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Remember the wedding of Adrian’s otherwise never mentioned sister? She has, over the years, produced four children, the last a doomed and perfect little man of five named Nepomuk but called Nepo or, most commonly, after his own usage, Echo. In 1928 Echo comes down with a nasty case of measles and then his mother is sent to a sanatorium for a recurrence of a problem with her lungs. The still recovering Echo is sent to live with his uncle. I’m not really giving much away when I start by describing him as doomed as this is clear from almost the first sentence of Zeitblom’s introduction of this character. He is a beautiful and charming child everyone is irrisistably taken with. He is clearly and expressly “too good for this world.” The fictional character he most reminds me of is “Egg” from The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. (I never saw the movie but I see that Egg was played by Seth Green, who was probably perfect for the role.) Of course Adrian is as taken with Echo as anyone else.
Perhaps Echo’s most unusual and impressive -- in a child of five -- trait is his propensity to say his truly distinctive prayers before bed. Where the text for these prayers comes from no one cares to ask about. I’m going to include the prayers that Zeitblom relates:
Whoso hedeth Goddes stevene
In hym is God and he in hevene.
The same commaunde myselfe would keepe,
And me insure my seemly slepe.
Amen.
Or:
A mannes misdeede, however grete,
On Goddes merci he may wait,
My sinne to Him a lytyl thynge is,
God doth but smile and pardon brings.
Amen.
Or:
Whoso for this brief cesoun
Barters hevens blysse
Hath betrayed his resound
His house the rainbow is;
Give me to build on the firme grounde
And Thy eternal joys to sound.
Amen.
Or, remarkable for its unmistakable coloration by the Protestant doctrine of predestination:
Through sin no let has been,
Save when some goode be seen.
Mannes good deede shall serve him wel,
Save that he were born for hell.
O that I may and mine I love
Be borne for blessedness above!
Amen.
Or sometimes:
The sun up-hon the divell shines
And parts as pure away
Keep me safe in the vale of earthe,
Till that I pay the debt of deathe.
Amen.
And Lastly:
Mark, whoso for other pray
Himself he saves that waye.
Echo prayes for all gainst harms,
May God hold him too in His armes.
Amen
I hadn’t been thinking of predestination, and I’m surprised Mann reminds us of this as it would seem to be something of a problem for this whole selling-your-soul business. Unless you interpret the Elect of God as being people destined (really predetermined) to live in accordance with God’s wishes, then if a person, like Adrian, happens to be among the Elect his actions or bargains would have no consequences as to his final destination. He would be going to heaven regardless. The whole Faustian bargain concept assumes it is you and not God who determines your fate.
Also, the line “His house the rainbow is;” must be a reference to Goethe’s Faust. That passage in Part 1 where Goethe trots out his hobby-horse of light and color, the point of which I would have to review. I found my notes on this and it is at the very beginning of Part 2. Here's a little taste of things to come:
Goethe's Faust
Part 2
Charming Landscape
[From the Interpretive Notes:] p 392 ...What unites these other moments in the drama with this scene, and indeed unites the drama of Faust as a whole, is a fundamental attempt by Faust to comprehend human existence in its constantly varying temporal dimensions and its constant dependence on shifting forces of mind and will, which motivate all actions and thought, with reference to some ultimate and absolute power of spirit or divinity, either within nature and thus accessible to human experience or else above and beyond the natural world, transcending all knowledge and understanding.
p 394 ...The arrival of dawn solicits in Faust’s mind a reciprocal response, which manifests itself in his renewed desire, indeed in his (Faustian) ‘striving’ toward the highest mode of existence...
...The second stage delineated the heroic, ultimately tragic thrust of Faust’s mind toward a confrontation with divinity as it manifests itself in the light of the rising sun. Instantaneous blindness results from the overwhelming brightness of the sun, forcing Faust to turn away his gaze, thus reversing his basic stance in what amounts to a tragic turn of the mind.
p 395 ...When he confronts the sun, Faust retreats, not to escape exposure, as was the case with Ariel and the spirits of nature, but to secure the conditions for reflective thought, which -- as Goethe knew from the entire history of German idealist speculation -- is the necessary condition for all conceptual knowledge and understanding... [This would also seem to be a case of Faust going for Apollinian insight instead of the more profound Dionysian.]
The final section of the monologue introduces one of Goethe’s most archetypal images of human experience. The life of a human being is symbolized by the waterfall as it plummets downward, crashing from rock cliff to rock cliff... [The Magic Mountain picnic?] The force of the flowing water corresponds to the will or drive that constitutes Faustian striving. The clash of water and rock, however, produces a spray or mist that hovers above the waterfall. The fine water droplets, though in constant motion, are suspended as a constant veil, indistinguishable by the eye as either rise or fall. The term Wechseldauer... ‘in variance lasting’... applied to the resulting rainbow, indicates a central concept for Goethe with regard to the value of art as permanence in change... This mist is described as life’s ‘most youthful veil’... the concept of a veil is central to Goethe’s view of art, as indicated at the end of Act III, when Helena’s veil is transformed into a cloud that carries Faust back from Greece to Germany.
In this mist Faust discovers the ultimate symbolic sign for his reflections on the meaning of human existence. The mist catches the light of the sun as it shines through the air, each tiny droplet of water serving as a crystal from which the light is mirrored back and refracted, forming for the perceiving eye in the totality of this process a rainbow in its varied color. The image of the rainbow serves as symbol for the aspect of human creativity that constitutes art and poetry, indeed, human culture in the most general, all-inclusive sense of the term. This form of visual experience also remains accessible to Faust after he has turned away from the blinding light of the sun, providing a comprehensive and reliable mirror or ‘reflection’ of human striving... ‘This mirrors all aspiring human action.’ The depiction of the rainbow in its accurate scientific detail reflects Goethe’s extensive study of optics and color theory....
p 396 - The striving that constitutes Faust’s essential nature is thus sublimated into a reflection upon itself, a representation of itself as model or analogue for the work of art, in and through which the authentic light of the divine, which -- like the sun -- overwhelms human vision in direct confrontation, is refracted into the many-hued spectrum of the rainbow. In this sense the final line of Faust’s monologue describes the highest possible achievement of human art and culture, in Goethe’s view. That quality or aspect of life accessible to human experience -- the same force that beat again anew in Faust’s pulse at the dawn of this new day, affirmed at the outset of his monologue... is this multicolored refraction, which we may have and hold... Three levels of reflectivity are thus included in the symbol of the rainbow: 1) the mirroring and refracting of the sun’s light; 2) the cognitive perception of the refracted colors by the human eye; and 3) The conceptual comprehension of this visual experience by the mind, as demonstrated by the several reflective structures in the language of Faust’s monologue.” [Fuck me!, I didn’t get any of that reading the original lines. I think I need to quote lines 4698 to 4727. Here are the lines just interpreted:]
Faust: “...But now the alp’s green slants have also shaken
The dusk, for gleam and contour newly minded,
And light descends triumphant, stepwise darting; --
He clears the rim! -- Alas, already blinded,
I turn aside, my mortal vision smarting.
“Thus also, as we yearningly aspire
And find at last fulfillment’s portals parting,
Wrung within tender reach our prime desire,
There will erupt from those eternal porches,
Dumbfounding us, exorbitance of fire;
We only meant to kindle up life’s torches,
And flame engulfs us, seas of torrid blazes!
Love? Hatred? Which? envelopes us and scorches,
Sends pain and joy in vast alternate phases,
Till we gaze back upon our homely planet
And shelter in most young of youthful hazes.
“So, sun in back, my eyes too weak to scan it,
I rather follow, with entrancement growing,
The cataract that cleaves the jagged granite,
From fall to fall, in thousand leaps, outthrowing
A score of thousand streams in its revolving,
From upflung foam a soaring lacework blowing.
But in what splendor from this storm evolving,
Vaults up the shimmering arc, in variance lasting,
Now purely limned and now in air dissolving,
A cooling fragrance all about it casting.
This mirrors all aspiring human action.
On this your mind for clearer insight fasten:
That life is ours by colorful refraction.”-Source
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