Through the combined generosity of Professor Benedict Anderson and Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri, an important European novel has been acquired by the Thammasat University Libraries. Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend is shelved in the Charnvit Kasetsiri Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library. It may seem like a surprising book to be donated from the collection of Professor Anderson, an eminent expert in Southeast Asian studies. Best known for his 1983 book Imagined Communities, exploring the origins of nationalism, Professor Anderson was also deeply interested in the arts and letters. In comparing cultures and civilizations, students of history and political science should note that sometimes reading a novel can help us understand things we would not learn elsewhere. Doctor Faustus is by the German author Thomas Mann who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was originally published in 1947. Faust is an important legend in Western culture. He is a successful researcher who is not happy with his life, so he makes an agreement with the Devil. He trades his soul for infinite knowledge and sanook. The idea of someone who knows a lot but is still not content is very familiar to university campuses worldwide, especially among graduate students. The idea of being tempted to give up the most important, basic aspect of ourselves in exchange for gratifications can be understood by most people with diplomas in advanced studies. Possibly for that reason, there have been many films, plays, and operas inspired by Faust. There is an English expression, a Faustian bargain, meaning that someone has sold out by doing a deal to get temporary benefits. While sacrificing anything to satisfy an endless desire for knowledge or power, the person who makes the deal knows that it is only temporary. The Devil, or whoever offered the deal, will sooner or later show up again and demand payment. Other English language expressions referring to similar situations include:

• to sell one’s soul
• to deal with the devil.

This situation is familiar from many different fields of public and private life. So when Benedict Anderson worked to understand historical behavior of national leaders in the ASEAN region, the example of Faust may have at times seemed relevant. Writers on politics and history all over the world refer to Faust regularly, as these passages from news publications should make clear:

• Many Republican members of Congress have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump.
• Marco Rubio: Obama’s Faustian Bargain With Cuba
• Faustian Bargains and the Testing of the Liberals
• In the U.K., universities entered a Faustian bargain with the Treasury, to shut up about their teaching if they could deliver a promotable “research base”, almost five-sixths of which is now medicine and science. Universities need the guts to break this Faustian pact with research.
• In Ireland, little wonder then that many unionists see the “finessing” of past paramilitary crimes into an “innocent past” as an unacceptable part of the Faustian dilemma, which undoubtedly lies at the heart of this peace process.
• Most tourist destinations want as many visitors as possible. And it shows up tourism as a Faustian pact: in Italy, the more visitors you have and the more money you make, the less you are the naive, folkloric, authentic, untouched place of the tourists’ imagination.
• How the ANC’s Faustian pact sold out South Africa’s poorest. What I call our Faustian moment came when we took an IMF loan on the eve of our first democratic election.
• “Increasingly, young Singaporeans are finding that the comfortable life is not enough, and they are rubbing up against those structures. It’s a Faustian deal. Some citizens are prepared to make that deal. Some are not.”

The TU Libraries own many books about Faust, especially a play by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, written in two parts over many years, starting in the 1700s and finishing in the 1800s. Goethe used the theme to discuss many other topics, including psychology, history, politics, mysticism, and philosophy. Even before Goethe, the English author Christopher Marlowe wrote a tragedy inspired by Faust. There is a famous opera by the French composer Charles Gounod inspired by Faust, and also one by another Frenchman, Hector Berlioz. 

Thomas Mann’s novel, as its subtitle states, is about a German composer named Leverkühn. The story is set in the 1940s, during and after the Second World War. Mann was an early opponent of the Nazi regime and spent the years during and after the war in exile. His hero Leverkühn believes a myth that to be a great composer, he must also be diseased and insane, the way many creators in the Romantic age were. This is his Faustian bargain with the world. Naturally, things do not work out well for him after he makes this decision. Mann’s portrait of Leverkühn was partly influenced by the celebrated example of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who despite being an important thinker, also suffered from madness during the last part of his life. As we can see, there are many serious and somber themes in Mann’s novel, but he was writing in very serious times. Among many things taken seriously in his novel is music, as Mann writes:

This music of yours. A manifestation of the highest energy — not at all abstract, but without an object, energy in a void, in pure ether — where else in the universe does such a thing appear? We Germans have taken over from philosophy the expression ‘in itself,’ we use it every day without much idea of the metaphysical. But here you have it, such music is energy itself, yet not as idea, rather in its actuality. I call your attention to the fact that is almost the definition of God. Imitatio Dei — I am surprised it is not forbidden.

To better understand music, Mann researched the subject as if he were a graduate student preparing a thesis. He consulted the noted philosopher and writer on music Theodor Adorno, who acted as a sort of thesis adviser. Mann also studied the lives of composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Hector Berlioz, Hugo Wolf, Franz Schreker, and Alban Berg. He even got in touch with living composers to discuss music, including Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. So in a sense, Mann’s Doctor Faustus is a product of research, as well as a writer’s imagination. Perhaps for this reason it ended up in the personal library of the eminent researcher Benedict Anderson, and TU students and ajarns now have the privilege of reading Professor Anderson’s own copy of this notable book.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)