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| Gerhart Hauptman |
Peeperkorn is a colonial Dutchman. He is from the east and the west. His name reminds us of this duality. Pepper the spice from the east. “Koren”, grain the bread of home.
A Dutchman, Peeperkorn drinks Jenever ( from Schiedam btw ), the liquid bread. ( Not Gin ! )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenever
“someone else”. The narrator promises that this last “pedagogue” will “spread great confusion” over our hero but this time ( Thanks God !) “no one need to worry that yet another instigator of intellectual and pedagogic confusion has made his appearance”. Mann knows we have got our fill.
PP is the companion of Clawdia
PP is described as a God – like figure. His hair forms an aura around his head, he commands respect with his colourless eyes, he has a white and regal head and a beard. His most impressive way however, is how he speaks, speaking without saying anything, with unfinished incomprehensible phrases , punctuated with hand and arm movements like an orchestra conductor… a fantastic figure ( and funny too ! ). PP calls everybody “my child” and surrounds himself occasionally with 12 people.
The wounded King / the fallen King
In his essay “The Hollow Miracle” ( Language and Silence ),
George Steiner investigates the relationship between German language and
political, in casu Nazi, inhumanity. Steiner describes how the traditional keepers
of language, the famous writers and poets, the intellectuals and academics
tried to survive the war. The lucky ones, (the ones who could afford it) like
Mann, Hesse and Broch escaped from Germany to Switzerland or America. Others
became in the words of Steiner “lackeys in the Reichsschrifttumskammer, the
official whorehouse of Aryan culture”.
A third category “equivocated till they had lost the faculty of saying anything clear or meaningful, even to themselves”. Steiner illustrates this with an excerpt out of the correspondance between the Mann brothers :
A third category “equivocated till they had lost the faculty of saying anything clear or meaningful, even to themselves”. Steiner illustrates this with an excerpt out of the correspondance between the Mann brothers :
In his letter to his brother Thomas, Klaus Mann sketches, how the
German dramatist and novelist Gerhart Hauptmann, “the old lion of realism” and
Nobel Prize winner of 1912, stuttered his opinion when confronted with the new
reality…
“Hitler… after all… My dear friends!... no hard
feelings!...Let’s try to be…No, if you please allow me… objective… May I refill
my glass? This Champagne…very remarkable, indeed-the man Hitler, I mean…The
Champagne too, for that matter… Most extraordinary development…German youth…
About seven million votes…As I often said to my Jewish friends…Those Germans…incalculable
nation…very mysterious indeed…cosmic impulses…Goethe….Niebelungen Saga….Hitler
in a sense, expresses…As I tried to explain to my Jewish friends…dynamic
tendencies…elementary, irresistible … “
You have probably recognized an echo of the ramblings of Pieter
Peeperkoorn, the famous character of Thomas Mann’s novel: “The Magic Mountain”.
And indeed, Hauptmann, whom Thomas Mann met at the Alpine resort, was a major
inspiration for his Peeperkoorn personage.
Under Wilhelm II Gerhart Hauptmann (15 November 1862 – 6
June 1946) had enjoyed the reputation of a radical writer, on the side of the
poor and outcasts. During the Weimar Republic (1918–33) he rose to the status
of the literary figurehead of the new order, and was even considered for the
post of state president. Under Hitler however he kept his distance from the
regime, but never publicly criticized it. This, and the fact that (unlike many
other writers and academics) he stayed in Germany, was strongly held against
him after the war.
With some hindsight, it becomes clear why Mann, depicted
Hauptman, his follow writer as an inarticulate and fallen deity and how
probably he came to see himself as the new bearer of the torch of German
culture.
I am sure you find this stuff as exciting as I do…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocrator
PP speaks about himself in the 3rd person when drinking.
PP is ill too. Maybe Malaria, or worse.
Clawdia ignores Hans for now.
The kinky Egyptian Princess is back too ( with here eunuch, a castrated Moor ), she turns out to be a lesbian…
“Jewish woman from Romania with the very plain name of Landauer”. Is Mann taking a jab at the anarchist Gustav Landauer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Landauer
My languishing Céladon: referring to the hero of the “Novel of novels” l’Astrée by Honoré d’Urfé
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Astr%C3%A9e
