Alexander

A Novel of Utopia

by Klaus Mann

translated by David Carter

Introduction

By David Carter

   Alexander the Great hardly needs an introduction, but Klaus Mann is scarcely known nowadays outside his native Germany, except among a few devotees. Nevertheless he should be, and not just because he was one of the multi-talented offspring of that giant of early twentieth century literature, Thomas Mann (Klaus' sister Erika became an actress and his brother Golo, a leading historian). He wrote in a different vein to his father and with different concerns, not least because of his more openly gay lifestyle; Thomas Mann had always sublimated that side of himself in his works. Many of Klaus' writings imply critiques of the societies in which they are set without being explicitly political (unlike the works of his uncle Heinrich Mann, most famous internationally through the film version of one of his novels, The Blue Angel). Klaus was to explore issues of sexual identity, corruption, hypocrisy ,and the self-destructive nature of genius more frankly than any other member of his family, with what might nowadays be described as a postmodern sensitivity.

   He was born in 1906 as the oldest son of Thomas and Katia Mann and was already writing poems and novellas as a schoolboy. In 1925 he founded a theatre group in Berlin with his sister Erika, Pamela Wedekind, the daughter of the famous dramatist Frank Wedekind, and the actor Gustav Gründgens, who was to become the leading interpreter of the great classic roles in German drama, including, for example, Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust. Klaus managed to gain for himself some notoriety with his own early plays. Then in 1929 he set off with his sister on a trip round the world, financing everything through lectures and performances on the way.

   Klaus Mann's first novel was The Pious Dance (Der Fromme Tanz, 1925). It was one of the first novels in Germany to deal openly with homosexuality; and its appearance inspired his father to write an essay On Marriage, in which he condemned homoeroticism. In his second novel he explored the complexity of human sexuality more thoroughly in relation to political idealism, and more especially to the imperial dream. Its focus on analysis of the close relationship between failure in human relationships with failure to realise impossible ideals (total knowledge and total control of a world, in which nevertheless freedom and love are able to flourish) is indicated by its subtitle: Alexander, A Novel of Utopia (Alexander, Roman der Utopie, 1929).

   On its first publication the novel did not meet with much critical acclaim. The world was not ready for a revaluation of the greatest of the Macedonian conquerors which included descriptions of his private life in such intimate detail. Re-reading the novel in later years Klaus himself commented that he found it 'naïve and cheeky'. He was doing himself an injustice however, for in the work he had respected the known historical facts, and his imaginative elaborations on the personal relations together with discussions on strategy are compatible with them. He had studied several of the sources thoroughly, including Aristotle and Plutarch, and the classic nineteenth century German history of Alexander, the History of Alexander the Great, 1833, by Johann Gustav Droysen, which idealised power in accordance with a Hegelian concept of history.

   The first part of the novel develops the image of Alexander as the glorious liberator, the beautiful young man, whom all adore and who can do no wrong, but progressively Alexander becomes a hollow man, estranged from those who would love him. A series of rejections, starting with that by his boyhood companion Clitus, who later becomes one of his generals, leads Alexander to attempt to compensate, overcompensate in fact, for his perceived inadequacies in a headlong, lifelong pursuit of empire. If individuals cannot and will not love him, then whole peoples shall. His initial success is very much due to the fact that he is liberating many countries from the cruel yoke of the Persian empire under Darius Codomannus, and after every victory he is welcomed with the love and adoration he craves, but by the time he has dragged his armies through Bactria, Sogdiana and over the Hindu Kush into India, he is hated by all the races he conquers: he is no longer a panacea but a plague. It might be argued that Mann is simplifying the motivation of a great man, reducing it to a matter of unsatisfied love, but, as his friend Jean Cocteau writes in his preface to the first French edition, the conflicts of childhood can influence one's personality for the rest of one's life: one should not despise '…those battles in which a snowball can leave its mark on us forever and forever dry up the springs of the heart.'

   The ending of the novel can be understood from a Christian perspective. In his final hallucinatory state Alexander communes with an archangel, who at one point seems to resemble the young blond soldier who had never wavered in his devotion to Alexander. It becomes clear that Alexander has misconceived the nature of love. He had actually killed Clitus, when the latter, acting as a kind of court jester, had revealed to the king the inadeqaucy of his capacity for love, through a retelling of the epic love of Gilgamesh for the youth Enkidu. Finally too he fails, from a false sense of priorities, to come in time to the deathbed of the one man, Hephaestion, who truly loved and understood him. The archangel, out of concern more than anger, points out to Alexander his basic error: 'You have sacrificed another, not yourself." He promises Alexander however that he will be able to return in another form. The implication is clearly that it will be in the form of one who knows that he must sacrifice himself. It cannot be incidental that at his first encounter with the archangel, Alexander wounded him in both hands. Another was to come later who would himself finally be wounded in both hands.

   An intriguing part of the novel is the penultimate section, entitled 'Temptation' (the German word 'Verführung' can also suggest the act of seduction, but I felt the latter rendering to be too sexually specific in its connotations). In his unquenchable thirst for knowledge about all things Alexander becomes fascinated by Indian mysticism and seeks wisdom through three old wise men who chant to him mysteriously and hypnotically about the nature of Brahman, the ultimate reality underlying all phenomena according to Hindu scriptures. He is tempted and succumbs, almost losing his self in the process, but finally manages to tear himself away from them, with an unfeeling disregard for nature in his flight. Shortly after this the Indian queen Kandake tempts him into loss of self by other means, through a narcotically induced state but also through sexual seduction until he loses all will power. His life is threatened and he has to be saved by another. When he recovers from these experiences his self-reliance and determination have only been strengthened the more. As ever Alexander recovers from weakness and defeat through exertion of will.

   It is timely to reconsider Klaus Mann's account of Alexander's life, which has been the subject in recent years of a television documentary and a Hollywood film. There have of course been other literary treatments, notably Mary Renault's trilogy: Fire From Heaven (1969), tracing his life from the age of four till his father's death; The Persian Boy (1972), about Alexander's campaigns after the conquest of Persia from the perspective of his boy companion Bagoas; and Funeral Games (1981), which focuses on the struggle for succession after Alexander's death. In general however it must be said that Renault's account is uncritical and romanticised. More recently there has been another trilogy by the Italian professor of classical archaeology and journalist Valerio Massimo Manfredi. These three volumes were published together in 1998, appearing in English in 2001: Alexander: Child of a Dream, Alexander: The Sands of Ammon, and Alexander: The Ends of the Earth. While being historically sound the works do not explore Alexander's emotional life deeply, downplaying the gay element; emotions are described but not analysed. The film Alexander the Great (1956) directed by Robert Rossen, suffers from the rather wooden respectful style with which epic subjects were treated in the period. There is much careful grouping of figures and big set speeches in theatrical style. There is not a hint of anything untoward in Alexander's sexual proclivities in Richard Burton's portrayal of the king, and he failed to hide approaching middle age convincingly under his blond wig. A more recent version of the story, Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004), with Colin Farrell as the king, explores the close relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion more frankly, but is still a little coy in handling it. In an interview with The Guardian (August 10, 2007), concerning the final director's cut of the film, Stone stressed that the Warner Bros studio wanted him to "cut out all the homosexuality and everything that reeks of anything incestuous." He did try to keep them happy by including scenes with Alexander and his wife Roxana making love (which the king never manages to achieve in Mann's version). In Stone's words: "He had to father some kind of heir, but he didn't work too hard at it did he?"

   A stimulating account of Alexander's life and an evocation of just how strenuous his campaigns were are provided by the historian Michael Wood's three-part documentary In the Footsteps of Alexander (1998). Wood constantly cross-checks legend with the major historical sources in the earliest biographies, especially those of Plutarch, Arrian, and Curtius (Quintus Curtius Rufus), who proves to be a stimulating and evocative writer (his History of Alexander is available in Penguin Classics). In an interview included on the DVD of the documentary Wood also points out that Alexander's hatred of his father and close relationship to his mother clearly invite a psychoanalytic interpretation of his obsession with conquest: "There's clearly something heavily Freudian going on in all this." But later he adds: "The Freudian thing…no one has got to the bottom of it." Except perhaps Klaus Mann? Mann's Alexander clearly fits closely Wood's description of him as "broken in the end by the loneliness and insecurity of absolute power."

   There are countless Greek personal names and Greek versions of place names in Mann's novel. Fortunately the author generally identifies the characters by their military role, or relation to Alexander, so that it is not necessary to burden this edition with copious notes. Listing modern geographical equivalents to the names of places, rivers, and cities etc. would also unduly increase the weight and price of the present volume. The notes therefore only include a few clarifications which aid easy reading. Readers who are keen to track down references in more detail are referred to the excellent glossaries, indexes and maps in the Penguin edition of Curtius' history. For the transliteration of the Greek names I have followed the English conventions rather than rely on the German renderings.

   Finally I owe a great debt of gratitude to those friends who have helped me to resolve ambiguities and obscurities in the German text. They are, in alphabetical order, Benjamin Barthold, Philippe Blanvillain, Alan Miles and Philip Morris. I am also very grateful to Katherine Venn and Rebecca Morris for all their practical advice.

                                                                                                                     David Carter

Undine

By Friedrich de la Motte-Fouque

translated by David Carter

(published by Hesperus Press in the volume Long Ago and Far Away)

From the opening of the first chapter: