Politiek en Psychologische roman. Eigenlijk een historische roman waarbij de fictieve personen toch gebaseerd zijn op werkelijk bestaande figuren; ook het plot stemt zowat overeen met een mogelijke waarschijnlijkheid met een waas van fictie. Het onderscheid fictie/werkelijkheid is hier een balanceren op een dunne koord.
Literair èn structureel meesterwerk. Doorheen heel het boek voelt de lezer dat de hoofdfiguur de verpersoonlijking kan zijn van de auteur zelf.
Het slot verhaalt de grote depressie van de hoofrolspeler wgs zijn schuld aan de dood van zijn vriend en het berokkende leed aan zijn naasten. Men voelt vaak de vertwijfeling, het schuldgevoel en het niet meer … terug kunnen keren. Het besef !
In het hele boek zijn we getuige van de afkeer en de walging van het fascisme en zeker in het slot voelen we ook het bekende depressieve karakter van de auteur.
We begrijpen dan ook de vlucht en zelfdoding ….
Zeer goed boek; een meesterwerk! Score : 5 28/08/23 GT ( )

آثاری که درباره‌ی آلمان نازی پیش از جنگ جهانی صحبت کرده بودند و خونده بودم، برای نویسندگانی بود که بعد از جنگ جهانی دست به تألیف اثر زده بودند... اما جالبی این رمان اینه که در 1936 نوشته شده و آلمان نازی رو پیش از جنگ جهانی دوم - که سوسیال ناسیونالیسم آلمان رو به مسئله‌ای بین‌المللی بدل کرد - بررسی می‌کنه و درواقع به همین علت بیشتر یک مخالفت سیاسی داخلی ازش به مشام می‌رسه تا مخالفت با یک جریان بزرگ و شیطانی جهانی!
خوانش این رمان یه کم صبوری می‌خواد... نمی‌دونم متن اصلی اینگونه است یا در ترجمه بد ترجمه شده، اما استفاده‌ی زیاد از ضمایر، مخصوصاً در ابتدا که هنوز عادت ندارید روش متن، می‌تونه براتون گیج‌کننده باشه! همچنین به نظرم نبود ضمایر سوم شخص مذکر و مؤنث تو فارسی می‌تونست توسط مترجم یه کم تعدیل بشه، تا خواننده‌ی فارسی رو گیج نکنه. تو همون دوتا فصل اول هم با نام‌های زیادی بمباران می‌شین که خیلی ترسناک و گیج‌کننده است، اما بعد از دو، سه فصل کم کم براتون خوانشش آسون‌تر و بلکه‌ لذت‌بخش می‌شه. ( )

Klaus Mann's best-known novel, written in exile in 1936 and attacking the prominent figures in the arts in Germany who had chosen to stay and work with the Nazis despite being aware of how evil the regime actually was.

Although Mann maintained that the novel was about types, not individuals, and that it should not be read as a roman à clef, everyone immediately spotted that the central character, the ambitious actor-manager Hendrik ("with a d") Höfgen, had at least a 90% overlap in background, career and appearance with the author's ex-brother-in-law Gustaf ("with an f") Gründgens. Like the real Gründgens, the fictitious Höfgen was a personal friend of Hermann Göring and his second wife, who appointed him Generalintendant of the Prussian State Theatre; was famous for playing Mephistopheles and Hamlet; a blond Rhinelander; got his start in an army mobile theatre in 1917; worked in the 20s in Hamburg where he cultivated a left-wing image; married the daughter of a prominent intellectual from Bavaria, etc. etc.

Details apart, there's only really one point at which the fictional and real stories diverge: Gründgens was notoriously gay, despite being married successively to Erika Mann and Marianne Hoppe (who were both notoriously bisexual...). Obviously, Klaus Mann couldn't use Gründgens' sexuality to attack him without (a) hypocrisy and (b) exposing himself to reciprocal attacks, so he invents an equally embarrassing sex-life for Höfgen with the black dominatrix Juliette, who eventually becomes such a risk to his career that he has to ask Göring to arrange for her to be deported and paid off.

The borrowing of Gründgens' life-story wasn't a big deal in 1936 — Klaus Mann's books weren't being published in Germany anyway, and the actor was hardly likely to go to court in foreign countries to protest at being represented as a friend of the Nazis — but it it completely overshadowed the subsequent life of the novel after 1945, when, contrary to the dark predictions his counterpart Höfgen gets to hear in the final chapter, Gründgens was able to cash in various debts owed to him by other prominent people and resume his theatrical career in the new Germany without much of a stain on his character.

It's been suggested that one of the things that prompted Mann to take his own life in 1949 was the news that a West German publisher was making plans to bring out an edition of Mephisto, which would certainly have led to Mann being involved in some very unpleasant arguments. In the event, Gründgens was able to use his considerable influence to prevent publication in the Federal Republic during his lifetime. After his death in 1963, his life-partner and adopted son, Peter Gorski, fought a legal action to suppress the novel that went all the way to the Federal Constitutional Court, which narrowly decided in his favour in 1971. It was only in 1981 that this bizarre fight between two dead men was put aside and the first West German edition appeared, by which time almost everyone who wanted one had illegally imported a copy of the Austrian or DDR edition.

The result of all this is a rather mixed message: Klaus Mann is using the text of the novel to tell us that you have to pay eventually if you make a pact with the Devil, but the historical context suggests that anyone with the right connections and enough good lawyers has a good chance of wriggling out of a Faustian pact without too much trouble. All the same, Mann's palpable anger and disgust at what is going on in Germany make this a very engaging read, and for us a couple of generations later there's also a lot of interesting period detail about the German theatre between the wars. ( )

A deserved classic that needs to be read urgently, right now; it explains how individuals can bend themselves and those around them to the will of strongmen dictators and their cliques, and of the degradation of the human soul that results. ( )

Not 100% sure how I feel about Mephisto. My initial thought was that I expected more. I kept waiting for struggles with moral dilemmas and choices. Instead, it seemed events were related and characters were introduced. In this regard the novel more resembled a play. Also, the conclusions and evaluations were present from the begining. We know the author's positions which were all too clearly revealed early in the novel.

All that not withstanding, the work is well written and captures a specific time and place. Worth reading. ( )