However, these experiences were not translated into literature until three years later. At that time, the danger of fascism was also becoming increasingly apparent in Germany, the characteristics and manifestations of which Mann had experienced first-hand in Italy.
In this light, it is perhaps not surprising that researchers drew attention to the political content of the novella at an early stage, for example Georg Lukács, who interpreted it as an expression of the helplessness of the German bourgeoisie in the face of emerging fascism. The physically disabled hypnotist Cipolla is seen as the embodiment of a fascist leader and seducer, analogous to Mussolini and Hitler. In addition to the identity of the illusionist as a leader, recent research has also focused on his artistry and its expression.
The fact that Cipolla, the actual main character of the novella, is a physically severely disabled figure opens up the text to an additional, innovative and highly topical perspective: that of disability studies. This discipline examines how deviations from the norm that are considered disabilities are constructed in the experiential world of literary characters, how they manifest themselves and what consequences they have in the course of the plot. This enables a new perspective on a physically impaired artist character who uses his art as a means of revenge and to hinder others.
Cipolla's physical disability
Even before Cipolla's hypnotic powers come to light, his physical appearance is the focus of the narrator and the other spectators. This takes place against the backdrop of Mussolini's fascist culture in Italy, which radicalises the bourgeois modern ideal of health and masculinity. A man is only considered a man if he is physically capable of defending and spreading fascism with a weapon in his hand. Cipolla, who is described as a cripple, is not capable of this; his physical condition also prevented him from participating in the First World War, for which he is socially ostracized and excluded. However, his body continues to hinder Cipolla: it prevents him from forming interpersonal relationships because – according to the plausible assumption – he violates the aesthetic ideals of society so profoundly that others avoid and exclude him simply because of his appearance.
This existence, fundamentally impeded by circumstances that deny him a fulfilling life according to social norms, is the root cause of his behaviour during the magic show. His goal is to take revenge on those present on behalf of society's treatment of him and to promote himself from his externally determined and excluded position to one of power – he accomplishes this with the help of his art.
Cipolla's art as an ability and instrument of disability
Unlike in most of Thomas Mann's other texts, especially his early stories, art is not the reason for the social exclusion of its practitioner in Mario and the Magician. On the contrary, Cipolla's special, hypnotic artistic ability is responsible for this social outsider becoming someone at all and already being able to perform successfully in front of the Duce's brother. For Cipolla, art is therefore not a disability, but rather an ability.
He uses this in a variety of ways to gain power and, in turn, hinder other characters. In his first victim, a young, rebellious and actually completely healthy man, Cipolla induces colic through hypnosis, causing the man to unnaturally contort and bend his body. This can be understood as an outlet for Cipolla's revenge, creating another cripple and achieving retribution for his own pain due to his physical impairment.
But Cipolla goes even further in abusing his art for revenge: since his physical impairment has prevented him from ever having a deeply emotional interpersonal relationship, he wants to use his interaction with the Angiolieri couple to demonstrate that he has a power greater than love. He subjugates the wife and lures her further and further away from the sphere of love and towards his own sphere of socially disabled life without love, existentially hindering the couple in their relationship and their emotions.
Cipolla ascends the throne of his success with his transgression against the waiter Mario. He suggests to him that he is suffering from lovesickness and evokes Mario's beloved Silvestra in his mind's eye. In doing so, the hypnosis artist uses the young and attractive waiter as an object to overcome his own trauma, to demonstrate that he is no longer in a position of weakness and dependence – au contraire. He gets Mario to kiss him. Cipolla succeeds in completely subjugating him to his will, making him a laughing stock, ultimately crippling him. On the one hand, this is based on the complete deprivation of his free will. On the other hand, he opens up the gender aspect. The hypnotist forces Mario into the sphere of homosexuality, which was socially ostracised in fascist Italy, making the waiter a victim of social disability on this level as well, due to the expected exclusion.
The end – the murder of Cipolla
As is well known, the text ends with Mario shooting the hypnotist twice after waking from his trance, shocked by the humiliation he has suffered. There are two possible interpretations of this. As a physically impaired character, Cipolla can be seen as a symbol of the weakness that fascism sought to eradicate. In this respect, Cipolla's murder can certainly be read as the violent removal of a disruptive factor by the fascist regime. Mario thus becomes Cipolla's executioner, the enforcer of the final exclusion and disability that marks the end of the hypnotist's life. The second interpretation is based on Cipolla's existence as an artist. Mario and the Magician demonstrates the danger that an artist can pose. Mario acts as the protector of the text society against an artist who threatens it on the basis of previous experiences of disability. Thomas Mann thus shows how dangerous an artist can become when he turns his abilities and power against the social fabric. In order to protect it from the hypnotist, Mario must intervene violently. Murder thus becomes the last line of defence that protects society from Cipolla. Conversely, Cipolla is excluded from the society around him one last time – and for good. A danger such as him must not exist in society, so it hinders his existence in the most radical way possible: by ending his life.
About the author
Jan Hurta is a literary scholar and currently works as a lecturer at the University of Koblenz. He is also working on his dissertation on disability in the works of Thomas Mann at the Chair of Modern German Literature at Otto Friedrich University in Bamberg and will hold the Max Kade Visiting Professorship at the University of Cincinnati in 2026. His research focuses on classical modernist literature, particularly the works of Thomas Mann, on which he has published two monographs and numerous essays.