Philip Kitcher Quotes - Page 5

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• There's a disciplined erotic component to it, so that the height of sexual contact is the embrace, the modest touch, a relatively chaste kiss. An important passage from the surviving 1942 diary (one I quote in the book) relates this mode of sexual expression to his own life. Mann had returned to his diary for 1927 (one of those he burned) and to his parting from the young man, Klaus Heuser, whom the family had met on holiday and invited to Munich.

  Philip Kitcher

  Book, Holiday, Kissing

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Wilhelmine Germany was hostile to the expression of same-sex love - and, of course, Mann would have known of the fate of Oscar Wilde. His early reading of Platen's poetry, and, probably when he was in his early twenties, of Platen's diaries, introduced him to a form of sexual expression he found profoundly congenial. It's not quite Platonic.

  Philip Kitcher

  Sex, Reading, Fate

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• After the success of Buddenbrooks, he married and fathered six children. Yet the surviving diaries tell us of recurrent sexual problems - and of Katia Mann's extremely sympathetic response to them

  Philip Kitcher

  Children, Diaries, Six

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Mann's sexuality and his attitudes towards it are extremely complex - and the complexities are inherited in the figure of Aschenbach. Mann had lived through a series of (almost certainly unconsummated) relationships with young men.

  Philip Kitcher

  Attitude, Men, Sexuality

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Mann was conscious of adopting different perspectives in different parts of the novella, but my guess is that there are plenty of passages in which the resonance of the words he chose struck him as exactly right (even though he didn't probe to discover exactly what tone or narrative device gave them that effect).

  Philip Kitcher

  Perspective, Different, Narrative

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Was Mann himself fully aware of all the facets of his irony? Probably not - any more than Shakespeare was fully aware of all the riches subsequent critics have found in his plays.

  Philip Kitcher

  Play, Riches, Irony

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The more you read the novella, the more you should wonder, I think, which judgments are to be taken as bedrock.

  Philip Kitcher

  Taken, Thinking, Wonder

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• To my mind, Death in Venice represents an enormous advance in Mann's literary development, not simply for the commonly appreciated reason that he crafted a superbly supple and elegant style, apparently well suited to the kind of prose Aschenbach is supposed to write.

  Philip Kitcher

  Writing, Venice, Style

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• We find in the novella a seamless interweaving of at least two narrative voices, one of which is that of an observer so sympathetic that his language appears to be Aschenbach's own, the other of which is superficially celebratory (except at the moment of moralistic condemnation) but undercuts Aschenbach by means of an ironic detachment.

  Philip Kitcher

  Mean, Narrative Voice, Two

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Critics who perceive the first level of Mann's irony recognize that the second voice is giving us reasons to be dubious about various aspects of Aschenbach's life and work. But many of them don't appreciate the second level of irony, the one exemplified in setting this narrative voice alongside the more sympathetic one, and inviting us to choose.

  Philip Kitcher

  Narrative Voice, Appreciate, Giving

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Any writer who could handle all these different voices would deserve high praise, but to do so without any sense of jarring or incoherence is an extraordinary accomplishment.

  Philip Kitcher

  Voice, Accomplishment, Different

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I think the tone of mockery Heller finds is a part of Mann's irony, but only a part - a brilliant further touch consists in juxtaposing perspectives so that we're led to wonder whether the mockery itself is the last word.

  Philip Kitcher

  Thinking, Perspective, Lasts

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• So my methodological approach is to draw on many different features in highlighting different facets of the novella (and the opera and the film).

  Philip Kitcher

  Different, Opera, Film

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Look at Mann's reading habits, his explicit comments on Nietzsche, and his copy of Birth of Tragedy, and it starts to seem doubtful that this work of Nietzsche's played much role in the gestation of the novella.

  Philip Kitcher

  Reading, Tragedy, Roles

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In working towards ways of reading Mann, so that his own advances in suggesting new perspectives will become more vivid, I do some fairly standard philosophical analysis of ideas in Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophical, Reading, Ideas

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I found a deep kinship between Mahler's recurrent attempts to confront all sides of life and to affirm himself in the face of his own finitude, and Aschenbach's dedication to persevere in the literary evocation of beauty. Exploring this kinship led me to reflect on many of Mahler's songs and symphonies - and particularly his great masterpiece, Das Lied von der Erde. The end result was a way of reading Mann that I hadn't originally anticipated at all.

  Philip Kitcher

  Song, Reading, Dedication

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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