Lyamshin and Leverkühn

Abstract

This article focuses on the literary, political, philosophical, and musical dialogue between Dostoevsky and his ardent admirer Thomas Mann, primarily between the novels Demons and Doctor Faustus. After the French Revolution and the Terror, Marquis de Sade and Goethe’s Mephistopheles reformulated Leibniz’s theodicy by declaring that evil does good. The novels of Dostoevsky and Mann showed that the endeavour to bring truth, goodness, and beauty to the world leads to the triumph of absolute evil. Utopian dreams lead to violence, blood, and dictatorship. Love and creativity lead to sickness, madness, torment, and a bargain with the devil. Thomas Mann’s dialogue with Dostoevsky was not only in the sphere of ideas and narrative techniques but also in musical polyphony. The dialogue was direct and indirect through Mahler and his followers, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, whose musical ideas were reflected in Doctor Faustus. While working on Doctor Faustus during the Second World War, Thomas Mann carefully re-read Dostoevsky’s work Demons and may have noticed a minor character Lyamshin’s musical piece of work “Franco-Prussian War.”

Keywords

• dostoevsky
• thomas mann
• baudelaire
• voltaire
• goethe
• music
• literature
• politics
• utopia