Faustus - Leverkuhn As Witness

Leverkühn as Witness: The Holocaust in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus
Author(s): Paul Eisenstein

Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 325-346
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German
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PAUL EISENSTEIN
OtterbeinCollege
Leverkiihn as Witness:
The Holocaust in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus
I to each and every historical or artistic rep-

resentation, for poststructuralism, this is
Nearly everyone who reflects on the precisely the progressive kernel that con-
Holocaust agrees on the need to remember stitutes its contribution to an ethics of his-
so as not to repeat. This consensus, of torical memory. In other words, it is this
course, has not made the enterprise of inadequacy, this limit, that prevents any
memory any less vexing. When we remem- total account and that necessitates the pro-
ber, when we seek to mark some aspect of liferation and dissemination of more and
the event, we might be saving history from more narratives of the Holocaust-all of
oblivion, but as events of recent decades which are asked to demonstrate a measure
indicate, there is no automatic link be- of self-reflexivity, some sign that such nar-
tween our efforts and the prevention of fu- ratives are aware of the particularity of
ture catastrophes.1 The question still re- their construction. For thinkers from
mains as to what kind of remembering is Adorno to Derrida to Lyotard, the fore-
implied here. The persistence of this ques- grounding of the particularity of subject
tion is perhaps explainable enough: Given position, the refusal (or endless deferral) of
the inability of thought to comprehend the identity between Particular and Universal,
enormity of the horror, there is no way for forms the very basis for an ethics that
our attempt to bear witness to be adequate would make another Auschwitz impossi-
to the experience itself, to the "way it really ble. The refusal or endless deferral of the
was." Immediately after (and even during) point of nondifference is, for such thinkers,
the Holocaust, people felt that their words part and parcel of an antifascist ethos. In
could not be adequate to the horror of the his Negative Dialektik, for instance, Ador-
event itself. Today, after poststructuralist no claims that any representation of the
theorizing, we know this theoretically; this Holocaust that does not admit its particu-
felt sense of inadequacy informs our very larity, that does not measure itself by what
inquiry into history. Condemned to par- eludes it, is "vorweg vom Schlag der Be-
ticularity by the unsymbolizable dimen- gleitmusik, mit welcher die SS die Schreie
sion of history, every historical narrative ihrer Opfer zu iibertinen liebte" (358). The
becomes, in Hayden White's now familiar progressive possibilities of this theoretical
term, an emplotment, and every artistic stance for a genuine engagement with the
representation must be regarded not as the Holocaust are not difficult to detect. For if
product of an essential, transhistorical vi- every approach is to be measured by what
sion, but rather as the product of a limited, eludes it, then there is something in the
discursive, subject position. History has be- very relation between thought and history
come memory. that is forever ongoing. There is, in other
If this transformation has had the effect words, no way to be over and done with an
of lending a sense of insufficiency or failure event like the Holocaust, no final meaning
The German Quarterly 70.4 (Fall 1997) 325

326 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Fall 1997
ever to be recouped from it. On the con- for relativization and apology? When, in
trary, the Holocaust becomes, as Dominick other words, does the insistence on particu-
LaCapra argues, the site of perpetual larity become a vehicle to recoup "mean-
"working-through" (64)-an effort which ing" and to guarantee the consistency of
he claims depends fundamentally on an ac- identity? This is precisely the question re-
knowledgement of the multiple subject po- cently raised by Omer Bartov, who notes
sitions involved in transferential relations the manner in which proponents of particu-
with it. In Representing the Holocaust: His- larity are "paradoxically forced together
tory, Theory, Trauma, LaCapra writes, and-mostly very much against their will
"working-through requires the recognition and better judgment-found sharing their
that we are involved in transferential rela- scholarly abodes with very strange bedfel-
tions to the past in ways that vary according lows indeed" (118). For Bartov, particular-
to the subject-positions we find ourselves izers and relativists, "though without any
in, rework, and invent" (64). The role of the visible direct ties, are part of the same in-
historian-witness, LaCapra says, "is not a tellectual discourse" (132). In his introduc-
full identity but at most a subject-position tion to Probing the Limits of Represen-
that should be complemented, supple- tation: Nazism and the "Final Solution"
mented, and even contested by other sub- -the most comprehensive attempt to
ject-positions" (10). Staking memory upon think through the dilemmas occasioned by
the particularity of subject-positions, La- this discourse-Saul Friedlander frames
Capra perhaps best exemplifies the ad- the decisive challenge for Holocaust stud-
vance represented by postmodernism's ies: Once you turn history into the product
challenge to the stability of history and his- of multiple, particular interpretations, how
torical inquiry. Dispensing with the unified do you stop these interpretations from
subject who was once the knower of a ra- crossing certain political and ethical lines?
tional and transparent history, LaCapra re- Friedlander writes:
places the closure and sense of community
gained by unself-conscious historical rep- The challengehas become more percepti-
resentations with a notion of trauma as the ble duringthe last two decades,as the re-
repressed dimension of redemptive narra- sult of ongoing shaping and reshapingof
tives of the Holocaust. the image of the Nazi epoch. During the
The very theoretical insight that was seventies, film and literature opened the
supposed to ensure a more genuine con- way to some sort of new discourse.Histori-
frontation with the Holocaust-the incom- ography followed and the mid-eighties
witnessed heated debates about new in-
mensurability between word and what
terpretations of the "Final Solution" in
happened-has not, however, made the ter- (the best known of these debates
rain any less contested. If in theory, the history
being the German "historians"'contro-
turn to the particular was supposed to in-
versy) and, in more general terms, about
fuse the act of memory with a dose of the properhistoricizationof National So-
trauma, it has in fact created another set cialism, that is, of "Auschwitz."In these
of problems entirely-opening the way (in- various domains new narratives about
advertently or not) for particular historici- Nazism came to the fore, new forms of
zations (what some would call mythologi- representation appeared. In many cases
zations) of the event driven by apologetic they seemed to test implicit boundaries
or ideological ends. It is, I think, fair to say and to raise not only aesthetic and intel-
that this problem is perhaps more vexing lectual problems,but moralissues too. (2)
than any other in Holocaust studies: To
what extent does an insistence on particu- The crux of the complication is this: When,
larity and context begin to grant a license in the name of antifascism, we do away

EISENSTEIN:Leverkifihn as Witness 327
with a traditionalbelief in historical truth the absolute form of his final masterpiece,
and representation, when we disavow the anticipates and addresses the most sensi-
possibility of some totalizing master nar- tive and long-standing moral and philo-
rative,2how are we to ensure that our ac- sophical tension concerning artistic repre-
counts are not being put to ideological or sentation and its relation to horror. Lever-
apologetic ends? How, in other words, are kiihn's art bears witness to the real of
we to ensure the place of trauma in the act historical suffering-not by holding back
of bearing witness to the Holocaust? within symbolization, by gesturing toward
It is my claim, in the following essay, a limit, or by acknowledging the limitation
that one way out of this impasse is to re- of individual perspective, but rather by ex-
cover the very totalizing impulse repudi- ercising thought so absolutely that sym-
ated by postmodern historiography and bolization itself is pushed to the brink of
postmodern aesthetics. My claim is simply horror. To read the novel in this manner is
this: That memory work in fact depends not only to provide a corrective to long-
upon our willingness to occupy a totalizing standing opinions in Thomas Mann schol-
position-not as a means for replicating to- arship regarding the moral and aesthetic
talitarian violence against particularity, nature and function of Mann's fictitious
but rather as the point at which we, as composer, and thus of the novel itself, but
human subjects, fully engage the unsym- also to provide an example of how we might
bolizable trauma of the Holocaust. To re- profitably address the question of how to
cover this position for progressive memory bear witness to-to represent-the Holo-
work is to recover the name synonymous caust.
with it: Hegel. Rather than see Hegel in the
way dominant poststructuralist thinkers
have-as wanton totalizer who eliminates II
all difference-we must see Hegel's insis-
tence on totality as, in fact, an insistence Zeitblom's introduction of the cremato-
that we bear witness to the unsymbolizable ria in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus
dimension of history. When Hegel insists comes in a paradigmatic way: to further the
again and again in his philosophy that we analogy between the subject of his biogra-
must retain what is finite and begin to re- phy, Adrian Leverkfihn, and the country
gard it as Absolute, he is arguing not for that did the cremating, Germany. It is 25
the superior, self-satisfied position of the April 1945, and "ein transatlantischer
Absolute Spirit, but, on the contrary, for General," Zeitblom reports, has forced the
that experience in which we recognize that population of Weimar to march past the
the Universal, the order of thought itself, ovens at Buchenwald. For Zeitblom, the
is incomplete. Thus, when we occupy a day-or better, "die Zeiten ... diejenige, in
totalizing position, we do not achieve a der ich schreibe"-is linked irrevocably
static, transcendental position of substan- with the period that his biography has now
tial knowledge; on the contrary, we bear reached: Adrian's final composition, Dr.
witness to the unsymbolizable trauma of Fausti Weheklage. Those years, he says,
the real. A modern exemplar of this kind of
witness resides in a place we perhaps would gehortenja schon dem Heraufsteigenund
not think first of looking-in Thomas Umsichgreifen dessen an, was sich dann
des Landes bemichtigte und nun in Blut
Mann's early postwar novel Doktor Fau- und Flammen untergeht.
stus, and in the artist that is that novel's Es waren fiir Adrian LeverkfihnJahre
principle subject-Adrian Leverkiihn. einer ungeheueren und hocherregten,
Though Leverkiihn dies before the geno- man ist versucht, zu sagen: monstr6sen,
cide even begins, his art, and specifically den teilnehmenden Anwohner selbst in

einer Art von Taumel dahinreit3enden Of crucial importance in this response is

schapferischenAktivitait.(732) the way it typifies a certain engagement
with history. Zeitblom, it would appear, is
The suggestion of fascism in this parallel less concerned with the pictured victims of
is not difficult to detect: the "monstrise Nazism than he is with the question, or
schdpferische Aktivittit" of the composer possibility, of German redemption or dam-
Adrian Leverkiihn dizzies a sympathetic nation. This is by no means an innocent
onlooker such as Zeitblom in the same way facet of his personality, and it explains the
the "monstrdse schdpferische Aktivitat" underlying motivation for the correspon-
of National Socialism dizzied, say, the dence he sets up between the career of
population of Weimar. Zeitblom's analo- Adrian and the trajectory of Germany.
gy-and this is not the only instance of That correspondence enables Zeitblom to
it-directs our reading of the novel in two displace the actual source of his con-
critical ways: It fundamentally implicates flict-Germany's embracing of fascism
Leverkiihn's art in German fascism and it and its execution of genocide-to a realm
turns Mann's novel into an inquiry into once removed from it, to the biography of
the relation, apropos of the criminal, be- a bedeviled artist. Adrian's final works,
tween guilt and grace. Leverkiihn's art, in along with the Holocaust itself, here oc-
other words, as part and parcel of the domi- cupy identical positions: Those who com-
nation and extermination, is such that its mitted them must pray for their souls,
creator-like the population of Weimar once pure, now defiled. This is the para-
-has reached the point where he must digmatic Zeitblomian response to the
take up the Faustian predicament of a events which appear to defile. They do not
choice between eternal damnation and suggest a defilement to which we have al-
mercy. ways been subject; rather, they become oc-
There is, for Zeitblom of course, a great casions for the romantic reaffirmation of
deal at stake in having Adrian take up this a soul which exists free from any pact with
question, for it is in fact the one he is con- the Devil. For Zeitblom, the events that
cerned to take up apropos of Germany. Now defile must be referred to the Faustian
that the torture chambers have been bro- situation-i.e., must be made the subject
ken open and foreign commissions inspect of a drama about guilt and grace. For the
the incredible photographs, is Germany, narrator of Doktor Faustus, history be-
like Adrian Leverkiihn, eternally damned? comes this drama, and those who lie ut-
terly outside of it-the murdered Jews, for
Denn ist es bloBe Hypochondrie,sich zu instance-are the casualties of a crucial
sagen, dab3alles Deutschtum, auch der elision.
deutsche Geist, der deutsche Gedanke, Zeitblom's move from the death camps
das deutsche Wort von dieser entehren- to the theological problem of Faust is for
den BloBstellungmitbetroffenund in tie- this reason troubling, and yet the proper
fe Fragwiirdigkeit gestiirzt worden ist?
response to it cannot be to relegate the vic-
Ist es krankhafteZerknirschung,die Fra- tims as well to the drama of Faust. Egon
ge sich vorzulegen,wie uiberhauptnoch in
Zukunft "Deutschland"in irgend einer Schwarz, for instance, is correct to note the
seiner Erscheinungenes sich soll heraus- problem in Zeitblom commending Lever-
nehmen diirfen, in menschlichenAngele- kiuhn and his worshippers to divine mercy
genheiten den Mund aufzutun? ... [U]nd while glossing over Jewish victims, and yet
was nur immer auf deutsch gelebt hat, his critique, too, transfers the question
steht da als ein Abscheu und als Beispiel raised by the places of extermination to the
des Bosen. (730) terrain of a positivist religious problematic.
"Arethe Jewish outsiders," Schwartz asks,

EISENSTEIN:Leverkiihn as Witness 329
"included in the plea for mercy or must attempt to allegorize German history along
they stay outside once more? That is the Faustian lines: Regardless of its variations
question" (138). Schwartz suggests here with respect to outcome,3 in raising the
that Zeitblom's exclusion is the anti-Se- question of grace (divine or otherwise), the
mitic act par excellence; in true German legend tacitly maintains the existence of a
fashion, according to this reasoning, force which deals in damnation and mercy,
Mann's novel once more relegates Jews to and which, in so dealing, links us all. Mann
the status of outsiders. Schwartz's critique, himself experienced this appeal-he re-
however, rests on a key misunderstanding sponded sharply to those who did not see
of anti-Semitism as that which designates the novel's "Christian character"4-and
and maintains the Jew as outsider. At the that experience points to the deep formal
most obvious level of anti-Semitic ideol- need the Faustian drama meets. This same
ogy-the level of its slogans- this is clearly need drives Zeitblom to turn "Das Leben
the case: The Jew is regarded as "the eter- des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Lever-
nal blood-sucker," the "parasite" attached kilhn" into an examination of a soul sold to
to an otherwise pure and sound social or- the Devil. In this turn, Zeitblom is able tac-
ganism (Hitler 310, 304). At a deeper level, itly to maintain the existence of an angelic
however, these slogans serve an opposite soul (Adrian's/Germany's) prior to its cor-
function that is in fact the deeper ground ruption, and to incorporate more easily into
of anti-Semitism: the Jew is made the out- his (and Mann's) symbolic universe, then,
sider so that the place outside the social the unspeakable dimensions that consti-
order can be known and given a body, so tute that corruption-i.e., one can, if only
that the real outside not be traumatically for a moment, feel connected to Adrian
encountered as the place of a void. If this Leverkiihn; one can, at least, pray for his
second level is, in fact, the level of the real soul.
anti-Semitic act, then to include Jewish vic- To incorporate the victims of the Holo-
tims in a larger petition for grace would be caust into the Faustian drama-to speak of
to perform a gesture analogous to it, be- including them, too, in a plea for mercy-
cause both have their source in the need to would be to grant ourselves as well the com-
mitigate the encounter with the place of forts of such prayer. For Zeitblom, these
that which is utterly outside the symbolic fruits are not insignificant. As the novel's
order and the body that happens to occupy ultimate line of prayer makes clear-
it-the emaciated and inscrutable Jewish "Gott sei euerer armen Seele gnaidig,mein
corpse, for instance. To return to Zeit- Freund, mein Vaterland" (773)-the peti-
blom's failure to memorialize the Holo- tion for grace enables Zeitblom to salvage
caust, the point is not that his plea for a felt connection to his country as much as
mercy is not comprehensive enough. It is to Adrian. This feeling is one of the payoffs
instead that the very discussion of mercy-- of the Faustian application, and even the
or damnation, for that matter-in the con- Holocaust is caught up in it, enfolded
text of the Holocaust represents an attempt within a rationalism that must maintain,
to save an ordering system in the face of it would appear, a "we" at all costs: If "we"
the catastrophe that shatters it, to bring were once the land of poets and thinkers,
inside that which is outside. At stake for now "we" are the penitent who must pray.
Zeitblom is precisely this system, the very Zeitblom's predicament is the one Mann
category of grace--and the Being who felt in exile-how to retain a kind of hu-
might bestow it-and one way of preserv- manistic feeling in the face of the terrifying
ing it is to keep it alive in the form of a German atrocity?-and what becomes
problem. Herein perhaps lies the enduring clear in it is the way a humanism charged
appeal of the Faust legend, or of the very with delivering this feeling slips into a form

of nationalism. In this feeling of commu- core disposition (rooted in moderation of

nity lies the shared basis of Zeitblom's mind and body, in the piety of culture, and
humanism and German nationalism. Zeit- in the tenets of classical humanism) is in
blom must incorporate the two most por- fact the conflict between duty and desire.
tentous threats to this feeling-Adrian To the end, Zeitblom refuses the risk en-
Leverkfihn and the murdered Jews-into tailed in the latter.
the decidedly German drama of Faust be- Despite his public act of disobedience
cause his feeling of connection can survive then-Zeitblom has resigned his post in a
only within this more nationalistic focus. German university-and despite the de-
It is precisely the nation qua "natural" en- struction of his country and the destruction
tity that is at stake in the Faustian appli- of European Jewry, Mann's narrator still
cation. carries on his life for the cosmic force that
Such an entity yields a feeling of belong- he imagines links us all. Throughout Dok-
ing that is its raison d'etre. The guarantor tor Faustus, dutifulness delivers what it al-
of this feeling is, of course, the imagined ways does-a way to sustain the real exist-
auditor of Zeitblom's prayers, the Big ence of some unifying principle before
Other which grants consistency to his life, which we experience essential solidarity.
his teaching, and his understanding of his- Although his humanism may not entail tra-
tory. Zeitblom here reveals in an exemplary ditional belief in God per se, the unifying
way the hidden underside of prayer, namely principle to which Zeitblom clings serves
that we never pray for those we say we are the same (God/Father) function; were it not
praying for. We pray, instead, for the Third there, there would be no one to obey. This
Party without whom we cannot imagine is precisely why obedience must be made
our lives, and without whom consistent universal: No one should see that it is not
identities (like "teacher,""German,""schol- there, that this transcendent, unifyingprin-
ar," or "father") are impossible. Zeitblom's ciple does not exist. And more importantly,
prayer for friend and Fatherland is pre- God himself should not see it. One critical
cisely for this Third Party, and it fulfills two way of maintaining the illusion lies in guilt
critical functions. It brings the deeds of itself. Simply put, guilt unifies, and in so
both Leverkfihn and the Nazis into a doing, preserves the essential identity of a
framework that maintains positive notions unifying principle. The feeling of guilt is,
of a transcendent essence, and more impor- to use one of Zeitblom's phrases, "religi6s
tantly, it maintains Zeitblom's fidelity to produktiv" (420); it provides a core consis-
the injunction inherent in that essence--to tency upon which community depends. All
obey. In this light, the entire project of Dok- the more reason, then, to emplot Lever-
tor Faustus might be seen as Zeitblom's kiihn and Nazi Germany within a long nar-
steadfast attempt to remain loyal to the dic- rative of original German sin. As Etienne
tates of this essence, to reap the enjoyment, Balibar points out, in the historical produc-
the consistency of identity, of doing one's tion of the people, or of national individu-
duty. The self-doubt he evinces with respect ality, the constitution of a new unity de-
to competency, the fear and dread and hor- pends upon a model of unity that must be
ror he invokes to explain his "'Fehlerhaf- seen to "anticipate" that constitution-the
ten' Vortragstechnik" (440), is nothing but Faustian personality for instance in which
Zeitblom's feeling that he may not be able "we" Germans have always been "at home"
to write Leverkiihn's biography and be obe- (94). This is the source which, Zeitblom
dient at the same time. The conflict be- would have us believe, supposedly illumi-
tween the demonic, which Zeitblom says he nates the link between the Leverktihnian
has "jederzeit als entschieden wesens- and Nazi catastrophe: Both are derived
fremd empfunden" (10), and Zeitblom's from some Faustian urge, some originary

guilt for having made a pact with the Devil. not here that his engagement with the
Zeitblom reflects upon just this source Holocaust is most suspect? If at first glance
when he says that one would be hard- Zeitblom's humanism-his belief in the le-
pressed to see the "Blutstaat"of the Nazis gitimacy of man's self-reverence-seems to
as something forced, or as "etwas unserer waver in his indictment of Germany for its
Volksnatur durchaus Fremdes": fascist crimes, it does not do so in another,
more critical sense. Zeitblom may indeed
War diese Herrschaft nicht nach Worten feel guilt and shame upon hearing news of
und Taten nur die verzerrte, verp6belte, the atrocities-he ratifies Eisenhower's
verscheuBlichteWahrwerdungeiner Ge- declaration that the people ofWeimar were
sinnung und Weltbeurteilung, der man as guilty for Buchenwald as those who ac-
charakterliche Echtheit zuerkennen
muB, und die der christlich-humane tually administered the camp-but it is still
Mensch nicht ohne Scheu in den Zilgen guilt and shame of a dutiful nature. It is
unserer GroBen, der an Figur gewaltig- guilt and shame for the Big Other still ca-
sten Verk6rperungen des Deutschtums pable of conferring a patriotic feeling, how-
ausgepraigtfindet? (731) ever perverse, and a consistent postwar
German identity. It is, we might say, guilt
The notion of a kind of "national" original and shame for Eisenhower (and for the
sin which establishes essential guilt here Allies), thus Zeitblom's esteem for the
carries out a clandestine mission. Far from latter and for the "community" the latter
destroying the notion of a Big Other who unwittingly creates in which Zeitblom is
has chosen Germany for some solidifying able to participate.5 In other words, Zeit-
task, the Faustian urge as essential (or blom doesn't think Eisenhower's action is
original) German sin keeps it alive. It is unjust because the performance that fol-
one way of refusing to permit history to lows from it gives Zeitblom a chance to join
put one at risk. The connection not to be with his countrymen: "Mbgen sie schauen
missed here pertains to "original sin" -ich schaue mit ihnen, ich lasse mich
more generally, and the way it serves to schieben im Geiste von ihren stumpfen
mask the Big Other's nonexistence. As Sla- oder auch schaudernden Reihen" (729-
voj 2iiek, in Enjoy Your Symptom!, writes: 30). His humanism, in other words, has be-
come the inverse of itself: Only the content
The sense of man's "original sin" is pre- of his conception of obedience has changed;
cisely to spare Him [God]the existence of formally, it remains the same. If, before, the
his "inexistence" (inconsistency, impo- Big Other was one before whom we revered
tence) by assuming guilt. The logicof "ori- ourselves, it is now one before whom we
ginal sin" is thereforeagain:better for me feel disgraced and dishonored.6
to be throughout guilty than for Him to It is precisely here in the context of this
learn about His death. (41) inversion that a connection emerges which
crystallizes Doktor Faustus's incisive in-
Several questions here follow. Is not this sight into fascism and into a way of orient-
the logic that describes Zeitblom's response ing ourselves as rememberers of the Holo-
to Nazi barbarism? Are not all ofZeitblom's caust and history. I am speaking here about
explanations concerning his "nature"-his the crucial feature which Zeitblom and Na-
open embracing of what he calls the tional Socialism have in common: the need
"wiirdigen Reiche der Humaniora" where to continue to act obediently for the Big
one is "sicher vor solchem Spuk" (35)-the Other, and the need to organize and/or
explanations of a man who quite simply eliminate those in their midst who suggest
wants to spare this unifying force, this Big an ontological void in the very place of that
Other, the news of its nonexistence? Is it Other. It is aneed to turn every contingency

into a meaningful sign. Both the perpetra- mercy of a kind of senseless chaos, and that
tion of the horror and the attempt to bear any attempt to order and to make meaning
witness to it thus have in common the dis- of our relation to that chaos which does not
avowal of the traumatic kernel of non- acknowledge its utter contingency, or "stu-
meaning at the heart of the human world. pidity," is already affiliated with the fan-
The odd man out in this equation, of course, tasy of fascism.9
is the artist who forces himself toward an This recognition of Adrian as a kind of
encounter with-who bears witness to-- anticipatory, exemplary witness to the
this traumatic kernel: Adrian Leverkifihn. trauma of the Holocaust reverses radically
It is Adrian who understands the silliness the critical doxa on the mythical composer.
-recall here his laughter at would-be That doxa, following Mann's own state-
meaningful orders-of believing in a Big ments and Zeitblom's analogizing, almost
Other who possesses the truth of our de- religiously links Leverkiihn's career with
sire, and for this reason, he must be seen fascist Germany in order to establish the
as not of the fascist's party, but rather as artist's guilt. Patrick Carnegy sees Adrian,
anticipating a manner of bearing witness for instance, as "errant Germany" (29).
to that party's victims. By orienting him- Gunilla Bergsten says that "Germany be-
self toward the place of trauma, by bearing comes Adrian Leverkiihn" (128). Erich
witness to the unsymbolizable dimension Heller argues that Leverkiihn is Mann's
of murder and human suffering, Adrian way of showing how artistic freedom "so
appears to be the one who truly under- easily deteriorates into ... an alliance with
stands perhaps the most significant cause the very powers of evil" (24). And Herbert
of the genocide-the desire to identify and Lehnert, more recently, in claiming that
to eliminate a body responsible for the sym- Leverkiuhn's "anti-conventional pride
bolic order's constitutive instability. But translates into removal of his art from hu-
his encounter with this place is not-as it man concerns" (13) contends that Adrian's
is for fascism-a way to guarantee the so- "imposition of artistic order is represented
cio-symbolic order, and this is why it exem- as an analogy to totalitarian power" (8).10
plifies an ethics of historical memory. In (For Lehnert, Zeitblom is not in the novel
short, Adrian "goes all the way" in the at- to be distrusted; he is there to balance a
tempt to bear witness to what is unsym- "radical cultural pessimism" [15].) The
bolizable; rather than remaining within mistake in these obvious readings of
the confines of a subject position con- Mann's novel lies in their inability to note
structed by language, Adrian risks his very Adrian's fundamental recognition of what
place within language.7 Despite the obvious both Zeitblom and Nazism never recognize,
import of his statement of intent then,8 of what I am arguing is crucial to our efforts
what Mann has given us-unwittingly or to bear witness to the Holocaust, namely,
otherwise-is a character who, prior to the that there is always something arbitrary
Holocaust, already exemplifies a manner of and utterly senseless about our ways of ex-
bearing witness to it. periencing and ordering our existence in
That is to say, Leverkiihn qua artist the world, that the nonexistence of the
risks his very place in the symbolic order Big Other is a truth of our human condi-
in order to testify to the place of the real--a tion which leaves us frail and constitu-
place soon to be occupied by the extermi- tionally incapable of completion. The point
nated Jews-which lies outside of it. He to be made apropos of Adrian's "imposi-
already knows what a number of contem- tion of artistic order"-Arnold Schoenberg's
porary representations of the Holocaust, twelve-tone system of composition to be
on both the left and the right, continue to discussed shortly-concerns precisely this:
disavow: that we live in the world at the the impossibility of completion, and conse-

EISENSTEIN:Leverkifihn as Witness 333
quently, the stupidity or silliness of those In refusing this sacrifice, Leverkiihn's

forms which promise or perform the deliv- art points beneath itself to the abyss for
erance. By exaggerating the very act of or- which it stands. It is, of course, Adrian's art
dering, Adrian's art demonstrates itself to that again and again exposes the stupidity
be utterly antithetical to the workings of of those systems that attempt to fill out the
totalitarianism. His response to the horror void marking our relation to nature, to his-
of the human situation-i.e., that we live tory, and to ourselves. The very progression
at the mercy of an imbecilic order or else of the forms he develops and employs is
we do not live at all-could not be more determined by the desire to expose, at the
different than that of German fascism. He level of technique, the arbitrariness of
furthers the imbecility of order, and laughs; one's choice of technique. This dynamic, of
Nazism posits a pure, natural (Aryan) or- course, is what gives the lie to the self-suf-
der, and sets out to exterminate those be- ficient work of art, and to the entirety of
lieved to be in the way of its achievement. the symbolic universe, which is why the
The recognition of order's "stupidity" sig- artist who would expose it is akin-as the
nifies not a removal from human concerns, Devil puts it-to the criminal and the mad-
but an approach to them at their deepest man. "Meinst du," the Devil asks Adrian,
level. Far from animating a project of ex- "daBje ein irgend belustigendes Werk zu-
termination, this recognition confronts standegekommen, ohne dab sein Macher
Adrian with a kind of constitutional impo- sich dabei auf das Dasein des Verbrechers
tence that no activity, artistic or otherwise, und des Tollen verstehen lernte?" (366).
can cure. This is an impotence which the About composers more generally, the Devil
genuine artist embraces; as the Devil says says, "Jeder Bessere tragt in sich einen
to Adrian, "du und ich ziehen die achtbare Kanon des Verbotenen" (370). Before tak-
Ohnmacht derer vor, die es verschmihen, ing up directly the formal shifts that mark
die allgemeine Erkrankung unter wiirdigem the telos of Adrian's musical compositions,
Mumschanz zu hehlen" (369). Adrian's com- we can see this criminality or madness in
positional activity for this reason escapes an exemplary way in Adrian's astronomical
the obsessional economy that so often and oceanographical investigations, and in
guides the work of technical invention: He the reaction they elicit from Zeitblom.
does not act in order to maintain the mean- Adrian has been reading the work of a cer-
ing and the sense of the Big Other. The tain Professor Akercocke, and Zeitblom
works which Adrian sees as frauds-the self- sees nothing in the ocean deeps or in the
sufficient forms of traditional art which perpetual explosion of our galaxy capable
Adrian can see only as the result of game- of stirring one to the feeling of God or moral
playing-are those of an obsessional econ- elevation. "Gib zu, sagte ich ihm,-daB die
omy; they are the result of so many little acts Horrendheiten der physikalischen Scho-
which hold out the possibility of an essential pfung auf keine Weise religi6s produktiv
meaning for its constructions, sacrificing sind. Welche Ehrfurcht und welche der
themselves to the project of concealing an Ehrfurcht entstammende Sittigung des
abyss. This sacrifice is part and parcel of Gemiites kann ausgehen von der Vorstel-
Zeitblom's ethic of obedience;11 and it is lung eines unermel3lichen Unfugs, wie des
this ethic-in refusing to permit the place explodierenden Weltalls?" (420). Horren-
of the void to interrupt, or render senseless, dous for Zeitblom are those statistics-e.g.,
our experience of harmony in the world-- a light-year the equivalent of six trillion
and not Adrian's, which partakes, at the miles-which defy human understanding,
level offantasy, offascistideology. Leverkiihn statistics before which we stand utterly al-
himself, it would appear, must be invoked ienated, that speak the terrifying otherness
to save himself from his interpreters. of the object world. Adrian's trespasses in

this extra-human realm, in the brute facts not just that Adrian's examinations do not
of the universe's vastness, threaten Zeit- work to inspire romantic-humanistic feel-
blom's pleasure in the face of the ungraspa- ings of reverence (for his own "Bewun-
ble. The real source of the pleasure Zeit- derung der Gr6l3e, Enthusiasmus ffir sie"
blom gets from doing his duty here becomes [417], Zeitblom is here the exemplar of
unmistakable; it lies not just in performing Kantian judgment, mentioning three other
some sort of tribute to an actually existing more traditional sites of encounters with
God, but in the possibility-if everyone the immense: the Pyramids, Mont Blanc,
does his duty, too-of experiencing the and the dome inside St. Peter's); it is in-
pleasure of belonging in a meaningful way stead that they expose for what it is the
to the family of living species: formal principle which organizes that ex-
perience-a principle that is stupid, arbi-
Frommigkeit, Ehrfurcht, seelischer An- trary, and nonsensical:
stand, Religiositat sind nur uiber den
Menschen und durch den Menschen, in Er [Adrian]stfirzte sich allerdingsin das
der Beschrinkung auf das Irdisch-
Menschliche moglich. Ihre Frucht sollte, UnermeBliche, das die astrophysische
Wissenschaft zu messen sucht, nur um
kann und wird ein religios tingierter Hu- dabei zu MaBen,Zahlen, GroBenordnun-
manismus sein, bestimmt von dem Ge-
gen zu gelangen, zu denen der Menschen-
ftihl ffirdas transzendente Geheimnisdes geist gar kein Verhiltnis mehr hat, und
Menschen, von dem stolzen BewuBtsein, die sich im Theoretischen und Abstrak-
daBer kein bloBbiologischesWeseneiner
ten, im vollig Unsinnlichen, um nicht zu
geistigen Welt angehort;daBihm das Ab- sagen: Unsinnigen verlieren. (409)
solute gegeben ist, die Gedanken der
Wahrheit,der Freiheit, der Gerechtigkeit,
daB ihm die Verpflichtung auferlegt ist This is, though not for Zeitblom, in fact
zur Annaherungan das Vollkommene.In Adrian's achievement: He makes the de-
diesem Pathos, dieser Verpflichtung,die- scent to that deep place where we most
ser Ehrfurcht des Menschen vor sich experience the utter non-sensory, nonsen-
selbst ist Gott. (420) sical nature of the nothingness at whose
whim we live. It is Adrian who unmasks
It is only under the aegis of this higher every single conceptual framework that
principle, this Father-in Zeitblom-ese the seeks to pass itself off as something other
"transzendente Geheimnis des Men- than a fraud, every single conceptual
schen"-that Zeitblom can achieve the im- framework believed to actually possess the
possible: that Wordsworthian bliss of a goods to fill out the terrifying abyss and
sublime sense of something far more deep- lack of connection that marks our relation
ly interfused, that feeling of connection to to the universe. And thus, it is Adrian who
every other thing in the universe, that rev- exemplifies a way of bearing witness to the
erence of man for himself. His belief in this real of history without recouping some-
unifying ideal signifier, and more specifi- thing symbolic from such an act.
cally its incarnation in the nation, is evi- Zeitblom refers to this as his friend's
dent in Zeitblom's final appeal with its in- "Erkenntniskitzel": "Adrian sprach von
vocation-still!-of a Fatherland. dem Erkenntniskitzel, den es bereitete, das
Herein lies Zeitblom's real objection to Unerschaute, nicht zu Erschauende, des
Adrian's scientific inquiries. It is not just Geschautwerdens nicht sich Versehende
that the objects of Adrian's investigations dem Blicke blo3zustellen" (412). What
do not, as Kant said they should, increase Adrian discovers in looking at the thing
our estimation of both ourselves and our not-expecting-to-be-looked-at is that the
minds in our relations with Nature.12 It is thing is actually the place of a void, an emp-

EISENSTEIN:Leverkfihn as Witness 335
tiness that one attempts to fill out with ar- positing of Adrian's "health" against the
tificial notions of the transcendental mys- backdrop of Esmeralda's disease.13 Zeit-
tery of man and of duty. (Adrian's journey blom's report, in typical fashion, lays the
with Akercocke 3600 hundred feet beneath castration/contamination at the doorstep
the sea in a two-ton hollow ball-essen- of Woman: "Der Hochmut des Geistes," he
tially a trip into the void-is another in- writes, "[hat] das Trauma der Begegnung
stance of this project.) For Zeitblom, there mit dem seelenlosen Triebe erlitten"
is a feeling of indiscretion bound up with (230-31).
such investigations. What disturbs him is Such a report makes plain Zeitblom's
Adrian's coldness and indifference, "als investment in Adrian as the exemplar of
habe er seine Kenntnisse nicht unter der innocence who underwent a Fall. The point
Hand, durch Lektire, sondern durch per- to be made here, of course, is that the kind
sdnliche Uberlieferung, Belehrung, Dem- of innocence Zeitblom relies on is always
onstration, Erfahrung gewonnen" (418). retroactive. This realization, were Zeit-
This is, in fact, the case in a way Zeitblom blom capable of it, would collapse his entire
cannot imagine, because Adrian is one investment in the Faustian drama. If man
whose actual experiences-his reading, his is never, strictly speaking, innocent, then
visit to the brothel, his meeting with the there is no actual moment of perdition, no
Devil-only make explicit what has been true pact, no classical Faustian situation,
experienced implicitly all along-one's be- only moments that indicate to Adrian that
ing at the mercy of the nothingness just he never enjoyed the kind of innocence he,
named. His experiences, in other words, do or Zeitblom, might have thought he had.
not have him trying to maintain the exist- That is to say, he has been without this
ence of some different, discrete identity or innocence from the beginning. Each true
value prior to the experience. On the con- pact, then, only makes explicit a truth that
trary, they have him understanding all the Adrian has felt implicitly all along-the on-
ways that very prior identity was always, tological experience of his own loss or dam-
all along, already marked by the experience nation. Damnation, in other words, does
now being encountered directly. This is not come afterward, because, as Hegel once
why the Devil tells Adrian not to pretend argued, the mind capable of conceptualiz-
that he has not been expecting him, and it ing damnation is staked on the very divi-
is also why it makes little sense to locate sion damnation expresses. In the Enzyklo-
the precise point of Adrian's perdition. pdidie der philosophischen Wissenschaften
Such an effort appears always to be a nos- I (i.e., the lesser Logik), Hegel makes just
talgic one, hearkening back to an imag- this point:
ined/imaginary time not marked by lack or
Dabei ist jedoch die aiuBerlicheVorstel-
loss-i.e., by damnation. Marguerite De
Huszar Allen is right to note that Adrian lung aufzugeben,daBdie Erbstindenur in
einem zufailligen Tun der ersten Men-
"is damned long before he officially encoun- schen ihren Grundhabe. In der Tat liegt
ters the Devil," but this insight becomes es im Begriff des Geistes, daBder Mensch
merely the occasion to propose an earlier von Natur bose ist, und man hat sich nicht
encounter as the actual point of damnation. vorzustellen, daB dies auch anders sein
"Adrian's true pact," Allen writes, "occurs k6nnte. (90)
in the form of an amorous union with a
diseased whore called Esmeralda" (97). The state of health that Zeitblom would
This reading, however, merely participates have us believe Adrian lives in prior to the
in the long misogynist narrative of the contaminating contact with soulless in-
Judeo-Christian world- the proud spokes- stinct is, thus, entirely Zeitblom's fantasy,
person of which is Zeitblom himself-in its and it is this fantasy which stands in the

way of a more genuine recognition of the composition naturally arrives. The stuff of
constitutive inadequacy that pertains to art, for Adrian, lies beneath what these
the relation between subject and history. compositions so decorously sing of. Adrian
The division of which Hegel writes, and says that art "iiber das Schema, die Uber-
upon which damnation is based, is, in einkunft, die Uberlieferung, dartiber, was
other words, both essential for all symbolic Einer vom Andern lernt, uiber den Trick,
representation-and thus for the repre- fiber das 'Wie es gemacht wird' weit
sentation of history-at the same time hinausgeht" (207). This is why Adrian re-
that it damns such representations to in- fers to it as his own "Scheu und Sorge"
completion. In disavowing Hegel's truth (207).
concerning the primordial aspect of this What Adrian here understands is the
division, Zeitblom is thus able to continue utter necessity of a pattern-he says later
to believe that the symbolic order was that "Organisation ist alles. Ohne sie gibt
once, in fact, complete, that language was es iiberhaupt nichts, am wenigsten Kunst"
once (and might once again become) one (295)-and yet what he despairs of is the
with the real. insipidity with which the pattern produces
The original five-tone series Adrian em- works marked by beautiful, unequivocal,
ploys-"B, E, A, E, E-flat," spelling (in Ger- harmonic triumphs. And given the "v6llige
man) the code name for Esmeralda-must Unsicherheit, Problematik und Harmonie-
be seen in the light of a pursuit to become losigkeit unserer gesellschaftlichen Zu-
explicitly what one has been implicitly all stminde" (280), these works, for Adrian,
along: as the attempt, on the level of tech- have no legitimate relation to the world:
nique, to embrace the stupid force acciden- They are, he says, a lie. The despair which
tally encountered. For Adrian, this ideal follows from this gets its first expression in
signifier is contingent--or stupid-in a Meerleuchten, which Zeitblom sees cor-
way Zeitblom's Fatherland is not. If, for rectly as the work of an artist giving his
Zeitblom, the organizing principle signifies best to the conventions in which he no
a destined, meaningful community, for longer believes. Meerleuchten is but the
Adrian, the five-tone series is derived from demonstration of conventions for the pur-
the accidental consequence of a prank. We poses of parodying them. (This is why it has
should, therefore, not be tempted to see any seemed to Adrian as if the methods and
actual, positive meaning in the series: It is conventions of art "heute nur noch zur
but the clasp of arbitrariness. That is, while Parodie taugten" [209, emphasis in origi-
Zeitblom sees a necessary totality looming nal].) Carrying with it what Zeitblom calls
behind its signification, Adrian recognizes traits of the "intellektuell[e] Ironisierung
the relationship between sign and signified der Kunst" (235), it signifies the initial
as not logically dictated (to evoke Hegel point of the Leverkiihnian trajectory-an
once again), but as arbitrary. Adrian's un- understanding of the ironic.
derstanding of the fundamentally arbi- Adrian's genius, however, lies in his
trary nature of this relationship is appar- next step-in his recognition of the formal
ent in his letter to Kretschmar detailing his implications of this understanding, of the
decision to become a composer. Adrian's need to eschew ironic distance. The beau-
disgust-he declaims the "robuste Naive- tiful, self-sufficient work may be a fraud,
tat" (206) he sees everywhere in the art- but it is not enough that one merely content
ist-is precisely for those works that appar- oneself with the task of ironizing it. The
ently testify to the adequacy of their own reason for this is clarified by Zeitblom him-
artistic mediation through the beautiful, self, for whom the ironic becomes a way to
"die 'Ah!'-Wirkung, die Gefiihlsschwel- maintain allegiance to the Big Other.14
lung" (208), at which the order of a musical (Irony serves just this function in Zeit-

blom's response to another of Adrian's gewesen, um von der AuBenwelt iibernom-

ironic works-the 13 Bretano songs.) Irony men werden zu kinnen" [108]), and it is
is the out Adrian will soon make increas- also why at this point Zeitblom's and
ingly difficult to draw upon. He will not Adrian's respective aesthetics part ways.
merely continue to fill up forms in which Zeitblom cannot defend "ein so absurdes
he no longer believes. He will expose, in- Ordnungsdiktat," whereas Adrian insists
stead, in the form of the work itself, the "ich habe was fuir ihn [Beissel] iibrig.
nonsensical meaninglessness of the impo- Wenigstens hatte er Ordnungssinn, und
sition of form at all.15 We have now arrived sogar eine alberne Ordnung ist immer noch
at the twelve-tone method of composing besser, als gar keine" (111). Adrian's claim
whose origins are to be detected in the sub- here evokes Hegel's line concerning Spirit
ject of one of Kretschmar's lectures: Jo- in Phdnomenologie des Geistes, of which
hann Conrad Beissel. Responding to the ar- Hegel writes that "Triumereien selbst
tificiality of the chorals coming over from noch besser sind, als seine Leerheit" (103).
Europe, Beissel does something novel: He No line, however, has been more invoked
develops a theory of composition that is to prove Adrian's proto-fascism and the
even more artificial: "Eine sinnvolle und proto-fascism of his absolute form-the
nutzbare Melodie-Lehre war mit kiihner twelve-tone method of composing.16
Raschheit beschlossen. Er dekretierte, daB Mann's novel has, in fact, been read as un-
'Herren' und 'Diener' sein sollten in jeder covering the close connection between the
Tonleiter" (107). The result of this arbi- twelve-tone method and Nazi suppression
trary system is, surprisingly, the democra- of irrationality. According to Fred Chappel,
tization of musical composition. Adrian's Zeitblom is correct to note the way Adrian's
description of Beissel makes this clear: "Er maniacal rationality threatens to trans-
stellte Akkord-Tabellen fiir alle m6glichen form that rationality into its opposite. Like
Tonarten her, an deren Hand jedermann the Nazis, this thorough-going rationalism
seine Weisen bequem genug vier- oder has its source and origin in the most irra-
ffinfstimmig ausschreiben konnte, und rief tional of impulses. Chappel writes: "Mann
damit eine wahre Woge von Komponierwut is careful to show over and over again in
in der Gemeinde hervor" (107). Fueling his novel that Leverkuihn's coldly rational
this democratization, however, is the dem- and highly mathematical means of expres-
onstration of the utter contingency under- sion has been constructed upon a basis
lying one's symbolic identity as artist or thoroughly romantic and primitive" (12).17
composer. We have here a key reversal of I would like here to insist on the error
the more romantic, New Age encourage- of this reading. Adrian's recourse to the
ment to discover the artist within all of us, primitive is not for the purpose of achieving
for what we discover when we recognize a self healed of fragmentation, a self in total
ourselves as artists are simply the stupid, control. It is one motivated instead by a
daily acts of ordering which maintain the desire to take up the self absolutely in order
ontological consistency of our being in the to bear witness to the real source of the sub-
world. Beissel's theory reveals this existen- ject's fragmentation-i.e., the real ofhistory
tial insight by foregrounding the very arbi- that is outside all symbolization. Adrian
trariness of musical form, by refusing to acts on the fundamental phenomenological
allow us to recoup something meaningful insight of Hegel that everything thought is
from the activity of artistic production. already universal, and that only in the ges-
This is why, Kretschmar says, it sank into ture of unapologetic universalizing is
oblivion when the sect of German Seventh- thought itself opened up to what it is not
Day Baptists ceased to flourish (it was "zu possible to think. 8 By taking thought itself
ungewShnlich, zu wunderlich-eigenwillig to its extreme, Adrian thereby sets the

stage for the ultimate opposition of some- such instability and anxiety, I can only sec-
thing and nothing.19 For Adrian-and for ond Weiner's lack of optimism concerning
those trying to bear witness to the unsym- the sort of collective Mann might be trying
bolizable dimension of history-this is the to forge by way of Leverktihn's art; the
only opposition that matters. This is per- most inclusive community, in other words,
haps the light in which to regard the im- would in some sense be the most precarious
portant distinction between Zeitblom's yet.)20 Leverktihn's return to the primi-
and Leverkuihn's respective conceptions of tive, then, must be seen as a return to this
the arts: Zeitblom opposes words and mu- estrangement-where the failure of om-
sic, culture and barbarism-an opposition nipotence is perhaps most marked. His use
between something and something-while of the absolute is for the purpose of expos-
Adrian repudiates this hierarchy by accept- ing its defects, a purpose that must not be
ing and including the barbaric. The impor- confused with Hitlerism, because the com-
tance of this distinction for Mann, as Marc munity promised by fascism never con-
Weiner points out, lies in the direction of sisted of a return to some constitutive es-
democratic politics: Mann wants to replace trangement.21 Contra fascism, the primi-
"Zeitblom's cherished aesthetic polariza- tive is for Adrian not the realization of
tion and the elitist sociocultural hierarchy imaginary relations, of harmony and bal-
it suggests" with an art which-by virtue ance and perfect unions. Whereas the Na-
of its inclusion of the barbaric-will "func- zis posit such relations as a desired
tion within a community in such a way that goal-even as they invent obstacles to it
all of its members have familiar and inti- (i.e., the more the Jews disappeared, the
mate access to aesthetic enjoyment" (219). more potency they were imagined to
Leverkuihn's art, Weiner suggests, func- have)-Adrian is nothing if not honest
tions in DoktorFaustus as an emancipatory about just how horrible its achievement
tool, but it can only do this by "recover[ing] would actually be. How else is one to ex-
from its status as culture, that is, from its plain, at the onset of his madness, Adrian's
alienation in the modern age, and by impli- suicide attempt after hearing of his
cation from its use as an aesthetic mask mother's imminent arrival? How else to ex-
hiding the reality of social inequality and plain the "einmalige[s] Vorkomnis" Zeit-
political domination" (232). Mann's desire blom mentions after Adrian's breakdown,
may indeed have been to try to forge a way the "Zornesausbruch des Sohnes gegen die
toward what Weiner calls a "postcultural Mutter, [ein] von niemandem erwartete[r]
community" (236), but we must be clear, Wutanfall" (770) on the train ride north
even if Mann is not, about the extent to into central Germany? What is this if not
which the democratic possibilities of this the expression of a certain horror at being
"postcultural community" depend on that trapped within the Imaginary, at suffering
community's refusal to regard its inclu- the loss of the ability to speak and desire?
sionary ethos as redress for its fundamen- The true horror lies not in the Symbolic
tal estrangement or incompletion. Staked Law to which we are subject, but in life
upon the opposition between something without this law at all--i.e., life without the
and nothing (which is where Leverkiihn's ability to speak.22
art insists that we stake it), the achieve- And yet its achievement is precisely
ment of this postcultural community would what the artist must risk in order to com-
mean, simply, the achievement of a sort of municate our fundamental estrangement.
togetherness in the face of a more consti- In a certain sense, the radicality of Mann's
tutive instability and anxiety. (Given the artist for historical memory lies in his tak-
fact that for most people the raison d'etre ing at its word-his overidentification
of community is precisely the resolution of with-fascism's desired goal of a society

not beset by unsymbolizable forces. He "real" time of their death. The Devil says
risks what they never would-its actual re- to Adrian that art must make its recipients
alization. This risk, admittedly, entails an attend to precisely this impossibility:
asocial act, but this is far from a sign of that "Zulassig ist allein noch der nicht fiktive,
risk's barbarity. Far from being an example der nicht verspielte, der unverstellte und
of the totalitarian impulse, Adrian's rigid unverklarte Ausdruck des Leides in seinem
or strict creations expose the fundamental realen Augenblick" (372). It is the (non-)
antagonism that discussions of personal or communication of this moment, this terri-
national unity would conceal, the un-sym- ble suffering of the negative, that marks
bolizable dimension in relation to which we Adrian's two expressionistic masterpieces:
live-utterly estranged. Promises of a mes- the Apocalipsis cum figuris and Dr. Fausti
sianic Reich are part of a different sort of Weheklag.
strictness. Herein lies the unsurpassable In both works, form itself is organized
accomplishment of the dodecaphonic prin- so as to point beneath itself to a harrowing
ciple that Adorno, in Philosophie der neuen absence. The first, according to Zeitblom,
Musik notices: "Die Stimmigkeit von covers the entire field of the apocalyptic; it
Zwolftonmusik kliBtsich nicht unmittelbar works out the most complex of technical
'h6ren'-das ist der einfachste Name fuir and intellectual problems by subjecting
jenes Moment des Sinnlosen an ihr" (113). such problems to the strictest law. More
This "Stimmigkeit," for Adorno, is part of significantly, Adrian himself, qua artist,
a necessary change in the function of mu- subjects himself to this strictest of laws,
sical expression. The communication of a risking in the process his very contact with
series of disjointed blotches, designed to reality and the consistency of symbolic
challenge music's facade of self-sufficiency, identity. Zeitblom can only shudder at
is not a matter of content but of form: "Die these literal risks, can only shrink from
Faktur als solche soll richtig sein anstatt "der Legitimitit seines Tuns, seinem zeit-
sinnvoll. Die Frage, welche dann die lichen Anrecht auf die Sphire, in die er sich
Zwblftonmusik an den Komponisten versenkte" (569). The Apocalipsis intimi-
richtet, ist nicht: wie kann musikalischer dates Zeitblom not just for the terrifying
Sinn organisiert, sondern vielmehr: wie juxtapositions of its parodies, the horror of
kann Organisation sinnvoll werden" (67- its loudspeaker effects, the pandemonic
68). Adorno would follow Beissel here: The laughter of the Pit which sweeps through
problem of organization is to be addressed 50 bars; it intimidates for what it suggests
by even more organization, so much so that about the actual state toward which his
subjective expression itself is resisted. In friend leans in order to produce artistic
this denied expression, however, some- truth. A clear parallel exists between
thing is, if only on the level of form, ex- Adrian's conception of the oratorio's end
pressed after all, for, as Adorno puts it: "So and the toll it takes on his emotional well-
gebannt ist es [das Subjekt] vom Ent- being:
setzen, daB es nichts mehr sagen kann, was
zu sagen sich lohnte" (108). Denn er lebte in der Furcht, der Erleuch-
What is heard instead is precisely a tungszustand, mit dem er gesegnet oder
von dem er heimgesuchtwar,mochte ihm
nothingness, the sound that cannot be
made to mean, the note that cannot be vorzeitig entzogen werden, und tatsach-
lich erlitt er kurz vor AbschluBdes Wer-
played. The artist who would memorialize kes, diesem furchtbarenSchluB, der sei-
the dead can do so only on the level of tech- nen ganzen Mut erforderteund der, weit
nique, and only in such a manner that tech- entfernt von romantischerErl6sungsmu-
nique itself dramatizes the impossibility of sik, den theologisch negativen und gna-
transmitting the hell of their suffering, the denlosen Charakterdes Ganzen so uner-

bittlich bestatigt,-tatsichlich, sage ich, dierend,auch in dem H6llengelachtervor-

erlitt er gerade vor der Festlegung dieser kame. (578)
iibermaiBigvielstimmigen, in weitester
Lage sich heranwilzenden Klinge des This formal correspondence is, Zeitblom
Blechk6rpers,die den Eindruckeines of- says, Adrian Leverkuihn's "Tiefsinn,"
fenen Schlundes zu hoffnungslosemVer-
sinken machen, einen iiber drei Wochen though his gloss is a paradigmatic mysti-
fication: "die zum Geheimnis erhobene
sich erstreckenden Ruickfall in den
Schmerzens- und Ujbelkeitszustandvon Berechnung" (578).
vorher,eine Verfassung,in der ihm nach This is characteristic Zeitblomian mis-
seinen eigenen Wortensogar die Errinne- reading. It is not Adrian's calculation that
rung daran, was das sei: Komponieren, is mysterious as much as what Lacan (after
und wie man das mache, entschwunden German idealism) would call das Ding,
war. (552) which all calculation seeks to flee, and
which finally might take from one the abil-
This is here the condition of the artist that ity to calculate at all. This is the effect that
is to be unequivocally articulated in the Adrian's final composition, the symphonic
context of Dr. Fausti Weheklag-the artist cantata Dr. Fausti Weheklag, has on its
who risks his own annihilation, his own creator-it should be the effect on us as
symbolic identity as composer, in the act well-and with it, Mann's novel reaches its
of creation, in the act of testifying to the culminating insight: Artistic creation tes-
hell of memory. The genius oftheApocalip- tifies to the hell of history only in its own
sis lies in just this risk, and in the way it drive toward symbolic death, in its utter
remembers what had not even occurred renunciation of its very symbolic function,
yet-the hellish laugh that, in Zeitblom's in the senselessness of its form. In his overi-
description, slips indistinguishably into, dentification with the arbitrariness of life
and then back out of, the sounds of human and death-Adrian sees his life continuing
slaughter. This laughter-analogous to, at the expense of little Nepomuk's-Adrian
and soon to be superseded by, the screams culminates the symbolic suicide first mani-
of the Nazis' victims-is then perfectly fested in the encounter with Esmeralda: a
juxtaposed with the sounds of children taking back of Beethoven's Ninth Sym-
singing. This strict correspondence-- phony We move here directly back into the
which Zeitblom contains by turning it into domain of the Holocaust, for what Adrian
a sort of Leverkiihnian aesthetic signa- risks, in his revocation, is precisely his
ture-is not to the work's discredit. As aes- place in the symbolic circuit of meaning.
thetic signature, Zeitblom is able to praise The radicalness of this act lies in the way
the work's essence: "Uberall ist Adrian he bears witness to a place soon to be occu-
Leverkiihn groB in der Verungleichung des pied by the Jews and Gypsies of Eastern
Gleichen" (578). And yet he does not want Europe. Before the fact, he is already the
to go further than this, though he does say one most committed to their memory, to the
that in the chorus of children one can displace outside the symbolic circuit of mean-
cern "das Teufelsgelaichter noch einmal": ing in which they exist. Only those of Zeit-
blom's camp would speak here of Adrian as
Das zuvor vernommene Schrecknis ist having, in retrospect, gone too far. The radi-
zwar in dem unbeschreiblichen Kinder- cality of the artist's risk resides precisely
chor in eine ginzlich andere Lage fiber- in his rejection of a future vantage point
tragen, zwarvllig uminstrumentiertund from which he might gauge his present un-
umrhythmisiert; aber in dem sirrenden, dertaking. What is rejected is, in fact, the
sehrenden Sphiren-und Engelsgetdn ist very guarantee of symbolization, because
keine Note, die nicht, streng korrespon- symbolization oversees all the ways we

have of dealing with the trauma of the would have it, as "Leverkuhn's most des-
Holocaust and our historical situatedness. perate plea" (184). It must be seen, instead,
It is for this reason that the most as Mann's own last-minute flight from
authentic work of art that would have the Adorno's insistence on unequivocal nega-
Holocaust as its subject be one which re- tivity-the echo of the high G, for Zeitblom,
fuses the inherent affirmation of symboli- "steht als ein Licht in der Nacht" (745).
zation. And more radically, it is for this rea- What Mann apparently could not give up
son that the most authentic act of bearing was precisely this symbolic, light-giving
witness to the Holocaust be one that places function of art. Against it, we must set
in question the very ability to symbolize. Adrian himself, who despises the tradition
Adrian's Dr. Fausti Weheklag lands au- that might save him, and who insists on
thentically on both of these scores. Tech- exposing the consolation that symbolic
nique has here become even stricter; there identities and symbolization itself afford.24
is, Zeitblom reports, "keine freie Note The experience Adrian wants us to have is
mehr" (738). Submitting every note to the that of being outside symbolization, even
most arbitrary of laws, Adrian has perfectly though the risk is that-like Adrian- we
revealed the fugitive disposition of all sym- might remain there.
bolization. Thus, the identity between the This is, of course, the path of a properly
angelic choir and the hellish laughter en- traumatic memory. What we must undergo
countered already in the Apocalipsis cum is our own disappearance, the risk of losing
figuris is carried to its furthest ex- everything, for it is only then that the act
treme-that identity, Zeitblom tells us, has of memory is allowed truly to change us.
now become "allumfassend" (740). In this We have perhaps now reached the point
way Adrian achieves freedom: "verm6ge where we can understand the novel's epi-
der Restlosigkeit der Form eben wird die graph from Dante: "O Muse, o alto ingegno,
Musik als Sprache befreit" (740). At its end, or m'aiutate, / o mente che scrivesti cib ch'io
the chorus of lament passes into a move- vidi, / qui si parrat la tua nobilitate" ("O
ment purely orchestral: "es ist gleichsam Memory who wrote down what I did see /
der umgekehrte Weg des Liedes an die Here thy nobility will be made plain"). For
Freude, das kongeniale Negativ jenes Adrian, memory lies somewhere beyond
Uberganges der Symphonie in den Vokal- the human world; its "nobility" lies in the
Jubel, es ist die Zuriicknahme" (742-43). lesson it teaches us about time and the way
The horror to which Adrian must testify is our finitude divides us in two, into the di-
that which cannot be spoken. For this Faust vision of which Hegel wrote. There is not a
(Adrian), the thought of being saved has time for us-in the world of our relations
become the bait held out by the Tempter. with others-in which we are not damned.
This is crucial, of course, because it turns With this recognition, there is no imagi-
Zeitblom-and more generally, Thomas nary left to motivate our violence and cru-
Mann-into the figure of the Tempter. At elty, no scenario in which what plagues the
least this was the implicit judgment of consistency of the social order is given a
Adorno, for whom any hint of consolation, name and a body, no fantasy which prom-
or redemption, or regeneration smacked of ises the possibility of wholeness. If we have
a wished-for affirmation that art could not, risked our very being within the symbolic
in good conscience, deliver.23 The cello's order, if we have peered into the void, if we
high G, given as the last word, as it were, have occupied without reserve a totalizing
of Adrian's Dr. Fausti Weheklag, must be position, we have, then, borne witness to the
seen in the light of this context-not, as real. And though, in so doing, we reveal the
Zeitblom would have it, as a sign ofAdrian's arbitrary, the stupid nature of the form that
conversion, and not, as Hans RudolfVaget that testimony takes, we nonetheless

thereby bespeak the trauma of history tuung, die einem die Wahrheit gewahrt. Es ist
which is the irrecuperable trauma of our ja wahr und fast selsbtverstindlich: wie sollte
selves and of our world. It is a trauma we denn auch ein so radikales Buch nicht irgend-
can do nothing about, a trauma for which wie ins Religidse reichen. Dennoch hat man es
there is no redress. Conceived of in these 'gottlos' genannt. Das ist die Intelligenz von
Leuten, die gewohnheitsmdiBig tiber 'Schane
terms, the act of remembering the Holo- Literatur' schreiben. Daher mein Ausruf: 'Sie
caust does after all work to combat those
sollten dariiber schreiben!" (Thomas Mann
occurrences which partake of its repetition. and Karl Ker6nyi 167).
5This is not an argument against Eisen-
hower's act-recorded by Zeitblom in the
Notes novel-of forcing the citizens of Weimer to
walk through Buchenwald after the Allies had
liberated the camp. (Eisenhower wanted those
1Michael Geyer's recent essay "The Politics who had lived in proximity to the camp to see
of Memory in Contemporary Germany" makes with their own eyes the crematoria that had
this plain. One of Geyer's principle concerns is been operating in their midst.) It is to note in-
to uncover the link between a belief in mem- stead the way that act can so quickly become
ory's automatic role in progressive politics and another exercise of a mode of conduct that ne-
the fantasy of Enlightenment. As Geyer puts cessitated it in the first place.
it: "It was and is the firm belief of the politics 6Nietzsche's critique of Christianity-"der
of memory that the past will not be repeated, Muth eines Christen, eines Gottglaubigen
if only people remember. But as a politics and uiberhaupt kann niemals Muth ohne Zeugen
culture of memory grew in the 1970s and sein,-er ist damit allein schon degradirt"
1980s, so did a politics and culture of anti- (Nietzsche 19: 239)-is perhaps the clearest
Semitism and racism, as well as a desparate expression of the manner in which belonging
[sic] and terrorist identity politics. These were to a community is not the fruit of particular
the first indications that there was something decisions, but rather their underlying cause. Is
wrong with the original argument" (194-95). this not the consistent feature of Zeitblom's
2The three sections of Friedlander's book personality-the need to be among a commu-
engage three related spheres in which these nity necessarily selected by History? The pleas-
complications have become significant: first, ure he experiences here by feeling himself part
the seeming licence for historical relativism of a (German) collective appears to be analo-
that is the off-shoot of Hayden White's rejec- gous to the pleasure he experienced in fighting
tion of "objective historical methodology" as a in World War I: "Und doch ist es ffir das h6here
way to settle truth-claims made by competing Individuum auch wieder ein groBer GenuB,
historical accounts; second, the problem of us- einmal-und wo hatte dies Einmal zu finden
ing the Holocaust as a sort of capital to affirm sein sollen, wenn nicht hier und jetzt-mit
Western rationality and ideas about Enlighten- Haut und Haar im Allgemeinen unterzuge-
ment; third, the problem of "postmodern mul- hen" (464).
tiplicities" in contemporary aesthetic repre- 71 have in mind here Zizek's insistence, con-
sentations, and whether or not they "convey a tra LaCapra, that "transference is not a kind
complex and multiple message [or] cover a bla- of 'theater of shadows,' where we settle past
tantly ideological message" (16). traumas in effigia, it is repetition in the full
3The primary historical line on German soil meaning of the term, i.e., in it, the past trauma
runs from Johann SpieB's chapbook Historia is literally repeated, 'actualized"' (Enjoy Your
von D. Johann Fausten (1587)-in which Faust Symptom 102). In risking his place within the
is denied redemption-to Goethe's Faust II social order, Leverkfihn follows a path which,
(1832)-in which Faust achieves grace and re- in my view, we must follow in our attempt to
demption.For an overview,see Berghahn. bear witness to the Holocaust: we must repeat
4Mann:"IhreAuBerungiber die religiosen the trauma, and in so doing, recognize some-
christlichen Charakter des 'Faustus' frap- thing fundamental about the impasse between
pierte mich und erfillte mich mit der Genug- symbolic and real. In my view, this recognition

EISENSTEIN:Leverkfihn as Witness 343
would be an important step toward eliminating ample, Ryan). The exception to this tradition
further barbarisms-most of which are driven of approaching Leverkiihn as representative of
by fantasies of guaranteeing the consistency of fascism may be found in Weiner 213-45. For an
social relations. For a dissenting view-that re- important examination critical of Zeitblom, see
peating trauma in the full sense of the term is also Rieckmann.
without "constructive ethicopolitical possibili- 110n the refusal of this sacrifice, see
ties," appearing only as a "lucidly theorized" Kretschmar's lecture on Beethoven's final pi-
option-see LaCapra 205-24. ano sonata (Op. 111) (79-87). There, Kretsch-
8Mann-intentionally or otherwise-is am- mar identifies Beethoven's excessive reflection
biguous in Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus and inwardness-a sign of his degeneracy in
when he recalls the task he set for himself in the eyes of critics and friends-and links it pre-
Doktor Faustus as to write "nichts Geringeres cisely with the task of the genuine artist to
als den Roman meiner Epoche, verkleidet in expose the abyss that the sonata form, for ex-
die Geschichte eines hoch-prekaren und siindi- ample, stands in for. In the incredible changes
gen Kiinstlerlebens" (33). In Zeitblom's at- that mark the encounter with this abyss-in
tempt to know the desire of the Other (i.e., the long second movement-are the kind of ex-
Adrian)-his consistent efforts to invest the plorations after which there can be no return.
latter and his art with a sensible meaning and Thus, no third movement.
purpose-Mann has indeed written the novel 12For Kant, the mathematical sublime of
of his era. nature-i.e., the stuff of Adrian's investiga-
9It is at the level of fantasy, then-where tions-resides not so much in a large numeri-
nothing is meaningless-that an apparently cal concept (a content), but rather in its offer-
progressive work like Steven Spielberg's ing of a unit for the measure of the imagination
Schindler's List, and a more reactionary trea- (a form)-i.e., a way of approaching these phe-
tise like Andreas Hillgruber's Zweierlei Unter- nomena at all: "Nun liegt das Erhabene bei der
gang: Die Zerschlagung des Deutschen Reiches isthetischen Beurteilung eines so unerme3-
und das Ende des europdischen Judentums lichen Ganzen nicht sowohl in der GroBe der
might be aligned. Spielberg's shift to present- Zahl, als darin, daB wir im Fortschritte immer
day Israel in the culminating frames of the auf desto gr83ere Einheiten gelangen; wozu
film-concomitant with a shift from black and die systematische Abteilung des Weltgebaudes
white to color-retroactively confers meaning beitragt" (Kritik der Urteilskraft 96). This is
on the events just depicted in its implicit em- clearly a "Fortschritt" Adrian is out to throw
brace of the Zionist postwar account of history into question.
which elevated the Jewish state to the status 13Zeitblom would appear to be retelling yet
of redemptive "sign." (For a discussion of this another story of paradise lost: Adrian's
elevation, see Young 172-89). Hillgruber's ac- (Adam's) downfall is traced in the manner of
count of the Wehrmacht forces fighting in the Milton to Esmeralda (Eve).
Eastern provinces at the end of the War also 140n ironic distance as a form of ideology,
gives, retroactively, a larger "meaning" to their see Slavoj 2ifek, The Sublime Object of Ideolo-
efforts. In both Spielberg and Hillgruber, a cer- gy, Chap. 1.
tain fantasy is at work as history is given back 15Wemight here mention Lukacs's paradig-
to a people and to a nation who have con- matic misreading of Doktor Faustus in "The
structed narratives of self-possession. Tragedy of Modern Art." Leverkiihn's realiza-
10These views are representative. Virtually tion of the stupidity or silliness of the social
every essay in a recent collection argues, or tac- order is for Lukacs evidence of a consciousness
itly assumes, Adrian as the figure of evil in the which needs only to mature. What Lukacs
novel (see Lehnert and Pfeiffer). Even those would have Adrian and Mann see (he says, in
who see Mann intending a kind of ambiguity fact, that they do eventually see it) is that there
and unequivocality apropos our judgment of exists another, more intelligent order out
Adrian still implicitly assume Adrian's "dam- there-the order of the socialist revolution.
nation." The ambiguity, in this view, pertains Adrian's pact with the Devil, for Luk;cs, points
solely to the fate of Adrian's music apropos a to Marx. Unable to see order in its very consti-
future German cultural tradition (see, for ex- tution as stupid or silly, Luk~ics here appears

in the company of Zeitblom. up the dialectical process" (330). Adrian's

16Even Arnold Schoenberg might have twelve-tone method of composition would
made this equation. In his famous letter to the seem to dramatize this "single comprehensive
editor in the Saturday Review of Literature, opposition" in its most developed form.
Schoenberg objected strenuously not only to 20Weiner is less than optimistic about the
Mann's use of his "literary property" (22) (i.e., efficacy of modernist aesthetic strategies,
the twelve-tone method of musical composi- given the extent to which they rely on the
tion), but also to the character of the fictional reader's capacity to interact with demanding
composer into which Mann placed his property. aesthetic structures (243).
For Schoenberg, Adrian Leverkiihn was to be 21The stupidity of attempting to solve this
regarded "from beginning to end, as a lunatic" estrangement is made unequivocal by none
(22). Noting this deeper source of Schoenberg's other than Adrian. In the Christian Society
disaffection, Michael Mann suggests that Winifried gathering, Adrian responds to the
Schoenberg made the equation between notion that Youth is some positive German
Adrian and Nazi Germany. What Schoenberg metaphysical endowment with a short laugh
was principally upset with, Mann suggests, and with this line: "Und seine [des Deutschen]
was that his invention seemed to be "involved ... sind der Budenzauber der Weltgeschichte"
with a sick-minded fictional character or even (185).
with German National Socialism" (318). 22This is also why we must be clear about
17In support of this position is Brigitte the diction that Mann has given to Adrian's
Prutti, who, in a similar vein, sees Adrian's discussion with the Devil. The point is not that
turn to the twelve-tone system as part of an Mann has given to Adrian a "corrupt diction"
"'archaic' regression ... into an order of his in order to bear witness to a corruption of lan-
own making over which he has total control" guage, to the abuse of rhetorical techniques,
(104). Manfred Dierks goes so far as to see in and to a "wit" that leads to nihilism (Fullen-
this regression the narcissist's fantasy of om- wider 581). Adrian's archaisms, instead, indi-
nipotence. Adrian's principle of composition is cate that there is no non-corrupt speech, and
for Dierks the "constant defense of a self that the "virtuosity of technique in language
threatened by fragmentation": "Leverkiihn's in the service of the preservation of the human-
continuous creations of ever new and ulti- ist tradition" (Fullenwider 589), the supposed
mately 'rigid' formations can be understood to healthiness of a rhetoric that evokes "a Classi-
follow the pattern of identification with mirror cal humanitas characterized by urbanity and
images, which produce the imaginary ego" lenity" (Fullenwider 590) is itself nihilistic.
(53). 23When Adorno read Mann's rendering of
18Forthis, see "Die sinnliche Gewi3heit" of the Dr. Fausti Weheklag, he could not abide the
the Phdnomenologie (69-78). Though we redemptive quality the latter had given it. "Er
speak all the time from the position of the ab- fand im Musikalischen nichts zu erinnern,
solute, it is significant whether or not we take zeigte sich aber graimlich des Schlusses wegen,
this position up absolutely: To do so is to expose der letzten vierzig Zeilen, in denen es nach all
the manner in which even the universal Law der Finsternis um die Hoffnung, die Gnade
that structures the order of language lacks sta- geht und die nicht dastanden, wie sie jetzt
bility and substance; not to do so is to maintain dastehen, sondern einfach miBraten waren.
the natural, essential universality of that Ich war zu optimistisch, zu gutmuitig und di-
Law-to keep that Law from encountering the rekt gewesen, hatte zu viel Licht angeziindet,
real. den Trost zu dick aufgetragen" (Die Entste-
19WalterDavis has rightly claimed that this hung des Doktor Faustus 158). Mann's modifi-
forms the basis of Mann's insight into the na- cations, one suspects-given the "high G"
ture of dialectical thought, his recognition, if given to Adrian's last work-didn't exactly ad-
you will, of Absolute Knowledge as the recog- dress Adorno's critique.
nition of what Davis calls "'the true or ultimate 24Consider, here, Zeitblom's pleasure at
dichotomy': that single comprehensive opposi- Adrian's seeming assumption of symbolic iden-
tion which generates and sustains the progres- tities-e.g., "suitor" of Marie Godeau, "father"
sively more inclusive oppositions which make to Nepomuk Schneidenwein, composer, etc.

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Faustus - Leverkuhn As Witness

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Leverkühn as Witness: The Holocaust in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus

Author(s): Paul Eisenstein

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I to each and every historical or artistic rep-

The German Quarterly 70.4 (Fall 1997) 325

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einer Art von Taumel dahinreit3enden Of crucial importance in this response is

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of nationalism. In this feeling of commu- core disposition (rooted in moderation of

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quently, the stupidity or silliness of those In refusing this sacrifice, Leverkiihn's

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blom's response to another of Adrian's gewesen, um von der AuBenwelt iibernom-

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bittlich bestatigt,-tatsichlich, sage ich, dierend,auch in dem H6llengelachtervor-

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in the company of Zeitblom. up the dialectical process" (330). Adrian's

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Works Cited Suhrkamp, 1970. Vol. 8 of Werke.20 vols..

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