Death in Venice
by Thomas Mann
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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
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Read in September, 2007
Rachael Gutierrez
Mrs Kuhn
English III
October 14, 2007
1. Gustav von Aschenbach sees a vacationer in his hometown of Munich. He has a sudden aspiration to travel after he sees the tourist.
2. It is apparent that Gustav suffers from a continuous illness and works out his troubles through art.
3. Gustav travels to an Adriatic island and disliked the weather there. Ten days after he arrives on the island he leaves for Venice.
4. When boarding the ship for Venice Gustav spots...more
Mrs Kuhn
English III
October 14, 2007
1. Gustav von Aschenbach sees a vacationer in his hometown of Munich. He has a sudden aspiration to travel after he sees the tourist.
2. It is apparent that Gustav suffers from a continuous illness and works out his troubles through art.
3. Gustav travels to an Adriatic island and disliked the weather there. Ten days after he arrives on the island he leaves for Venice.
4. When boarding the ship for Venice Gustav spots...more
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Read in January, 2000
recommends it for:
film viewers who need to read the book
Gustav Aschenbach or von Aschenbach, as he had officially been known since his fiftieth birthday... - one of my all time favorite first lines in a novel. In this new (1999), widely acclaimed translation by Joachim Neugroschel that restores the controversial passages that were cut out of the original English version, Death in Venice tells about a ruinous quest for love and beauty amid degenerating splendor. Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but lonely author, travels to the Queen of the ...more
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Read in August, 2005
I'm ambivalent about this one. Perhaps it was the translation I was reading (I think I have the actual Der Tod in Venedig in the house somewhere, but frankly I couldn't face literary German at the moment), but I never really felt at ease when reading this. Not because of any of the themes that Mann tackled, or because of the denseness of the work; they were challenging and thought-provoking aspects, of course, but I found myself able to grapple with them.
What unnerved me was the way i...more
What unnerved me was the way i...more
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Read in October, 2002
A good book to be taught in tandem with Lolita, methinks. A literary achievement with the psychology of Tolstoy and a Greek commitment to the story itself. Of course, that is not the only thing about this book that is 'Greek'. A treatise on Death, Life, Sex, Desire, and Fear which is both enticing and terrifying, and for the self-same reason.
Here is the face of wretched animal man, teeth bared and cloudy desperation mocking the vision. However...more
Here is the face of wretched animal man, teeth bared and cloudy desperation mocking the vision. However...more
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Read in January, 2008
i'd wanted to read this ever since an early boyfriend, if he could be called that, mentioned that "death in venice" was his favorite piece of fiction. i'd tried "magic mountain" and "doctor faustus" with no success in the years since (mann has always struck me as unwieldy and quite daunting. i feel small next to his books, not intellectually but physically.), so i was surprised by how manageable this work was. it is a powerful work and one i wish wasn't presente...more
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The comparisons to Lolita may be inevitable but this book, in my opinion, does not even come close. For one thing, as much as I appreciate Greek mythology and philosophy, I found references to them annoying and pretentious in this book. They served to distract from the plot, not that there was much of one (a 50+ year old intellectual writer falls in "love" with a young adolescent boy). As I can still recall how annoying boys are at that age, I found it hard to swallow that such a sophi...more
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Read in January, 2003
recommends it for:
"Have-to-read-this" fanaticians
Well... I didn't like it really much. Better, of course, than "Mario and the magician" _the short story bonus in the edition I read.
I can't express why this book gave me nothing _maybe it's due to Mann's treatment of time in his narrations, which keeps me out of the story.
Anyway, I still keep in my to-read shelf "The magical mountain" :)
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Pues no me gustó, la verdad. Me gustó más que la narración breve "Mario y el mago" que venía con la nov...more
I can't express why this book gave me nothing _maybe it's due to Mann's treatment of time in his narrations, which keeps me out of the story.
Anyway, I still keep in my to-read shelf "The magical mountain" :)
********
Pues no me gustó, la verdad. Me gustó más que la narración breve "Mario y el mago" que venía con la nov...more
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Read in December, 2007
This is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. It takes a while to get going, but it's eventually made clear this work is about a man delving into becoming a pedophile. It's a book that never should have been written, there is nothing uplifting or redeeming to be found here. Yes, the man comes to a tragic end, but I don't think I needed to read this book to make that realization. I was reading about Thomas Mann on wikipedia and apparently he struggled with his own sexuality and thi...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in November, 2006
A famous psychological novella about a writer (an artist biographer, to be exact) who seeks a change of scenery in Venice, hoping to also inspire his craft. Instead, he finds there a boy who he regards as a god--the human representation of art perfected--and, for this reason (the art that is the boy), becomes obsessed with him and then falls in love with him. But this isn't the typical pedofile scenario. Here is a character who questions his attraction and struggles with the concepts of life ...more
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Read in September, 1978
WOW! I will never forget reading this book! I was all of 19 years old, studying literature at the University of South Florida. I think it's one of the first books I remember "studying," and I thought it was so great and so deep. I was also studying Hemingway at the time and made an embarrassing comment in class one day. I said something to the effect that I preferred reading Death in Venice because it was so deep and so intellectual and you had to study it to understand it... unlike Th...more
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Not an easy book to read but well worth perservering. If you are lucky enough, as I was, to find a DVD copy of the incredible film starring Dirk Borgarde then buy it without delay. Not only is it cinematograpically stunning, many consider it one of the greatest, if not the greatest, masterpiece from legendary Italian director, Luchino Visconti, but it is also considered by many, including myself, as Bogarde's crowning achievement on film. Book and film make a superb duo in your collection. For ...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to Chelsea by:
Anthony
Very interesting book of short stories that Anthony gave me. I have never read any work of his before. Very sardonic, morbid stories with complex psychologically-disfunctional characters, mostly male, at the turn of the 20th century.(Mann was apparently a contemporary and colleague of Freud). I liked the title story "Death in Venice", about a German writer who becomes obcessed with a Polish youth in Venice, and "The Will for Happiness". Overall an interesting read about the i...more
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Read in July, 2007
I hadn't read this in years but I enjoyed it again a great deal. Mann is not a natural fabulist, and the opening sections are thick with ideas and schemes. But once the central encounter takes place, the story unfolds with the sort of slo-mo inevitability whose pain is among the chief pleasures of both horror and tragedy. I'm not sure which this story is. The fact that it unfolds within Aschenbach himself, rather than in any fated confrontation with the world -- he could easily have left Venice...more
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Read in May, 2002
I love the first half of this one, I read it over and over, has a lot to do with the idea of travel. Then someone talked me into finishing it and I was really disappointed. A plague takes over the story and it gets going in a different direction. The movie played up this whole male/gay relationship between the man and a "perfect" boy that I didn't take in a sexual direction when reading. I took it more as a love and search for "perfection" in form, aura etc. Besides all t...more
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Read in November, 2007
Despite (funny, I am using the word "despite"... it is used in the book in a memorable way) the incredibly skillful use of language as well as the incredible skill in translating the book, I was just not overwhelmed by the book. The language, while sometimes beautiful and almost poetic, seemed distracting from the story. Although, having said that, the book did not have much of a story if you remove the in-depth descriptions of all Aschenbach saw and did. This was my first Thomas Ma...more
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Have to admit, I didn't get the point of this book at all.
There wasn't much plot, the prose was dense and boring, and I found the "obsession" to be very unlikely.
Most people like to label the older man as a pedophile, but I didn't really see it that way. I don't think it was a physical attraction so much.
It was more like an older man, close to death, sees a beautiful young boy and becomes obsessed with the idea of the boy's youth. Not his body, in a sexual way.
There wasn't much plot, the prose was dense and boring, and I found the "obsession" to be very unlikely.
Most people like to label the older man as a pedophile, but I didn't really see it that way. I don't think it was a physical attraction so much.
It was more like an older man, close to death, sees a beautiful young boy and becomes obsessed with the idea of the boy's youth. Not his body, in a sexual way.
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Read in November, 2006
I wasn't a fan. I read this in the original German for a German Translation class. I had never read any of Mann's work before (or since), nor did I have any idea what I was getting myself into. Something about a grown man falling in love with a teenage, barely post-pubescent boy came off as highly disturbing to me...
The work screamed of an outlet for Herr Mann to get out his own inward conflict with his own (closeted) homosexuality.
The work screamed of an outlet for Herr Mann to get out his own inward conflict with his own (closeted) homosexuality.
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Read in May, 2008
very amusing story. i never read a story like this before. when you love someone but never really want to tell that person. you just have an affection to that person and you also think that person give the same reaction to you. but what power does words have if we can say it by our eyes and the way we behave. it's really fil me with sensation about one secret admirer that always hunt you wherever you go. it's so exciting.
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Read in June, 2008
An interesting look at the 'Lolita' tale. About obsession, as all of them are, but also a look at the nature of man. Mann tends to ramble a bit in these parts - taking several pages just to discuss the nature of beauty, for example. I did like his commentary of how the people who speak out most strongly against what they think are moralistic failures are often the very people struggling the most with those failures.
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.79 (1539 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.83 (1040 ratings) number of reviews: 110popular shelves
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quote
"Solitude begets originality, bold and disconcerting beauty, poetry. But solitude can also beget perversity, disparity, the absurd and the forbidden."
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