Thomas Mann's Conception of the Creative Writer

Abstract

A study of Mann's conception of the man of letters and of the literary artist is necessarily an enquiry into his entire philosophy of life, for to Mann “art is the quintessence of humanity and the artist the most human of men.” Because of Mann's perennial and conscious preoccupation with intellectual and artistic creativity, his views on the writer reflect most of the shifts and oscillations in his career. The present essay does not encompass all of these changes in accentuation and tonality.