Mann's Doctor Faustus

About Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus (Doktor Faustus, 1947) is Thomas Mann's most demanding and most explicitly allegorical novel — a fictional biography of a German composer named Adrian Leverkühn who makes a Faustian pact with the Devil, told by his childhood friend Serenus Zeitblom as Germany destroys itself between 1943 and 1945. Mann wrote the novel in exile in Los Angeles, in consultation with Arnold Schoenberg (whose twelve-tone technique inspired Leverkühn's fictional music system) and Theodor Adorno (who advised on the musical-philosophical dimension), and it represents his fullest reckoning with how German culture produced National Socialism. It is best approached after Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain establish Mann's shorter and longer modes; Doctor Faustus requires patience and some familiarity with both Goethe's Faust and the German musical tradition from Bach through Schoenberg. The novel was translated by John E. Woods in 1997 in a version generally considered superior to the original 1948 H.T. Lowe-Porter translation.