62 Thomas Mann, “The Railway Accident” (Lecture, 1950)*

The little book before me is called Nocturnes. The author is Thomas Mann. Nobody in his right mind would use the word Nocturnes for a title but let that pass. The title page goes on to state “with lithographs by so-and-so” and “published in N.Y.C. by Equinox Press, in the year 1934.” All very stylish. Very stylish and very abominable lithographs—lisping little pictures.1 “The edition consists of a thousand copies signed by the author.” This copy is numbered 861. Mr. Mann’s appended signature is a little wobbly, after the 860 copies already signed. Say—five seconds—thousand by five—five thousand seconds—five thousand divided by sixty—about an hour and a half—say two hours solid signing of copies. The modest translator2 is not mentioned.

The middle story is quite a famous Mann story—it’s called “The Railway Accident.”3 The German text is roughly contemporaneous with Kafka’s Metamorphosis.4

It begins in a rather coy fashion, which of course is a very commonplace approach.

“Tell you [a] story? But I don’t know any. Well, yes, after all, here is something I might tell.” (The grace of an elephant.)

This heavily flippant, ponderously bantering style is sustained throughout. The narrator is traveling first class from Munich to deliver a lecture in Dresden. As his train is about to leave, he contemplates the station platform from the window and identifies his trunk with his manuscript being carted toward the baggage car.

Lecture notes for a brief denunciation of Thomas Mann’s story “The Railway Accident,” apparently designed as a contrast—how *not* to write fiction—before tackling Kafka’s *Metamorphosis,* the first time Nabokov taught his Masterpieces of European Fiction class at Cornell, 1950–51

“ ‘There,’ thought I, ‘no need to worry, it is in good hands. Look at that big station guard with the leather belt and the military moustache, watch him rebuking that old woman in the threadbare black cape—by golly, she almost got into a second-class carriage, when her place is third class.’ ”5 See the idea? This is sociological sarcasm.

There is some more obvious stuff about this heavyweight station guard, representative of King Wilhelm’s government—but that is sufficient for our purpose.

Another person is introduced: A man strolling up and down the platform wearing spats and a monocle. Aha! Aristocrat. Spats, eyeglass. Ha. With a handsome bulldog on a leash. He struts, his gaze is cold. He does not apologize when he bumps into people. Big bad aristocrat. He takes his dog into the sleeping car, which is against the rules. The first point is made:

little old woman not allowed even into a second-class carriage

High class dog of a high class nob allowed to enter

Magnificently deep and original, isn’t it?

The train starts, the beds are not yet made apparently, presently the sleeping car attendant asks for the spatted gentleman’s tickets. “I heard,” says the narrator, “the gentleman’s immediate burst of rage. ‘What do you want,’ he roared. ‘Leave me alone, you swine.’ He said swine. It was a lovely epithet (the narrator is being very sarcastic)—and then the ticket flew out of the compartment into the attendant’s face. He picked it up with both hands [not a very natural thing to do—but it is needed in order to show his humility] and though a corner of his cardboard ticket had hit him in the eye, which was watering, through his tears he saluted and clicked his heels.”6 [Oh, the pity of it!]

Before we get to the accident let us check what we have had so far.

You will notice what is so completely inartistic: the characters are only there to represent this or that general idea. The easy and obvious—and therefore false—is everywhere preferred to the difficult and personal. Easy does it: want a pathetic type? four ingredients: woman, old, small, poor: there you are. Want a proud aristocrat—Bitte sehr—monocle, spats, mustaches, dog. Under the flag of this so-called realism the most preposterous actions take place. Tickets are sent flying into conductors’ faces, and—but let us go on:

The train is derailed. The forward coaches are smashed up. Many of the compartments are telescoped. There is a good deal of wreckage under which children are buried. But no lives are lost. Mann, being a bad writer, does not see the accident: He just uses ready-made phrases to describe it. He is concerned with the moral of the accident and not with the authentic vision of it. The first-class sleeper is intact of course, but in spite of this, its occupants, women with bare arms and shoulders, stand wringing their hands. Just imagine that vision.

The spatted gent throws himself upon a case on the wall of the corridor, where an ax and saw are kept for emergencies, and breaks the glass with his bare fist. Through the broken glass he tries to pull out the tools but fails, and leaves the car.

Now comes the point of the story.

“Finally we were all stowed higgledy-piggedly into a special train. I had my first-class ticket—my journey being paid for—but it availed me nothing,—my carriage was as crowded as the others. But just as I found a little nook, who do I see opposite to me, huddled in the corner. [Who indeed?] My hero, the gentleman with the spats and vocabulary of a cavalry officer. His dog had been taken away from him and now sat howling in a gloomy prison just behind the engine (the last thing that would happen in an emergency). He sits there, the aristocrat, with a sour smile, resigning himself to the crazy situation.

“And now who gets in, supported by two firemen. A wee little old grandmother in a tattered black cape, the very same who in Munich almost got into a second-class carriage and now she is traveling first class.”7 Ah, what symbolism. How very realistic and profound. What humor. The story ends:

“Well, that was the railway accident I went through. I suppose it had to happen once; but whatever mathematics may say, I feel that I now have every chance of escaping another.” Very funny. And that’s that.

I would like you to ponder the difference between the seemingly fantastic but inwardly authentic world of Kafka, an artist of genius—and this kind of thing, where everything is built on the bog of platitudes, of average and therefore false and dead ideas, a phony world where—now comes my delightful discovery: a man who puts his fist through broken glass hasn’t a single scratch to show.