staring up some woman`s skirt—and turned his attention back to Philip.
And who was the prodigy?(Philip droned on.) His name was Thomas Mann. When he
was your age, yes, your age, he began writing a masterpiece, a glorious novel
calledBuddenbrooks published when he was only twenty–six years old. Thomas
Mann, as I hope and pray you know, went on to become a towering figure in the
twentieth–century world of letters and was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature.»(Here Philip spelled M–a–n–nand B–u–d–d–e–n-
b–r–o–o–k–sto his blackboard scribe.) Buddenbrooks, published in 1901, traced the life
of one family, a German burgher family, through four generations and all the
associated vicissitudes of the life cycle.
Now what does this have to do with philosophy and with the real subject of
today`s lecture? As I promised, I have strayed a bit but only in the service of
returning to the core with greater vigor.
Julius heard rustling in the auditorium and the sound of footsteps. The two
elbowing voyeurs directly in front of Julius noisily collected their belongings and left the
hall. The embracing students at the end of the row had departed, and even the student
assigned to the blackboard had vanished.
Philip continued:
To me, the most remarkable passages inBuddenbrooks come late in the novel as the
protagonist, the paterfamilias, old Thomas Buddenbrooks, approaches death. One is
astounded by a writer in his early twenties having such insight and such sensibility to
issues concerned with the end of life.(A faint smile played on his lips as Philip held
up the dog–eared book.) I recommend these pages to anyone intending to die.
Julius heard the strike of matches as two students lit cigarettes while exiting the
auditorium.
When death came to claim him, Thomas Buddenbrooks was bewildered and
overcome by despair. None of his belief systems offered him comfort—neither his
religious views which had long before failed to satisfy his metaphysical needs, nor his
worldly skepticism and materialistic Darwinian leaning. Nothing, in Mann`s words,
was able to offer the dying man «in the near and penetrating eye of death a single
hour of calm.»
Here, Philip looked up. «What happened next is of great importance and it is here
that I begin to close in on the designated subject of our lecture tonight.»
In the midst of his desperation Thomas Buddenbrooks chanced to draw from his
bookcase an inexpensive, poorly sewn volume of philosophy bought at a used book
stand years before. He began to read and was immediately soothed. He marveled by
how, as Mann put it, «a master–mind could lay hold of this cruel mocking thing called
life.»
The extraordinary clarity of vision in the volume of philosophy enthralled the
dying man, and hours passed without his looking up from his reading. Then he came
upon a chapter titled «On Death, and Its Relation to Our Personal Immortality» and,
intoxicated by the words, read on as though he were reading for his very life. When
he finished, Thomas Buddenbrooks was a man transformed, a man who had found the
comfort and peace that had eluded him.
What was it that the dying man discovered?(At this point Philip suddenly
adopted an oracular voice.) Now listen well, Julius Hertzfeld, because this may be
useful for life`s final examination....
Shocked at being directly addressed in a public lecture, Julius bolted upright in his
seat. He glanced nervously about him and saw, to his astonishment, that the auditorium
was empty: everyone, even the two homeless men, had left.
But Philip, unperturbed by his vanished audience, calmly continued:
I`ll read a passage fromBuddenbrooks. (He opened a tattered paperback copy of the
book.) «Your assignment is to read the novel, especially part nine, with great care. It
will prove invaluable to you—far more valuable than attempting to extract meaning
from patients` reminiscences of long ago.
Have I hoped to live on in my son? In a personality yet more feeble, flickering, and
timorous than my own? Blind, childish folly! What can my son do for me? Where
shall I be when I am dead? Ah, it is so brilliantly clear. I shall be in all those who
have ever, do ever, or ever shall say «I»—especially, however, in all those who say it
most fully, potently, and gladly!...Have I ever hated life—pure, strong, relentless
life? Folly and misconception! I have but hated myself because I could not bear it. I
love you all, you blessed, and soon, soon, I shall cease to be cut off from you by all
the narrow bonds of myself; soon that in me which loves you will be free and be in
and with you—in and with you all.
Philip closed the novel and returned to his notes.
Now who was the author of the volume which so transformed Thomas
Buddenbrooks? Mann does not reveal his name in the novel, but forty years later he
wrote a magnificent essay which stated that Arthur Schopenhauer was the author of
the volume. Mann then proceeds to describe how, at the age of twenty–three, he first
experienced the great joy of reading Schopenhauer. He was not only entranced by the
ring of Schopenhauer`s words, which he describes as «so perfectly consistently clear,
so rounded, its presentation and language so powerful, so elegant, so unerringly
apposite, so passionately brilliant, so magnificently and blithely severe—like never
any other in the history of German philosophy,” but by the essence of
Schopenhauerian thought, which he describes as «emotional, breathtaking, playing
between violent contrasts, between instinct and mind, passion and redemption.» Then
and there Mann resolved that discovering Schopenhauer was too precious an
experience to keep to himself and straightaway used it creatively by offering the
philosopher to his suffering hero.
And not only Thomas Mann but many other great minds acknowledged their
debt to Arthur Schopenhauer. Tolstoy called Schopenhauer the «genius par excellence
among men.» To Richard Wagner he was a «gift from Heaven.» Nietzsche said his
life was never the same after purchasing a tattered volume of Schopenhauer in a used–book store in Leipzig and, as he put it, «letting that dynamic, dismal genius work on
my mind.» Schopenhauer forever changed the intellectual map of the Western world,
and without him we would have had a very different and weaker Freud, Nietzsche,
Hardy, Wittgenstein, Beckett, Ibsen, Conrad.
Philip pulled out a pocketwatch, studied it for a moment, and then, with great
solemnity:
Here concludes my introduction to Schopenhauer. His philosophy has such breadth
and depth it defies a short summary. Hence I have chosen to pique your curiosity in
the hope that you will read the sixty–page chapter in your text carefully. I prefer to
devote the last twenty minutes of this lecture to audience questions and discussion.
Are there questions from the audience, Dr. Hertzfeld?
Unnerved by Philip`s tone, Julius once again scanned the empty auditorium and
then softly said, «Philip, I wonder if you`re aware that your audience has departed?»
«What audience? Them? Those so–called students?» Philip flicked his wrist in a
disparaging manner to convey that they were beneath his notice, that neither their arrival
nor their departure made the slightest difference to him. «You, Dr. Hertzfeld, are my
