SOURCE: "Tonio Krdger: An Interpretation," in Thomas Mann: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Henry Hatfield, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964, pp. 22-34.

In the following essay, originally published in 1944, Wilkinson analyses theme and technique in Tonio Kröger.

I. Themes

Tonio Kruger occupies a central position in Thomas Mann's spiritual and artistic development. But a work of art must contain its own justification, and to appreciate the story there is no need to know anything of the author's physical or literary antecedents, nor to have read anything else he has written. Taken in and for itself, Tonio Kruger is many things—above all a tender study of youth, of its yearnings and sorrows and its soaring aspirations, of the incredible bitterness of its disillusion. Herein lies, perhaps, its widest appeal. But it is also the story of the growth of a man and artist into self-knowledge, while yet another...