Germanesimo dionisiaco. Per una critica della ricezione di Nietzsche nelle Considerazioni di un impolitico di Thomas Mann

This essay aims to enquire the legacy of Nietzsche’s thought within Thomas Mann’s literary work. Specifically, the paper is focused on the reading of the complex essay-novel Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918). This controversial work by Thomas Mann is crucial for understanding the composite cultural atmosphere of early Twentieth Century Germany; moreover, it equally represents a testimony of the relevance of the reception of Nietzsche’s philosophy during the First World War. Through the distinction between the concepts of Kultur and Zivilisation, I mean to show the proximity between Mann’s human type of the unpolitical artist and Nietzsche’s figure of the aristocratic. Therefore, I aim to compare the notion of irony with the pathos der Distanz. In the second part of the essay, I will discuss Mann’s interpretation according to which Nietzsche represents the heir par excellence of «Germanism». Through the analysis of the figure of Dionysus presented by Nietzsche, I aim to highlight his distance from the «Wotan archetype», his criticism of the «State» institution and finally his relationship with the notion of deutsche Romantik.