Dr. Faustus (Modern Library) - Hardcover

Mann, Thomas; Lowe-Porter, H. T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679600426 ISBN 13: 9780679600428

Publisher: Modern Library, 1992

Synopsis

"The thorn was in my flesh," Mann said about the genesis of Doctor Faustus, which was composed during World War II.  "I knew what I was setting out to do and what task I was imposing upon myself:  to write nothing else than the novel of my era, disguised as the story of an artist's life, a terribly imperilled and sinful artist."
Adrian Leverkuhn, a former theological student who has become a composer, enters symbolically into a pact with the devil in exchange for two and a half decades of inspired work.  Narrated by Serenus Zeitblom, Leverkuhn's faithful friend, this retelling of the Faust legend turns on the composer's slow descent into syphilitic paralysis.  Densely orchestrated with musical constructions and what Mann called historical "montage", the book discourses on the tragedy of Germany, the Schonbergian twelve-tone system, Nietzche, the life of Tchaikovsky, and the introduction of syphilis into Europe.  Mann described Doctor Faustus as "difficult, weird, uncanny, sad as life."

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Thomas Mann is a monument of his time--our time....Sometimes one feels that this monument is made of very hard, resistant, almost cruel material: but under the surface there is a human being who, together with Freud, was the greatest humanist of this century." --Stephen Spender

About the Author:

Thomas Mann was born in 1875 in Germany. He was only twenty-five when his first novel, Buddenbrooks, was published. In 1924 The Magic Mountain was published, and, five years later, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Following the rise of the Nazis to power, he left Germany for good in 1933 to live in Switzerland and then in California, where he wrote Doctor Faustus (first published in the United States in 1948). Thomas Mann died in 1955.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Library
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0679600426
• ISBN 13: 9780679600428
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 669