Previous - 57. Why?
Doctor Faustus
I'm now re-reading the XLV chapter, the one where Adrian says,
“I find,” he said, “that it is not to be.”
“What, Adrian, is not to be?”
“The good and noble,” he answered me; “what we call the human, although it is good, and noble. What human beings have fought for and stormed citadels, what the ecstatics exultantly announced -- that is not to be. It will be taken back. I will take it back.”
In the summer of the Trump Presidential candidacy, one is tempted to agree with Adrian. Though it's worth noting that Mann was writing not much over 100 years after Beethoven wrote his 9th Symphony. He lacked the historical perspective we have today, the feeling that there may be a historical cycle with Napoleon and Hitler and today's madmen at the low point and Beethoven's 9th as a reminder that these storms in time do pass. If only for a time.
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