Finishing Buddenbrooks
beware: spoilers...!
Before you read—beware: spoilers...!
I have just finished Buddenbrooks. How shattering. I kept putting it off, gradually reading less and less, until I was down to just a few chapters. I walked away after the scene with Hanno at school. His teeth, his feebleness, oh it is too awful. And the way he sits silently not playing the piano in the evening, composing in his head. Little red spots like lentils all over him! The whole books ends on a note of insistent optimism, when Madame Weichbrodt defies Tony’s defeatism. It is a clash of the nihilist and the worker, the one who is accustomed to what “life” must be, and one who have faith in “the good fight she has waged all her life against the onslaughts of reason.” It is a faith many more of us will perhaps need to retain in the years to come, rather than succumbing to the all to persuasive reasons why civilization will go smash. I have nothing else to say about Buddenbrooks. How could I? I am simply going to have to get used to it. This is the last scene of Hanno’s life, and I shall think of it often:
…well after midnight, he was sitting in his room by candlelight, at his harmonium and he played it, but only in his mind—noise was not allowed at this hour. Of course he fully intended to get up at half past five and do his most pressing homework.
Normally, I would not give spoilers, but what else is there to do in this case? The book moves so determinedly towards its ending, gripping one with a rising fear of the inevitable. (It works by the expectation of astonishment.)
Here is what I had to say a few days ago, before I reached the end.
Ok, fine, Henry, fine! You broke me! I was aiming to buy no new books in Q2. But this made me -- forced me -- to buy Buddenbrooks and read asap. Forced my hand! Look at what you have done to this noble visage, this former pillar of steely willpower....
I have been saving Buddenbrooks for a rainy day. I adore “Doctor Faustus” and “Magic Mountain” — I read both of those in prison, in solitary confinement. They allowed me to request up to two books at a time from the library. Read most of Dostoevsky in that cell also, freezing cold and three inches of backed up sewage on the floor. I was close to real starvation, lost 40 pounds - so all the sumptuous meals in “Magic Mountain” had quite an impact.