by Thomas Mann
“Thank God, that lousy Lublin lies far behind me. More than twenty years I have been living in Paris—will you believe it, for a whole year I attended philosophy lectures at the Sorbonne! But a la longue they bored me. Not that philosophy couldn’t be a best-seller too. It could. But for me it is too abstract. And I have a vague feeling that it is in Germany one should study metaphysics—perhaps the Herr Professor, my honoured vis-a-vis, will agree with me… After that I had a little boulevard theatre, small, exclusive, un creux, une petite caverne for a hundred people, nomme ‘Theatre des fourbenes gracieuses.’ Isn’t that a peach of a name? But what would you, the thing wasn’t financially possible. So few seats, they had to be so high-priced, we had to make presents of them. We were lewd enough, I do assure you; but too highbrow too, as they say in English. James Joyce, Picasso, Ezra Pound, the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnere—it wasn’t enough of an audience. En un mot, the fourberies gracieuses had to fold up after a short season. But the experiment was not entirely without fruit, for it had put me in touch with the leaders of the artistic life of Paris, painters, musicians, writers. In Paris today—even here I may say it—beats the pulse of the living world; and in my position as director, it opened to me the doors of several aristocratic salons where all these artists gathered…
“Perhaps that surprises you? Perhaps you will say ‘How did he do it? How did the little Jewish boy from the Polish provinces manage to move in on these fastidious circles, all among the creme de la creme?’ Ah, gentlemen, nothing easier. How quickly one learns to tie a white tie, to enter a salon with complete nonchalance, even if it goes a few steps down, and to forget the sensation that you don’t know what to do with your hands! After that you just keep on saying ‘madame’: ‘Ah, madame, O madame, que pensez-vous, madame; on me dit, madame, que vous etes fana-tique de musique?’ That is as good as all there is to it. Believe me, from the outside these things are exaggere.
“Enfin, I cashed in on the connections I owed to the Fourberies, and they multiplied when I opened my agency for the presentation of contemporary music. Best of all, I had found myself, for as I stand here, I am a born impresario; I can’t help it, it is my joy and pride, I find my satisfaction et mes delices in discovering talent, genius, interesting personalities, beating the drum, making society mad with enthusiasm or at least with excitement, for that is all they ask, et nous nous rencontrons dans ce desir. Society demands to be excited, challenged, torn in sunder for and against; it is grateful for that as for nothing else, for the diversion and the turmoil qui fournit le sujet for caricatures in the papers and endless, endless chatter. The way to fame, in Paris, leads through notoriety—at a proper premiere people jump up several times during the evening and yell ‘Insulte! Impudence! Bouffonerie ignominieuse!’ while six or seven initiates, Erik Satie, a few surrealistes, Virgil Thomson, shout from the loges: ‘Quelle precision! Quel esprit! C’est divin! C’est supreme! Bravo! Bravo!’
“I fear I shock you, messieurs—if not Monsieur Le Vercune, then perhaps the Herr Professor. But in the first place I hasten to add that a concert evening never yet broke down in the middle; that is not what even the most outraged want at bottom; on the contrary they want to go on being outraged, that is what makes them enjoy the evening, and besides, remarkable as it is, the informed minority always command the heavier guns. Of course I do not mean that every performance of outstanding character must go as I have described it. With proper publicity, adequate intimidation beforehand, one can guarantee an entirely dignified result; and in particular if one were to present today a citizen of a former enemy nation, a German, one could count on an entirely courteous reception from the public.
“That is indeed the sound speculation upon which my proposition, my invitation is based. A German, un boche qui par son genie appartient au monde et qui marche a la tete du progres musical! That is today a most piquant challenge to the curiosity, the broad-mindedness, the snobisme, the good breeding of the public—the more piquant, the less this artist disguises his national traits, his Germanisme, the more he gives occasion for the cry: ‘Ah, ca c’est bien allemand, par exemple!’ For that you do, cher Maitre, why not say so? You give this occasion everywhere—not so much in your beginnings, the time of the Phosphorescence de la mer and your comic opera, but later and more and more from work to work. Naturellement, you think I have in mind your ferocious discipline, and que vous enchainez votre art dans un systeme de regies inexorables et neo-classiques, forcing it to move in these iron bands—if not with grace, yet with boldness and esprit. But if it is that that I mean, I mean at the same time more than that when I speak of your qualite d’Allemand; I mean—how shall I put it?—a certain four-squareness, rhythmical heaviness, immobility, grossierete, which are old-German-en effet, entre nous, one finds them in Bach too. Will you take offence at my criticism? Non, j’en suis sur—you are too great. Your themes—they consist almost throughout of even note values, minims, crotchets, quavers; true enough, they are syncopated and tied but for all that they remain clumsy and unwieldy, often with a hammering, machinelike effect. C’est ‘boche’ dans un degre fascinant. Don’t think I am finding fault, it is simply enormement characteristique, and in the series of concerts of international music which I am arranging, this note is quite indispensable…
“You see, I am spreading out my magic cloak. I will take you to Paris, to Brussels, Antwerp, Venice, Copenhagen. You will be received with the intensest interest. I will put the best orchestras and soloists at your service. You shall direct the Phosphorescence, portions of Love’s Labour’s Lost, your Cosmologic Symphony. You will accompany on the piano your songs by French and English poets and the whole world will be enchanted that a German, yesterday’s foe, displays this broad-mindedness in the choice of his texts—ce cosmopolitisnle genereux et versatile! My friend Madame Maia de Strozzi-Pecic, a Croatian, today perhaps the most beautiful soprano voice in the two hemispheres, will consider it an honour to sing your songs. For the instrumental part of Keats’s hymns I will engage the Flonzaley Quartet from Geneva or the Pro Arte from Brussels. The very best of the best—are you satisfied?
“What do I hear—you do not conduct? You don’t? And you would not play piano? You decline to accompany your own songs? I understand. Cher Maitre, je vous comprends a demi-mot! It is not your way to linger with the finished work. For you the doing of a work is its performance, it is done when it is written down. You do not play it, you do not conduct it, for you would straightway change it, resolve it in variations and variants, develop it further and perhaps spoil it. How well I understand! Mais c’est dommage, pourtant. The concerts will suffer a decided loss of personal appeal. Ah, bah, we must see what we can do. We must look about among the world-famous conductors to interpret—we shall not need to look long. The permanent accompanist of Madame de Strozzi-Pecic will take over for the songs, and if only you, Maitre, are simply present and show yourself to the public, nothing will be lost, everything will be gained.
“But that is the condition—ah, non! You cannot inflict upon me the performance of your works in absentia. Your personal appearance is indispensable, particulierement a Paris, where musical renown is made in three or four salons. What does it cost you to say a few times: ‘Tout le monde sait, madame, que votre jugement musical est infaillible?’ It costs you nothing and you will have a lot of satisfaction from it. As social events my productions rank next after the premieres of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe—if they do rank after them. You would be invited out every evening. Nothing harder, generally speaking, than getting into real Paris society. But for an artist nothing is easier, even if he is only standing in the vestibule to fame, I mean the sensational appeal. Curiosity levels every barrier, it knocks the exclusive right out of the field…
“But why do I talk so much about elegant society and its itches? I can see that I am not succeeding in kindling your curiosity, cher Maitre. How could I? I have not seriously been trying to. What do you care about elegant society? Entre nous, what do I care about it? For
business reasons—this and that. But personally? Not that much. This milieu, this Pfeiffenng and your presence, Maitre, do not a little to make me realize my indifference, my contempt, for that world of frivolity and superficiality.
Dites-moi done: don’t you come from Kaisersaschern on the Saale? What a serious, dignified place of origin! Well, for me, I call Lublin my birthplace—likewise a dignified spot and grey with age, from which one carries into life a fund of severite, un etat d’ame solennel et un peu gauche… Ah, I am the last person to want to glorify elegant society to you. But Paris will give you the chance to make the most interesting and stimulating contacts among your brothers in Apollo, among the sons of the Muses, your aspiring colleagues and peers, painters, writers, stars of the ballet, above all musicians. The summits of European tradition and experiment, they are all my friends, and they are ready to be yours. Jean Cocteau the poet, Massine the ballet-master, Manuel de Falla the composer, Les Six, the six great ones of the new music—this whole elevated, audacious, amusing, aggressive sphere, it waits only for you, you belong to it, as soon as ever you will…
“Is it possible that I read in your manner a certain resistance even to that? But here, cher Maitre, every shyness, every embarras is really quite out of place—whatever may be the ground for such habits of seclusion. I am far from searching for grounds; that they exist is quite enough for my cultivated and I may say respectful perceptions. This Pfeiffering, ce refuge etrange et ere-mitique—there must be some peculiar and interesting psychological association: I do not ask, I consider all possibilities, I frankly bring them all up, even the most fantastic. Eh bien, what then? Is that a reason for embarras, in a sphere where there reigns unlimited freedom from prejudice? A freedom from prejudice which for its part has its own good reasons too? Oh, la, la! Such a circle of arbiters elegantiarum and society cheer-leaders is usually an assortment of demi-fous excentriques, expended souls and elderly crapules-un impresario, e’est un espece d’infirmier, voila!
“And now you see how badly I conduct my affair, in what utterly maladroit fashion! That I point it out is all that speaks in my favour. With the idea of encouraging you I anger your pride and work with my eyes open against my interests. For I tell myself, of course, that people like you—though I should speak not of people like you, but only of yourself—you regard your existence, your destin as something unique and consider it too sacred to lump it in with anyone else’s. You do not want to hear about other destinees, only about your own, as something quite unique—I know, I understand. You abhor all generalizing, classifying, subsuming, as a derogation of your dignity. You insist on the incomparableness of the personal case. You pay tribute to an arrogant personal uniqueness—maybe you have to do that. ‘Does one live when others live?’ I have read that question somewhere, I am not sure precisely where, but in some very prominent place. Privately or publicly you all ask it; only out of good manners and for appearance’ sake do you take notice of each other—if you do take notice of each other. Wolf, Brahms, and Bruckner lived for years in the same town—Vienna, that is—but avoided each other the whole time and none of them, so far as I know, ever met the others. It would have been penible too, considering their opinions of each other. They did not judge or criticize like colleagues; their comments were meant to annihilate, to leave their author alone in the field. Brahms thought as little as possible of Bruckner’s symphonies, he called them huge shapeless serpents. And Bruckner’s opinion of Brahms was very low. He found the first theme of the D-minor Concerto very good, but asserted that Brahms never came near inventing anything so good a second time. You don’t want to know anything of each other. For Wolf Brahms meant le dernier ennui. And have you ever read his critique of Bruckner’s Seventh in the Vienna Salonblattt. There you have his opinion of the man’s importance. He charged him with ‘lack of intelligence’—avec quelque raison, for Bruckner was of course what one calls a simple, childlike soul, wholly given to his majestic figured-bass music and a complete idiot in all matters of European culture. But if one happens on certain utterances of Wolf about Dostoyevsky, in his letters, qui sont simplement stupefiant, one is driven to ask what kind of mind he had himself. The text of his unfinished opera Manuel Venegas, which a certain Dr. Homes has restored, he called a wonder, Shakespearian, the height of poetic creation, and became offensive when friends expressed their doubts. Moreover, not satisfied with composing a hymn for male voices, To the Fatherland, he wanted to dedicate it to the German Kaiser. What do you say to that? The memorial was rejected. Tout cela est un peu embarrassant, n’est-ce pas? Une confusion tragique.
“Tragique, messieurs. I call it that, because in my opinion the unhappiness of the world rests on the disunity of the intellect, the stupidity, the lack of comprehension, which separates its spheres from each other. Wagner poured scorn on the picturesque impressionism of his time, calling it all ‘daubs’—he was sternly conservative in that field. Eut his own harmonic productions have a lot to do with impressionism, they lead up to it and as dissonances often go beyond the impressionistic. Against the Paris daubers he set up Titian as the true and the good. A la bonne heure! But actually his taste in art was more likely somewhere between Piloty and Makart, the inventor of the decorative bouquet; while Titian was more in Lenbach’s line, and Lenbach had an understanding of Wagner that made him call Parsifal music-hall stuff—to the Master’s very face. Ah, ah, comme c’est melancholique, tout ca!
“Gentlemen, I have been rambling frightfully. I mean I have wandered from my subject and my purpose. Take my garrulity as an expression of the fact that I have given up the idea that brought me here. I have convinced myself that it is not possible. You will not set foot on my magic cloak. I am not to introduce you to the world as your entrepreneur. You decline, and that ought to be a bigger disappointment to me than it actually is. Sincerement, I ask myself whether it really is one at all. One may come to Pfeiffering with a practical purpose in mind—but that must always take second place. One comes, even if one is an impresario, first of all to salute a great man. No failure on the practical side can decrease this pleasure, especially when a good part of it consists in the disappointment. So it is, cher Maitre: your inaccessibility gives me among other things satisfaction as well; that is due to the understanding, the sympathy which I involuntarily feel towards it. I do so against my own interests, but I do it—as a human being, I might say, if that were not too large a category; perhaps I ought to express myself more specifically.
“You probably do not realize, cher Maitre, how German is your repugnance, which, if you will permit me to speak en psychology, I find characteristically made up of arrogance and a sense of inferiority, of scorn and fear. I might call it the ressentiment of the serious-minded against the salon world. Well, I am a Jew, you know, Fitelberg is undeniably a Jewish name. I have the Old Testament in my bones, a thing no less serious-minded than being German is, and not conducive to a taste for the sphere of the valse brillante. In Germany the superstition prevails that there is nothing but valse brillante outside its borders and nothing but serious-mindedness inside them. And still, as a Jew one feels sceptical towards the world, and leans to German serious-mindedness—at the risk, of course, of getting kicked in the pants for one’s pains. To be German, that means above all to be national—and who expects a Jew to be nationalistic? Not only that nobody would believe him, but everybody would bash his head in for having the impudence to try it on. We Jews have everything to fear from the German character, qui est essentiellement antisemitique; and that is reason enough, of course, for us to plump for the worldly side and arrange sensational entertainments. It does not follow that we are windbags, or that we have fallen on our heads. We perfectly well know the difference between Gounod’s Faust and Goethe’s, even when we speak French, then too…
“Gentlemen, I say all that only out of pure resignation. On the business side we have said everything. I am as good as gone; I have the door-handle in my hand, we have got up, I am still running on just pour prendre co
nge. Gounod’s Faust, gentlemen—who turns up his nose at it? Not I, and not you, I am glad to know. A pearl—a marguerite, full of the most ravishing musical inventions. Laisse-moi, laisse-moi contempler-enchanting! Massenet is enchanting, he too. He must have been particularly charming as a teacher—as professor at the Conservatoire, there are little stories about it. From the beginning his pupils in composition were urged to produce, no matter whether or not they were technically able to write a movement free from flaws. Humane, n’est-ce pas? Not German, it isn’t, but humane. A lad came to him with a song just composed—fresh, showing some talent. ‘Tiens,’ says Massenet, ‘that is really quite nice. Listen, of course you must have a little friend; play it to her, she will certainly love it and the rest will happen of itself.’ It is not certain what he meant by ‘the rest,’ probably various things, both love and art. Have you pupils, Master? They wouldn’t be so fortunate. But you have none. Bruckner had some. He had from the first wrestled with music and its sacred difficulties, like Jacob with the angel, and he demanded the same from his pupils. Years on end they had to practise the sacred craft, the fundamentals of harmony and the strict style before they were allowed to make a song, and this music-teaching had not the faintest connection with any little friend. A man may have a simple, childlike temperament; but music is the mysterious revelation of the highest wisdom, a divine service, and the profession of music-teacher a priestly office…"