''Tonio Kröger'' () is a novella by

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...

, written early in 1901, when he was 25. It was first published in 1903. A. A. Knopf in New York published the first American edition in 1936, translated by

Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (June 15, 1876 – April 26, 1963) was an American translator and writer, best known for translating almost all of the works of Thomas Mann for their first publication in English. Personal life Helen Tracy Porter was the ...

Plot summary

The narrative follows the course of a man's life from his schoolboy days to his adulthood. The son of a north German merchant and a "Southern" mother (Consuelo) with artistic talents, Tonio inherited qualities from both sides of his family. As a child, he experiences conflicting feelings for the bourgeois people around him. He feels both superior to them in his insights and envious of their innocent vitality. This conflict continues into Tonio's adulthood, when he becomes a famous writer living in southern Germany. "To be an artist," he comes to believe, "one has to die to everyday life." These issues are only partially resolved when Tonio travels north to visit his hometown. While there, Tonio is mistaken for an escaped criminal, thereby reinforcing his inner suspicion that the artist must be an outsider relative to "respectable" society. As Erich Heller—who knew Thomas Mann personally—observed, ''Tonio Kröger''s theme is that of the "artist as an exile from reality" (with

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...

's ''

Torquato Tasso Torquato Tasso ( , also , ; 11 March 154425 April 1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, known for his 1591 poem ''Gerusalemme liberata'' ( Jerusalem Delivered), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between ...

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and Grillparzer's '' Sappho''

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for company).Erich Heller, ''The Disinherited Mind: Essays in Modern German Literature and Thought'' (Cambridge, Bowes & Bowes, 1952), p. 167.

Cf. The abbreviation ''cf.'' (short for the la, confer/conferatur, both meaning "compare") is used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. Style guides recommend that ''cf.'' be used onl ...

'' id.'', ''The Disinherited Mind'' (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1961), p. 187. Yet it was also Erich Heller who, earlier, in his own youth, had diagnosed the main theme of ''Tonio Kröger'' to be the infatuation and entanglements of a passionate heart, destined to give shape to, intellectualize, its feelings in artistic terms.Erich Heller, ''Flucht aus dem zwanzigsten Jahrhundert: Eine kulturkritische Skizze'' (Vienna, Saturn-Verlag, 1938), p. 9.

Connection to other works

''Tonio Kröger'' forms a pair with the more famous story, ''

Death in Venice ''Death in Venice ''(German: ''Der Tod in Venedig'') is a novella by German author Thomas Mann, published in 1912. It presents an ennobled writer who visits Venice and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed by the sight of a Poli ...

'' (''Der Tod in Venedig''). They both describe the life of an artist and express Thomas Mann's views on art. In one story the artist travels from south to north, in the other from north to south. One journey ends in a tenuous reconciliation, and the other in death. But, as T. J. Reed has pointed out, :"In ''Der Tod in Venedig'', Thomas Mann returns from excursions into allegory and once more writes directly about a literary artist. But the directness is not that of ''Tonio Kröger''. There he was expressing lyrically his immediate experience, formulating and coming to terms with what he had gone through..."T. J. Reed, ''Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition'' (2nd ed.; Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 144. Thus the importance of the work lies, chiefly, in its autobiographical character, as well as in its contribution, through the description of an ''amitié particulière'', to the ''theory of love''. The novel was made into a film in 1964, directed by Rolf Thiele.

English translations

* H. T. Lowe-Porter (1936) * David Luke (1988) * Joachim Neugroschel (1998) * Jefferson S. Chase (1999)

References

* Erich Heller, ''The Ironic German: A Study of Thomas Mann'' (London, Secker & Warburg, 1958), pp. 68ff. (on the genesis of the work), 286 (on the date of publication). * Frank Donald Hirschbach, ''The Arrow and the Lyre: A Study of the Role of Love in the Works of Thomas Mann'' (The Hague, M. Nijhoff, 1955), '' passim'' (but especially the section "The Loves of Two Artists: ''Tonio Kröger'' and ''Death in Venice''", '' op. cit.'', pp. 14ff.). * Steven Millhauser, "''Some Thoughts on'' Tonio Kröger", ''Antaeus'', No. 73/74 (Spring 1994), pp. 199–223. * Lee Slochower, "The Name of Tadzio in ''Der Tod in Venedig''", ''German Quarterly'', vol. 35, No. 1 (January 1962). * Alfred D. White, "''Tonio Kröger'': Anthropology and Creativity", ''Oxford German Studies'', vol. 34, No. 2 (September 2005), pp. 217–223.

Notes

External links