Fraeulein Else
box 5/1
31. Jnnnenn en—
THOMAS MANN
335
title, The Empire: Novels of German Society in the Times of
William II, the other two volumes being the world-famous Unter¬
tan (novel of the bouryeoiste, published in English as The
Patrioteer); and Die Armen (novel of the proletariate). This new
volume is the novel of the Zeaderr, and my judgement is free from
personal bias when I say that it marks by far the highest point
in this series of social criticisms; further, it belongs among the
strongest and most beautiful attainments of this brilliant and, in
rhe best sense of the word, sensational author, ranking in my mind
with his masterpieces Die Kleine Stadt and Professor Unrat.
Of all German writers, Heinrich Mann is the most social-minded,
a man whose interests are social and political to an extent which,
while not unusual in Western-European, and especially Latin,
countries, is unheard-of among us (although, thanks to the heavy
blows of fortune which have befallen us, it is now very timely).
The rest of us are close“ to metaphysical, moral, and pedagogie
motives and problems—those in short which concern the inner man:
the novel of growth, education, confession, has always been the
particular German variety of this species of art. This author’s
development is almost without parallel; and, when such artistic
brilliance is taken into account, it & without parallel: from the
beginning, the moral element in him manifested itself not as inner¬
worldly askesis' (to borrow a term from religious philosophy) but
as political and socio-critical expansion. It was he who, while we
still lived in splendour, suffered most deeply from the basic stag¬
nation of our political life; and, in literary manifestos the ful¬
minant injustice of whlich sprang from a higher justice, he dragged
our leaders into the forum of the intellect. At the end of that
novel in which he savagely caricatures the German Patrioteer,
he prophesied symbolically the collapse of imperial Germany. And
he tells us now, in a free artistic rearrangement, the story of this
decline—tells it is a prose work which is neither more nor less than
It is a book written in his fifty-fourth year, by a man who has
ripened and mellowed. It is far removed in temper from the biting
satire of its predecessors, fairer in every way, and penetrated with
human warmth. The particular genius of this author consists in
his so allowing the poetic and the human to grow out of the social,
that they gain from it, weight and significance; while correspond¬
ingly, it gains from them, increased depth and poetic feeling. The
box 5/1
31. Jnnnenn en—
THOMAS MANN
335
title, The Empire: Novels of German Society in the Times of
William II, the other two volumes being the world-famous Unter¬
tan (novel of the bouryeoiste, published in English as The
Patrioteer); and Die Armen (novel of the proletariate). This new
volume is the novel of the Zeaderr, and my judgement is free from
personal bias when I say that it marks by far the highest point
in this series of social criticisms; further, it belongs among the
strongest and most beautiful attainments of this brilliant and, in
rhe best sense of the word, sensational author, ranking in my mind
with his masterpieces Die Kleine Stadt and Professor Unrat.
Of all German writers, Heinrich Mann is the most social-minded,
a man whose interests are social and political to an extent which,
while not unusual in Western-European, and especially Latin,
countries, is unheard-of among us (although, thanks to the heavy
blows of fortune which have befallen us, it is now very timely).
The rest of us are close“ to metaphysical, moral, and pedagogie
motives and problems—those in short which concern the inner man:
the novel of growth, education, confession, has always been the
particular German variety of this species of art. This author’s
development is almost without parallel; and, when such artistic
brilliance is taken into account, it & without parallel: from the
beginning, the moral element in him manifested itself not as inner¬
worldly askesis' (to borrow a term from religious philosophy) but
as political and socio-critical expansion. It was he who, while we
still lived in splendour, suffered most deeply from the basic stag¬
nation of our political life; and, in literary manifestos the ful¬
minant injustice of whlich sprang from a higher justice, he dragged
our leaders into the forum of the intellect. At the end of that
novel in which he savagely caricatures the German Patrioteer,
he prophesied symbolically the collapse of imperial Germany. And
he tells us now, in a free artistic rearrangement, the story of this
decline—tells it is a prose work which is neither more nor less than
It is a book written in his fifty-fourth year, by a man who has
ripened and mellowed. It is far removed in temper from the biting
satire of its predecessors, fairer in every way, and penetrated with
human warmth. The particular genius of this author consists in
his so allowing the poetic and the human to grow out of the social,
that they gain from it, weight and significance; while correspond¬
ingly, it gains from them, increased depth and poetic feeling. The