Disorder and Early Love

The Thomas Mann literature-by him or about him, and translated into all civilized languages-is immense; no writer has ever written more or received more accolades. His six children called him "the magician," and no doubt had their reasons. There is a magical "now-you-see-it, now-you-don't" in practically all of his writings, a magic that pertains to his eroticism: a homo-eroticism that explicitly rules out homosexuality by virtue of an internal dictum: "You may observe, but you may not touch." That proviso, which goes back to his childhood, eventually enabled him to write over and over again about his dominant passion, a passion for handsome young men, for the ephebe "beautiful like man and woman, yet neither man nor woman, but something miraculous in between," to write about it without causing offense.