“The Magician”, the novel by the Irish writer Colm Tóbin about the life of Thomas Mann, initially represents a challenge: you have to achieve depth in the portrait of the man and of the time and narrate lightly on each page, without trying to imitate at any time the stylistic splendor and tempest of the German Nobel Prize winner. The lightness is perfectly achieved here because it is a work for the most part in dialogue, very agile reading, with few descriptions and shallow and prudent reflections and value judgments. So what does Thomas Mann show us Tóibín? I think it can be said that in this book we only approach Mann’s family life: his relationships with his parents (especially his mother, who is of Brazilian origin), with his brother Heinrich, with his wife Katia and with their six children. Few more characters acquire some relief. Is this enough to fill 563 pages?
It must be assumed that a novelist needs a large empty space to fill with his imagination. Data, dates, works, literary influences… all this belongs to the realm of biography or academic studies, and Tóibín legitimately wants to write literature, no matter how flesh and blood Thomas Mann might have been. Thus, the reader who wants to know Mann in depth will not be able to satisfy his curiosity by reading this work of fiction. My advice is to read a magnificent book of Herman Kurzke, fruit of 25 years of work: “Thomas Mann. Life as a work of art. A biography” (Galaxia Gutenberg). On the other hand, Tóibín includes a very useful (although not exhaustive) bibliographical appendix about the Mann tribe.
Is Colm Tóibín’s novel then superfluous? Not at all, it can be safely recommended, as long as the essentially domestic limits within which it moves are taken into account. Now, what message does the novelist convey to us, or is it that his book is a mere dialogical recreation? I explain: John Williams wrote a great novel about Augustor (“The son of César”, Pàmies, 2016), which, in addition to its high literary value, constitutes a deep reflection on destiny and power. And Toibin? Which is the pathos of your novel? In my opinion, it consists, above all, in the dissection of intra-family resentment. Both Heinrich Mann, a good writer but without the genius of his brother, and Thomas’ children feel deeply offended by him. Heinrich because of the envy that Thomas’s talent, honors, wealth and surely the full success of marriage produce; and his sons for not having received more attention from his father, always taking refuge in the sacred place of his office. Very revealing in this regard is the letter that, according to Tóibín, Michael man addresses the writer after the death by overdose of his brother Klaus, whose funeral neither Thomas nor Katia wanted to attend: “I’m sure the world thanks you for your absolute dedication to your books, but we, your children, feel no gratitude towards you, and not towards our mother, who is by your side… You are a great man. Almost everyone appreciates and applauds your humanity… More than likely, it does not bother you very much that none of your children share such feelings of admiration”.
Without a doubt, it is always difficult to be the son of a genius. Not only because of the intellectual difference, but because genius, dominated by creative passion, tends to place everything else in the background. Katia accepted it without any problem (as she accepted Thomas’s repressed homosexuality) and their marriage worked. Thomas Mann’s passion for literary creation is reflected by Tóibín at the end of his novel, when the great writer evokes the story his mother told them about the relationship between Dietrich Buxtehudeorganist of the Marienkirche in Lübeck, and his disciple Johann Sebastian Bach. It was to this that he revealed the “great secret”. And the secret is called Beauty. Buxtehude told Bach that he should not be afraid to express Beauty in his music. “And for weeks and weeks and weeks Buxtehude showed him how to do it.”
Thomas Mann also followed this path, and was fully aware of it in the sententious way that Tóibín imagines thus: “He had written many books in a complex style, without fear of long sentences or numerous digressions, uninhibitedly evoking famous names of the German pantheon. By any measure, he was a great man. Even his father would have been intimidated by him.” And, certainly, Thomas Mann is the literary equivalent of great German music: “The Buddenbrooks”, “Death in Venice”, “The Magic Mountain”, “Doctor Faustus”…
The magician
Colm Tóbin
Translation of Antonia Martin Martin
Lumen, 568 pages, €22.90