Thomas Mann : Last Essays

This book contains Thomas Mann's last great performances as a man of letters. They have been superbly translated. - "ON Schiller", the longest of the pieces assembled in this volume, has been called the most eloquent and moving of Mann's essays. In this commemorative address, Thom as Mann returned as an old man to a figure who had fascinated him when he was very young. Drawing on his own experiences in the sufferings and joys of creative living, he arrived at a new and often startling picture of the great poet. Schiller's problematic friendship with Goethe grows, in Mann's narrative, to be the very key to an understanding of his life and writings. -- "Fantasy on Goethe" represents the last, ripest fruit of Mann's lifelong preoccupation with his towering countryman. The almost novelistic flow of this essay produces an intimacy with Goethe that only the author of The Beloved Returns could create. -- In "Chekhov", Mann retraces with compassionate warmth the short life of one of the few writers who influenced his own early efforts as a teller of tales. - "Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Light of Recent History," as powerful as it is subtle, will come as a surprise to most readers. It constitutes a reappraisal of the philosopher's work, which, for better and for worse, overshadowed the thinking of Mann's whole generation. This essay is, in effect, Mann's farewell to one of the heroes of his youth and early manhood - a deeply moving testimonial to Thomas Mann's never-ceasing search for truth. -- Appendix: A Weary Hour - a story from 1905. -- This is the 1959 hardcover edition published in the U.S. by Knopf.