The Bitter Taste of Victory (70 page)

57  
HS,
The Dark and The Bright
, p. 226.

58  
‘beginning to bar’: Stephan Hermlin, cited in Brockmann,
German Literary Culture
, p. 152. On the conference in general, see Brockmann
German Literary Culture
, and the transcript of the conference in Ursula Reinhold et al (eds.),
Erster Deutscher Schriftstellerkongress, 4
–
8 Oktober 1947
(Aufbau, 1999).

59  
See Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam (eds.),
The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945
–
60
(Frank Cass, 2003), p. 295.

60  
‘barbarism’, ‘millions of simple’: cited in Brockmann,
German Literary Culture,
p. 153.

61  
See Brockmann,
German Literary Culture
, p. 154.

62  
‘Show of fireworks’: Elisabeth Langgässer to Waldemar Gurian, 21 Oct 1947, in Elisabeth Langgässer,
Briefe 1924
–
1950
(Claasen, 1990). The ban of the Kulturbund was the result of a series of complicated bureaucratic manoeuvres (see Schivelbusch,
In a Cold Crater,
pp. 97–104), but ultimately represented the American and British suspicion of an organisation they perceived to be actively promoting Communism.

12:
Artistic enlightenment

1  
‘a formal gesture’, ‘semi-totalitarian dimness’: Melvin Lasky, ‘Berlin Letter’,
Partisan Review
, Nov-Dec 1947.

2  
‘a vacuum filled’: Elisabeth Langgässer to Wilhelm Lehman, 10 Dec 1945, in Langgässer,
Briefe
.

‘Both culturally’: Langgässer to Henry Goverts, 17 Mar 1946, in
Briefe
.

‘a garbage heap’: Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, 19 Apr 1947, in Arendt and Jaspers,
Correspondence 1926
–
1969
.

3  
Wolfgang Borchert’s
Draußen vor der Tür
(
Outside the Door
) was also performed in November and commented on the postwar German situation.

4  
Concern of American authorities, sense he belongs to Germany: CZ,
A Part of Myself
, p. 401.

5  
‘When becoming’, ‘I am an American’: CZ,
Deutschlandbericht
, p. 126.

6  
‘The play corresponded’: CZ,
A Part of Myself
, p. 402.

7  
‘I’ve never dipped’, ‘The meaning of’, ‘Don’t question’, ‘total mobilisation’: CZ,
The Devil’s General and Germany: Jekyll and Hyde
, trans. by Sebastian Haffner (Continuum International, 2005), pp. 13, 9, 21, 8.

8  
‘I want to’, ‘We need a’, ‘The world is’: CZ,
The Devil’s General,
pp. 47, 48, 34.

9  
‘the true’, ‘It’s laid’, ‘We’re guilty’: CZ,
The Devil’s General,
pp. 28., 63, 52.

10  
‘We need the defeat’, ‘only then’, ‘I’ve been’, ‘That’s how’: CZ,
The Devil’s General,
pp. 81, 81, 84, 76.

11  
‘fought and eventually’: CZ,
Deutschlandbericht
, p. 43.

‘The hearts of these’, ‘I am your’: CZ,
A Part of Myself
, p. 402.

12  
‘When I saw’: Douglas Sirk, in
Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday
(Faber, 1997), p. 90.

13  
This was also a view put forward by the (as yet unknown) younger novelist Heinrich Böll in his novel
Kreuz ohne Liebe
(
Cross without Love
), written at this time. Böll’s anti-Nazi soldier hero Christoph is convinced that Germany has been placed in the hands of the Devil forever. ‘The Devil possesses all the power in this world, and a change of power is only a change in rank among devils, that I believe for certain’. The allies may conquer the Germans with ‘their rubber soles and tins of Spam’ but they will never understand what it is like to be showered with their bombs at the same time as being sullied by a diabolic state. Therefore they cannot rid the Germans of their satanic curse. (Heinrich Böll,
Kreuz ohne Liebe
(Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2003), pp. 285–86).

14  
Goethe’s Faust does continue to experience pleasure (notably sexual pleasure with Gretchen and other women) but this is transient; he has made a bargain with Mephistopheles that if he ever experiences the kind of transcendent happiness that makes him long for a particular moment to continue, the Devil will be in possession of his soul.

15  
‘If ever I shall’: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy
, trans. by David Constantine (Penguin, 2005), p. 57.

‘Is not coldness’: TM,
Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend
, trans. John E. Woods (Vintage International, 1999), p. 265.

16  
Other obvious models for Leverkühn are Adorno and Schoenberg. See Ehrhard Bahr,
Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism
(University of California Press, 2007) for a discussion of Mann’s influences.

17  
‘your life shall’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, p. 264.

18  
‘innocent tangle’, ‘gently floating presence’, ‘radiant daylight’, ‘I have discovered’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, pp. 483, 490, 501.

19  
For a discussion of whether we should take the devil literally or not see Susan Von Rohr Scaff, ‘Doctor Faustus’, in Ritchie Robertson (ed.),
The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann
(Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 168–84. According to Rohr Scaff, it is not so much what he does but who he is that defines Leverkühn’s sinfulness (p. 174).

‘mildly orgiastic’, ‘faint, sinister’, ‘a world of’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, pp. 94, 6, 11.

In his ‘Germany and the Germans’ essay Mann observed that ‘if Faust is to be the representative of the German soul, he would have to be musical, for the relation of the German to the world is abstract and mystical, that is, musical’.

20  
Mann writes that the central idea of the novel is ‘the flight from the difficulties of the cultural crisis into the pact with the devil, the craving of a proud mind, threatened by sterility, from an unblocking of inhibitions at any cost, and the parallel between pernicious euphoria ending in collapse with the nationalistic frenzy of Fascism.’ (TM,
The Story of a Novel
, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Knopf, 1961) p. 30.)

21  
‘You will break’, ‘a double barbarism’, ‘through to a’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, pp. 259, 317.

22  
‘Am enraptured with Eissi. Terribly handsome in his swimming trunks. Find it quite natural that I should fall in love with my son.’ (TM, diary, 5 Jul 1920, in TM,
Diaries, 1918
–
1939
, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Harry N. Abrams, 1982).

23  
‘would scream’, ‘prison’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, pp. 184, 33.

24  
‘Berlin’s agony’: TM, diary, 9 Feb 1945, in
Tagebücher
.

‘heavy bombing’: TM, diary, 25 Feb 1945, in
Tagebücher
.

‘the conquest’: TM, diary, 2 Apr 1945, in
Tagebücher.

‘The failure’: TM, diary, 4 Apr 1945, in
Tagebücher.

25  
‘strange impression’: TM, diary, 14 May 1945, in
Tagebücher
.

‘the terror of’, ‘as the Last’, ‘our hideously battered’, ‘that gaze from’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, pp. 267, 184, 474.

26  
‘enfeebled democracies’, ‘a German prerogative’, ‘cannot help fearing’, ‘a certain satisfaction’, ‘and as the’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, pp. 268, 33, 183.

27  
‘weighs more heavily’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, p. 33.

‘a parody of myself’: TM to Paul Amann (cited in Clark,
Beyond Catastrophe
, p. 101). Clark notes that through Zeitblom Mann was ironising the German tendency to see their conflicts of conscience as unusually noble and profound. For a discussion of the novel’s self-reflexivity and Zeitblom’s unreliability as a narrator see Martin Swales, ‘The over-representations of history? Reflections on Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus’ in Fulbrook and Swales,
Representing the German Nation
(Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 77–90.

‘popular elation’, ‘a sacrificial rite’, ‘soul is powerfully’, ‘our love belongs’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, pp. 317, 185.

‘How much Faustus’; ‘A radical confession’: TM, diary, 1 Jan 1946, in
Tagebücher.

28  
‘a mistake’: TM to Max Rychner, 26 Oct 1947, in
Letters of Thomas Mann,
ed. and trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Alfred A. Knopf, 1971)
.

‘I was too old’: TM, Interview,
Die Welt
, 20 May 1947, in Hansen,
Frage und Antwort
.

‘so utterly German’: TM to Dean of Philosophical Faculty of University of Bonn, 28 Jan 1947, in
Letters of Thomas Mann.

29  
‘foolish’, ‘believed, exulted, sacrificed’, ‘And they will’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, p. 475.

30  
‘I hope it’: TM to Walter Kolb, 4 Jan 1948, in
Letters of Thomas Mann
.

‘Even though he’: Victor Sell, ‘Doktor Faustus’,
Die Wandlung
, 3:5, cited in Clark,
Beyond Catastrophe
, p. 111 (also see Clark for a summary of reviews).

‘there is a Germany’: Walter Boehlich, ‘Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus’,
Merkur
, 10, 1948, pp. 588–603.

31  
‘hope beyond’, ‘abides as’, ‘transatlantic general’, ‘should one say’, ‘though at times’, ‘Whatever lived’, ‘this gruesome’: TM,
Doctor Faustus
, pp. 515, 505, 506.

32  
‘Huge stone doorways’: SB,
Force of Circumstance
, trans. by Richard Howard (Penguin, 1975), p. 144.

‘Ruins and rubbishes’: SB to Nelson Algren, 31 Jan 1948, in
A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren
, ed. by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir (New Press, 1998).