2017
Cairn
Jean-François Laplénie, « Entre « concessions en profondeur » et « dédommagement ». Krokowski, personnage complexe et stratégique dans La Montagne magique », Études Germaniques, ID : 10670/1.4zfblc
In a short article published in 1925 Thomas Mann addresses his “unsimple” relation to psychoanalysis, suggesting that in his latest published novel, The Magic Mountain, the character of Dr. Krokowski could be read as “indemnification” [“ Schadloshaltung”] for “deeper concessions” [“ tiefere Zugeständnisse”] which the author made to psychoanalysis “inside his work.” He thus invites us to analyse this character not only as such (i.e. in the straightforward process of characterisation), but in terms of a strategy within the “artistic economy” of the novel. Krokowski’s repeated mythical identification as the infernal judge Minos makes him simultaneously a master of the labyrinthine space structure of the Berghof sanatorium, of its cyclic time, and of the theories that reign there. He notably plays a key role in contrasting successions of scenes in which refusal or denial of psychoanalysis alternates with Freudian dream sequences which present themselves as narrative confirmations of the actual validity of psychoanalytical theories. In this game of giving voice to both validation of and attacks upon psychoanalysis (“deeper concessions” and “indemnification”) – culminating in the diptych of sections Hippe and Analyse – Krokowski is a central piece and personifies both the possibility and the limit of a psychoanalytical reading of the novel, thus opening a space of playful relationship to the text.