閱讀托馬斯·曼 Thomas Mann在小说之家的作品!!! |
托馬斯.曼1875年6月6日出生於德國北部港市呂貝剋。他的父親 是經營𠔌物的巨商,母親出生於巴西,有葡萄牙血統。托馬斯.曼是 五個孩子中的老二,長他四歲的亨利希.曼後來也是一位著名作傢。 作為成功的商人,托馬斯.曼的父親作風實際,在呂貝剋很有影響; 而他從母親那裏則得到音樂、文學和藝術的熏陶。父親的實用主義與 母親的藝術氣質所代表的二元性,成為托馬斯.曼後來文學創作的重 要主題。
托馬斯.曼的父親於1891年在41歲的年齡上早逝。長子亨利希. 曼和次子托馬斯.曼這時都還年輕,且都對文學更感興趣,而不想成 為商人。於是傢族産業變賣出去,曼氏傢族商業上的衰敗也隨之而來, 而他們在文化上的地位卻開始蒸蒸日上。
1892年,曼的母親遷往慕尼黑。托馬斯.曼則留在呂貝剋完成大 學預科學校的學業。他把大部分精力轉嚮了文學,他的學習成績並不 理想,畢業時衹得到了一個“中等”文憑。1893年,托馬斯.曼離開 呂貝剋前往慕尼黑。1894-1896年間,他參加了慕尼黑技術大學的歷史、 藝術和文學課程。1897年,托馬斯.曼開始他第一部長篇小說《布等 勃洛剋一傢》的創作。1901年這本小說發表並立即獲得巨大成功,從 此奠定了托馬斯.曼在德國的文學地位。
1905年,托馬斯.曼同卡蒂婭普林斯.海姆結婚。儘管曼對自己 的同性戀傾嚮不是一無所知,但他選擇了壓抑剋製。他們生了六個孩 子,三兒三女。除了長子剋勞斯.曼,長女艾麗卡.曼也是一位作傢、 演員和社會活動傢。剋勞斯.曼和艾莉卡.曼都是公開的同性戀者。
1929年,托馬斯.曼榮獲諾貝爾文學奬。但這也沒有阻止納粹主 義對他一傢的威脅。除了托馬斯.曼自己的作品不合納粹的胃口之外, 他哥哥亨利希.曼的進步言論,他妻子的猶太血統以及他子女公開的 同性戀身份都足以令納粹咬牙切齒。1933年,托馬斯.曼一傢開始流 亡生活,先是瑞士,然後是美國。在美國,托馬斯.曼在加利福尼亞 州的帕利塞茲丘陵的傢成了許多者和名流們參拜的地方,阿諾德 .勳伯格,勃托爾特.布萊希特,以及他哥哥亨利希.曼都是這裏的 座上客。
五十年代,邁卡錫主義開始在美國肆虐。而二戰後的德國分裂為 東西兩個。托馬斯.曼最終選擇於1952年返回瑞士定居。1955年8月 12日,托馬斯.曼在蘇黎世病逝。
托馬斯.曼與長子剋勞斯.曼在對待同性戀的問題上有著不同的 看法。剋勞斯曼選擇公開的同性戀生活方式,並且在作品中再現兩次 大戰之間德國富於反叛精神的年輕藝術傢們的波西米亞式生活。在托 馬斯.曼那裏,同性戀雖然常與藝術的唯美相關,但它更是一種具有 毀滅性的力量,它破壞社會建構,並最終帶來同性戀者個人的死亡。 1949年,剋勞斯曼的自殺似乎更是印證了托馬斯.曼對同性戀的悲觀 態度。由於父子關係早已僵化,或者也是為了不讓自己的名譽受到玷 污,托馬斯.曼這位可敬的大文豪沒有出席他兒子的葬禮,而是僅僅 發了一封吊唁電報。
在德語世界中,托馬斯.曼算得上是一位“受過教育的市民”的 典範。他舒適的中上階層經濟地位不僅使他不愁吃穿,還允許他獲得 良好的文化教育,使他變得儒雅且有品位。他的作品中反映出的就是 這樣一種狀況。比如,《布等勃洛剋一傢》就是以他自己的傢族為藍 本,描繪出一幅中上階層的風情畫。
不過,托馬斯.曼一生都在努力與中産階級社會劃清界綫。他認 為藝術靈感來源於一個與中産階級相對立的王國,即一個情愛的、性 欲的,或更具體說,一個同性愛的王國。他的許多重要作品都記錄下 為了保持一種平衡而付出的鬥爭,即那種介於藝術傢與日常生活中普 通人之間的平衡。而處於這場鬥爭核心的往往就是那種男同性愛的欲 望,這種欲望在表達與壓抑之間猶豫不定。
在一封寫給朋友海爾曼.吉塞林伯爵的信件中(發表時題為《關 於婚姻》,1925),托馬斯.曼試圖將婚姻與同性愛進行區分,前者 具有創造性和持久性,建立了家庭,並成為國傢的基石,而後者雖具 有藝術必要性,但終究是一種毀滅性的力量。關於同性愛,他寫道: “除了美和死亡,對它沒有別的祝福。”這封信可以看作是作者對自 己同性愛情感的辯護。托馬斯.曼是他那一代中堅公民的一分子,是 一個享有盛譽的作傢,也是一傢之父。他承認,如果細心閱讀,讀者 可以發現啓發他藝術靈感的同性愛欲望,但是同性戀身份,他是堅决 拒絶的,因為這不衹是威脅到“社會”,更威脅到他顯赫的社會地位。
同性戀破壞社會建製並導致同性戀者個人死亡的主題出現在托馬 斯.曼的好幾部作品中,其中一些也是他最傑出的作品。
◇ 《魂斷威尼斯》
在《魂斷威尼斯》(又譯作《威尼斯之死》,1912)中,成熟的 名作傢古斯塔夫馮阿申巴赫讓想象中道德上的疑點服從於防古典藝術 的嚴格的倫理和美學的要求,他的生活處於理智的嚴格掌控之中。然 而,在他前往威尼斯度假的過程中,他的理智堡壘受到了猛烈衝擊而 最終崩潰。而引發這場衝擊的則是一個美麗絶倫的14歲波蘭男孩塔齊 奧。塔齊奧也在威尼斯與傢人一起度假。阿申巴赫窺視著塔齊奧的一 舉一動,男孩那如同古希臘雕塑般美麗的容貌一開始似乎衹是印證了 作傢關於美的理想。然而,阿申巴赫發現自己越來越難以自拔。原本 保守剋製的作傢完全迷失於自己對男孩的迷戀之中,他每天坐在海灘 邊就是為了看到塔齊奧在那裏戲耍,他在城裏散步也是為了能碰到塔 齊奧,他甚至塗脂抹粉,穿上色彩鮮豔的衣服,以使自己看上去年輕 一些。阿申巴赫同塔齊奧之間從來沒有說過一句話。當阿申巴赫從熟 人那裏得知威尼斯開始流行霍亂時,他卻選擇了留下來,衹為了每天 能看到塔齊奧。終於,阿申巴赫也病倒了,直到他臨死的那一刻,他 仍然望着他心中的美少年在海灘上玩耍,而塔齊奧也似乎在遠處召喚 他“進入那無限浩瀚的富饒前景之中。”
托馬斯.曼自己的興趣和經歷無疑是這部中篇小說的靈感之源。 1911年,他在威尼斯度假時被一個14歲波蘭男孩所吸引。和阿申巴赫 一樣,曼也從未結識那個男孩。
托馬斯.曼的日記和信件以及一些散文提供了作傢本人受到同性 ──尤其是英俊的年輕同性──吸引的證據。文學史傢具有特殊興趣 的兩個關係,一個是曼與保羅.尤倫伯格之間的(大約在1899-1903年 間),另一個是曼與剋勞斯.郝賽爾之間的(開始於1927年,郝賽爾 當時16歲,保持了好幾年)。曼的同性戀情結曾經一直是許多文學評 論傢拒絶承認的事實。而過去幾十年間曼日記的出版則使得類似這樣 的否認不再可能了。
◇ 《托尼奧.剋勒格爾》
在中篇小說《托尼奧.剋勒格爾》(1903)中,主人公托尼奧在 孩童時就對他的好朋友漢斯漢森産生了同性愛的情感。托馬斯.曼用 這種情感來暗示與普通的中産階級生活的疏離。同性愛成為一種異見 者和局外人的隱喻。托尼奧渴望融入那些“金發碧眼的、明朗快活的、 值得被愛的普通人們。”但是加入他們就得放棄他作為藝術傢的身份。 對於藝術傢身份尤為關鍵的便是深處日常生活存在之外的王國,從那 裏進行創造。
◇ 奧古斯特.馮.普拉騰
托馬斯.曼在19世紀詩人奧古斯特.馮.普拉騰身上找到了將藝 術與中産階級生活相分離的先驅。普拉騰的詩歌和日記揭示出他本人 的同性戀趣味,而這又成為一場著名的文學紛爭的由來:後來名氣遠 遠超過普拉騰的海因裏希.海涅曾用普拉騰的性取嚮來貶低普拉騰和 他的作品。托馬斯.曼在他的散文《論普拉騰》(1926)中試圖將詩 人的生活與作品區分開來。曼認為,普拉騰將他的性欲疏導進入了他 的藝術創作。雖然曼承認,普拉騰可能施與一些“微不足道的男孩們” 以感性之愛,但詩人在中産階級社會中所體驗的壓抑為他的詩歌創作 提供了必要的靈感。
◇ 《魔山》
在托馬斯.曼另一部非常著名的宏篇巨製《魔山》(1922)中, 同性戀題材被融入了一個更大的有關世界觀的題材中。在這部被稱之 為“教育小說”的著作中,主人公漢斯.卡斯托普去瑞士阿爾卑斯山 區的一所肺病療養院探訪他的表哥。原計劃衹要幾周的探訪,沒想到 卡斯托普一去就呆了七年。阿爾卑斯山上的時間流動的速度似乎與平 原上的有所不同。而山下的世界裏,歐洲文明正在墮入即將成為第一 次世界大戰的混亂之中。年輕的工程師漢斯.卡斯托普成了療養院裏 新來的病人,而他身邊的幾個病友則競相嚮這個年輕人灌輸各自不同 的世界觀和相互對立的哲學信仰。對卡斯托普身心康復起關鍵作用的 則是者科勞迪婭.舒夏特夫人,她給卡斯托普帶來了難以抗 拒的性愛。但在小說末尾,歷史以第一次世界大戰的形式打斷了 卡斯托普沒有時間的夢並猛然地把他拋到了佛蘭德的戰場上,成為戰 爭的犧牲品。不同於一般的教育小說,小說到這裏嘎然而止,似乎沒 有得出任何確定性的結論,衹有從主人公的最後一句話“愛將在這個 世界性的大中誕生”中,或許能窺探到作者思想中的一斑。
在這部對歐洲戰前思想進行反思的作品中,神秘性也是小說的一 個重要元素。比如,舒夏特夫人的長相與卡斯托普的一個中學男同學 普裏比斯拉夫.希普出奇地相似。漢斯與普裏比斯拉夫是同校但不是 同班同學,普裏比斯拉夫還比漢斯長一級。普裏比斯拉夫長著中亞人 一樣的細長眼睛。然而就是這蒙古人一樣的細長眼睛牢牢俘獲了漢斯 的心。漢斯每天上學最快活的時刻就是碰見普裏比斯拉夫的時刻,如 果哪天,普裏比斯拉夫沒來,那一天對於漢斯來說都是灰暗的。漢斯 後來鼓足勇氣嚮普裏比斯拉夫開口藉鉛筆,並且還將削下來的鉛筆沫 保存了很久。如果按照弗洛伊德的理論進行分析的話,那麽這支鉛筆 就象徵著普裏比斯拉夫的。漢斯想要對普裏比斯拉夫做出性愛表 達,但是他所能做的也衹能是拿走普裏比斯拉夫的一個擁有物──鉛 筆──來作為對他的象徵。多年以後,當舒夏特夫人藉給漢斯一支鉛 筆時,所有的回憶都涌上漢斯心頭,而他的同性戀過去也就此得以解 决。此時,鉛筆的象徵意味也更加明顯了。
有關普斯比斯拉夫的情節在一本厚厚的《魔山》中衹不過幾頁篇 幅,但是他卻通過與舒夏特夫人的聯繫而取得了中心的地位。托馬斯 .曼受弗洛伊德的影響很深,他希望與其壓抑或消滅同性戀欲望,不 如去轉換或集成它。不過不管怎樣,在托馬斯.曼那裏,同性戀都是 一種需要剋服的病態。
◇ 《馬利奧和魔術師》
在中篇小說《馬利奧和魔術師》(1929)中,場景又一次選在文 化氣息與陳腐乏味相交錯,藝術蛻變為情色的意大利。駝背魔術師齊 卜拉靠表演催眠術為生,他把各式各樣的人拉入自己的表演中,泄露 他們內心的隱秘。一次,他誘使年輕迷人的侍者馬裏奧加入他的舞臺, 並稱他為甘尼梅德(宙斯身邊侍酒的美少年),顯然齊卜拉扮演的就 是宙斯。魔術師施展魔法讓馬裏奧在無意識中講述自己與女友的煩心 事。而魔術師把自己作為一個更善解人意、更值得愛的對象給馬裏奧 奉上。在魔術師“相信我,愛我”的魔咒下,馬裏奧吻了他。這是藝 術勝利的一刻──“極其重要的時刻,荒誕古怪而又令人毛骨悚然, 馬裏奧賜福的一刻”──這也是標志齊卜拉毀滅的一刻,因為他僭越 了曼在《魂斷威尼斯》中所描繪出的藝術靈感與公開的同性戀之間的 界綫。等待他的衹有死亡。果然,清醒後的馬裏奧因為不堪魔術師的 當衆羞辱,立即拔槍殺死了他。
與托馬斯.曼的其他小說不同的是,即將於1933年離開德國的曼 在《馬裏奧和魔術師》中已經開始描繪法西斯主義、同性愛,以及同 性戀恐懼之間的相互聯繫。
◇ 《浮士德博士》
《浮士德博士》(1947)是一部關於德國嚮法西斯主義蛻變的寓 言,書中的藝術傢也是一個同性戀者。作麯傢阿德裏安萊弗昆為了延 長自己的藝術生命將靈魂出賣給了魔鬼。萊弗昆與他交際圈中的盧迪 史維特菲格有過一段同性戀關係。在這裏又一次,托馬斯.曼將同性 戀欲望視作一種與保持社會制度和促進社會進步相對立的元素。
Life
Mann was born Paul Thomas Mann in Lübeck, Germany and was the second son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (a senator and a grain merchant), and his wife Júlia da Silva Bruhns (a Brazilian with partially German ancestry who emigrated to Germany when seven years old). His mother was Roman Catholic, but Mann was baptised into his father's Lutheran faith. Mann's father died in 1891, and his trading firm was liquidated. The family subsequently moved to Munich. Mann attended the science division of a Lübeck gymnasium, then spent time at the Ludwig Maximillians University of Munich and Technical University of Munich where, in preparation for a journalism career, he studied history, economics, art history, and literature. He lived in Munich from 1891 until 1933, with the exception of a year in Palestrina, Italy, with his novelist elder brother Heinrich. Thomas worked with the South German Fire Insurance Company 1894–95. His career as a writer began when he wrote for Simplicissimus. Mann's first short story, "Little Herr Friedemann" (Der Kleine Herr Friedemann), was published in 1898.
In 1905, he married Katia Pringsheim, daughter of a prominent, secular Jewish family of intellectuals. They had six children:
Children
Name Birth Death
Erika November 9, 1905 August 27, 1969
Klaus November 18, 1906 May 21, 1949
Angelus Gottfried Thomas "Golo" March 29, 1909 April 7, 1994
Monika June 7, 1910 March 17, 1992
Elisabeth April 24, 1918 February 8, 2002
Michael April 21, 1919 January 1, 1977
The summerhouse of Thomas Mann in Nida (German: Nidden)
In 1929, Mann had a cottage built in the fishing village of Nidden (Nida, Lithuania) on the Curonian Spit, where there was a German art colony, and where he spent the summers of 1930-32 working on Joseph and his Brothers. The cottage now is a cultural center dedicated to him, with a small memorial exhibition. In 1933, after Hitler assumed power, Mann emigrated to Küsnacht, near Zürich, Switzerland, but received Czechoslovak citizenship and a passport in 1936. He then emigrated to the United States in 1939, where he taught at Princeton University. In 1942, the Mann family moved to Pacific Palisades, in west Los Angeles California, where they lived until after the end of World War II. On 23 June 1944 Thomas Mann was naturalized as a citizen of the United States. In 1952, he returned to Europe, to live in Kilchberg, near Zürich, Switzerland.
He never again lived in Germany, though he regularly traveled there. His most important German visit was in 1949, at the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, attending celebrations in Frankfurt am Main and Weimar, as a statement that German culture extends beyond the new political borders.
In 1955, he died of atherosclerosis in a hospital in Zürich and was buried in Kilchberg. Many institutions are named in his honour, most famously the Thomas Mann Gymnasium of Budapest.
Thomas Mann is buried at Kilchberg, Zurich
Thomas Mann's works were first translated into English by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Her translations have become classics in their own right and have contributed enormously to Mann's popularity in the English-speaking world.
Political views
During World War I Mann supported Kaiser Wilhelm II's conservatism and attacked liberalism. Yet in Von Deutscher Republik (1923), as a semi-official spokesman for parliamentary democracy, Mann called upon German intellectuals to support the new Weimar Republic. He also gave a lecture at the Beethovensaal in Berlin on 13 October 1922, which appeared in Die neue Rundschau in November 1922, in which he developed his eccentric defence of the Republic, based on extensive close readings of Novalis and Walt Whitman. Hereafter his political views gradually shifted toward liberal left and democratic principles.
In 1930 Mann gave a public address in Berlin titled "An Appeal to Reason", in which he strongly denounced National Socialism and encouraged resistance by the working class. This was followed by numerous essays and lectures in which he attacked the Nazis. At the same time, he expressed increasing sympathy for socialist ideas. In 1933 when the Nazis came to power, Mann and his wife were on holiday in Switzerland. Due to his very vociferous denunciations of Nazi policies, his son Klaus advised him not to return. But Thomas Mann's books, in contrast to those of his brother Heinrich and his son Klaus, were not among those burnt publicly by Hitler's regime in May 1933, possibly since he had been the Nobel laureate in literature for 1929 (see below). Finally in 1936 the Nazi government officially revoked his German citizenship. A few months later he moved to California.
However, already in 1933, in a personal letter dated 26 October 1933 but published only recently (in the feuilleton section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung dated Oct. 30, 2007), Thomas Mann expressed views on Nazism, which corresponded to the much later novel Doktor Faustus. In the novel, the author refers in several places to the historical debt of the German population, leading to World War II with all its cruelty.
During the war, Mann made a series of anti-Nazi radio-speeches, Deutsche Hörer! ("German listeners!"). They were taped in the USA and then sent to Great Britain, where the BBC transmitted them, hoping to reach German listeners.
"Images of Disorder", by social critic Michael Harrington in his collection The Accidental Century, is an account of Mann's political progression from the right to the left.[citation needed]
Work
"Modern Book Printing" from the Walk of Ideas in Berlin, Germany - built in 2006 to commemorate Johannes Gutenberg's invention, c. 1445, of movable printing type
Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, principally in recognition of his popular achievement with the epic Buddenbrooks (1901), The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg 1924), and his numerous short stories. (Precisely, due to the personal taste of an influential committee member, only Buddenbrooks was explicitly cited.) Based on Mann's own family, Buddenbrooks relates the decline of a merchant family in Lübeck over the course of three generations. The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg, 1924) follows an engineering student who, planning to visit his tubercular cousin at a Swiss sanatorium for only three weeks, finds his departure from the sanatorium delayed. During that time, he confronts medicine and the way it looks at the body and encounters a variety of characters who play out ideological conflicts and discontents of contemporary European civilization. Later, other novels included Lotte in Weimar (1939), in which Mann returned to the world of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774); Doktor Faustus (1947), the story of composer Adrian Leverkühn and the corruption of German culture in the years before and during World War II; and Confessions of Felix Krull (Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull, 1954), which was still unfinished at Mann's death.
In Buddenbrooks, at several places he uses the Low German of the northern part of the country.
To his greatest works belongs the tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder, 1933–42), a richly imagined retelling of the story of Joseph related in chapters 27-50 of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. The first volume relates the establishment of the family of Jacob, the father of Joseph. In the second volume the young Joseph, not yet master of considerable gifts, arouses the enmity of his ten older brothers, who then sell him into slavery in Egypt. In the third volume, Joseph becomes the steward of a high court official, Potiphar, but finds himself thrown into prison after rejecting the advances of Potiphar's wife. In the last volume, the mature Joseph rises to become administrator of Egypt's granaries. Famine drives the sons of Jacob to Egypt, where the unrecognized Joseph adroitly orchestrates a scene that discloses his identity, resulting in the brothers' reconciliation and the reunion of the family.
Mann's diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his sexuality, which found reflection in his works, most prominently through the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the 14-year-old Polish boy Tadzio in the novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1912). Anthony Heilbut's biography Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997) was widely acclaimed for uncovering the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre. Gilbert Adair's work The Real Tadzio describes how, in the summer of 1911, Mann had been staying at the Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice with his wife and brother when he became enraptured by the angelic figure of Władysław Moes, an 11-year-old Polish boy.
A classic about an intellectual succumbing to passion, Death in Venice has been made into a film and an opera. Blamed sarcastically by Mann’s old enemy, Alfred Kerr, to have ‘made pederasty acceptable to the cultivated middle classes’, it has been pivotal to introducing the discourse of same-sex desire to the common culture. Mann was friends with violinist and painter Paul Ehrenberg for whom he had feelings as a young man. Despite certain homosexual overtones in his writing, Mann fell in love with Katia Mann—whom he married—in 1905. His works also present other sexual themes, such as incest in The Blood of the Walsungs (Wälsungenblut) and The Holy Sinner (Der Erwählte).
Throughout his Dostoyevsky essay he finds parallels between the Russian and the sufferings of Frederich Nietzsche. Speaking of Nietzsche he says: "his personal feelings initiate him into those of the criminal... in general all creative originality, all artist nature in the broadest sense of the word, does the same. It was the French painter and sculptor, Degas who said that an artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime." Nietzsche's influence on Mann runs deep in his work, especially in Nietzsche's views on decay and the proposed fundamental connection between sickness and creativity. Mann held that disease is not to be regarded as wholly negative. In his essay on Dostoyevsky we find: "but after all and above all it depends on who is diseased., who mad, who epileptic or paralytic: an average dull-witted man, in whose illness any intellectual or cultural aspect is non-existent; or a Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky. In their case something comes out in illness that is more important and conductive to life and growth than any medical guaranteed health or sanity... in other words: certain conquests made by the soul and the mind are impossible without disease, madness, crime of the spirit."
Balancing his humanism and appreciation of Western culture was his belief in the power of sickness and decay to destroy the ossifying effects of tradition and civilization. Hence the "heightening" of which Mann speaks in his introduction to The Magic Mountain and the opening of new spiritual possibilities that Hans Castorp experiences in the midst of his sickness. In Death in Venice he makes the identification between beauty and the resistance to natural decay, embodied by Aschenbach as the metaphor for the Nazi vision of purity (akin to Nietzsche's version of the ascetic ideal that denies life and its becoming). He also valued the insight of other cultures, notably adapting a traditional Indian fable in The Transposed Heads. His work is the record of a consciousness of a life of manifold possibilities, and of the tensions inherent in the (more or less enduringly fruitful) responses to those possibilities. In his own summation (upon receiving the Nobel Prize), "The value and significance of my work for posterity may safely be left to the future; for me they are nothing but the personal traces of a life led consciously, that is, conscientiously."
Regarded as a whole, Mann's career is a striking example of the "repeated puberty" which Goethe thought characteristic of the genius. In technique as well as in thought, he experienced far more daringly than is generally realized. In Buddenbrooks he wrote one of the last of the great "old-fashioned" novels, a patient, thorough tracing of the fortunes of a family.
—Henry Hatfield in Thomas Mann, 1962.
Cultural references
Martin Mauthner's German Writers in French Exile 1933-1940 (London, 2007) devotes several chapters to Thomas Mann and his family.
Mann's 1896 short story "Disillusionment" is the basis for the Leiber and Stoller song "Is That All There Is?", famously recorded in 1969 by Peggy Lee.
"Magic Mountain" by the band Blonde Redhead, is based on Mann's novel of the same title.
"Magic Mountain (after Thomas Mann)" is a painting made by Christiaan Tonnis in 1987. "The Magic Mountain" is a chapter in his 2006 book "Illness as a Symbol" as well.
The 2006 movie "A Good Year" directed by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe and Albert Finney, features a paperback version of Death in Venice. It is the book the character named Christie Roberts is reading while she visits her deceased father's vineyard.
In the Philip Roth novel The Human Stain, several references are made to Mann's Death in Venice.
A staged musical version of The Transposed Heads, adapted by Julie Taymor and Sidney Goldfarb, with music by Elliot Goldenthal, was produced at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia and The Lincoln Center in New York in 1988.
Joseph Heller's 1994 novel, Closing Time, makes several references to Thomas Mann and Death in Venice.
The Andrew Crumey novel Mobius Dick (2004) makes extensive references to Mann, and imagines an alternative universe where an author named Behring has written novels resembling Mann's. These include a version of The Magic Mountain with Erwin Schrodinger in place of Castorp.
Works
* 1896 Disillusionment (Enttäuschung)
* 1897 Little Herr Friedemann ("Der kleine Herr Friedemann"), collection of short stories
* 1897 "The Clown" ("Der Bajazzo"), short story
* 1897 The Dilettante
* 1897 Tobias Mindernickel
* 1897 Little Lizzy
* 1899 The Wardrobe (Der Kleiderschrank)
* 1900 The Road to the Churchyard (Der Weg zum Friedhof)
* 1901 Buddenbrooks (Buddenbrooks - Verfall einer Familie), novel
* 1902 Gladius Dei
* 1902 The Hungry
* 1903 Tristan, novella
* 1903 Tonio Kröger, novella
* 1903 The Child Prodigy ("Das Wunderkind")
* 1904 Fiorenza, play
* 1904 A Gleam
* 1904 At the Prophet's
* 1905 A Weary Hour
* 1905 The Blood of the Walsungs ("Wälsungenblut"), novella
* 1907 Railway Accident
* 1908 Anekdote
* 1909 Royal Highness (Königliche Hoheit), novel
* 1911 The Fight between Jappe and the Do Escobar
* 1911 Felix Krull (Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull), short story, published in 1922
* 1912 Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig), novella
* 1915 Frederick and the Great Coalition (Friedrich und die große Koalition)
* 1918 Reflections of an Unpolitical Man (Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen), essay
* 1918 A Man and His Dog (Herr und Hund; Gesang vom Kindchen: Zwei Idyllen), novella
* 1921 The Blood of the Walsungs (Wälsungenblut), novella
* 1922 The German Republic (Von deutscher Republik)
* 1924 The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg), novel
* 1925 Disorder and Early Sorrow ("Unordnung und frühes Leid")
* 1929 "Mario and the Magician" (Mario und der Zauberer), novella
* 1930 A Sketch of My Life (Lebensabriß)
* 1933–43 Joseph and His Brothers (Joseph und seine Brüder), tetralogy
o 1933 The Tales of Jacob (Die Geschichten Jaakobs)
o 1934 The Young Joseph (Der junge Joseph)
o 1936 Joseph in Egypt (Joseph in Ägypten)
o 1943 Joseph the Provider (Joseph, der Ernährer)
* 1938 This Peace (Dieser Friede)
* 1937 The Problem of Freedom (Das Problem der Freiheit)
* 1938 The Coming Victory of Democracy
* 1939 Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns, novel
* 1940 The Transposed Heads (Die vertauschten Köpfe - Eine indische Legende), novella
* 1943 Listen, Germany! (Deutsche Hörer!)
* 1944 Mose, a commissioned novella (Das Gesetz, Erzählung, Auftragswerk)
* 1947 Doctor Faustus (Doktor Faustus), novel
* 1947 Essays of Three Decades, translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter. [1st American ed.], New York, A. A. Knopf, 1947. Reprinted as Vintage book, K55, New York, Vintage Books, 1957.
* 1951 The Holy Sinner (Der Erwählte), novel
* 1954 The Black Swan (Die Betrogene: Erzählung)
* 1954 Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years (Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull. Der Memoiren erster Teil), novel expanding upon the 1911 short story, unfinished