J O H N K.

N E W M A N

THE CLASSICAL BACKGROUND TO

THOMAS MANN'S DOKTOR FAUSTUS

When Doktor Faustus was first published in 1947, the world

was filled with horror and contempt by the revelations made at
Nuremberg and elsewhere of Nazi barbarism. The book was a
long and complex composition, making great demands on the
foreign reader. Its title seemed to confirm, from the lips of Ger-
many's greatest living author, what everyone already knew: Ger-
many had sold its soul to the devil, and must now pay the price.
Was there really such need to labor the point ?
Although this simplistic interpretation of the novel was
accepted even by German critics, 1 I would like to suggest here
that Mann had something far more subtle to say about the sins
of his fellow-countrymen, as indeed one might have expected
from "the ironic German". His apparently committed work,
ostensibly dealing in clear cut issues of black versus white,
good versus evil, intended as a big, epic, historical narrative, is
as riddled with ambiguity as the Aeneid, and constitutes in itself
the vivid proof of the survival of the classical tradition of epic
in our own age. This does not at all mean that Mann was morally
uncommitted about the evils of the Nazism which he had fought
so bitterly. But, like Dante, he thought the more important sins
were those of the intellect. Germans were wrong because they
too easily followed the wrong myths.

See especially Die Welt ohne Transzendenz by H. E. Holthusen (Ham-

burg 1949). Andr6 yon Gronicka's remarks in the Germanic Review 23,
1948, pp. 206--18 are typical of an attitude still dominant in the interpre-
tation of the novel.

3*
36 J.K. NEWMAN

D o k t o r Faustus sets in counterpoint against Germany's na-

tional myth enshrined in its title the myths of the Greco-Roman,
classical world. Classical echoes are particularly loud, for
example, in the scene where Leverkiihn decides to take up
residence on the Schweigestill farm outside Munich, where he
can compose undisturbed, while at the same time having occa-
sional access to the city by train. 2 He is fetched from the station
by the farmer's son Gereon, a surly cattleman. Can we be
supposed to ignore the famous Geryon of Greek myth, who
also kept cattle ? The stealing of these cattle by Heracles formed
a celebrated theme of Greek lyric. Stesichorus had described
how the hero had travelled to perform his task in the golden
cup which carried the chariot and horses of the Sun by night
across Ocean. Pindar had meditated on the morality of Hera-
cles' action: " L a w , which is king of all, both men and immor-
tals, conducts the uttermost violence with the hand of power,
making it just: I judge f r o m the deeds of Heracles, since he
drove the oxen of Geryon to the Cyclopean porch of Eurystheus
without asking and without buying. ''~
These Greek allusions point up several important themes of
the novel. Music first comes to Leverktihn f r o m the cowgirl
Hanne, and his preoccupation with law and order in art stems
f r o m the need he feels to discipline what he calls music's " c o w
warmth". As he begins his long vigil, he is, in fact, invoking the

Doktor Faustus, pp. 337 iT. References to the novel are made to the
1956 edition in the Stoekholmer Gesamtausoabe der Werke yon Thomas
Mann. For melancholy as creative in the classical world (Heracles), see
[Aristotle], Problemata XXX. 1, adduced by R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky
and F. Saxl at the start of their Saturn and Melancholy, New York 1964.
Cf. Panofsky and Saxl, Darers ~)Melancolia I~ : Eine Quellen- und Typen-
#esehiehtliche Untersuehung, Studien der Bibliothek Warbur# II, Leipzig--
Berlin 1923,
3 For Geryon see Hesiod, Theogony 281 ft.: Stesichorus, p. 100 in
Poetae Meliei Graeei, ed. D. Page, Oxford 1962: Pindar, ft. 169 (Snell-
Maehler): Plato, Gorgias 484bl--c3 with E. R. Dodds' notes on
pp. 270 iT. of his edition (Oxford 1959). The allusion to Dante, Inferno
)(VII, is also important.
BACKGROUND TO MANN'S DOKTOR FAUSTUS 37

Apolline principles of control over a distant, dark world. Like

Heracles, he is prepared to use violence to attain his end. ~
Pindar alluded to this same story in the second Dithyramb,
evidently puzzled by the morality of Heracles' behavior:
"I praise you, Geryon, beyond him [i.e. Heracles], but I must
keep silent altogether about what is not pleasing to Zeus."
Geryon was right to resist, Pindar argues, but God was against
him, and so we must pass over his fate in silence. Zt2~t~t z~dt~z~a~,
- Schweigestill. 5
The farmyard dog at the Schweigestills' is surly and snappish,
like Geryon's dog Orth(r)os. 6 On his first arrival Leverkiihn
knows how to calm it by a simple gesture, and later with the
aid of a special pipe which only it can hear. We need look no
further than the fourth book of the Georgics to find a musician
who could control by his instrument a hellish dog, this time
Orth(r)os' brother, Cerberus. 7 The elm in the Schweigestill
courtyard whose leaves are dropping shows that we are at the
entrance to hell. By a typically Virgilian technique two mythical
analogues, Orth(r)os and Cerberus, here blend.
But for the calming of Cerberus by a simple gesture we have
to go outside the ancient literary tradition and turn instead to
a Greek vase painting. A red figure amphora in the Louvre
shows the motif of Heracles coaxing Cerberus depicted by the
Andocides painter. Arias and Hirmer comment: "On the left
Athena with helmet, spear and snake-bordered aegis. She makes
a gesture of encouragement towards H e r a k l e s . . . With his
right he makes a soothing gesture towards the dog, in his left
he holds a chain. A spreading tree with purple leaves grows in

4 See Doktor Faustus pp. 35, 41, 94 (Gesetz / Kuhwiirme), 410.

5 Pindar, ft. 81 (Snell-Maehler).
e Hesiod, Theogony 293.
7 Georgics IV. 483. F o r Leverkiihn as Orpheus, see p. 647 o f the n o v e l
For the elm see AeneidVI. 282--284 with E. N o r d e n ' s notes in his edition
(repr. Stuttgart 1957).
38 J.K. NEWMAN

front of the house guarded by Cerberus whose dog's body has

a lion's mane and a snake-headed tail. ''8
Side B of this amphora, in black figure work by the Lysippi-
des painter, shows Dionysus, satyrs and a menad, who could
also be Ariadne. One of the satyrs is playing a citharaY The
relevance of the theme of artistic euphoria and drunkenness to
the novel needs no emphasis. It is the willingness to accept the
syphilitic exaltation which is at once Leverktihn's sacrifice and
his doom.
Side A - the coaxing of Cerberus by Heracles - shows us
that Leverktihn is once again the Heracles who robbed Geryon
of his cattle. The important motif of Athene's assistance canon-
izes the role ultimately played in the novel by Leverktihn's
artistic patroness, the Hungarian noblewoman Madame de
Tolna. The tree before the house shown on the vase has been
transmuted with Virgil's help into the Schweigestills' elm. The
preservation of this a m p h o r a in Paris is also relevant to the
novel. Leverktihn's attempt to break out of his isolation, which
might have led him perhaps to see his destiny in different terms,
is by a vicarious proposal to Marie Godeau, a Swiss girl who
lives in Paris.
Leverkfihn's fatal inability to come to terms with the femi-
nine is revealed both in this Nietzschean episode of the proposal
by proxy, but also in his quixotic relations with the prostitute
first encountered in a Leipzig brothel whom he calls after a
South American butterfly "hetaera esmeralda". The syphilis
which he ultimately contracts from hetaera esmeralda as a delib-
erate gesture of love and identification is also his passport to

8 p. E. Arias and M. Hirmer, A History of Greek Vase Painting, Lon-

pon 1962, nos 88 and XXIX with the commentary on p. 317.
9 Arias and Hirmer, loe. eit., p. 317. The Dionysiac theme of the novel,
particularly relevant to its Nietzschean protagonist, is emphasized in
T. J. Reed's Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition, Oxford 1974, pp. 392,
396, 403--04. The relationship between the novel and carnival literature,
hinted at by M. Bakhtin in Problemy Poetiki Dostoevsko#o, Moscow
1963, pp. 224 and 300, remains to be explored.
BACKGROUND TO MANN'S DOKTOR FAUSTUS 39

new artistic realms, where he hopes to restore to music a lost

soul. " H o w does one burst the chrysalis and become a butter-
fly ?" he asks in words borrowed from Dante. 1~
So his sexual encounter is also a spiritual breakthrough. Here
another Greek vase becomes relevant. A black-figure vase
described by Martin Nilsson depicts a man with an erect phal-
lus blowing a double flute while drops of his semen fall onto a
fluttering butterfly. But the identification of the butterfly with
the soul has endured in Greek at least from the days of Aristotle
to the modern Greek grvzr (butterfly). The whole com-
plex of music, sexual intercourse and butterfly/psyche, so impor-
tant in the novel, comes together in this work of a Greek artist. 11
Classical models have importance for the central episode of
the whole composition, Leverkfihn's supposed encounter with
the devil at Palestrina. Palestrina, where Mann himself had
lived in his youth, and as the home of the great composer, has
an obvious relevance to the musical argument of the book. But
classical scholars visit Palestrina (Praeneste) for another reason.
It was the site of what was probably pagan Italy's largest reli-
gious shrine, the temple of Fortuna Primigenia. Princes and
potentates were among those who flocked to consult the sortes
there for guidance. One potentate, the dictator Sulla, had
adorned the temple with two striking mosaics, for which the
finest Alexandrian techniques were employed. These mosaics
have partially survived to our own day. One of them shows a
bird's eye view of the course of the Nile, flowing past exotic
animals of every kind. Students of Apollonius Rhodius will be
familiar with it from A. Hurst's book, where it is reproduced
as an example of the kind of aesthetic sensibility represented
by Apollonius. le In view of the interest in astronomical dating

ao Doktor Faustus, p. 410: Purgatorio X. 121 ft. (the purgation of pride).

11See M. Nilsson, Gesehiehte der grieehisehen Religion, Munich 1961,
vol. I, p. 198 and notes.
12A. Hurst, Apollonios de Rhodes: Mani~re et Cohdrence, Rome
1967, fig. 1.
40 J.K. NEWMAN

shared by M a n n with Apollonius, this mosaic constitutes a

fascinating point of contact between two epic styles across the
centuries. 13
The second mosaic shows a marine panorama, in which the
waters of the sea gradually darken as they recede further f r o m
the shore. In them fish and sea creatures of m a n y varieties
move. An Italian archeologist calls attention to the note di bianco
in the fish mosaic which sugggest Mann's interest in the lights
found even in the darkest depths of ocean. Leverkfihn's first
major composition is precisely Meerleuehten? ~
Praeneste is not a seaside resort. What can the dictator Sulla,
who thought of himself as peculiarly the favorite of Fortune,
have meant by installing in her temple a seascape ? The offering
denotes the universal power of the goddess, who in ancient
times took many forms, and at Praeneste a f o r m which irre-
sistibly reminds the modern student of the Christian M a d o n n a ? '~
W h a t neither Leverkiihn nor his classical friend Zeitblom
could see at Palestrina was that the presiding daemon of life
might be understood in other terms than the Gothic fantasies
o f medieval Germany. No doubt it was important to acknowl-
edge in an artist's work the presence of more than the merely
human. But this suprahuman element need not be Satan.
It could be Fortune, the eternal feminine. Sulla was called in
Greek ~ a ~ g d t ~ o ~ , " u n d e r the patronage of Aphrodite". Some
ancient sources say that he called both himself and his son

13See P. Bogue, Astronomy in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius

(diss. Urbana, Illinois 1977). For astronomy in the novel compare the
deaths of Echo and his uncle Adrian in late August, both seasolas under
the sign of Leo, the Lion, a symbol in the novel for Satan.
1~Doktor Faustus, pp. 201--02: G. Gullini, I Mosaiei di Palestrina,
Rome 1956, p. 30.
15 Cicero, De Divinatione II. 85: K. Latte, R6mische Reli#ionsgeschich-
te, Munich 1960, p. 176. For Isis-Tyche-Protogeneia see Nilsson, op. eit.
(supra, note 11), II, p. 126. Fortune as Isis connects with the theme of
the Golden Ass.
BACKGROUND TO MANN'S DOKTOR FAUSTUS 41

Faustus. Germany's - and Leverkiihn's - dilemma is that

for their culture Faustus can mean only one thing. 18
Had Leverkiihn been able to rise out of his self-centeredness,
he might have seen his situation in terms of a rather more inno-
cent story, of which Mann himself tells us he was a deep admirer,
and that is Apnleius' Golden Ass. There too a Faustian curiosity
into forbidden things leads the hero astray. His earthy dilemma
is symbolized by the heavenly story of Amor and Psyche (Lever-
kfihn and his butterfly). When eventually Lucius finds release,
he describes his mystical experiences in language which has
great relevance to Mann's novel: " I approached the bound of
death and trampled on Proserpina's threshold" (this would be
the arrival at the Schweigestill farm): "Yet I returned, carried
through all the elements" (die elementa spekulieren, Leverkiihn's
voyages with Professor Auerhahn): "At midnight I saw the
sun shining with clear light" (Heracles' journey on the Sun's
golden cup at night): " I entered the presence of the gods of the
underworld and the gods of the upper world, stood near and
worshipped them. ''17
This last remark brings us to the heart of our classical Umdeu-
tung of the novel. If Leverkiihn did, like Lucius, stand near the
gods of the upper world, he was not in the last analysis damned,
because the gods are not so cruel and the world is not such an
isolated place as he believes. Mann tells us that his novel prac-
tises music, and he defines music as "systematic ambiguity".18

is F o r Sulla/Faustus a n d his son Faustus see Plutarch, Sulla X X X I V ,

3 : Appian, Bellum Civile I, 97. F o r the fatal G e r m a n preoccupation with
myth see M a n n ' s phrase " D e r deutsche Wille zur Legende, zum Mythos
9 ein Wille gegen die W a h r h e i t " quoted by Reed op. cit. (supra, note 9),
p. 333.
17 Metamorphoses XI, 23. F o r Lucius as a predecessor of Faust see H.
Ruediger, "Curiositas und Magie: Apuleius und Lucius als literarische
Archetypen der Faustgestalt," Festschrift far F. Schalk, edd. H. Meier
and H. S c h o m m o d a u (Frankfurt 1963), pp. 57--82.
is See Doktor Faustus, p. 66: " D i e Entstehung des D o k t o r Faustus:
R o m a n eines R o m a n s " , Gesammelte Werke XI, F r a n k f u r t 1960,
pp. 45 iT., pp. 171 and 187.
42 s.K. NEWMAN

Interpretations which proceed as if the novel could mean only

one thing are unfaithful to its Alexandrian, ironic essence.
A man does not lose his soul because he contracts syphilis in
some self-sacrificing encounter with a girl prostitute. Lever-
kfihn's tragedy is not his visit to the brothel, but his unwilling-
ness to seek treatment for his disease. He represents in delicate
miniature the perversion of his society, butwhereas their excesses
had nothing to redeem them, the artist's sufferings were both
crucifixion and resurrection.
The remedy for the problem is quite simply to open the
window of German society to other and saner perspectives.
These perspectives are provided, according to Mann, by the
classical world, which offers less damning myths for our guid-
ance. The novel's critics, who saw in it only one meaning, and
that hellish, were giving exact confirmation of Mann's diagnosis
of what is wrong with Germany.
But in this context a particular burden of blame is laid on
the shoulders of classical scholars. Zeitblom, who complacently
announces himself as philosophiae doctor, is the first to see his
friend's life in traditional German terms. We are told in the
book that classical scholarship makes its exponents insensitive
to life (gegen das Leben zu verdummen). Philology is pretty use-
less, we learn, when murder is afoot. The University of Munich
is asleep, and Dr. Erasmi had been dead, when help was
needed. ~9
I believe that this disturbing critique of Altphilologentum
should give every scholar food for thought. No nation has made
more brilliant and original contributions to our knowledge of
classical antiquity than Germany. If in the eyes of a great Ger-
man artist even German classicists have failed in their civiliz-
ing mission, what judgment may the rest of us expect ? Perhaps
it is here that the student of comparative literature faces his
greatest challenge in our time, and his greatest opportunity.

~ See Doktor Faustus pp. 209, 551,596.