SOURCE: "Casting Out Nines: Structure, Parody and Myth in Tonio Kroiger," in Revue Des Langues Vivantes, Vol. XLII, No. 2, 1976, pp. 126-46.

In the following essay, Bennett explores the ways in which Tonio Kröger parodies several other works of German literature concerned with the role and development of the artist in society.

Mann has drawn a complete portrait of the intellectual artist who, lacking a capacity for direct feeling, can not even endure the sensual in art but rather finds in his calling a cleansing effect and the destruction of passions.

—J. R. McWilliams

I

One consequence of that leaning toward the autobiographical which Thomas Mann so frequently indulges, is that when he speaks of his own works he tends to concentrate more upon their spirit than upon their structure. The remarks about Tomio Krger in the Lebensabriss of 1930, however, form somewhat of an exception to this rule...