Thomas Mann and Shakespeare

Reviews / Votes

When Thomas Mann speaks of 'the most tremendous case of poetic genius the world has ever seen', he is referring not to Homer, nor to Goethe - but to Shakespeare. It is strange that this important identification has been so little heeded or seriously examined for so long. At last the present book makes up for such neglect, opening our eyes to the truly 'tremendous case' of one of the great dialogues of world literature.

[Wenn Thomas Mann ueber den 'den ungeheuersten Fall von Dichtertum' spricht, 'den die Erde sah', dann spricht er weder von Homer noch von Goethe, sondern von Shakespeare. Es ist eigenartig, wie lange dieses Diktum kaum gehoert und wie selten es ernst genommen wurde. Dass das Versaeumte mit diesem Buch endlich nachgeholt wird, oeffnet den Blick auf den wahrhaft 'ungeheuren Fall' eines Dialogs von weltliterarischem Ausmass.] * Heinrich Detering, President of the German Academy for Language and Literature, and chief editor of the Great Annotated Frankfurter Edition of the works of Thomas Mann * Literature is never harmless. Thomas Mann and William Shakespeare reflect on the abysses that form part of Western history as well as their political and aesthetic implications. This unique collection of essays, the first of its kind, renders the works of both authors transparent to one another and offers a fresh angle from which to look at literary modernity. This volume makes for inspiring re-reading of both Shakespeare and Mann.

[Literatur ist niemals harmlos. Thomas Mann und William Shakespeare reflektieren die Abgruende der abendlaendischen Geschichte, deren politische und aesthetische Implikationen. Diese Sammlung von Aufsaetzen, die erste ihrer Art, macht die Werke beider Autoren fuereinander transparent und bietet eine neue Sicht auf die literarische Moderne. Dieser Band inspiriert zur Relektuere von Shakespeare und Mann.] * Claudia Olk, President of the German Shakespeare Society, and Chair of Comparative Literature, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany * The modern appreciation of Shakespeare is in great part the legacy of the profound scholarship, criticism, and artistic imagination of Germany. This adventurous, wide-ranging, and highly experimental volume asks how the most complex and dialectical of German novelists apprehended Shakespeare-and, in turn, how our vision of Shakespeare might be made larger and more subtle by reading him side-by-side with Mann. What keeps coming into view in this intriguing book is how the kinship of these two authors lies in a bold commitment to irony and the ambivalent: sexual, aesthetic, moral, political, and philosophic. * Peter Holbrook, Chair of the International Shakespeare Association, and Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, The University of Queensland, Australia * The work of 12 noted scholars from the UK, the US, and Germany, these essays analyze the literary/philosophical affinities of Shakespeare and Mann. Like his contemporaries, Mann knew Shakespeare well. The first German translations of Shakespeare's plays appeared in the late 18th century, and these were followed by the excellent Schlegel-Tieck renderings; scholarly studies of Shakespeare helped to establish his reputation, and Shakespeare's plays were staged more frequently than those of Goethe or Schiller. Mann, as his diary reveals, drank in Shakespeare from his early youth. In Mann's novel Dr. Faustus the comedy Love's Labors Lost serves as Leverkuehn's basis for a decidedly uncomic opera (on Leverkuehn's desk lie the sonnets and editions of Twelfth Night, Much Ado about Nothing, and Two Gentlemen of Verona), and there are many traces of Othello in Mann's work. Shakespeare is in Tonio Kroeger, Der Tod in Venedig, Der Zauberberg, and numerous critical essays. Aside from philological evidence, some essays argue, in a more theoretical manner, that Mann and Shakespeare had striking similarities in outlook: e.g., Jonathan Dollimore claims that the two men are most intimately linked by their deep pessimism, their underlying fear that knowledge is illusory, that, as in Hamlet, it can kill action. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. -- J. Hardin, University of South Carolina * CHOICE * The volume offers just what the authors wanted: an unconventional, sometimes provocative, often highly original series of insights into Shakespeare and Thomas Mann. * The German Quarterly * [A] very fine collection of essays. * Memoria di Shakespeare *