Thomas Mann and Friedrich Nietzsche: Eroticism, Death, Music, and Laughter

Caroline Joan Picart

Jan 1999 · Value Inquiry Book Series Book 85 · Rodopi

About this ebook

Traditional interpretations of Thomas Mann's relation to Nietzsche's writings plot out a simple relation of earlier adulation and later rejection. The book argues that Mann's disavowal of Nietzsche's influence was, in the words of T.J. Reed, a necessary political act when the repudiation of Nietzsche's more hysterical doctrines required such a response. Using a genealogical method, the book traces how Mann labors ambivalently under the shadow of Nietzsche's writings on his own political artistry through a detailed analysis of Mann's Death in Venice, Dr. Faustus, the Joseph tetralogy, and Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. Using the recurring Nietzschean themes of eroticism, death, music, and laughter as a guide, it arrives at a rough picture of how Mann both takes up and discontinues Nietzsche's poetic heritage. The book derives the vision of the interrelationships binding these four leitmotiv elements from Dürer's magic square as depicted in Melancholia I. The link with Dürer is far from arbitrary because Mann directly aligned Nietzschean insight with Dürer's world of passion, sympathy with suffering, the macabre stench of rotting flesh, and Faustian melancholy.

About the author

Caroline Joan ("Kay") S. Picart was born in 1966, and is married to Davis William Houck. Currently she is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, St. Lawrence University, 1999-. Prior to that, she was with the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 1997-1999. Before then, she was with the Division of Arts and Humanities, College of Liberal Arts, Florida Atlantic University, 1996-1997. She worked as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) Instructor at the Yonsei University Foreign Language Center, Seoul, South Korea, 1991-1992; and was a University Lecturer in Zoology, Philosophy, and Astrophysics at the Ateneo de Manila and the San Carlos Pastoral Foundation, the Philippines, 1987-1989. For her Ph.D., she specialized in Social and Political Philosophy, with minors in Comparative Literature, and in Aesthetics, Critical Theory and Literary Criticism, from the Department of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University, 1993-1996. She finished her M.Phil. in History and Philosophy of Science as the Wolfson Prize Awardee in 1991, and Sir Run Run Shaw Scholar, from 1989-1991, at Cambridge University, England. She graduated with an M.A. with distinction in Philosophy, 1987-1989, and a B.S. in Biology, magna cum laude, 1983-1987, at the Ateneo de Manila, the Philippines. Picart's forthcoming books include Resentment and "the Feminine" in Nietzsche's Politico-Aesthetics, The Pennsylvania State University Press, and The Rebirths of Frankenstein, University of Texas Press. She has published articles and book chapters in aesthetics, philosophy and sociology of science, social and political philosophy, feminism and philosophy, philosophy and multiculturalism, Nietzsche studies, and phenomenology. Picart is also an artist, a journalist, and an enthusiast of ballroom dancing. Her art has been exhibited in South Korea, the Philippines, and many parts of the United States. Her articles have been published by two newspapers in Seoul, South Korea, as well as by three newspapers and Filipinas Magazinein the United States. Recently, she was awarded grants from the Institute on Race and Ethnicity, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the Office of University Research, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, to produce videos linking her art with her journalistic and auto-ethnographic writing. She founded and taught ballroom classes with the International Dance Club in South Korea in 1993, and began participating in ballroom competitions in 1998.