Sunday, August 17, 2008

Flare Up

"...it not infrequently happens that a race with sober, practical bourgeois traditions will towards the end of its days flare up in some form of art."

Thomas Mann, "Tristan," Stories of Three Decades

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Simply One Wound

"The conscience, madame, is a bad business. I, and other people like me, work hard all our lives to swindle our consciences into feeling pleased and satisfied. We are feckless creatures, and aside from a few good hours we go around weighted down, sick and sore with the knowledge of our own futility. We hate the useful; we know it is vulgar and unlovely, and we defend this position, as a man defends something that is absolutely necessary to his existence. Yet all the while conscience is gnawing at us, to such an extent that we are simply one wound. Added to that, our whole inner life, our view of the world, our way of working, is of a kind -- its effect is frightfully unhealthy, undermining, irritating, and this only aggravates the situation. Well, then, there are certain little counter-irritants, without which we would most certainly not hold out. A kind of decorum, a hygienic regimen, for instance, becomes a necessity for some of us. To get up early, to get up ghastly early, take a cold bath, and go out walking in a snowstorm -- that may give us a sense of self-satisfaction that lasts as much as an hour. If I were to act our my true character, I should be lying in bed late into the afternoon. My getting up early is all hypocrisy, believe me."

Thomas Mann, "Tristan," in Stories of Three Decades

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Out of Chaos

"He drew a deep breath, his lips closed firmly; he went back and took up his pen. No, he must not brood, he was too far down for that. He must not descend into chaos; or at least he must not stop there. Rather out of chaos, which is fullness, he must draw up to the light whatever he found there fit and ripe for form. No brooding! Work! Define, eliminate, fashion, complete!

And complete it he did, that effort of a labouring hour. He brought it to an end, perhaps not to a good end, but in any case to an end. And being once finished, lo, it was also good. And from his soul, from music and idea, new works struggled upward to birth and, taking shape, gave out light and sound, ringing and shimmering, and giving hint of their infinite origin -- as in a shell we hear the sighing of the sea whence it came."

Thomas Mann, "A Weary Hour," in Stories of Three Decades. Also translated as "The Harsh Hour."