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8 - Buddenbrooks

between realism and aestheticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Ritchie Robertson
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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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.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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  • 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
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  • 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
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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
×