DIE DIALEKTIK VON LOGOS UND EROS IM WERK VON THOMAS MANN. (GERMAN TEXT)

The erotic and especially the linguistic aspects of Thomas Mann's creativity have been analysed extensively. Their dynamic interrelations, however, and their complex significance for the author's complete oeuvre have remained largely unexplored. This dissertation attempts to elucidate this dialectic through an analysis of its various structural, psychological and mythological manifestations. In light of the poly-semantic, i.e. ironic structure of Thomas Mann's work only the sum of various methodological approaches will do justice to the author's artistic imagination.Closely interwoven with Thomas Mann's dialectic of Logos and Eros is his aesthetic concept of an "erotic utopia" which gains a strong political momentum in his cultural philosophy during the 1920's. Its complex and problematic implications with various ideologies of that time, as well as its fallacious critical reception necessitate the extensive evaluation of this theme in chapter IV "(')Asthetik und Politik".In the final analysis the dialectic of Logos und Eros emerges as an important guiding principle, in which the structure and content of Thomas Mann's work find their multi-faceted reflections.Roland Barthes' Le plaisir du texte will serve as a central theoretical frame of reference for "Der Tod in Venedig" to make its structural equation of the act of love and the act of writing transparent. In the Zauberberg Freud's psychoanalytical theories on laughing and language will help to establish an explanation pattern for the relationship between language consciousness and body consciousness. Out of this interplay Hans Castorp's "scientific Eros", his "erotic irony" and his quest for an "erotic utopia" will develop. Der Erwahlte will be interpreted as a parodical parable of redemptive history in which the motif of incest functions as the common denominator of the "Babel of language" and the "Babel of sin". In the memoirs of Felix Krull, who appears as the mythical double figure of Hermes and Eros, Tonio Kroger's antithesis of art and life will finally reveal itself as the unified embodiment of the art of life and the art of love.