07-30-2013, 06:36 AM | #76 |
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I have just finished Part 6, so am halfway through. I was horrified at the exchange between Tony and Tom starting on page 299 where she was supposed to put up with the situation she found herself in rather than "wounding the dignity" of the family. I noted also through clenched teeth the way in which he told her she was a child. And of course that was how she was treated and therefore the way in which she behaved at times, though I was cheering for her as she stood up for herself.
I continue to be very grateful that I wasn't born into a time when women were treated in that way! |
07-30-2013, 09:34 AM | #77 | ||||
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Quote:
Quote:
I read in a short piece by Peter Gay that Mann wrote an anti-Semitic story early in his career which he later suppressed; according to Gay, very few have read it or know of it, I assume. Quote:
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07-30-2013, 04:07 PM | #78 | |
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And yes, the context is rather interesting, also for my own country. Having said this: I finally ended the book. 'finally', as I felt myself plodding along for the last 200 pages. I didn't have the feeling something unexpected would happen and it didn't. But tragic all. Spoiler:
Last edited by desertblues; 07-31-2013 at 01:39 AM. Reason: Grammar |
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07-30-2013, 05:16 PM | #79 | |
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You can read a little bit more about the members of the Mann-family on this wikipedia site: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_(Familie) It is in German but has a link to the English version too. |
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07-30-2013, 08:52 PM | #80 | |
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If Gay meant Mann's first story "Gefallen", than that would be Gay's own private interpretation of this story since none of the protagonists is introduced as a Jew. Mann called "Gefallen" a premature work some years later, that is right. There is a huge paragraph about analysis and interpretation about this story on Wikipedia. Statements on Wikipedia usually don't mean a lot, but this story is not regarded as antisemitic usually. Last edited by medard; 07-30-2013 at 09:02 PM. |
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07-31-2013, 08:12 AM | #81 |
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OK, I've finished!
There were times where I felt like it was a bit plonkety plonk plonk. But then there were these fantastic moments. Off the top of my head: - The last full Christmas as a family before the matriarch died - The matriarch's death - There were two impressive speeches by Thomas, one about the sea vs the mountains. I can't remember the other one, just that I really enjoyed it - The fight between Christian and Thomas - The absolutely exquisite description of little Johann's "improvisation" I also liked the one-joke characters that appear over and over again, "...my good chawld." The story was really quite dark, but there were so many little jokes, even if they were really just a handful repeated. |
07-31-2013, 09:08 AM | #82 | ||
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This is what Gay had to say about it: Quote:
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07-31-2013, 05:24 PM | #83 | |
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It's so nice to see such an active conversation! I'm going to go back and read all the posts that discuss the book once I get farther into it, but I'm a good enough ways into it now and I'm enjoying it so far.
I went with the newer Woods translation. It was a tough decision and I really delved into it, but in the end I found both translations perfectly passable but neither particularly great. Both seemed awkward and not quite well translated at points. Because of the similar (though different) quality in this regard, I ended up with the Woods because of the minor difference that I'd read that the older Lowe-Porter translation excised small parts of the text and censored/altered a few other small parts of the texts. I didn't notice any censoring per se but I did find little examples of excising, such as the poet's dinner poem to the family. In the Lowe-Porter, one stanza was cut out. This is very minor in my opinion, but it gave me a reason to choose one translation over the other, especially in that, though I didn't notice any censoring-intended alterations in the beginning parts that I compared, I don't like the idea of them however minor they may be. Anyway, I can tell that the writing isn't up to the same level as "Death in Venice", though I do ascribe part of it to the awkward translations. However, I do see glimpses of fine writing and I enjoy some of his nicely described scenes. One I'll share here is the garden scene from the beginning of Part 3. I love the description of a family sitting in a lovely sunny garden, with many of them reading as their study or divertissement. In an age where so few people read and it's almost an impossible idea to imagine an entire family sitting contentedly in silence with many of them reading, it sits in my imagination as something of a foregone ideal. Quote:
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07-31-2013, 08:01 PM | #84 |
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Didn't you love the title of the book that Klothilde, the poor relation, was reading? I remember smiling at that when I read it, assuming it's a spoof title. But of course it might not be!
I think the main thing I'm finding with the book as a whole is that it is all description but I don't get any deep insights into what really makes the individuals tick. Of course I can pick up some of this from what they say and do, but remembering issybird's earlier reference to The Forsyte Saga, I think from my long ago reading of that work that I got much more about how people felt, and an understanding of their motivations. I also just wanted to say how much I am enjoying the discussions by the German speakers about the various dialects - I do envy your ability to read in the original language. |
08-01-2013, 12:53 AM | #85 | |
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The problems concerning the first printing of this story 1906 came because Mann feared that people might think that he is describing his own wife Katia and her brother Klaus in an incestous relationship. They had an affluent jewish background. At least this is what is usually concidered as the reason. Maybe this is a bit of a missunderstanding because the jewish brother and sister perform some kind of Richard Wagner Kult in Wälsungenblut. But you have to keep in mind that this story was written before 1933. Richard Wagner's music was extremely polpular at the time Mann wrote this story, among germans and among german jews. As we know today some national socialists liked Wagner for whatever reason. But the line Wagner = Nazi is wrong, even the equation Wagner = Antisemitism is wrong, although Wagner wrote essays that contain higly problematic antisemetic sterotypes at some point. But thanks to this conversation I found out about Gay's works, I didn't know him or his books. Thanks a lot for sharing this, although this lead to some sort of controversy. I had a look at the Wikipedia page and some of his books and I think he's a quite interesting person. At least his biography and his own interests are. |
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08-01-2013, 03:55 AM | #86 |
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You seem to know a great deal about Thomas Mann, medard.
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08-01-2013, 01:24 PM | #87 |
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I've just read the marriage proposal chapter in which Tony is told that Grunlich has sent a letter to her father proposing marriage to her. The most striking aspect of this scene is that it dramatises the Patriarchal nature of society through the use of one of the most core lies of such cultures--namely that a young unmarried woman equates with infantile child--i.e. someone incapable of reason who must be manipulated into the socially approved niche set out for them. In fact, Grunlich reminds me of a Mr Collins type who believes in a trophy wife and whose demonstrations of affection are purely superficial.
Unfortunately for Tony both mother and father use the woman as child routine on her. The mother says: "A young girl like you never knows what she really wants. Your head and heart are both all in a muddle." And the consul answers Tony's quite rational point that she hardly knows the man with: "What could you possibly know about him? You're a child, don't you see, and you wouldn't have known any more about him if he had been here for fifty-two weeks rather than four, You're a little girl who's seen nothing of the world and has to depend on the eyes of other people, who only want the best for you." Throughout we see Tony dehumanised and locked into a child-pattern which allows the father to exercise control. The fact that Tony actually seems so far to be a rather unpleasant person doesn't change the nature of her victimisation. At this stage Tony has--as Caleb pointed out earlier--the right instincts. I gather that she will be less a victim later on, but that doesn't change the fact that she is being used essentially as an item of property for social aggrandisement rather than being seen as a person. But did Thomas Mann actually have an understanding of the feminist rationale underlying the business with the first marriage? Did he have any real sympathy for the oppression of women in that type of patriarchal culture? Or was he simply portraying the situation as it existed? So far, I find it an interesting book, but it lacks the subtlety and psychological perception of Ulysses, Remembrance of Things Past {Now known as In Search of Lost Time} or Conrad's Nostromo. Of course, this is only a personal opinion and I may well change my mind by the time I finish the book. In addition, another factor is that we are dealing with a translation here--and I suspect that neither of the two available is as powerful as Scott-Moncrieff's brilliant rendering of Proust. Last edited by fantasyfan; 08-01-2013 at 02:53 PM. |
08-01-2013, 02:31 PM | #88 |
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I think that Tony has been my favorite character in the book. I liked in the scenes that introduced Grunlich that Tony had enough insight to know that she didn't love him and to recognize that he was telling her parents exactly what they "wanted to hear" in his attempts to gain their consent. As you keep reading you will see what becomes of that match and what his true motives were. I don't want to reveal too much for you. As the book continues Tony does repeat often that she is no longer a silly little goose and that she now knows a little something about life and the world. She is strongly influenced by what she considers her "duty to the firm" and that affects the outcome of whether or not she continues to be a victim of life's circumstances.
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08-01-2013, 02:58 PM | #89 |
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Thanks for making those points Bookworm_Girl. I suspect that Tony will indeed turn out to be quite an interesting character. In fact, so far, I find her more interesting than any other in the novel.
Last edited by fantasyfan; 08-02-2013 at 04:10 AM. |
08-01-2013, 08:10 PM | #90 |
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Wrong cat, fantasyfan! But yes, I'm with both of you. Tony is flawed - aren't we all? - but she does try to overcome the constant harping on her being "a child". I'm certainly more on her side than on anyone else's.
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