Three essays by Thomas Mann
"Three essays" by Thomas Mann is a collection of essays written in the early 20th century. The volume examines towering figures and ideas—chiefly Goethe and Tolstoy, but also Frederick the Great and an occult episode—to probe how art, culture, power, and belief shape human life. Expect comparative criticism, historical reflection, and personal insight rather than narrative fiction. The opening of the book presents the essay “Goethe and Tolstoy,” beginning with an anecdote
about a Weimar schoolmaster who glimpsed Goethe in youth and, decades later, unknowingly hosted Tolstoy in his classroom—an encounter used to justify juxtaposing the two. From there, the author develops a wide-ranging comparison that treats the “and” between their names as a principled contrast, weighing questions of rank and “godlike” charisma, their shared Rousseauian inheritance (nature, education, confession), and the polarity of nature versus spirit, classic versus romantic, health versus disease, and freedom versus necessity. Goethe and Tolstoy are paired as children of nature and creation, set against Schiller and Dostoyevsky as champions of spirit and critique; this frames Tolstoy’s lifelong struggle to renounce nature for moral rigor, his crises and illnesses, and parallel moments in Goethe’s career. The section surveys their attitudes toward art, music, and society, evokes the pilgrim magnetism of Weimar and Yasnaya Polyana, notes their aristocratic bearing, and closes mid-argument as it contrasts Tolstoy’s sensuous realism with Dostoyevsky’s visionary idealism and revisits Goethe’s poised acceptance of necessity. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Mann, Thomas, 1875-1955 |
|---|---|
| Translator | Lowe-Porter, H. T. (Helen Tracy), 1876-1963 |
| LoC No. | 29025965 |
| Title | Three essays |
| Original Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922, copyright 1929. |
| Contents | Goethe and Tolstoy -- Frederick the Great and the Grand Coalition -- An experience in the occult. |
| Credits | Sean/IB@DP |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures |
| Subject | Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910 |
| Subject | Occultism |
| Subject | Frederick II, King of Prussia, 1712-1786 |
| Subject | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832 |
| Subject | Prussia (Germany) -- Foreign relations -- 1740-1815 |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 76837 |
| Release Date | Sep 7, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 702 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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