165 Nicholas Martin Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer: “Simply a Story of Human Affairs” This essay examines the apparent tension between political and psychological readings of Thomas Mann’s novella Mario und der Zauberer (1930). Political interpretations of the text often see in the magician Cipolla little more than a thinly disguised Mussolini- figure, and interpret the novella as a veiled warning or prophecy of the dangers of fascism. 1 Psychological readings have tended to focus on the text’s allegorical portrayal of the mind-games and performance wizardry employed by fascist demagogues. 2 Mann himself was dismayed by exclusively political interpretations of the story, which in his view tended to exaggerate the theme of the hypnotic attraction of political extremism, at the expense of the novella’s aesthetic qualities. He also became increasingly convinced that the text had revealed the manifest ill-preparedness and inability of intellectuals, including himself, to combat the rise of National Socialism. 1 In the interest of brevity the terms ‘fascism’ and ‘fascist’ in this discussion refer to both Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. Mario und der Zauberer alludes to the psychology of both phenomena. 2 Among the vast number of critical studies of Mario und der Zauberer, the following are both particularly valuable in themselves and of immediate relevance to the present discussion: R. C. Speirs, ‘Some Psychological Observations on Domination, Acquiescence and Revolt in Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 16 (1980), pp. 319-30; Henry Hatfield, ‘Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer: An Interpretation’, Germanic Review 21 (1946), pp. 306-12; Eugene Lunn, ‘Tales of Liberal Disquiet: Mann’s Mario and the Magician and Interpretations of Fascism’, Literature and History 11 (1985), pp. 77-100; A. F. Bance, ‘The Narrator in Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer’, Modern Language Review 82 (1987), pp. 382-98; George Bridges, ‘Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer: “Aber zum Donnerwetter! Deshalb bringt man doch niemand um!”’, German Quarterly 64 (1991), pp. 501-17; Alan Bance, ‘The political becomes personal: Disorder and Early Sorrow and Mario and the Magician’, in Ritchie Robertson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 107-18.