3 - The Significance of Die Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen for Doktor Faustus

Summary

ONE OF THE OUTSTANDING CHARACTERISTICS OF Doktor Faustus is the violence of the emotions expressed, a much greater violence than in any other of Mann's novels. Mann tends, when discussing emotions, to be analytical and detached, but not here. Doktor Faustus expresses extreme degrees of hatred, frustration, anguish, and helplessness. The atmosphere is heavy with misunderstanding and innuendo, the emotion immediate and personal. Mann is experiencing his suffering and frustrations of the 1920s and 1930s all over again in his portrayal of Adrian's suffering. He is anything but kind in the novel to his former friends.

The relationship of Doktor Faustus with Die Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen is not limited to the use of the same metaphors — music and theology as expressions of politics — to the same underlying disagreement on the nature of humanism, and to the parallel between the misinterpretation and misuse of Adrian's music in Doktor Faustus and that of Mann's Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen in real life. In Die Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen the two opposing social philosophies are presented in the form of personification. Mann describes them as individuals with different attitudes towards life and society. They are personalities, caricatures of types we all see every day (and not just in Germany), and they are opposites in almost every respect. The context in which Mann has presented these personalities is political, and he describes these characteristics — not necessarily political in themselves — as determining their political stand.