err Friedemann tells of the tragic, yet pitiful suicide of an impotent man, who suffers with a disability that has prevented his personal romantic desires. On the surface, Herr Friedemann, as the name suggests, is ‘at peace’ with himself, however this is merely a form of Ibsen’s ‘Lebenslüge’; he is constantly at odds with his reproachful nature, as a man who has forbid himself from loving, yet feels so emotionally drawn to Frau von Rinnlingen. There is an argument that Herr Friedemann’s death is foreshadowed after just four chapters; after the scene where he encounters his “plötzliche Neigung” kissing another man, he decides that he will never love again as this only causes him “Gram und Leid”. Herr Friedemann has been described as having ‘precarious epicureanism’ , which suggests, and somewhat validates, that his desires were subdued in order to obtain greatest ‘pleasure’, although his suppressed sexual passion does not lead to satisfaction, rather tragedy.

There appears to be something significantly ‘Apollonian and Dionysian’ about Herr Friedemann’s suicide. Moments before his death, his expresses his ultimate Dionysiac wish “sich zu vernichten [und] sich in Stücke zu zerreisen”, yet he is only able to “sich [schieben] noch weiter vorwärts [und] ins Wasser fallen”. This makes the suicide seem antithetical, to such an extent that Mann’s grave, dramatic free indirect style is pitifully undone by Herr Friedemann’s pathetic death. He can barely muster the strength to make it to the water; there is certainly no ‘dagger through the heart’ moment, not least an act of pathos that may lead the reader to sympathise with the fallen protagonist. Perhaps Herr Friedemann’s self-pitiful death is in keeping with the inner morality of his personality. His Apolline view of the arts, that appeals to the purity and melodrama of music, more specifically Wagner, is all part of a his ‘life sustaining lie’, as Frau von Rinnlingen discovers in the final chapter, such that his life as an ‘artist’ is in fact futile; shown fully by his self-destruction in the final Dionysiac moment of annihilation and self-disgust. I suppose this is the psychological paradox that causes Herr Friedemann such distress; T.J. Reed tells us that an artist’s “bacchantic howling only proves imcompetence”, who “merely vents [their feelings] in helplessly inarticulate sounds” . This seems to perfectly epitomise the character of Herr Friedemann, who drowns himself in water that is only deep enough to cover his face, leaving the rest of his body on the ground.

Mann’s narration of the final scene encompasses the Apollonian and Dionysian psychology of the pro