BUDDENBROOKS ·I· Other Books by THOMAS MANN DEATH IN VENICE ROYAL HIGHNESS MAGIC MOUNTAIN THOMAS MANN BUDDENBROOKS VOLUME ONE [Illustration] Translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter ALFRED·A·KNOPF·NEW YORK 1927 COPYRIGHT 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. _Published, February, 1924_ _Second Printing, July, 1924_ _Third Printing, March, 1927_ MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TRANSLATOR’S NOTE _Buddenbrooks_ was written before the turn of the century; it was first published in 1902, and became a German classic. It is one of those novels--we possess many of them in English--which are at once a work of art and a unique record of a period and a district. _Buddenbrooks_ is great in its psychology, great as the monument of a vanished cultural tradition, and ultimately great by the perfection of its art: the classic purity and beautiful austerity of its style. The translation of a book which is a triumph of style in its own language, is always a piece of effrontery. _Buddenbrooks_ is so leisurely, so chiselled: the great gulf of the war divided its literary method from that of our time. Besides, the author has recorded much dialect. This difficulty is insuperable. Dialect cannot be transferred. So the present translation is offered with humility. It was necessary to recognize that the difficulties were great. Yet it was necessary to set oneself the bold task of transferring the spirit first and the letter so far as might be; and above all, to make certain that the work of art, coming as it does to the ear, in German, like music out of the past, should, in English, at least _not_ come like a translation--which is, “God bless us, a thing of naught.” H. T. Lowe-Porter PART ONE CHAPTER I “And--and--what comes next?” “Oh, yes, yes, what the dickens does come next? _C’est la question, ma très chère demoiselle!_” Frau Consul Buddenbrook shot a glance at her husband and came to the rescue of her little daughter. She sat with her mother-in-law on a straight white-enamelled sofa with yellow cushions and a gilded lion’s head at the top. The Consul was in his easy-chair beside her, and the child perched on her grandfather’s knee in the window. “Tony,” prompted the Frau Consul, “‘I believe that God’--”