The Beloved Returns: Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann

"The strange thing was that these pictures and memories had this extreme vividity and brilliance, their fullness of detail, not, as it were, at first hand. It was as though memory had not originally been so concerned to preserve them in all their detail, but had to yield them up afterwards, bit by bit, word by word, out of its very depths. They had been searched out, refashioned, reproduced with all their attendant circumstance- give, so to say, a fresh coat of paint and hung in a strong light,f or the sake of the significance which they had unanticipatedly taken on."

This is referring to Goethe's taking of the memories (Lotte's). But this really relates to me. Of course in my childhood I never thought those moments held any significance for my future life- I just lived them. But now, bits and pieces from them pop out randomly and unexpectedly. Things that I haven't thought about since I've experienced them...it all seems like a dreamworld- and I willingly drown in it.

"(...)but loved without sense or aim, as a poet does."

"He must discover and choose her, realize her worth and draw her out of the darkness of the unknown to giver her his love."

"And in very truth the godlike is not to be taken quite seriously when, that is, it lodges temporarily in the human form."

Yes, the form itself doesn't appreciate the fact that he has been chosen to be a temple of the muse. It's ironic- but apparently, that is the way it naturally needs to be. For if he admired what he had inside of him, then he wouldn't be able to worship the true beauty, radiating out of him.

"(...) you could put no human dependence on it, for it was something like an emotional means to an end that was unreal and extra-human."

These "godlikes" play with their feelings and emotions as if it was something apart from themselves and they are above it.

--answer to previous quote--

"(...) poesy has nothing extra-human, aside from her divinity. (...) Truly she is a mystery, the divine made human'' actually just as human as divine, a phenomenon which reminds me one of the profoundest mysteries of our Christian doctrine- and of some charming pagan ones too. It may be because she is double, being human and divine, or perhaps because she is beauty itself' but she reminds me of that enchanting old picture of the boy who loves to gaze enraptured at his own charms. She tends to mirror herself. Smiling she reflects herself, in language, feeling, thought, and passion. (...) Why should not poesy, why should not the beautiful, recognize herself? She does, even when anguishing with passion; for she is human in her anguish but godlike in her pleasure."

Poesy is vain? That is an interesting concept. And is this vanity also a sin? Or is that all she can do but admire the beauty she reflects? Was the boy vain by looking at his own charms? But if he looked beyond himself, he would have noticed the beauty of the sun setting beyond the fields of grass. Can poesy deny that nature is more beautiful than what she describes? Can a description equal the thing described? Can a thought mirror reality?

Charlotte says:
"Why did he need to grow so great, that youth who tempted and distracted me all summer long, that I must grow great with him and be held in lifelong bonds, into the same painful tension into which I was flung by his aimless adoration? What were my poor foolish words, that they had to be uttered for immortality? When we drove to the ball, in the carriage with my cousins, and talked about novels and the pleasure of dancing, I prattled on, never dreaming, God knows, that I was prattling for the centuries and my words were to stand for ever in cold print! I would have held my tongue or tried to say something more fit for immortality. I am ashamed, Herr Doctor, when I read it, ashamed to stand there with it in my shrine before all the people! The youth, being a poet, should have known how to make my words sound nobler and cleverer, more fitting as I stand there in my niche- it was his duty, since he dragged me into immortality against my will..."

She accepted and her fate, her destiny. What a feeling, to be immortal, to be made immortal by a poet...As she said- in cold print. How much humanity expected from her- even though she was a commoner "dragged into immortality" with the divine poet. And what a contrast- the poet that converses with the muses, the heavenly inspiration, and her- who "prattled" on about dancing. How original! That is why the poet needs this life- to depict the real!

"We gladly conceded that one may scorn poetry when one is embodied poetry itself. In fact, as just that, as the fulfillment of our most poetic dreams, did we regard this noble and handsome human being."

"But as flesh and blood always conflict to some extent with the claims of the ideal, a disappointment of these is inevitable. Frankly, it is an advantage, a clarification of the idea, when flesh and blood are absent."

How much easier it is to believe in something that hasn't a form, emotions, ...opinions! Like Mann said, it is actually easier to believe in such a thing- and even an advantage. But one may ask, an advantage to what? Just that it doesn't contradict the ideal, and does it really benefit the idealist in the end? This again is the whole, reality vs the imagination concept. It wholly depends on what the individual prefers. And for the rare idealist who also prefers reality, he needs to learn to overcome such disappointments- for it will be the death of his ideals!

"He was to us, in truth, more a personification than a person. That is a difficult distinction; perhaps after all it may be just the qualities of a person that enable him to become a personification."

Yes that is difficult; does the personality make up the person or does the person make up the personality?

"(...)as I realized that the great poet is a ruler of men; that the course of his fate, his work, and his life is effective far beyond the confines of his person, and conditions the character, the culture, and the future of the nation!"

What influence can an author(a genius, that is) have! Imagine how many people looked to Goethe to represent their culture- and at the same time, what insufferable pressure was put upon Lotte!

"For what is the possible in comparison with the actual? And yet I often think there is a kind of injustice here- and injustice due to the fact (yes, it is possible in this connection to speak of facts) that actuality takes up all the room and attracts all the admiration to itself. On the other hand, the possible, the unfulfilled, is only an outline, a guess at what might have been. (...) But where the possible still exists, if only in form of longing, of an adumbration, a whisper of what might have been- that is the sign-manual of destruction, of 'pining away'."

Destruction towards what?

"Man cannot tarry long in his conscious mind; must take from time to time refuge in his unconscious, there his being has its roots."

The unconscious is the real man inside

"That is man's prerogative on earth: to call things by name and put them in a system. They cast down their eyes before him, so to speak, when he calls them by name, for to name is to command."

Interesting- forcing authority upon something just because that something is categorized.

"The spiritual, she felt, needed to be poor, ugly, and bare of earthly honour, in order to test aright the capacity of men to honor it."

Reminds me of Christ- how he had to serve to be great.

"It was meant to contract the sense we of ten have, after contact with the beautiful, or rather fretful and condescending estrangement from ordinary life. We turn our backs with regret upon that sphere; the persistent applause down below was evidence of the fact. It was not so much enthusiastic for the actors as a means of clinging yet a little longer to the beautiful before one dropped one's hands and resigned oneself once more to the commonplace."

It is ironic how desperate we are for the beautiful, and yet so eagerly and contently we "resign" ourselves to the fate life has dealt us. A tad bit paradoxical.

"(...) and all reality and achievement are nothing but the impaired possible."

Depicts the delicate line of our lives- how easily they could go in any direction by any little touch- by any tweak- and yet how absolutely defined and even predestined they are. Like a master with his brushes, which could go in any way possible- and yet it hits the canvas at a certain point- on purpose. So that he paints what he was born to paint.

**********
"Say, if you will, that I am the flame, and into me the poor moth flings itself. Yet in the chance and change of things I am the candle too, giving my body that the light may burn."

So in the end it not only "eats" others, but it also consumes the one the flame occupies. As if the genius just needs a body to live (burn) in once every few centuries. Beautiful concept. As if it was beyond him too...

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The book was extremely interesting. Mann dabbles in the worship of the spiritual, which was thought provoking. The story was about Goethe's Lotte- how she dealt with being immortalized, and how Goethe's genius affected him and the people he "sacrificed" to his genius.

Also I think the book was such an insight to the lives of geniuses and even a fragment of their thought processes. It stresses the importance of such a creature for humanity- and what happens when the genius and common man meet (woman in this case) and whom benefits whom. In this case, Goethe benefited so much from observing common life, and that is how he breathed in his genius. Without such innocence such naivety- Lotte would not have been immortalized for centuries past and centuries to come.

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Pub by Alfred A. Knopf, 1940.