joseph and His Brothers tetralogy.
Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
Selected Letters, pg. 176
Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
Selected Letters, pg. 176
Buddenbrooks is the multi-generational tale of the of the eponymous merchant class family in northern Germany during the mid-1800s. The novel centers around the lives of the third generation of Buddenbrooks: Thomas, his brother Christian and their sister Tony. This
Despite its length, Thomas Mann's debut novel engagingly portrays the rise and decline of the family as it navigates the changing social customs of an industrializing Germany. Mann refreshingly avoids interjecting authorial commentary, instead allowing his narrative to depict the wisdom or foolishness of the business and marital decisions which bring about the Buddenbrook's many misfortunes. Thomas' misplaced reliance on appearances rather than competency and his inadequacies as a father which result in the lack of a suitable successor to the family business. Christian's unsuitability for work in the family business and his decadent lifestyle. Tony's arranged marriage to a swindling, much older man she does not love. Her subsequent marriage to a man whose cultural inadequacies doom this relationship. Her daughter's unfortunate marriage to a man brought down by the disfavor of his enemies.
Buddenbrooks is an absorbing yet ultimately discouraging portrait of a family's dissolution amidst a changing environment in what for them must have also felt like a story set in a different country.
Had I been told that an objective, even detached depiction of the downfall of a merchant family in a North-German town in the nineteenth century would shake me they way Buddenbrooks has
Told in an omniscient, impartial voice and taking for background the first symptoms of major social and economic changes in Germany on its way into 20th Century modernity and uncertainty, Mann opens the narration with an opulent banquet in 1835 where the three generation of Buddendbrooks are celebrating their social and economic prominence and future prospects. Mann describes their world in detail and masterly pictures the characters with all their hopes, fears and ambitions, all this in a brilliantly flowing language.
The story mainly follows two of the children: Thomas, the crown prince who has been prepared to take over the firm and to become the future ruling man in the family, and his beautiful sister Antoine, a spoiled, naive creature with bourgeois airs but good-natured heart who will see her life expectations vanish and her dreams disappear as years go by.
While Thomas embodies the vitality, strength and vigor of a prosperous, responsible merchant of the time, his hypochondriac, indolent brother Christian and eventually Thomas’ introverted and frail son, Hanno, fail their merchant inheritance in allowing their artistic vocation to prevail over their duty to the firm, condemning the Buddenbrook name into oblivion.
In this sense, Mann sets the tone for some themes in his forthcoming works, one of them being the refined and sophisticated artistic attitude opposed to the simple, healthy and pragmatic life of a merchant family, a poignant subject in this novel and one which could also have reminiscences of his own personal experience.
Although Mann treats his characters lovingly he always keeps in an ironic distance which reminds the reader that the fate of the Buddenbrooks is a sealed one and that, like in life, eventual decay and ultimate death can’t be prevented. And this natural cycle of ups and downs both of the firm and the family, for they are bound together, is precisely what makes possible that a naturalistic story such as this one could reach one’s soul and fill it with wonder with its delicate and effortless language.
In the end, nothing is left, no grand house, no flourishing firm, no prominent family. The Buddenbrooks sink back into meaninglessness. Only an old volume with the genealogy of the whole family remains, echo of a long gone world and the only proof of what once was and never will be again.
But with the end comes freedom.
"Was not every human being a mistake and a blunder? Was he not in painful arrest from the hour of his birth? Prison, prison, bonds and limitations everywhere! The human being stares hopelessly through the barred window of his personality at the high walls of outward circumstances, till Death and calls him home to freedom!" (p.506)
What I most appreciated about Mann's writing was his use of description. I'm not a big fan of descriptive passages, authors that drone on and on about the shape of the table and how the hands of a grandfather clock move. Normally, I find it irrelevant, tiring, and detrimental to the forward movement of the plot. But Mann succeeds in this regard. His descriptions give life to the story. It paints the background and sets the stage for the scene. Colors and props become meaningful to the theme. In fact, I think it would be easy to say that his scenery is a character of its own.
Aside from scenery, excellent characters were also found in Toni and Hanno. Both were developed wonderfully, and I looked forward to their every scene. I think I could've like Christian had he been similarly developed, but he was more of a plot device than a character. Unfortunately for me, a large part of the novel focused on Thomas and I was never able to connect with him. By the novel's conclusion, I was completely ambivalent toward his character.
In the end, I enjoyed Buddenbrooks greatly. There were moments I lost interest, particularly when Thomas was at the center, but this did not take away from the grand setting and story that made this novel fabulous. Thank you, Thomas Mann, for reminding me not to make assumptions.
Set in the mid 1800s, the book tells the story of a leading business family in a small regional town in what is now northern Germany. I found it fascinating - the characters believably fallible, and set in a rich background of town and
It made me realise how little I know of that place and time.
It also made me wonder why I couldn't think of an English language twin - what 19th century English books are centred on the business class? From Austen to Hardy, they all seem to focus on the clergy, landholders, or the aristocracy. Dickens covered the disadvantaged - but who wrote about the families driving the industrial revolution?