Thomas Mann and Italy by Ilsedore B. Jonas (review)

Abstract

I. B. Jonas's detailed study of Italy's influence on Thomas Mann and the German author's influence on Italian literature maximizes the southern country's importance to the northern novelist and viceversa. The work is divided into five chapters — Mann's Encounters with the Italian World, Reflections of Italy in Mann's Works, Mann's Influence on Italian Literature, and Results of the Investigation of Mann's Relationship with Italy — followed by a chronological table of Mann's trips to Italy, extensive notes, a useful bibliography, an index of persons, and eight pages of photographs. From 1895 to 1954 Mann made over twenty separate trips to Italy. His initial reaction to the colorful Italian scene was reserved, but his reserve gradually turned into a fascination with the Latin culture. In Death in Venice, as in the earlier novella Tonio Kroger and the sketch Gladius Dei, the south comes to represent sensuality and the north asceticism. An Italian setting is absent from The Magic Mountain, but the figure of Lodovico Settembrini (undoubtedly based on the historical Luigi Settembrini) introduces the motif of Italian liberalism and humanism. Settembrini's admiration for Carducci, Mazzini, and Garibaldi and his references to Dante, Petrarch, Brunetto Latini, Pietro Aretino, and Giacomo Leopardi testify to Mann's familiarity with Italian literature. In Mario and the Magician the scene is once again Italian, and the author's anti-Fascist sentiments are in the foreground; the character Cipolla, furthermore, is modelled on Boccaccio's Frate Cipolla. Adrian Leverkühn, in Doctor Faustus, travels to Italy in search of freedom. In this and all Mann's works containing descriptions of Italy the author draws on his personal recollections to capture the southern scenes. Until Mann received the 1929 Nobel Prize, Italian interest in him was minimal. In the 1930's and 1940's Lavinia Mazzucchetti, Italy's chief Mann scholar, was most responsible for directing southern attention to the German writer. In 1952 Mann received the Feltrinelli Prize. Italian literature of our era has taken French and American authors as models, but the German traditions has rarely exerted extensive influence over Italy. Jonas's main contribution is her demonstration that Italian influence on Mann was much greater than previously thought.