VOLUME ONE

Translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter

ALFRED·A·KNOPF·NEW YORK 1927

COPYRIGHT 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

_Published, February, 1924_ _Second Printing, July, 1924_ _Third Printing, March, 1927_

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

_Buddenbrooks_ was written before the turn of the century; it was first published in 1902, and became a German classic. It is one of those novels--we possess many of them in English--which are at once a work of art and a unique record of a period and a district. _Buddenbrooks_ is great in its psychology, great as the monument of a vanished cultural tradition, and ultimately great by the perfection of its art: the classic purity and beautiful austerity of its style.

The translation of a book which is a triumph of style in its own language, is always a piece of effrontery. _Buddenbrooks_ is so leisurely, so chiselled: the great gulf of the war divided its literary method from that of our time. Besides, the author has recorded much dialect. This difficulty is insuperable. Dialect cannot be transferred.

So the present translation is offered with humility. It was necessary to recognize that the difficulties were great. Yet it was necessary to set oneself the bold task of transferring the spirit first and the letter so far as might be; and above all, to make certain that the work of art, coming as it does to the ear, in German, like music out of the past, should, in English, at least _not_ come like a translation--which is, “God bless us, a thing of naught.”

H. T. Lowe-Porter