This volume brings together Thomas Mann's reflections of a lifetime on the composer to whom he felt closest. The novelist's admiration for Wagner was, however, by no means uncritical. Following Nietzsche, Mann knew that one had a duty to be both 'pro and contra Wagner'–hence the title of this collection. Its centerpiece, 'The Sorrows and Grandeur of Richard Wagner', is one of the most revealing essays on the composer ever written. Delivered as a lecture in Munich within two weeks of Hitler having become Chancellor. Mann's blasphemous view of Wagner's art as 'dilettantism raised to the level of genius', was the immediate cause of his long exile from German soil. This and the other major essay in this book (on the Ring) have long been out of print. They are presented here in wholly new translations which capture more faithfully than previous renderings the tone and literary distinction of the original texts. The forty-four other items, written between 1902 and 1951, include many which have never before been available in English. As Erich Heller says in his introduction, these incomparable writings are 'an essential fragment of the novelist's intellectual autobiography'.
Author
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information. See also: Serbian: Tomas Man Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate in 1929, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
