Buddenbrooks
Page 1
THOMAS MANN
Buddenbrooks
THOMAS MANN was born in Germany in 1875. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, and left Germany for good in 1933. Among his major novels are Buddenbrooks (1901), The Magic Mountain (1924), the tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers (1933, 1934, 1936, 1943), and Doctor Faustus (1948). He is equally well known for his short stories and essays. Thomas Mann died in 1955.
ALSO BY THOMAS MANN
The Black Swan
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man
Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories
Doctor Faustus
The Holy Sinner
Joseph and His Brothers
Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns
The Magic Mountain
Royal Highness
Stories of Three Decades
The Transposed Heads
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JULY 1994
Copyright © 1993 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1993.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mann, Thomas, 1875–1955.
[Buddenbrooks. English]
Buddenbrooks : the decline of a family / Thomas Mann; translated from the German by John E. Woods. — 1st Vintage International
ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78095-9
I. Woods, John E. (John Edwin) II. Title.
PT2625.A44B82 1994
833′.912—dc20 93-43499
v3.1
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Part One Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Two Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Three Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Four Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Five Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Six Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Seven Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part Eight Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Nine Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Ten Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Eleven Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
About the Translator
PART ONE
1
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN.—What—does this mean.…”
“Well, now, deuce take it, c’est la question, ma très chère demoiselle!”
Madame Buddenbrook was sitting beside her mother-in-law on the sofa, its clean lines accented with white enamel and a golden lion’s head, its cushions upholstered a pale yellow; she first shot a glance at her husband, the consul, who was seated in an armchair beside her, and then came to the rescue of her young daughter, who was perched on her grandfather’s knee near the window.
“Tony!” she said. “I believe that God made me—”
And little Antonie, a petite eight-year-old in a dress of softly shimmering silk, was thinking hard, her pretty blond head turned slightly toward her grandfather, but her gray-blue eyes directed into the room without seeing anything. She first repeated, “What does this mean,” then slowly said, “I believe that God made me,” and quickly added, her face brightening, “—and all creatures,” and, suddenly finding the track smooth—she was unstoppable now and her face beamed with happiness—she rattled off the whole article, as prescribed by her catechism, newly revised and published under the auspices of an august and wise senate in this year of our Lord, 1835. Once you were moving, she thought, it felt just like racing down “Jerusalem Hill” on the sled with her brothers in winter: every thought vanished from your mind, and you couldn’t stop if you wanted to.
“Including clothes and shoes,” she said, “meat and drink, hearth and home, wife and child, fields and cattle …” But at these words, old Monsieur Johann Buddenbrook burst into laughter, a high, pinched giggle that he had secretly kept at the ready. He laughed in delight at being able to mock the catechism, had presumably arranged this little exam for just that purpose. He inquired about Tony’s fields and cattle, asked how much she wanted for a sack of wheat, and offered her a contract. His round, pastel pink, good-humored face—try as he would he could not look mean—was framed in snow-white powdered hair, and something like the merest hint of a pigtail brushed the wide collar of his mouse-gray frock coat. He had not, at seventy, proved untrue to the fashion of his youth; he had dispensed with lace between the buttons and the oversize pocket, but never in his life had he worn long trousers. His broad double-chin rested comfortably on the wide lace jabot.
They had all joined in the laughter, mainly out of respect for the head of the family. Madame Antoinette Buddenbrook, née Duchamps, giggled exactly like her husband. She was a stout lady with thick white curls at her ears, her unadorned black dress with pale gray stripes expressed simplicity and modesty, and her beautiful white hands clasped a small velvet reticule on her lap. Over the years, her features had curiously become very like her husband’s. Only the shape and lively dark hue of her eyes hinted at her half-Latin origins; her grandfather had been French-Swiss, but she was born in Hamburg.
Her daughter-in-law, Elisabeth Buddenbrook, née Kröger, laughed the Kröger laugh, which began with a splutter as her chin was pressed against the chest. She was, like all Krögers, a person of great elegance, and though perhaps not a beauty, by her clear and cheerful voice, by her easy, sure, and gent
le movements, she impressed everyone with her serenity and confidence. Her reddish hair, which swept back high on her head in a little crowning swirl and lay in broad, carefully coiffed waves over her ears, matched well with her extraordinary soft white complexion and the few little freckles. The most characteristic feature of her face, with its rather long nose and small mouth, was the lack of any indentation between lower lip and chin. Her short bodice with high puffed sleeves was fitted to a narrow skirt of filmy silk patterned in bright flowers and open at a neck of perfect beauty, adorned by a satin ribbon glistening with a spray of large diamonds.
The consul fidgeted and bent forward in his armchair. He wore a cinnamon jacket with broad lapels and leg-of-mutton sleeves that closed tight just below the wrist. His fitted trousers were of a white, washable fabric and trimmed with a black stripe down each side. The silk cravat wound around his stiff high-wing collar was fluffed to fill the broad, open neck of his multicolored vest. He had something of his father’s deep-set, blue, watchful eyes, though perhaps with a more preoccupied expression; but his features were more earnest and defined, the nose jutted forward in a strong curve, and blond curls ran halfway down his cheeks, which were much less full than the old man’s.
Madame Buddenbrook turned to her daughter-in-law, pressing her arm with one hand and giggling as she spoke into her own lap: “Oh, mon vieux, always the same, is he not, Bethsy?” She pronounced it “ollweez.”
The consul’s wife merely waved this aside with her delicate hand, setting her gold bracelet jingling softly; and then the hand performed a gesture peculiarly her own, moving from one corner of her mouth up to her coiffure, as if tucking back a hair that had strayed to her lips.
The consul, however, said with a mixture of indulgent amusement and reproach in his voice, “Now, Father, you are making fun of the most sacred matters again!”
They were sitting in the “landscape room,” on the second floor of the spacious old house on Meng Strasse, which the firm of Johann Buddenbrook had recently purchased and in which his family had resided for only a short time. The thick, supple wall coverings, which had been hung so that there was a gap between them and the wall, depicted expansive landscapes in the same pastel colors as the thin carpet on the floor—idyllic scenes in the style of the eighteenth century, with merry vinedressers, diligent farmers, prettily ribboned shepherdesses, who sat beside reflecting pools, holding spotless lambs in their laps or exchanging kisses with tender shepherds. Most of these scenes were suffused with yellowish sunsets that matched the yellow upholstery of the white enameled furniture and the yellow silk of the curtains at both windows.
Given the size of the room, there was not a great deal of furniture. The round table with its thin, straight legs finely detailed in gold was not placed in front of the sofa, but stood against the far wall, facing the little harmonium—a flute case lay on the lid. Apart from stiff armchairs distributed evenly along the walls, there was only a small sewing table at the window and, opposite the sofa, a fragile and expensive secretary loaded with knickknacks.
Through a glass door, opposite the windows, a columned hallway was visible in the semidarkness, and to the left of someone entering the room were wide folding doors that opened onto the dining room. To the right, however, a crackling fire could be seen through the ornate wrought-iron door of the stove, which was set back in a semicircular niche.
It was cold for so early in the season. Even now—and it was only mid-October—there were yellow leaves on the small linden trees that lined St. Mary’s Cemetery across the street, and the wind whistled in the nooks and around its massive Gothic corners. A fine, cold rain was falling. They had already put up the storm windows to oblige the older Madame Buddenbrook.
It was Thursday, the day on which the family regularly gathered every other week; but today, along with relatives who lived in the city, a few good friends of the family had been invited to share a simple dinner, and so they sat in the waning light of evening—the clock was approaching four—awaiting their guests.
Little Antonie had not let her grandfather disturb her sled ride, had merely extended her naturally slightly protruding upper lip in a little pout. Now she was at the foot of “Jerusalem Hill”; unable to bring her swift glide to a sudden halt, she shot on ahead a little beyond her goal.
“Amen,” she said. “I know something, Grandfather!”
“Tiens! She knows something!” the old man exclaimed and pretended to be itching all over with curiosity. “Did you hear, Mama? She knows something! Is there no one who can tell me …”
“If a bolt starts a fire,” Tony said, nodding her head with each word, “then lightning has struck. But if there’s no fire, then all we got was a thunderbolt!”
And then she folded her arms and gazed at the smiling faces like someone sure of her success. The elder Buddenbrook, however, was annoyed at such wisdom and demanded to know who had taught the child this foolishness, and when it turned out that it had been Ida Jungmann, a young lady from Marienwerder only recently engaged as the girl’s governess, it was the consul who had to come to Ida’s defense.
“You are too strict, Papa. Why shouldn’t the child have her own curious notions about such things at her age?”
“Excusez, mon cher! Mais c’est une folie! You know how I detest such darkening of children’s minds! Get a thunderbolt, do we? Well, the thunder can just bolt her! You can send that Prussian girl to—”
As a matter of fact, the old gentleman had few good words for Ida Jungmann. He was not a narrow-minded man. He had seen a good piece of the world, had ridden in a coach-and-four to southern Germany to buy grain to supply the Prussian army in ’13, had been in Amsterdam and Paris, was a man of enlightened views, who, God knows, did not condemn everything beyond the gates and gables of his hometown. But apart from his business connections, he was more inclined than his son, the consul, to set strict limits to social relationships and to be standoffish with strangers. When, one day, then, his children returned from a trip to West Prussia with this young girl—she was only just twenty—bringing her into the house like some baby Jesus, an orphan, the daughter of an innkeeper who had died just before the Buddenbrooks’ arrival, the consul’s act of Christian charity had resulted in an outburst, during which the old gentleman spoke almost nothing but French and Plattdeutsch. All the same, Ida Jungmann had proved quite adept at housekeeping and dealing with children, and, given her Prussian sense of hierarchy and loyalty, was admirably suited for her position in the household. She was a woman of aristocratic principles, who differentiated very precisely between the first and second levels of society, between the middle class and the lower-middle class; she was proud to be the devoted servant of the first level, and showed her displeasure if Tony made friends with a schoolmate who, in Mamselle Jungmann’s estimation, was merely from a good middle-class family.
At that moment, the Prussian woman appeared out in the columned hall and now entered through the glass door; a rather tall, bony girl in a black dress, with smooth hair and an honest face. She was leading little Klothilde by the hand, an extraordinarily skinny child in a flowered muslin frock, with dull, ashy hair and the face of a silent old maid. She came from a collateral line of the family, one with no property whatever—was the daughter of a nephew of old Herr Buddenbrook, who now served as overseer of an estate near Rostock—and, being the same age as Antonie and a tractable child, she was being raised here in the house.
“Everything is ready,” said Mamselle Jungmann and rolled the “r” in her throat—when she first arrived, she had been totally unable to pronounce her “r”s at all. “Klothilde was great help in the kitchen, Trina didn’t have to do hardly anything.”
At the sound of Ida’s odd pronunciations, Monsieur Buddenbrook smirked down into his jabot; but the consul gave his little niece a pat on the cheek and said, “That’s the thing, Thilda. Work and pray, every day. Our Tony should follow your example. She tends all too much to idleness and haughtiness.”
Tony hu
ng her head and cast her eyes up at her grandfather, because she knew that as usual he would come to her defense.
“No, no,” he said. “Chin up, Tony, courage! We can’t all be the same. To each his own. Thilda is a good girl, but we’re not to be despised, either. Am I speaking raisonable, Bethsy?”
He turned to his daughter-in-law, who made a habit of concurring in his opinions, whereas Madame Antoinette, more out of tact than conviction, usually took the consul’s side. And so the two generations shook hands, chassé-croisé, as it were.
“You’re very kind, Papa,” the consul’s wife said. “Tony will try to grow up to be a clever and practical wife. Are the boys home from school?” she asked Ida.
But Tony, who from her grandfather’s knee could see the reflection in the “window spy,” shouted at almost the same time, “Tom and Christian are coming up Johannis Strasse. And Herr Hoffstede. And Uncle Doctor.”
The chimes of St. Mary’s began their chorale—dong!-ding-dong!—with so little rhythm that it was not quite clear which hymn it was, though it was full of solemnity, and while the smaller and the larger bells—one merry, the other grave—tolled four o’clock, the bell in the vestibule below rang shrilly through the entrance hall. And indeed Tom and Christian had arrived, along with the first two guests, Jean Jacques Hoffstede, the poet, and Dr. Grabow, the family physician.
2
HERR JEAN JACQUES HOFFSTEDE, the town poet, who was sure to have a few rhymes in his pocket for today as well, was not much younger than Johann Buddenbrook senior, and, apart from the fact that his frock coat was green, their taste in clothing was the same. But he was thinner and more sprightly than his old friend and had small, quick hazel eyes and a long pointed nose.
“Many thanks,” he said, after he had shaken the hands of the gentlemen and executed a few of his choicest bows to the ladies, in particular to the consul’s wife, whom he especially admired—the kind of bows of which the modern generation was totally incapable, each of them accompanied by a quiet and attentive smile. “Many thanks for your kind invitation, my dear friends. We, the doctor and I, met these two young people,” and he pointed to Tom and Christian, who stood beside him in blue tunics with leather belts, “on König Strasse as they were returning from their studies. Splendid fellows—Madame Consul? Thomas—now, there’s a serious, steady intellect; he’ll have to go into commerce, no doubt of that. Whereas Christian seems to go off in all directions at once, does he not? Something of an incroyable, though there’s no concealing my engouement. He will go on to study, I fancy; he is a lad of wit and brilliant gifts.”