Kunst und Künstler im Erzählwerk Klaus Manns. Intermediale Forschungsperspektiven auf Musik, Tanz, Theater und bildende Kunst

My doctoral thesis focuses on the analysis of the art and artist question in the main novels by Klaus Mann (1906-1949). It concentrates especially on all those intermedial phenomena, which make the author’s literary style modern and dynamic. Through this perspective, I intend to diverge from the main stream within the Klaus-Mann-Forschung, which focuses itself mostly on biographical or gender aspects. My analysis mainly develops from a chronological point of view and examines Klaus Mann’s artistic and aesthetic thought beginning from his debut, with the novel Der fromme Tanz (1925), until his later works, i.e. his pre-exile novel Treffpunkt im Unendlichen (1932) and his well-known exile works Symphonie Pathétique (1935), Mephisto (1936) and Der Vulkan (1939). In this context, I particularly stress those strategies, which can be defined as “intermedial”, because they show how reciprocal medial influences permit to model and represent the most important art expressions of this era through writing. Therefore, Klaus Mann’s prose is strongly characterised by the thematization of art expressions such as the modern dances and songs of the 1920s, the early days of the talkies, but also cabaret, photography and expressionist painting. In particular, these phenomena are not only the object of the plot, but they also influence the narrative structure, so that these novels become fictional texts about music, dance, theatre and figurative arts, because they deal with these themes and at the same time they try to imitate them from a formal point of view. Moreover, it’s possible to identify the development of Klaus Mann’s poetics toward the role of art and the artist through the comparison between his prose and essay works. If Klaus Mann’s first novel is also a novel about Berlin, it’s important to underline that the interest for this metropolis mainly emerges from the representation of its most significant art manifestations, so that Klaus Mann’s work can also be considered as a fictional reportage about the “Golden Age”. That’s also true for Treffpunkt im Unendlichen, in which the author reflects the influences of the Neue Sachlichkeit. However, it’s the musician’s novel Symphonie Pathétique, which presents the most interesting intermedial aspects, because with this work Klaus Mann tries to imitate Tschaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B-minor both thematically and structurally, as especially showed in the American edition of this novel. It should also be emphazised that this novel functions as counterpart of the satire Mephisto, in which the author explores an eminently negative example of art, i.e. Hendrik Höfgen’s histrionism on the stage, but also in his private life; moreover, Klaus Mann compares here the aesthetic role of masks with the Nazis propaganda techniques. Nevertheless, the theatre dimension also plays a positive role, as represented in Klaus Mann’s last novel Der Vulkan, especially through the political engagement of Marion von Kammer. In conclusion, my doctoral thesis aims to analyse not only Klaus Mann’s understanding of art and its antifascist role, but also the expressive potential of his writing and often experimental style.

La tesi mira ad indagare l'opera narrativa di Klaus Mann dal punto di vista intermediale, distaccandosi dalla prospettiva predominante, ovvero la chiave di lettura autobiografica e di genere.