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'impossible here, absurd, depraved, ludicrous and yet sacred, still honourable, even here: "I love you!"'R
This volume contains a generous selection of the short fiction Thomas Mann published in the years 1897 to 1912, after which he turned to larger-scale projects. The acknowledged classic among the early shorter fiction is the novella
Death in Venice, in which Mann develops a lyrical style and a range of mythological allusions, through the forbidden love of a middle-aged man for a teenage boy, a theme with roots in Mann's own emotional experience. In many of his shorter works, Mann uses irony and humour to treat the conflict between sensitive, often artistic souls and the vital, often brutal forces of life. The stories, usually about isolated figures, convey a mixture of humour, sadness, and irony which invites ambivalent responses from readers.
This new set of translations by Ritchie Robertson and Nicola Luckhurst is accompanied by explanatory notes and introduction.
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List of contents
- Introduction
- Note on the Translations
- Select Bibliography
- Chronology
- Death in Venice
- Tristan
- Tonio Kröger
- Little Herr F.
- Tobias Mindernickel
- The Road to the Cemetery
- Gladius Dei
- At the Prophet's
- The Blood of the Volsungs
- Explanatory Notes
About the author
Nicola Luckhurst is an academic and translator. A specialist in modernism, her publications include
Science and Structure in Proust's A la recherche (2000),
Virginia Woolf in Camera (2001), (as editor)
The European Reception of Virginia Woolf (2002), and a translation of Freud's
Studies in Hysteria (2004).
Ritchie Robertson retired in 2021 as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German in the University of Oxford. For the greater part of his career he was Fellow and Tutor of St John's College, Oxford. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of the Queen's College. His many books include
Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (1985),
The Enlightenment: The Pursiuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 (2020) and
German Political Tragedy: The Machiavellian Plot and the Necessary Crime (2024), as well as books on Kafka and Goethe in OUP's
Very Short Introductions series. Since 2004, he has been a Fellow of the British Academy.
