Tonio Kröger

Infobox Book
name = Tonio Kröger
title_orig =
translator = Frederick Alfred Lubich


image_caption =
author = Thomas Mann
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = Germany
language = German
series =
genre = Autobiographical novel
publisher =
release_date = 1903
english_release_date = 1940
media_type =
pages =
isbn = ISBN 0826409717 (recent edition)
oclc = 3512222
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Tonio Kröger" is one of Thomas Mann’s youthful works, written early in 1901, when Mann was 25, and first published in 1903.

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 an Italian artist, 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. 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’s "Tasso" and Grillparzer’s "Sappho" for company).Erich Heller, "The Disinherited Mind: Essays in Modern German Literature and Thought" (Cambridge, Bowes & Bowes, 1952), p. 167. Cf. "id.", "The Disinherited Mind" (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1961), p. 187.] Yet it was also Erich Heller who, earlier, in his own youth, diagnosed the main theme of "Tonio Kröger" to be the infatuation and entanglements of a passionate heart.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" ("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.

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.).
* 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.

ee also

* Erich Heller ("s.v." Love)
* Heterosis ("s.v." Heterosis in fiction)
* Júlia da Silva Bruhns

Notes