Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 270

We shall return to these statements and deal with them more fully as the evidence for them accumulates.

For the present it is enough to note that in the grotesque figure of Jacoby, at the moment of his collapse, all these elements come together in prophetic parody.

Professionally a lawyer, that is to say associated with dignity, reserve, discipline, with much that is essentially middle-class, he is compelled by an impossible love to exhibit himself dressed up, disguised -- that is, paradoxically, revealed -- as a child, and, worse, as a whore masquerading as a child.

That this abandonment takes place on a stage, during an ' artistic ' performance, is enough to associate Jacoby with art, and to bring down upon him the punishment for art ; ;

that is, he is suspect, guilty, punishable, as is anyone in Mann's stories who produces illusion, and this is true even though the constant elements of the artist-nature, technique, magic, guilt and suffering, are divided in this story between Jacoby and Lautner.