E-Book Overview
The thesis of A Gorgon’s Mask: The Mother in Thomas Mann’s Fiction depends upon three psychoanalytic concepts: Freud’s early work on the relationship between the infant and its mother and on the psychology of artistic creation, Annie Reich’s analysis of the grotesque-comic sublimation, and Edmund Bergler’s analysis of writer’s block. Mann’s crisis of sexual anxiety in late adolescence is presented as the defining moment for his entire artistic life. In the throes of that crisis he included a sketch of a female as Gorgon in a book that would not escape his mother’s notice. But to defend himself from being overcome by the Gorgon-mother’s stare he employed the grotesque-comic sublimation, hiding the mother figure behind fictional characters physically attractive but psychologically repellent, all the while couching his fiction in an ironic tone that evoked humor, however lacking in humor the subtext might be. In this manner he could deny to himself that the mother figure always lurked in his work, and by that denial deny that he was a victim of oral regression. For, as Edmund Bergler argues, the creative writer who acknowledges his oral dependency will inevitably succumb to writer’s block. Mann’s late work reveals that his defense against the Gorgon is crumbling. In Doctor Faustus Mann portrays Adrian Leverk?hn as, ultimately, the victim of oral regression; but the fact that Mann was able to compete the novel, despite severe physical illness and psychological distress, demonstrates that he himself was still holding writer’s block at bay. In Confessions of Felix Krull: Confidence Man, a narrative that he had abandoned forty years before, Mann was finally forced to acknowledge that he was depleted of creative vitality, but not of his capacity for irony, brilliantly couching the victorious return of the repressed in ambiguity. This study will be of interest to general readers who enjoy Mann’s narrative art, to students of Mann’s work, especially its psychological and mythological aspects, and to students of the psychology of artistic creativity.
E-Book Content
A Gorgon’s Mask
Psychoanalysis and Culture
Editorial Board
12
J.J Baneke, M. Franchoo, H.G.C. Hillenaar, C.P. Nuijten, R.A. Pierloot, J.H. Scheffer, W. Schönau and T. Traversier
A Gorgon’s Mask The Mother in Thomas Mann’s Fiction
Lewis A. Lawson
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1745-7 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2005 Printed in The Netherlands
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
5
I.
Introduction
7
II.
Early Works
29
III.
The Magic Mountain
145
IV.
Mann meets Freud
219
V.
Joseph and His Brothers
235
The Beloved Returns:Lotte in Weimar
260
The Transposed Heads
285
Joseph the Provider
301
Doctor Faustus
313
VI.
VII. The Holy Sinner
365
Confessions of Felix Krull: Confidence Man
377
The Black Swan
391
Confessions of Felix Krull: Confidence Man
398
VIII. Conclusion
411
Bibliography
415
Index
427
Acknowledgements Throughout the years the years spent on this project, I was buoyed, as always, by the love of my wife Barbara, our son John, and our daughter Rachel, her husband Don, their son Pat. My writing style has been considerably improved by the timely arrival of Pat, whose recent Lego constructions have taught me a thing or two about putting things together and t