with the private conviction that they were all sheer impossibilities" (90).
Tonio's father dies, his indifferent mother re-marries, and Tonio leaves his native town. He leaves behind his friends and the things of nature which he has loved for so long: "He looked down on the lowly and vulgar life he had led so long in these surroundings" (91). He sets off into the big world to pursue his romantic ideas of poetry and honors. He gave himself to
the power of intellect, the power of the Word. . . . To this power he surrendered with all the passion of youth, and it rewarded him with all it had to give. . . . It opened for him men's souls and his own, made him clairyoyant, showed him the inwardness of the world and the ultimate behind men's words and deeds. And all that he saw could be put into two words: the comedy and the traged
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