Thomas Mann
Photo:United Archives International / imago images
Thomas Mann in "Friedrich and the grand coalition"
He had overcome the hatred, the psychological counter-pressure of a world, and thus important supports were removed from the physical power of his enemies. His moral radicalism did the rest, the depth of his determination, which made him appear so repulsive and horrific at the same time to others, like a strange and vicious animal, so that at last they dreaded him. A moral advantage was that it was a matter of life and death for him; that gave him an unconditionality that the others knew nothing of.
For people to whom life seems clear, the semicolon is a suspicious punctuation mark. There's the point, there's the comma; that's enough. A traffic light is green or red. Why is a yellow phase needed?
The painter Horst Janssen said of the semicolon: "It doesn't separate one desire from the next like a dot - not even for a while - but it doesn't act as casually as a comma that wanted to say: I'm not finished yet. "
In fact, the semicolon is a very contemporary punctuation mark. Because little is unambiguous and a lot is ambivalent. At the same time, its use is demanding. The semicolon separates and connects, it slows down the flow of thoughts without bringing it to a standstill. At a yellow traffic light, Johannes Gross said, it is decided whether someone is master or servant.
Thomas Mann understood at least as much about desire as about ambivalence. It is said that he used a semicolon more than 760 times in his "Buddenbrooks". Almost 800 pages of Luebian businessman's tristesse, at first glance, but at the second: a ceremony for the semicolon, as it is called in German.
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