| |
Saturday,
February 4, 2006
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann:
“Baron Riedesel, then, saw in whatever was
old and historical a bulwark against all things modern and subversive,
a kind of feudal polemic against them, and in that spirit he supported
the old without in fact understanding anything about it. For just as little
as one can understand what is new and young without being at home in tradition,
so, too, love for the old must remain inauthentic and sterile if one closes
oneself off to the new, which arises from the old out of historical necessity.
And so Riedesel cherished and promoted the ballet – simply because
it was “graceful.” The word “graceful” was for
him a conservative, polemical shibboleth against the subversively modern…
To
be sure, a great deal of Wagner was performed at the Schlaginhaufens’
as well…Wagner’s music, without which the Hoftheater could
not have existed, has been more or less incorporated into the feudal realm
of the “graceful” (though it was loud and violent) by Herr
von Riedesel, who was all the more willing to hold it in esteem because
there were newer works that went far beyond it, which as a conservative
one could reject by playing them off against Wagner….
…I was touched when afterward his Excellency
von Riedesel – immediately seconded by the tall, elegant lady of
the house – encouraged me in words spoken with the soft lilt of
southern Germany, though sharpened by an officer’s tone, to repeat
the andante and minuet by Milandre (1770) with which I had only recently
obliged them on my seven strings. How weak man is! I was grateful to him,
completely forgot my dislike of his smooth, vacant aristocratic physiognomy
– so imperturbably impudent as to be almost serene – with
its twirled blond moustache beneath pudgy clean-shaven cheeks and sparkling
monocle tucked in one eye beneath a whitish brow.”
|
|
