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Chapter 8 Comparative Genetics: “a world of differents” By referring to the thirst for knowledge, Thomas Mann’s Leverkühn goes to the heart of the matter. In order to articulate this core of the Faust theme, Mann discovered a perfectly matching form in the encyclopedic novel, for which he found inspiration in the Faust tradition itself, more speci‹cally the Volksbuch. This tradition puts into perspective the arti‹cial division between modernist encyclopedic projects and so-called postmodernist projects such as the somewhat in›ated concept of hypertext. Mann’s montage technique may be regarded as a literary Memex, a “device for individual use which is a sort of mechanized private ‹le and library,” as it was de‹ned by Vannevar Bush in “As We May Think.” In this article, which was published two years before Doktor Faustus came out, Bush predicted that “[w]holly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them.” In the meantime, hypertext has gone out of vogue as quickly as it came into fashion, but it has also sensitized literary critics to one speci‹c aspect of literature: the encyclopedic nature of certain novels. JAMES JOYCE/THOMAS MANN: TEXTUAL ECONOMICS Gérard Genette used the notion of “hypertext” in a context of intertextuality rather than electronics. In Palimpsestes he de‹nes hypertextualité as “every relationship linking a text B (which I shall call hypertext) to an existing text A (which I shall call hypotext) to which it is added in a way that is not that of a commentary” (13). One of the examples he gives is the Odyssee, which is the hypotext of hypertexts such as the Aeneid and Ulysses. According to this de‹nition, Mann’s Doktor Faustus is a hypertext based 147 not only on Goethe’s Faust but also on the older, anonymous Historia von D. Johann Fausten. Mann was inspired by the compilatory craftsmanship of the editor of the Volksbuch, an always expandable collection of as much knowledge as possible to satisfy the reader’s inquisitiveness, and at the same time create a new desire for even more knowledge. The Faustian urge for understanding is almost by de‹nition excessive or “hyper,” for each new insight raises dozens of new questions and refers to numerous other encyclopedic entries, which in their turn whet the reader’s curiosity. Mann referred to his montage of intertextual elements as “absorption .”1 This metaphor emphasizes the author’s method of incorporating extratextual elements in his own text. It is precisely this merging and processing mechanism that makes Doktor Faustus the book it is, that is, the sequence of words, passages, chapters as ‹xed by Mann. Because the “montage” of external sources is an essential aspect of Doktor Faustus, and since Mann carefully preserved not only his notes and all the omitted passages (Ausgeschiedenes), but also the extradraft material he used for the composition of Doktor Faustus, the question arises whether a genetic edition should not incorporate these sources, especially since hypertext may serve as an excellent tool to support this kind of linking with intertextual material. Mann’s ability to adapt texts written by others in such a way that they ‹t seamlessly in his own text is part of his writing method and strategy and can be visualized in a hypertext environment. According to George Landow, “Hypertext, which is a fundamentally intertextual system , has the capacity to emphasize intertextuality in a way that pagebound text in books cannot” (35). But precisely the ease with which the published texts of Doktor Faustus may be linked to this extratextual material in an electronic edition has intensi‹ed the discussion concerning the desirability of the integration of source texts in editions. Since intertextual references in a literary text are often implicit, this quality would be completely annulled if a passage that refers to another text would be highlighted and presented as a hyperlink. One of Hans Zeller’s somewhat xenophobic arguments against integration of “foreign texts” (Fremdtexte) is that the principle of “interpretation-free commentary” has always been one of the main objectives of historical-critical editing (“Übernahme und Abweichung” 21). The ideal of purity corresponding to this objective manifests itself in the medical imagery Zeller employs when he compares the integration of intertextual references in a historical-critical edition to a viral infection, resulting in a swelling of the edition (28). Source studies are more than merely a way of reducing the multiplicity of the...

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