'Thomas Mann's Mario und der Zauberer: "Simply a Story of Human Affairs"' more

Nicholas Martin Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer: “Simply a Story of Human Affairs” This essay examines the apparent tension between political and psychological readings of Thomas Mann’s novella Mario und der Zauberer (1930). Political interpretations of the text often see in the magician Cipolla little more than a thinly disguised Mussolinifigure, and interpret the novella as a veiled warning or prophecy of the dangers of fascism.1 Psychological readings have tended to focus on the text’s allegorical portrayal of the mind-games and performance wizardry employed by fascist demagogues.2 Mann himself was dismayed by exclusively political interpretations of the story, which in his view tended to exaggerate the theme of the hypnotic attraction of political extremism, at the expense of the novella’s aesthetic qualities. He also became increasingly convinced that the text had revealed the manifest ill-preparedness and inability of intellectuals, including himself, to combat the rise of National Socialism. 1 In the interest of brevity the terms ‘fascism’ and ‘fascist’ in this discussion refer to both Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. Mario und der Zauberer alludes to the psychology of both phenomena. 2 Among the vast number of critical studies of Mario und der Zauberer, the following are both particularly valuable in themselves and of immediate relevance to the present discussion: R. C. Speirs, ‘Some Psychological Observations on Domination, Acquiescence and Revolt in Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 16 (1980), pp. 319-30; Henry Hatfield, ‘Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer: An Interpretation’, Germanic Review 21 (1946), pp. 306-12; Eugene Lunn, ‘Tales of Liberal Disquiet: Mann’s Mario and the Magician and Interpretations of Fascism’, Literature and History 11 (1985), pp. 77-100; A. F. Bance, ‘The Narrator in Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer’, Modern Language Review 82 (1987), pp. 382-98; George Bridges, ‘Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer: “Aber zum Donnerwetter! Deshalb bringt man doch niemand um!”’, German Quarterly 64 (1991), pp. 501-17; Alan Bance, ‘The political becomes personal: Disorder and Early Sorrow and Mario and the Magician’, in Ritchie Robertson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 107-18. While Mann remained convinced of its merits as a work of art, he came to believe that the novella had been widely misinterpreted as primarily a political text and had, moreover, not been properly appreciated as a (self-)critical exploration of the psychology of the artistic process. It will be argued here that Mann’s retrospective assessment of the text and its impact is essentially correct. The artistic qualities of Mario und der Zauberer – its allegorical construction, the brilliant psychological portrayal of Cipolla, and the ambivalence of its catastrophic conclusion – tend to work against the transmission of any unambiguous political or moral message. In Mario und der Zauberer the unnamed narrator recounts events during a family holiday in the fictional Italian resort of Torre di Venere, an experience which becomes increasingly unpleasant for himself and the members of his family. It is a version of Mann’s own experience of a vacation on the Tuscan coast in 1926.3 The first quarter of the text sketches the oppressive atmosphere, both climatic and political, in the resort. The bulk of the text, however, gives tangible expression to this oppressive atmosphere by describing and to some extent analysing a performance by the magician Cipolla, who attempts to bend and manipulate his audience’s will by means of his hypnotic powers. Integral to Cipolla’s performance is his misuse of his power in order to bully, mock and browbeat his audience. Mann himself, in a letter of 1945, called the magician “the mental tyrant Cipolla”.4 The cruel, gloating style of Cipolla’s performance appears to stem from an inferiority complex, which is in turn, it is suggested, the product of a physical deformity. Cipolla’s hold over the audience, and over the individual ‘victims’ he has hypnotised, is shattered at the climax of the novella. Mario, a waiter and native of Torre di Venere, shoots Cipolla dead after the magician has humiliated him by making the hypnotised Mario kiss him. The 3 “Es ist alles ganz richtig, wir waren im August-September [19]26 in Forte dei Marmi, das mit dem Torre di Venere der Novelle identisch ist.” Thomas Mann to Gabriele Hopkins, 27 November 1930. Quoted in Hans Wysling (ed.), Thomas Mann. Dichter über ihre Dichtungen, 3 vols, Munich: Heimeran; Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 1975–81, vol. 2 p. 369. Henceforth quotations from this edition will be identified by the letters DD, followed by the volume and page numbers. Forte dei Marmi is on the Versilia coast of Tuscany, thirty-five kilometres north of Pisa. It remains the most exclusive resort on the Tuscan Riviera. 4 Thomas Mann to Charles Duffy, 14 December 1945 (DD, II, 372). assassination of Cipolla is a liberation of sorts for the narrator and his family. On a banal level, they are now free to leave but, more importantly, the narrator in particular is at last freed from the profoundly disturbing experience of witnessing Cipolla’s performance. Yet Cipolla’s death does not symbolise a liberation of the human spirit from the irrational, demonic forces embodied by the magician. Mario’s shooting of Cipolla is itself an irrational act, and the ending of the novella is as unsettling as it is liberating. This is the surface plot of a tale which Mann characterised years later, somewhat disingenuously, as “simply a story of human affairs which should interest the reader for its own sake and not for some hidden meaning”.5 Arguably, Mann protests too much, for beneath its surface Mario und der Zauberer indirectly addresses and explores the misuse of art as a tool of political seduction, the curious allure of malevolent and irresponsible political leaders as well as the psychology of the leader and the led in European fascist movements. Through the figure of the magician-hypnotist Cipolla, Mann evokes the irrational forces underlying the appeal of fascism in both its Italian and its German manifestations. Moreover, in the generally supine behaviour of Cipolla’s audience Mann points to the dangers of passivity and moral inertia in the face of these irrational forces. We shall now briefly rehearse the interpretation of Mario und der Zauberer as a political text, as a warning against the dangers of fascism in Europe in 1930, before considering the novella as another, to some degree self-critical, investigation by Mann of the psychology of the artist and the artistic process. Mario und der Zauberer is arguably the most overtly political of Mann’s fictional narratives, in which he criticises both the fascist mentality and, through the figure of Cipolla, the nature of fascist leadership and demagogic practices. Yet even here, where it is supposedly at its most overt, Mann’s political message is characteristically elliptical. It is not immediately decipherable, partly because it is conveyed by means of an elaborate allegory, in which Cipolla and his cheap artistic ‘performance’ can be taken to represent the psychological workings and mass appeal of fascism. Cipolla’s ability to paralyse and bend the will of his audience, and the collective delirium he inspires, have generally been interpreted as 5 Thomas Mann to Louis M. Grant, 14 October 1949 (DD, II, 372). an analogue to the hypnotic, irrational power of Mussolini’s or Hitler’s oratory. This is, however, not how Mann himself, or indeed the majority of contemporary reviewers, interpreted the tale. According to Mann in a letter of 1941, the novella did indeed possess a political dimension, which was detected at the time in nationalist and National Socialist circles in Germany. Mann quickly adds, however, that even in 1930 the political dimension was being accorded too much significance: Ich kann nur sagen, daß es viel zu weit geht, in dem Zauberer Cipolla einfach eine Maskierung Mussolinis zu sehen, aber es versteht sich andrerseits, daß die Novelle entschieden einen moralisch-politischen Sinn hat. Der europäische Faschismus war damals im Heraufziehen, seine Atmosphäre lernte ich bei dem Besuch in Italien, der die Erzählung zeitigte, kennen, und die Tendenz der Novelle gegen menschliche Entwürdigung und Willenszwang ist denn auch in der vorhitlerisch, nationalistisch-faschistischen Sphäre Deutschlands klar genug empfunden worden, so daß in diesen Kreisen die Erzählung heftig abgelehnt wurde. Immerhin, sie ist in ihrer Gesamtheit als Kunstwerk zu betrachten, nicht als 6 tagespolitische Allegorie. A year earlier Mann had confirmed that the political dimension was but one, allusive aspect of a complex text: Die politisch-moralistische Anspielung, in Worten nirgends ausgesprochen, wurde damals in Deutschland lange vor 1933, recht wohl verstanden: mit Sympathie oder Ärger verstanden, die Warnung vor der Vergewaltigung durch das diktatorische Wesen, die in der menschlichen 7 Befreiungskatastrophe des Schlusses überwunden und zunichte wird. Mann’s scepticism regarding the novella’s political import is borne out by the fact that the majority of reviews of the text when it was first published in 1930 focused on quite different aspects of the text. Of the seven contemporary reviews which I have been able to locate, six chose to highlight Mann’s skill as a prose writer and applaud his deft psychological portrait of Cipolla.8 One 6 7 Thomas Mann to Hans Flesch, 26 June 1941 (DD, II, 371). Thomas Mann, ‘On Myself’, March/April 1940, a lecture at Princeton University, where Mann held a visiting professorship from 1938 to 1941 (DD, II, 371). 8 Harald Braun, ‘Thomas Mann, Mario und der Zauberer’, Eckart 6 (1930), pp. 448-49; Stephan Ehrenzweig, ‘Der neue Thomas Mann’, Das Tagebuch 11 reviewer commented that the text “zeigt uns den Dichter in der entspannten Gelöstheit des Episodenerzählers”;9 another hailed the novella as “ein kaum erreichbares Musterbeispiel von künstlerischer Psychologie”;10 while a third remarked simply that “[d]ieses Reiseerlebnis […] ist ein Meisterwerk”.11 Only one of these seven contemporary reviewers pointed to the novella’s political dimension, suggesting a possible connection between Cipolla and “ein viel mächtigerer italienischer Rhetor oder Zauberer oder Herrscher”.12 Mario und der Zauberer bears a number of outward similarities to Mann’s earlier novella Der Tod in Venedig (1912). Both are set in Italy, of course, and both texts contain strong autobiographical elements. The settings and large parts of the actual content of the narratives are based on Mann’s unusual holiday experiences in Italy. In both novellas the unbearable Italian climate is an important factor, reflecting and also fuelling the increasingly oppressive psychological atmosphere of each text. The intolerable climate prompts the narrator of Mario und der Zauberer, like Aschenbach in Der Tod in Venedig, twice to consider leaving, only to reject the idea. Although sexual desire is not as central to the later novella as it is to Der Tod in Venedig, it is nevertheless important in contributing to the underlying tension of Mario und der Zauberer. A sexually charged atmosphere is created in the opening line; the name of the fictional resort, Torre di Venere (Tower of Venus), immediately evokes Eros, as does the tremendous heat in the resort and the narrator’s eager descriptions of lithe bodies on the beach. A further parallel between the two novellas lies in the surrender by both Aschenbach and members of Cipolla’s audience to chaos, to the irrational (1930), pp. 1070-74; Alfred Kantorowicz, ‘Thomas Mann: Mario und der Zauberer’, Die literarische Welt 6 (1930), no. 25, p. 5; Werner Krug, ‘Thomas Manns Mario und der Zauberer’, Das literarische Echo 32 (1929-30), pp. 69697; Arthur Eloesser, ‘Mario und der Zauberer’, Die neue Rundschau 41.2 (1930), pp. 718-19; Stefan Großmann, ‘Mario und der Zauberer: Zwei Begegnungen mit Thomas Mann’, Das Tagebuch 11 (1930), pp. 874-75; H. v. Wedderkop, ‘Thomas Mann, Mario und der Zauberer’, Der Querschnitt 10 (1930), p. 945. 9 Braun, p. 448. 10 Ehrenzweig, p. 1073. 11 Eloesser, p. 718. 12 Großmann, p. 875. power of Dionysian ‘Rausch’.13 Furthermore, homo-eroticism plays a decisive role in determining the tragic outcome in both texts. Cipolla’s seduction of Mario proves fatal. Aschenbach’s pursuit of Tadzio is also fatal, yet he arguably attains a form of redemption in death, even as he persists in deluding himself that the boy is an object of aesthetic appreciation rather than physical desire. There is nothing redeeming about Cipolla’s sordid, manipulative lust, however. His desire for Mario is his Achilles’ heel which breaks his hold over the audience and occasions his downfall. The figure of Aschenbach in Der Tod in Venedig embodies a deal of self-criticism on Mann’s part, and there is also an element of self-criticism in Mario und der Zauberer. This can be seen, for example, in the narrator’s shortcomings as a father and in his irascible snobbishness.14 Self-criticism is also evident in Mann’s portrayal of Cipolla and his art. Hermann Kurzke has suggested, not implausibly, that the magician contains thinly disguised features of his creator. Above all, Cipolla is a fellow-artist or “brother artist”, a term Mann was later to use to characterise Hitler.15 Cipolla is also, like Mann, a chain smoker who appears to need cigarettes in order to assist the creative process; and Mann’s not always affectionate nickname in his own family was “der 13 Much later, Mann himself not only saw this connection but also went further, claiming to see in Der Tod in Venedig an anticipation of National Socialism twenty years ahead of its time: “Ich sprach über den um 20 Jahre vorweggenommenen ‘National-Sozialismus’ des T.i.V.” (Thomas Mann, Tagebücher 1937–39 (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1980), p. 166). As Ronald Speirs has pointed out, Mann’s retrospective claim is an over-simplification which seeks to derive general conclusions from Aschenbach’s specific, individual psychology and distorts, or ignores, the complex series of economic, political and social factors underlying the rise of National Socialism in the years 1912 to 1933. See Ronald C. Speirs, ‘The Embattled Intellect: Developments in Modern German Literature and the Advent of Fascism’, in Fascism and European Literature – Faschismus und Europäische Literatur, ed. Stein Ugelvik Larsen and Beatrice Sandberg, Berne: Peter Lang, 1991, pp. 29-36 (pp. 29-30). 14 See Hermann Kurzke, Thomas Mann: Das Leben als Kunstwerk, Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 2001, p. 309, and Lunn, p. 82. 15 In the essay Bruder Hitler (1938), Mann says of Hitler that he is “[e]in Bruder... Ein etwas unangenehmer und beschämender Bruder; er geht einem auf die Nerven, es ist eine reichlich peinliche Verwandtschaft”, adding that the dictator is “[e]in Künstler, ein Bruder” (Thomas Mann, Bruder Hitler, in Essays, ed. Hermann Kurzke and Stephan Stachorski, 5 vols, Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 1995, vol. 4, pp. 305-12 (pp. 309, 311-12)). Zauberer”.16 Cipolla represents not only the exploitative power of fascism but also the manipulative power of the artist. Mann knows only too well that, whatever their differences, he and his creation Cipolla are both manipulating their respective audiences by means of illusion and deceit. Cipolla, the political artist or artistpolitician, is therefore not only the target of political criticism from Mann the liberal antifascist, but also a means of selfexamination by Mann the artist. As has already been pointed out, Mario und der Zauberer is based on actual events. Shortly after the novella’s publication in 1930, Mann cast detailed light on the inspiration for the novella: Der ‘Zauberkünstler’ war da und benahm sich genau, wie ich es geschildert habe. Erfunden ist nur der letale Ausgang: In Wirklichkeit lief Mario nach dem Kuß in komischer Beschämung weg und war am nächsten Tag, als er uns wieder den Thee servierte, höchst vergnügt und voll sachlicher Anerkennung für die Arbeit ‘Cipolla’s’ […] Die Schüsse aber sind nicht einmal meine Erfindung: Als ich von dem Abend hier erzählte, sagte meine älteste Tochter [Erika]: ‘Ich hätte mich nicht gewundert, wenn er [Mario] ihn niedergeschossen hätte.’17 The Mann family’s holiday in Tuscany in 1926 coincided with Mussolini’s turning Italy from a parliamentary democracy into a fascist dictatorship. In 1922 Mussolini had seized power by marching on Rome with his action squads (Arditi), yet initially he had governed within the rule of law and the will of Parliament and the King. In 1924, however, Mussolini began to murder his political opponents. On 3 January 1925 he declared the end of representative democracy. In 1926 he became the absolute leader of both party and government, and by the summer of that year political parties and trade unions had been closed down and freedom of the press abolished. The repressive, authoritarian climate of Italian fascism finds its way, quite deliberately, into Mario und der Zauberer, even before Cipolla makes his entrance. The corrosive and depressing effects of prolonged exposure to fascist ideology are registered by the narrator in the opening pages of the novella. He says of the Italian holidaymakers on the beach, who are, after all, supposed to be enjoying themselves: 16 17 See Lunn, p. 89, and Kurzke, pp. 333-34. Thomas Mann to Otto Hoerth, 12 June 1930 (DD, II, 368). Auf irgendeine Weise fehlte es der Atmosphäre an Unschuld, an Zwanglosigkeit; dies Publikum ‘hielt auf sich’ […] – wieso? Man verstand bald, daß Politisches umging, die Idee der Nation im Spiele war. Tatsächlich wimmelte es am Strande von patriotischen Kindern – eine unnatürliche und niederschlagende Erscheinung […] Es gab […] einen Flaggenzwist, Streitfragen des Ansehens und Vorranges; Erwachsene mischten sich weniger schlichtend als entscheidend und Grundsätze wahrend ein, Redensarten von der Größe und Würde Italiens fielen, unheiter-spielverderberische Redensarten […] Diese Leute […] machten soeben etwas durch, so einen Zustand, etwas wie eine Krankheit […], nicht 18 sehr angenehm, aber wohl notwendig. This distanced observation is followed almost immediately by the episode in which the narrator is taken to task by a hectoring Italian busybody for allowing his eight-year-old daughter to run naked on the beach: Nicht allein Buchstabe und Geist der öffentlichen Badevorschriften, sondern zugleich die Ehre seines Landes seien freventlich verletzt, und in Wahrung dieser Ehre werde er, der Herr im Schniepel, Sorge tragen, daß unser Verstoß gegen die nationale Würde nicht ungeahndet bleibe. (GW, VIII, 668) This episode is designed to illustrate how the political climate of fascism has transformed normally relaxed Italians into prudish and self-righteous little dictators. The narrator’s unpleasant experiences at the beach and at the family’s hotel, where he encounters ill-concealed xenophobia, are mere prologue, however, to the pivotal Cipolla episode which takes up almost three-quarters of the novella. The magician’s performance takes place in a hall which is little more than a run-down wooden shed, which is both a fitting setting for Cipolla’s shabby display and a clear hint by Mann at the moral tawdriness of fascism. Once the narrator and his family are seated in the hall, they and the rest of the audience must wait. Although Mann does not make it explicit, there is a parallel here between the use of suspense by Cipolla and the way suspense was exploited by Mussolini and Hitler before their political speeches. 18 Thomas Mann, Mario und der Zauberer. Ein tragisches Reiseerlebnis, in Gesammelte Werke, 13 vols, Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 1974, vol. 8 pp. 658-711 (pp. 666-67). Henceforth quotations from this text will be identified in parentheses in the text proper by GW with volume and page numbers. It is clear that when Mann devised the fiendish Cipolla, Hitler’s Munich (which was, of course, also Mann’s adoptive hometown), the city the Nazis had declared to be “die Hauptstadt der Bewegung” and where they were most active in the late 1920s, was as much as in his mind as Mussolini’s Rome.19 Nazi ritual began in the sweaty, smoky beer halls and circus tents of Munich, where Hitler gave his first speeches in the early 1920s. The subsequent addition of technical paraphernalia, such as elaborate lighting and sound effects, merely intensified the Führer’s presence, and the later mass rallies at Nuremberg differed only in degree from the earliest gatherings of the faithful.20 Hitler regarded oratory as an art-form from the outset, remarking as early as 1922 that he had mastered it. However, he realised that he could add an extra dimension to the traditional view of oratory as purely rhetorical skill, namely, the theatrical power of gesture. Hitler treated each speech as a dramatic performance. It is said that, from his earliest ‘performances’, people would come to hear him, as much for the theatrical style of his speeches as for their political content.21 Hitler’s overriding aim was to suspend the audience’s rational and critical faculties. Speaker meetings would begin with loud martial music, and Hitler would leave his audience in suspense, until finally he chose the moment to make his entrance. He would then wait for up to five minutes before beginning to speak. (Cipolla keeps his audience waiting for thirty minutes.) Hitler was able to convert his life into a series of staged entrances, with himself as playwright, leading actor, director and set designer.22 An early convert to Nazism described the effect of a Hitler speech: I do not know how to describe the emotions that swept over me as I heard this man. His words were like a scourge. When he spoke of the disgrace of Germany, I was ready to spring on any enemy. His appeal to German manhood was like a call to arms, the gospel he preached a sacred truth. He seemed to be another Luther. I forgot everything but the man; then, 19 20 See Hatfield, pp. 307-08. See Peter Reichel, Der schöne Schein des Dritten Reiches. Gewalt und Faszination des deutschen Faschismus, Munich: Hanser, 1991, pp. 371-75. 21 See Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History, London: Macmillan, 2000, pp. 113-16. 22 See J. P. Stern, Hitler: The Führer and the People, London: Fontana, 1975, pp. 56-68. glancing round I saw that his magnetism was holding these thousands as one [...] The intense will of the man, the passion of his sincerity conviction seemed to flow from him to me. I experienced an exaltation that could be 23 likened only to religious conversion. A Dionysian experience is being described here, in which members of a crowd – be it at a Nazi rally, a rock concert or a football match – may lose their sense of individuality and assume an irrational, collective personality. This Dionysian abandonment of the self and its critical faculties is described with horrified fascination by the narrator of Mario und der Zauberer as he observes the behaviour of the people Cipolla has hypnotised: seine [Cipollas] Autorität [war] auf einen Grad gestiegen, daß er sein Publikum tanzen lassen konnte – ja, tanzen. Das ist ganz wörtlich zu verstehen, und es brachte eine gewisse Ausartung, ein gewisses spätnächtliches Drunter und Drüber der Gemüter, eine trunkene Auflösung der kritischen Widerstände mit sich, die so lange dem Wirken des unangenehmen Mannes entgegengestanden waren. (GW, VIII, 700). The narration of Cipolla’s performance combines an oblique examination of the politics and psychology of fascism with an investigation of the psychology of the artist. On the political level, Mann makes clear Cipolla’s sympathy for Mussolini’s regime (the magician mentions the Duce in sycophantic terms at one point) and, as the evening progresses, Cipolla’s own manner becomes increasingly dictatorial as he exercises power over his ‘victims’ with sadistic pleasure: “um diese Zeit [war] in [Cipollas] ganzes Gehaben und auch in den Tonfall seiner Worte etwas Sattes und Paschahaftes, etwas von Räkelei und Übermut eingetreten” (GW, VIII, 706). Although they use the ghetto barber in Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator (1940), rather than Cipolla, as their example, Horkheimer and Adorno’s characterisation of fascist dictators applies well in some respects to the grotesque anti-hero of Mario und der Zauberer: 23 Kurt G. W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped The Blood Purge, London: Jarrolds, 1938, pp. 22-23. Such was the emotional power of Nazi ritual and spectacle that, at a Nuremberg rally, even the French ambassador became a National Socialist for a few moments. See André FrançoisPoncet, Botschafter in Berlin 1931-1938, trans. Erna Stübel, 2nd edn, Berlin, Darmstadt and Vienna: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft, 1962, p. 308. Die faschistischen Herren von heute sind nicht sowohl Übermenschen als [...] Schnittpunkte der identischen Reaktionsweisen Ungezählter. Wenn in der Psychologie der heutigen Massen der Führer nicht sowohl den Vater mehr darstellt als die kollektive und ins Unmäßige gesteigerte Projektion des ohnmächtigen Ichs eines jeden Einzelnen, dann entsprechen dem die Führergestalten in der Tat. Sie sehen nicht umsonst wie Friseure, Provinzschauspieler und Revolverjournalisten aus. [...] [sie sind] die Leerstellen, auf die gerade die Macht gefallen ist. [...] Im Kampf gegen den Faschismus ist nicht das geringste Anliegen, die aufgedunsenen Führerimaginés auf das Maß ihrer Nichtigkeit zurückzuführen. Chaplins Film hat wenigstens in der Ähnlichkeit zwischen dem Gettobarbier und dem Diktator etwas Wesentliches getroffen.24 Cipolla is a figure of genuine menace, however, unlike the disarming, likeable clown Chaplin portrays as ‘the great dictator’. The key to Mann’s diagnosis of the psychology of fascism in Mario und der Zauberer lies not in the figure of Cipolla, however, but in that of the critically detached narrator. The narrator neither succumbs to Cipolla’s Dionysian mind-games – he cannot, if their terrifying effect on the audience is to be adequately conveyed –, nor does he resist them. He simply observes and registers them with cool, Apollonian detachment, tinged with fascination. The detachment which enables him to narrate so lucidly prevents him from acting or intervening. Mario und der Zauberer contains an obvious warning of the power of fascism over the masses. Less obviously, perhaps, and more self-critically, it warns that this power can ‘induce in even the intelligent, cultured, critical observer a sense of fascinated helplessness’.25 Thomas Mann’s construction of disaster in Mario und der Zauberer is as poised and consummately controlled as it had been in Der Tod in Venedig. Yet this seasoned, detached traveller in the land of the irrational was already sensing that elegant prose and formal control would be no match for the storm of unreason that was about to break over Germany. Mario und der Zauberer suggests that Mann already knows, as early as 1930, both where the battle lines are being drawn and how one-sided the coming battle is likely to be. 24 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente, Amsterdam: Querido, 1947, pp. 282-83. 25 Ronald C. Speirs, ‘The Embattled Intellect’, p. 35.