German Life and Letters 52:1 January 1999

0016–8777

BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S UNORDNUNG UND

FRÜHES LEID
David Turner
abstract
This article seeks to elucidate the various narrative strategies which Thomas Mann
adopts to achieve the desired balance between sympathy and critical objectivity in
the reader’s response to the central character of his story Unordnung und frühes
Leid. Making due allowance for the degree of ambiguity created by an irony whose
source and direction can rarely be identified with certainty, it assesses the signifi-
cance of the narrator’s pervasive adoption of Professor Cornelius’s perspective
(and its occasional interruptions); it considers the rhetorical function of the title
and its problematic relation to the totality of what is presented; it shows how the
narrator’s persistent use of the present tense implicitly subverts the professor’s
conservative view of history; and in structural terms it argues not only that the low
level of narrativity of the story as a whole contradicts his attempt to subject life to
historical coherence, but also that contrasting blocks of material juxtaposed with
his lofty historical reflections serve to question the value of these reflections by
calling attention to the remoteness and evasion they represent.

Set in the inflationary period of the early Weimar Republic, Unordnung

und frühes Leid naturally concerns itself with the struggles of the Cornelius
household to make ends meet, to provide adequate food and clothing, to
keep their villa in a proper state of repair, to preserve something of that
earlier lifestyle which the parents at least still deem appropriate to their
social status. In this article, however, I am using the idea of balancing the
account in a very different, non-financial sense. I am concerned rather
with how, in his narrative presentation, Thomas Mann manages to main-
tain a balance between a subjective and objective, sympathetic and critical
account of Professor Cornelius, whom I take to be the chief focus and
central character of the story. This balance is particularly important,
because the autobiographical basis of Unordnung und frühes Leid – the simi-
larities between the Cornelius and Mann families, the degree to which the
conservative view of history put forward by the professor mirrors that of
his creator as expressed in Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (1918)1 – may
predispose the informed reader to an over-generous view of the middle-
aged academic and his alienation from contemporary society. Beyond that,
the question of balance is also important as an indicator of the degree to
which, by the mid-1920s, Thomas Mann has shifted his political stance

1
These are discussed in more detail by Herbert Lehnert, ‘Thomas Manns Unordnung und frühes
Leid: Entstellte Bürgerwelt und ästhetisches Reservat’ in Text und Kontext: Festschrift für Steffen Stef-
fensen, ed. Rolf Wiecker, Munich 1978, pp.239–56, and by Anthony Heilbut in his recent book
Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, London 1996, pp.446–9.
 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
44 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S
UNORDNUNG UND FRÜHES LEID
and of the pain involved in his adjustment to the new democracy. How,
then, is the balance achieved?
Even for the reader of Unordnung und frühes Leid who is unaware of any
autobiographical connections there is one especially powerful and pervas-
ive feature of narrative presentation which, alone and unqualified, would
encourage an unduly sympathetic understanding: the story is told almost
entirely from Cornelius’s point of view. The author has not, it is true,
adopted that first-person voice which can so easily seduce the unwary in
Mario und der Zauberer, but his third-person narrator appears to have
aligned himself so thoroughly with the professor’s perspective that the
danger is potentially no less great.2
At the simplest level it is a matter of how, with one or two insignificant
or doubtful exceptions, the narrator describes only what lies within Cor-
nelius’s immediate or remembered experience. When during the course
of the single day recorded in the story the professor comes downstairs
after taking a short nap, the festivities organised by his older children are
described as he gradually becomes aware of them; when he retreats to his
study for a time, the young people’s dancing to their modern music is
presented not directly but as heard by him through the wall; when he
goes out for a walk, the narrator follows him and his reflections, turning
his back on the party that is continuing indoors. Even when, near the
beginning of the story, the narrator temporarily abandons Cornelius to
recount some of the pretences and practical jokes of Bert and Ingrid, of
which their father is unaware, he introduces the professor’s perspective
by proxy, in the protests of an elderly gentleman with academic preten-
sions, who objects to their public discussion of such ostensibly improper
behaviour (623).3
Thomas Mann’s narrator not only limits himself almost entirely to what
lies within the range of Cornelius’s perception; he also tends to adopt the
values of his central character. It is a feature of the narrative voice of
Unordnung und frühes Leid that, although there are passages where it
describes Cornelius from the outside and with apparent neutrality and
there are other passages where it assumes his mask in the form of narrated
or even interior monologue,4 for most of the time it occupies shifting
ground between the two, assimilating the vocabulary and values of Pro-
fessor Cornelius to varying degrees and in such a way that the stance may
alter within a single sentence or the reader may be unable to determine

2
Thus Herbert Lehnert, loc. cit., who accepts Cornelius’s perspective uncritically and, accordingly,
assumes that the author’s sympathies are all on his side. The error of this approach has already
been pointed out by Werner Hoffmeister, ‘Thomas Manns Unordnung und frühes Leid: Neue
Gesellschaft, neue Geselligkeit’, Monatshefte, 82/2 (1990), 164–5.
3
Page numbers in the text refer to the following edition: Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke in zwölf
Bänden, VIII, Frankfurt a.M. 1960.
4
I have followed Dorrit Cohn, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in
Fiction, New Jersey 1978, in using the term ‘narrated monologue’ in place of the German
‘erlebte Rede’.
 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.
 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S 45
UNORDNUNG UND FRÜHES LEID
with any certainty whether the information offered represents the view of
the narrator, that of the professor, or that of some amalgam of the two.5
Consider the following extract, describing some of the domestic staff in
the Cornelius household, starting with one of two sisters who occupy their
present position only because they have come down in the world:

Sie serviert mit abgewandtem Gesicht und gerümpfter Nase, eine gefallene
Königin; es ist eine Qual und tiefe Bedrückung, ihre Erniedrigung mit
anzusehen, und die ‘Kleinen’, als sie einmal zufällig am Abendessen teilnah-
men, haben bei ihrem Anblick alle beide und genau gleichzeitig laut zu
weinen begonnen.
Solche Leiden kennt Jung-Xaver nicht. Er serviert sogar recht gern, tut
es mit einem gewissen sowohl natürlichen wie geübten Geschick, denn er
war einmal Pikkolo. Sonst aber ist er ein ausgemachter Taugenichts und
Windbeutel – mit positiven Eigenschaften, wie seine bescheidene Herrschaft
jederzeit zuzugeben bereit ist, aber ein unmöglicher Windbeutel eben doch.
Man muß ihn nehmen, wie er ist, und von dem Dornbusch nicht Feigen
verlangen. Er ist ein Kind und Früchtchen der gelösten Zeit, ein rechtes
Beispiel seiner Generation, ein Revolutionsdiener, ein sympathischer Bol-
schewist. Der Professor pflegt ihn als ‘Festordner’ zu kennzeichnen, da er
bei außerordentlichen, bei amüsanten Gelegenheiten durchaus seinen
Mann steht, sich anstellig und gefällig erweist. Aber, völlig unbekannt mit
der Vorstellung der Pflicht, ist er für die Erfüllung langweilig laufender,
alltäglicher Obliegenheiten so wenig zu gewinnen, wie man gewisse Hunde
dazu bringt, über den Stock zu springen. Offensichtlich wäre es gegen seine
Natur, und das entwaffnet und stimmt zum Verzicht. (644)

At various points the passage moves beyond the terms of a factual report,
and offers a series of personal judgements on the two figures presented
(‘eine gefallene Königin’; ‘ein ausgemachter Taugenichts und Windbeu-
tel’; ‘ein Kind und Früchtchen der gelösten Zeit %ein Revolutionsdiener,
ein sympathischer Bolschewist’). But it is impossible to be sure whether
they represent the views of the narrator, the views of Cornelius or of both
equally. All one can say for certain is that they do not differ from the
views of Cornelius implied elsewhere in the story and that they are not
disowned by the narrator either. At other points the passage implies the
stance of an eyewitness who both observes and responds emotionally to
what he has observed (‘eine Qual % mit anzusehen’; ‘Offensichtlich %,
und das entwaffnet und stimmt zum Verzicht’). In these instances the
reader is less likely to identify the perspective with that of the narrator,
since the clearest evidence of the reported ‘Qual’ is the tears of the pro-
fessor’s younger children, which have presumably served to reinforce their
father’s reaction, while the one who is disarmed and persuaded to

5
This shifting stance makes it difficult to accept the view of Martin Nikisch that Unordnung und
frühes Leid shares the ‘überraschend einfache Erzählweise’ of Herr und Hund and Gesang vom
Kindchen. Martin Nikisch, ‘Unordnung und frühes Leid’, in Kindlers Literatur Lexikon, ed. Walter Jens,
VII, Munich 1988, p.9742.
 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.
46 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S
UNORDNUNG UND FRÜHES LEID
renounce is evidently the professor himself (and perhaps his wife). The
perspective is undoubtedly one in which Cornelius shares; it is also one
from which the narrator nevertheless does not seek to distance himself.
Similarly, while the impersonal pronoun ‘man’ is used in statements which
could be taken as a direct, verbatim expression of the views of either nar-
rator or Professor Cornelius, the statement, ‘Der Professor pflegt ihn als
“Festordner” zu kennzeichnen’, records the view of the professor, but in
the form of a report which adopts a position outside him.
A further example of the more fluid, less easily definable perspective
assumed by Thomas Mann’s narrator may be cited from the description
of the young people’s dancing a few pages later:

Die Jugend tanzt eifrig, soweit man es Tanzen nennen kann, was sie da mit
ruhiger Hingebung vollzieht. Das schiebt sich eigentümlich umfaßt und in
neuartiger Haltung, den Unterleib vorgedrückt, die Schultern hochgezogen
und mit einigem Wiegen der Hüften, nach undurchsichtiger Vorschrift
schreitend, langsam auf dem Teppich umher, ohne zu ermüden, da man
auf diese Weise gar nicht ermüden kann. Wogende Busen, erhöhte Wangen
auch nur, sind nicht zu bemerken. Hie und da tanzen zwei junge Mädchen
zusammen, sogar zwei junge Männer; es ist ihnen alles einerlei. Sie gehen
so zu den exotischen Klängen des Grammophons, das mit robusten Nadeln
bedient wird, damit es laut klingt, und seine Shimmys, Foxtrotts und One-
steps erschallen läßt, diese Double Fox, Afrikanischen Shimmys, Java dances
und Polka Creolas – wildes parfümiertes Zeug, teils schmachtend, teils exer-
zierend, von fremdem Rhythmus, ein monotones, mit orchestralem Zierat,
Schlagzeug, Geklimper und Schnalzen aufgeputztes Neger-Amüsement.
(647)

In this instance it is less immediately evident that the professor’s perspec-

tive is at all involved. Most of the passage could be understood as the
report of a narrator who has assumed the role of an eyewitness and who
for much of the time remains dispassionately factual. Frequently, however,
the narrator appears to be more personally involved: vainly seeking to
understand an alien world (‘nach undurchsichtiger Vorschrift
schreitend’); influenced by particular, traditional expectations of dancing
(‘eigentümlich umfaßt und in neuartiger Haltung’; ‘Wogende Busen,
erhöhte Wangen auch nur, sind nicht zu bemerken’); fastidious in his
aesthetic tastes (‘zu den exotischen Klängen des Grammophons’; ‘wildes,
parfümiertes Zeug, teils schmachtend, teils exerzierend, von fremdem
Rhythmus, ein monotones, mit %Geklimper und Schnalzen aufgeputztes
Neger-Amüsement’); and, on the evidence of the last quotation, with cul-
tural prejudices which we would now consider racist. In conjunction with
the collective noun ‘die Jugend’ (rather than ‘die jungen Leute’) and the
collectivising pronoun ‘das’ (‘Das schiebt sich’) the effect of the views thus
implied is to place a disdainful distance between the observer and the
scene observed. Although the paragraph contains no explicit reference to
Cornelius therefore, the little adverb ‘da’ in the clause ‘was sie da mit
 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.
 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S 47
UNORDNUNG UND FRÜHES LEID
ruhiger Hingebung vollzieht’, which indicates an immediate rather than
a notional observer, together with the coincidence between the views of
the implied eyewitness and the views already associated with the professor,
will almost certainly ensure that the two perspectives are fused in the mind
of the reader.6
In short, what is likely to remain the reader’s strongest impression on
reading Unordnung und frühes Leid and what could be illustrated by many
other more extended passages is that the narrative perspective seems larg-
ely to embrace that of the central character, even though to an extent
which does not remain static and is not always clearly definable.
It is also possible to argue that the title Thomas Mann has chosen for
his story is part of a similar narrative strategy, that in purporting to offer
an unbiased summary of what is presented it in fact adopts the perspective
of Professor Cornelius. In particular it endorses the term ‘Unordnung’ as
a fair and adequate characterisation of the times and it implicitly accepts
that the second important element in the story is the sorrow of Cornelius’s
younger daughter, Lorchen. Whether either of those views can be sus-
tained unequivocally is a question to which I shall return.
So far I have dwelt on what is the most obvious feature of the narrative
method in Unordnung und frühes Leid, the degree to which the perspective
of the central character is assimilated by the narrator. It is now time to
consider those elements which tilt the scales the opposite way and serve
to establish the balance between subjectivity and objectivity for which I
am arguing.
Within the narrative voice itself, which for much of the time seems to
have incorporated the perspective of Professor Cornelius, there are pass-
ages which – unobtrusively yet undeniably – distance themselves from that
perspective in the form of brief comments or glosses. Occasionally the
narrator interpolates a piece of information which may appear to be sim-
ply factual and therefore unbiased, but which nevertheless has the effect
of modifying or questioning the professor’s view of matters.
After one of the guests, the ‘Wandervogeltyp’ Möller, has sung a Hung-
arian popular song in the original language and received widespread
applause, in which Cornelius has joined ostentatiously, we read:

Cornelius ist um so liebenswürdiger gegen ihn, als er, nach Art aller Väter,
die Gaben und Werte des fremden jungen Menschen sofort mit denen
seines eigenen Sohnes vergleicht und Unruhe, Neid und Beschämung dabei
empfindet. Da ist nun dieser Möller, denkt er, ein tüchtiger Bankbeamter.
(Er weiß gar nicht, ob Möller in der Bank so sehr tüchtig ist.) Und dabei

6
Joachim Müller, ‘Thomas Manns Sinfonia Domestica’, ZfdPh, 83 (1964), 168, is not persuasive in
his assertion of a clear distinction between the two perspectives: ‘Deutlich ist hier im Erzählton
das ironische Wohlwollen des Dichters und der befangene Ernst seines Geschöpfes unterschieden,
soviel vom Dichter in dieser Figur lebt’. It seems to me that, in his article ‘Thomas Manns Unord-
nung und frühes Leid’, Hoffmeister also is sometimes too ready to establish a distance between
Cornelius and the narrator.
 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.
48 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S
UNORDNUNG UND FRÜHES LEID
hat er doch dies spezielle Talent aufzuweisen, zu dessen Ausbildung natür-
lich Energie und Studium gehört haben. Dagegen mein armer Bert % (643)

The situation here is complicated, not only because of the professor’s

ambiguous attitude towards Möller, but also because the beginning of the
passage assumes a position of narratorial omniscience which, at least par-
tially, stands outside Cornelius and places him in the wider context of
fathers in general. But even when the narrative switches to interior mono-
logue (‘Da ist nun dieser Möller % Dagegen mein armer Bert’) and raises
expectations of a more complete espousal of Cornelius’s perspective, this
is interrupted by a parenthetic piece of information which calls his attitude
into question and hints at unfairness on his part.
On the occasion mentioned earlier, when the narrator introduces the
views of the absent Cornelius vicariously in the protests of an elderly
gentleman, he follows a similar practice, noting how the man ‘sich
öffentlich dagegen verwahrt, daß so junge Leute solche Themata (er ge-
braucht den griechischen Plural “Themata”) in dieser Ausführlichkeit
erörtern’ (623). The clause in parenthesis interrupts the course of the
reported speech and therefore the view expressed there; moreover, in
offering what appears to be no more than helpful additional information,
it calls attention to a misplaced pedantry of which, as I am suggesting, both
the unnamed gentleman and Cornelius himself may be deemed guilty.
Ultimately, these narratorial asides have a subversive effect out of all
proportion to their length or prominence. The subversion is never radical
or destructive; it is gently ironic. And there is reason to suppose that it
forms part of a more pervasive irony that characterises the narrative voice
of Unordnung und frühes Leid throughout. At this point, however, we again
enter uncertain territory and must tread warily. It is not just that irony in
general is an elusive quality. Readers of Unordnung und frühes Leid encoun-
ter numerous passages where, though they may suspect the presence of
irony, they are left unsure of its force or direction. Are they dealing with
a narrator who is establishing an ironic distance from the world depicted,
including his central character? Or does the irony belong to the central
character himself and imply a healthy scepticism towards his own foibles
and prejudices as well as towards the society he finds so bewildering?
A couple of short extracts will help to illustrate the difficulty. The first
occurs quite early in the story as the physical features of the younger son,
affectionately known as ‘Beißer’, are described:

Er hat kastanienbraune Kugelaugen, die leicht etwas schielen, weshalb er

wohl bald eine korrigierende Brille wird tragen müssen, ein langes Näschen
und einen kleinen Mund. Es sind die Nase und der Mund des Vaters, wie
recht deutlich geworden, seitdem der Professor sich den Spitzbart hat
abnehmen lassen und glatt rasiert geht. (Der Spitzbart war wirklich nicht
länger zu halten; auch der historische Mensch bequemt sich schließlich zu
solchen Zugeständnissen an die Sitten der Gegenwart.) (625)
 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.
 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S 49
UNORDNUNG UND FRÜHES LEID
If the first two sentences hover uncertainly between the perspective of
Cornelius and that of a neutral but well-informed observer, what are we
to make of the next sentence? The use of parenthesis, familiar to us from
earlier examples, might seem like a narratorial interruption if there were
a clearer shift of perspective. The statement contained within the paren-
thesis, particularly the reference to the concession to contemporary habits
made by ‘even’ an historically minded person, could be read as an ironical
comment of the narrator, smiling perhaps at the lack of consistency of
his central character. On the other hand there is nothing to prevent us
from construing it as a piece of self-irony, as a resigned acknowledgement
by Cornelius that he too is ultimately incapable of resisting the pressure
of the times.
The second extract comes from a point in the narrative when the festiv-
ities are well under way and it occurs to Cornelius that he ought perhaps to
contribute to the enjoyment of the evening by making cigarettes available:
Es geht nicht an, findet er, daß die jungen Leute ihre eigenen Zigaretten
rauchen, – obgleich sie selbst sich wohl nicht viel dabei denken würden.
Und er geht ins leere Eßzimmer und nimmt aus dem Wandschränkchen
eine Schachtel von seinem Vorrat, nicht gerade die besten, oder doch nicht
gerade die, die er selber am liebsten raucht, ein etwas zu langes und dünnes
Format, das er nicht ungern los wird bei dieser Gelegenheit, denn schließ-
lich sind es ja junge Leute. (640)

The passage begins from the professor’s perspective, as the attribution

‘findet er’ makes plain, but whether the concessive clause that concludes
the first sentence is a continuation of his thoughts, and therefore a sign of
some (commendable) appreciation of the different outlook of the young
people, or marks a shift to a more omniscient perspective of the narrator,
which calls into question the pertinence of the professor’s intentions,
remains unclear. Similarly, when the second sentence quoted moves from
a factual account of Cornelius’s action to the appended comment that the
cigarettes he offers are not the best, or not his favourites, the reader has
no means of determining with certainty whether the comment represents
an extension of the professor’s thoughts or an interpolation on the part
of the narrator. There is no denying the ambivalence of Cornelius’s
motives, but it makes a difference to the reader’s perception of him
whether, in a spirit of self-irony, he acknowledges the ambivalence himself
or, as part of a distancing process, he becomes the object of the nar-
rator’s irony.
The evidence so far considered is uncertain and inconclusive. It indi-
cates that, while the perspective of the central character is widely adopted,
it is filtered through a narrator whose voice varies irregularly and often
indeterminately between near-identification and detachment. To this
extent the balance of the account seems to be tipped slightly in favour of
Professor Cornelius’s view of the world. There remains, however, one
other very significant feature of the narrative voice which serves implicitly
 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.
50 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S
UNORDNUNG UND FRÜHES LEID
to redress the balance. It is not a matter of what the narrator says – the
information he reveals, the comments he makes, the attitude he betrays –
but of the tense he adopts, a tense which has been noted by commen-
tators, but not properly explored.7
Although Unordnung und frühes Leid is by no means the only story of
Thomas Mann to be narrated in the present tense, the manner and extent
of its use set it apart from other works. Herr und Hund comes closest as a
substantial story narrated almost entirely in the present tense, but there
are significant differences: a) it is a first-person narrative, b) it restricts the
present tense almost entirely to its iterative and durative aspects, whereas
Unordnung und frühes Leid uses these largely at the beginning, and c), in
a curious inversion of the usual practice, it introduces brief sections in
the preterite towards the end of the narrative as a means of marking more
dramatic single events.
Even more important than the extent and consistency of Thomas
Mann’s use of the present tense in Unordnung und frühes Leid, however, is
the fact that it is closely linked with the most persistent concern of Pro-
fessor Cornelius and therefore with a major theme of the story. To appreci-
ate this it is helpful to consider some observations of Roland Barthes on
the narrative preterite and the way in which it reflects or imposes a sense
of order:

It [the preterite] presupposes a world which is constructed, elaborated, self-

sufficient, reduced to significant lines, and not one which has been sent
sprawling before us, for us to take or leave % So that finally the preterite
is the expression of an order and consequently of an euphoria. Thanks to it,
reality is neither mysterious nor absurd; it is clear, almost familiar, repeatedly
gathered up and contained in the hand of a creator % The narrative past
is therefore part of a security system for Belles-Lettres. Being the image of
an order, it is one of those numerous formal pacts made between the writer
and society for the justification of the former and the serenity of the latter.
The preterite signifies a creation: that is: it proclaims and imposes it. Even
from the depth of the most somber realism, it has a reassuring effect
because, thanks to it, the verb expresses a closed, well-defined substantival
act %8

In both his personal and professional life Cornelius emerges as an

upholder of the preterite principle. He rejects the messy, uncontrolled
and constantly shifting present – the world that has been ‘sent sprawling’
before him – in favour of the ordered, closed and well-defined past, in
which he feels secure. A seemingly trivial symptom of this attitude is his

7
Among those who have remarked on the use of the present tense are: Anthony Heilbut, Thomas
Mann: Eros and Literature, p.448, and Joachim Müller, ‘Thomas Manns Sinfonia Domestica’, p.168,
who makes a passing and obscure reference to the use of the present tense in a particular passage
as something which ‘unterstreicht wohl das Symptomatisch-Verbindliche’.
8
Roland Barthes, from Writing Degree Zero, quoted from Barthes: Selected Writings, ed. and with an
introduction by Susan Sontag, London 1983, pp.45–7.
 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.
 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S 51
UNORDNUNG UND FRÜHES LEID
constant battle with the manservant Xaver, who insists on tearing off a
page of the calendar every morning: ‘Er soll das Kalenderblatt in Ruhe
lassen, Doktor Cornelius hat es ihm oftmals anbefohlen, da dieser dazu
neigt, auch das nächste noch abzureißen, und so Gefahr läuft, aus aller
Ordnung zu geraten’ (645). What is enacted here is a battle between one
who is happy to confirm the forward march of time and whatever changes
it may bring and one who seeks to arrest it in order to prevent the danger
of ‘Unordnung’.
Much more weighty, though closely related, are Cornelius’s reflections
on the basis of his own historical interest and its peculiar connection with
the favouritism he shows towards his younger daughter, Lorchen. It is no
accident that his academic hobby-horse is the age of Philip II of Spain
and the Counter-Reformation, for in Philip he recognises a kindred spirit,
who fights a losing battle against ‘das Neue, den Gang der Geschichte’
and ‘die Mächte des Fortschritts’ (633). Nor is it an accident that his first
recorded musings on the significance of history for him grow out of his
acknowledgement of Lorchen’s special place in his affections, for, in their
different ways, both Lorchen and history represent a world which is
immune from the disturbing and unregulated vicissitudes of the contem-
porary scene by virtue of the fact that it is essentially beyond time: ‘Denn
Vaterliebe und ein Kindchen an der Mutterbrust [Lorchen], das ist zeitlos
und ewig’ (627); while ‘über dem Vergangenen [history] % liegt die Stim-
mung des Zeitlosen und Ewigen’ (626). Of special interest here, however,
is the fact that, in the course of this extended passage, Cornelius expresses
his thoughts in language which foregrounds the grammatical category of
tense (including the distinction between present and past participle) in
relation to the verb ‘geschehen’, that is, the verb from which the noun
‘Geschichte’ derives. ‘Er weiß, daß Professoren der Geschichte die Ge-
schichte nicht lieben, sofern sie geschieht, sondern sofern sie geschehen ist’,
he reflects at one point (626), and a little later: ‘Sie hat ihrem Ursprunge
nach etwas Tendenziöses, diese Liebe; es ist Feindseligkeit darin, Oppo-
sition gegen die geschehende Geschichte zugunsten der geschehenen, das
heißt des Todes’ [my emphasis] (627). One could say that the professor
is an opponent of the present tense as an instrument of all that is open-
ended, liable to change, resistant to imposed order and control. And
although he states his position in terms of the perfect tense rather than
the preterite, he nevertheless conforms to the pattern outlined by Barthes.
Indeed, his admission that the preference for past history, for that which
is already fixed, is also a preference for death anticipates the further
suggestion of Barthes that the ordered world set forth in the narrative
preterite is simultaneously a form of death: ‘The Novel is a Death; it trans-
forms life into destiny’.9
To the extent that the narrator of Unordnung und frühes Leid adopts the
perspective of Cornelius, he gives scope to the professor’s preference for
9
Barthes, from Writing Degree Zero, p.52.
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52 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S
UNORDNUNG UND FRÜHES LEID
‘geschehene Geschichte’, but in making such consistent use of the present
tense, especially in what linguists call its punctual aspect,10 he privileges
‘geschehende Geschichte’. If Thomas Mann had elected to narrate in the
preterite, he would implicitly have aligned himself not only with the theor-
etical abstractions of Cornelius’s conservative philosophy of history, but
also with his more immediate, somewhat bemused disdain for contempor-
ary society and perhaps even with his jealous protectiveness towards his
younger daughter. By adhering so persistently to the narrative present he
has found a way of standing apart from his central character and entering
into the spirit of the world from which he (Cornelius) is alienated.
Although tense may be said to function on a different level from per-
spective, it is equally part of the narrative voice. In redressing the balance
of his account, however, Thomas Mann has available to him other
resources which are independent of voice and function at the structural
level, deriving their force as much as anything from the way in which the
material of the story is organised. Of particular importance in this regard
are: a) the question of narrativity and b) the use of narrative juxtapo-
sitions, which, unnoticed by the central character and furnished with no
commentary by the narrator, invite the reader to make critical compari-
sons.
Whether the context is history or fiction, narrativity may be seen as a
matter of intelligible articulation and cohesion; accounts that have a high
degree of narrativity will give the reader the sense that ‘matters are per-
fectly rounded and that no event preceding or following the sequence of
events recounted can be narratively important’; that changes are
adequately accounted for; that what comes after is to some extent con-
ditioned by what comes before; that the end is conditioned by the begin-
ning, but also that the beginning is determined by the end; that events
are therefore meaningful in terms of the outcome.11 To that extent it may
be said that it is a major part of Professor Cornelius’s project to make the
world narrative. Indeed the attraction of the past stems largely from the
fact that, for historians such as himself, it has become coherent
(‘zusammenhängend’), while the upheavals of the present are ‘gesetzlos,
unzusammenhängend und frech’ (626). His project succeeds therefore
only in relation to the past; contemporary events resist narrativity.
If one moves from the level of what Gérard Genette calls histoire (the
level of the characters and events, the level at which Professor Cornelius
finds or does not find cohesion) to that of the récit (the level of the
discourse),12 one discovers in Unordnung und frühes Leid a work which lacks
something of the careful ordering of, for example, Tristan or Der Tod in
10
R.L. Trask, A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics, London/New York 1993, p.224, defines
‘punctual’ as the ‘aspect category expressing an action or state which is confined to a single instant
of time’.
11
Gerald Prince, Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative, Berlin/New York/Amsterdam
1982, pp.153–8.
12
Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse, trans. Jane E. Lewin, Oxford 1980.
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Venedig. This is not a criticism but the acknowledgement of a different
narrative strategy. For although the title seems to hold out the promise
of a meaningful link between the disorder and the early sorrow, what one
finds is contiguity but not cohesion or causality. The younger children,
Lorchen and Beißer, are least aware, either positively or negatively, of the
changed conditions of contemporary society; Lorchen’s hopeless infatu-
ation with Max Hergesell and its (temporary) resolution are not explicable
in terms of those conditions, much as the professor might like to think
that they are. Judged in the light of the title, Unordnung und frühes Leid
falls into two disparate parts; its beginning does not condition its end and
its end does not condition its beginning; it subverts Cornelius’s attempt
to make the world narrative.13 Only by disregarding the invitation of the
title and shifting the focus of attention, from some proposed connection
between the confusion of the times and Lorchen’s sorrow onto the pro-
fessor himself (his resistance to change or development, his search for the
timeless), will the reader recover full narrativity and coherence.
As to narrative juxtaposition, I have already mentioned the way in which,
in his alienation from the contemporary world, Professor Cornelius sees
in King Philip II of Spain a kindred spirit. This supposed affinity is in fact
revealed as only partial. For while Philip struggles actively against the
forces that oppose him in the here and now, Cornelius withdraws from
open conflict to the safety of a settled past.14 Expressed in military terms,
Philip engages in what Cornelius himself repeatedly thinks of as a ‘Kampf’:
(‘den sachlich aussichtslosen Kampf des langsamen Philipp gegen das
Neue, den Gang der Geschichte’ (633); ‘Philipps Kampf gegen den ger-
manischen Umsturz’ (650)), while Cornelius beats a series of retreats,
‘Rückzüge’ (‘während der Professor sich in sein Arbeitszimmer zurück-
zieht’ (633); ‘der Professor zieht sich zurück’ (639)). This particular con-
trast, though it receives no explicit comment and therefore has essentially
to make its own mark, is helped to do so by qualities of linguistic formu-
lation (repetition, contrast, military metaphor) that form part of the narra-
tive voice. At other points Thomas Mann is content to rely on structural
juxtaposition alone. Behind it may stand the more general contrast, so

13
In what is essentially a linguistic study, which uses Unordnung und frühes Leid to test a particular
theory, Petra Konieszewski does indicate a connection between Lorchen’s Leid and the Unordnung
of the times, seeing the young child’s sorrow as a product of the ‘Aufweichen der traditionellen
sozialen Normen, aufgrund dessen Lorchen und Beißer am Fest der Großen teilnehmen dürfen’.
Nevertheless Konieszewski also argues that the overall structure is (intentionally) lacking in the
organisation one would expect of a well-formed text, ‘indem die Einleitung zu lang und der
Hauptteil zu kurz, der Hintergrund eigentlich der Vordergrund und der Vordergrund, das ei-
gentliche Ereignis, nur ein Beispiel für den Hintergrund ist und somit gegenüber dem Hinter-
grund kein dominantes Gewicht hat’. Petra Konieszewski, Textkonstitution und Substitution am Beispiel
von Thomas Manns Erzählung ‘Unordnung und frühes Leid’, Frankfurt a.M./Berlin/Bern 1994, pp.98
and 109.
14
Sidney Bolkosky, ‘Thomas Mann’s Disorder and Early Sorrow: The Writer as Social Critic’, Contem-
porary Literature, 22 (1981), 226, detects other similarities between Cornelius and Philip II which
are not referred to in the story and are, by implication, much more damaging to the professor.
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54 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S
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well described by Bolkosky,15 between the open space of the dance floor
and the enclosed world of the study, but the particular effect depends on
the immediate proximity of disjunctive blocks of narrative material.
The penultimate example quoted above has a significant continuation:

während der Professor sich in sein Arbeitszimmer zurückzieht, um zu lesen,

wie es nach Tische seine Gewohnheit ist, und seine Frau Gedanken und
Tätigkeit auf die Anchovis-Brötchen und den italienischen Salat richtet, die
für die Tanzgesellschaft vorzubereiten sind. Sie muß, bevor die Jugend ein-
trifft, auch noch zu Rade mit ihrer Einkaufstasche zur Stadt fahren, um eine
Summe Geldes, die sie in Händen hat, und die sie nicht der Entwertung
aussetzen darf, in Lebensmittel umzusetzen. (633)

The coordinating conjunction ‘und’ before ‘seine Frau’ is deceptive; it

promises parity, but delivers only a simultaneity behind which lies an
important disparity. The disparity, moreover, has an effect which is only
momentarily bathetic (the sudden descent from weighty academic reflec-
tion to anchovies), for as the narration proceeds, the reader becomes
increasingly aware of a woman who takes positive steps to combat the
consequences of an immediate financial crisis, while her husband retreats
to the safety of his study to contemplate at one remove, mediated by the
writings of earlier historians, financial crises of the past, the English
national debt at the end of the seventeenth century and the Spanish debt
at the end of the sixteenth. In doing so he fails to see the possible rel-
evance of his studies to the present situation,16 still less the irony of the
conjunction. Since the voice of the narrator registers no sense of irony or
relevance either, it might be possible to argue that no such contrast is
intended and therefore that the alleged qualification of Cornelius’s per-
spective is an arbitrary product of my imagination. In answer to such an
objection I would insist first of all that, intended or not, the fact of the
juxtaposition can scarcely be denied. It has led one commentator to speak
of the professor’s failure as ‘breathtaking in its blindness’, as testimony to
a ‘fatal flaw’ in those of his class, profession and ethos, and to deliver a
much more uncompromising judgement on his stance than my under-
standing of the narrative balance would allow.17 More important – when
a similar juxtaposition occurs near the end of the story, it becomes even
more difficult to attribute it to mere coincidence.
On this occasion Cornelius’s retreat has taken a more radical form; he
has left the house and gone for a walk alone. His mind, however, has
15
Ibid., p.227.
16
Ibid., p.228, makes an interesting though speculative link between this failure to see and Cor-
nelius’s bifocal glasses: ‘His mind and life are divided, like his glasses with their two lenses: he can
see in theory, at a distance, what he cannot see in reality.’ Unfortunately, there is no way of
determining whether the professor suffers from myopia or hypermetropia.
17
Ibid., p.225, continuing: ‘And Mann does not justify it, sympathise with it, or pity it. We feel the
pathos of Abel’s situation, but no sympathy for his separation; no meditative, artistic excuses for
disengagement insinuate themselves.’
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again been occupied with thoughts about his forthcoming seminar and,
more generally, with what he regards as the necessity for historical impar-
tiality in contrast to the contemporary demand for political commitment,
reflections which might have come straight from Thomas Mann’s own
Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen. From the heights of these philosophical
‘Träumereien’, as they are called, the professor arrives home to find him-
self immediately confronted by a domestic crisis in which his own
emotional involvement will find him far from impartial: the tearful tan-
trum of his five-year-old daughter, Lorchen, at being torn away from her
(adult) dancing partner, Max Hergesell. The force of the contrast, in
which bathos once more plays its part, is strengthened by the fact that the
tantrum is reported to Cornelius by the manservant, Xaver, in a Bavarian
dialect so broad and uncouth that it acts like a linguistic threat to the
noble edifice of his reflections (‘Herr Professor, gehen S’ nur glei nauf
zum Lorchen. Die hat’s. % Ne, krank grad net % . Bloß erwischt hat sie’s,
und recht weinen tut’s alleweil recht heftik. Es ist zwegn den Herrn, der
wo mit ihr tanzt hat, den Frackjacketen, Herrn Hergesell’ (651).) Xaver’s
words are rendered in direct speech; they do not belong to the narrative
voice, but function rather in apparent independence of that voice as a
block of narrative material which derives its peculiar force and colour
from adjacent blocks of material, more especially from the professor’s
ruminations.
In the three examples just considered the reader is encouraged by the
very organisation of the material to view important features of Cornelius’s
perspective (the conservatism, the opposition to contemporary society and
the preference for the timeless, the cultural fastidiousness, the rejection
of activism, the emphasis on impartiality) in a wider context. The three
figures who form the basis of this wider context, Philip II, Frau Cornelius
and Xaver, are different from each other, but between them they implicitly
hold up before the reader alternative ways of dealing with the present:
accepting it, exploiting it, adjusting one’s expectations, but above all con-
fronting it and acting positively. The introduction of these alternatives,
though they receive no endorsement or even evaluation from the narrative
voice, serves nevertheless as a further counterbalance to the persuasions
of the professor’s perspective.
I would like finally to return to the rhetorical function of the title which
Thomas Mann has given to his story. I suggested earlier that, under the
mask of neutrality and objectivity, the title in fact tended to endorse Pro-
fessor Cornelius’s view of matters. I would like now to consider the extent
to which the information provided by the work as a whole may cause the
reader to modify that view.
From the professor’s point of view it will certainly seem that the times
are out of joint, that economic and social stability has vanished, that dis-
order reigns. But we discover, as the story progresses, that his conception
of order is bound up with the idea of immutability, timelessness, stasis and
ultimately therefore, as he himself acknowledges, with death. The issue of
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56 BALANCING THE ACCOUNT: THOMAS MANN’S
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the calendar suggests that for him any acquiescence in the forward flow
of time runs the risk of creating chaos (‘und so Gefahr läuft, aus aller
Ordnung zu geraten’ (645)). Among the particular losses he registers are
the social, cultural and linguistic hierarchies of the pre-war era, for which
reason he still seeks to maintain the appearance of bourgeois standards
of hospitality, is distressed by the older children’s refusal to conform to
expected career patterns, is offended by the current taste in music and
dance and by the lack of discretion and refinement in the spoken lang-
uage. Although the story nowhere advocates these new values, it shows the
vigour of those who embrace them and raises the question whether the
values of Cornelius may not now be obsolete and whether the bewildering
behaviour of the younger generation may represent not so much disorder
as a new kind of order.18 In relation to the now derelict if elegant Cor-
nelius villa, symbol of the professor’s whole position in the postwar world,
we read: ‘Aber es ist der Lebensrahmen des höheren Mittelstandes von
ehemals, worin man nun lebt wie es nicht mehr dazu paßt, das heißt ärm-
lich und schwierig, in abgetragenen und gewendeten Kleidern. Die Kinder
wissen nichts anderes, für sie ist es Norm und Ordnung, es sind geborene
Villenproletarier’ (621). Given the shifting nature of the narrative voice,
one cannot be absolutely certain that these words do not represent some
mental concession on the part of Cornelius, but they read more like the
utterance of a narrator who is offering an alternative and more detached
perspective on events.
As to the second part of the title, I would draw attention to what seems
a neglected aspect of the story: the rather special and peculiar nature of
Cornelius’s love for his younger daughter Lorchen. The love itself has
been widely recognised; what has not always been recognised is that this
love has a disturbing, unhealthy quality. It is more than just parental love;
it involves jealousy, and not merely the generalised ‘Ressentiment des
Geistes gegen das Leben (im Sinne Nietzsches)’, as Hoffmeister describes
it,19 but a very particular jealousy in which Max Hergesell plays the role
of the admired but hated sexual rival. This is not the place to pursue that
argument further. Nevertheless, however one interprets the resentment,
there can be no denying the reality or importance of the professor’s men-
tal torment in relation to his younger daughter and her infatuation with
Max Hergesell. It constitutes a major part of the story, its importance
increased by the very fact that the professor’s perspective is so pervasive.

18
Hoffmeister, ‘Thomas Manns Unordnung und frühes Leid’, pp.157–76, sees in the totality of the
author’s presentation a more positive evaluation of the society of Weimar Germany than most
other commentators. He writes (p.161): ‘Vielleicht herrscht in dieser Gesellschaft nur scheinbar
viel “Unordnung”; vielleicht erscheint nur dem konservativ getrübten Auge eines Geschichtsprofes-
sors diese Gesellschaft “gesetzlos, unzusammenhängend und frech”’. It is interesting to note that
Klaus Mann, the real-life equivalent of the fictional Bert, looking back on his own experience of
the early 1920s, acknowledged the ‘Unordnung’ as ‘Dauerzustand und permanenter Lebenstil’,
but affirmed it. Klaus Mann, Der Wendepunkt: Ein Lebensbericht, Munich 1989, pp.136–66.
19
Ibid., p.165.
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Conversely, although the sorrow of Lorchen forms the critical climax to
the story, it is presented from the outside and serves as much as anything
to provide a final focus, a suitable conclusion to the wider investigation
of an older man’s pain. This means that the title of Thomas Mann’s story
is by no means the straightforward signifier it is usually held to be. In
adopting the view of the central character it diverts attention away from
an alternative way of looking at things that might have been summarised
in a very different title: Neuordnung und spätes Leid.20 I am not seriously
proposing that Thomas Mann’s story should henceforth be known by
another title; I am simply trying to demonstrate the rhetorical function
of the chosen title, the way in which, taken at face value, it predisposes
the reader to a particular and biased interpretation of the narrated world
which has to be counterbalanced by other factors.
Consensus about Unordnung und frühes Leid may be difficult to achieve.
In addition to the usual obstacles – the elusive nature of irony, the precon-
ceptions, prejudices and simple experiences which individual readers
bring to the act of reading – the story adopts a narrative voice which
frequently shifts imperceptibly and indefinably between the perspective of
the central character and the supposedly more objective position of the
third-person narrator. Nevertheless, however unstable the perspective may
sometimes be, however uncertain the source or target of the irony may
sometimes be, it seems to me indisputable that Thomas Mann has sought
to balance his account in such a way that the reader is permitted both to
sympathise with the central character and to judge him. What is interest-
ing, however, is that this very refusal to take sides unequivocally either
for or against Cornelius conforms to the pattern of historical impartiality
advocated not only by Thomas Mann in his own Betrachtungen eines Unpoli-
tischen but also by the professor in his more personal reflections: ‘Aber
Parteinahme, denkt er, ist eben auch unhistorisch; historisch allein ist die
Gerechtigkeit’ (650). At the heart of Unordnung und frühes Leid lies a
strange paradox: that in creating a balance which, at one level, gives due
allowance both to Cornelius’s and to alternative perspectives, the author
implicitly endorses, at another level, a significant aspect of his character’s
view of the world (the advocacy of impartiality). In the very act of preserv-
ing the balance he tips it in one direction.

20
One early (dismissive) commentator did in fact refer in passing to ‘das späte Leid eines alten
Herrn’ (Hans Kafka, ‘Ein Brief an Th. M.’, Die literarische Welt, 2/48 (26 November 1926), 6).
Lehnert, ‘Thomas Manns Unordnung und frühes Leid’, p.248, writes: ‘Daraus entwickelt sich das
“frühe Leid” des Titels, das unter dem Humor, mit dem es erzählt ist, auch ein ernstes Leid des
Professors impliziert’.
 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.