From Aesthetic Illusion to Ingenious Simulacrum. Art and Magic in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus

At its core, Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus is a Künstlerroman: Faust does not appear here as a scientist striving for true knowledge but as a composer—"the German musician Adrian Leverkühn"—who struggles for artistic genius and supreme creative power. What was magic for the older Faust is music for Mann’s Faust. But what connects music and magic? And in what way does the act of composing become a demonic invocation that deliberately accepts the “dishonest intensification” leading to the tipping point where genius turns into illness and madness? This is a radical concept of art that leaves bourgeois humanist ideals far behind. In the novel, it is no coincidence that this vision is placed in the mouth of the demon himself during the central, hallucinatory encounter with the devil.