The Magician

Shortly after Thomas realizes that his return to Munich is impossible, his gravest preoccupation becomes the diaries he left behind in Germany. If seized by the Nazis and published, the diaries would reveal his innermost truth: “Who he was and what he dreamed about” (180). A record of his attraction to men, the diaries would show that “[h]is distant, bookish tone, his personal stiffness, his interest in being honored and attended to, were masks designed to disguise base sexual desires” (180). Thomas’s anxious thoughts about the possible discovery of his diaries illustrate the complex relationship between his sexuality, his notion of self, and his dynamics with his family. Unlike Ernst Bertram and some other openly gay writers of his time, Thomas never made his sexual orientation known, though it’s present in his works of fiction. Thomas, who likes the power that his secret infuses in his writing, doesn’t want to upset the delicate balance between desire, art, and public image.

The diaries are eventually returned to Thomas, which (in his mind) averts a great crisis. In the anxious period of waiting for the diaries, Thomas imagines meeting the fate of writer Oscar Wilde, who was tried for his admission of relationships with men.