Thomas Mann's story "Tristan" uses the powerful legend of Tristan and Isolde as a sort of metaphor for the artist, and in it we are presented with two individuals, one for whom the identity of Tristan is an assumed posture, and the other, whose real suffering and "inner" nature marks her out as the true artist, and therefore more authentically depicts the heroic character of Tristan.
The Tristan and Isolde story is like a totem for Mann, and he uses it in several stories, especially in reference to defining what an artist is. In "Tonio Kruger," he points to the exaltation and inspiration that the story incites in "a healthy young man of thoroughly normal feelings."1 But he also says that real artists know that the circumstances that are behind artistic creation are often dark and involve suffering:
But what is it, to be an artist? Nothing shows up the general human dislike of thinking, and man's innate craving to be comfortable, better than his attitude to this question. When these worthy people are affected by a work of art, they humbly say that that sort of thing is a 'gift.' And because in their innocence they assume that beautiful and uplifting results must have beautiful and uplifting causes, they never dream that the 'gift' in question is a very dubious affair and rests upon extremely sinister foundations.2
In fact, the Tristan totem shows us that Mann has in one sense bought into the Romantic notion of the "suffering" hero, the artist, but Mann is also a modern author in that his characters' sufferings, like Kafka's, is internal, psychological, existential. These characters suffer because of who they are, not what happens to them. This brings up the essential contrast between the two main characters in "Tristan," Herr Spinell and Frau Kloterjahn. Spinell is essentially a caricature, a dandy, a poseur. He has come to the spa not because he actually has some ailment, but because of "style." This implies that by affectation, he wants to be seen as suffering, because this is fitting for an artist. By contrast, Frau Kloterjahn does not at first appear artistic at all, merely frail and sick. But in the end, she is a more authentic artist because as her vitality diminishes, her artistry increases, her inner life becomes more and more pronounced. This "give-and-take" is closely related to the Freudian concept of sublimation, which states that as humans we have a limited amount of energy which can be channelled into either "physical" life or "spiritual" art. The "sinister foundations" upon which Frau Kloterjahn's artistry rests are her failing health and her inexplicably healthy baby. Her husband's pedestrian nature adds to the sense of tragedy and waste. Her life has some real drama, while Spinell is actually an artificial bore.
The irony is that Spinell actually sees himself in the role of Tristan when Frau Kloterjahn plays the Wagner music for him. In a sense, he is an artist, because of his complete fabrication of an image of Frau Kloterjahn (the maids dancing in the garden, the golden crown in her hair), but his "art" is pure artifice, a desire to escape the reality of suffering and tragedy, and manufacture an ideal which he can worship. The fact that at the end of the story Frau Kloterjahn is dying (or has died) and Spinell is wandering around the garden tells us who the real artist is. One has suffered and is now living completely in the "inner" world, while one wanders around, almost wishing for something artistic to happen to him. He is a comic figure, but also one that is profoundly saddening to this reader. I sense this is what Mann wanted to convey since he could probably see some of Spinell's faults in himself.
This polarity is something that can be seen throughout history. Many writers and artists came from wealthy, comfortable families, and lived in artificial worlds where they could pursue their writing at their leisure. In contrast, more of twentieth-century artists have been grounded in real-life experience. Because Franz Kafka, for example, worked as a civil servant, his sufferings were more applicable to a wider audience. His suffering may be existential and psychological, but it was not as a result of idling and living in "Style." This sets Mann and Kafka, among others, apart as modern writers. Their "suffering" is not a reaction to surface, external forces, but to deep internal questions as well as to the forces that shaped their lives. It is almost fitting, then, that Kafka should succumb to the "artist's disease," tuberculosis, at a young age. It fits this Romantic-Modern fused paradigm of the self-tortured suffering artist.
1Thomas Mann, "Tonio Kruger," Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories (New York: Vintage, 1989) 99.
2Mann 98.