I am Der Bajazzo: I am Tonio Krueger
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There. I admit it! I am the joker: I am Tonio Krueger. At times I am also Little Herr Friedemann, and Detlev Spinell and Gustav Aschenbach. Such is the psycological power of Thomas Mann to present the deepest insights of his protagonists. Each story is partly autobiographical and each story depicts love as seen from an outsider, sometimes fraught with pain, sometimes cosetted by tenderness. These short stories - all from the early part of his career - will hopefully dig beneath your own preconceptions of what it means to be pained and rejected, and will therefore hopefully inspire you as it did me to be that little more charitable to fate and to unintentional cruelty. A last word on style. Here you will see a craftsman at work where every word seems to have been examined in detail before being committed to paper. A joy to read. To use a (not wholly inappropriate) musical analogy, Thomas Mann is an author who embraces classic sonata or rondo forms, recapitulating words and phrases from earlier sections in a masterful way, and treats his themes to intense developments that provides immense satisfaction to this reader at least at the end of each story.
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A novel but flawed approach
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Studies of mortality in Italy are rarely written in such a literary style as this, and for this the author has to be commended. Instead of going for a general overview of the subject as it relates to the city in question, he has chosen to focus on an individual case, and it must be said that he does this very well. The writer is clearly blessed with artistic talent; some of the descriptive passages would not be out of place in a novel. From a scientific point of view, however, one cannot help feeling that the book would have benefited from some more general conclusions. Statistical evidence, for example, is non-existent. In this respect, it compares unfavourably with, for example, Doug Graves' 'When in Rome, Die as the Romans Do'. This is why the book rates only three stars, despite its undeniable readability.
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For any paragon of self-discipline
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Mann draws a painful distinction between artistic beauty and the sensual, erotic beauty which underpins the protagonist's downfall. At the beginning of the narrative, a paragon of self-discipline, by the end this successful writer of wide European acclaim has become a slave to his passions. The exploration of aethetic rationalism (clearly evoked by Nietzsche)is shocking in its revelation of the deadly consequences of an extreme of either passion for the sensual or for the rational. A brilliant read - a masterpiece!
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