The Sorcerer, Irish writer Colm Tóibín’s novel about the life of Thomas Mann, represents a challenge at the beginning: you have to dig deep into the portrait of man and time and tell it lightly on each page, without trying to imitate any particular story. The stylistic splendor and storm of the German Nobel Prize. The lightness is perfectly achieved here, as it is a work of mostly dialogue, very agile reading, little explanation, and shallow and cautious reflections and value judgments. So what does Thomas Mann show us about Tóibín? I think in this book we can only say that we are getting closer to Mann’s family life: his relationships with his family (especially his Brazilian mother), his brother Heinrich, his wife Katia, and his six children. A few more characters are relaxed. Is that enough to fill 563 pages?
It must be assumed that a novelist needs a large empty space to fill with imagination. Data, histories, works, literary influences… these all belong to the realm of biography or academic studies, and Tóibín legitimately wants to write literature, no matter how flesh and blood Thomas Mann may be. Therefore, the reader who wants to get to know Mann in depth will not be able to satisfy his curiosity by reading this work of fiction. My advice is to read Herman Kurzke’s wonderful book, the fruit of 25 years of work: Thomas Mann. Life as a work of art. A Biography (Gutenberg Galaxy). On the other hand, Tóibín contains a very useful (although not exhaustive) bibliographical supplement about the Mann tribe.
Is Colm Tóibín’s novel redundant then? Not at all, it can be safely recommended as long as the essentially local boundaries within which it moves are taken into account. Now, what message does the novelist give us, or is his book just a dialogic re-creation? Let me explain: John Williams has written a wonderful novel about Augustus (César’s son, Pàmies, 2016) that, in addition to its high literary value, is a profound reflection on destiny and power. And Toibin? What is the pathos of your novel? I think it is, first of all, an examination of domestic resentment. Both Heinrich Mann, who is a good writer but not the genius of his brother, and Thomas’s children are deeply offended by him. Heinrich, out of envy of Thomas’ talent, honor, wealth, and certainly not the complete success of the marriage; and his children always sought refuge in the holy place of the study closet, for they received no more attention from their fathers. According to Tóibín, Michael Mann’s letter addressed to the author after his brother Klaus, who did not want to attend his funeral either Thomas or Katia, died of an overdose, is very revealing in this regard: “I’m sure the world thanks you. For your dedication to your books, but we, your children, are not grateful to you or to our mother who is with you… You are a great person. Nearly everyone appreciates and applauds his humanity.… He is probably not worried that none of his children share such feelings of admiration.”
Without a doubt, being the son of a genius is always difficult. Not just because of intellectual diversity, but because the genius of creative passion tends to put everything else in the background. Katia accepted this without issue (as she admitted to Thomas’ repressed homosexuality) and their marriage worked out. Thomas Mann’s passion for literary creation is reflected by Tóibín at the end of his novel; The great writer recalls the story his mother told them about the relationship between the organist Dietrich Buxtehude at the Marienkirche in Lübeck and his student Johann Sebastian Bach. For this he revealed the “big secret”. And the name of the secret is Beauty. Buxtehude told Bach not to be afraid to express Beauty in his music. “And for weeks and weeks and weeks Buxtehude showed him how to do it.”
Thomas Mann also followed this path, and was fully aware of this in the emotional way Tóibín imagined: “He wrote many of his books in a complex style, without fear of long sentences or a large number of off-topics, that evoked the famous names of the German pantheon without hesitation. In all respects, he He was a wonderful man. Even his father was afraid of him.”
And certainly, Thomas Mann is the literary equivalent of great German music: Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus…