Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T17:31:18.113Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Buddenbrooks

between realism and aestheticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Ritchie Robertson
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

One of the most astute early reviews of Buddenbrooks was written by a young poet who was Thomas Mann's exact contemporary, Rainer Maria Rilke. What strikes today's reader is not so much Rilke's positive response to the novel as his perceptive grasp of the inner tensions that give Buddenbrooks its unique and innovative character. Rilke describes Mann as having reconceptualised the traditional role of chronicler in a modern way. At the same time as Mann builds up an increasing sense of material concreteness in what he depicts, he also works over the surface of his presentation with 'a hundred furrows', producing an unusual richness of detail. While avoiding authorial intrusions in which 'a supercilious writer bends down to the ear of a supercilious reader', Mann maintains a narrative objectivity that nonetheless gets us involved, just as if we were reading our own family documents, discovered 'in some secret drawer'. Rilke's review, published in 1902, recognises fundamental aspects of the position of Buddenbrooks in the first year of the twentieth century. Rilke is fully aware of the novel's double character as a record of an actually experienced reality and a carefully constructed and intricately developed work of art. He assesses quite deftly what has since been called Mann's 'irony': his ability to hold sympathy and critical distance in balance.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Buddenbrooks
  • Edited by Ritchie Robertson, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL052165310X.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Buddenbrooks
  • Edited by Ritchie Robertson, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL052165310X.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Buddenbrooks
  • Edited by Ritchie Robertson, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL052165310X.008
Available formats
×