Buddenbrooks: The Decline Of A Family (1994) - Plot & Excerpts
MEAN REVERSION IS A BITCH...!!!There is a concept in statistics, Regression or Reversion to the Mean, which is widely used in a variety of fields of knowledge. It was first realized by Sir Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, when he worked on the correlation of heights between adult children and parents.The concept refers to the tendency for any variable which exhibits an extreme value at any point of measurement to move towards the average next time it is measured.This mathematical tool is used regularly both in Genetics and in Finance Theory. Consequently, it is an apt model for dealing with the Buddenbrooks and their three Fs: Family, Firm and Fortune, and particularly so because the anchor of the family is precisely that: Trading. Their pride was founded upon the buying and selling of grains, and to do so in the appropriate manner with suitable methods, engaging in the right discipline, performing the relevant calculations, exerting their commercial savvy, and adhering to their code of ethics -- all of these constituted their pride and nature.The novel begins with the second generation of a family and spans five generations. Their business had, however, one generation less. The book tracks the progression of the Buddenbrooks as a function of their prosperity. The characters and their circumstances are factors that exert a force in the success trend of the family.In the Buddenbrooks the finances and identity of the firm and family are inseparably intertwined. The family’s expenses are expenses for the firm. And profits from the firm accumulated as capital provide the income and living style of the family. The new Buddenbrooks house, the family symbol with which the novel begins, is a monument to itself. Family and firm reside there.In addition to the launch of the triumphal house the novel regularly pegs the level at which the Buddenbrooks capital stands. They start off with a mark of 900k Marks and the subsequent levels, which can be plotted, guide us as we follow their successes or hardships. Johann Buddenbrook the Younger begins the apprenticeship of his son Thomas by giving a quick review of the big blocks composing their capital. He understands them well. Later on Tom gives the latest balance to his sister Tony, and although the figure sounds reassuringly high to her, he however adds with concern: “we should be at one million” The Buddenbrook capital has stayed sort of flat, which in any progression of prosperity means trouble. As we approach the end of the novel the family is valued at 650k, amount that will however decrease further as the assets are liquidated inadequately.So, how does this function of prosperity work? The phenomenon of moving back to the Mean irremediably starts and both Genetics and Trading are players in the game.Depending on their gender and their primogeniture the various members of family will have to perform a different role. The patriarchs, role reserved for the eldest son, are to be the main motor. When this works, it works, but the problem is that its dependency is concentrated on one individual becoming therefore too risky. We see that even the luck of begetting a male son does not guarantee the survival of the genes of mercantile prosperity. Christian turns out to be a good-for-nothing and therefore neither a support nor a back-up to the elder brother in any of the Buddenbrook responsibilities and activities. He becomes a deviation from the trend and a very strong pull away from excellence. Nor is Hanno a healthy alternative to the mercantile model. The boy inherits the artistic inclinations from his mother, but also the lack of discipline that we saw in his uncle. His musical abilities turn out to be good only for toying around with music, not really for playing or composing. He is not, as Tony hoped, a new Mozart. Surprisingly, Thomas Mann does not present the Arts and Music as Saviours for the Buddenbrooks. No redeeming transformation is generated.The women and daughters occupy a very particular position. The daughters are detractors of a significant amount of the capital, since significant dowries have to be carved out of the sustaining trunk. These side investments are expected to bring back both prestige and an extended business clout with an overall benefit for the Buddenbrooks. In this family the dowries granted out were almost all utter failures. We know that money seduces swindlers like honey attracts flies. And the Buddenbrooks, both the women and the men, suffer as the victims of the Gründlich hoax and of devout greed. The family’s mercantile acumen was not able to detect the money-hunters. In spite of these failures, however, dowries did net in around 89k Marks thanks to the 300k that Gerda brought along when she married Tom. But it is the concentration on the different roles that the various family members have to play, according to their gender, which increases the probability of failure. Tony is a convinced Buddenbrooks even if she suffered when she sacrificed her Morten. Could she have offered the business support to her elder brother once it was clear that Christian was not capable? Or could she, or her daughter and grand-daughter, have continued the family firm similarly to the way Donatella Versace has? This is hard to say, since after all it was she who persuaded her brother of the suitability of the Pöppenrader deal. Failure or hailstorm, had she been able to participate or take over the business, the probability of survival would have increased. With this possibility barred, the Pöppenrader misfortune takes place precisely and symbolically when Tom’s grandiose house and the Centennial of the firm are celebrated. It marks the resistance point and the decline clearly begins.But not all the triggers for the Verfall can be found in the family members. The novel gives loose indications of the historical and economic conditions in which we see this family’s progression. We learn that although Johann the Elder expressed antipathy towards the rising Prussia, he had made a great deal of his profits by selling his grains to the emerging Teutonic Kingdom. And several times the Customs Union is mentioned, although we cannot know in what specific aspects they were detrimental for their business. Revolution comes, entertains, and goes. And the new war between Prussia and Austria remains hazily further south. When Thomas refers to the slow pace at which their benefits are made, signalling a business of narrowing margins, we wonder whether there were other factors that were transforming the business profoundly and which he was not detecting. Although the context is included in the novel, we are left with only a very general idea that the rules of the game must have changed and that these have debunked the Buddenbrooks-way. But the book does not offer further detail.So, what brought the downfall of the Buddenbrooks? It was a joint result of bad luck, some failed judgment, changing political and economic circumstances, and the determinism of social conventions. But when a reversion to the mean process begins, the causes are not important. What is important is that it happens and that it can hurt.As the Turkish proverb, that Tom quotes, says: Wenn das Haus fertig ist, kommt der Tod, and so the graphs and statistical laws show.
How could Katia Pringsheim have gone on to marry Thomas Mann if she had ever read his first novel, Buddenbrooks beforehand? The long story of a families multifaceted decline across four generations features mental anguish, bankruptcy, insanity and no happy marriages.Thomas Mann's first novel is set among the Lübeck Patrician class of leading merchants who dominated the small city-state. Mann drew heavily upon the family background that he left behind along with the world of business to make himself into a writer in Munich instead. There is no such escape for his fictionalised family in Buddenbrooks. For them the pride in their heritage becomes an obligation. A yardstick that serves only to measure the extent of their shortcomings, however Mann's analysis of the families decline is not so straightforward. Contingency is a major factor. They lose out from unexpected bankruptcies, they miss out on opportunities, the currents of the economy change and shift about them, they don't adapt and are slowly left behind “sitting on the rocks” as others, including would be suitor the medical student Morten, steam ahead . For Thomas Mann as an author the deconstruction of his heritage is a creative act that allows him to reconstruct himself into a novelist. Before Buddenbrooks Thomas had only published short stories and the narrative he produced is not continuous. Reading it is like admiring a series of Hogarth prints like The Rake's Progress or Marriage a la Mode. Some chapters could be split off and read as a story on their own. There are years between some chapters. The point of view character changes. At one point a chapter consists only of a letter sent from one family member to another. Mann created the novel as a federation of short stories, bound together by common characters, setting, images and the notion of inescapable decline. The decline of the Buddenbrooks is complex. For one the family fails to nourish. Like poor Klothilde they eat and eat but don't grow sleek. Christian is prematurely aged. Tom worn out. Tony educated to be helpless, she clings to the intellectual highpoint of her life – the conversations she had with the student Morten at the age of sixteen – decades later recommending to her brother to read newspapers that had long ago ceased to be printed. The whole of Fontane's Effi Briest is given over to the story of a woman educated to be a child and married to be a dependant, but Tony's story of a woman searching for a role is an alternative take with an ironic twist is itself just one strand of Buddenbrooks. I prefer the Fontane, but I have to give credit to the scope of Mann's ambition. Their world is changing around them, they fail to flow with the Zeitgeist. The big politics of 1848 and the wars of unification are in the background. Their world is a shrinking pond. When they venture outside they are at the mercy of bigger fish. Each character in successive generations succeeds in both being a type and true to their time while also being an individual.This is the book that gave rise to the 'Buddenbrook syndrome' used to describe the practise of commercial families to withdraw in the second and third generations from business and to put their time and money into leisure activities as well as anticipating (maybe even inspiring) Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in its treatment of the part played by religion in the inner lives of the Buddenbrooks. The neverending oppressive school day that robs little Hanno of vitality would feature again in his brother Heinrich Mann's novels The Blue Angel and Man of Straw.The concerns with philosophy and music that Mann developed further in The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus here suggest that the decline in the world is balanced by an inner refinement. That the increasing interior richness of their lives renders them unable to compete with their local rivals, the grossly corporeal Hagenstrom family. For all their status inside the city the new Germany is dominated by the old landed aristocracy - something that will be expressed with more brutality and bitterness in Man of Straw.The gloomy, pessimistic story is told with irony, which can keep the characters at arm's length, but then since they tended to fail to achieve connections with spouses and other contemporaries was perhaps just what the author intended. He escaped and transcended his heritage – his characters couldn't.
What do You think about Buddenbrooks: The Decline Of A Family (1994)?
A 19th century family saga, rich in character study, which serves as a dissection of societal ritual and mores. Mann kills off his namesake Buddenbrook (Thomas) by means of a decayed tooth (sorry for the plot spoiler), thus providing a metaphorical coda to what ultimately went wrong. It is hard to like any one character, but easy to be fascinated by each of them. Many chapters stand very well alone, like the antepenultimate one which examines a day in the life of Hanno Buddenbrook, laying bare the German educational system, friendships, art and artists, fraud, hope, despair, self-esteem and self-doubt. 'Buddenbrooks' does not have the metaphysical searching of 'The Magic Mountain' but nevertheless displays fully the imagination and craftsmanship of this great writer.
—Tony
Ventisei anni. Thomas Mann aveva solo ventisei anni quando ha pubblicato questo romanzo. Ai tempi nostri, un ragazzo della sua età riesce probabilmente a pubblicare solo un milione di cretinate su Twitter o Facebook.Non essendo iscritta né al primo, né al secondo, e non potendo, di conseguenza, portare prove a suffragio di quello che dico, mi cullo nell’illusione di venir presto smentita e palesemente contraddetta da concreti dati di fatto. Ma ne dubito.Tornando in pista, I Buddenbrook è un romanzo intenso, corposo, solido. E’ la fotografia di un tempo e di un luogo che l’autore conosceva assai bene e di cui ce ne ha impeccabilmente tramandato l’immagine, facendocela vivere, con tutte le sue contraddizioni, le sue paure, i suoi trionfi e le sue sconfitte. Tutte espresse attraverso gli atti, le scelte e i comportamenti dei personaggi, nonché una scorrevolissima scrittura. Non c’è alcun stream of consciousness e nessun narratore onnisciente. Solo fatti dai quali ciascun lettore, tenendo ovviamente conto della distanza temporale che lo separa dall’epoca in questione, potrà giungere alle proprie conclusioni. Io ho tratto le mie. A voi trarre le vostre. ;-)
—Arwen56
I just ordered that Mitford! I inherited my grandmother's silver and it could use a good polish so I'm going to take your suggestion and read Mann and polish.
—Jonfaith
