He disfrutado muchísimo de la lectura, de sus personajes, de la veracidad de sus sentimientos, de sus imperfecciones y lo fácil que resultaba empatizar con todos ellos, me ha encantado descubrir a ese Mann tan analítico pero divertido, un observador de su tiempo y de cada detalle que conforman el carácter de una persona.

In part 10, chapter 5, Thomas Mann described Thomas Buddenbrook's encounter with Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy. When he read the second volume of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Thomas Buddenbrook was strongly affected by Chapter 41, entitled "On Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of Our Inner Nature." From this chapter's influence, he had such thoughts as "Where shall I be when I am dead? ...I shall be in all those who have ever, do ever, or ever shall say 'I' " ..."Who, what, how could I be if I were not—if this my external self, my consciousness, did not cut me off from those who are not I?"..."soon will that in me which loves you be free and be in and with you – in and with you all." "I shall live...Blind, thoughtless, pitiful eruption of the urging will!" Schopenhauer had written that "Egoism really consists in man's restricting all reality to his own person, in that he imagines he lives in this alone, and not in others. Death teaches him something better, since it abolishes this person, so that man's true nature, that is his will, will henceforth live only in other individuals." According to this teaching, there really is no self to lose when death occurs. What is usually considered to be the self is really the same in all people and animals, at all times and everywhere. Irvin D. Yalom had a character in his novel describe it as follows:The concerns with philosophy and music that Mann developed further in The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus here suggest that the decline in the world is balanced by an inner refinement. That the increasing interior richness of their lives renders them unable to compete with their local rivals, the grossly corporeal Hagenstrom family. For all their status inside the city the new Germany is dominated by the old landed aristocracy - something that will be expressed with more brutality and bitterness in Man of Straw by Tom's brother Henrich Mann. Before the movies no one, it would seem, knew what anything looked like. But everyone had an aching need to know every detail of a bourgeois family’s clothes and home furnishings. So Thomas Mann, being aware of this, turns Buddenbrooks into a type of catalogue. Ogni componente della famiglia, tuttavia, è concepito come ingranaggio ( Anelli di una catena ) per una macchina che spesso necessita di manutenzione finchè il tempo la logora e con le nuove generazioni si affacciano prepotenti nuovi valori.

Life was harsh: and business, with its ruthless unsentimentality, was an epitome of life."(Buddenbrooks, p.363) E' la storia, lungo tre generazione, di una ricca famiglia di commercianti, nella Lubecca borghese e intraprendente dell'autore stesso. Unfortunately, though, I experienced a real disconnect from the characters and story. Perhaps it's because this was Mann's debut and he falls prey to a number of debut author traps - like getting caught up in his own masturbatory metaphor, for example - but I'm not sure.The sad thing is that one lives but once—one can't begin life over again. And one would know so much better the second time!" In the Buddenbrooks the finances and identity of the firm and family are inseparably intertwined. The family’s expenses are expenses for the firm. And profits from the firm accumulated as capital provide the income and living style of the family. The new Buddenbrooks house, the family symbol with which the novel begins, is a monument to itself. Family and firm reside there. Here is a multi-generational novel where a large number of characters are introduced early in the story and stay around long enough so that the reader comes to know each one intimately. The characters mature yet each remains true to their distinctive personality. There are characters with widely differing traits, but usually there were both good and bad qualities in each individual, and this made each feel real. The family saga of the Buddenbrooks is considered a classic of German literature, a book many people have already heard about, yet never read for a very simple reason... it's loooong. And if you appreciate your books with action and thrilling stuff, then Thomas Mann's novel is not exactly the book you should turn to because it would only disappoint you. In this sense, Mann sets the tone for some themes in his forthcoming works, one of them being the refined and sophisticated artistic attitude opposed to the simple, healthy and pragmatic life of a merchant family, a poignant subject in this novel and one which could also have reminiscences of his own personal experience.

Buddenbrooks is recommended for those who think that huge ponderous family sagas by Nobel prize-winning authors are by definition good for the soul. This is the book that gave rise to the idea of a 'Buddenbrook syndrome' used to describe the practise of commercial families to withdraw in the second and third generations from business and to put their time and money into leisure activities as well as anticipating (maybe even inspiring) Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in its treatment of the part played by religion in the inner lives of the Buddenbrooks. The neverending oppressive school day that robs little Hanno of vitality would feature again in his brother Heinrich Mann's novels The Blue Angel and Man of Straw.The story mainly follows two of the children: Thomas, the crown prince who has been prepared to take over the firm and to become the future ruling man in the family, and his beautiful sister Antoine, a spoiled, naive creature with bourgeois airs but good-natured heart who will see her life expectations vanish and her dreams disappear as years go by. Mann's emotional description of the Frau Consul's death has been noted as a significant literary treatment of death and the subject's self-awareness of the death process. [6] Thomas Buddenbrook and Schopenhauer [ edit ] After sunset a sultry breath, like a hot blast from an oven, streamed out of the small houses and up from the pavement of the narrow streets. Today the wind had gone round to the west, and at the same time the barometer had fallen sharply. A large part of the sky was still blue, but it was slowly being overcast by heavy grey-blue clouds that looked like feather pillows.