SOURCE: "Some Thoughts on Tonio Krdger," in Antaeus, Nos. 73-4, Spring, 1994, pp. 199-223.

Millhauser is an American novelist and critic. In the following essay, he examines the structure and major themes of Tonio Kröger.

Time

An immediately striking fact about Tonio Kröger (1903), Mann's second novella, is that it covers a large amount of time: some seventeen years. There is no law of fiction, no principle of imagination, that requires a short narrative to take place in a short span of time, but it remains true that the physical shortness of a story or novella invites concentrated effects. Mann's own practice in his four other major novellas is instructive. The action of Tristan (1903), his first novella, begins in January, reaches its climax in February, and ends in the spring. Death in Venice (1913) begins in the spring and ends in the summer; the past is briskly disposed of...