Tonio Kroger

PUBLISHED IN GERMAN. This classic novel examines the theme of the soul divided against itself. Tonio Kroger endeavors to resolve within himself the ever-present conflict between art and life; his life is that of the bourgeois but his soul is that of the artist. In an effort to rise beyond the mundane mechanism of the working class, Kroger associates himself with the Bohemian. Instead of finding freedom and enlightenment, he discovers that their academia has made them cold and aloof, contemptuous of the very warmth, life and honesty that Kroger is trying to find. His "awakening" opens his eyes to the art present in the life around him. Readers will learn a great deal about Mann in what he reveals about himself through Tonio Kroger. Like his character, Mann was born into the bourgeois as the son of a Burgermeister and, as such, felt acutely the separation and isolation of an artist in such a society. Mann reveals his own struggle in Kroger's search to reconcile the dichotomy of an artist's heart coursing with bourgeois blood. A winner of the Nobel prize for literature, Mann shows us the artistic temperament and the agonies and ecstasies inherent in it through a compelling narrative augmented with the use of leitmotif and alliteration.