| One of the most pervasive elements in the works of Thomas Mann is the contrast drawn between the artist or artistically gifted person on the one hand, and common everyday humanity on the other. There is hardly a work by this author in which this contrast is not at least hinted at, if indeed it is not a major theme. The problematic relationship with society at large, which Thomas Mann sees as virtually constitutive of the life of the true artist, the "Kunstler von Schicksals wegen," is especially in the forefront in a number of the author's novellas, and it is these novellas, four in number, which form the subject matter of the present investigations.;The four novellas examined here contain, by widespread critical agreement, a layer of extremely personal experience from the author's own life. They express Mann's view that the artist, in this case the literary artist, exists in a painful dialetical relationship with his/her fellow human beings. Because the artist "sees" as they do not, he/she is in one sense above and beyond them, an inhabitant of a higher realm, a Promethean creator of new worlds. Yet this exalted gift is as much a curse as a blessing, for it condemns the muses' favourite to eternal banishment from the harmless heartwarming banalities, the friendship, love, the ordinary human contact taken for granted in the everyday world. The artist, Thomas Mann tells us, must be "dead" as an ordinary human being.;The object of this thesis is to examine the recurring appearance of this theme, and the art of variation which governs it, in four of Thomas Mann's novellas, the so-called "Kunstlernovellen" (novellas about artist). The element of sameness in change, the facility with which the recurring pattern can break up, shift, and reform itself in new configurations still familiar to us in their essence, is the subject of the discussion. Since an author's style includes not only his/her choice and interpretation of subject matter, but also the specific stylistic devices used, such as the choice of word, phrase, image and motif, the latter elements are given more attention here.;It is hoped that the present study, by concentrating on the four "Kunstlernovellen," contributes some further light to a subject already rather well-lit on the broader terrain of Thomas Mann's works as a whole: the problem of the artist and his/her world as a "theme with variations". |
