EW: Archive

October 17th, 2008

While Thomas Mann’s focus throughout Buddenbrooks is on the decline – the biological degradation and gradual failure of will – that afflicts the family and the firm, he carefully injects moments of insight and idealism throughout the novel. These moments prove strikingly incompatible with the domestic, business-oriented life of the Buddenbrooks; they are episodes short-lived and seemingly irrelevant to the greater plot. Yet, it is precisely because of this rather stark contrast and incongruency with the rest of the novel that they are so important. Such episodes range from Christian and theatre, to Tom and philosophy, to Hanno and music. But the most powerful of all are the trips to the coastal town of Travemunde. Outside the oppressive confines of the Buddenbrook home and business society, these trips expand the dimensions of the characters and add a context for the overall plot. They empower the reader with a new, narrower lens with which to view and judge the characters. In this way, Mann provides some relief from the cold, unsavory, and calculating materialism that dominates the novel and simultaneously enhances its morbidity and tragedy by way of contrast.

Before exploring the significance of the individual episodes at Travemunde, it is important to understand the magnitude of the contrast it poses to the rest of the novel’s setting. It is not simply a different town or a temporary vacation home; it is an entirely new world. True, Travemunde may only be a few hours away from the Buddenbrook home and it may even house other important families, remnants of the oppressive business world. But it is only at this place that Mann invokes extended descriptions of nature, that there is a viable new environment and new atmosphere. There, a “strong, free, wild, gently sighing and deliciously scented” air blows and “instead of a slimy wooden floor there [is] soft sand to caress the foot” (509). Such extended personifications are starkly juxtaposed with the morbid, gloomy atmosphere of Buddenbrook life in the rest of the novel.

Combined with the lyrical, flowing language that accompanies such trips, the personifications seems to give the setting a life of its own. Compared with the stale and static and confined Buddenbrook household, Travemunde is vibrant and dynamic, and its “great, powering waves” and “salt wind [blowing] in their faces” vividly awaken the senses (111). In fact the sand and wind, sea and sun, and sheer physical relief that Travemunde embodies are virtually the only pleasurable biological experiences depicted in the novel. But Travemunde evokes something more than simple physical relief and an awakening of senses. Deeply connected with its dynamic and vibrant setting are not only alternative conceptions of life to the business world of the Buddenbrooks but also an alternative dimension to the characters themselves. Not only is Tony able to extricate herself from the fawning sentimentality of Grunlich and the unbearable urgings of her pastor and family to marry, but also – free from the more general oppressive influence of propriety and business, of family and firm – she is able to experience a new world view and a natural relationship. Both of these feats are achieved with the young aspiring doctor Morten. It is important to emphasize that Morten is not just a representative of another class, nor is he simply Tony’s “true love.” Rather he is an embodiment of something much greater: of equality and freedom and liberal ideals presented nowhere else in the novel. His bold declarations that “all shall be sovereign children of the state” and “receive their reward according to merit” may sound clichéd and hackneyed in modern day America, but they are quite novel and radical in the Buddenbrook society (113). This is underscored by Tony’s naïve inquiry of “Freedom?” when Morten identifies it as his highest goal (115).

Is this naïveté just a reflection of Tony’s childness and the fundamental incompatibility between herself and the ideals Morten embodies? Or, better put, is the whole Travemunde affair just a fluke, a futile relationship that was doomed from the very beginning. Well – yes and no. The relationship certainly could never have lasted in the framework of the main plot, one centered around duty to family and firm, and upon the concept of the person as just a “link in a chain” and not a “free, separate and independent entity” (120). But the new world of Travemunde and the natural, nonobligatory relationship with Morten is by no means futile. Tony, who just before the visit “moved dumbly about the house, […] laughed no more, [and] lost her appetite” (94), transforms both her look and behavior in Travemunde. Indeed she “blooms” and retrieves her “gay, pert, careless manner” (110). Now this outward transformation does not signal a new trajectory for the narrative or even a fundamental change of character; rather it helps elucidate just how stifling and debilitating the Buddenbrook household had become and would be in the future. For while there had hitherto been something unsettling about the material life led by the Buddenbrooks, Tony’s vivid physical transformation helps pinpoint what exactly is so unsettling. It was the lack of freedom, the constant compulsion and coercion, the suppression of individuality – in short, the very ideals that Morten espouses so emphatically. In this way Morten and Tony are in fact quite compatible, linked not by a predetermined chain, but by their own mutual affinity for freedom as well as natural affection. And while the relationship is eradicated almost instantly by a single reproach from Morten’s father, one should not underestimate its ultimate impact. This fleeting vision of a sincere life of affection and ideals defines a new perspective, a new lens with which to view Tony’s subsequent relationships, and namely her unsuccessful marriages. For they become more than just unsuccessful; they become pitiable and tragic and even painful in the context of the true affection she shared with Mortin.

Now my focus so far has been on Tony’s experiences in Travemunde. Not only was she the first to make the trip, but her visit was the most extended and in many ways the most dramatic. Yet it is only with Hanno and Tom, nearer the end of the novel, that the meaning of Travemunde is extended and generalized to be a window into the natural, inner spirit. Hanno, much like Tony and her first marriage, is pushed and urged and burdened by the responsibility to carry on the family business. But quite unlike Tony, he is presented as frail and weak-willed, quiet and sickly. He has arms “small and soft like a girl’s,” and he often sobs and stammers and is unable to bear the inquiries of his father (500). This portrait is a sad one to be sure and perfectly in line with the overarching theme of Darwinian evolution (and extinction). Yet before his journey to Travemunde he is largely an enigma; is Hanno simply weak-willed or just rebellious in his own way or something else entirely? He may very well be weak-willed but Travemunde brings out the true source of his angst and melancholy. His stay is depicted initially as an “eternity of bliss,” and the life as “easy and care-free” (508-9). In contrast to the passion and vivacity the stay inspires in Tony, it is the soothing peace of the place that Hanno finds so pleasing. Thus it is not that Hanno opposes his father or that he is weak or stupid. He simply has no desire for the Buddenbrook life prepared for him; he has no material aspirations or fundamental goals. Just like Travemunde presents an enviable life of true passion and affection for Tony, so does it present a parallel enviable vision of peace and tranquility for Hanno. Travemunde embodies natural life, uninhibited by duties to business and family and to society and propriety. In this light, Hanno’s weaknesses and sentimentality are no longer morbid or perverse; they are the understandable result of having his ideal, dreamy and tranquil life denied to him.

However important of a context Travemunde produces for the lives of Tony and Hanno, one may be skeptical of its importance given how ephemeral and inconsequential to the plot their stays ultimately prove. In fact consider Tony’s return from Travemunde to the Buddenbrook home in Mengstrasse. Her first thought is “how everything was exactly as it had been.” There is only limited description of the setting, namely the “grey gables” of the “old, the accustomed, [and] the traditional” as she approaches the house and “the damp, yellow garden” when she awakes the next morning (129-30). These bits of imagery, feeble and stale as they are, immediately contrast to the vibrancy of the Travemunde environment. And, at least at first, this dramatic regression of the setting seems to anticipate the dramatic regression of her individualism and inner passions. As she “becomes absorbed” by the family book with “gilt edges,” and makes the final, impulsive resolution to marry Grunlich, the hopes and ideals she held just the previous day (remember this is first morning of her return!) all seem to be shattered in one fell swoop, “with a jerk, with a nervous, feverish accompaniment of sobbing breaths and quick-moving lips” (130-31). While in a sense she gives up her individualism by acquiescing to the wishes of her father and embracing the importance of the firm and the history of her family, the extraordinary and dominating feature of this episode is Tony’s impulsiveness and fickleness, not her submission. In other words, the change she experiences upon her return is not in the loss of her individualism and passions I alluded to earlier, but rather in the focus and subject of that same individualism and those same passions. As someone who tells Morten “I care for you more than anyone else I know” (118) and her own father that “riches do not make everyone happy” (120) – phrases inconceivable anywhere in the novel but Travemunde – Tony can no longer be viewed as just a spoiled child or a vain, privileged daughter. Her impulsive action thus becomes more nuanced and understandable by virtue of Travemunde.

Tom’s journey to Travemunde, the latest and shortest of all gives perhaps the most compelling of alternatives to the materialistic business life so vividly portrayed throughout Buddenbrooks. It comes in the wake of Tom’s deep, melancholy introspection and musings on Death:

Death was a joy, so great, so deep that it could be dreamed of only in moments of revelation like the present. It was the return from an unspeakably painful wandering, the correction of a grave mistake, the loosening of chains, the opening of doors – it put right again a lamentable mischance (526).

This effusive extolment of death is morbidly eloquent, and deeply unsettling given the long succession of deaths that dominates the final chapters. But what strikes me is the unnatural quality of these accolades; the words glaringly jump out like some colossal sacrilege. A soul moved to such thoughts has taken a wrong path; it is at the precipice of self-destruction. Now what does all this have to do with Travemunde? Well once again, as with Tony and Hanno, Travemunde has the effect of distilling misconceptions about motives and adding a new dimension to the visitor. Standing with Tony in front of the “turbid, restless sea,” Tom elucidates why he prefers the sea to the mountains. The mountains “frighten and abash” him and are “too capricious, too manifold, too anamolous”, while the sea possesses “simplicity,” and he longs to be “soothed by the sight of its waves rolling on forever, mystically, relentlessly” (537-38). The diction is shockingly poetic for a character that had repressed his artistic inclinations and despised his own brother for embracing them…and even thought death to be a joy. His words – conveyed verbally and not merely as thought – come like a ray of light through the darkness of death and decay that seems to grow through the last chapters. And in fact Tom’s contrast between the sea and the mountains captures the very essence of not only Travemunde’s role in the novel, but also – spoken by the namesake of the author – quite likely Mann’s own fundamental message to the reader. The difference between preferring the mountains to the sea is, in Tom’s words that between “health and illness” (538). In other words, both ambition and will and simplicity and moderation should have a role in life, depending on the state of the person. It was the imbalance, Tom’s inability to reconcile his ambition and his duty with care and moderation that fueled his exhaustion with life and rapture for death. It was this imbalance that sealed his terrible demise. Only Travemunde, only a new and natural world could have inspired such an insight, simultaneously verbal, candid and poetic.

But what of Tom Buddenbrook’s arbitrary and shockingly grotesque death? After all, it comes in the chapter following Tom’s short trip to Travemunde and the powerful insight described above. It may seem there is an incongruency, that Travemunde was nothing but a failed remedy to his inner torments, given the rapidity and horrifying nature of his death. But it is important to remember that Travemunde never existed as an attainable alternative to Buddenbrook life, and never had a permanent effect on the characters or direct impact on the plot trajectory. Rather its crucial role was in the development of a perspective with which to follow the plot. It was Mann’s tool to demystify and humanize his characters and to present, or simply suggest, alternative lives, and thereby give a framework from which to view and judge the characters. And perhaps the most interesting function of Travemunde is in the dual pain and relief it inspired in the reader: pain at the existence but unattainability of a better life, and relief from the death and decay and darkness into which the narrative inexorably fell. Yet for me, the moments on the beach – in front of the sea, with the wind and the sand and the sun – these moments were simply the most memorable. And perhaps it is this enduring and memorable quality of the Travemunde episodes that is most important in living a fulfilling life.

Microsoft Is Releasing Silverlight 2

Microsoft has announced a final release of Silverlight™ 2.

Silverlight 2, the next step in the evolution of the so called Microsoft #39's Adobe Flash killer, has been released to web. As Silverlight 2 has reached the RTW milestone, the Redmond giant announced that downloads would only go live on October 14, 2008. At the same time, users who have already deployed Silverlight 2 on their machines as a Beta or a Release Candidate version would be automatically upgraded to the gold version, Microsoft informed. According to the software company, Silverlight is defined as a cross-browser, cross-platform and cross-device plug-in. "We launched Silverlight just over a year ago, and already one in four consumers worldwide has access to a computer with Silverlight already installed,” revealed Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at Microsoft. “Silverlight represents a radical improvement in the way developers and designers build applications on the Web. This release will further accelerate our efforts to make Silverlight, Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression Studio the preeminent solutions for the creation and delivery of media and rich Internet application experiences.

Silverlight 2 is designed to integrate seamlessly with Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer running on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, with Microsoft claiming that one in four consumers worldwide has had contact with Silverlight. The Redmond giant indicated that Silverlight penetration was as high as 50% in some markets around the world, but just 30% in the US. However, the software company stated that at just two years since it had been introduced, Silverlight was enjoying a rapid adoption both from users, as well as web content developers and designers.

Microsoft indicated that Silverlight 2 brought to the table features and capabilities including: Deep zoom; out-of-the-box support allows calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS and standard HTTP services; expanded .NET Framework language support, and support for Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby, but also Silverlight DRM, powered by PlayReady, offering robust content protection for connected Silverlight experiences; as well as improved server scalability and expanded advertiser support (this includes new streaming and progressive download capabilities, superior search engine optimization techniques, and next-generation in-stream advertising support).