THOMAS MANN'S NOVEL “BUDDENBROOKS” BETWEEN CLASSICAL REALISM AND THE AESTHETICS OF MODERNISM

Abstract

It is widely believed that the “disjuncture” of Thomas-Mann's work between high modernism and social (critical) realism is due to the efforts of certain Marxist critics, most notably György Lukács, to find in modern Western literature a phenomenon that reflects their understanding of the progressive role of realism in art; and that proves the rightness of certain aesthetic concepts. However, if we leave the presence of social criticism in the novels of the writer in the background and take the aesthetic and aesthetic-philosophical foundations of artistic objectivity as the starting point of the analysis, it becomes clear that the issue is far more complex. The present paper considers Thomas Mann's first novel, The Buddenbrooks, precisely as a dialectical unity of subjectivist aesthetic grounding and objectivist-realist artistic realization; as a non-modernist text by a writer with a formed modernist aesthetic disposition.