Doctor Faustus

by Thomas Mann

  I kept my eyes on my friend, and while talking with one and another of the guests did not miss the sign which he gave me with his head and eyebrows, to the effect that I should have people take their seats. I did so at once, inviting those nearest me, making signs to those farther off, and even bringing myself to clap my hands for silence, that the announcement might be made that Dr. Leverkühn would now begin his lecture. A man knows by a certain numbness of the features that he has gone pale; the drops of perspiration which may come out on his brow are deathly cold as well. My hands, when I very feebly clapped them, shook as they shake now when I set myself to write down the horrible memory.

  The audience obeyed with fair alacrity. Silence and order were quickly established. It happened that at the table with Adrian sat the old Schlaginhaufens, Jeanette Scheurl, Schildknapp, my wife and myself. The other guests were irregularly bestowed at both sides of the room, on various kinds of seats, the sofa, painted wooden chairs, horsehair arm-chairs; some of the men leaned against the walls. Adrian showed no sign of gratifying the general expectation, mine included, by going to the piano. He sat with his hands folded, his head drooped to one side, looking straight in front of him, yet hardly with an outward gaze. He began in the now complete hush to address the assembly, in the slightly monotonous, rather faltering voice I was familiar with; in the sense of a greeting, it seemed to me at first, and at first it really was that. I must bring myself to add that he often mis-spoke-and in my agony I dug my nails into my palms—and in correcting one mistake made another, so that after a while he paid no further attention, but simply passed them over. Anyhow, I need not have been so agonized over his various irregularities of pronunciation, for he used in part, as he had always enjoyed doing in writing, a sort of elder German, with its defects and open sentence-structure, always with something doubtful and unregulated about it; how long ago is it, indeed, that our tongue outgrew the barbaric and got tolerably regulated as to grammar and spelling!

  He began in a low murmur, so that very few understood his opening sentence or made anything out of it. Perhaps they took it as a whim, a rhetorical flourish; it went something like this: “Esteemed, in especial dear and beloved brethren and sisters.”

  After that he was silent for a little, as though considering, his cheek resting against one hand that was supported by the elbow on the table. What followed was also taken as a whimsical introductory, intended to be humorous; and although the immobility of his features, the weariness of his looks, his pallor contradicted the idea, yet a responsive laugh ran through the room, a slight sniff, a titter from the ladies.

  “Firstly,” said he, “I will exhibit to you my thankfulness for the courtesy and the friendship, both undeserved by me, ye have vouchsafed in that ye are come hither into this place, afoot and by wagon, since out of the desolation of this retreat I have written to and called you, likewise had you written to and called by my leal famulus and special friend, which yet knoweth how to put me in remembrance of our school-days from youth up, since we did study together at Halla; but thereof, and of how high-mindedness and abominacyon did in that study already begin, more hereafter in my Sermoni.”

  Some of them looked over at me and smirked, who out of emotion was unable to smile, feeling that our dear man did not look as though he thought of me with any such particular tenderness. But just the fact that they saw tears in my eyes diverted most of them; and I remember with disgust that at this point Leo Zink loudly blew his big nose, the butt of most of his own jokes, to caricature my perceptible emotion. His performance elicited more titters. Adrian seemed not to notice.

  “Before aught else,” he went on, “must I pray” (he said “play,” corrected it, and then went back again to his mistake) “and beg you not to take it amiss or crosswise that our hound Praestigiar, he is called Suso but of a truth is named Praestigiar, did demean himself so ill and make so hellish a yauling and bauling that you have for my sake undergone stress and strain. It were better we had handed each of you a whistle we have pitched so high that only the hound can hear it and understand from afar off that good and bidden friends are coming, coveting to hear in what manner of life under his guard I have lived these many years.”

  There was another polite laugh at his words about the whistle, but it sounded strained. He continued, and said: “Now have I a friendly Christian request to you, that ye may not take and receive in evil part my homily, but that ye would rather construe it all to the best, inasmuch as I verily crave to make unto you, good and sely ones, which if not without sin are yet but ordinarily and tolerably sinful, wherefore I cordially despise yet fervidly envy you, a full confession from one human being to another, for now the houre-glasse standeth before my eyes, the finishing whereof I must carefully expect: when the last grain runs through the narrow neck and he will fetch me, to whom I have given myselfe so dearly with my proper blood that I shall both body and soul everlastingly be his and fall in his hands and his power when the glass is run and the time, which is his ware, be fully expired.”

  Again here and there somebody tittered or sniffed; but others shook their heads and made disapproving noises as though the words had been in bad taste. Some of the guests put on a look of dark foreboding.

  “Know, then,” said he, at the table, “ye good and godly folk” (he said “god and goodly”), “with your modest sins and resting in Goodes godness, for I have suppressed it so long in me but will no longer hide it, that already since my twenty-first year I am wedded to Satan and with due knowing of peril, out of well-considered courage, pride, and presumption because I would Avin glory in this world, I made with him a bond and vow, so that all which during the term of four-and-twenty years I brought forth, and which mankind justly regarded Avith mistrust, is only Avith his help come to pass and is divel’s work, infused by the angel of death. For I well thought that he that Avill eat the kernel must crack the nut, and one must today take the divel to favour, because to great enterprise and devises one can use and have none other save him.”

  A strained and painful stillness now reigned in the room. Only a few listened unperturbed; there Avere many raised eyebrows, and faces wherein one read: “What is all this and what is it leading up to?” If he had but once smiled or put on a face to explain his words as a mystification got-up by the artist, matters Avould have been halfway made good. But he did not, he sat there in dead earnest. Some of the guests looked inquiringly at me, as if to ask what it all meant and how I would account for it. Perhaps I ought to have intervened and broken up the meeting. But on Avhat pretext? The only explanations were humiliating and extreme; I felt that I must let things take their course, in the hope that he would soon begin to play and give us notes instead of words.

  Never had I felt more strongly the advantage that music, which says nothing and everything, has over the unequivocal word; yes, the saving irresponsibility of all art, compared with the bareness and baldness of unmediated revelation. But to interrupt not only went against my sense of reverence, but also my very soul cried out to hear, even though among those who listened with me only very few were worthy. Only hold out and listen, I said in my heart to the others, since after all he did invite you as his fellow human beings!

  After a reflective pause my friend went on: “Believe not, dear brothers and sisters, that for the promission and conclusion of the pact a crosse way in the wood, many circles and impure conjuration were needed, since already St. Thomas teacheth that for falling away there needs not words with which invocation takes place, rather any act be enough, even without express allegiance. For it was but a butterfly, a bright cream-licker, Hetaera Esmeralda, she charmed me with her touch, the milk-witch, and I followed after her into the twilit shadowy foliage that her transparent nakedness loveth, and where I caught her, who in flight is like a wind-blown petal, caught her and caressed with her, defying her warning, so did it befall. For as she charmed me, so she bewitched me and forgave me in love—so I was initiate, and the promise confirmed.”

  I started,
for now came a voice from the audience: it came from Daniel zur Hohe the poet, in his priestly garment, pounding with his feet and hammering out his words: “It is beautiful. It has beauty. Very good, oh, very good, one may say so!”

  Some people hissed. I too turned disapprovingly towards the speaker, though privately I was grateful for what he said. His words were silly enough; but they classified what we were hearing, put it under a soothing and recognized rubric, namely the aesthetic, which, inapplicable as that was and however much it angered me, did make me feel easier. For it seemed to me that a sort of relieved “Ah-h!” went through the audience, and one lady, Radbruch the publisher’s wife, was encouraged by zur Hohe’s words to say: “One thinks one is hearing poetry.”

  Alas, one did not think so for long! This aesthetic interpretation, however conveniently offered, was not tenable. What we heard had nothing at all in common with zur Hohe the poet’s tall tomfooleries about obedience, violence, blood, and world-plunder. This was dead sober earnest, a confession, the truth, to listen to which a man in extreme agony of soul had called together his fellow-men-an act of fantastic good faith, moreover, for one’s fellow-men are not meant or made to face such truth otherwise than with cold shivers and with the conclusion that, when it was no longer possible to regard it as poetry, they very soon unanimously and audibly came to about it.

  It did not look as though those interpolations had reached our host at all. His thoughts, whenever he paused in his address, obviously made him inaccessible to them.

  “But only mark,” he resumed, “heartily respected loving friends, that you have to do with a god-forsaken and despairing man, whose carcass belongeth not in consecrate earth, among Christians dead in the faith, but on the horse-dung with the cadavers of dead animals. On the bier, I say to you beforehand, you will always find it lying on its face, and though you turn it five times you will ever find it on its face. For long before I dallied with the poison butterfly, my froward soul in high mind and arrogance was on the way to Satan though my goal stood in doubt; and from youth up I worked towards him, as you must know, indeed, that man is made for hell or blessedness, made and foredestined, and I was born for hell. So did I feed my arrogance with sugar, studying divinity at Halla Academie, yet not for the service of God but the other, and my study of divinity was secretly already the beginning of the bond and the disguised move not Biblewards, but to him, to him the great religiosus. For who can hold that will away, and ‘twas but a short step from the divinity school over to Leipzig and to music, that I solely and entirely then busied myself with figuris, characteribus, formis con-jurationum, and what other so ever are the names of invocations and magic.

  “So my desperate heart hath trifled all away. I had I suppose a good toward wit and gifts gratiously given me from above which I could have used in all honour and modesty, but felt ail-too well: it is the time when uprightly and in pious sober wise, naught of work is to be wrought and art grown unpossible without the divel’s help and fires of hell under the cauldron… Yea verily, dear mates, that art is stuck and grown too heavy and scorneth itselfe and God’s poor man knoweth no longer where to turn in his sore plight, that is belike the fault in the times. But an one invite the divel as guest, to pass beyond all this and get to the breakthrough, he chargeth his soul and taketh the guilt of the time upon his own shoulders, so that he is damned. For it hath been said ‘Be sober, and watch!’ But that is not the affair of some; rather, instead of shrewdly concerning themselves with what is needful upon earth that it may be better there, and discreetly doing it, that among men such order shall be stablished that again for the beautiful work living soil and true harmony be prepared, man playeth the truant and breaketh out in hellish drunkenness; so giveth he his soul thereto and cometh among the carrion.

  “So, courteous and beloved brothers and sisters, have I borne me, and let nigromantia, carmina, incantatio, veneficium, and what names so ever be all my aim and striving. And I soon came to the speech of that one, the make-bate, the losel, in the Italian room, have held much parley with him, and he had much to tell me of the quality, fundament, and substance of hell. Sold me time too, four and twenty years, boundless to the eye, and promised too great things and much fire under the cauldron, to the end that not withstanding I should be capable of the work although it were too hard and my head too shrewd and mocking thereto. Only certes I should suffer the knives of pain therefor, even in the time, as the little seamaid suffered them in her legs, which was my sister and sweet bride, and named Hyphialta. For he brought her me to my bed as my bed-sister that I gan woo her and loved her ever more, whether she came to me with the fishes tail or with legs. Oftentimes indeed she came with the tail, for the pains she suffered as with knives in the legs outweighed her lust, and I had much feeling for the wise wherein her tender body went over so sweetly into the scaly tail. But higher was my delight even so in the pure human form and so for my part I had greater lust when she came to me in legs.”

  There was a stir in the room. Somebody was leaving, the old Schlaginhaufen pair it was: they got up from our table and looking neither right nor left, on tiptoe, the husband guiding his spouse by the elbow passed through the seated groups and out at the door. Not two minutes went by before the noise and the throbbing of their engine were heard, starting up in the yard. They were driving away.

  Many of the audience were upset by this, for now they had lost their means of conveyance to the station. But there was no perceptible inclination among the guests to follow the Schlaginhaufens’ example. They all sat spellbound, and when quiet was restored outside, zur Hohe raised his voice again in his dogmatic “Beautiful! Ah, indeed yes, it is beautiful.”

  I too was just on the point of opening my mouth, to beg our friend to make an end of the introduction and play to us from the work itself, when he, unaffected by the incident, continued his address: “Thereupon did Hyphialta get with child and accounted me a little son, to whom with my whole soul I clung, a hallowed little lad, lovelier than is ever born, and as though come hither from afar and of old stamp. But since the child was flesh and blood and it was ordained that I might love no human being, he slew it, merciless, and used thereto mine own proper eyes. For you must know that when a soul is drawn violently to evil, its gaze is venomous and like to a basilisk, and chiefly for children. So this little son full of sweet sayings went from me hence, in Augst-month, though I had thought anon such tenderness might be let. I had well thought before that I, as devil’s disciple, might love in flesh and blood what was not female, but he wooed me for my thou in boundless confidence, until I graunted it. Hence I must slay him too, and sent him to his death by force and order. For the magisterulus had marked that I was minded to marry me and was exceeding wroth, sith in the wedded state he saw apostasy from him, and a trick for atonement. So he forced me to use precisely this intent, that I coldly murdered the trusting one and will have confessed it today and here before you all, that I sit before you also as murtherer.”

  Another group of guests left the room at this point: little Helmut Institoris got up in silent protest, white, his underlip drawn across his teeth. So did his friends the academy portraitist Nottebohm, and his markedly bourgeois high-chested wife, whom we used to call “the maternal bosom.” They all went out in silence. But outside they had probably not held their tongues; for shortly afterwards Frau Schweigestill came quietly in, in her apron, with her smooth grey head, and stood near the door, with folded hands. She listened as Adrian said: “But whatever sinner was I, ye friends, a murtherer, enemy to man, given to divelish concubinage, yet aside from all that I have ever busied myself as a worker and did never arrest” (again he seemed to bethink and correct himself, but went back to “arrest” again), “arrest nor rist, but toiled and moiled and produced hard things, according to the word of the apostle: ‘Who seeks hard things, to him it is hard.’ For as God doth nothing great through us, without our unction, so neither the other. Only the shame and the intellectual mockery and what in the time was agains
t the work, that he kept aside, the residue I had to do myself, even also after strange infusions. For there was oftentimes heard by me all manner of instrument: an organ or positive, more delectable then harpes, lutes, fiddles, trombones, clarigolds, citerns, waights, anomes, cornets, and hornpipes, four of each, that I had thought myself in heaven had I not known differently. Much of it I wrote down. Often too, certain children were with me in the room, boys and girls who sang to me a motet from sheets of notes, smiled a funny little knowing smile, and exchanged their glances. They were most pretty children. Sometimes their hair was lifted as though from hot air and they smoothed it again with their pretty hands, that were dimpled and had little rubies on them. Out of their nostrils curled sometimes little yellow worms, crawled down to their breasts and disappeared—“