The Transposed Heads by Thomas Mann

First published:Die vertauschten Kopfe: Eine indische Legende, 1940 (English translation, 1941)

Type of work: Fable

Time of work: The eleventh century

Locale: Kurukshetra, India, and environs

Principal Characters:

• Shridaman, a merchant who is well-versed in classical Indian learning
• Nanda, his friend, a shepherd and smith who is three years younger than Shridaman
• Sita, a young woman who becomes Shridaman’s wife
• Kali, a Hindu goddess who is associated with motherhood but who also represents bloodshed, sacrifice, and destruction
• Kamadamana, a pious hermit
• Samadhi, also called Andhaka, the son of Sita and Shridaman

The Novel

This slender, supple work achieves its ends through forms of imagery and symbolism that are revealed at each turn. The story itself, which rests upon relatively slight narrative foundations, suggests that basic antinomies in human character may yield results that are entirely unexpected; the exotic, indeed seemingly mythic setting seems to heighten the moral tension felt in this work even as it diminishes the impact of what otherwise would be some rather shocking events. Moreover, while enough details of the specific time and place are supplied to convey a distinctive and extraordinary atmosphere, these effects do not impose limitations on the more nearly universal issues that are also called forth. All the while, there is enough wry wit in the author’s tone to suggest that such matters need not be taken too seriously.

At the outset, two young men become friends possibly because their seemingly dissimilar qualities are actually complementary. Shridaman, the older, has been educated in grammar and philosophy and is a merchant, and Nanda, who is more given to physical labor, tends livestock and is a smith. In quiet, secluded places, they discuss ultimate questions of truth and understanding, although they reach no particular conclusions. Their musings are pleasantly interrupted one day when a young woman, not knowing that they are about, comes to bathe in the river nearby. Without any improper overtones, they regard her lithe, delicately curved form; in particular, they admire her delicate, golden brown skin. Her graceful, unaffected movements seem admirably suited to her splendidly proportioned figure. Shridaman is inspired by her appearance to launch into a disquisition about relations between the image and the beholder in aesthetic theory; yet both he and his interlocutor seem bemused and distracted in a way that is far from intellectual. Some time later, Shridaman confesses to his friend that his philosophical cast of mind has been dulled by yearnings of a more worldly sort; Nanda maintains lightheartedly that, though Shridaman is seemingly given to cerebral pursuits, he actually cannot find means to contain the urges of his lovesickness.

It does not take very long for courtship to blossom into marriage. Although he and Sita initially are quite happy together, some misgivings begin to trouble Shridaman. His religious precepts offer him no guidance; when he enters a shrine of the goddess Kali, he becomes possessed instead with dark thoughts of propitiation. Shridaman fears that his very essence has been divided hopelessly by the conflicting claims of the mental and physical facets of his existence. The goddess is intent on exacting her due in blood and sacrifice. Accordingly, and in a stroke that admittedly seems improbably difficult to carry out, Shridaman takes up a sword and in one movement severs his head from his body. Nanda, who has been disquieted by his friend’s air of gloomy preoccupation, comes upon Shridaman’s corpse when he visits the temple; after only a moment’s reflection, he takes up the fatal sword and decapitates himself.

When Sita comes upon this gruesome spectacle, she is, at first, inclined to join the others in death; at this juncture, however, the goddess reproaches her for any thoughts of self-sacrifice. Instead, Sita succeeds somehow in affixing the heads back on the bodies of the men. When they come back to life, however, there is an unusual twist: For each of them, the head of the one has been set upon the other’s body. This turn of events leads to some oddly comic discussions between the new Shridaman and the new Nanda. At issue is whether each should construe his personal identity on the basis of his physical or his mental qualities. Both are actually a bit amused at the situation but recognize that the confusion cannot continue indefinitely. In particular, Sita would need to determine which one actually is her husband; thus, the three of them go off to a forest sanctuary some distance away, where they consult the eccentric old hermit Kamadamana. He advises them that it is the head, not the body, that confers the unique personal status identified with each individual.

The new Shridaman continues to live in a wedded state with Sita. For a time it seems that all is well; eventually, however, it appears that something is awry. Sita initially is rather pleased with the more powerful and fully developed physical state of her husband. Yet, the body is soon dominated by Shridaman’s head, the limbs and chest becoming so thin and weak that they cannot be distinguished from those of the original Shridaman. Meanwhile, the child who was conceived early in their marriage is born and is found to bear some resemblance to all three of them. Sita wearies of Shridaman and develops a pronounced penchant for Nanda; indeed, her interest has been aroused by her past experience with him as a transposed body. When she comes upon him again, she finds that, true to his calling, his body has come to resemble that possessed by the Nanda of old. Their blissful liaison lasts a day and a night; then Shridaman discovers them together and becomes distraught.

At last, Shridaman and Nanda agree to a trial by combat, with the added stipulation that neither will allow his body to betray his head. The outcome is as precise and symmetrical as their earlier decapitations; each pierces the other’s heart with his sword, and both fall dead simultaneously. It remains for Sita, who has contemplated this final act all along, to commit ritual suttee by placing herself upon the funeral pyre which consumes the two men. As an afterthought, the narrator adds that young Samadhi, the son of Sita and Shridaman, is obliged by his nearsightedness to take up contemplative pursuits. He soon becomes known as Andhaka (little blind one) and acquires wide renown for his precocious mastery of learned subjects. By the age of twenty, he has become a reader to the King of Benares.

The Characters

The participants in this metaphysical work may be considered archetypal; in no sense does any of them possess those peculiarly individual qualities that require characterization in great detail. The characters are meant to represent the incarnation of much broader attributes. The dialogue, especially that between Shridaman and Nanda, also repeatedly reaches a rarefied philosophical plane where abstract values and categories are discussed in relation to observations and experiences.

In a sense, there is a sort of philosophical dualism that is exemplified in the qualities assigned to the two men, and the physical descriptions of each of them seem further to establish this relationship between character and appearance. Shridaman has the outward bearing of a scholar; his sharp nose and soft, gentle eyes are set above thin lips and a gentle spreading beard, and his head seems disproportionately large in relation to his body. The cogitation in which he is often immersed may at times have led him to underestimate the imperatives of his bodily urges; thus, his relations with Sita involve an abrupt awakening for him. Unlike the others, Shridaman is also prone to fits of melancholy. His tendency to elicit ultimate questions from the experiences of his life foreshadows the dark brooding that leads him first to suicide and then to a fatal duel with his opposite, Nanda.

Nanda is typified by other, simpler virtues, which are set off as well by the more obvious physical contrasts between him and his friend. Readily distinguishable from Shridaman by his darker complexion, thick lips, and goat like nose, Nanda has acquired characteristics which also seem evocative of his nature: His work as a smith has strengthened his arms and upper body to produce a harmonious effect of rugged masculine power. If he seems physically more imposing, he is not given so much to complex, troubled responses to the everyday issues of his existence. His manner of speaking is simpler and more direct than that of Shridaman; his merry laughter and forthright, unaffected manner contrast markedly with the moody, unsettled qualities evident in his friend. Nevertheless, his sense of honor and responsibility seems equal to that of Shridaman. He does not in the least recoil from the challenges to self-sacrifice and combat that are laid down by the other man.

Other vital principles are represented in Sita, although otherwise she seems less fully realized as a character than her two male counterparts. In her, there is a fusion of erotic and aesthetic elements to the extent that her being may be considered on both ideal and material levels. She appears first as an object admired and pursued by the men, but in due course, her own desires and aspirations are revealed. Another duality of sorts, which is grounded in Indian religious imagery, exists within her: the idea that divergent drives toward sexual fulfillment and motherhood are necessarily united in woman’s nature. Sita’s awakening joy in matters of the flesh is offset by a sense of self-sacrifice that differs from but is equally strong as that felt by the men. It would seem, however, that her thoughts and feelings arise in response to problems posed as Shridaman and Nanda grapple with moral concerns that must affect her also.

The antinomies of head and body, or intellect and substance, are resolved with mutual destruction, and the same fate is reserved for the opposition of male and female qualities. It is unclear whether the honor and status that are ultimately accorded Samadhi represent the reassertion of principles by which the inward-looking mind could again claim a place for itself in the world at large.

Critical Context

During Thomas Mann’s later literary career, much of his work was drawn from themes and settings that ranged across more distant historical periods and rather far-flung lands; in this case, he borrowed from various cultural traditions while rendering his own interpretations of the material he selected. The original source for The Transposed Heads is a Sanskrit legend translated by the Indologist Heinrich Robert Zimmer, to whom Mann dedicated the American edition of this work. Although he took some care to study those aspects of classical Indian culture that were important for his work, Mann acknowledged that Western thinkers had also provided inspiration for this effort. Among the more significant influences Mann mentioned are Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who had made use of a somewhat similar theme, and the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, whose work inspired some of the brooding, pessimistic elements of this novel. Mann also found literary uses for the psychoanalytic doctrine of Sigmund Freud and the work of Carl Gustav Jung, whose theories of a collective unconscious stemmed in part from the study of Indian and other Asian patterns of thought.

Among the full-length works composed entirely during Mann’s later life, The Transposed Heads could be considered rather distant from his other efforts in time, space, and cultural outlook. Mann referred to it later as a metaphysical jest which was composed while he was also at work on other novels. Although during this period of his career Mann was also reworking traditional German themes—as in Lotte in Weimar ( 1939; The Beloved Returns, 1940) and Doktor Faustus (1947; Doctor Faustus, 1948)—the closest counterpart in spirit and setting to Mann’s Indian novel is the tetralogy Joseph und seine Bruder (1933-1943; Joseph and His Brothers, 1934-1944, 1948), which pursues biblical themes in pharaonic Egypt as part of Mann’s quest for the elucidation of basic moral values in human relationships. Yet The Transposed Heads stands apart from Mann’s other works by virtue of its odd choice of subject matter; while it has not been considered a major effort (indeed Mann himself did not regard it as such), The Transposed Heads does indicate the great range of his interests and the extent of his ability to utilize diverse materials for his own literary purposes.

Bibliography

Fleissner, Else M. “Stylistic Confusion in Thomas Mann’s Indian Legend, The Transposed Heads,” in The Germanic Review. XVIII, no. 3 (1943), pp. 209-212.

Ganeshan, Vridhagiri. “The Transposed Heads by Thomas Mann: An Indian Legend or a Metaphysical Jest?” in Journal of the School of Languages. V, nos. 1/2 (1977/1978), pp. 1-13.

Hollingdale, R.J. Thomas Mann: A Critical Study, 1971.

Lawson, Marjorie. “The Transposed Heads of Goethe and of Thomas Mann,” in Monatshefte. XXXIV, no. 2 (1942), pp. 87-92.

McWilliams, James R. Brother Artist: A Psychological Study of Thomas Mann’s Fiction, 1983.

“Form and Style in Thomas Mann’s Indian Legend,” in Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Helmut A. Hatzfeld, 1964. Edited by Alessandro S. Crisafulli..

Schultz, Siegfried A."Hindu Mythology in Mann’s Indian Legend,” in Comparative Literature Studies. XIV, no. 2 (1962), pp. 129-142.

Willson, Amos Leslie. “Die vertauschten Kopfe: The Catalyst of Creation,” in Monatshefte. XLIX, no. 6 (1957), pp. 313-321.