This month, Scott and friends are reading Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, which reminds me to mention one of my favorite connections between art and literature:

In 1972, German artist Horst Janssen suffered a serious illness.  Following his recovery, he was inspired to produce a series of etchings.  Over one week, Janssen produced 27 self-portraits “which show approaching death in all stages of disintegration.”  He entitled the series “Hanno’s Tod,” or “The Death of Hanno,” after the famous scene in Buddenbrooks in which the sensitive, artistic son of businessman Thomas Buddenbrook is struck by typhus and dies.   The scene famously begins (in the John E. Woods translation), with the chilling words:

“Typhoid runs the following course.”

At which point, in an instant, the reader learns that Hanno will die.   It is the second-to-last chapter, but essentially the end of the book and of the Buddenbrook family.

Janssen’s series is wonderful, beginning with a fairly straightforward portrait (here, which is the one that I have on my living-room wall) and concluding with something that looks like an exploding tree.  I also have a book that includes all the portraits (actually, I count 36) and some commentary in German.

Here are some of Janssen’s works.  Here’s more.   He was incredibly prolific and most of his works are on paper, meaning that even though he’s in MOMA and the Tate and lots of other museums, his works are pretty affordable.

From Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (1901), translated by John E. Woods:

Until now Gerda’s violin playing had been just another charming adjunct to her unique character …  But he was forced to watch as her passion for music — which he had always found rather odd — took possession of the child at such an early age. In some sense it had been part of Hanno from the very start, and Thomas regarded music as a hostile force that had come between him and his child — after all, he had hoped to make a genuine Buddenbrook of him, a strong and practical man with a powerful drive to master and take control of the world outside him …  He did not let them see the anguish he felt as he watched the apparent estrangement grow between him and his son, and he would have recoiled at even the appearance of currying the son’s favor.  He had little leisure during the day to spend with the boy but sometimes at meals he would banter with him amiably, with just a hint of sternness.  ”Well, my lad,” he said, patting him a few times on the back of his head as he sat down beside him at the dining table, across from his wife, “how are things going? What have you been up to?  Studying?  Oh, and playing the piano?  That’s fine.  But not too much, or you won’t have energy for anything else, and you’ll be set back come Easter.”  Not a muscle in his face betrayed his anxiety as he waited to see how Hanno would react to this greeting, how he would respond; he betrayed nothing of the painful wrenching inside him when the boy simply glanced his way wth shy, golden-brown, blue-shadowed eyes that avoided looking directly at him, and then bent down mutely over his plate.

It would have been monstrous to express alarm at the boy’s childish awkwardness.  But as they sat there together waiting for the plates to be changed for the next course, it was his duty to show some concern about the boy, to test him a little on facts, to rouse his sense for practical things.  What was the population of the town?  Which streets led up from the Trave into town? What were the names of the firm’s warehouses? Speak up, now, loud and clear!  But Hanno was silent. Not because he wanted to defy his father, or hurt him. Under normal circumstances, the population, the streets, even the warehouses were matters of complete indifference to him, but the moment they were raised to the status of questions on a test, they filled him with reluctant despair.  He could be in a perfectly fine mood, even be enjoying a little chat with his father — but as soon as the conversation took on the least hint of a little oral exam, his mood sank to zero and below and all his powers of resistance collapsed.  His eyes lost their sparkle, his mouth took on a despondent pout, and all he could feel was a great pang of regret that Papa had been so careless, because he surely had to know that these tests always turned out badly and spoiled the meal for himself and everyone else.  He gazed down at his plate, his eyes swimming with tears. Ida nudged him and whispered the names of the streets and warehouses.  But that was pointless, absolutely pointless.  She didn’t understand. He knew the names well enough, or at least most of them, and it would have been so easy to oblige Papa and answer his questions, at least in part — if only he could, if only it weren’t for this overwhelming sadness. 

It’s the spring of 1848, and in the ancient Hanseatic city of Lübeck, as elsewhere in Europe, the streets are filled with crowds demanding political change. Consul Buddenbrook heads out into the street to find out what the demonstrators want:

“Well, Consul, sir,” Carl Smolt said, somewhat intimidated now, “That may as may be. But there’s gonna be a revolution, sure as rain. There’s revolution everywhere, in Berlin and Paree . . .”

“Smolt, what is it you really want? Speak up, out with it!”

“Well, Consul, sir, that’s just what I’m sayin’. We want a republic, plain and simple.”

“But, you nincompoop — you already have one.”

“Well, Consul sir, then we want ‘nother besides.”