A review by Ethan A. Bayer
Thomas Mann's frighteningly accurate sense of the future is crafted with great detail in
Mario and the Magician. At the rise of Communism he is able to see past its exciting newness and into the horror that looms ahead.
Mann spends a significant portion of his story constructing a scene of Italy in the hot summer, laden with beach-going tourists. The narrator comments on the hostile demeanor of the natives and the unfriendly welcome he and his family receive. Through creating this world in all its coarse detail, Mann makes it possible for the reader to interpret the magician's show as reality.
In fact, the magician's performance (and the Nazi regime, if it is not too bold to say as much so quickly) is paralleled by the situation in Torre di Venere. After enduring a vehement attack on the beach, the narrator wonders that they should have left. However, he considers his decision to stay a mark of courage, and that to leave would show cowardice. No one feels confident in leaving a place just as the air becomes a bit tense, least of all the German Jews, whose whole lives were cemented in Germany. The narrator recalls the saying that "it is indolence that makes us endure uncomfortable situations" (p.537).
Ironically, the narrator feels things picking up when they are actually headed towards disaster-when he notices posters for "Cavaliere Cipolla." The advertisements, like the Nazi party's platform, are vague at best, only promising "a display of extraordinary phenomena of a mysterious and staggering kind" (p.538). Such professions that lack substance or support should automatically arouse suspicion, but people become so curious and mesmerized that they want to believe them, so they do.
At the show, the children serve as a superficial affirmation that it is wholesome and innocent. They giggle wildly at the magician's every move. Similarly, radical political ideas are often seized by the young, as well as the uneducated, who rationalize and support them enthusiastically. It becomes their job to convince the rest of the population, which is evident in the children's pleas to stay long into the night. The narrator attempts to leave numerous times, only to hear the heart-rending supplications from his child. In this way, someone who is naïve and ignorant can lead not only himself, but others who he associates with, into darkness.
After his first exhibition of hypnosis, the adults feel a sense of betrayal from Cipolla-that he has turned on the audience for his mockery. Instead of viewing him with fright or unease, though, they simply look down upon him as a "silly ass" (p.543). Since they feel that he is below them, they have no reason to be apprehensive, for surely he could not outwit them with his crude magic! And so they stay.
In each "experiment" the magician used alcohol and a riding-whip. Put into context, these objects are symbolic of elements of the Nazi regime. The liquor represents the control that power takes on a person. As he guzzles more and more from his glass, the magician adopts an air of arrogance and confidence. His magic takes weirder and more daring twists. Likewise, Hitler grew drunk with his leadership, as did the concentration camp officers, and so the laws that were initially imposed against Jews gradually lost the emotional satisfaction they brought to the authorities. They were eventually transformed into horrible torture and, ultimately, horrific mass murder.
When Mario is called up to the stage, he proceeds with caution. Yet he, too, is caught by the mesmeric influence of the magician and sucked into an erotically grotesque kiss. He comes to his senses and, realizing the dignity he and the audience have been robbed of, puts an end to the magician. In a way, Mario is an idealistic creation of Mann's; he is a man unafraid to go against the crowd, unwilling to just laugh along with the rest of them. He does something that, in the present context, is wildly unpopular and unacceptable, but in the end is necessary for survival. Unfortunately, no single person such as Mario existed in Germany in the 1930s, or at least not one person who alone had so much power to directly attack Hitler's force.
Mann's story tells of the psychological effects that a demagogue has on his people. He reveals that a dictator's authority is not his own, but is essentially given him by the people who stand by and watch his "grotesque and thrilling" (p.566) drama unfold. Like the audience members at the magician's spectacle, German Jews were hesitant to leave their homeland, and justified their stay with whatever they could. Many times they did not see the storm until it was on top of them.