The Coming of the Stranger God

Abstract

When Thomas Mann published The Black Swan in 1953, it was the twenty-ninth story to come from his pen, and fifty-nine years had passed since a monthly journal, Die Gesellschaft, had published his first story, Fallen.¹ Among this host of stories were some that have since become classics in world literature, such as Little Herr Friedemann, Tonio Kröger, Death in Venice, or Mario and the Magician. There are others, like The Dilettante, The Child Prodigy, or Blood of the Walsungs which are known to a somewhat more limited audience that is specifically interested in Mann, and then there are stories which the author himself has deliberately suppressed by not including them in later anthologies or editions of his works. The above-mentioned Fallen, Death, and The Will to Happiness belong in this category.