Tristan by Thomas Mann

First published: 1903 (English translation, 1925)

Type of plot: Parody

Time of work: The turn of the twentieth century

Locale: Einfried, an Alpine sanatorium

Principal Characters:

• Anton Kloterjahn, a successful, domineering businessperson from North Germany
• Gabriele Kloterjahn, his wife, a patient in an Alpine sanatorium
• Detlev Spinell, a writer of slight reputation who is also taking the cure

The Story

At the beginning of January, Anton Kloterjahn and his wife arrive at Einfried, a clinic in the mountain climate once favored by tuberculosis patients. Kloterjahn, who has brought his wife here for treatment of a slight tracheal disorder, is in robust good health and richly enjoys the fruits of his material success. Gabriele Kloterjahn is younger than he; her face betrays fatigue and a delicate constitution; shadows appear at the corners of her eyes, and a pale blue vein stands out under the fair skin of her forehead. Her present complaint—weakness, slight fever, and traces of blood when she coughs—appeared directly after the difficult birth of her first child, a lusty baby who immediately asserted his place in life "with prodigious energy and ruthlessness."

Detlev Spinell, a writer of no particular renown, has been resident at Einfried for a short time already. He has about him an air of illegitimacy, seemingly more dilettante than artist and more vacationer than patient. For some, he is merely amusing, an odd sort who affects the role of the unappreciated, solitary aesthete. Several inmates refer to him privately as "the dissipated baby." Once Kloterjahn returns to his flourishing business in the north, Spinell displays growing interest in his wife, and she finds a certain diversion in his conversation, eccentric as it is. He makes no secret of his dislike for her husband, insists that the name Kloterjahn is an affront to her, and queries her about her own family and her youth in Bremen. On learning that Gabriele and her father are amateur musicians, Spinell laments that the young woman sacrificed her artistic sensitivities to the domination of an acquisitive, boorish husband. Gabriele is vaguely charmed by this devotion; at the same time, her physical condition grows less encouraging.

One day at the end of February, a sleighing party is arranged for the patients, but she prefers not to take part. To no one's surprise, Spinell also remains behind. Gabriele and her frequent companion, Frau Spatz, retire to the salon. Spinell joins them there and proposes that Gabriele play something on the piano. He knows that her doctors have forbidden it, and she reminds him of this fact, but he invokes the image of her as a girl in the family garden in Bremen, as if to suggest that by satisfying his request she could undo her marriage, her submission to the odious Kloterjahn, and the illness that has resulted from bearing Kloterjahn's child. Finally, she consents and plays a few of Frederic Chopin's nocturnes that have been left lying out in the room.

Then Spinell finds another volume. Gabriele takes it and begins to play as he sits reverently listening. It is the prelude to German composer Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (1865). The performance is inspired and moving, and when it ends, both sit without speaking. Frau Spatz, by now bored and uncomfortable, retires to her room. As the late afternoon shadows deepen, Spinell urges her to play the second act, the one in which Tristan and Isolde consummate their burning, illicit love. The music completely absorbs the pair at the piano. Gabriele passes to the opera's finale and plays Isolde's love-death. When it is finished, neither can speak until recalled to reality by the bells of the returning sleighs. Spinell rises, crosses the room, then sinks to his knees as if in veneration, while Gabriele sits pensively in front of the silent piano.

Two days later, her condition shows signs of worsening. Kloterjahn is notified and arrives with his infant son, irritated by the interruption of his business affairs. Spinell, meanwhile, writes Kloterjahn a long, laboriously worded letter in which he indulges all of his ecstatic devotion to Gabriele and his hatred of her husband. He calls her the personification of vulnerable, decadent loveliness, consecrated, in his words, to "death and beauty." He denounces Kloterjahn as her mortal enemy for having violated the deathly beauty of Gabriele's life and debased her by his own vulgar existence. When Kloterjahn receives the letter, he reviles Spinell as presumptuous, cowardly, and ridiculous. However, his tirade is interrupted by a message that his wife has taken a turn for the worse and that he is needed at her bedside.

Spinell takes refuge in the garden. He gazes wistfully at Frau Kloterjahn's window and walks on, humming to himself the melody of the yearning motif from Tristan und Isolde. His reverie is cut short by the approach of a nursemaid with Kloterjahn's infant son in a perambulator. The sight of the chubby, happily screaming child is more than he can bear; he turns in consternation and walks the other way.