Mann the Teacher

  Final Notes on 

Joseph and His Brothers

"That my brothers mutilated me and threw me into the pit and that they shall now be standing before me--that is life.  And life is also the question of whether one should judge the deed by its consequences and so call what is evil good, because it was necessary for a good result.  Those are the questions that life poses.  One cannot answer them with a long face.  The human spirit can rise above them only in serene delight, so that in its own profound amusement over what is unanswerable, it may move God Himself, the great unanswering God, to laughter." (p 1304)



As Joseph and His Brothers moves inexorably toward its conclusion the reader is reminded again by the narrator of this fact.
"We are astonished to note that this story is moving toward its end--who would have thought it could ever run dry and come to an end?  But ultimately it no more has an end than it actually had a beginning, and instead, since it  cannot possibly go on forever like this, it must at some point excuse itself and simply cease its narration." (p 1431)

At the beginning of the story we were regaled with the "Tales of Jacob" and his clever wresting of the birthright from his elder brother Esau.  Now, as Jacob is reunited with his lost son Joseph in Egypt he bestows his rightful blessing on Ephraim, the younger of Joseph's two sons, instead of Manasseh, the elder.  Thus we have the beginning in the end and as Joseph points out to his father Jacob what he has done Jacob says to him, "What I have done, I have done, and it is indeed my will that it become a proverb and saying in Israel, so that whenever anyone wishes to bless, he shall say, 'God make you as Ephraim and Manasseh.'  Let Israel take note." (p 1461)

Again, the narrator has lectured the reader about what to expect, "How remarkable, how it tickles one's fancy, to note how events in this story are ordered in such lovely correspondence and one piece finds its fulfillment in its counterpart." (p 1388)  
Jacob's sons have just returned from Egypt with the news that his son whom he thought was dead is instead alive and prospering in Egypt.  Yes, Joseph has risen to the penultimate level in the whole country.  Thus the second fall into the pit of prison has led to an even greater outcome than the earlier apparent death and rebirth from the first pit.  In the meantime the narrator has regaled the reader with Joseph's dream interpretations and his continued faithful adherence to what he believed to be God's plan for his life. Yet his life story was interpreted in light of episodes that mirrored Mesopotamian and Greek mythology, and involved Joseph becoming an Egyptian. In Jacob's eyes "Joseph was the man set apart, who in being exalted had stepped back, was now separated from his tribe, and could not be a tribe himself." (p 1450)  This would devolve upon his sons as we saw above.  

At the end of the fourth and final novel in the massive tetralogy, after his sons had buried Jacob, the brothers are united in a positive spirit respecting Jacob's last wish and the story ends on a beautiful note.  The magnificent story of Joseph and His Brothers was complete, a story in the even greater comedy of humankind.

Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)

Interpreter of Dreams

 

  Further Notes on
Joseph and His Brothers

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."(p 23) - T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom




 

All men dream as T. E. Lawrence observed in his magnificent memoir, but not all men are interpreters of dreams.  At least not all men are capable of interpreting as astutely as the mature Joseph, who, imprisoned in the island prison Zawi-Re,  put his interpretive abilities to good use as he, once again, began to rise up from the pit into which he descended based upon the accusations of Potiphar's Wife.

The very young Joseph was described by the narrator as being in a state that  "includes a certain feminine consciousness;  -- more at home really in heavenly realms". (p 60)  Perhaps it was this aspect of his consciousness that was the source of his preternatural ability to read,  analyze, and interpret dreams.  Perhaps the source was his nightly vigils meditating upon the moon or, and this is more certain, it was a gift from his father Jacob who was also known to dream and, especially, ponder.  If the source is uncertain,  the ability, first to dream and later to interpret dreams, was something he demonstrated in his youth.   His own dreaming ability,  when young and brash, was shared with his brothers whose hackles were understandably raised; just one of the many missteps and misspeakings of Joseph that would lead to his entering the first pit.  Joseph's dreaming was corollary to his meditative mode and it is this that consumes him on the journey to a second pit, the island prison Zawi-Re.  This "added to his uneasiness, to the general depression and gloom that overshadowed him, but that was also accompanied by a lofty awareness of destiny and a meditative play of thought.
For the son of Jacob and his true wife had been unable to resist such play his whole life long, no more as a grown man, whose years were now counted at twenty-seven, than as a callow lad.  But for him the dearest and sweetest form of play was allusion, and whenever events in his carefully monitored life grew rich with allusion and circumstances proved transparent for a higher correspondence, then he was happy, for transparent circumstances can never be entirely gloomy."(p 1053)

It is here in the island prison Zawi-Re that he he meets yet another father-figure in Mai-Sakhme, the would-be artist who is Warden of the Prison.  Mai-Sakhme recognizes the talents and competency of Joseph and puts him to work as a prison overseer.  This would be surprising if we had not seen Joseph rise again and again in his previous roles from the lowest of the low to a valued place that, if not high itself, was close to those that were high in social standing.  It is in his new role as a trusted convict that he is also given the opportunity to improve his status even further;  for he is given the duty to serve two new prisoners, the Baker and Butler to the Pharaoh himself, both of whom are awaiting the result of their trial for the alleged crime of attempting to poison the Pharaoh.  It is this moment when they bring their dreams to Joseph who offers these words:

"I am not entirely inexperienced in the field and might even boast a certain familiarity with dreams--and please don't take that amiss, but simply as an apt way of stating that my family and clan have always dreamt a good many highly suggestive dreams .  . . why not take it with me and tell me your dreams, so that I may try to interpret them?
You're an amiable lad and when you speak of dreams you stare off into space with a veiled look in those handsome, even beautiful eyes of yours, so that we are tempted to trust in your ability to assist us." (p 1102)

While it takes some further persuasion from Joseph, they willingly share their dreams with him and he interprets them with precision and, as it subsequently turns out, correctness.  Most importantly he elicits from the Butler, whose dream foretold a successful return to his previous state, a promise that he not be forgotten when the Butler reascends to the court of the Pharaoh.  Whether or not the Butler will actually remember his promise is another of Mann's many details that provides the reader with suspense (even if you have the original Joseph story from Genesis in the back of your mind).  Interpreter of dreams will be Joseph's talent, one that will carry him to greater heights than he has yet seen;  along with his continuing confidence in his god's plan.

 Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T. E. Lawrence.  Penguin Books, 1986 (1926)

Potiphar's Wife

 Further Notes on
Joseph and His Brothers

"Love is an illness, though perhaps more like pregnancy and the labors of childbirth, and thus, so to speak, a healthy illness, even if, like them, it is not without its dangers.  The woman's mind was dazed, and although as an educated Egyptian she could express herself with literary and, after her own fashion reasonable   eloquence, her ability to differentiate between what was permissible and impermissible was greatly diminished and blurred." (p 916)
 
In other words she was smitten with love, a condition entirely new to her, after many years in a merely symbolic relationship with Potiphar who, for reasons too recondite, or perhaps merely complicated, to relate, was not in any position to demand or persuade her emotional or physical participation in his bedroom.  No, his wife, Mut-em-enet, referred to simply as Mut, has fallen "head-over-heels" for Joseph.  Joseph, too, is confused as his growing maturity has increased his masculinity yet his position as Potiphar's chamberlain following the death of Mont-kaw, settled a new formality in his relations with Potiphar and his household, including Mut.  He was not a little dazed by the apparent change in her look and language used toward him and would fend off presents she offered as inappropriate for one in his position.  It is only when he reluctantly refuses a gift of "festive garb" that a realization occurs, his eyes suddenly cleared of the mist that had hampered them, which the narrator compares to the reaction that Gilgamesh had "when Ishtar besieged him because of his beauty and solicited him, saying: "Come then, Gilgamesh, you shall pair with me and impart your fruit to me," while holding out to him the splendor of many gifts should he comply with her wish."(p 920)

Joseph reflects on this and on Mut's rash actions and deliberates, concluding that "I understand myself in him [Gilgamesh], as I understand him through myself. . . and girded himself with his chastity against your pursuit and your gifts."(p 921)  Thus Joseph reflects on the chastity required and the reasons, enumerating seven reasons of varying validity and strength, perhaps the strongest of them being his loyalty to Potiphar and his recognition of the power of the covenant that he must maintain with his fathers, both Jacob his earthly father and God his spiritual father.  This is done as the years have passed and his memory of his earthly father seems to dim and with it the memory of what Jacob must continue to feel in his mourning for his dead son, yet Joseph's relation with his god seems to be continually refreshed bringing strength to his will that yields unexpected success in his dealings with the Egyptians for someone who is still a foreigner in their midst.
These internal vows determine that the narrative will be one of a smitten woman who, in spite of her relative power over Joseph, is hindered and thwarted in her increasingly heated and threatening attempts to conquer him in the sense that one gains the love of another.  Her increasing desire leads the narrator to compare her state that of a witch and the familiar metaphor of witchcraft in the tempting of a man is one that would fit her with the exception that she lacks any control over her actions.  Returning to a classical trope one would better describe Mut as being under the spell of Eros, engaging in an increasingly irrational series of actions that appear Maenadic in their Dionysian fury.  Through all their relations it appears that Joseph and Mut are talking past one another.  While Joseph is certainly aware of Mut's  desires (although perhaps not their strength), she is definitely not aware of the power of his reasons for chastity, especially a covenant with a god that is literally unknown to her.
 
At the same time, the evil dwarf Dudu is attempting to use the situation to his own benefit by persuading Potiphar to banish Joseph based on his telling tales about the so-called affair between Mut and Joseph.   Joseph, who does not appreciate the danger Dudu presents, remains unaware of these machinations.  We all know the outcome of these events, but the lengthy narrative once again demonstrates Thomas Mann's ability to create interest through detail and suspense and in this instance through relating a powerful story of unrequited love.  The power of the story raises Mut to the level of quintessential or perhaps even an archetypal woman; one who would compare with Eve or Delilah, Clytemnestra or Penelope.  

Joseph, for all his saintly chastity and growing maturity, is still a person who is both demonstrably hindered by his own "amor propre" and is overtly hubristic, losing sight of all the potentialities and possibilities of his situation.  Could not he have confided in Potiphar when Mut first approached him?  Potiphar certainly loves Joseph as the son that he never had, but this love will eventually be tested when Potiphar is faced with the pleading of his wife when she changes her fury from the pursuit of love to the rage for revenge. 


Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)
Image of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife by Guido Reni.

The Servant Joseph and a Covenant

Further Notes on
Joseph and His Brothers

 "For this was the beginning, and his head was raised up in many ways;  but as for his becoming the servant closest to Potiphar--who, as the story presents it, then gradually placed the entire household in the Ebrew's hands--all that was already fully prepared for, its seed contained in Mont-kaw's words and in the covenant he made with Joseph, as surely as a tree's slow years of growth already lie within its seed, needing only time for development and fulfillment." (p 740)

In a lecture presented to the Royal Society of London in 1947 John Maynard Keynes described Sir Isaac Newton as "the last of the magicians . . .  Because he looked at the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret that could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence . . ."  Reading Joseph and His Brothers I sometimes feel the same way about Thomas Mann.  His interpretation and presentation of the Joseph story in Genesis is expanded and made vivid by his application of pure thought to the brief verses and terse suggestions in the Biblical story.  Undoubtedly his thought was amplified by his scholarship that was as lengthy as it was deep.  The evidence of this is presented on almost every page with references to the mythology of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece along with hints that he gleaned from Hebraic studies of the biblical text known as the Midrash (Sommer, 1977).  The result is magnificent in the detailed and seemingly realistic portrayal of Joseph's life in Egypt.  This is developed throughout the middle of the third novel in the tetralogy, Joseph in Egypt, especially in parts three through five; "The Arrival", The Highest", and "The Man of Blessing".

In these parts once again Joseph finds another father figure.  It is Mont-Kaw, the overseer who manages Potiphar's estate, who deals with the Midianites demonstrating his "sensible, natural" way one would describe as common sense.  He buys Joseph and from the very first notices his beauty, his aura, the difference in Joseph.  A difference that set him apart:

"Joseph stood before him . . . a human being, not a god, not Thoth of Khmunu.  But he had intellectual connections with that god, and there was something ambiguous about him--just as there is about certain words, about the adjective "divine," for instance, a word that, when compared to the sublime noun to which it refers, has undergone a certain diminution, no longer contains that noun's total reality and majesty, but is simply a reminder of it and thus retains about it something half unreal and figurative . . ."(p 651)

Mont-kaw took in these "ambiguities"  when "he first set eyes upon Joseph.  There was a repetitive quality to what was happening here.  The same thing or something very like it had happened, and would happen again, to others."(p 651)  It is not long before Mont-kaw takes Joseph under his wing and there develops a bond stronger than the one Joseph had developed with the old leader of the Midianite traders; a bond that would rival the one with his own father for whom he was no longer of this world.  The chapter depicting the death of the overseer, Mont-kaw, becomes even more heart-rending as a result of this bond.  It is a bond so strong that as Mont-kaw lays on his deathbed he gives Joseph his blessing and makes a covenant with him; "the gods have given your mind subtle refinements and higher charms that mine lacks . . . Which is why I have made a covenant with you for the sake of such service, which you are to keep when I am dead and am no more;"(p 808)  yet through it all Joseph does not lose sight of his destiny which means following the lead of his God.

It is in this part also that the narrator reminds us once again of the growing maturity of Joseph as the years pass by reinforcing the separation from his past life.  The world of Potiphar's court and his courtiers is exotic, filled with challenges for Joseph which he seems to handle well with his innate intelligence and clever ability, managing both fields and people, and an aura that surrounded him apparently stemming from the confluence of his inner direction and his outward beauty; one might call this his charisma.  It served him well but did not eliminate enemies for, after all, he was a foreigner from the East with strange beliefs who had made amazing progress in becoming the right hand of the Overseer in position to succeed him. These enemies and the power of Eros would ultimately present even more challenges for the stranger in Egypt.



Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)
Mann, Midrash, and Mimesis by Doris Sommer.  Rutgers University, 1977

A River and a Destiny

Further Notes on 

Joseph and His Brothers

"Thus life's benefits were always held in check by its drawbacks, and its drawbacks compensated for by its benefits, so that in purely mathematical terms the result was naught and nothing, but in practical terms, it was the wisdom of balance and of middling perfection--in light of which neither jubilation no curses were in order, but rather contentment.  For perfection did not consist of a one-sided amassing of benefits, just as life would be impossible if it were naught but drawbacks.  Instead, life was made up of the mutual cancellation of benefit and drawback, resulting in nothing, which was to say, contentment." (p 622)

The Nile was the source of life for the peoples of Egypt, a land that was known by outsiders as the land of mud, but known by those who live there as the apex of the universe.  The above bit of distilled wisdom, blending thoughts from such disparate sources as Aristotle, Buddha, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, was inspired by the motion of the ship, optimistically named Sparkling with Speed, that carried Joseph and the entourage with which he belonged southward on the Nile or upstream as the Nile flows from the South toward the North where it ultimately empties into the Mediterranean Sea.  The journey of Joseph from the north to the south was taking him toward a future which the narrator in one of his somewhat omniscient moments declares:
"How accustomed he would one day become to this mode of travel, and how familiar to him this stretch between Amun's house and the witty graveyard town of Menfe would become!  And like those nobles in their tapestried shrines, that is how, by the decree of Providence, he would sit one day in stately immobility--which he would have to learn because the people expected it of their gods and great men.  For, under God's care, he was to conduct himself so wisely and with such grace that he became first among those in the West," (p 624)
Thus the reader is given a description of Joseph's future, foretelling his rise from his current position as a slave, a "boy of the sand", who is the lowest of the low.  He is a young innocent boy who in spite of his innocence senses his destiny with face upward, challenging his superiors at some risk, yet having already risen from the dead he is emboldened beyond the limits that would be expected for someone in his lowly position.  Yes,  he is "Osarsiph" and he is destined for more, much more, than the traders and courtiers who haggle over him as a piece of merchandise can possibly imagine.

The Nile journey is one that presents to Joseph a world teeming with life, made of flora and fauna that seem strange to his eyes.  But he takes it all in and uses his eyes, and other senses, to learn the essence of this new world.  Among the many plants are bulrushes, a vision that reminds this reader of another river and another time when a young boy leaves his home to encounter strange adventures on the border between civilization and nature.  That boy was Huck Finn and the river the mighty Mississippi.  It was mighty river for some of the same reasons as the Nile with its magnificent power and importance for the people and culture who lived on and by it and depended upon it for their livelihood.  Thomas Mann has created an archetypal portrait of the world that surrounds Joseph and which he is determined to subdue as he fulfills his destiny.

Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)

A Young Man's Destiny

Further Notes on

Joseph and His Brothers

"Joseph stood there beneath the stars and before the giant riddle for a long time, his weight on one leg, an elbow propped in one hand and his chin in the other.  When he was once again lying beside Kedma in the tent, he dreamt of the sphinx, which said to him, "I love you.  Come to me and name your name to me, whatever my nature may be."  But he answered, "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?"

Joseph has entered into Egypt in the third volume of Thomas Mann's magisterial tetralogy, Joseph in Egypt.  His destiny that was identified in the opening pages of the tetralogy when he was given the promise, along with his father Jacob, "And you shall be a destiny"(p 7).  As the descent into Egypt begins Joseph is chatting with Kedma, son of the leader of the Midianite caravan that purchased him from his brothers after they saved him from the depths of the pit.  The reborn Joseph asks "Where is God leading me by having me travel with you?"  Kedma responds,

"What a fellow, always good for a laugh.  You have a way of putting yourself in the middle of things that leaves a man not knowing whether to be amazed or angry.  Do you suppose, Hey There, that we journey simply so that you may arrive somewhere your god wants you to be?"

Joseph responds that "you are the means and the tool by which I am to arrive at my goal.  That is why I asked you where you are leading me." (pp 541-2)  He has recognized his destiny and is confident that he will be able, wherever he ends up in this new land, to realize that destiny.

Thomas Mann is consummate in his ability to depict the details of the land Joseph is entering whether it is the great monuments or the common people he meets at a ceremony praising the gods of Menfe (Memphis) like a simple "potbellied man in bast sandals" standing next to them whose detailed description is a paragraph in length -- just one of many such seeming diversions that make the story all the more readable and believable as the interstices of the brief passages from the story in Genesis are filled in by the narrator. 

This is part of one of the primary themes in Thomas Mann's Joseph tetralogy.  The theme of Up and Down, Top and Bottom, Heaven and the Earth below in a metaphorical sense.  From the opening overture to the rest of the book, Descent into Hell, this theme recurs in many settings.  With major characters, often Joseph as in the quotation above, dreaming of the stars and the heavens above while pages later the narrator is sharing the details of the streets and the people that are encountered whether on the caravan trail or in a ceremony encompassing hundreds of common everyday people.

Throughout the story the narrative builds an image of an archetype, that is Joseph the young man on an heroic journey to claim his destiny.  He has been singled out by his father;  he was cast into the pit and left for dead only to be reborn and sold to traders headed for Egypt; and now he is entering "the Land of Mud" as Egypt was known pejoratively, a "Sheol" on earth.  In this journey he has left one father behind and in the head of the Midianite Traders found a second whom he will also soon leave behind.  At this most recent step he has acquired a new name.  The unknown young man who knows that he will be passed on to new owners in the not too distant future and who the traders referred to as "Hey There" has a lengthy discussion with the old man leading the traders which ends with this exchange:

""But you must at least be able to name the slave when you pass him on to that blessed house in Amun's city."

"So then, what is your name?"

"Osarsiph," Joseph replied.

The old man was silent.  Although there was no more than a respectful distance between them, they could perceive one another only as shadows now." (pp 564-5) 

Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)

Beauty and Knowledge

Further Notes on

Joseph and His Brothers

"Seldom are beauty and knowledge found together on earth.  Rightly or wrongly, we are accustomed to imagine that erudition is ugly, and that charm lacks all intellect--indeed it is part of charm that it lacks intellect in all good conscience, since it not only has no need of letters, of intellect and wisdom, but in fact also runs the risk of being distorted or destroyed by them."(p 331)

HERMES is the name the Greeks gave to the messenger of the Gods.  He was the cleverest of the Olympian gods, and messenger to all the other gods.

Hermes is the son of Zeus and Maia. He is Zeus messenger. He is the fastest of the gods. He wears winged sandals, a winged hat, and carries a magic wand. He is the god of thieves and god of commerce. He is the guide for the dead to go to the underworld. 
Versatility and mutability are Hermes' most prominent characteristics. His specialties are eloquence and invention (he invented the lyre). He is the god of travel and the protector of sacrifices; he is also god of commerce and good luck. The common quality in all of these is again consciousness, the agile movement of mind that goes to and fro, joining humans and gods, assisting the exchange of ideas and commercial goods. Consciousness has a shadow side, however: Hermes is also noted for cunning and for fraud, perjury, and theft.
While Hermes is regarded as one of the earliest and most primitive gods of the Greeks, he enjoys so much subsequent prominence that he must be recognized as an archetype devoted to mediating between, and unifying, the opposites. This foreshadows his later role as master magician and alchemist, as he was regarded both in Egypt and in Renaissance Europe. His Egyptian name was Thoth which is the title Thomas Mann gave to the opening part of Young Joseph, the second novel in the tetralogy that comprises Joseph and His Brothers.  

Joseph is seventeen as the book opens and his beauty approaches perfection.  But what does that mean?  Our narrator tells us that "Beauty is magic worked upon the emotions--always half-illusionary, extremely precarious, and fragile in its very efficacy."(p 317)  He reminds us that beauty may be hidden in the dark, or the lack thereof as in the case of Jacob's bridal night with Leah.  It seems that "deception, Deceit, trickery, fraud"--these play a role in the "realm of beauty", and these bring us into the realm of Thoth (Hermes).  But there are more considerations such as the role of sexuality, love and desire in the realm of beauty.  He suggests that beauty lies in a realm suspended between masculinity and femininity.  With this thought he concludes that:
"A lad of seventeen is not beautiful in the sense of a purely impractical femininity--that would attract only a few.  But let us grant this much: Beauty as youthful charm always tend in both psychology and expression somewhat toward the feminine; that is part of its nature, which has its basis in its tender relationship with the world and of the world with it--it is painted in youth's smile.  At seventeen, it is true, someone can be more beautiful than woman or man, beautiful both as woman and man, beautiful from both sides and in every way, handsome and beautiful enough to set any woman, any man gawking, tumbling, head over heels in love."(p 318)  
Now that is an impressive picture of beauty!  But more important even than that for young Joseph is learning.  And for this he must sit under the tree of God to be tutored in the science of knowledge.  His tutor is Eliezer, Jacob's steward and oldest servant, mysterious man with a "divine vagueness" about his person.  Notably, Joseph alone among the sons of Jacob received this sort of education.  And in the tradition of Thoth (Hermes) it was one that was broad and deep ultimately initiating Joseph in "Secrets that made learning a great and flattering delight, precisely because they were secrets known to only a few tight-lipped and arch-clever men in temples and closed lodges, but not to the great masses."(p  327).  Thus Joseph is further set apart from his brothers and prepared with secret knowledge that would, unknown to him at the time, stand him in good stead in his future life.

Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)

Flourishing Shepherd

Further Notes on
Joseph and His Brothers


"Jacob was truly in his element as a breeder of sheep, as a master of the sheepfold . . ." (p 223)



With this line Thomas Mann begins a paean to Jacob's fruitfulness as a shepherd.  His success and the bounteous beauty of his herds of sheep reminded me of my early years growing up in the farm country of southern Wisconsin.  I was not a shepherd or even a farmer or, at that early age, one in training.  I was a city boy but one experience with the fruits of the orchard gave me a chance to experience something like that of Jacob and it gave me a memory that I find echoed in these lines from a famous poem of Robert Frost:

"My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough."

My experience was something memorable and fruitful in both the literal and metaphorical sense, but not nearly as meaningful and deep as that of Jacob or that of which Frost goes on to speak.  In Frost's poem apple-picking leads to dreams and the sleep that is brought with age; while Mann, too, will soon be narrating the aging of Jacob.  But as shepherd working for Laban and for himself he is a man in the strength of young adulthood with the blessing of god multiplying his flocks.

  "For it was not merely that Jacob improved the breed and produced splendid sheep valuable for both their meat and wool, but the sheer growth in numbers, the constant fecundity of his herd exceeded all common standards, became extraordinary in his hands." (p 224)

More than that we see Jacob's expectation, dreams, thoughts of the fruitfulness to come, for as an "expectant lover" waiting for union with his bride to be he found his energies directed toward great deeds that presaged a flourishing life with many children to come.

Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)

Moonlight as Leitmotif

Further Notes on  

Joseph and His Brothers


"As they spoke the moon, its shimmering light so pure that it transfigured its own materiality, had continued it high journey; the position of the stars had changed according to the law of hours.  Night wove peace, mystery,  and the future out into far expanses" -  Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers, p 92.
 
Imagine you are there in the midst of the arid countryside with Jacob and Joseph under the moon.  The mysteries of the night are broken only by the light of the moon.  What would you be thinking about?  Peace and the future of your family?  The importance of the moon's light for the culture within which Jacob and his family moved cannot be overemphasized.  This importance is brought home over and over in "The Stories of Jacob", the first book in the tetralogy.  The phrase "A World Lit Only By Fire" comes to my mind.  It is the title of a luminous work of history by William Manchester about the beginnings of the sixteenth century more than two millenia after the time of Jacob and Esau, yet the world he described still depended very much on the moon in the dark sky of the night.  

It is the moonlight with its "magically ambiguous precision" that mirrors the way the traditions of the children and grandchildren of Abraham are "spun out over generations and solidified as a chronicle only much later--".  The moon as leitmotif serves two main functions. One aspect is the beautiful orb as the goddess of love, Ishtar or Astarte.  Although either of these ladies are also the planet Venus; remembering that Mann's "moon grammar" ignores logical contradictions (even as Mann maintains a sort of narrative logic as he weaves the tales).  Pagan in its eroticism the moon, represents a threat to Jacob's personal standards of sexual behavior; but we see Joseph at the well under the moonlit sky sitting half-naked, flirting with the moon, as it were.  Yet another aspect of the moon is one of mediator between the sun and the earth; feminine to one and masculine to the other. As the story goes forward we see this mirroring Joseph's mediation between Pharaoh and Egyptian Society and an anticipation of Jesus' mediation between god and man.

Mann himself spins out his story weaving themes like tradition, culture, and moonlight into a mesmerizing mosaic of tales of individuals within the whole of the tribes from which Joseph emerges.  Moreover, just as Mann interweaves the themes he also plays loose with time weaving backward and forward as he builds the mosaic-like narrative.  Just as many of the stories yet to be told were foreshadowed in the Prelude: Descent into Hell, the stories of Jacob are related out of order; for example, the rape of Dinah narrative is related before returning to the story of the trials of Laban that occurred almost two decades earlier.  This method suggests some of Thomas Mann's personal approach to modernism that was still at its height in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. 

Most of all the first book of the tetralogy is Jacob's story.  It is the story of a man whose "soul was moved and exalted by thoughts of emulation, recurrence, the past made present."  Throughout the long narrative these ideas, especially recurrence, will blend with questions of identity, unity, and tradition to limn this distant world and challenge our idea of the world today;  Mann as always tells it better when he lectures the reader:

"And here, to be sure, what we have to say flows into a mystery in which our own information gets lost--the mystery, that is, of an endless past in which every origin proves to be just an illusory stopping place, never the final goal of the journey, and its mystery is based on the fact that by its very nature the past is not a straight line, but a sphere.  The line knows no mystery.  Mystery lies in the sphere.  But a sphere consists of compliments and correspondences, a doubled half that closes to a unity;" (p 151)

Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)

Prelude to a Tetralogy

Notes on Joseph and His Brothers, I

"Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?"

With these words Thomas Mann begins his magisterial tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers.  The opening "Prelude", "Descent into Hell", is an exploration of the mythology of time.  Much as Augustine asks, "What, then, is time?" in his Confessions (Chapter 14 of Book 11), Mann's narrator asks us if the past is not inscrutable in the sense that it "offers us only illusory stations and goals, behind which, once we reach them, we discover new stretches of the past opening up--".  This meditation on the past in the Prelude is not unlike a prelude by Wagner for one of his operas where the motifs and themes for the whole opera are explored.  We experience this as Mann's narrator moves on to Jacob and Joseph and a vision of the godhead in the abstract--in effect imagining the idea of a god in the Platonic philosophic sense.  

It is into this abstract vision of the world on the edge of time that the story is presented as a mythos that explores the relationships of specific Biblical personages, like Joseph and his father Jacob, with their traditions and history.  They become the focal point for a personal monotheistic god in a culture that is surrounded by Mesopotamian gods on the east and Egyptian gods on the west and, at least referentially Greek gods to the north or in the mythological mysts of time.  These mysts are as deep and distant as can be measured by the extravagant lengths of an imagined "temporal plumb line".
As the prelude wanes the myth of the past and the traditions of Jacob suggest a god who looks to the future--plans that are far reaching for a culture that shared an unease and desire for a god of problems and movement and mystery.

The novel proper begins with the stories of Jacob the father of Joseph.  Here we see a beautiful young Joseph and an anxious father who is proud of his precocious son, even as his voice is "charged with emotion" as he states in a questioning way, "My child is sitting beside the depths of the well?" 
While Joseph, the bookish child of beauty and brains, asks for a story from his father to entertain him, his father begins a reverie, "pondering" in his own serious way; so much so that he is eventually described as "brooding" over his past life of stolen name and stolen wife and more; yet, through all his pondering in the section called "Names" he ultimately receives from "an extraordinary voice" the name of "Yizrael " . . . "God goes to war".  Thus the first novel of the four that comprise the totality of Joseph and His Brothers begins with mythos, an account, a narrative, yes a story of a man of god and his sons.

Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, John E. Woods, trans. Everyman's Library, 2005 (1933-43)