“. . . in each disguise I assumed I looked better and more natural than in the last. I might appear as a Roman flute-player, a wreath of roses twined in my curly locks; as an English page in a snug-fitting satin with lace collar and plumed hat; as a Spanish bullfighter in spangled jacket and broad-brimmed hat; as a youthful abbé at the time of powdered wigs . . . whatever the costume, the mirror assured me that I was born to wear it, and my audience declared that I looked to the life exactly the person whom I aimed to represent.”

A passage from Thomas Mann’s translation of Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, translated by Denver Lindley. This reminds me to make time one day to reread Doctor Faustus and Death in Venice. Both versions I read were Helen Lowe-Porter’s translations, now generally seen as not only dubious but in the case of the latter substantively altered  out of puritanism. David Luke’s Death in Venice is considered more faithful, and we are fortunate to have John E Wood’s translations of Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus.