At the beginning of Death in Venice, we find the fifty-three year old writer unable to write a perfectly balanced work. He has chosen an ascetic, disciplined life, a life of “noble purity, simplicity and symmetry”, for the sake of his creativity, success and national reputation. Show More command of language and play with mythology, his psychological profile of the artistic mind, and the novella’s contrast between cold artistic discipline and the power of love has generated great admiration.Īschenbach is introduced as an esteemed author who has produced literary works known for their formalism and neo-classical style. I'm giving Death in Venice by Thomas Mann five out of five stars. By then end our understanding of what is happening to him has deepened making his story a haunting one. He does become a sympathetic character in spite of it all. While I did not really like Aschenbach at first, and I honestly can't say that I'm too fond of him by the end either, his story does become compelling. The city provides attractions for the boy's aging mother and aunt who've brought their children in tow the man can do nothing more than follow along trying to steal a glimpse of the youth he will not have again in any form.įor all of its melancholy, all of its atmosphere of decay and the fact that the main character never talks to the object of his desire, Death in Venice is a highly readable story.
Neither the city nor the man can do much to really attract the attentions of a beautiful youth, those days are gone for both. The facade Venice puts on to attract visitors is mirrored in the fancy suits the fifty plus man wears in an attempt to make himself attractive. Its decay, its age, its vulnerablity to disease are all mirrored in Aschenbach. The city becomes a metaphor for Aschebach. Aschenbach indulges in his obsession, staying on at the hotel as long as he can, in spite of the very real threat of a cholera outbreak in the emptying city. Aschenbach can see what the boy looks like, but he does not know him in any real way. Is Aschenbach a man in love or just a man obsessed? He learns as much as he can about Tadzio from secondhand sources like the hotel barber, but his knowledge remains so limited that the Tazio he comes to love is largely a Tadzio of his own imagination. He never attempts to meet the boy or to speak with him though he does learn his name, Tadzio, and quite a bit of his family history. Show More staying at the same hotel as the boy, so he studies the boy's daily habits, making sure that he is at the beach when the boy will be, ready for breakfast when the boy is, he even follows his family when the boy goes on tours of the city.
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