Frases de Thomas Mann

“Su respeto hacia el trabajo era, pues, de naturaleza religiosa y, hasta donde él era consciente, indiscutible. Otra cuestión muy distinta era que lo amase; a eso no podía llegar, por profundo que fuese su respeto, por la sencilla razón de que no estaba hecho para trabajar. Un trabajo duro irritaba sus nervios, lo agotaba enseguida, y Hans Castorp reconocía con franqueza que, en realidad, amaba mucho más el tiempo libre, en que no tenía que soportar el plúmbeo peso del esfuerzo, tiempo a su entera disposición, no sujeto a un programa de obstáculos que había que vencer a regañadientes.”

La montaña mágica

De vida

“«Confieso un honrado menosprecio hacia la mediocridad, que no sabe de maestría y, por tanto, lleva una vida fácil y necia, y considero que es demasiada la gente que escribe». Los orígenes del Doktor Faustus”

La montaña mágica

De libros, Realidad, Esfuerzo, Naturaleza

“La muerte era de una naturaleza piadosa, significativa y tristemente bella, es decir, espiritual; pero, al mismo tiempo, también poseía una segunda naturaleza, casi contraria, muy física y material que, desde luego, no se podía considerar bella, ni significativa, ni piadosa, ni siquiera triste. La naturaleza solemne y espiritual se expresaba en la suntuosa mortaja y ataúd del difunto, las magníficas flores y las palmas que, como se sabe, significan la paz celestial (…) Todas aquellas disposiciones claramente hallaban su sentido y su buen fin en la idea de que el abuelo había adoptado su forma definitiva y verdadera para siempre. Pero además, como muy bien captó el pequeño Hans Castorp, aunque no quiso reconocerlo, todo aquello, y especialmente a su vez, la enorme cantidad de flores (y, entre éstas, en particular de nardos) tenía otro sentido y otro fin más prosaico: mitigar ese otro aspecto de la muete que no es ni bello ni realmente triste, sino más bien casi indecente, bajo, indignamente físico; hacer olvidar o impedir tomar conciencia de la muerte (pp.43-44)”

De gente, De vida

“El que nace para ser ahorcado nunca morirá ahogado.”

De paz, Las flores, Naturaleza, Idea

“De la muerte nadie que volviese de ella podría decir que vale la pena, pues no se tiene vivencia alguna de la muerte. Salimos de las tinieblas y entramos en las tinieblas. Entre esos dos instantes hay muchas experiencias, vivencias, pero no vivimos ni el principio ni el fin, ni el nacimiento ni la muerte; ninguno de los dos tiene carácter subjetivo; en tanto procesos, caen enteramente en el terreno de lo objetivo.”

Fuente: Ortega Blake, Arturo. El gran libro de las frases célebres. Editorial Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial México, 2013 ISBN 978-60-7311-631-2.

“La belleza, como el dolor, hace sufrir.”

Fuente: Citado en Zuleta, Estanislao. Thomas Mann, La montaña mágica y la llanura prosaica. 2ª Edición. Hombre Nuevo Editores, 2003. p. 309.

De muerte, Nacimiento

“La vejez es la peor de todas las corrupciones.”

Fuente: Israel, Ricardo. El libro de las verdades. Citas citables. Editorial RIL Editores, 2011. p. 12.

De belleza, De dolor

“El escritor es aquel al que escribir le resulta más difícil que a las demás personas.”

De vejez

“Colocar en el mismo plano moral el comunismo ruso y el nazifascismo, en la medida en que ambos serían totalitarios, en el mejor de los casos es una superficialidad; en el peor, es fascismo. Quien insiste en esta equiparación puede considerarse un demócrata, pero en verdad y en el fondo de su corazón es en realidad un fascista, y desde luego solo combatirá el fascismo de manera aparente e hipócrita, mientras deja todo su odio para el comunismo.”

Fuente: Citado en Marina, José Antonio. La magia de escribir. Editorial Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial España, 2010. ISBN 9788401390456.

“La maldad, señor, es el espíritu de la crítica, y la crítica es el origen del progreso y la ilustración.”

Fuente: Citado en Becerra, David. La Guerra Civil como moda literaria. Editorial Clave Intelectual, 2016. ISBN 9788494528149. p. 1897.
Fuente: Domenico Losurdo en Stalin: historia y crítica de una leyenda negra, p. 17.

De odio, De verdad, Corazón, Realidad

“¿Quién podría descifrar el enigma de la naturaleza del artista? ¿Quién puede comprender esa fusión instintiva de disciplina y desenfreno en que consiste? Porque el hecho de no querer un sedante saludable es desenfreno.”

La montaña mágica

“Porque quien tiene confianza en sí mismo practica lo más difícil para estar mejor preparado en lo fácil”

La muerte en venecia/Las tablas de la ley

Naturaleza

“la palabra es enemiga de lo misterioso y cruel delatora de lo vulgar.”

Confesiones del estafador Félix Krull

Confianza

“era como una estrofa de un poema primitivo que hablara de los tiempos originarios, del comienzo de la forma y del nacimiento de los dioses.”

Confesiones del estafador Félix Krull

“¿Quiere decir, malicioso? Sí, soy un poco malicioso –dijo Settembrini–. Lo que lamento es estar condenado a malgastar mi maldad en cosas tan miserables.”

La muerte en venecia/Las tablas de la ley

De Dios, Nacimiento

“La corrupción es como un pantano sin fondo: de ella se puede esperar todo.”

La montaña mágica

“Para todo amigo de la ilustración, la palabra «pueblo» y su concepto mismo conservan algo de primitivo que causa aprensión y es porque se sabe que basta tratar de pueblo a la multitud para predisponerla a actos de regresiva maldad. Ante nuestros ojos, o lejos de ellos, ¿cuántas cosas no han ocurrido en nombre del pueblo que no hubiesen podido ocurrir en nombre de dios, de la humanidad o del derecho?”

“Mire, la muerte es digna de honores en tanto es la cuna de la vida, el seno materno de la renovación. Sin embargo, vista como la antítesis de la vida y separada de ella se convierte en un fantasma, en una máscara horrenda o en algo peor todavía. Porque la muerte entendida como fuerza espiritual independiente es una fuerza enteramente depravada; cuya perversa seducción sin duda es sinónimo del más espantoso extravío del espíritu humano.”

De Dios

“los años ricos en acontecimientos transcurren con mayor lentitud que los años pobres, vacíos y carentes de peso, que el viento barre y que pasan volando. Lo”

La montaña mágica

De muerte, De vida

“¿Comprendes ahora por qué nosotros, los poetas, no podemos ser sabios ni dignos? ¿Comprendes por qué tenemos que extraviarnos necesariamente, y ser siempre disolutos, aventureros del sentimiento? La maestría de nuestro estilo es mentira e insensatez; nuestra gloria y honorabilidad, una farsa; la confianza de la multitud en nosotros, el colmo del ridículo.”

La montaña mágica

— Thomas Mann, libro La muerte en Venecia

Death in Venice

De mentira, Confianza

“Quien toma en serio a Nietzsche, quien lo toma al pie de la letra y le cree, está perdido.”

“Apasionado: eso significa vivir por vivir.”

Fuente: Citado en Sebreli, Juan José. El olvido de la razón. Editorial Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Argentina, 2011. ISBN 9789500734769.

Pérdida

Esta traducción está esperando su revisión. ¿Es correcto?

“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”

Thomas Mann: Frases en inglés

“Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.”

Fuente: Death in Venice and Other Tales

“Life is not the means for the achievement of an esthetic ideal of perfection; on the contrary, the work is an ethical symbol of life.”

As quoted in The New York Times (18 June 1950); also in Thomas Mann: A Critical Study (1971) by R. J. Hollingdale, Ch. 2

“Writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well.”

Reflections of a Non-Political Man [Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen] (1918)
Contexto: The important thing for me, then, is not the "work," but my life. Life is not the means for the achievement of an esthetic ideal of perfection; on the contrary, the work is an ethical symbol of life.

“Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

Fuente: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4
Contexto: Writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics. Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word... The word was — civilization!

“Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.”

Fuente: The Beloved Returns (1939), Ch. 7
Contexto: Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.

“He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

Fuente: The Magic Mountain

“This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected — in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.”

“Politics has been called the “art of the possible,” and it actually is a realm akin to art insofar as, like art, it occupies a creatively mediating position between spirit and life, the idea and reality.”

"Early Sorrow" in Tellers of Tales : 100 Short Stories from the United States, England, France, Russia and Germany edited by William Somerset Maugham (1939), p. 884

“I hold that we shall one day recognize in Freud’s life-work the cornerstone for the building of a new anthropology and therewith of a new structure, to which many stones are being brought up today, which shall be the future dwelling of a wiser and freer humanity.”

— Thomas Mann, Germany and the Germans

Speech at the US Library of Congress (29 May 1945); published as "Germany and the Germans" ["Deutschland und die Deutschen"] in Die Neue Rundschau [Stockholm] (October 1945), p. 58, as translated by Helen T. Lowe-Porter

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

Freud and the Future (1937)

“Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.”

Fuente: Essays of Three Decades (1942)

“Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state.”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

Fuente: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 1
Contexto: Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.

“I think of my suffering, of the problem of my suffering. What am I suffering from? From knowledge — is it going to destroy me? What am I suffering from? From sexuality — is it going to destroy me?”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

“Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death.”

Letter from Naples, Italy to Otto Grautoff (1896); as quoted in A Gorgon's Mask: The Mother in Thomas Mann's Fiction (2005) by Lewis A. Lawson, p. 34
Contexto: I think of my suffering, of the problem of my suffering. What am I suffering from? From knowledge — is it going to destroy me? What am I suffering from? From sexuality — is it going to destroy me? How I hate it, this knowledge which forces even art to join it! How I hate it, this sensuality, which claims everything fine and good is its consequence and effect. Alas, it is the poison that lurks in everything fine and good! — How am I to free myself of knowledge? By religion? How am I to free myself of sexuality? By eating rice?

“For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

Fuente: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5
Contexto: Analysis as an instrument of enlightenment and civilization is good, in so far as it shatters absurd convictions, acts as a solvent upon natural prejudices, and undermines authority; good, in other words, in that it sets free, refines, humanizes, makes slaves ripe for freedom. But it is bad, very bad, in so far as it stands in the way of action, cannot shape the vital forces, maims life at its roots. Analysis can be a very unappetizing affair, as much so as death.

“Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute!”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

Fuente: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6
Contexto: I will keep faith with death in my heart, yet will remember that faith with death and the dead is only wickedness and dark voluptuousness and enmity against humankind, if it is given power over our thought and contemplation. For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts. And with that, I wake up.

“Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.”

“The body, love, death, these three are just one.”

— Thomas Mann, libro Deutsche Ansprache

On German fascism, in "An Appeal to Reason" ["Deutsche Ansprache. Ein Appell an die Vernunft"] in Berliner Tageblatt (18 October 1930); as translated by Helen T. Lowe-Porter in Order of the Day, Political Essays and Speeches of Two Decades (1942), p. 57
Contexto: This fantastic state of mind, of a humanity that has outrun its ideas, is matched by a political scene in the grotesque style, with Salvation Army methods, hallelujahs and bell-ringing and dervishlike repetition of monotonous catchwords, until everybody foams at the mouth. Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.

“What is success? It is an inner, an indescribable force, resourcefulness, power of vision; a consciousness that I am, by my mere existence, exerting pressure on the movement of life about me.”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

Hans Castorp to Chauchat, in French, Ch. 5
The Magic Mountain (1924)
Contexto: Rough translation of this passage written in French: The body, love, death, these three are just one. For the body, this is the disease and exquisite delight, and this that does die, yes, they are carnal both of them, love and death, and thus their terror and their great magic!

“The myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious.”

Buddenbrooks [Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie, Roman] (1901). Pt 7, Ch. 6
Contexto: It is as though something had begun to slip – as though I haven’t the firm grip I had on events. – What is success? It is an inner, an indescribable force, resourcefulness, power of vision; a consciousness that I am, by my mere existence, exerting pressure on the movement of life about me. It is my belief in the adaptability of life to my own ends. Fortune and success lie within ourselves. We must hold them firmly – deep within us. For as soon as something begins to slip, to relax, to get tired, within us, then everything without us will rebel and struggle to withdraw from our influence. One thing follows another, blow after blow – and the man is finished.

“It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory.”

Freud and the Future (1937)
Contexto: The myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious. Certainly when a writer has acquired the habit of regarding life as mythical and typical there comes a curious heightening of his artistic temper, a new refreshment to his perceiving and shaping powers, which otherwise occurs much later in life; for while in the life of the human race the mythical is an early and primitive stage, in the life of the individual it is a late and mature one.

“We, when we sow the seeds of doubt deeper than the most up-to-date and modish free-thought has ever dreamed of doing, we well know what we are about.”

— Thomas Mann, The War and the Future

Speech, "The War and the Future" (1940); published in Order of the Day (1942)
Contexto: It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.

“The same is true of the passive qualities, patience under suffering, even pleasure in ill usage.”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

Fuente: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 7
Contexto: We, when we sow the seeds of doubt deeper than the most up-to-date and modish free-thought has ever dreamed of doing, we well know what we are about. Only out of radical skepsis, out of moral chaos, can the Absolute spring, the anointed Terror of which the time has need.

“Passionate — that means to live for the sake of living.”

Fuente: The Beloved Returns (1939), Ch. 7
Contexto: Cruelty is one of the chief ingredients of love, and divided about equally between the sexes: cruelty of lust, ingratitude, callousness, maltreatment, domination. The same is true of the passive qualities, patience under suffering, even pleasure in ill usage.

“Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

The Magic Mountain (1924)
Contexto: Passionate — that means to live for the sake of living. But one knows that you all live for the sake of experience. Passion, that is self-forgetfulness. But what you all want is self-enrichment. C'est ça. You don't realize what revolting egoism it is, and that one day it will make you the enemies of the human race.

“It had been a moving, tranquil apotheosis, immersed in the transfiguring sunset glow of decline and decay and extinction.”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

Fuente: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 5
Contexto: Irony, forsooth! Guard yourself, Engineer, from the sort of irony that thrives up here; guard yourself altogether from taking on their mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct and classic device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, vice and materialism.

“I am looking into an unborn and shapeless world that longs to be called to life and order, I am looking into a throng of phantoms of human forms which beckon me to conjure them and set them free: some of them tragic, some of them ridiculous, and some that are both at once — and to these I am very devoted. But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the bright-spirited living ones, the happy, amiable, and commonplace.”

— Thomas Mann, libro Tristan

Fuente: Tristan (1902), Ch. 10
Contexto: It had been a moving, tranquil apotheosis, immersed in the transfiguring sunset glow of decline and decay and extinction. An old family, already grown too weary and too noble for life and action, had reached the end of its history, and its last utterances were sounds of music: a few violin notes, full of the sad insight which is ripeness for death.

“Time cools, time clarifies, no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.”

— Thomas Mann, libro Tonio Kröger

Fuente: Tonio Kröger (1903), Ch. 9, as translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan
Variant translation: But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the fair-haired and the blue-eyed, the bright children of life, the happy, the charming and the ordinary.
Ch. 9, as translated by David Luke
Contexto: What I have done is nothing, not much — as good as nothing. I shall do better things, Lisaveta — this is a promise. While I am writing, the sea's roar is coming up to me, and I close my eyes. I am looking into an unborn and shapeless world that longs to be called to life and order, I am looking into a throng of phantoms of human forms which beckon me to conjure them and set them free: some of them tragic, some of them ridiculous, and some that are both at once — and to these I am very devoted. But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the bright-spirited living ones, the happy, amiable, and commonplace.
Do not speak lightly of this love, Lisaveta; it is good and fruitful. There is longing in it and melancholy envy, and a tiny bit of contempt, and an unalloyed chaste blissfulness.

“It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.”

— Thomas Mann, libro La montaña mágica

Fuente: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 7
Contexto: Time cools, time clarifies, no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. In the early dawn, standing weapon in hand, neither of the combatants would be the same man as on the evening of the quarrel. They would be going through it, if at all, mechanically, in obedience to the demands of honour, not, as they would have at first, of their own free will, desire, and conviction; and such a denial of their actual selves in favour of their past ones, it must somehow be possible to prevent.