Томас

Twenty years ago, in the summer of 1947, a Swiss publishing house published Thomas Mann's novel "Doctor Faustus." Now, the judgment of that unfortunate, sick Jew, the critic Samuel Lublinsky, was no longer necessary. About fifty years before that, it was he who had made a prediction about "Buddenbrooks," which time had fully confirmed: over the years, the importance of this book would grow and it would be read by many more generations. The author of "Doctor Faustus" was already a well-known writer, entered into the literary classics of the 20th century - he did not need the encouraging words once spoken to the young and unknown author of "Buddenbrooks." But precisely because of this, Thomas Mann's personal and literary responsibility became much greater - the entire literary world would gaze at the novel of the 72-year-old famous writer. Perhaps "Doctor Faustus" would remain his last novel, a summary of a long and rich civic and literary life. There were too many reasons for such attention from the literary world beyond the fame, beyond the literary reputation of the artist. "Doctor Faustus" was neither conceived nor realized as a single novel, as one of many novels. Even before the unequivocal confessions of the writer himself, the literary public sensed that this was a novel about the era in the form of a history of the artist's tormented and sinful life, that it contained many of the author's moods, that this was a frank authorial confession. Then came the confessions. "Doctor Faustus" is the writer's first major creative undertaking, which was clear to him in detail from the very beginning, whose spiritual and physical dimensions he saw in advance not in a "magic crystal", but clearly as in the palm of his hand. And perhaps not so much because the 68-year life and nearly 50-year writing experience bore their fruits - the complete coverage of the creative idea with the creative result - but rather because, as he himself admits, none of his fictional characters (perhaps with the exception of Hanno Buddenbrock) did Thomas Mann love so sincerely, so deeply and so sufferingly as he loved his Doctor Faustus, his Adrian Leverkuhn. He loved him as a person loves himself and those in whom he sees himself. As his fictional biographer Serenus Zeitblom, he surrounded him with his anxious love - from the years of haughty discipleship to the fulfillment of the devil's curse.