Outlooks
The author provides a very clear description of Hans and Tonio: “Both were well and warmly dressed: Hans in a short sailor jacket, with the wide blue collar of his sailor suit turned out over shoulders and back, and Tonio in a belted grey overcoat. Hans wore a Danish sailor cap with black ribbons, beneath which streamed a shock of straw-coloured hair. He was uncommonly handsome and well built, broad in the shoulders and narrow in the hips, with keen, far-apart, steel-blue eyes; while Tonio’s round fur cap was a brunette face with the finely chiselled features of the south; the dark eyes, with delicate shadows and too heavy lids, looked dreamily and a little timorously on the world.” The given contrast shows how different these boys are, even their outlooks have nothing in common, as well as their walk: “Tonio’s walk was idle and even, whereas the other’s slim legs in their black stockings moved with an elastic, rhythmic tread”. The author draws this contrast on purpose, and the provided difference in appearance is mirrored into the characters and inner worlds on the heroes, which are also different.
Beautiful Inge
Inge was a girl Tonio fell in love with when he was sixteen. The author spares no words when describing her appearance: “the thick blond plait, the longish, laughing blue eyes, the saddle of pale freckles across the nose”. The portrayal of the Inge gives n image f a lovely girl who can charm with her beauty.
A blank page
After the Kroger family has declined, Tonio has moved to Munich where he started a new life. when we first meet him in Munich it happens in the atelier of Lisabeta Ivanovna: “the young sweet breath of spring streaming through an open pane mingled with the smells of paint and fixative. The afternoon light, bright golden, flooded the specious emptiness of the atelier”; no wonder that the author chooses spring for Tonio to start everything, it is time when the nature starts ti live itself. And the smells of paints and spring add even more poetry and mastery to the narration.
