A Sketch of My Life

Fülszöveg

THOMAS MANN
Sketól) ofJWy Líjr
Published in a very limited edition as far back as 1930, this fascinating narrative is for the first time available to all who wish to read it. Here Thomas Mann telis the story of a young solitary's rise to world fame; he gives a delightful account of a youthful celebrity's achievement of personal happiness; and he reports on the growing involvement of the middle-aged man and artist with the demands of his times.
Many of the questions that have puzzled students of Mann's work and life are taken up in these pages, with gratifying directness: his awareness of a story-teller's obligations toward society; the seeming di-chotomy between the urgings of his sense of duty and the pleasure afforded him by his own "playful" occupations; the peculiar "rhythm" of his inventive capacities; and the altogether enigmatic felicity with which new subjects presented themselves to his imag-ination.
Somé of his greatest triumphs and all his great trials lay ahead of... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THOMAS MANN
Sketól) ofJWy Líjr
Published in a very limited edition as far back as 1930, this fascinating narrative is for the first time available to all who wish to read it. Here Thomas Mann telis the story of a young solitary's rise to world fame; he gives a delightful account of a youthful celebrity's achievement of personal happiness; and he reports on the growing involvement of the middle-aged man and artist with the demands of his times.
Many of the questions that have puzzled students of Mann's work and life are taken up in these pages, with gratifying directness: his awareness of a story-teller's obligations toward society; the seeming di-chotomy between the urgings of his sense of duty and the pleasure afforded him by his own "playful" occupations; the peculiar "rhythm" of his inventive capacities; and the altogether enigmatic felicity with which new subjects presented themselves to his imag-ination.
Somé of his greatest triumphs and all his great trials lay ahead of him when he wrote this memoir. But all the leitmotifs of his life are present in it; and, for all the conversational informality of the writing, they are as much "in their proper places" as any of the significant scenes in his great novels.
Translated by H. T. Loive-Porter
THOMAS MANN, born in 1875 into one of Lübeck's prominent merchant families, was only twenty-five when Buddenbrooks was published. His second great work of fiction, The Magic Mountain, was issued in 1924. Five years later he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The chance request of an artist for an introduction to a portfolio of Joseph drawings was the genesis of his tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers, the first vol-ume of which was published in 1933. In that same year Mann left Munich—where he had made his home —and Germany, to settle for a time in Switzerland.
After several visits to the United States, he came to live in Princeton, New Jersey, where he lectured at the university. In 1940 his Goethe növel, The Beloved Returns, appeared.
In 1941 Mann moved to Pacific Palisades, Cali-fornia. It was there that he wrote Doctor Faustus and The Holy Sinner. Three years later he became a citi-zen of the United States. In 1952 he moved to Kilch-berg, a suburb of Zürich. There he wrote Confessions of Félix Krull, Confidence Man, the continuation of a fragmentary story that had been published more than thirty years earlier. He died in 1955, not long after a memorable three-day celebration of his eighti-eth birthday. Vissza