La muerte en Venecia

published	2005 by Edhasa
first published	1911
isbn
description	Un compositor envejecido y fatigado descubre, en medio de la decadente belleza veneciana, el espontáneo atractivo de un angelical adolescente. Public...more [close] Un compositor envejecido y fatigado descubre, en medio de la decadente belleza veneciana, el espontáneo atractivo de un angelical adolescente. Publicada en 1914, esta novela cimentaría la fama de Mann, que en 1929 recibió el premio Nobel. Completa este volumen otro espléndido relato de Mann, Mario y el mago, y un interesante prólogo del académico de la lengua Francisco Ayala.
date added	06-27-07 edit book

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Peter rated it:

(review of isbn 0141181737)

12/26/07

bookshelves: literature

recommends it for: art lovers and fans of good literature

I gather that the main character - Gustav von Aschenbach - was perhaps based on the composer Mahler. Like Mahler, Aschenbach has devoted his life to seeking aesthetic perfection while suffocating his emotional needs in the process. Mann's writing encapsulates this ordered restraint and, as Aschenbach suffers something of a crisis, the writing fans out more. The story concerns the fiftysomething composer sojourning in Venice to mend his ailing health. Shortly after arrival, he is transfixed b...more I gather that the main character - Gustav von Aschenbach - was perhaps based on the composer Mahler. Like Mahler, Aschenbach has devoted his life to seeking aesthetic perfection while suffocating his emotional needs in the process. Mann's writing encapsulates this ordered restraint and, as Aschenbach suffers something of a crisis, the writing fans out more. The story concerns the fiftysomething composer sojourning in Venice to mend his ailing health. Shortly after arrival, he is transfixed by a beautiful Polish boy - Tadzio. The youth is also on holiday and, as weeks pass, Aschenbach falls in love with the boy. Gradually, he becomes less composed and his raison d'aitre centres on Tadzio. We witness the gradual unravelling of this highly composed man and, as an outbreak of the plague hits Venice, eventually his death.

So, there's rather a lot of food for thought. Not least, what does Mann imply by Aschenbach's obsession with Tadzio? In her book 'The boy' Germaine Greer discusses the western aesthetic tradition concerning the boy. It originates, as so many things do, in ancient Greece. There, it was common enough for an older man to take a youth as a 'companion'. In Hellenic culture the woman was generally regarded as a baby-making machine. The male was prized beyond compare for his athletic strength and for his virility. The language equated what we understand as moral goodness with strong, youthful looks. So, a beautiful youth would be regarded as a boy of upstanding character. Love was generally reserved for this 'sacred' relationship between wise man and good boy. They felt it was a union of the highest virtues in humanity (remember, the woman was regartded as a physical creature).

It all sounds rather odd and is obviously incongruous with our modern take on such matters. For starters, such men would no doubt be witch-hunted in today's society. Nevertheless, the deification and romanticisation of the youth runs through western art. During the Renaissance the Greek ideal was resurrected by - among others - Donatello, Michelangelo and Titian. It runs like a thread of gold though the art of the 'grande siecle' and through the Baroque era, until it finally morphes into something slightly different with what we call the 'Romantic' movement. There, literature sanctifies the youth. Young poets like Chatterton and Keats are posthumously immortalised in eulogistic stanzas and the youth with an existential crisis arrives courtesy of Stendhal's Julien Sorel.

The point is - Aschenbach's love is the overwhelming marriage of two factors: firstly, his long-suffering emotional needs and secondly, his search for artistic perfection. Mann is well aware of the above described tradition and asks us to consider Aschenbach's love from this perspective as well as from a more routine view. Ultimately though, what we see is a highly-strung man suffering a nervous breakdown. He implicates Tadzio in his search for aesthetic perfection when perhaps he is really overintellectualising the unravelling of his emotions. Tadzio is perhaps more honestly the object of simply a frail, sad and very lost man. We feel a certain amount of concern for Aschenbach, despite the nature of his love, because he is fundamentally a decent man undergoing tremendous strain. At no point does he act in a vulgar or thoroughly indecent manner, though he may cross the line of of respectability marginally. But, we are left to ask, would he have acted so had he not perished? If he had, of course, then we would no doubt vilify him. Instead, he dies a very lonely and rather sad death. In the end, we even feel a little sorry for him.

Mann's 'The Magic Mountain' was originally intended as a thematic sequel to 'Death in Venice'. It concerns the inhabitants of an asylum slowly falling apart. Mann asks us to consider them as analogous to the pre-first world war European powers. Perhaps Aschenbach is just this Europe, sickly, lost and spent....less

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La muerte en Venecia

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