The Second World War in Thomas Mann and Marguerite Yourcenar

This article explores the resonant intellectual and artistic affinities between Thomas Mann and Marguerite Yourcenar, whose works reflect profound engagements with the crises and cultural upheavals of the Second World War. It reinterprets Mann’s prose through the conceptual lens of Yourcenar’s seminal essay “Humanism and Hermeticism in Thomas Mann” (1955), highlighting the pervasive shadow of war in Mann’s imagery and Yourcenar’s defining metaphor of the abyss. Ultimately, both writers affirm a post-catastrophic humanism in perpetual transition, salvaging Europe’s classical spirit from the void of annihilation.