Buddenbrooks

By Thomas Mann.

Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter.

Titlepage
Imprint
Translator’s Note
Buddenbrooks
1. Part I
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
  5. V
  6. VI
  7. VII
  8. VIII
  9. IX
  10. X
2. Part II
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
  5. V
  6. VI
  7. VII
3. Part III
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
  5. V
  6. VI
  7. VII
  8. VIII
  9. IX
  10. X
  11. XI
  12. XII
  13. XIII
  14. XIV
  15. XV
4. Part IV
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
  5. V
  6. VI
  7. VII
  8. VIII
  9. IX
  10. X
  11. XI
5. Part V
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
  5. V
  6. VI
  7. VII
  8. VIII
  9. IX
6. Part VI
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
  5. V
  6. VI
  7. VII
  8. VIII
  9. IX
  10. X
  11. XI
7. Part VII
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
  5. V
  6. VI
  7. VII
  8. VIII
8. Part VIII
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
  5. V
  6. VI
  7. VII
  8. VIII
  9. IX
9. Part IX
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
10. Part X
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
  5. V
  6. VI
  7. VII
  8. VIII
  9. IX
11. Part XI
  1. I
  2. II
  3. III
  4. IV
Colophon
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Translator’s Note

Buddenbrooks was written before the turn of the century; it was first published in 1902, and became a German classic. It is one of those novels⁠—we possess many of them in English⁠—which are at once a work of art and a unique record of a period and a district. Buddenbrooks is great in its psychology, great as the monument of a vanished cultural tradition, and ultimately great by the perfection of its art: the classic purity and beautiful austerity of its style.

The translation of a book which is a triumph of style in its own language, is always a piece of effrontery. Buddenbrooks is so leisurely, so chiselled: the great gulf of the war divided its literary method from that of our time. Besides, the author has recorded much dialect. This difficulty is insuperable. Dialect cannot be transferred.

So the present translation is offered with humility. It was necessary to recognize that the difficulties were great. Yet it was necessary to set oneself the bold task of transferring the spirit first and the letter so far as might be; and above all, to make certain that the work of art, coming as it does to the ear, in German, like music out of the past, should, in English, at least not come like a translation⁠—which is, “God bless us, a thing of naught.”

Buddenbrooks

Part I

I

“And⁠—and⁠—what comes next?”

“Oh, yes, yes, what the dickens does come next? C’est la question, ma très chère demoiselle!”

Frau Consul Buddenbrook shot a glance at her husband and came to the rescue of her little daughter. She sat with her mother-in-law on a straight white-enamelled sofa with yellow cushions and a gilded lion’s head at the top. The Consul was in his easy-chair beside her, and the child perched on her grandfather’s knee in the window.

“Tony,” prompted the Frau Consul, “ ‘I believe that God’⁠—”

Dainty little eight-year-old Antonie, in her light shot-silk frock, turned her head away from her grandfather and stared aimlessly about the room with her blue-grey eyes, trying hard to remember. Once more she repeated “What comes next?” and went on slowly: “ ‘I believe that God’⁠—” and then, her face brightening, briskly finished the sentence: “ ‘created me, together with all living creatures.’ ” She was in smooth waters now, and rattled away, beaming with joy, through the whole Article, reproducing it word for word from the Catechism just promulgated, with the approval of an omniscient Senate, in that very year of grace 1835. When you were once fairly started, she thought, it was very like going down “Mount Jerusalem” with your brothers on the little sled: you had no time to think, and you couldn’t stop even if you wanted to.

“ ‘And clothes and shoes,’ ” she said, “ ‘meat and drink, hearth and home, wife and child, acre and cow.⁠ ⁠…’ ” But old Johann Buddenbrook could hold in no longer. He burst out laughing, in a high, half-smothered titter, in his glee at being able to make fun of the Catechism. He had probably put the child through this little examination with no other end in view. He inquired after Tony’s acre and