Thomas Mann and the return of the repressed

Abstract

This essay explores the basic motif which to some extent holds together Thomas Mann’s literary work: «the collapse of a highly cultivated poised attitude, laboriously won by judgement and renunciation» and the «triumph of the suppressed world of instinct». In other words: the return of the repressed. Behind the extraordinary congruence and organicity of Mann’s poetic universe lie erotic anguishes that beset the author. These pages explore the poetic transfiguration of such drives, essentially homoerotic, in works such as Der kleine Herr Friedemann, Der Bajazzo, Tonio Kröger, Der Tod in Venedig and Der Zauberberg, among others, where the author reaches admirable peaks of veiled silence.