Los verdaderos protagonistas de la historia son Tony y Thomas, hermanos que vamos a ver desde niños hasta el final de sus días y que ocupan la mayor parte de la trama, y así como el inicio del libro y la primera parte (más protagonizada por Tony) es mucho más ligera y optimista, la segunda, protagonizada por su hermano Thomas y su hijo deja un regusto amargo por la tristeza que desprende. He amado profundamente ambos personajes y creo que son de esos que no se me irán nunca d The family saga of the Buddenbrooks is considered a classic of German literature, a book many people have already heard about, yet never read for a very simple reason... it's loooong. And if you appreciate your books with action and thrilling stuff, then Thomas Mann's novel is not exactly the book you should turn to because it would only disappoint you.

He disfrutado muchísimo de la lectura, de sus personajes, de la veracidad de sus sentimientos, de sus imperfecciones y lo fácil que resultaba empatizar con todos ellos, me ha encantado descubrir a ese Mann tan analítico pero divertido, un observador de su tiempo y de cada detalle que conforman el carácter de una persona. Alfred Weidenmann directed The Buddenbrooks television series starring Liselotte Pulver, Nadja Tiller, Hansjörg Felmy, Hanns Lothar, Lil Dagover and Werner Hinz. Buddenbrooks – 1. Teil was released in 1959, and Buddenbrooks – 2. Teil was released in 1960. When Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1929), the citation made special mention of his first novel, “Buddenbrooks,” published in 1901, describing it as “the first great novel of the 20th century.” La parola “bancarotta” implicava, tutto ciò che di vago e di spaventoso aveva sentito in quella parola fin da bambina… “bancarotta”… era più atroce della morte, significava disordine, sfacelo, rovina, onta, vergogna, disperazione e miseria… “Had I been told that an objective, even detached depiction of the downfall of a merchant family in a North-German town in the nineteenth century would shake me they way Buddenbrooks has shaken me, I wouldn't have believed it possible. But what I find most impacting is that even though I was prepared to witness the much forewarned decline of this family I was swept away completely all the same by the pragmatic but intense tone of the narrative which stirred unintended, troubled feelings in me. into a uniformly even style, in certain cases simply omitting passages. As a result, much of the novel's humor was lost. Tóibín vividly evokes Mann’s panic when the diaries went missing. In a wonderful detail, the protagonist asks a Zurich bookshop for a biography of Oscar Wilde: “While he did not expect to go to prison as a result of any disclosures, as Wilde did, and he was aware that Wilde’s life had been dissolute, as his had not, it was the move from famous writer to disgraced public figure that interested him.”

Bruford, Walter Horace. The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: Bildung from Humboldt to Thomas Mann. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975. In the Buddenbrooks the finances and identity of the firm and family are inseparably intertwined. The family’s expenses are expenses for the firm. And profits from the firm accumulated as capital provide the income and living style of the family. The new Buddenbrooks house, the family symbol with which the novel begins, is a monument to itself. Family and firm reside there.

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El pesimismo invade a Thomas, el cabeza de familia y protagonista principal de la novela, que es consciente de la decadencia y tiene que luchar contra el desaliento que lo invade:

Although Mann treats his characters lovingly he always keeps in an ironic distance which reminds the reader that the fate of the Buddenbrooks is a sealed one and that, like in life, eventual decay and ultimate death can’t be prevented. And this natural cycle of ups and downs both of the firm and the family, for they are bound together, is precisely what makes possible that a naturalistic story such as this one could reach one’s soul and fill it with wonder with its delicate and effortless language.

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Such moments are a sign of how subtly Tóibín develops his central theme of what can escape the eye of seclusion-seeking writers lauded for their observational gifts. Overall, though, the impression left by his somewhat confounding enterprise is rather more blunt. An early paragraph dealing with Thomas’s sexuality begins: “There was a boy in his class with whom he had a different sort of intimacy.” Despite the unpromising start, the ensuing scene is well done, rich in longing and awkward jeopardy. But as the novel proceeds, and Mann becomes a celebrity among other writers and artists (not least his own children), you sense its panorama unfolding with increasing strain: “In his mind, he went through where each member of the family was...” Antonie (Tony) Buddenbrook ( AHN-toh-nee), later Frau Grünlich, and Frau Permaneder, Jean’s oldest child. She has ash-blonde hair, gray-blue eyes, and finely shaped but stumpy hands. Impetuous in youth, she becomes conventional in maturity, but to her brother Tom she always remains a child in her reactions to the incidents in her life. She easily adapts herself to any situation; she is not humiliated by the dissolution of her marriage to Grünlich and is proud of the fact that she becomes a person of importance in the family. She adapts as readily to the breaking up of her marriage to Permaneder. As she develops a closer intimacy with her father following her first divorce, she recognizes and establishes closer ties with Tom after the death of their father. She sees the two of them as true Buddenbrooks, for their brother Christian does not really seem one of the family, and young Clara remains an unimportant sister. The retention of dignity for both herself and the family becomes almost a religion with Tony. Buddenbrooks is recommended for those who think that huge ponderous family sagas by Nobel prize-winning authors are by definition good for the soul. moved the family and the business into one of the most handsome houses in town. As the novel begins, he is holding his 8-year-old granddaughter Tony on his knee and testing her playfully on her Lutheran catechism. In the course of It is Thomas who is supposed to later take on the responsibility of continuing the family tradition, regardless of the cost. Mann weaves his narrative work starting with this main family, and then across several generations.