Der Tod in Venedig

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Die Werke des Protagonisten Gustav von Aschenbach, die im zweiten Kapitel vorgestellt werden, sind identisch mit bereits abgeschlossenen bzw. geplanten Arbeiten Thomas Manns, auch wenn ihre Titel für die Novelle leicht verfremdet wurden. A stage production in 2013, directed by Thomas Ostermeier at the Schaubühne theatre in Berlin, titled Death in Venice/Kindertotenlieder, took elements from Gustav Mahler's song cycle Kindertotenlieder. The older man constantly monitors the boy in the hotel dining room and at the beach and eventually starts stalking the boy as he travels through Venice with his family. The Publisher Says: Death in Venice tells how Gustave von Aschenbach, a writer utterly absorbed in his work, arrives in Venice as a result of a 'youthfully ardent thirst for distant scenes,' and meets there a young boy by whose beauty he becomes obsessed. His pitiful pursuit of the object of his abnormal affection and its inevitable and pathetic climax is told here with the particular skill the author has for this shorter form of fiction.

Aschenbach begins to fret about his aging face and body. In an attempt to look more attractive, he visits the hotel's barber shop almost daily, where the barber persuades him to have his hair dyed and his face painted to look more youthful. The result is a fairly close approximation to the old man on the ship who had so appalled Aschenbach. Werner Frizen: Der Tod in Venedig (= Oldenbourg Interpretationen. Nr. 61). München 1993, ISBN 3-486-88660-6. Jurnaliștii, librarii, istoricii literari, autorii de topuri au răscolit bibliotecile și au întocmit cataloage de cărți despre epidemii. Povestirea lui Thomas Mann a fost adesea uitată.One could muse that perhaps what Achenbach is rather saying, in what seems like a rationalization for his passion, that beauty can inspire love, the latter which is in itself beautiful. ...and yet, since in this specific context the object of that passion is so young, and vain, and since they had never even exchanged a word with one another, could this be love? Methinks not - this could surely be but an infatuation of the senses.

Frank Donald Hirschbach, The Arrow and the Lyre: A Study of the Role of Love in the Works of Thomas Mann (The Hague, M. Nijhoff, 1955), passim (especially the section "The Loves of Two Artists: Tonio Kröger and Death in Venice", op. cit., pp. 14ff).Einen wilden Höhepunkt findet von Aschenbachs Entartung in dem Traum des fünften Kapitels. Er gerät unter die zügellos Feiernden eines antiken Dionysos-Kultes. „Aber mit ihnen, in ihnen war der Träumende nun dem fremden Gotte gehörig. Ja, sie waren er selbst, als sie reißend und mordend sich auf die [Opfer-]Tiere hinwarfen und dampfende Fetzen verschlangen, als auf zerwühltem Moosgrund grenzenlose Vermischung begann, dem Gotte zum Opfer. Und seine Seele kostete Unzucht und Raserei des Unterganges.“ Since the piece is well known as being a landmark work of fiction regarding male homosexuality, I am not going to focus on that in my review, or on its other element that has been flogged to death as well, being the rather extreme youth (age 14) of the love object. Mann being a fairly obviously repressed individual, one can read a certain parallel between the disease that infects Venice, with Achenbach's almost insane passion (insanity features in Mann's notes). Mann seems to see these homosexual pederastic impulses that one surmises he felt himself, as at the same time degrading and ennobling. Ennobling, so the reasoning seems to go, in the sense of that when a person degrades himself for love, it can be seen as a kind of sacrifice of dignity for a higher cause (being, in this case, "love").

Aschenbach, a widower, considers travel a necessary evil, not something embraced willingly but rooted within his own sphere for ages & with with life seemingly on the wane, he craves a distant scene as a kind of release, to counter his fastidious self-discipline, his life as an ascetic writer. He comments that he has "done homage to the intellect & overworked the soil of knowledge" & so in quest of change, he heads by degrees for a grand hotel in Venice. Herkunft, Lebensweg und Charakter Aschenbachs werden beschrieben, dazu seine Werke, ihr literarischer Stellenwert und ihre Publikumswirkung. The novella is intertextual, with the chief sources being first the connection of erotic love to philosophical wisdom traced in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, and second the Nietzschean contrast between Apollo, the god of restraint and shaping form, and Dionysus, the god of excess and passion. The trope of placing classical deities in contemporary settings was popular at the time when Mann was writing Death in Venice. [ citation needed]Aschenbach's name and character may be inspired by the homosexual German poet August von Platen-Hallermünde. There are allusions to his poems about Venice in the novella, and like Aschenbach, he died of cholera on an Italian island. Aschenbach's first name is almost an anagram of August, and the character's last name may be derived from Ansbach, Platen's birthplace. However, the name has another clear significance: Aschenbach literally means "ash brook". It "suggests dead ashes ( Aschen) clogging the stream ( Bach) of life". [4] Aschenbach considers warning Tadzio's mother of the danger; however, he decides not to, knowing that if he does, Tadzio will leave the hotel and be lost to him. But Aschenbach is not rational; "nothing is as abhorrent to anyone who is beside himself as returning into himself.... The awareness that he was complicit, that he too was guilty, intoxicated him...." [2] For me this was not because of how the protagonist's obsession affected his love-object, but because of how this obsession affected the protagonist himself. Now, when confronted with the exotic, sensation-filled atmosphere of Venice, von Aschenbach’s suppressed desires bubble to the surface, and his carefully constructed, intellect-driven world crumbles in the face of the onslaught. <>"His head and his heart were drunk, and his steps followed the dictates of that dark god whose pleasure it is to trample man's reason and dignity underfoot." Swiftly, our protagonist finds himself at the other extreme, a slave to his passions, the object of which is encapsulated in the character of Tadzio.

Over the next days and weeks, Aschenbach's interest in the beautiful boy develops into an obsession. He watches him constantly and secretly follows him around Venice. One evening, the boy directs a charming smile at him, looking, Aschenbach thinks, like Narcissus smiling at his own reflection. Disconcerted, Aschenbach rushes outside, and in the empty garden whispers aloud "I love you!" Other translations include those by David Luke (1988), Clayton Koelb (1994), Stanley Applebaum (1995), Joachim Neugroschel (1998), Martin C. Doege (2010), and Damion Searls (2023).

Holger Pils, Kerstin Klein: Wollust des Untergangs – 100 Jahre Thomas Manns „Der Tod in Venedig“. Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1069-8. Von Aschenbach gibt sich ganz der Bewunderung des Knaben hin. „Das war der Rausch; und gierig hieß der alternde Künstler ihn willkommen“. Nach Art der Dialoge Platons imaginiert „der Enthusiasmierte“ Gespräche mit dem Bewunderten. In ihnen bricht er mit seiner apollinischen, zuchtvollen Lebenssicht. „[…], denn der Leidenschaft ist, wie dem Verbrechen, die gesicherte Ordnung und Wohlfahrt des Alltags nicht gemäß.“ Er erkennt die Sinnlichkeit der Kunst und monologisiert: „[…] du musst wissen, dass wir Dichter den Weg der Schönheit nicht gehen können, ohne dass Eros sich zugesellt und sich zum Führer aufwirft.“ Doch damit beschönigt von Aschenbach. Nicht Eros leitet ihn. Dionysos ist es, dem er verfallen ist. Von ihm seines apollinisch-klaren Weltbildes beraubt, meint von Aschenbach, dem Künstler sei „eine unverbesserliche und natürliche Richtung zum Abgrunde eingeboren“. What a visceral writer he is! Once he engaged me, he kept me to the end, which was one of the finest endings I could imagine. I would caution other readers that the start of this is extremely laborious and slow. It provides information that is essential to understanding this man and his ramblings, but I had to push through the first two chapters. Once Aschenbach makes the decision to go to Venice, the writing begins to flow. Thomas Mann lived and wrote on the thin line between belief in European culture and his lifelong struggle with his own role and position within that culture. He lived long enough to suffer from the complete breakdown of his native country. Death in Venice, telling the story of "forbidden" desire and of the quite literal breaking of hearts to abide by the standards of thought of the collective, could be seen as the dying of the spirit of excellence facing a reality that doesn't fit the idea. And it is dying and dying. Forever dying like the overcrowded, dirty, real Venice choking on its own popularity as a symbol of European grandeur. Der „Fieberdunst“ der Lagune, die „üblen Ausdünstungen der Kanäle“ lassen an die Vorstellung des Miasma denken und weisen auf Krankheit und Tod voraus.