Thomas Mann's Tonio Kroger

Tonio loved Hans, and had already suffered much on his account. He who loves more is the inferior and must suffer; in this hard and simple fact his fourteen-year-old soul had already been instructed by life, and he was so organized that he received such experiences consciously, wrote them down . . . inwardly, and even . . . took pleasure in them (77).

Tonio plays the violin. He loves things of nature---a fountain, an old tree, the North Sea---and things of the spirit. Just as he tries to bring art and life together, and life and love, he tries to bring nature and spirit together within himself. He also tries to bring these things together in the poetry he writes. His poetry brings himn ridicule from others, and he sees that his poetry is "extravagant and out of place" (78), but he cannot stop wrtiing it. His father disapproves of his romantic ideas, and his mother does not care. His father is "fasti

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creation of art. Tonio argues back that the problem for the true artist is that he sees through even the good parts of creating art. He sees through the knowledge won from seeing through the artist's eyes. The artists is forced to keep his emotions on ice for the sake of creating. Tonio looks down on "artists" who do not suffer, who see art as a pleasant exercise. At the same time, he argues that he is not a nihilist. He says that a nihilist does not believe in "lively feeling" (101), as he himself does. He says he loves life, despite the fact that his readers think he hates life. What he loves about life, however, is just that which he cannot have. He loves "the normal, respectable and admirable" (102). He longs to be "normal," but he cannot. As with people, he loves what he cannot have. He sees himself, as always, as being alienated from the common pleasures of life, the innocence of the common life. He says again that it is not possible for a person who fits comfortably into the world to also be a true artist. Lisabeta accuses him of being a bourgeois, meaning somebody who looks down on the masses and sees himself as superior to them. Tonio tells Lisabeta he is going to Denmark, because he loves Scandanavian literature and
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2940
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)