BUDDENBROOKS ·I·

Other Books by THOMAS MANN

DEATH IN VENICE ROYAL HIGHNESS MAGIC MOUNTAIN

THOMAS MANN

BUDDENBROOKS

VOLUME ONE

Translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter

ALFRED·A·KNOPF·NEW YORK 1927

COPYRIGHT 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Published, February, 1924 Second Printing, July, 1924 Third Printing, March, 1927

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

Buddenbrooks was written before the turn of the century; it was first published in 1902, and became a German classic. It is one of those novels—we possess many of them in English—which are at once a work of art and a unique record of a period and a district. Buddenbrooks is great in its psychology, great as the monument of a vanished cultural tradition, and ultimately great by the perfection of its art: the classic purity and beautiful austerity of its style.

The translation of a book which is a triumph of style in its own language, is always a piece of effrontery. Buddenbrooks is so leisurely, so chiselled: the great gulf of the war divided its literary method from that of our time. Besides, the author has recorded much dialect. This difficulty is insuperable. Dialect cannot be transferred.

So the present translation is offered with humility. It was necessary to recognize that the difficulties were great. Yet it was necessary to set oneself the bold task of transferring the spirit first and the letter so far as might be; and above all, to make certain that the work of art, coming as it does to the ear, in German, like music out of the past, should, in English, at least not come like a translation—which is, “God bless us, a thing of naught.”

H. T. Lowe-Porter

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

“And—and—what comes next?”

“Oh, yes, yes, what the dickens does come next? C’est la question, ma très chère demoiselle!”

Frau Consul Buddenbrook shot a glance at her husband and came to the rescue of her little daughter. She sat with her mother-in-law on a straight white-enamelled sofa with yellow cushions and a gilded lion’s head at the top. The Consul was in his easy-chair beside her, and the child perched on her grandfather’s knee in the window.

“Tony,” prompted the Frau Consul, “‘I believe that God’—”

Dainty little eight-year-old Antonie, in her light shot-silk frock, turned her head away from her grandfather and stared aimlessly about the room with her blue-grey eyes, trying hard to remember. Once more she repeated “What comes next?” and went on slowly: “‘I believe that God’—” and then, her face brightening, briskly finished the sentence: “‘created me, together with all living creatures.’” She was in smooth waters now, and rattled away, beaming with joy, through the whole Article, reproducing it word for word from the Catechism just promulgated, with the approval of an omniscient Senate, in that very year of grace 1835. When you were once fairly started, she thought, it was very like going down “Mount Jerusalem” with your brothers on the little sled: you had no time to think, and you couldn’t stop even if you wanted to.

“‘And clothes and shoes,’” she said, “‘meat and drink, hearth and home, wife and child, acre and cow....’” But old Johann Buddenbrook could hold in no longer. He burst out laughing, in a high, half-smothered titter, in his glee at being able to make fun of the Catechism. He had probably put the child through this little examination with no other end in view. He inquired after Tony’s acre and cow, asked how much she wanted for a sack of wheat, and tried to drive a bargain with her.

His round, rosy, benevolent face, which never would look cross no matter how hard he tried, was set in a frame of snow-white powdered hair, and the suggestion of a pigtail fell over the broad collar of his mouse-coloured coat. His double chin rested comfortably on a white lace frill. He still, in his seventies, adhered to the fashions of his youth: only the lace frogs and the big pockets were missing. And never in all his life had he worn a pair of trousers.

They had all joined in his laughter, but largely as a mark of respect for the head of the family. Madame Antoinette Buddenbrook, born Duchamps, tittered in precisely the same way as her husband. She was a stout lady, with thick white curls over her ears, dressed in a plain gown of striped black and grey stuff which betrayed the native quiet simplicity of her character. Her hands were still white and lovely, and she held a little velvet work-bag on her lap. It was strange to see how she had grown, in time, to look like her husband. Only her dark eyes, by their shape and their liveliness, suggested her half-Latin origin. On her grandfather’s side Madame Buddenbrook was of French-Swiss stock, though born in Hamburg.

Her daughter-in-law, Frau Consul Elizabeth Buddenbrook, born Kröger, laughed the sputtering Kröger laugh and tucked in her chin as the Krögers did. She could not be called a beauty, but, like all the Krögers, she looked distinguished; she moved with graceful deliberation and had a clear, well-modulated voice. People liked her and felt confidence in her. Her reddish hair curled over her ears and was piled in a crown on top of her head; and she had the brilliant white complexion that goes with such hair, set off with a tiny freckle here and there. Her nose was rather too long, her mouth somewhat small; her most striking facial peculiarity was the shape of her lower lip, which ran straight into the chin without a curve. She had on a short bodice with high puffed sleeves, that left exposed a flawlessly modelled neck adorned with a spray of diamonds on a satin ribbon.

The Consul was leaning forward in his easy-chair, rather fidgety. He wore a cinnamon-coloured coat with wide lapels and leg-of-mutton sleeves close-fitting at the wrists, and white linen trousers with black stripes up the outside seams. His chin nestled in a stiff choker collar, around which was folded a silk cravat that flowed down amply over his flowered waistcoat.

He had his father’s deep-set blue observant eyes, though their expression was perhaps more dreamy; but his features were clearer-cut and more serious, his nose was prominent and aquiline, and his cheeks, half-covered with a fair curling beard, were not so plump as the old man’s.

Madame Buddenbrook put her hand on her daughter-in-law’s arm and looked down at her lap with a giggle. “Oh, mon vieux—he’s always the same, isn’t he, Betsy?”