Reading Order
Doctor Faustus Reading Order
Doctor Faustus (1947) by Thomas Mann is his most ambitious and most harrowing novel — a biography by Serenus Zeitblom of his brilliant and terrible friend Adrian Leverkühn, a composer who has made a pact with the Devil. Adrian was infected with syphilis by a prostitute in Leipzig (or so the novel implies), and the disease gives him both his creative genius and his isolation: he cannot love, he cannot touch, he can only compose. The novel is organized around the most sustained and audacious formal innovation in twentieth-century fiction: Adrian's twelve-tone composition (explicitly connected to Schoenberg's method, which Mann discussed with Theodor Adorno as he was writing the novel) is also the formal principle of the novel itself. Doctor Faustus is Mann's investigation of the German national character and its relationship to fascism — the Faustian bargain that Germany made with the Devil in 1933, trading humanity and civilization for the intoxication of power and a brief illusory greatness. It is also a meditation on the relationship between artistic genius and moral responsibility, and on what happens to the German humanist tradition in the face of catastrophe.
Where to start
Doctor Faustus (1947) — the complete novel in the John E. Woods translation (Knopf), which is the standard modern English version. Best Mann reading order: Tonio Kröger → Death in Venice → Buddenbrooks → The Magic Mountain → Doctor Faustus.
Complete Doctor Faustus Book List
- 1Buy
Doctor Faustus
Thomas Mann·1947·The complete novel — Adrian Leverkühn, Serenus Zeitblom, and the Devil in Leipzig. Mann's most ambitious novel; the John E. Woods translation (Knopf 1997) is the standard modern English version; the older H.T. Lowe-Porter translation is more widely available but less accurate - 2Buy
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann·1924·The companion — Hans Castorp at the sanatorium. The companion investigation of the same German cultural themes: where The Magic Mountain is the education of a naive young man in the ideas that led to the First World War, Doctor Faustus is the investigation of the genius who embodied the impulses that led to the Second - 3Buy
Buddenbrooks
Thomas Mann·1901·The companion — the decline of the Buddenbrook family. The companion investigation of the same German bourgeois world from the beginning of Mann's career: the artistic hypersensitivity that destroys the Buddenbrook family is the same force that, in Adrian Leverkühn, becomes the demonic genius of the composer - 4Buy
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe·1808·The companion — the original Faustian bargain. The companion as the predecessor that Doctor Faustus explicitly rewrites: where Goethe's Faust is ultimately saved because he continued to strive, Mann's Leverkühn is not saved — the twentieth-century version of the Faustian bargain has no redemption - 5Buy
Tonio Kröger
Thomas Mann·1903·The companion early novella — Tonio's love of the bourgeois world he has lost. The companion as the prototype: Adrian Leverkühn is what Tonio Kröger becomes when the loving relationship to the bourgeois world is replaced by the demonic relationship to absolute artistic power - 6Buy
The Philosophy of Modern Music
Theodor Adorno·1949·Adorno's companion investigation of twelve-tone music and its relationship to modernity. The companion philosophical text: Mann wrote Doctor Faustus in dialogue with Adorno, who served as his musical advisor; the novel's account of Leverkühn's music is based on Adorno's analysis of the twelve-tone method, and Doctor Faustus and The Philosophy of Modern Music are companion investigations of the same musical and cultural catastrophe - 7Buy
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann·1912·The companion — Aschenbach's passion for Tadzio. The companion investigation of the same theme: the artist who renounces ordinary human warmth for creative power, and the catastrophic consequences - 8Buy
The Origins of Totalitarianism
Hannah Arendt·1951·Arendt's companion investigation of the historical and philosophical roots of fascism. The companion as the analytical companion to Doctor Faustus's fictional investigation: both are investigations of the same historical catastrophe (German fascism) from different angles — Arendt's historical-philosophical and Mann's biographical-fictional
Doctor Faustus — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Doctor Faustus about?
Doctor Faustus is a biography, narrated by the humanist scholar Serenus Zeitblom, of his brilliant and terrible friend Adrian Leverkühn — a composer who has made a pact with the Devil. Adrian was (apparently) deliberately infected with syphilis by a prostitute in Leipzig, and the disease gives him both his creative genius and his isolation: he cannot love, he cannot touch, he lives in a solitude broken only by his relationship to the demonic force that drives his composition. The novel is organized on two levels: Adrian's life (roughly 1885-1930) and Zeitblom's narration (1943-45, as Germany destroys itself). The connection between the two levels is the novel's argument: Adrian's Faustian bargain is Germany's Faustian bargain, and the catastrophic conclusion of both runs in parallel.
What is the role of music in Doctor Faustus?
Music is the central formal and thematic element of Doctor Faustus. Adrian Leverkühn is a composer, and the novel's account of his musical development (from his studies with the eccentric Wendell Kretschmar to the twelve-tone method that becomes his mature style to the final choral work The Lament of Doctor Faustus) is the narrative's spine. Mann wrote the novel in dialogue with the philosopher and musicologist Theodor Adorno, who served as his musical advisor and whose unpublished analysis of twelve-tone technique became the basis for the novel's account of Leverkühn's music. The twelve-tone method is itself an emblem of the Faustian bargain: it is a rigorous system that seems to offer complete freedom (any arrangement of the twelve tones) but actually determines every note in advance (each tone can appear only once until all twelve have appeared). Mann uses it to investigate the paradox at the heart of the Faustian bargain: the totalizing system that claims to liberate but actually imprisons.
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