Nonpolitical Mann? Faustian Bargains and False Romanticism in Colm Tóibín’s The Magician

AbstractAbstractThis essay explores how Colm Toíbín’s biographical novel The Magician, alongside Thomas Mann’s own writings, exposes contradictions in Mann’s definition of “nonpolitical,” the relationship to today’s culture wars, the risks of virtue signaling and cancel culture, and the Faustian bargain of literary fame and external validation versus empathy and real human connection. Building on her study, Derivative Lives: Biofiction, Uncertainty, and Speculative Risk in Contemporary Spanish Narrative, Rademacher argues that what biofiction does especially well is to illuminate powerful spaces of uncertainty. Such gaps of knowledge and “not seeing” are not internalized, apolitical actions, but expose unsettled, contentious questions that continue to act on our lives. Within this framework, it is fear of and retreat from the uncertain that complicates Mann’s thinking and fiction. Toíbín’s novel exposes how Thomas Mann internalized a false Romanticism that rationalized personal and political forms of detachment and disengagement. In turn, the biofiction reveals how individuals become lost when they use imagination not as a means of contesting reality to understand the always incomplete and evolving nature of the human condition, but in order to conceal or evade this inquiry—deepening deceptive fictions.Keywords: Colm Tóibínbiofictionbiographical novel Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Mann, “Germany and the Germans,” 6. I use Romanticism (capitalized) to refer to the specific literary movement and romanticism (small r) to refer to the broader concepts associated with such thought.2 McCann, “Contested Realities,” 138–139; emphasis added.3 Lackey, Biofiction, 15.4 Mann, “Thoughts in Wartime,” 506.5 In his review of the 2021 edition of Reflections (with a foreword by Mark Lilla), Beha maintains that “by the time Mann published ‘Thoughts in Wartime’ in 1914, most observers recognized the war as a moral and human disaster, and the response to this intervention was scathing.” Among the harshest critics was Mann’s older brother, Heinrich (“Thomas Mann”).6 Tóibín, The Magician, 57.7 Tóibín, The Magician, 145.8 Mann, Reflections, 23.9 Mann, Reflections, 255.10 Mann, Reflections, 487.11 Mann, Reflections, 23.12 Mann, Reflections, 217, 221.13 Mann, Reflections, 22.14 Mann, Reflections, 22–23.15 Mann, Reflections, 22.16 Mann, Reflections, 24.17 Mann, Reflections, 27.18 Mann, Reflections, 28.19 Mikics, “Against Politics.”20 Kirsch, “Thomas Mann’s Dilemma.”21 Mann, Reflections, 22. In Kirsch’s article above, Christopher Beha is cited and contends, for example, that a highly relevant aspect of Mann’s Reflections relates to contemporary conflicts over the responsibility or contrasting instrumentalization of art and culture to political purposes: “the idea that we do damage to life’s most important elements when we use them instrumentally, for political ends, poses a real challenge to our moment, obsessed as it is with the political responsibility of the artist.”22 Mann, Reflections, 273.23 Tóibín, The Magician, 152.24 Ross has noted that, although he stopped short of disavowing the work, as the years went by, Mann “became increasingly embarrassed by ‘Reflections,’ worrying that it had contributed to Germany’s slide into Nazism” (“Thomas Mann’s Brush”). Mikics observes that Mann’s “embarrassment” about the “tome, cantankerous and unwieldy as it is, can’t be shrugged off so easily,” even while “the usual tactic is to call Reflections an aberration corrected by Mann himself after World War I, when he became a defender of the Weimar Republic” (“Against Politics”). Krul argues that how thorough and decisive Mann’s change of thinking was “remains a matter of debate. On the one hand, it is often argued that his wartime Reflections are a deeply ambivalent work,” which “below the nationalistic surface” contained “many ideas on politics and culture that lent themselves to a cosmopolitan and more or less democratic interpretation. The argument, however, can be reversed: if his allegiance to the Weimar Republic was based on the sentiments that dominated the Reflections, then perhaps his new loyalty was only pragmatic and superficial. At heart he remained attached to authoritarian and elitist concepts of government” (“Conservatism, Republicanism, and Romanticism,” 217). I take the view that Mann’s politics did change, but that his essential conservatism, reflected through his reuse of the same romantic tropes of Reflections for different arguments, did not.25 Tóibín, The Magician, 188, 191, 193, 194, 195; emphasis added.26 Lackey, “Unresolving Characters in Biofiction.”.27 Lackey, “Unresolving Characters in Biofiction.”28 For a comprehensive exploration of this topic, see Rademacher, Derivative Lives. While drawing on examples from contemporary Spanish biographical novels, this work speaks universally to the rich field of biofiction in relation to concepts of uncertainty, speculation, and risk in a post-truth age.29 Tóibín, The Magician, 191.30 Tóibín, The Magician, 192–193.31 Tóibín, The Magician, 193.32 Niedenthal, “An Interview.”33 Buruma, “Cosmopolitanism.” As Krul has observed (see subsequent note), in 1924, Mann wrote an open letter to Ricarda Huch, the author of a two-volume history of German Romanticism. In it, he defended a humanist cosmopolitanism and “‘gender-bending’ in which the spheres of the sexes were no longer opposed but complementary and compatible.” Nonetheless, in this same letter, “he still hoped to keep his right-wing readers on board. His ideal was the coming of a Third Reich, he said, the reign of a ‘religious humanism.’ The term was popular in conservative circles. Soon it would be one of the most successful slogans in Nazi propaganda” (“Conservatism, Republicanism, and Romanticism,” 227; emphasis added).34 Krul, “Conservatism, Republicanism, and Romaniticism,” 232. Krul has further noted: “When the parties of the Right successfully supported the election of Field Marshal Hindenburg as President of the Republic in 1925, Mann referred to it as a ‘scandalous exploitation of the Romantic inclinations of the German people.’ In 1928 he described the Nazi agitation as a ‘Romanticism consisting purely in dynamics, a celebration of catastrophe for its own sake.’ Romanticism, once thought of as a solution to Germany’s political dilemmas, now became a problem of its own” (232).35 Cercas, “Resisting the ‘Dictatorship,’” 50.36 Cercas, “Resisting the ‘Dictatorship,’” 55.37 Tóibín, The Magician, 229; emphasis added.38 Tóibín, The Magician, 239.39 Tóibín, The Magician, 294; emphasis added.40 Niedenthal, “An Interview.”41 Boswell, “What Is Politics?”42 Tóibín, The Magician, 147.43 Tóibín, The Magician, 147.44 Tóibín, The Magician, 149.45 Niedenthal, “An Interview.”46 Tóibín, The Magician, 123.47 Tóibín, The Magician, 149.48 Tóibín, The Magician, 104, 321, 334, 345.49 Tóibín, The Magician, 476.50 Tóibín, The Magician, 181, 263.51 Tóibín, The Magician, 240–241.52 Tóibín, The Magician, 181.53 Tóibín, The Magician, 279.54 Tóibín, The Magician, 159.55 Tóibín, The Magician, 414.56 Tóibín, The Magician, 251.57 Tóibín, The Magician, 433.58 Tóibín, The Magician, 380.59 Tóibín, The Magician, 380.60 Tóibín, The Magician, 361.61 Tóibín, The Magician, 380–381.62 Mann, “Germany and the Germans,” 5–6.63 Mann, “Germany and the Germans,” 5–6.64 Tóibín, The Magician, 407.65 Mann, “Germany and the Germans,” 7, 6.66 Mann, “Germany and the Germans,” 18. Notably, Tóibín includes a slightly different translation: “There are not two Germanies, a bad one and a good one, but only one, in which the best qualities have been corrupted with diabolical cunning into evil. The evil Germany is the good one in misfortune and guilt, the good Germany perverted and overthrown” (The Magician, 406–407).67 Tóibín, The Magician, 407.68 Mann, “Germany and the Germans,” 14.69 Mann, “Germany and the Germans,” 20.70 Bahr, Weimar on the Pacific, 249.71 Scaff, “The Duplicity.”72 Tóibín, The Magician, 419.73 Tóibín, The Magician, 419; emphasis added.74 Tóibín, The Magician, 420; emphasis added.75 Tóibín, The Magician, 448.76 Tóibín, The Magician, 451.77 Tóibín, The Magician, 453.78 Tóibín, The Magician, 453.79 Tóibín, The Magician, 453.80 Tóibín, The Magician, 454.81 Tóibín, The Magician, 461.82 Tóibín, The Magician, 461.83 Tóibín, The Magician, 469, 381.84 Tóibín, The Magician, 471.85 Mann, “Germany and the Germans,” 18.86 Niedenthal, “An Interview.”87 Mann, “Germany and the Germans,” 6.