asure is deeply irrational and ultimately causes his pain. Nietzsche described such fusion of Dionysiac and Apollonian psychologies as ‘Kunsttriebe’, or ‘artistic impulses’, which form the basis of tragedy. We are able to apply this to Herr Friedemann, as his mental struggle arises as a result of his apparent love for ‘Kunst’, or rather his Apollonian search for aesthetic beauty, coupled with his natural ‘Trieb’, a certain Dionysiac helplessness that is presented through his desperate self-destruction at the end of novel.
Mann may look to place Herr Friedemann’s suicide on nature, rather than an external factor, or the fault of Frau von Rinnlingen (she is certainly not to blame). The naturalist movement, that which Mann was a keen follower, grounded literature in scientific theory, whereby characterisation, hereditary disease, and psychology, are all linked by means of ‘biological determinism’. That is to say that Herr Friedemann’s fate is ultimately inevitable as a result of his degenerate life that he succumbs to, by being both physically and morally weaker. It is no coincidence that the hunchback he is fatefully given by the maid when he dropped in the first chapter, stunts his growth both in terms of stature and emotion. His misconstrued emotions therefore, tie in with his chaotic ‘Trieb’, that allows this naturalist, determinist work to ascertain an almost proleptic structure; Herr Friedemann anticipates and resolves potential problems, before they have even arisen; the finale tragically descends into an obdurate nihilistic dissection of his social misfortunes, that Mann presents through a naturalistic, fateful tone; an outsider’s voice that permeates through the free indirect style, commenting on what becomes, through Frau von Rinnlingen’s “kurzen, stolzen, verächtlichen Lachen”, a melodrama, that appeals to Mann’s sentimentality and emotionality as a writer.
We can extend the idea that Herr Friedemann’s suicide is more melodramatic entertainment than it is sincere, heartfelt narration, through the impact of Wagner on, not only the genre of ‘melodrama’, but also the work itself. ‘Music is of course an integral part of Mann’s aesthetics’ , above all in Wagner’s operas, which, while they were often grand and expressive, contained melodramatic features, or ‘leitmotifs’, that 19th Century authors derived into their works. When referring to Der Kleine Herr Friedemann, the term ‘Wagnerian’ is inherently contradictory to ‘melodrama’ unless we consider the plot itself. If we take an impotent young man, who tragically falls in love with a beautiful woman and ends up killing himself – this is the grand Wagnerian opera – whilst the ‘melodrama’ exists in the smaller moments, the crucial scenes of emotion and sentimentality, whereby narrative ‘leitmotif’ is used to underpin the drama. A key musical example would be Wagner’s epic musical drama Der Ring des Nibelungen, where melodramatic leitmotifs are employed to represent certain characters or situations; it is therefore possible to see Herr Friedemann’s suicide, particularly with the
