(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) This remarkable new translation of the Nobel Prize-winner's great masterpiece is a major literary event. Thomas Mann regarded his monumental retelling of the biblical story of Joseph as his magnum opus. He conceived of the four partsThe Stories of Jacob, Young Joseph, Joseph in Egypt, and Joseph the Provideras a unified narrative, a "mythological novel" of Joseph's fall into slavery and his rise to be lord over Egypt. Deploying lavish, persuasive detail, Mann conjures for us the world of patriarchs and pharaohs, the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, and the universal force of human love in all its beauty, desperation, absurdity, and pain. The result is a brilliant amalgam of humor, emotion, psychological insight, and epic grandeur. Now the award-winning translator John E. Woods gives us a definitive new English version ofJoseph and His Brothersthat is worthy of Mann's achievement, revealing the novel's exuberant polyphony of ancient and modern voices, a rich music that is by turns elegant, coarse, and sublime.

Thomas Mann was born in 1875 in Germany. He was only twenty-five when his first novel, Buddenbrooks, was published. In 1924 The Magic Mountain was published, and, five years later, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Following the rise of the Nazis to power, he left Germany for good in 1933 to live in Switzerland and then in California, where he wrote Doctor Faustus (first published in the United States in 1948). Thomas Mann died in 1955.

Introduction

xiii

Select Bibliography

xvii

Chronology

xx

Sixteen Years

xxxii

Prelude Descent into Hell

3

(40)

THE STORIES OF JACOB

Part One AT THE WELL

Ishtar

43

(2)

Fame and Reality

45

(4)

The Father

49

(3)

The Man Jebshe

52

(7)

The Tattletale

59

(8)

The Name

67

(6)

Monkey-Faced Egypt

73

(5)

The Test

78

(4)

Oil, Wine, and Figs

82

(5)

Duet

87

(6)

Part Two JACOB AND ESAU

Moon Grammar

93

(2)

Who Jacob Was

95

(7)

Eliphaz

102

(6)

His Head Is Raised Up

108

(4)

Esau

112

(7)

Part Three THE STORY OF DINAH

The Little Girl

119

(1)

Beset

120

(3)

The Rebuke

123

(3)

The Agreement

126

(2)

Jacob Dwells at Shechem

128

(2)

The Grape Harvest

130

(4)

The Condition

134

(3)

The Abduction

137

(3)

The Repetition

140

(2)

The Butchery

142

(5)

Part Four THE FLIGHT

Primal Bleating

147

(2)

The Red One

149

(6)

Isaak's Blindness

155

(5)

The Grand Joke

160

(11)

Jacob Must Journey

171

(2)

Jacob Must Weep

173

(5)

Jacob Joins Laban

178

(7)

The Clod of Earth

185

(3)

The Evening Meal

188

(3)

Jacob and Laban Strike a Deal

191

(5)

Part Five IN LABAN'S SERVICE

How Long Jacob Remained with Laban

196

(3)

Jacob and Laban Cement Their Deal

199

(2)

Jacob's Prospects

201

(4)

Jacob Makes a Discovery

205

(4)

Jacob Sues for Rachel

209

(3)

The Long Wait

212

(9)

Laban's Increasing Wealth

221

(8)

Part Six THE SISTERS

The Evil One

229

(6)

Jacob's Wedding

235

(18)

God's Jealousy

253

(4)

Rachel's Confusion

257

(3)

The Dudaim

260

(9)

Part Seven RACHEL

The Oil Oracle

269

(8)

The Birth

277

(4)

The Speckled Flocks

281

(7)

The Theft

288

(5)

The Pursuit

293

(10)

Benoni

303

(14)

YOUNG JOSEPH

Part One THOTH

Beauty

317

(2)

The Shepherd

319

(3)

The Lesson

322

(8)

Body and Mind

330

(9)

Part Two ABRAHAM

The Oldest Servant

339

(4)

How Abraham Discovered God

343

(9)

The Messenger's Master

352

(4)

Part Three JOSEPH AND BENJAMIN

The Grove of Adoni

356

(16)

The Dream of Heaven

372

(9)

Part Four THE DREAMER

The Coat of Many Colors

381

(11)

The Fleet-Footed Runner

392

(6)

Ruben Is Appalled

398

(8)

The Sheaves

406

(9)

The Conference

415

(3)

Sun, Moon, and Stars

418

(7)

Part Five THE JOURNEY TO HIS BROTHERS

An Extraordinary Demand

425

(5)

Joseph Rides to Shechem

430

(5)

The Man in the Field

435

(10)

Lamech and His Wound

445

(5)

Joseph Is Cast into the Well

450

(10)

Joseph Cries from the Pit

460

(5)

In the Grave

465

(11)

Part Six THE STONE AT THE GRAVE

The Ishmaelites

476

(7)

Ruben's Plans

483

(3)

The Sale

486

(14)

Ruben Comes to the Grave

500

(7)

The Oath

507

(5)

Part Seven THE MUTILATION

Jacob Mourns for Joseph

512

(14)

The Temptations of Jacob

526

(6)

The Inurement

532

(9)

JOSEPH IN EGYPT

Part One THE DESCENT

The Silence of the Dead

541

(4)

Before the Master

545

(8)

Conversation by Night

553

(12)

The Temptation

565

(4)

A Reencounter

569

(7)

The Fortress of Zel

576

(11)

Part Two THE ENTRANCE INTO SHEOL

Joseph Sees the Land of Goshen and Comes to Per-Sopd

587

(4)

The City of Cats

591

(2)

The Lessons of On

593

(8)

Joseph at the Pyramids

601

(8)

The House of the Wrapped God

609

(12)

Part Three THE ARRIVAL

Journey by River

621

(6)

Joseph Passes Through Wase

627

(9)

Joseph Comes Before Peteprê's House

636

(4)

The Dwarves

640

(5)

Mont-kaw

645

(13)

Potiphar

658

(3)

Joseph Is Sold a Second Time and Throws Himself upon His Face

661

(7)

Part Four THE HIGHEST

How Long Joseph Remained with Potiphar

668

(6)

In the Land of the Grandchildren

674

(9)

The Courtier

683

(8)

The Task

691

(6)

Huya and Tuya

697

(17)

Joseph Considers These Things

714

(4)

Joseph Speaks Before Potiphar

718

(16)

Joseph Makes a Covenant

734

(6)

Part Five THE MAN OF BLESSING

Joseph as Reader and Personal Servant

740

(11)

Joseph Grows As If Beside a Spring

751

(8)

Amun Looks Askance at Joseph

759

(8)

Beknechons

767

(11)

Joseph Visibly Becomes an Egyptian

778

(15)

Account of Mont-kaw's Modest Death

793

(22)

Part Six THE SMITTEN WOMAN

A Misinterpretation

815

(6)

Eyes Are Opened

821

(11)

Husband and Wife

832

(31)

Three Exchanges

863

(18)

The Coils of Agony

881

(5)

The First Year

886

(20)

The Second Year

906

(15)

Joseph's Chastity

921

(11)

Part Seven THE PIT

Billets-doux

932

(7)

The Painful Tongue (A Play with Epilogue)

939

(20)

Dudu's Accusation

959

(17)

The Threat

976

(6)

A Gathering of Ladies

982

(15)

The Bitch

997

(10)

New Year's Day

1007

(7)

The Empty House

1014

(9)

The Countenance of the Father

1023

(6)

The Judgment

1029

(12)

JOSEPH THE PROVIDER

Prelude in Higher Echelons

1041

(11)

Part One THE SECOND PIT

Joseph Recognizes His Tears

1052

(10)

The Warden of the Prison

1062

(15)

Of Goodness and Cleverness

1077

(8)

The Gentlemen

1085

(11)

The Sting of the Serpent

1096

(5)

Joseph Assists as an Interpreter

1101

(7)

Part Two THE SUMMONS

Neb-nef-nezem

1108

(7)

The Courier

1115

(4)

Light and Darkness

1119

(9)

Pharaoh's Dreams

1128

(15)

Part Three THE CRETAN LOGGIA

The Introduction

1143

(8)

The Child of the Cave

1151

(16)

Pharaoh Prophesies

1167

(10)

"I Do Not Believe in It"

1177

(11)

All Too Blissful

1188

(10)

The Wise and Discreet Man

1198

(11)

Part Four THE TIME OF PERMISSIONS AND LIBERTIES

Seven or Five

1209

(2)

The Golden Ceremony

1211

(5)

The Sunken Treasure

1216

(6)

Lord over Egypt

1222

(6)

Urim and Thummim

1228

(5)

The Maiden

1233

(8)

Joseph Marries

1241

(6)

Clouds Gather

1247

(7)

Part Five TAMAR

The Fourth Son

1254

(7)

Ashtaroth

1261

(3)

Tamar Learns About the World

1264

(7)

A Resolute Woman

1271

(5)

"Not Through Us!"

1276

(5)

The Sheepshearing

1281

(6)

Part Six THE HOLY GAME

Of Water and Waters

1287

(2)

Joseph Enjoys Life

1289

(5)

"They Are Coming!"

1294

(10)

The Interrogation

1304

(15)

"It Is Required!"

1319

(7)

The Money in the Sacks

1326

(6)

Less Than Full Number

1332

(5)

Jacob Wrestles at the Jabbok

1337

(7)

The Silver Cup

1344

(3)

The Fragrance of Myrtle; or, The Meal with the Brothers

1347

(13)

The Imprisoned Cry

1360

(4)

It's with Benjamin!

1364

(5)

"It Is I!"

1369

(9)

"Do Not Quarrel!"

1378

(4)

Pharaoh Writes to Joseph

1382

(6)

How Do We Begin?

1388

(3)

Annunciation

1391

(15)

Part Seven RESTORATION

I Will Go and See Him

1406

(4)

Seventy in All

1410

(3)

"Carry Him!"

1413

(3)

Jacob Teaches and Dreams

1416

(3)

Love That Must Deny

1419

(9)

The Reception

1428

(3)

Jacob Stands Before Pharaoh

1431

(7)

The Rascal Servant

1438

(9)

Obedience

1447

(8)

Ephraim and Manasseh

1455

(7)

Assembled for Death

1462

(16)

They Now Wrap Jacob

1478

(7)

The Grand Procession

1485

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Between 1926 and 1942, Thomas Mann labored off and on for a total of ten years at what he called his "pyramid," Joseph and His Brothers, the great literary monument that he hoped would tower over all the other works for which he is now remembered. It is half a century now since Mann's death, and although The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus, "Death in Venice," and Buddenbrooks still find their readers, a mere five decades have apparently sufficed to raze the pyramid of Joseph, leaving few traces of what Mann intended as his magnum opus. Why? For starters, there is the book's publishing history Germany's history. The first volume, The Stories of Jacob, appeared in October 1933. The Nazis had spent their first nine months tightening the terror, Thomas Mann and his family were already in exile, and there were few who dared express open approval of the book. Despite mounting difficulties, S. Fischer Verlag managed to publish a small edition of volume 2, Young Joseph, in April of the following year. By 1936, however, S. Fischer had already been forced to move to Vienna, where Joseph in Egypt was published. The Nazis allowed the work to be sold inside the Reich, but permitted no reviews and engaged in bureaucratic chicaneries to make sure it did not sell. Joseph the Provider appeared, then, in neutral Stockholm, in 1943. After the war, modest editions were offered once or twice a decade, the first in 1948, but the work never recovered from its shaky early years. The sheer bulk of the thing surely worked against it as well: four formidable volumes, a veritable encyclopedia of ancient Near Eastern myth, history, theology, and cultural anthropologyand all just to retell a (once) familiar Bible story? And who in postwar Germany would read it? Many Christians found it heterodox to the point of heresy; any Jewish readership had been largely exterminated in the death camps. Communists in the East had no use for a "religious" Thomas Mann. Intellectuals in the West were not particularly keen on "biblical" novels, either. Besides, in 1947 Mann's Doctor Faustus had become the focus of interest for Mann's readers. It spoke directly to the evil that had befallen Germany and the world. Joseph seemed more remote than ever. On this side of the Atlantic, the book's reception, if seldom enthusiastic, was somewhat warmerMann was living, after all, among us as the representative of the "good Germany," and volume 4, Joseph the Provider, was written under the California sun. A single-volume edition incorporating all four novels was first published in 1948 and remained in print into the 1990s. But over the years, the larger American reading public, accustomed to historical biblical novels in the Ben-Hur and Silver Chalice mode, has quite understandably viewed Joseph as forbiddingly Germanic. And more intrepid readers, who find an intellectual home in The Magic Mountain or Doctor Faustus, have been just as reluctant as their European counterparts to embrace a work that seems so far removed from the concerns of our time. Beyond the issue of subject matter, there is another difficulty. However unfairly, Americans have tended to think of Mann as a writer of turgid and dense, if not almost unreadable prose. And here are almost fifteen hundred pages that, in Helen Lowe-Porter's translation, can often read rather like the King James Bible run amokreplete with "he saith" and "thou knowest." Joseph and His Brothers deserves a far better fate. It is, by my lights, an epic comedy of extraordinary grandeur. If Thomas Mann regarded it as his magnum opus, that was in part be