Orbis Litterarum (1974), XXIX, 61-76

Parody and Narrator in Thomas Mann’s

”Dr. Faustus” and ”The Holy Sinner”
William M . Honsa, Jr., Humboldt

The method of parody is briefly described and then shown as a

means for Mann to explore myth and legends without attempting
to look at them directly. Parody can fall short of reality either on
purpose or through necessity; again, parody can dissolve into
meaninglessness. For Mann, in Dr. Faustus and The Holy Sinner,
parody offered a way in which we can catch a glimpse of an ulti-
mate truth about good.
The device of narrator is also used to elucidate realities of faith
and feeling. Zeitblom is the onlooker-narrator, often used as a
vehicle for Mann’s irony, but also the other protagonist of the
novel. The narrator in The Holy Sinner, Clemens, is not involved
in the action but is free to shape it and comment on it. Parody i s
possible of a man who has read the tale and does believe. The
artist-narrator, Clemens, balances between joy and sorrow and
rises beyond a mere spokesman for the unbelievable.
Both parody and narrator allow Mann “to bring in his points
through the back door,” conciliating systematic rational belief with
the realities of faith and feeling.

“Parody,” R. P. Blackmur writes in his extremely suggestive essay on Dr.

Faustus, “is a good name for a means of getting at material that - in our
state of belief - does not submit to existing system.”1 Blackmur is speaking
here not only of Thomas Mann, but of any writer in an age in which the
principal problem of the artist is how to get at materials that, in our state of
belief, do not submit to existing rational system. Among these materials are
the mythical and the legendary, or perhaps more accurately, the realities of
faith and feeling which lie behind myth and legend. These realities have
always been and are now the principal source of artistic vitality, yet our
existing systems of belief will not accomodate them. If the artist is to con-
tinue to draw upon these sources, as he must, he is obliged to discover a
means of getting at them without falling back upon older systems of belief
which are no longer viable. Parody is one of these means. Another, perhaps
even more important, or at Ieast more usefuI, is the use of a fictitious,
62 William M . Honsa, Jr.

subjective narrator - a device which is explored with increasing mastery in

the later novels of Thomas Mann, and particularly in Dr. Fuustus and The
Holy Sinner.

I1
The mythical is a part of the two books, for Mann is aware that “the use of
‘mythos’ may indeed enable an author to explore regions inaccessible to
‘10gosyy’.2And in both books the legendary serves a similar purpose. These
legends are one step up from the level of myth, however, for both have
literary history, though their roots may lie deep in primitive beginnings.
Both are in fact medieval legends, but in neither novel does the original
form of the legend determine its application. In both Mann exploits, though
in quite different ways, the peculiarly anti-historic or timeless relevance of
the legendary to perennial human problems and relationships - using it to
focus or comment upon essentials of faith and feeling that underlie the local
accidents of history.
In Dr. Fuustus three times are plotted one against the other: the time at
which it is written, which calls forth statements about the condition of
humanity (more specifically Germany) in 1943; the time in which the events
related took place, Leverkuhn’s story; and the more distant time in which
lie the roots of the Faustus legend. Only Zeitblom speaks for present time;
Leverkuhn and Zeitblom together speak for remembered time; Leverkiihn,
in the medieval dialect with which he recounts the Esmeralda episode,
conducts his conversation with the devil, and makes his last confession,
speaks for and in the language of the remoter past. Finally, because these
three times are so marked, it is necessary for the reader to consider his own
time, the time which will be ever changing, and which will always bring new
light to bear on the old story.
Zeitblom, as he speculates on the condition of Germany at the time of
his writing, is not wholly removed from any connection with the Faust
legend. The last lines of the book - “my friend, my Fatherland” - make it
clear that Leverkuhn-Faust and Germany are related, if not one and the
same. Thus the humanist who differs with his country is the same friend who
must season Leverkuhn’s creative daemonic urge with humanism, that it
may not become wholly diabolic. Zeitblom is in a sense the Wagner of
Goethe’s Faust, though not as simple. The legend is relevant to Zeitblom’s
Thomas Mann’s “Dr. Faustus” and “The Holy Sinner” 63
time; it exists in the present as well as in the past, though it lies under the
surface of the historical narrative rather than comprising its substance.
The use of legend in The Holy Sinner is quite different. The novel is
free of the restrictions of time in another way. Where in Dr. Fuustus time is
complicated and multi-faceted, in The Holy Sinner it is simplified - a
cabochon whose rounded face shines rather than sparkles. There is no time
in The Holy Sinner - “there is no fixed term” (HS, 10) to restrict the
narration of the tale or to limit the time in which the tale takes place. Here
the legend is itself the substance of the narrative. The legendary, unlike the
purely historical, has no fixed time of Occurrence nor is to be understood
only in terms of one definite period. “The life of man follows well tried
patterns, but it is only in words that it is old and traditional; in and for
itself it is ever new and young” (HS, 16). As the giver of words to the
legendary, Clemens himself is a part of the legend. As he insists on the
story-ness of the tale, as he equates himself with the spirit of storytelling, he
fits himself into new-old-undefined legendary time. His purpose is not to link
the present with the past, but to show that the two are one. The legend of
Gregory is not enhanced and enriched by the splendor of tradition; it
remains suspended in the midst of the past in such a way that light may
strike it from all directions.
Since it does not move past its basic statement, the legend is exactly
suited to be the libretto for a puppet performance, for in its original form it
is as much a parody of human and divine relationships as puppets are of
men. The legend is itself a reflection of the time in which men were able to
act with puppet-like simplicity of movement and faith now no longer
possible, and Mann’s task is to make such a simplicity of being intelligible
and convincing within currently acceptable patterns of belief. The puppets
p i n t too grotesquely toward the truth to be convincing. Mann, instead of
indicating direction with the tremulous finger of reason, chooses to mani-
pulate his creatures in such a way that they cease to become parodies
themselves, but become material for Mann’s own parody.

m
Parody, in its broadest sense, imitates another piece of work; it need not
simply ridicule it, for it may criticize and thus further define and clarify its
64 William M . Honsa, Jr.

object. Again, I find Blackmur’s definition useful: “Parody is a means of

treating reality so as to come short of it either on purpose or through
necessity. . . . Because it involves, points at, and limits what it parodies,
parody is a good name for a means of getting at material that - in our state
of belief - does not submit to existing systems.”3 A parodistic novel can
cope with myth and legend because it does not attempt to come to grips with
them; it can look at an ultimate state of being, at salvation, because it does
not attempt to look at it directly.
In The Holy Sinner much of the beginning is devoted to setting up the
conditions necessary for salvation. Mann’s parody in these early parts is
restricted to a recreation of the tone of the original legend. It would be
misleading to say that the original was a deliberate parody, rather it was
an unpremeditated result of “historical uninstructedness, pious Christian
didacticism, and moral naivete” (DF, 315). Unable to partake of this mixture
of qualities, Mann can induce the effect of them in his readers by his own
deliberate parody of the original. But in his treatment of Grigorss’ time on
the rock Mann must go beyond his initial parodistic style. The legend can
put it simply: Grigorss spends seventeen years chained on a rock doing
penance, and the “existing system” of the time accepts this flat statement.
But MaM’S audience cannot, so rather than going beyond it, rather than
demanding a suspension of disbelief, Mann turns to parody. Of course the
parody is as impossible as the original statement, but the body of reason is
disarmed when parody attacks it. Against the impossible one can stand
firm; confronted with parody there is no need to resist because it is clearly
only parody, and thus the point comes through, though by the back door.
In Dr. Faustus the use of parody is quite different. In The Holy Sinner
parody falls short of reality on purpose, in Dr. Faustus through necessity.
Leverkiihn’s ability to work within the form of parody is the devil‘s gift, or
Lather, Leverkiihn in his meeting with the devil confirms the grounds on
which this ability has always been based. But on the other hand, it is only
through parody that the breakthrough can ultimately come. In spite of what
the devil says - “I know, I know. Parody. It might be fun, if it were not so
melancholy in its aristocratic nihilism” (DF, 241) - the gift of parody is a
genuine step toward the breakthrough. This is the devil speaking, after all,
and we cannot attribute certain truth to his words. Leverkuhn’s parodies
lead to the writing of the Apocalypse, and this is the last of his parodies, for
in this piece is “the devil’s laughter all over again” (DF, 378). Parody has
Thomas Mann’s “Dr. Faustus” and “The Holy Sinner” 65

brought Leverkuhn as far as it is able to; in the devil’s terms, this parody
is as close as man can come to reality.
This crisis in Leverkuhn’s musical development is made clear in the
novel by the narrator’s switch following this point to the personal and
social world. Immediately after the description of the Apocalypse Zeitblom
turns to the death of Clarissa, next to the strange Mme. de Tolna, then to
the impresario Saul Fitelberg, and finally to the Marie Godeau, Rudi
Schwerdtfeger, Inez Institoris complication and tragedy. The only music
written by Leverkiihn in this period is a violin concerto for Schwerdffeger,
a work which is outside the frame of Leverkiihn’s work as a whole, and
corresponds only to the fact that he and Schwerdtfeger are per du - a
relationship as meaningless as the concerto. For while it is his only human
work, it is merely partially human and in no sense a breakthrough.
The last work, The Lamentation of Dr. Faustus, is again in line with
Leverkiihn’s development as a parodist, but here parody is so complete that
instead of pointing from a distance, the form of parody is exactly super-
imposed on reality, and the breakthrough is achieved. It is accomplished
through the devil, but it is no longer diabolic; as the devil is a parody of
God and therefore points to God more clearly than theology, so the Lumen-
tation points at salvation because it is the denial of it. The work permits “up
to the very end no consolation, appeasement, transfiguration” (DF, 491).
But in the completeness of the negation lies the only possibility for hope to
arise - not from the work itself, but from the silence that follows it, the
tone that is no longer heard. It is the vibration that indicates the actuality
of the breakthrough, not the work itself, for the work is only destruction
and negation. The vibration stands outside and beyond it. Negation is not a
creative act; the real creation is the intangible, unprovable hope which arises
from the parody carried to completion.
In music, Leverkuhn is a parodist of great technical ingenuity and
virtuosity. In language,Thomas Mann may be said to be the same. “Parody,”
Blackmur writes in the essay from which I have already taken such useful
formulations, “emphasizes mechanics, especially . . . in executive technique,
and greedily fastens on the merest possibilities in the material.”4 Both Dr.
Faustus and The Holy Sinner display such an emphasis, especially in their
deliberate play with archaic modes of expression.
By varying his language Mann makes necessary points obliquely. The
letter written to Zeitblom by Leverkuhn about his first meeting with
66 William M . Honsa, Jr.

Esmeralda is written in archaic language which is dropped when the episode

with her is told. Zeitblom analyses this manner as “parody as pretext” (DF,
145) and prepares for the whole subject of parody to arise again later. For
it is true, even on this obvious level, that the parody by Leverkiihn of the
style associated with the religious Reformation enables him to say “pray for
me”. Already there is the suggestion that parody can do what sincerity
cannot.
The next passage in which Mann, and again Leverkiihn, chooses archaic
German is the visit of the devil. The reader recalls the earlier passage, and
Esmeralda and the devil are thus connected, though the devil makes the
point even clearer in his “I, Esmeralda’s friend and co-habitant” (DF, 233).
But the other person whose language has the same archaic quality is
Nepomuk - surely he is not connected with the devil? The connection is
made that it may be denied. When Leverkuhn employs a language no longer
current it is because only in that language can he express religious feelings
unstateable in modem German. But Nepomuk has not yet lost his other-
world purity; his archaic language is as indicative of his state as his
childish language is of his age. This coupling of diabolic and angelic
archaisms suggests the interpretation of the Lamentation. The language of
parody, the language given Leverkiihn by the devil, is not restricted only to
a use which will further the devil’s purpose. Through a language previously
connected with the diabolic the grace of Nepomuk shines, as after the
destructive fire of the Lamentation, written with the devil’s own tool, is
burned out, a glow remains which can perhaps be hope.
But not assuredly hope. For in the last use of archaic language, Lever-
kiihn’s confession, it is no longer clear whether we witness the final mani-
festation of evil, or have returned to a world in which language has regained
its original purity. Is Leverkiihn’s stumbling over words - his inability to
choose between “pray” and “play” - (DF, 496) an indication that words
no longer are significant? “My sin is greater than it can be forgiven me”
(DF, 502) can mean either exactly that - in arrogance Leverkuhn admits he
is damned and is so - or it can mean that, even adding the sin of specula-
tion, the confession is indeed complete and forgiveness is possible.
There is a third possibility. The speech itself may be meaningless, that is,
there may be no sure interpretation of its meaning possibIe. But this inter-
pretation is not fencestraddling; Mann is not posing a question without an
answer. The fence is apparently defined, not in terms of itself but in respect
Thomas Mann’s “Dr. Faustus” and “The Holy Sinner” 67
~ ~ ~ _ _ _

to what is on each side of it. But actually the fence cannot exist, for in the
end the devil’s side of it is not there. The devil has pointed too hard, he has
come too close to what he pointed at and has become God. His own
parody, the gift of parody Leverkuhn always had and which was the means
of his breakthrough in music, also destroys the devil himself. Parody has
dissolved. Nothing can be decided on the basis of the speech, but the wail
of Leverkuhn as he falls on the piano is the wail of the devil, and the devil
it is who falls. Beyond that it cannot be decided what happens to Leverkiihn,
for the question - saved or damned? - is not the question Mann asks.
“Talked about th’everlasting mercy, poor soul, I don’t know if it goes’s far’s
that, but human understanding, believe me, that does!” (DF, 503). Mann
does not speculate, either, on the extent of everlasting mercy, but remains
at the furthest limits of human understanding - at the point where the devil
and God are one.
As parody becomes reality, so does the language of Mann in Dr. Faustus
approach “language” - which in The Holy Sinner Clemens defines as lan-
guage “in and for itself, language itself, which sets itself as absolute and
does not greatly care about idiom” (HS, 10). Nevertheless, the language
Clemens employs is far from an absolute language; again, in so parodying
the absolute Mann is reaching toward it. The good life at Beaurepaire, de-
scribed in terms of silk cushions from Aleppo and Damascus, combats of
Christian knights in such lands as Ethnise, Gylstram, or Rankulat, shields
from Toledo, Azagoger fineware (HS, 13-15), is both specifically and
confusedly drawing everything into itself. It is “no small thing, to align and
keep in grammatical sequence such encomiums as these” (HS, 15), though
it is all Clemens can do. Through Clemens’ inability to do more, through
his parodistic style, Mann suggests that there is an ultimate language which
he parodies.
The power of events to determine the language in which they are told is
suggested most amusingly in the uncontrollable rhyming of M. Poitevin as
he tells of Grigorss’ first battle, and falls helplessly into the rhyming which
is the common minnesinger form for such a tale. The real compulsion to
rhyme comes from Grigorss’ “blue blaze of the eyes in the pale face” (HS,
166), from the idea behind the traditional action, which turns into jingles the
usual shrewd reporting of M. Poitevin. As he can only express the force of
Grigorss’ concentration in rhyme which differs from his customary dignified
prose, so Mann in The Holy Sinner deliberately chooses a language removed
68 William M . Honsa, Jr.

from that a€ his time with which to look through the sinner Grigorss at Sin
itself.
The lightness and effortlessness of the parody in The Holy Sinner is a
result of the working out of the possibilities of parody in Dr. Faustus. In
the latter novel parody is defined and its possibilities as a means of reaching
reality are developed. The Holy Sinner demonstrates the way in which the
problem - insoluble in any other terms - of making the unbelievable ac-
ceptable to the modern world, is worked out. Had The Holy Sinner been
written before Dr. Faustus, it would not be so clear what Mann is doing;
the book would not have the same effect because it might be seen as
a simple burlesque of reality, The effect might be charming, as a fairy tale
is charming, but as an escape from reality rather than as a clearer approach
to it. In a sense The Holy Sinner is a greater achievement (though not a
greater work) than Dr. Faustus, for in it a believable world is created
rather than destroyed. We accept a set of conditions that we know are no
longer true of the world we live in, and we see Pope Gregory reconcile
humanity with itself. In Dr. Faustus humanity disintegrates in the person
of Leverkuhn and the German nation, but still the novel is no simple work
of destruction - there is at least the possibility of a new creation. It is parody
which makes this positive view possible in Dr. Faustus, and which makes it
probable in The Holy Sinner. Parody is the only way in which we can, at
the present time, catch a glimpse of an ultimate truth about good. Dr.
Faustus illustrates the process through which parody becomes an effective
tool of the modern artist, and The Holy Sinner is built with this tool.

Iv
EmpIoyed (like parody) with increasing skill and elaboration in Thomas
Mann’s later works, the device of the narrator is another means of getting
at those realities of faith and feeling which are the source of artistic vitality.
Mann agrees with Goethe’s statement: “NOone has a conscience except the
onlooker”,5 but would perhaps add that existing systems of belief cannot
accept the reality of such an inner voice. He is convinced of the necessity
for a conscience, however, fm he feels the whole task of the artist is that
of “keeping awake the conscience of life”.6 Mann must bridge the gap
between the need to recognize the validity of a conscience and the inability
Thomas Mann’s “Dr. Faustus” and “The Holy Sinner” 69

to do so. In a society which cannot accommodate a concept which it

nevertheless must accept if it is to remain whole, the artist is the only person
who is able to reunite man with his conscience. But the artist cannot do this
with the power of his personal voice alone, which is only a kind of ultima-
tely unconvincing rhetoric. To make his own view clear he must speak
through someone else, someone who can take a stand that he, as the
directing artist, cannot maintain.
Zeitblom is an onlooker; however much he would like to influence
Leverkuhn, he is resigned to the fact that he cannot. He is allowed only to
look on, but this is still the most important function of his life. He has a
conscience which at times leads him to become something more than an
onlooker in respect to his country (he fights for Germany in the first war,
resigns from his profession in protest against Hitler). He is an onlooker, but
not one without character or a position of his own. His Catholic humanism
speaks through Dr. Faustus; Zeitblom does not hesitate to react against
Leverkuhn’s daemon when it reaches too far toward the powers of darkness,
but neither does he ever utterly condemn Leverkuhn. Human understanding
in Zeitblom stretches far enough to suggest the possibility of everlasting
mercy. “First and last . . . I loved him”(DF, 5), and we do not question this
statement.
But some of Zeitblom’s remarks are not to be taken at face value, for
he is not simply the mouthpiece for Thomas Mann - and in this lies his
value in the novel. Zeitblom is the artist we see working out the form of
the novel; he is the speaker in the epigraph from Dante on the title page.
He will relate the war and the pity, but he will do it with the help of the
Muse - the voice of Art - which is Mann. Always behind Zeitblom is still
another voice; he is on one level significant but is reinforced and enlarged
by a “high genius” beyond him.
If Mann’s voice is the voice of the Muse, of Art, then is the artist
Zeitblom or Leverkiihn?We hear Leverkiihn’s music only through Zeitblom,
and the novel itself is ostensibly Zeitblom’s work, but in his struggles to
write, the bourgeois rather than the daemonic artist is revealed. Zeitblom is
per du with humanity; he belongs to the human race; he marries an ordi-
nary middle-class girl. But he is not completely ordinary, for the enchant-
ment of the name Helene swings h i strongly toward his choice, and his
devotion to Leverkuhn cannot be explained on the grounds of reciprocated
friendship. All in all, however, the bourgeois predominates in him, as the
70 William M.Honsa, Jr.

artist does in Leverkiihn. Similarly, Leverkuhn is not wholly artist, for his
impulse toward humanity allows him to love at least Nepomuk, and to be
drawn to Schwerdtfeger and Marie Godeau. The types which are opposed
in one man in Tonio Kriiger are separated in Dr. Faustus into Zeitblom and
Leverkiihn, but the achievement of each belongs to the role of the other. It
is Zeitblom who tells the story - his recurring concern with the manipulation
of his material is annoyingly convincing - and the language of the bourgeois
shapes the work of art. It is Leverkiihn who stands for humanity, who
breaks through as “a good and as a bad Christian”, whose works cannot be
played in the Germany of 1943, but whose life and death relate directly to
the life, collapse, and rebirth of humanity. In remaining outside both the
narrator and the protagonist, in separating and then confusing their roles
and their accomplishments, MaM sees the artist and the bourgeois as
unavoidably one.
Though Zeitblom is to some extent an artist, he is often the vehicle for
Mann’sirony. When Zeitblom says “that intellectual and wit [Spengler] . . .
had most regretably succumbed to his heart trouble” (DF, 492) he means
exactly that, but Mann’s intent is that we realize that the loss of a Spengler
is not regrettable, and “heart trouble” is rather corruption which may have
affected his heart, but more certainly his soul. Sometimes Zeitblom is the
focus of an irony he does not himself see. Always a bit jealous of Riidiger
Schildknapp because Schildknapp’s gallows humor often appeals to Lever-
kiihn more than his own devoted earnestness, Zeitblom is able to recognize
that the friendship is based on a profound indifference - a thought which
consoles him rather than otherwise. But this recognition should be upsetting
rather than consoling, for indifference simulating friendship should make
Zeitblom look to the meaning of his own tie with Leverkiihn, the du to
which he clings. His being per du with Leverkiihn is as meaningless as the
other reIationship, based as it is only on habit and indifference on the one
side. It is a safe nothingness, however, for it cannot pull Leverkiihn toward
humanity, as does the du won by Schwerdtfeger. If pulled hard enough,
Leverkiihn appears to give in, but he is not in truth humanized. He makes it
impossible for himself to win a humanizing Marie, and he kills the only
other winner of his du. Zeitblom is saved from this fate because he does not
reach Leverkiihn, and the du he cherishes for the wrong reasons is without
meaning except in his own mind. And yet, Zeitblom’s du is a symbol of
“human understanding”, an understanding which is present from the begin-
Thomas Mann’s “Dr. Faustus” and “The Holy Sinner” 71

ning to the end of the relationship, whose very significance lies in its ability
to love despite lack of reciprocation, and which points to possibility of
66 everlasting mercy”.

Thus Zeitblom is more than narrator. He is the other protagonist of the

novel, Leverkuhn’s alter ego, and to some degree also the voice of Mann,
who cannot speak entirely as either Zeitblom or Leverkuhn. Mann remains
outside the work, pointing to the abyss which separates reality from its
possible modes of expression. Zeitblom and Leverkuhn are two modes of
expression, each speaks partially for the author, but even taken together
they do not make a whole, nor is the abyss bridged. Mann demonstrates the
difficulty of making any kind of allegation, and the demonstration of this
difficulty is his work, while the voices are those of Zeitblom and Leverkuhn.
Zeitblom’s “kindly view of the world” (DF, 274) is mocked by Lever-
kuhn’s belief that the physical universe is dynamic and exploding. Zeitblom
speaks for the “reverence of man for himself” (DF, 273) as opposed to the
ungraspable “data of the cosmic creation” (DF, 271) as a means of under-
standing God.Leverkuhn, on the other hand, finds in the very “monstrosity
of a world set-up . . . the premise for the moral, without which it would
have no soil, and perhaps one must call the good the flower of evil” (DF,
273). Is Leverkiihn suggesting here the justification for his death, and is
Zeitblom too limited by the human to see beyond it? Is Leverkuhn, for all
his apparent withdrawal from humanity, actually the man of action, who
takes on himself the responsibility for the breakthrough in human as well as
in musical terms? And does not Zeitblom remain the onlooker, clutching his
conscience but able to feel nothing but emptiness when the conscienceless
Leverkuhn is gone? Mann does not make it clear, but this juxtaposition of
contradictions is not a negation, it is an approach to reality which is neither
positive nor negative, which art alone can clothe with something approaching
understanding. To draw a definite conclusion would be as inappropriate as
to add a third movement to Beethoven’s op. 111. The characteristic of the
novel, as of the second movement of Beethoven’s work “is the wide gap
between the bass and the treble, between the right and the left hand’’ @F,
5 9 , a gap that Beethoven can make less frightening by an added C sharp,
but Mann only by the echo of the last high G of the Lamentation. The right
and the left hand, Zeitblom and Leverkiihn, remain unreconciled except as
they are both part of Mann’s work in which “coldness and heat, repose and
ecstacy are one and the same” (DF, 54).
72 William M . Honsa, Jr.

The narrator of The Holy Sinner is not involved in the action of the tale
he tells; he is free to shape it and comment on it from his place at Notker’s
desk. Clemens’ position in space is identified, but to a specific time he
refuses to commit himself, and the resulting fluidity - the merging of times -
is quite different from the temporal counterpoint of Dr. Faustus. At the
beginning of the novel, Clemens, as the spirit of storytelling, is ringing the
bells of Rome for the triumphal entry of the new pope which takes place
again amid bell-ringing at the close. Clemens reveals the happy ending from
the first page, for his state of mind is quite unlike Seitblom’s anguish in the
first chapters of Dr. Faustus. As a narrator unconnected with the tale he
tells, Clemens can refer to the “terrifying and highly edifying” (HS, 10)
story from the point of view of, again, a Catholic humanist, but one who
knows that all is well in the world. Clemens is also convinced of his ability
to tell the tale well, in spite of his separation from wordly affairs; there is in
him none of the doubt as to his capacity to write on the subject that
Zeitblom feels. The Irish monk is satisfied with himself - with his new
name, with the high standard of Irish art which he admires in his cell, with
his command of correct prose (far superior to that of the German or Roman
monks), with his fine handwriting, and above all, with his Christianity,
which is a “challenge to the spirit to manifest its power and show what all
it succeeds in believing” (HS, 8). This challenge Clemens has met, for he
believes. Now if it were only possible to believe in Clemens himself, the tale
could unfold without a trace of scepticism or ironic humor. But we do not
believe in Clemens, or at least not in him as a thinking man, any more
than we believe the legend. However, it is not Mann’s intention that Clemens
should be real, for his function is to be a parody of another, more real,
man - of a man who, when he has read the tale, does believe. Neither the
legend nor the narrator exists initially on the level of believability, but
through each, by means of parody, reality may appear.
So Clemens is very much present in the novel, with his piously scandal-
ized attitude which is at odds with his human appreciation of the situation.
Again, he is a sort of artist, finding it necessary in the course of his narrative
to discuss events which he professes to deplore, writing happily, though with
alleged monkish ignorance, of knightly deeds, and adding, at the proper
time, suitable comments from his own point of view. He does not shirk his
task as the spirit of storytelling - he edits, balances, explains - but instead
of making the story credible he succeeds only in placing before the tale a
Thomas Mann’s “Dr. Faustus” and “The Holy Sinner” 73

sheet of clear though rosy glass, through which the blackest evil appears
only as a dark red.
But Grigorss is the artist as well: Clemens is not the only partial mouth-
piece of Mann. The narrator is the frame, and the picture is limited by the
dimensions of its frame, but the frame does not determine the meaning of
the picture. So while Clemens looks and tells, it is still possible to see in
Grigorss the artist as well as the sinner. As an artist he has the power of
“pulling himself together . . . beyond the ordinary measure, and collecting
his vital spirit in one burning point” (HS, 158). But when he suggests that
this ability (actually his own) is the source of Duke Roger’s victory in battle,
M. Poitevin does not understand, and attributes the Duke’s victories to his
fabled invincibility which convinces his opponents that they must lose. When
Grigorss compliments M. Poitevin on his shrewdness, the Mayor further
characterizes his own thinking as taking “the form of complete clarity and
general intelligence” (HS, 158). This kind of mind is exactly the sort incap-
able of understanding the power of the artist - it is precisely the sort of
mind Thomas Mann does not have. In Grigorss, Mann speaks as the artist,
as the man whose role he himself shapes as he plays it, the man whose
virtues are not clarity and general intelligence but rather an ability to focus
himself. The sharpness of the resulting image is extraordinary, and it is this
that sets the artist apart from ordinary men. He is “the chosen one” -
chosen for art and for sin (for his very separateness is his sin), and chosen
possibly, as result of this excess, to be finally and completely purged of it.
The HoZy Sinner is the bourgeois artist looking at the daemonic, some-
times diabolic, artist - Clemens explaining Grigorss. CIemens’ inability to
explain Grigorss satisfactorally is a necessary failing, for if he succeeded the
artist would be reduced to the level of his bourgeois interpreter. If the inter-
preter were too convincing or too believable his point of view would prevail
over that of the artist. And if the artist’s heightening of himself were seen
as an absolute virtue instead of leading in the end to disaster, art could
properly separate itself from humanity and ultimately from God. None of
these points of view predominates in The Holy Sinner, for the narrator, as
the spirit of storytelling, holds each in balance. Lest the married happiness
of Gregorss and Sibylla seem too carefree, Clemens interposes his specula-
tions on the indifference of evil, which is of the devil (HS, 206). Lest the sin
seem totally evil, Clemens reflects that “from the horrible may perfection
flower” (HS, 211).
74 William M.Honsa, Jr.

Although Clemens remains balanced between joy and sorrow, his very
inability to partake completely of either experience (which he blames on his
monkdom) frees the reader from the need to take either emotion seriously
in terms of the legend. Clemens does not convince, but his very failure to
tug at the understanding provides a sort of freedom within which a choice to
accept the legend can be made. Because Clemens is so fallible, such a
parody of human intelligence and belief, the reader smiles at him without
realizing that soon he will be smiling with him. There is no forced accept-
ance of a rational point of view but rather a recognition that within his
limits (and the reader is encouraged to feel superior to Clemens) the monk
is a good man and perhaps not as stupid as he seems.
When, before explaining Grigorss’ penance on the rock, Clemens begs
for the reader’s understanding, Mann does not expect that it will be granted.
Therefore he removes the explanation completely from the realms of the
convincing - instead of parodying the legend through the narrator, as he
does in most of the novel, the parody of the legend is direct, and Clemens’
interpretation of the legend is parody within a parody.
Once restored to the shape of a man, Grigorss rather than Clemens
holds the shape of the story in his hands. He has been chosen out of sin for
salvation, and Clemens’ work is over when he has brought the story to this
point. When Grigorss finds his tablet again it is no longer the tablet of the
legend, it has become actual. The symbolic tablet that Clemens has tried so
hard to make convincing, describing it as “made of yvorie, framed in gold
and splinters of precious stones, and closely bewritten” (HS, 143) has indeed
become real, emerging from soil as “clean and bright as though fresh from
the farmer’s hand” (HS, 301). And now it gleams with the light of reality.
Clemens’ abdication as narrator is indicated by Grigorss’ speaking to
himself, on finding the tablet, in verse - a form so inferior to prose in the
mind of Clemens that he scorns its use. The implication is that the telling of
the legend requires the definition of prose to give it validity, but that the
conviction of reality needs no support, it can be conveyed even through the
lighthearted stumbling of verse.
With the ringing of the bells for the second time the spirit of storytelling
has completed his task. He no longer is the spokesman for the unbelievable.
“Be that as it may, I neither deny it nor make it obligatory to give it
credence” (HS, 305) is his stand, for the legend has become reality with the
crowning of the new pope. The difference in tone between the last chapters
Thomas Mann’s “Dr. Faustus” and “The Holy Sinner” 75

and the first is as marked as the difference between the actual nativity and
a van Eyck painting of it. The actuality of Gregory’s salvation becomes
complete in the last chapter, where the tablet becomes simply, in common
language, “of ivory, framed, and written like a letter” (HS, 331). The Pope
speaks: “Everything has its limits - the world is finite” (HS, 334) and
nothing remains for Clemens to do but echo his words: “The world is finite
and infinite only is the glory of God” (HS, 335).

V
I have been dealing in these pages with Mann the old magician, as his
children affectionately called him, of whose arts it is not always easy to say
whether they are black or white. “Beautiful is resolution,” he wrote in 1922
at the end of his essay on Goethe and Tolstoy. “But,” he continued, “the
really fruitful, the productive and hence the artistic principle is that which
we call reserve.”? Mann’s allegiance in Dr. Faustus and The Holy Sinner is
to the artistic principle, to reserve. The serious technical games he plays
with the materials of myth and legend, the parodistic strategies which enable
him to bring in his points through the back door, the disarming tricks he
plays with his narrators and upon them - all of these are means of concili-
ating systematic rational belief while at the same time pointing to the
realities of faith and feeling with which it is unequipped to deal. They are
instruments of the artistic principle - or reserve - in an age when the
intensities of belief are suspect. And in Dr. Faustus and The Holy Sinner
these instruments are most brilliantly employed.

1. “Parody and Critique: Mann’s Doctor Fnustus”. in Eleven Essays in the European Novel
(New York and Burlingame, 1964), p. 110.
2. E. G. Furstenheh, “The Place of Der Erwiihlte in the Work of Thomas Mann”, MLR, LI
(1955), p. 68.
3. R. P. Blackmur, “Parody and Critique”, p. 110.
4. Blackmu, p. 110.
5. Thomas Mann, Rejlections of an Unpolitical Man, in The Thomas Mann Reader, ed.
Joseph W. Angel1 (New York, 1950), p. 500.
6. Mann, Reflections, p. 496.
7 . Mann, “Goethe and Tolstoy”, Essays of Three Decades, trans. H. T. LowePorter (New
York, 1948), p. 173.
76 William M . Honsa, Jr.

Works consulted
Blackmur, R. P. “Parody and Critique: Mann’s Doctor Faustus”, in Eleven Essays in
the European Novel. New York and Burlingame: 1964, 97-116.
Furstenheim, E. G. “The Place of Der Erwahlte in the Work of Thomas Mann.”
MLR, LI (1955), 55-70.
Heller, Erich. The Ironic German. Boston: 1958.
Kaufman, Fritz. Thomas Mann: The World as Will and Representation. Boston: 1957.
Krieger, Murray. The Tragic Vision. New York: 1960.
Mann, Thomas. Essays of Three Decades, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter. New York: 1948.
Mann, Thomas. Dr. Faustus, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter. New York: 1951.
Mann, Thomas. The Thomas Mann Reader, ed. Joseph W.Angell. New York, 1950.
Mann, Thomas. The Holy Sinner, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter. New York 1951.
Neider, Charles, ed. The Stature of Thomas Mann. New York 1947.
Raleigh, John H. “Mann’s Double Vision: Dr. Faustus and The Holy Sinner.” Pacific
Spectator, VII (1953), 380-382.
Rice, Philip Blair. “The Merging Parallels: Mann’s Doctor Faustus.” Kenyon Review,
XI (1949), 199-217.