Thomas Mann is not only an important writer, but also a collector of manuscripts of writers and artists. Because he believes in Goethe's words: "To fully understand a great work, you must not only see the finished product, but also understand the process of its creation." For me, when I do literary criticism, I need to understand why the author wrote, based on what experiences and inspirations, what system and values they have, what social background they are in, and why they chose the writing form that we see.
Thomas Mann himself was a witness to a major turning point in history, and a witness to humanity's journey towards modernity. I currently want to provide a comprehensive description, but I still fall short. For now, I mainly rely on my current understanding of the novel "A Letter from an Unknown Woman". If I can gain a deeper understanding in the future, I will further write about it.
I. Realism of the Story#
The realism of the story has two aspects.
On one hand, this novel has its realistic origins.
In 1916, Thomas Mann received a letter from a stranger. The writer of the letter, Friederike, was a female writer. In the letter, she mentioned her encounter with Thomas Mann four years ago and their accidental encounter a few days ago. In the letter, Friederike expressed her admiration for many of Thomas Mann's works and also expressed her personal opinions on some of the works. At that time, Friederike was already a mother of two children, but as the correspondence continued, their feelings deepened. Four years later, Friederike divorced her original husband and married Thomas Mann.
In 1913, Thomas Mann came to Paris and met Marcel, who was skilled in making women's hats and was being abused by her husband. They spent a happy but short time together in Paris. A few months later, Thomas Mann received a letter from Marcel before her death, which expressed her deep and passionate love for him, without any blame but full of gratitude. Thomas Mann commented on this: "A letter without blame, therefore seven times more touching. I oscillate between extreme shame and extreme shamelessness, and I tend towards extremes in this regard."
(The above two paragraphs have significant differences in different sources I checked, for example, some believe that Thomas Mann received Friederike's letter in 1912, and some do not believe that the letter Thomas Mann received was Marcel's last letter. I will find more accurate and authoritative descriptions in the future.)
The male protagonist of the novel is a young and famous man, gentle and elegant, and loves to travel, resembling the author himself. These must have provided him with inspired inspiration.
On the other hand, the portrayal of the young girl's passion in the story is realistic and credible. Some people oppose this novel because it is so real and enticing that it can lead others to imitate. Even so, what responsibility does a novel have? Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" was believed to have caused many young men and women to commit suicide. "The Peony Pavilion" was also believed to have harmed young ladies. But these are not the responsibilities of the novels. What novels require is sincerity in the content they write. Moreover, this novel is not meant to be read in this way.
II. Psychological Analysis of the Story#
The last sentence of the female protagonist's letter says, "I no longer believe in God now, I don't need others to say Mass for me, I only believe in you, I only love you, and I only want to continue living by your side." This sentence is crucial for interpreting this novel.
In the 20th century, the death of God, Nietzsche and Freud were two crucial figures. Thomas Mann had written biographies of these two people and was familiar with their thoughts. He was friends with Freud, who praised Thomas Mann's novels from a psychoanalytic perspective multiple times.
From a psychological analysis perspective, the female protagonist was born into a poor family, lacking a father, with a weak mother, and surrounded by vulgar lower-class people. When she was 13 years old and saw the male protagonist, who was gentle and had various beautifully bound books, a new world opened up to her. "That person has read so many beautiful books, he also knows many languages, he is rich and knowledgeable, what does he really look like? Just thinking about you having so many books, a feeling of awe towards the sage arose in my heart." Within that door was her paradise. This is compensation for the shortcomings of her childhood. According to Freud's theory, adults spend their entire lives compensating for the shortcomings of their childhood, striving towards that otherworldly world. However, this otherworldly world no longer has a place for God, but belongs to human desires and free will.
In Freud's view, the repression of the ego and the id leads to the sublimation of the superego. Since meeting the male protagonist, "Before, I had mediocre grades in school, but after falling in love with you, I studied seriously, often staying up late to read, and my grades became the best in the class. I also started learning the piano and showed extraordinary perseverance."
If the story ended there, there would be nothing wrong, and no one would be repulsed. However, the female protagonist's love for the writer is characterized by a masochistic spirit. Besides from the writer, she cannot feel happiness. This is not uncommon in the symptoms of youth.
The question we need to ask is, is this normal?
This question is difficult to answer. On one hand, if she were to undergo psychological counseling, this would be a typical case of paranoia and emotional dependence, and she would need to develop an independent personality. On the other hand, masochism is a voluntarily chosen sacrifice and endurance, which many human heroes possess. Although they express this paranoia and masochism in other aspects, such as dedication to humanity, to ideas, to art. Like the heroes in Thomas Mann's biographies. As Thomas Mann himself said:
"In my biographical literature, I don't write about people who have achieved success in real life, only about characters with noble moral spirits. I never liked to praise and glorify heroic characters, but always focused on the tragedies of the failures. In my novellas, the protagonists are all manipulated by fate, and they are very attractive to me."
What Thomas Mann writes, whether it is a biography or a novel, is about heroes driven by passion who ultimately fail. In the eyes of the ordinary, they are failures, but they have achieved self-completion in their own lives and are masters of themselves. From a secular perspective, Yang Lijuan brought disaster upon herself and her family. However, I do not think there is anything to blame. Each person has several decades of life, and no one can dictate how you should live your life.
Bao Yu being beaten and Dai Yu saying to him, "Can you change?" is not asking him to really change, but rather pity for the only person who shares a spiritual connection on the lonely road. Every individual's life is a lonely one-way street. But I do not recommend placing one's life on a person or a belief, because one day you may find that this person, this belief, is just like that. It is best to live a fulfilling and joyful life.
The courage and dedication to beliefs in youth are determined by hormones. It is intentionally meant to make humans compete, take risks, and mate for the overall continuation of human genes. This passion from youth, the innocence, can continue into adulthood and is a factor that many people who make significant contributions to humanity can succeed. As the female protagonist says:
"My love is so selfless and self-sacrificing, I will not betray you, I only love you, and I only want to continue living by your side. In this world, a child's unrequited love is unparalleled. This kind of love does not harbor any hope, it is humble, not valued by others, full of passion, and only seeks to please the beloved. It is different from the passionate desires of adult women, it does not have the greedy desires that love usually has. It gathers all the passion, which only a lonely child can do."
Based on my current experience, I believe that after going through this stage, one can have doubts about past beliefs, seeing mountains as not mountains and seeing water as not water, being able to experience the despair of mountains and rivers, and the emergence of a bright village, and ultimately further growth, seeing mountains as mountains and seeing water as water again.
III. Yesterday's World and the Otherworldly World#
The passionate dedication in this novel brings to mind Oscar Wilde's "The Nightingale and the Rose," "The Happy Prince," and "The Picture of Dorian Gray," and even further back, Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," and Victor Hugo's romanticism. This is an idealistic world based on personal freedom of choice, opposing rationalism based on reality.
Before the death of God, your belief in God cannot be measured by self-interest. In the era of romanticism, the love you give cannot be measured by life. These otherworldly values and beliefs cannot be calculated or doubted.
Thomas Mann witnessed the victory of modernity, and modernity is the ultimate value, metaphysics, and the dissolution of otherworldly ideals. A world that experienced the devastation of World War I, causing many writers to reflect on their own creations and on history. This is an era without belief, God is dead, as Max Weber said: all noble values and meanings have been demystified and lost from the public sphere.
"A Letter from an Unknown Woman" was written in 1922, and in the same year, Kafka's "The Castle," Eliot's "The Waste Land," Joyce's "Ulysses," and Proust's second volume of "In Search of Lost Time" were published. George Orwell said that writers between 1910 and 1930 were pessimistic and disillusioned, and their works would be passed down. As for why this is the case, Orwell did not explain. My conclusion is that the pessimism of humanity's belieflessness and the death of freedom is eternal. "No longer resisting, no longer pretending to be able to control it, just accepting it, enduring it, and recording it. It seems to be the remedy that all sensitive novelists can adopt now. It has a positive and constructive attitude, while being emotionally true in the novel, which is difficult to imagine at the moment" (Orwell, "Inside the Whale").
Therefore, further extending, Thomas Mann in this novel mourns the world of yesterday, the world that has not yet reached the end of the heavens and the earth, the world that can reach the otherworldly world. This story is quite cruel, but intentionally so, because faith justifies it, and all tests cannot shake the belief.
Human childhood has ended, and we have acquired many powers that can destroy ourselves. We irreversibly enter modernity. Atomic bombs, assembly lines, big data, credit loans, climate change, parliaments, and reality TV shows make up modernity. Modernity has an uncertainty principle. When you do not think, do not understand what modernity is, modernity can bring destruction to humanity. But if enough people think about modernity, panic about its possible destruction, then perhaps destruction will not come. This itself is a responsibility ethics. From Hannah Arendt's banality of evil, Albert Camus' self-imposed meaning, John Rawls' veil of ignorance, Jürgen Habermas' communicative rationality, they have endowed humanity that has stepped out of childhood with the responsibility they should bear.
Yesterday's world cannot be retained, today's world is full of worries. When I read Thomas Mann's "The World of Yesterday," he wrote about the first time he saw an airship, which made me think of Eren Yeager's father taking his sister to see an airship in "Attack on Titan." The same cheers for human progress, but also the same tragedy for humanity. Hajime Isayama hurts readers intentionally because many questions have no answers. God is dead, and humans can only rely on themselves.