An Exchange

<p>It is a story known only too well by readers of <em>Doctor Faustus</em>, but not, perhaps, by other mortals. A gentlemen’s duel with the always-thorny issue of artistic plagiarism as its backdrop, played out by two giants in the history of literature and music, swords drawn: Thomas Mann and Arnold Schoenberg. Their pride wounded, the pair argued, barely managing to contain their indignation and rage. It was as if they had emerged out of Joseph Conrad’s outstanding novel <em>The Duel</em>, in which two Hussar lieutenants in Napoleonic times struck up a protracted private contest, one that was to last their whole lives and had a memorable conclusion: in old age one of the lieutenants, utterly ruined, survives thanks only to secret monthly payments from this greatest and most intimate enemy of his—who, for his part, since he didn’t blow the other’s brains out when the opportunity presented itself, now feels unable to let him just die of hunger in his old age.</p> <p>The compassion between these dueling thugs is in reality no more than a precursor to the true outcome saved up by Conrad, which arrives, inexorably, with death—that great expert in closure, in putting an end to all arguments and duels. Here too it was death—in this case, that of Schoenberg—that curtailed the swordfight between the aggrieved musician, who felt so grossly imitated, and the alleged plagiarist, the glorious Thomas Mann…</p>