Serenus Zeitblom (from Mann's Doctor Faustus)

I would've recognized the name Adrian Leverkühn (it's been years since I've read Doctor Faustus and I need to give it a "reread" eventually), but I didn't recognize Serenus Zeitblom.


*


Doctor Faustus (in German, Doktor Faustus) is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, begun in 1943 and published in 1947 as Doktor Faustus. Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde ("Doctor Faustus. The Life of the German composer Adrian Leverkühn, told by a friend").


The story is narrated by Leverkühn's childhood friend Serenus Zeitblom. Much like Settembrini and Naphta in “The Magic Mountain” the “serene” humanist Zeitblom and the tragical Leverkühn represent the dualism of the German character, its Apollonian (reason, democracy, progress) and Dionysian (passion, tragedy, fate) aspects. Writing in Germany between 1943 and 1946, Zeitblom describes the rise and downfall of Nazi Germany in parallel with his account of Leverkühn's life. Clearly Leverkühn's pact with the devil symbolizes Germany's "selling of its soul" to Hitler, and vice versa.


[From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Faustus_(novel)]

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