Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus, novel by German writer Thomas Mann, published in 1947. It is a reworking of the Faust legend in the form of a biography of a fictional 20th-century composer.

Summary

Doctor Faustus is the story of the rise and fall of Adrian Leverkühn, and it is told through the eyes of his friend, Serenus Zeitblom, who narrates the tale as a reminiscence undertaken in the 1940s. Leverkühn is born in 1885 near the fictional town of Kaisersaschern, Germany. While in high school, he studies piano and attends lectures by the musicologist Wendell Kretzschmar. Leverkühn later goes to the University of Halle, but, when Kretzschmar is appointed to the conservatory at Leipzig, Leverkühn follows him.

Leverkühn subsequently becomes obsessed with a prostitute whom he calls Esmeralda, and he eventually has sex with her despite the fact that she has syphilis. Although he seeks medical attention, the first doctor he consults dies before completing his treatment, and a second doctor is arrested. At this point Leverkühn gives up trying to find a cure. His music become wildly inventive, gaining critical praise, though his musical idioms are too difficult to win popular acceptance. Among the works is a song cycle inspired by the poetry of Clemens Brentano. One of Leverkühn’s friends, the translator Rüdiger Schildknapp, persuades him to write an opera based on Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, with a libretto by Zeitblom.

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In 1910 Leverkühn moves to Munich, where he takes a room with Frau Rodde and her daughters, Clarissa and Ines. He spends a summer in Palestrina, Italy, with Schildknapp. Here he has a conversation with the Devil, according to papers later found by Zeitblom. During their discussion, it is stated that when Leverkühn was infected with syphilis, he entered into a pact with the Devil, agreeing to deny himself any form of love in exchange for 24 years of compositional genius.

Leverkühn moves to Pfeiffering, outside Munich, and writes increasingly successful vocal music. Ines Rodde falls in love with the violinist Rudolf Schwerdtfeger, though she is married to another man. Later Leverkühn asks Schwerdtfeger to approach Marie Godeau, a young woman he thinks he loves, on his behalf, but she falls for Schwerdtfeger. Before they can be married, a jealous Ines shoots Schwerdtfeger to death. An oratorio that Leverkühn has written during this time is performed a year later and is a great success.

Leverkühn then begins work on his masterpiece, the cantata The Lamentation of Dr. Faustus. During this time Leverkühn’s young nephew is sent to live with him. The composer becomes fond of the young boy, but the child dies of meningitis. In 1930, 24 years to the day after he became infected with syphilis, Leverkühn prepares to perform the cantata for his friends. He first tells them about his pact with the Devil. When he begins playing the piano, he collapses and spends the final 10 years of his life ravaged by dementia.

Legacy

Interwoven with the narration of Leverkühn’s life, his bargain with the Devil, and the pact’s repercussions is an exploration of how and why Germany chose to ally itself with dark forces in its embrace of fascism through Adolf Hitler. Doctor Faustus engages with the ideas of many European philosophers and thinkers, elaborating its own unique vision. Particularly brilliant are Mann’s meditations on the evolution of musical theory over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, including the advent of the 12-tone system of Arnold Schoenberg, the composer on whom Leverkühn is partly based (the character is also partly based on Friedrich Nietzsche). Also in strong evidence is Mann’s preoccupation with the ruthless demands of creative life. Leverkühn suffers excruciating periods of pain punctuated by short bouts of breathtaking genius.

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Many of the finest passages are those that explore the relationship between illness and creativity. The novel’s major achievement is its eloquent synthesis of complex ideas on art, history, and politics, as well as its elaborate meditation on the relationship between the artist and society. The final description of Leverkühn’s fate is tinged with the despair and isolation that Mann himself endured as he pondered the future of his native Germany from the vantage point of his exile in California. The novel was first translated into English by H.T. Lowe-Porter. A new English translation, by John E. Woods, was issued in 1997.