Doctor Faustus chapter 3 : Adrian's father

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin : L'enfant au tonton, 1738; Louvre

Chapter 3 of Doctor Faustus presents us Adrian's father : "... Jonathan Leverkuhn was a man of finest German Stamp..."

After a short physical description, an attempt is made to capture his mental being, by describing what preoccupies this man's mind when he is at leisure. 

Smoking his porcelain pipe ofcourse and reading his ancient "mammoth family Bible, bound in smooth pigskin and secured with leather clasps...".

But besides that there was ..." another trend that in certain ages might have been characterized as a desire to speculate the elements. That is, on a modest scale and with modest means, he pursued studies in natural sciences - biology , and even chemistry and physics, too.

This dabbling in chemistry and especially with the natural phenomena of inorganic matter acting as if it were alive, gives the inocent experiments an alchemistic,caballistic hue.

"It all comes close to sorcery...'

This alchemistic spielerei is ofcourse a clear allusion to the Faustian theme. 

Interesting enough in Rüdiger Safranski biography of Goethe, similar experiments are described as done by the young writer, who was, he too, looking for the mysterious transition of the mineral into the organic. ( Chapter 3; P 76 ). These experiments would later appear in Goethe's Faust as the search for the Erdgeist, the Earth Spirit, a force of nature competing in its creativity against God. 

Turning the inorganic into something alive is nothing less than imitating the Creator, to play God.

Jeremias Gotthelf : "The Black Spider"

When Thomas Mann was doing his research in preparation of his novel “Doctor Faustus”, he needed examples of some Ur – German story –telling. The idea  was to imitate in certain chapters of his book both the language and the true “gothic” atmosphere of  Biedermeier writings. He found what he was looking for in a novella “The Black Spider”, written by the Swiss author Jeremias Gotthelf in 1842.

In an Alpine village guests gather to celebrate the christening of a newborn child in one of the oldest and most respected farmer families. One guest is surprised that in the new house where they  seat themselves around the food-laden table, an old  black wooden post has been used to support the framework of the construction.  The merry patrons urge the grandfather of the new –born child to  tell the story of the house and the old man reluctantly uncovers the chilling secret of the wooden beam and the ancient story of their Alpine village which was once ripped to shreds by a demonic curse.

The story the grandfather will tell is so horrific that it will cut the appetite and the merriment of the guests. Thankfully and unlike the horror stories of today, a clear message is given to ward off Evil in the future : to relentlessly praise the Almighty God and live a simple and honest life.

Thomas Mann, loved Gotthelf’s narration of the Homeric  battle between Good and Evil and admired the spider book "like no other piece of world literature”

The horror has not aged. Creepy crawlies abound. Young mothers should abstain..

Susan Bernofsky’s translation (New York Review Books Classics ) feels awkward and contrived at moments

Doctor Faustus chapter 24 : Palestrina

Joseph Mallord Turner : Palestrina composition 1828

1912 SZ with his wife joins AL and RS in Palestrina for a holiday

24.1 The town of Palestrina :

Thomas Mann spent some time there in 1895 and, two years later, during the long harsh summer of 1897, he stayed over again, with his brother Heinrich. ( Two times like Al )

The name of the city has a musical link

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He has had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.

And it is the title of an opera by Hans Pfitzner ( and in a book about Musical genius, Mann is confident that the reader will make the link )

Palestrina is an opera by the German composer Hans Pfitzner, first performed in 1917. The composer referred to it as a Musikalische Legende (musical legend), and wrote the libretto himself, based on a legend about the Renaissance musician Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who saves the art of contrapuntal music (polyphony) for the Church in the sixteenth century, through his composition of the Missa Papae Marcelli. The wider context is that of the European Reformation and the role of music in relation to it. The character of Cardinal Borromeo is depicted, and a General Congress of the Council of Trent is the centrepiece of Act II.
The conductor of the premiere was Bruno Walter. On 16 February 1962, the day before he died, Walter ended his last letter with: "Despite all the dark experiences of today I am still confident that Palestrina will remain. The work has all the elements of immortality".

But nothing is coincidence in this book. There are two “ bad “ guys in classical nusic according to Mann and many others : Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner. Both of them sort of sucked up to Hitler and his cronies during the war years. Strauss, even signed the petition against Thomas Mann in 1933
So when evil occurs in the book, the infection from Esmeralda and the visit of old Nick, it is announced by an Opera of these two evil composers: Salome and Palestrina.

By this Mann endorsed what was decided by the American "reeducation" - governement in Germany in the first years after the war, that Strauss and Pfitzner ( and Sibilius - but for other reasons ) were dangerous and that they made dangerous music.

Still Mann rejects the notion that there is a good Germany and a bad Germany – here Beethoven there Hitler; here Goethe, there Goebbels. As Mann viewed it, the conflicting forces were always intertwined, particularly in such poweful figures as Luther, Wagner, and Nietzsche. [ … ] From Mann’s perspective, coming to terms with Nazi-Germany could not take the form of self-righteous finger – pointing at the evil in others, but rather in the struggle against the evil within oneself.

See Todd Kontje, The Cambridge introduction to Thomas Mann, 2011

The town is a scenery of both early Christianity - Saint Augustinus like -(orchard and all) - and Classical heritage

They stay with the Manardi family in the Manardi palazzo

Signora ( Nellli ) Manardi , a widow like Frau Rodde        
daughter Amelia ( 13 yeras old ! and who asks herself if there are ghosts in the house : Spiriti ? Spiriti ?
the two brothets of la Signora Manardi and Alfo, hardened bachelors both of them
Dario Manardi and his sickly wife ( brother in law of la Signora )

Fa sangue il vino, the wine makes blood ( Christian symbolism )

forks and knives abound : like prongs in hell ?

AL is still working on jis LLL but again it has , even if it is genial work, something of a carricature... it is too well done...

AL and RS live a solitary live in Palestrina, a double solitary life...they are not a couple
They live a life of monks - a shared chastity

Easy for AL, he is of the Noli me tangere type, a man of distatste, of evasion of reserve of aloofness

Noli me tangere, meaning "touch me not", is the Latin version of words spoken, according to John 20:17, by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she recognized him after his resurrection

Chastity in the case of AL because of his illness ?

How RS manages, ( in the words of SZ, a a roué : a debauched lecherous man ), he does not understand

SZ is in one sense relieved that he leaves this sex - less or love -less environment.

Time for the Devil ...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Doctor Faustus : chapter 23 : A presentation of a handfull of new characters and scenes

Thomas Mann and Paul Ehrenberg

23.1 “No shouldring the wheel, no budging the cart”

23.2 Capital of Bavaria : Munchen! Birthplace of Richard Strauss & Carl Orff, Heinrich Himmler & Eva Braun, Werner Herzog & Andreas Baader. 

Mann lives in Munich from 1894 ( 19 years old ) until 1933 ( his exile )

23.4 3 relic of some forgotten enthusiasm…Giacomo Meyerbeer… Leverkuhn sits with his back to the painting of the French Opera composer , author of "Robert le Diable" !

Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jacob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a Prussian opera composer of Jewish birth who has been described as perhaps the most successful stage composer of the nineteenth century. With his 1831 opera Robert le diable and its successors he gave the genre of grand opera 'decisive character'. Meyerbeer's grand opera style was achieved by his merging of German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition.

Apart from around 50 songs, Meyerbeer wrote little except for the stage. The critical assaults of Wagner and his supporters, especially after his death, led to a decline in the popularity of his works; his operas were suppressed by the Nazi regime in Germany, and were neglected by opera houses through most of the twentieth century. Meyerbeer's works are only infrequently performed today.

23.4 Harmonium & a Bechstein grand piano in the house

23.5 badly darkned painting ( 1850 ) picturing the Golden Horn with a view of Galata. Horns ?

23.6 Meet de Rodde’s

Widow (Frau Senator) Rodde ; dark eyes, brown hair…she wanted to enjoy them herself… amused by slightly off-color but never vulgar remarks…

Daughter Inez, the older one… destine for a tragic deed…, a blond… writer of well crafted letters

Daughter Clarissa, the younger one, aa blond training for a dramatic career… penchant for the whimsical and the macabre… ( a Gothic avant la lettre with the Skull fanaticism of the nazi’s ).. she has a hollow book of Hippocrates containing poison.  Clarissa will take her own life… SZ will get the book as a memento.

23.7 The room was the stage of social gatherings…

23.8 list of person associated with the Rodde salon

A married couple by the name of Knöterisch … he looking a perfect Teuton ( Sugambrian or Ubian )… a savage cello – player

Dr. Kranisch the scholar…numismatist

The painter friends Leo Zink and baptist Spengler; An Austrian funny faunish fellow & a German hypochodrial sneak

Rudolf Schwerdtfeger, a talented young violonist… blissfully applying himself to flirting with the fair sex…even mature women ( hint hint )… is about to die early and tragically…shrouded in uncanny horror…with a pout and steelblue eyes … a good, technically brillant musician…Likes AL

In these social gatherings, at least three attendents will have a dramtic end : Inez, clarissa and rudolf schwerdtfeger

23.9 Rudiger Schildknapp the anglophile translator will move to Munich too. He is a real buddy to AL

23.10 Schildknapp visits other artistic – bourgeois salons meets other people who he introduces to AL ( and probably SZ too )

The Publisher  of Radbruch & co

Elderly wealthy couple SChlaginhaufens

His excellency von Riedesel

Herr Bullinger a rich industrialist

Wagnaerian heroine Tanya Orlanda

Felix mottl

Schiller’s great –grandson

Herr von Gleichen –Russwurm , a historian

Jeanette Scheurl, a woman of peculiar charm and trustworthiness, highly intelligent but fashionably ugly , an author , a novelist…trusting and devoted friend of Al for many years…

23.11 the city I speak is Munich at the end of the regency…( 1910 )… the southern city of carnival

Mann, describes an artistic and intellectual milieu he knew well enough. Widow Rodde's salon closely resembles the ones by Mann’s mother Julia ( also a Senator widow). The daughters Inez and Clarissa are modelled on Mann’s sisters Julia ( Lulu ) and Carla. Both sisters committed suicide, Carla in 1910 and Julia in 1927.

Rudiger Schildknapp is modelled after Hans Reisiger, Mann’s parasitic friend...

 Hans Reisiger (1884–1968) was a German writer and translator. Mann had met him by at least 1913 and in the years that followed, until 1933, he was a close friend of Mann and his family. His translation of selected poems from Leaves of Grass, which appeared in 1919, left no discernible impression on Mann, who seems not to have read it. (Walt Whitman, Grashalme: Neue Auswahl, trans. Hans Reisiger [Berlin: S. Fischer, 1919]). But the second collection of writings by Whitman that he published three years later, Walt Whitmans Werk (or Walt Whitman's Work), elicited Mann's interest even before it was published. On 31 May, 1921 (ten months before its publication), Mann noted in his diary: "On Sunday evening Reisiger visited us and read some of his translations, which led on to discussions of Whitman's love of men." 

Schwerdtfeger, the handsome virtuoso violonist  might be Paul Ehrenberg, the musician whom Mann had loved when he was a young man.

Paul Ehrenberg (1876–1949) was a German violinist and impressionist painter, brother of Carl Ehrenberg and half-brother of Hilde Distel.

Ehrenberg was a student of the painter Heinrich von Zügel. He was a member of the Luitpoldsgruppe and Künstlergenossenschaft. His work, shown in many Munich exhibitions, included portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and animal paintings. He married the painter Lilly Teufel.

Ehrenberg was an excellent violinist, who often played chamber music with Thomas Mann. Based on the evidence of Thomas Mann's letters and diaries, Mann was infatuated with Ehrenberg, and they had an intense personal relationship from 1899 to about 1903. Mann based several characters in his published writings on him.

Nepomuk, Al’s nephew is drawn after Mann’s favourite grandson Frido

Mann lived in the same street as AL : Ramberg strasse

( source Todd Kontje, The Cambridge introduction to Thomas Mann )

23.12 Excursions with Schildknapp on the bicycle

23.13 theatrical castles of the people’s favourite madman : Ludwig 2 , King of Bavaria, sponsor of Wagner’s niebelungen and the Bayreuth festival

23.14 Adrian made an acquintance of a spot that he would one day choose as the framework for his personal life : Pfeiffering near Waldshut and the Schweigestill farm.

23.15 …Klammer Pool … the Rohmbühel…a tree-crowned hill…a barefoot dairymaid… ahuge tree in the courtyard…: all similarities of the buchel farm of AL’s youth…

23.16 Notice the chained dog “Kaschperl” which is a particularity not remembered from his childhood

23.17 1 winged victory of Samothrace ( discoverd in 1863 and now at the Louvre in Paris )

23.18 Dark brown piano

23.19 Schweigestill : be silent / silence

23.20 Farm had once been a cloister : holy ground ?  Abott of the Augustinian monks

The previous borders are from the dark melancholy Romanticist type : a brooding artist, an aristocratic madwoman and a girl who dies after abondoning her fatherless child…

23.21 The summer before last an artist fellow from Munchen had rented space here… wanted to paint… Waldshuter Moor … ended up a little mournful, all gray on gray… : Adolf Hitler who was in Munich in 1913 ? or one of the German avantgarde like Lovis Corinth, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee or Franz Marc.

Hitler frequented the artists' cafes in Munich in the unfulfilled hope that established artists might help him with his ambition to become a painter.

From 1908 to 1913, Hitler tinted postcards and painted houses for a living. He painted his first self-portrait in 1910 at the age of 21. Samuel Morgenstern, an Austrian businessman and a business partner of the young Hitler in his Vienna period, bought many of the young Hitler's paintings. According to Morgenstern, Hitler came to him for the first time in the beginning of 1910s, either in 1911 or in 1912. When Hitler came to Morgenstern's glazier store for the first time, he offered Morgenstern three of his paintings. Morgenstern kept a database of his clientele, through which it had been possible to locate the buyers of young Hitler's paintings.

23.22 Musicians are better than painters !

23.23 A crazy Baroness von Handschuchsheim lived once in the Abott’s study,

Handschuscheim -> Handschue ( glove ) and heim ( home ). A marriage with the glove ?

A young lady of the best social circles came to the place to bring her baby to the world.
The girl, a daughter of a high ranking judge in Bayreuth, was made pregnant by her father’s driver. Baby has been given to the Gray sisters of Bamberg. The woman dies in Davos ( on the magic Mountain ) from consumption.

23.24 in a letter to SZ, AL confesses that his work has come to a standstill… + he is searching  for a place where he can bury himself away from the world…

23.25 Then AL leaves to Italy together with Rudiger Schildknapp !

Doctor Faustus : chapter 22 : twelve tone music

Arnold Schönberg and the twelve tone matrix ( another magical square ? )

September 1910; AL leaves Leipzig but returns home to Buchel first for the mariage of hi sister.

22.1 Mariage of Ursula ( AL’s sister ) Leverkuhn with Johannes Schneidewein. They will have four children, Rosa, Ezechiel, Raimund and Nepomuk. The last one will play an important part later in the book

22.2 The youngest, however, Nepomuk was an angel. More of that later – at almost the end of my story

22.3 Last meeting between Al and his parents ?

22.4 Al and Sz go on a walk through sceneries of their childhood memories. AL has a headache (from the Christian ceremony ? Is the devil stirring as JP Anderson wittily noticed)

22.5 SZ helps Al with the adaptation of the Shakespaerean tekst of Love Labour lost

Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth. It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as they attempt to foreswear the company of women for three years of study and fasting, and their subsequent infatuation with the Princess of Aquitaine and her ladies. In an untraditional ending for a comedy, the play closes with the death of the Princess's father, and all weddings are delayed for a year. The play draws on themes of masculine love and desire, reckoning and rationalization, and reality versus fantasy.

22.6 … which I had based on Tieck and Hertzberg…German translators of Shakespeare

22.7 … as we theologians say with justifiable pride at having smuggled the Devil out of this union of the flesh by making a sacrament of it…

… very comical, how what is natura land sinful has been taken prisoner by the sacrosanct…

… the domestication of what is naturally evil, of sex,…

Without doubt AL is thinking about his moment of sin with “Esmeralda”, a union of the flesh with the grace of the Devil

22.8 SZ who intends to tell Al about his engagement with helene, reacts as a good Humanist should : …I don’t like you handing over Nature to Evil… “slandering the wellspring of Life”… Whoever believes in the devil is already His…

22.9 Al does not give up :

“And all be one flesh” = domestication, to conjure the elment of sin, sensuality, of evil lust right out of marriage

“lust exists only if the flesh is twofold…

22.10 “Well roared, lion” ( Shakespeare ) SZ tells about his intention to mary Helene…

22.11 “But, if thou marry, hang me by the neck, if horns that year miscarry!” ( quote out of Love Labour Lost ) – cuckoldry as an inevitable consequence of marriage – what a nasty thing to say to someone about to marry.

22. 12 “Come, come, you talk greasily” ( Shakespeare Lost Labour Love ) from a part with lots of sexual innuendos

22.13 Through AL’s words we suspect a problem with bodily love as well as Love in general

22.14 Al sets out his plans / ideas towards the future with the 12 tone music. As some of you have all ready remarked, “twelve tone” is the stuff of Arnold Schonberg. Mann did not acknowledge his source of inspiration first, but then afraid of any possible court-cases, he added in subsequent editions a postscript that the 12 tone was not his invention but that of Arnold Schönberg.

The fact that Al is mostly autodidact in musical matters is also taken from Schönberg’s life who like the fictional Al had no formal musical education.

( from Wiki )

Arnold Schoenberg (German: [ˈaːʁnɔlt ˈʃøːnbɛʁk] ( listen); 13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian composer and painter, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. After his move to the United States in 1934, he altered the spelling of his surname from Schönberg to Schoenberg.

Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, has been one of the most influential of 20th-century musical thought. Many European and American composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it. During the rise of the Nazi Party in Austria, Schoenberg's works were labelled as degenerate music.[citation needed]

Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.

Schoenberg was also a painter, an important music theorist, and an influential teacher of composition; his students included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hanns Eisler, Egon Wellesz, and later John Cage, Lou Harrison, Earl Kim, Leon Kirchner, and other prominent musicians. Many of Schoenberg's practices, including the formalization of compositional method, and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically, are echoed in avant-garde musical thought throughout the 20th century. His often polemical views of music history and aesthetics were crucial to many significant 20th-century musicologists and critics, including Theodor W. Adorno, Charles Rosen and Carl Dahlhaus, as well as the pianists Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, Eduard Steuermann and Glenn Gould.

Arnold Schoenberg was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family in the Leopoldstadt district (in earlier times a Jewish ghetto) of Vienna, at "Obere Donaustraße 5". His father Samuel, a native of Bratislava, was a shopkeeper, and his mother Pauline was native of Prague. Arnold was largely self-taught. He took only counterpoint lessons with the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, who was to become his first brother-in-law.

In his twenties, Schoenberg earned a living by orchestrating operettas, while composing his own works, such as the string sextet Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured Night") (1899). He later made an orchestral version of this, which became one of his most popular pieces. Both Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler recognized Schoenberg's significance as a composer; Strauss when he encountered Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, and Mahler after hearing several of Schoenberg's early works.

I add two things :

Schônberg’s father came from Bratislava -> Hetaera Esmeralda has gone back to Bratislava ( some eastern – European connection here ? – Why Bratislava ? ( Presburg ? )

Alexander von Zemlinsky -> Kretschmar ?

Arnold Schönberg was not amused by his role in Doctor Faustus. He was especially worried that the readers of Faustus would think he had a Siphilitic infection just like his alter ego Leverkuhn.

22.15 At the end of the chapter, Al shivers in a chill. The Devil is indeed very close…

http://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/1194817121260/12tone-music.html

Doctor Faustus : chapter 21 : Where do we stand ?

Arnold  ( I never had syphilis ) Schoenberg & Alban Berg

A resumé ? A turning point ? In any case a chapter with 2 Asterixes

"I am saying all this to remind the reader of the historical circumstances under which [ … ] this account is written. ( late autumn 1943 )"

21.1 Can the war still be won ?

…auspicious revival of our submarine war...which within 24 hours has claimed as its victims no fewer than twelve ships – including two large passenger liners with five hundred passengers on board.

… or the comando exploit … Operation Oak (Unternehmen Eiche, September 1943) – The rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini by Otto Skorzeny

…in the meantime, we have experienced the destruction of our venerable cities from the air… ( Allied bombing raids )

… we registered the landing of American and canadian troops on the southern coast of Sicily…

…with a mixture of horror and envy… ( the italian people are rebelling against their leader )

… Just last week a Communist uprising… broke out in Naples… ( 27 - 30 september 1943 )

21.2 State of mind : Mix of Pride to be German, fuelled by propaganda and fear for the ennemy

….with five hundred passengers on board … (followed immediately with )… We owe this success to a new torpedo with fabulous capabilities

…I cannot suppress a certain satisfaction at our ever resourcesful spirit of invention…

..we who suffers it ourselves laden with guilt.

- our Wehrmacht storm forth against the Russia hordes, who in turn defended their inhospitable but apparantly very beloved homeland… ( condescending )

-… the invasion of our Sicily – ( imperialistic )

On the one hand SZ laments over : the dreadful bombardment of the city of Durer and Willibald Prickheimer and a few lines further he says … in the wake of which the city ( Naples ) no longer seemed worthy of German troops, so that after conscientiously destroying the library and depositing a bomb…

In SZ mind, the cultur of Durer is still vastly more important than the library of Naples. He accuses the Nazi regime of all evil, but still, every word, he speaks, can be turned against him too.

21. 3 Willibald Pirckheimer (5 December 1470, Eichstätt, Bishopric of Eichstätt – 22 December 1530, Nuremberg) was a German Renaissance lawyer, author and Renaissance humanist, a wealthy and prominent figure in Nuremberg in the 16th century, and a member of the governing City Council for two periods. He was the closest friend of the artist Albrecht Dürer, who made a number of portraits of him, and a close friend of the great humanist and theologian Erasmus.

21.4 Monseignor Hinterpförtner ( behind the door )… who in no way resembles the passionate scholar around whom was centered the student uprising in Munich…

Probable reference to :

Kurt Huber (October 24, 1893 – July 13, 1943) who was a Psychology and Music professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and member of the White Rose group, which carried out resistance against Nazi Germany.

The student uprising :

The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to dictator Adolf Hitler's regime.The six most recognized members of the German resistance group were arrested by the Gestapo and beheaded in 1943. Most were in their early twenties.

21.4 page 186 in the vintage edition of  DF merits to be quoted entirely, but I will not do it. Suffice to say that the 10 years under Hitler have destroyed all what Germans were ever proud of.

21.5 Asterisks serve to refresh the reader’s mind … irony

21.6 I am too close to my subject. ( So is Thomas Mann ? )

21.7 I would write the whole thing in one fell swoop, in one breath, without any divisions, indeed without paragraphs and identations… ( through SZ, Mann investigates more Modernist narrative techniques – Joyce ? – Claude Simon ?)

21.8 AL lives a conservative, rigid life with no interest in things outside his musical Art…

Compared to Chopin’s “not wanting to know” He too wanted to know nothing, see nothing, indeed experience nothing…

21.9 exception of the eyes : Adrian’ sensitivity to, indeed his weaknes for the magic of eyes, black eyes, blue eyes : the eyes ( of hithertho unknown ) characters : Marie Godeau, Rudi Schwerdtfeger, Nepomuk Schneidewein.

We do not know the colour of the eyes of Adrian’s mother, SZ or even Esmeralda…

21.10 travels interupt from time to time this rigid life…

Graz, North sea ( tone painting ), Basel ( attend the performance of baroque sacred music )          

Monteverdi Magnificat

The Magnificat (Latin: [My soul] magnifies)—also known as the Song of Mary or the Canticle of Mary—is a canticle frequently sung (or spoken) liturgically in Christian church services. It is one of the eight most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn. Its name comes from the first word of the Latin version of the canticle's text.

The text of the canticle is taken directly from the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:46-55) where it is spoken by the Virgin Mary upon the occasion of her Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth. In the narrative, after Mary greets Elizabeth, who is pregnant with the future John the Baptist, the child moves within Elizabeth's womb. When Elizabeth praises Mary for her faith, Mary sings what is now known as the Magnificat in response.

Organ studies by Frescobaldi

Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi (Italian pronunciation: [dʒiˌɾɔːlamo fɾeskoˈbaldi]; also Gerolamo, Girolimo, and Geronimo Alissandro; September, 1583[1] – March 1, 1643) was a musician from Ferrara, one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. A child prodigy.

Oratorio by Carissimi

Giacomo Carissimi (baptized April 18, 1605 – January 12, 1674) was an Italian composer. He is one of the most celebrated masters of the early Baroque or, more accurately, the Roman School of music.

Buxtehude Cantata      

Dieterich Buxtehude (German pronunciation: [ˈdiːtəʁɪç bʊkstəˈhuːdə], also Dietrich; Danish Diderich [ˈdidəʁɪk buksdəˈhuːðə], equivalent to the modern Diderik; c. 1637 to 1639[1] – 9 May 1707) was a Danish-German organist and composer of the Baroque period. His organ works represent a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and in church services. He composed in a wide variety of vocal and instrumental idioms, and his style strongly influenced many composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach. Today, Buxtehude is considered one of the most important composers in Germany of the mid-Baroque.             

   

Musica reservata

In music history, musica reservata (also musica secreta) is either a style or a performance practice in a cappella vocal music of the latter half of the 16th century, mainly in Italy and southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense emotional expression of sung text.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

21. 11 …the fiery sketch that legend says a certain Someone drew in the sand … (The legend of Master Builder Gerhard of Ryle and the Devil ? ).

21.12 AL is depicted as something of a hermit living an internal intellectual live rather than a live of experiences. His still living in his tiny two room appartment in the peter Strasse Leipzig.

His stay in Leipzig has been interrupted by three excursions, each decisive in his musical development:

-          North Sea / Sylt : tone –painting ( Romanticism ? )

-          Graz : Strauss’s Salome ( maps out various paths of development for twentieth century music – modernist dissonance, romantic nostalgia, ironic detachment – it is no accident that Mann sends his fictionzl character to a performance where Schönberg, Alban Berg and Webern are present.

-          Switserland – Geneva – Basel – Zurich ( Baroque – Religious )

o   AL phosphorescence is played within the framework of the lectures d’orchestre in the Basel’s Composer Society

o   AL does not really fit in with his peers in the artistic circles

21.13 A devilish ambition?

- Art wants to stop being illusion and games ( against form )… it wants to become comprehension

- the remark terrorizes SZ

- There came a day… FFW to chapter 25.

- Composition of the Brentano Songs – Lieder based on poems by Clemens Brentano – financed by SZ and Kretzschmar – sung by Jakob Nägli, a crippled boy.

- Clemens Brentano, or Klemens Brentano (9 September 1778 – 28 July 1842) was a German poet and novelist, and a major figure of German Romanticism.

21.14 Kretzschmar leaves leipzig for a further career

Doctor Faustus Chapter 20: My title : “Rüdiger Schildknapp”

After a year Al & SZ meet again. 

20.1 It is a bit sad to see how unilateral the relationship between AL en SZ really is. While SZ’s friendship tends to adoration and devotion, AL’s is more and more the demonic egotistical arrogant individual, he is meant to be. SZ, disappointed about this attitude of AL tries to trivialize it a bit for his future readers.

20.2 Opus 132 ( the String Quartet in A – Minor ) also known as String Quartet no.15 written in 1825 by Ludwig von Beethoven

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group. The string quartet is one of the most prominent chamber ensembles in classical music, with most major composers, from the late 18th century onwards, writing string quartets.

Ever since Haydn's day the string quartet has been prestigious and considered a true test of the composer's art. This may be partly because the palette of sound is more restricted than with orchestral music, forcing the music to stand more on its own rather than relying on tonal color; or from the inherently contrapuntal tendency in music written for four equal instruments.

Quartet composition flourished in the Classical era, with Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert writing famous series of quartets to set alongside Haydn's. A slight slackening in the pace of quartet composition occurred in the 19th century; here, composers often wrote only one quartet, perhaps to show that they could fully command this hallowed genre, although Antonín Dvořák wrote a series of 14. With the onset of the Modern era of classical music, the quartet returned to full popularity among composers, and played a key role in the development of Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, and Dmitri Shostakovich especially.

Opus 132 ( the String Quartet in A – Minor ) by Beethoven consists of five movements

I Assai sostenuto-Allegro ca 9¼ min

II Allegro ma non tanto ca 8¼ min

III Canzona di ringraziamento (Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenden an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart: Molto Adagio ca 15 min

IV Alla marcia, assai Vivace ca 2 min

V Allegro appassionato ca 6¼ min

20.3 The Lydian movement, the “Hymn of Thanksgiving upon Recovery”

The Lydian is the third movement of Opus 132. Beethoven wrote this piece after recovering from a serious illness which he had feared to be fatal during the winter of 1824-5. Out of recognition he headed the movement with the words, "Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart" (Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity, by a convalescent in the Lydian Mode).

20.5 I drain that cup at every feast…

From “Der König in Thule” ("The King in Thule"), a six verse poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, written in 1774. The ballad is composed in an artificially obsolete poetic language to make it sound like a traditional folk song. 

Goethe used it later in his tragedy Faust (part I, lines 2759–82) as Gretchen's (Margaret) introduction. The girl ponders who the young man was; she met just a while before. She sings the text of “The King in Thule” to herself while undressing.

I drain that cup at every feast…: Al is awed by the Opus 132 for it is barely playable because of its complexity.

There are things in music, at least in this music, that cannot be characterized by an adjective…

20.5 “I learned that Adrian was looking for a text for an Opera…”

AL is working on different pieces of Music. SZ sees in them early drafts of what will one day be Adrian’s masterpiece “the Apocalypsis”

- He was increasingly preoccupied with an interest in Music wedded to the word

- composing Lieder

- taking his material from…Mediterranean verse, Italian poetry, Divine comedy ( Purgatorio & Paradiso )

- Paul Verlaine

- William Blake poetry

20.6 Wendell Kretzschmar has introduced AL to the Café Central Group, a bohemian club of students, artists, publishers etc. Rüdiger Schildknapp is also one of them

20.7 Rüdiger Schildknapp

His name has been announced a few times, but in this chapter, we are finally introduced to Rudiger Schildknapp. What do we need to know ?

-          Born in Silesia – not a true German then? – In his early thirties

-          Of humble origin with a sense of social inferiority

-          Grown up with an abusive father

-          Bad student

-          Amateur devoted to literature

-          English translator

-          Funny / foolish / boyish

-          Poor / threadbare clothing / still the looks of an elegant sporty gentleman

-          Handsome in a Germanic way admired by numerous women : broad shoulders, tall, small hips, long legs

Opinion SZ: Rüdiger Schildknapp is an imposter 

-          Not sporty at all

-          Poor health – tends to TBC

-          More a flirt than a real lover

-          Takes advantage of his many female admirers (presents, free lunches etc. )

-          Vain and very worried about his ageing

20.8  RS has the same eyes as AL ( strange detail – important ? )

20.9 RS has refused to help AL with Love’s Labour Lost. But no hard-feelings; RS is very funny and makes AL laugh a lot

20.10 RZ sounds like a jealous maiden when speaking about RS

Doctor Faustus chapter 16 : My title : The daughters of the Wilderness

In the salon at La rue des moulins : Toulouse Lautrec

16.1 I could not help accentuating my farewell with the mention of his name…He did not mention mine… -> Once more emphasizing the one way relationship SZ – AL

16.2 And yes, it was in some sense a break… All previous chapters form together a first part : end of Youth, AL flinging himself in thr arms of  music and the courses of life of SZ and AL splitting

16.3 What now follows is a letter…

The letter is one of the two bigger chunks of text where we hear AL’s voice directly…( insofar of course that AL has rendered it verbatim )

The letter is written in an “antiquated prose”, in a German of the 16th century ( see chapter number ) , the German in which Luther wrote, the German in which the original Faustbuch ( not the one of Goethe ! ) is written.

It sounds like a voice from the past !

Why ?

According to SZ :…intended as a parody, …an allusion of the linguistic deportment of Ehrenfried Kumpf ( who speaks and acts like Luther )… expresses ( Al’s ) personality a self-stylization, a manifestation of his inner disposition …a tendency to hide behind and find fulfillment in parody…

16.4 Peter strasse Leipzig : a street known for it’s great Fair

The Friday after the purification : when googled, more links to Moslim traditions than Christians… anyone know why ?

16.5 Comparaison of Lepzig ( city of 7 hundred thousands souls ) with Ninevah

The book of Jonah depicts Nineveh as a wicked city worthy of destruction.

The Autumn fair is going at full swing at the moment of AL’s arrival adding to the confusion of the big city

16.6 People speak a devilish vulgar tongue…( adding to Leipzig as an image of Sin city )

16.7 Al’s first afternoon in Leipzig

He easily finds new lodgings ( Landlady is fat and has a devilish tongue )

His guide is the “verry porter who fetched my valise from the station…”

The porter “looked right like Schleppfuss”, a churl a rope around his gut ( ? ) with red cap and brass badge, in a rain mantle speaking the same devilish tongue … small beard

16.8 Meeting of kretzschmar again

16.9 AL prefers counterpoint to Harmony

16.10  Auerbach’s inn = Auerbach’s keller

Famous for the visit by Goethe who advertized the place in his Faust.

Auerbachs Keller is the best known and second oldest restaurant in Leipzig, dating to at least the first half of the fifteenth century. It was already one of the city’s most important wine bars by the 16th century and is described in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play Faust I as the first place Mephistopheles takes Faust on their travels.

Goethe often visited Auerbach’s Cellar while studying in Leipzig 1765-1768 and called it his favorite wine bar. He saw there two paintings on wood dating from 1625, one depicting the magician and astrologer Faust drinking with students and the other showing him riding out the door astride a wine barrel. Goethe was already familiar with the Faust legend from his youth, since a puppet show Dr. Faust, was frequently performed at local street fairs. The scene Auerbach’s Cellar in Leipzig in his drama Faust I is his literary memorial to his student tavern and to the city, albeit an ironic one. According to legend, the alchemist Dr. Johann Georg Faust once rode a wine barrel from the cellar to the street at Auerbach's Cellar, something he could have accomplished only with the help of the Devil. ( from Wikipedia )

16.11 Where Luther had his disputation with Eck

Dr. Johann Maier von Eck (13 November 1486 – 13 February 1543) was a German Scholastic theologian and defender ofCatholicism during the Protestant Reformation.

Eck forced Luther to declare that Ecumenical Councils were sometimes errant, as in the case when Constance (1414–1418) condemned Hus (1415). Luther now effectively denied the authority of both pope and council. Eck was greeted as victor by the theologians of the University of Leipzig, who overwhelmed him with honors and sent him away with gifts

16.12 I bid my guide…that he show me to an inn for a good meal…

Al is tricked by his guide to enter a bordello, a bawdyhouse . ( the entrance displays the same coulours as his outfit Red and brass ).

Recovering from his initial surprise, Al steps right to a piano ( which he sees as a friend ) – see note previous chapter and starts playing…

He plays modulation B major to C major…as in the hermits prayer in the finale of Freischutz

Der Freischütz, Op. 77, J. 277, (usually translated as The Freeshooter is a German opera with spoken dialogue in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin. It is considered the first important German Romantic opera, especially in its national identity and stark emotionality. The plot is based on the German folk legend of the Freischütz and many of its tunes were inspired by German folk music. Its unearthly portrayal of the supernatural in the famous Wolf's Glen scene has been described as "the most expressive rendering of the gruesome that is to be found in a musical score".

A Freischütz ("freeshooter"), in German folklore, is a marksman who, by a contract with the devil, has obtained a certain number of bullets destined to hit without fail whatever object he wishes. As the legend is usually told, six of the magic bullets (German: Freikugeln, literally "free bullets"), are thus subservient to the marksman's will, but the seventh is at the absolute disposal of the devil himself.

16.13 The unreliable guide, the bordello, and the playing of the piano to recover his wits comes straight out of the biography of Frederic Nietzsche. It is an anecdote of capital importance for Nietzsche will indeed have sex with one of the prostitutes and contract siphilis. Acording to legend it is this siphilitic infection that will make Nietzsche a genius and in the end a Madman.

16.14 AL does not have sex with a prostitute at this moment, he flees the place

16.15 One of the girls  - a nut –brown lass, in Spanish jacket, with large mouth, stubbed nose , and almond eyes ( color not mentioned ), strokes his cheek with her arm.

She does not give her name … but he calls her Esmeralda… - see chapter 3 when his father shows him the butterflies : ” One such butterfly, whose transparent nakedness makes it a lover of dusky, leafy shade, is called Hetaera Esmeralda…. “

16.16 Musings on Music ( to develop )

16.17 Handel vs Gluck

16.17 Ecce epsitola : here is the letter

16.18  The letter is uncharacteristically signed with a capital L … L for Lucifer ?

16.19 The girl waiting in the salon are described as butterflies and moths ( night butterflies )

… silken couches, upon which there sit waiting for you the nymphs and daughters of the wilderness, six or seven ( 7 ) – how shall I put it – morphos, clearwings, esmeraldas, scantly clad, transparently clad, in tulle, gossamer, and glister…

See parallel chapter 3

p. 143 has incorrect reference to Chopin Nocturne.

Mann’s source on Nietzsche : Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche (1901) by Paul Deussen

Doctor Faustus : chapter 19 : Esmeralda

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

What a chapter !

A summary to begin with :

So it turns out that one year later AL revisits the Leipzig Bordello to meet the girl that” brushed his face with her arm”. How he manages to describe the working - girl, he met a year earlier, to get her whereabouts is a bit beyond me. Let’s not forget that the name Esmeralda, is what HE calls her IN HIS MIND. We don’t know the nut-brown lass’ real name or even her nickname. In any case, the girl does not work in the Leipzig Maison anymore. Being infected with siphilis, she has been dismissed. AL does manage to get her new ( working ? ) adres.

He traces her all the way back to the town of Pressburg . AL desires to have intercourse with her even though she is siphilitic. She warns him about her infection but then yields to his advances and they have unprotected sex with each other.

Al returns to Leipzig. He is infected and he seeks medical treatment, but the doctors keep dissapearing and a cure is made impossible through strange coincidences. Neither rational Humanism ( Doctor Erasmi ) nor magic ( Dr. Zimbalist ) can help AL.

19.1 About Esmeralda

Her name is not Esmeralda

She is not Spanish, she wears a Spanish jacket

She is wearing a “Spanish” jacket which is a short outdoor jacket ( of Spanish origin, hence the name ) , fasted down the chest in the front and then sloping away to the back ending at waist level. Worn over a closely fitted bodice extending past the waisteline over the hips, ( a basque ) it is a rather elegant, sexy prop for a professional girl.

The short jacket opening to the front could be used by the girl as a captivating play to slowly unveil, button by button, a healthy bosom, while still exposing and  flaunting her “derrière”.

The nut-brown lass with the large mouth has switched quarters to Pressburg, which is today’s Bratislava, the capital of Slowakia. Why the narrator  mentions that Hungarians call it Poszony is not clear to me. Pressburg is not in Hungary.

If she is not Spanish, is she a Slavic girl then ? Is the true German blood of AL infected by a poison from the East ?  Is this what Oswald Spengler means with Asian degenerative force ? Is the lass another ill Clawdia ?

She stroke his cheek with her bared arm …a vulgarly tender expression

Still, the movement would be akward. It is not as personal as fingertips touching his lips or so…Her touch may have been accidental.

19.2 About the musical signature.

It is a bit confusing : Hetaera esmeralda would be H EAEA EEAA ? AL sticks to the 5 first letters : Hetaera.

Which Anglo Saxons call B… – strange remark…

Why would SZ mention this in a draft of the biography he is writing in German and at a moment that the third Reich is still on the rise? Makes no sense to me, should have been a footnote by translator.

19.3 About the Doctors Erasmi and Zimbalist

Both the description of their features and the way they appear and dissapear, make me conclude that both of them are two more apparitions – avatars of the Devil. In chapter 25, the Devil will  morph three times in one single evening, and so I advance the theorie that the Devil has been constantly been present as a string of different appearances.

- Dr. Zimbalist : short man, horn  rimmed glasses, on oval of bald framed between reddish hair and a “Hitler- type” moustache, manly quips and bad puns, a tic that lifted one cheek and a corner of the mouth, while the eyes jointed in a squint, gave him a problematic sour look.an uneasiness and touchiness that boded no good.

- Dr Eramus : A puffing heavy-set man with a red face and black goatee . Pouted lips.. and difficulty to bend over…( because of his limp ? )

- The Porter of Leipzig speaking a devilish tongue, jutting bristled jaw – looked somewhat like our Schleppfuss , small beard – looked right like Schleppfuss  , a bit stouter and fatter

- Baworinski, presiding officer of Winfried,  a tall dark fellow , concealed eyes, kept his mouth puckered as if for a whistle ( puckered mouth / pouting mouth to kiss the Devil's anus.

- Schleppfuss ( see earlier )

- Kretzschmar, what about Kretzschmar’ stuttering ?

19.4 About the diffference with the Nietzsche anecdote

- During Nietzsche’s accidental visit of the bordello, he has sex with one of the girls, on the spur of the moment, without much ado. The siphilitic infection is accidental.

- AL has fled the first night to come back a year later. So this time, it is with premonition. His girl warns him that she is infected but he doesn’t care about it.

19.5 Why did AL do it ?

Out of Romantic love ? (This is the interpretation by SZ ). Out of a false sense of Romantic ideals challenging a “Liebestod”  “The poor creature had feelings that responded to those the young man extended to her. And, good heavens was it not Love as well ?”

or

Out of Adolescent Lust  – loss of control,  possessed by sexual desire as advanced by JP Anderson ? I do not think so. If that was the case Al would have liberated his urge with any other girl in any other Bordello.

or

In search of a genial creativity boost ? Al wants to get infected, he seeks to get infected , not as a Freudian death urge, but as a sacrifice in exchange for Musical Genious. Is this the Faustian pact ? Is Hitler the Siphilitic component that will give Germany his “ Third Reich geniality” before it succumbs to it’s dreadful infection ?

19.6 About the cover story of the Austrian premiere of Salome ( Graz 16 May 1906 )

Salome, Op. 54, is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde.

When Richard Strauss conducted his opera Salome on May 16, 1906, in the provincial Austrian city of Graz, several leading figures in European music gathered to witness the event. The première of Salome had taken place five months before, in Dresden, and word had got out that Strauss had created something beyond the pale—an ultra-dissonant Biblical spectacle, based on a play by an Irish degenerate whose name was not mentioned in polite company; a work so frightful in its depiction of adolescent lust that imperial censors had banned it from the Court Opera in Vienna.

( See Alex Ross : The rest is noise )

The opera is famous (at the time of its premiere, infamous) for its "Dance of the Seven Veils". It is now better known for the more shocking final scene (often a concert-piece for dramatic sopranos), where Salome declares her love to – and kisses – the severed head of John the Baptist.

That Adrian’s cover up to meet the girl of his dreams, is that he going to watch, on his own, a sick stiptease show which ends with an act of necrophilia is rather funny

19.7 The devil is in the details.

The real Hitler was probably in Graz too, watching Salome, on May 16, 1906. It is unlikely that Thomas Mann knew that in 1943…

Doctor Faustus chapter 18 : The highly talented Mr. Leverkühn

Thomas Eakins ( 1904 ) Music

Doctor Faustus chapter 18 : My title :  The highly talented Mr. Leverkühn

Ok, before things get worse, let’s have chapter 18, which does two things:

1) Wet our appetite by hinting at things to come ( Mann understands that his reader need some encouragement ! )

2) Bringing us up to date concerning AL’s progress to become a composer

18.1 SZ tells us that he is familiar with the doings of AL even tough he is not always present.If you check the subsequent actions in their lives, I get the impression that SZ , the humanist Bourgeois is following his “intellectual hero” like a dwhining discarded  puppy.

I am looking back at the subtitle : The life of the German composer Adrian Leverkûhn as told by a friend. A friend ? Wishful thinking ?

Al is feeling more confortable in the presence of others. Not only Kretzschmar, but also others. Take for instance Rûdiger Schildknapp, AL’s companion for his Italian travel. At the end of chapter 10 SZ, confesses that “Schildknapp is a far better partner for such moods ( of demonic laughter ) – which is why I have always been a little jealous of the man”.

Schildknapp is described as a writer, an Anglophile and a Silesian ( in today’s Poland ) by birth.  A bit of a racist remark. AL takes a holiday to the Nort Sea with this new found friend and Schildknapp where he will write his “Phosphorence of the Sea”

18.1  Wet our appetite by hinting at things to come ( Mann understands that his reader need some encouragement ! )

year	SZ	AL
1905	Does Military service	In Leipzig with Kretzschmar
1906 - 1907	University of Leipzig
1908 – 1909	Classical tour	Moves to Munich in Southern Germany
1910 - 1911	First year teacher in Kaisersaschern	In Italy with Schildknapp
1913	Freising	Pfeiffering in Upper Bavaria
1930

18.2 Bringing us up to date concerning AL’s study to become a composer

18.3 Neat definition of Music : that strangely cabalistic, simultaneously playful and rigorous, ingenious and profound craft.

18.4 the study of music :

AL makes rapid progress in compositional technique,formal structure and orchestration

Eager and prolific exercises in counterpoint

The teacher experience versus the students intuition

Al learns about Instrumentation,  he learns to orchestrate orchestrate

“Teacher and pupil were essntially quite far apart in matters of musical instinct and intent – indeed, any aspirant in the arts finds himself almost by necessity dependent on the guidance of a master of his craft from whom he is already half estranged by a generation’s difference. Things only go well if the master nevertheless surmises and understands these hidden tendencies – sees them ironically , if need be – but is careful not to stand in the way of development”.

And so Kretzschmar lived in the self – evident, unuttered conviction  that music had found its ultimate, highest manifestation  and efficacy in orchestral works – Something Adrian no longer believed.

Contemporary music is as a dead tooth preserved by artificially ambalming…

AL proofs this with his own symphonic fantasy : “Phosphorence of the Sea” which is a masterpiece but a parody as well 

-          Astounding feel for bewitching mixtures of sound

-          Exquisite tone painting

-          highly talented succesor to Debussy or Ravel

-          unbelieving masterpiece of orchestral coloristic brillance

        but still with “traits of a parody”