Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend
by Thomas Mann
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas MannTranslator: John E. Woods
Edition: Paperback
Audio: German (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1999-07-27
ISBN: 0375701168
Number of pages: 544
Publisher: Vintage
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780375701160
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend
Book Review: Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus" is a descent into hell amid the dance of thundering flames
Summary: 5 Stars
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was the 1955 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mann came from the cultured German bourgeoise being raised in the North Sea port of Lubeck. Doctor Faustus is the final novel written by Mann and is the latest chapter in the Faustian legend. Dr. Faustus (the Devil) bargains with gifted but hubritic artists to give Hell their souls in return for a few years of life lived to the full. Previous incarnations of the Faust story have been seen in Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan play; Goethe's Faust Part One and Part II and in Hector Berlioz's opera "The Damnation of Faust" as well as Charles Gonoud's opera "Faust." (the favorite opera of Great Britain's Queen Victoria).
Mann's Doctor Faustus is a long 534 page, densely printed, novel in the Vintage edition translated into readable English by John E. Woods. The book's theme is the destruction of the composer Adrian Leverkuhn as he barters his soul to the Devil in order to be given 24 more years of life. During that time AL becomes world famous as the father of the twelve tone method of musical composition (Mann states that AL is based on the Viennese twelve tone composer Arnold Schoenberg). The life span of the fictional AL is from 1885-1940 taking him from his college career as a theological student at Halle to Leipzig for philosophical and musical mentoring in Munich. Adrian is aloof, cold and obsessed with his art. His state of mind is parallel with that of Germany which fell into total defeat in 1945.
No big wig Nazis or Hitler are mentioned in the book but their sinister shadow oversees the slide
made by Al and Germany into the abyss of collapse.
The story is told by a fictional academic Dr. Serenus Zeitblom who is a teacher and lifelong friend of Adrian.
His narration contains chapters dealing with a wide range of topics from philosophy, theology, the demonic in art,
Zeitblom is, to this reviewer, a portrait of the cultivated German intellectual adrift in the stormy sea of Nazi tempest. Adrian, says Zeitblom, never married but was infatuated with the angelic beauty of his nephew who dies of disease much as all in German cultural lufe was infected by the black death of the black shirted SS thugs.
This is a difficult novel written in an erudite style. Mann is familiar with modern music, art, literature and ancient languages. His book is not for the easily bored or those looking for a story fueled by a good plot. I have read the book three times and have learned new things about life, love, evil and artistic ambition each time I have poured over this tragic tale of a tormented genius. The book is Mann's masterpiece.
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Summary of Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend
"John E. Woods is revising our impression of Thomas Mann, masterpiece by masterpiece."??--The New Yorker"Doctor Faustus is Mann's deepest artistic gesture. . . . Finely translated by John E. Woods." --The New Republic
Thomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now newly rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverk?hn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul--and the ability to love his fellow man.
Leverk?hn's life story is a brilliant allegory of the rise of the Third Reich, of Germany's renunciation of its own humanity and its embrace of ambition and nihilism. It is also Mann's most profound meditation on the German genius--both national and individual--and the terrible responsibilities of the truly great artist.
Mann, Thomas Books
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