Buddenbrooks

Thomas Mann is not without reason one of the great storytellers and seen as a monolith in German-language literature. With his debut novel "Buddenbrooks" he wrote a long read that provides a literary insight into the life of the Hanseatic upper middle class of the 19th century. If Buddenbrooks is read with the courage to skip boring passages at times, the classic becomes an entertaining read. Each member of the Buddenbrook family has a distinct personality, and with seamless time skips, Mann explores how it comes to pass that the Family's wealth, status and grain wholesale company slowly deteriorates. Thus, the characters grow on you and the almost pulpy blows of fate hit you hard, even though you have nothing in common with these fictional characters from another century. Of course, "Buddenbrooks" is showing its age and the length may be off-putting, but all in all, the novel is still readable today, given some staying power.

This extraordinary novel is the story of the decline of a middle-class 19th-century German family that was apparently modeled on Mann's own family. Its strengths for me were the meticulously observed details of 19th-century life and the brilliant, often satirical, characterization that is sometimes reminiscent of Dickens. There are constituent themes e.g., the conflict between the lives of businessmen and artists, and extensive supporting imagery e.g., dental decay paralleling the financial and moral decay of the family.

Mann was born in 1875 and this novel's storyline ends in 1877, but the novel's Wikipedia article says that he did careful research with family members to capture the details of earlier 19th-century Lübeck - the author's hometown. When the novel first appeared there was apparently considerable criticism of it as a roman à clef about the people of Lübeck (see www.luebeck-kunterbunt.de/TOP100/Buddenbrooks-Klarnamenverzeichnis.htm). Mann responded:

I forgive [small-town (more or less, I think-MLM)] lawyers and old maids if they are unable to appreciate a work of art in isolation from civil relationships. I despise the artist who is incapable of this masculine objectivity ... It is not the gift of invention - it is the gift of inspiration that makes the poet....

Les Buddenbrook est un classique de la littérature allemande signé de la main de Thomas Mann, à qui l’on doit également La Mort à Venise ou La montagne magique. Cela fait un moment que je voulais lire ce roman, dont le résumé proposé par l’éditeur français m’avait très vite attiré :

Les Buddenbrook, premier roman de Thomas Mann, devenu l’un des classiques de la littérature allemande, retrace l’effondrement progressif d’une grande famille de la Hanse au XIXe siècle, de Johann, le solide fondateur de la dynastie, à Hanno, le frêle musicien qui s’éteint, quarante ans plus tard, dans un pavillon de la banlieue de Lübeck.

Le style, tout en nuances, où l’émotion se teinte de connivence et d’ironie, d’affinités et de détachement, traduit parfaitement la relation que l’auteur entretient avec la réalité et accentue subtilement la transcription du lent processus de décadence.

L’ambition de Thomas Mann est considérable : narrer la destinée d’une famille de la bourgeoisie allemande au XIX° siècle. Au fil de ses 11 parties et ses 758 pages (en poche), nous suivons en effet la vie de plusieurs générations des Buddenbrook, une lignée de négociants de Lübeck, une ville du nord de l’Allemagne. Au début du récit, dans les années 1930, le consul Johann Buddenbrook est à la tête d’une compagnie familiale florissante. Son fils Johann est destiné à lui succéder après que son fils aîné ait été déshérité suite à son mariage « scandaleux » avec la fille d’un boutiquier.

Tout au long du récit, des mariages sont arrangés – oserais-je dire négociés ? – des enfants naissent, les personnages vieillissent et s’éteignent, laissant les reines à la génération suivante. Nous suivons ainsi une lignée de personnages auxquels il n’est pas toujours aisé de s’attacher mais que l’on suit tout de même avec délectation. Quand le roman s’achève, à la fin des années 1870, on quitte cette famille avec une certaine émotion.

Le récit n’est pas toujours palpitant, mais le rythme m’a semblé tout à fait adapté au sujet du roman. Avec ces petites aventures familiales, cette importance donnée à des affaires qui nous semblent aujourd’hui triviales, Thomas Mann dresse un portrait passionnant de la société allemande du XIXème siècle, en particulier de la bourgeoisie de l’Allemagne du nord. La déchéance progressive de la famille Buddenbrook est relatée de façon parfaite, l’exercice est parfaitement réussi à mes yeux.

Les Buddenbrook est une fresque familiale de grande qualité, un roman au long court dont le faux rythme ne doit pas faire oublier la richesse de ses personnages et la finesse psychologique et sociale de son propos.

Great Expectations would be my title for this review. At the outset it looks like one of those long drawn out family sagas with stodgy upperclass mores and lots of characters, but this novel is better than anything Dickens or Austen or their kind wrote and you should read it even if you don't like those types of books.

Although the rich detail the author uses paints scenes where you can smell the coffee, sea air, or taste the dessert,it is better than that because there is not a simple morality at play that attributes success or failure. Why does this family decline? It's not simply greed or sloth or profligacy or turning away from God or family. No the childlike morality of some the characters is contrasted with the author's skepticism and philosophical bent. There is a randomness to the fail, it is not like Gibbons decline and fall where you can point to specific reasons.

I can see why Europe in early 1929 felt a connection to this 1901 book that spans from 1835 - 1877. The headlines said boom times still, but more and more people were not participating in it - this is what happens to the firm and the family Buddenbrooks. Success seems random. the successful aren't much different than the muddle-rs. Pessimism spreads. Unlike the 20th Century, there's no catastrophic event, just the combination of the fatal flaws of the all the characters adds up.

Yet this book wouldn't win the Swedish award now. If you look at it as Mann won the Prize on this novel, I don't think it meets expectations. Magic Mountain is better. I haven't gotten to Dr Faustus. But the main issue is that the Schopenhauer and Wagnerian influences do not permeate or interweave through out. They are presented in essays towards the end. It's too forced. Moreover the pessimism is unwarranted in hindsight. Germany is more powerful today than 1901 or 1929 thanks to the EU. Ironically those custom unions which the author frowns upon were what led to the EU. If the decline was about moral decline maybe you could make an argument that we are worse off now, but the focus of the novel measures decline in money, prestige, and male heirs.

I found the last male heir to be the most humane, beautiful and endearing. Maybe in that way one lives on past their life - an idea presented at the end of the novel. His death is the real tragedy, everything is else either the breaks or comeuppance.

The Woods translation gives you an idea that Mann also did a lot with the use of dialect that is hard to translate. I'm going to seek out other Mann books by this translator, since I will most likely never learn German.