The Magician

“No matter where they went in the world, the Manns of Lübeck would never be known as they had been known when the senator was alive.”

Thomas’s realization, filled with a sense of loss, thematically illustrates finding one’s Identity Amid Displacement. He has lost not only Lübeck but also status, identity, and community. Even though he’s still a teen, he understands the depth of loss, of knowing that time can never be reversed.

“When Thomas wrote a poem about wanting to rest his head on his lover’s breast, or walk with his lover in the deepening twilight to a place of beauty where they would be fully alone, when he spoke of the urge he felt to intertwine with the soul of his loved one, the figure he imagined, the object of his desire, was Armin Martens.”

This poetic passage describes Thomas’s amorous awakening and his realization of his sexuality. The novel describes Thomas’s yearning for the loved one in romantic language rather than that of physical lust, evoking Thomas’s youthfulness and idealism.

“‘I think novels should not deal so obsessively with private life.’

‘Madame Bovary?’

‘I see that as a book about changing mores, a changing society.’

‘And my book?’

‘It may be about that. Yes, it may. But readers will feel more that they are peering in through a window.’

‘That might be the perfect description of what a novel is.’

‘In that case, you have written a masterpiece. I should not be surprised that you are already so famous.’”

This exchange between Thomas and Heinrich is structured almost as a dramatic duel: Heinrich lands strikes that Thomas parries. Enlivening the novel, the quick conversation also reveals Heinrich’s attempts to minimize Thomas’s achievements, possibly out of a sense of jealousy.

“When he had cut out the portrait of the young Pringsheims from that magazine, this was what he had imagined—a world filled with elegant people and rich interiors, with conversations going on that were both clever and oddly inconsequential.”

Katia is important to Thomas because she represents a new way for him to belong in the world. Aware that, like his mother Julia, he’ll never fit in with Lübeck society, Thomas aspired to a family and home that accommodated his desire for beauty, validation, and intellectual company.

“‘My advice to you,’ he said, pointing to Thomas, ‘is to stick to historical subjects, or write about commercial life in Lübeck.’ He said the words ‘commercial life in Lübeck’ as if he were referring to the tawdriest activity in some far-flung region.”

While Thomas’s marriage to Katia is happy, Alfred and Klaus Pringsheim often take digs at Thomas’s mercantile origins. Alfred suggests his anger at Thomas for writing “The Blood of the Walsungs” via a low blow at Lübeck.

“‘In our house, Mahler was much loved,’ Katia said. ‘Even saying Mahler’s name gave my brother a funny kind of satisfaction. In every other way he is normal.’

‘Your brother Klaus? Normal?’ Thomas asked.”

Humor and irony help paint a vivid portrait of the Manns’ family life. As Katia describes her brother to Heinrich, Thomas’s incredulity at the words “Klaus” and “normal” occurring in the same sentence introduces a note of levity in the proceedings.

“Now, however, the events of the day, the most ordinary things, had no depth or substance since he could not discuss them with her.”

The marriage between Thomas and Katia is a central subject in the novel. Though it initially appears to be a marriage of convenience, the novel quickly establishes the deep love and friendship that is the marriage’s bedrock. For Thomas, this love means that nothing seems real to him until he sees it through Katia’s eyes.

“We hate Johnny Russia with his big smelly farts.

We hate the French for being sly.

We hate the English with their cold, cold hearts.

The Huns will fight them all until they die.

Die, die, die. Until they all die.”

The parody of patriotic sentiment in this song, which Klaus Pringsheim sings, establishes his wit and also provides humor. The song satirizes the German position in the events leading up to World War I, when Germans were suspicious of “Johnny Russia” and the “sly French.” The song’s childlike vocabulary adds to the satirical effect, indicating that the German position is immature. One might argue that Klaus can afford to parody the German position as he’s insulated from the social realities of his homeland.

“He listened to the aria conclude and saw that no one outside Germany would ever understand what it meant to be in this room now and what strength and solace this music gave to those under its spell.”

Exemplifying the importance of music in the novel, this passage shows how, for Thomas, music symbolizes the lofty German spirit. Listening to an aria by Leo Slezak as he contemplates a beleaguered Germany, Thomas connects the music to his history, tradition, and language. Thomas believes that to save this music, Germany, too, must be saved, at any cost.

“The battles they were fighting included one for cultural hegemony. A lyric poem written by a Jew or a left-wing writer could offend them as much as a thriving Jewish business. A famous novelist could come into their sights as much as an unfriendly foreign country or a Jewish banker. Not only did they want to control streets and government buildings, banks and businesses, they wanted to recreate the Germany of the future.”

This passage reveals Thomas’s keen understanding of the Nazi project. Unlike other parties, which seek to rule in the present, the Nazis want to control the future, too, by curbing all dissent and diversity forever, whether through murdering Jews or jailing writers. Simply because he can think and write, Thomas is a danger to the future Nazis imagine for Germany.

“‘How strange it is,’ she said, ‘that we are now Jewish. My parents never went near a synagogue. And I thought of the children as pure Manns, but now they are Jewish because their mother is Jewish.’”

Filled with tragic irony, Katia’s statement shows how historical origins—rather than personal choice—dictate her identity in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. The statement also shows that cultural forgetting isn’t an option for many minorities.

“Casual glances at young men who had come to his lectures or whom he encountered at a concert. Glances that were sometimes reciprocated and then became unmistakable in their intensity. While he enjoyed the homage he received in public and appreciated the large audiences he attracted, it was always these chance meetings, silent and furtive, that he remembered. Not to have registered in his diary the message sent by the secret energy in a gaze would have been unthinkable. He wanted that which had been so fleeting to become solid. The only way he knew to make this happen was to write it down. Should he have let it pass so that it would have faded completely, this, the story of his life?”

Illustrating The Complex Relationship Between Sexuality, Self, and Family as a theme, these lines show that Thomas needs to record his attraction toward men to complete “the story of his life.” His self-image is incomplete without these accounts, which is why, regardless of how dangerous it may be, he must register them in their raw honesty.

“‘Katia,’ Nelly asked, ‘do you know the best places for a real night out?’

‘I have never been on a real night out in my life,’ Katia said.”

Katia’s voice in the novel, filtered through Thomas’s perspective, is caustic and funny, often infusing levity into the proceedings. In a culture-clash moment, the younger Nelly asks Katia for recommendations about a night out, to which Katia icily responds with frosty, deadpan humor.

“‘Start taking notes for a novel about the years in Munich when everything led to his rise, but when few of us noticed. You were there.’

‘I was busy watching my children growing up.’

‘My dear father, none of us saw you much, except at meals. So you must have been doing something else.’”

Thomas prides himself as the patriarch of his family of six children, but the novel shows how the bulk of child-raising falls to Katia. In response to Thomas’s assertion that he spent the between-war years watching his children grow up, Erika wittily remarks that his children often saw him only at the dining table.

“‘Oh, on the contrary, I rather do!’ Auden said and then started imitating a woman’s high-pitched English accent: ‘She would get the flowers herself, Mrs. Walloway, because her maid Letitia would have her work cut out for her. Oh, yes she would! What a day, as fresh as the curl-fold of the waves, all those waves, flowing untidily, as untidily as cabbages, with all their unnecessary leaves, lying raw and unplucked in the fields, the fields strangely silent and queerly humming in all their dark, sweet, sweeping, vertiginous verticality or, wondered Mrs. Walloway greenly, should that be horizontality? Oh yes, I really admire her.’”

An example of both literary allusion and humor, this speech by Auden parodies the writing style of novelist Virginia Woolf. “Mrs. Walloway” is a reference to Mrs. Dalloway, the protagonist of Woolf’s eponymous novel, while Walloway’s imaginary thoughts mock Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness narrative style.

“When the reporter asked them what relationship Isherwood had with the family, Erika replied under her breath that he was their pimp.”

Erika’s aside is an example of the text’s use of wit; the joke is that Isherwood “pimped” Erika to Auden by arranging their marriage of convenience. A larger joke is that the Manns and Auden are posing for a happy-family-style photo shoot, yet are far from a typical family.

“It had occurred to him more than once that Adolf Hitler could have easily been among that Munich crowd. He might not have been able to afford an opera ticket, but perhaps he was waiting to see if there were tickets that someone could not use […] And then he would, Thomas imagined, have seen the Manns coming with their chauffeur, both of them stately, distant, dignified, alert to their status in the city [,,,] On the nights when Wagner was playing, Hitler would have been desperate to hear Lohengrin or Die Meistersinger or Parsifal. And he would watch as the people who had paid for their tickets well in advance, or who had their own box in the theatre, alighted from their cars dressed perfectly for the occasion, while he was turned away into the night.”

This passage shows that Thomas is sharply aware of the role that class plays in sociopolitical unrest. Here, he imagines that the rise of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler link to Germany’s elitism. By imagining this scenario, Thomas also examines his role in the scheme of things, wondering if his wealth sparked dissatisfaction in the villains of the future by turning them “away into the night.”

“You know, I rather like Klaus, but some people call him the Subordinate Klaus, but that is too cruel, far too cruel.’ Thomas was not quite sure what this meant, but he avoided Auden for the rest of the day.”

Auden’s statement is more cruel than funny, as he makes a pun regarding “Klaus,” alluding to “clause,” to belittle Thomas’s oldest son. Ironically, the joke is lost on Thomas since he’s not yet fluent in English. Auden’s cruelty supports a subtler theme in the text—that artists, writers, and musicians aren’t necessarily nice human beings.

“‘The German people voted for Hitler,’ Katia said, ‘and the thugs around him. They are supporting the Nazis. They oversee the cruelty. It is not simply that there is a group of barbarians at the top. The whole country, and Austria too, is barbarous. And the barbarity is not new. The anti-Semitism is not new. It is part of Germany.’

Proof of Katia’s intelligence and clarity of thought, this passage shows that Hitler wasn’t an external monster who invaded Germany, but a popular leader voted into power. He didn’t introduce antisemitism in Germany but fanned the already smoldering flames. Hitler may be dead, but the German people are still complicit in his crimes.

“I am sure the world is grateful to you for the undivided attention you have given to your books, but we, your children, do not feel any gratitude to you, or indeed to our mother, who sat by your side. It is hard to credit that you both stayed in your luxury hotel while my brother was being buried. I told no one in Cannes that you were in Europe. They would not have believed me. You are a great man. Your humanity is widely appreciated and applauded. I am sure you are enjoying loud praise in Scandinavia. It hardly bothers you, most likely, that these feelings of adulation are not shared by any of your children. As I walked away from my brother’s grave, I wished you to know how deeply sad I felt for him.”

Michael’s letter to Thomas, written after Thomas and Katia skip Klaus’s funeral, reveals the Manns’ complex family dynamics. Thomas may think he’s a great parent, but Michael reminds him of the dichotomy between his public front and his private life. A renowned artist to everyone else, to his children, Thomas is a complicated, sometimes distant figure whose absence distinguishes him.

“While in Frankfurt the aura of ease and good cheer had been merely distasteful, here, because it was his own city, it unsettled him deeply. In his dreams, he had expected a Germany to arise in which a dinner like this would be attended by a new generation nervously ready to re-create democracy. But everyone in the banqueting hall looked to him middle-aged and overfed as well as jolly and at home.”

After Thomas revisits Germany for the first time since World War II, he’s struck by how normal everyone seems, despite the horrors they witnessed. To Thomas, the normalcy is a symptom of moral decay, proof that many Germans simply don’t care about the cruelty that occurred during the war.

“For years now, he understood, he had been living in some strange opposition to Klaus and Heinrich. Klaus had been unsettled, not knowing where to live; Thomas, on the other hand, remained in Pacific Palisades. While Heinrich lived in poverty, Thomas continued to make money. While the other two had strong opinions, Thomas wavered politically. They were fiery, he was circumspect. But now that they were gone, he had no one to argue with, except Erika. And he found her so irascible that it was hardly worth disagreeing with her.”

This passage illustrates the importance of opposition in Thomas’s life. Klaus and Heinrich have been foils to him, touchstones against whom Thomas revised his worldview. After losing them, he realizes that even though his brother and oldest son frequently annoyed him, he longs for the energy that these radical forces brought into his life.

“He flicked through the pages of his diary again and read an entry from that previous visit. ‘At lunch the enchanter was nearby at times. Gave him 5 francs because yesterday he served so nicely. Indescribable the charm of the smile in his eyes when saying thank you. Too heavy neck. K.’s friendliness to him for my sake.’”

An inclusion from historical Thomas’s diaries, this passage illustrates the interaction between the raw material that powers art and the finished product. While some describe Thomas’s literary style as ornate, the diary entry is written in short sentences. Nevertheless, the sentences offer a wealth of information, including the description of Franzl as “the enchanter” and K.’s (Katia’s) empathetic friendliness to him for Thomas’s sake.