Death In Venice Revisited Again!
Well, I said back in May that I was going to re-read Death in Venice following my blog about the Luchino Visconti film, and I finally got round to doing it! Death in Venice and Other Stories, translated and introduced by David Luke, is a fine selection of Thomas Mann's work and preserves his beautiful, vivid and thoughtful style - though it does give the impression, erroneous or otherwise, that his entire literary output centred around the male midlife crisis ...
'Death In Venice' is the final story of the selection, and it is, as the translator says, the best. I was surprised to discover how closely the Visconti film does actually follow the original text, given the critics' observations quoted in my 2nd May blog. I would not now agree that the film 'loses the philosophical content of the Thomas Mann work', or that there is 'no indication in the novel that Tadzio is anything more than vaguely aware of the older man's interest.' Granted, the whole weight of the story rests upon von Aschenbach's struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of his obsession with a fourteen year old boy, and to identify his infatuation as aesthetic appreciation (Platonic Eros) rather than middle-aged lust (Dionysos); but the 'Apollonian/Dionysian' dichotomy so beloved of Mann's hero Friedrich Nietzsche is very evident in the film, heartbreakingly portrayed in Dirk Bogarde's performance.
As regards Tadzio's awareness of Aschenbach's interest, the novella makes it pretty explicit!
'With a surge of joy the older man became aware that his interest and attention were not wholly unreciprocated. Why, for example, when the beautiful creature appeared in the morning on the beach, did he now never use the boarded walk behind the bathing cabins, but always take the front way, through the sand, passing Aschenbach's abode and often passing unnecessarily close to him, almost touching his table or his chair as he sauntered towards the cabin where his family sat?'
'Through the vaporous dimness and the flickering lights, Aschenbach saw the boy, up there at the front, turn his head and seek him with his eyes until he found him.'
'... he would turn his head hesitantly and cautiously, or even quickly and suddenly as if to gain the advantage of surprise, and look over his left shoulder to where his lover was sitting.'
'Tadzio walked behind his family ...he sometimes turned his head and glanced over his shoulder with his strange, twilight-grey eyes, to ascertain that his lover was still following him.'
And inevitably, Tadzio's family notice that something is going on:
'... at the point things had now reached, the enamoured Aschenbach has reason to fear that he had attracted attention and aroused suspicion. Indeed, he had several times, on the beach, in the hotel foyer and on the Piazza San Marco, been frozen with alarm to notice that Tadzio was being called away if he was near him, that they were taking care to keep them apart – and although his pride withered in torments it had never known under the appalling insult that this implied, he could not in conscience deny its justice.'
Aschenbach's attempt to deny the sexual side of his infatuation is of course doomed to failure, and when he collapses and dies on the beach on the morning of the Polish family's departure from the Lido he is a pathetic figure, dyed and rouged in an attempt to recapture his own lost youth - a mirror image of the 'dandified', 'babbling' 'sniggering' old man that so repulses him at the beginning of the story. Platonic Eros who clothes abstract Beauty in human form for mankind's spiritual benefit has been thoroughly vanquished as Dionysos rides roughshod over all his highfalutin pretensions. It's a sad story, but I don't find it a sordid one. It's a very different read from, for example, Lolita; for one thing, no sexual abuse takes place, nor are we made privy to any fantasies implying that, given opportunity, it would. It does however, as David Luke says in his introduction, describe with extraordinary vividness 'the process of falling in love'.
'Death In Venice ' is apparently based on two real-life encounters: the literary giant Goethe Johann Wolfgang von 1749-1832's brief infatuation, at the age of seventy-four, with seventeen-year-old Ulrike von Levetzow during a holiday in Marienbad in 1823; and Mann's own fascination with an eleven-year-old boy, Wladyslaw Moes (called by his family 'Wladzio' or 'Adzio'), while holidaying in Venice in 1911 - a fascination confirmed by his wife, Katia, though she emphasised that it never reached the fever-pitch recounted in Aschenach's story, and that her husband was not in the habit of following the boy and his family around.
Obviously Mann felt the need to increase the age of 'Tadzio' to fourteen in his novella; and just as it is not Visconti's beautiful film but the shocking lack of protection given to its juvenile lead that bothers me about his production, so it is this real-life detail, and not the story itself, that makes uncomfortable reading for me.
Mann's own bisexuality is very apparent in his diaries – no problem there, to a modern reader – but a series of entries regarding his own adolescent son, Klaus (pet name 'Eissi') seem to enter more dangerous territory:
'Delight over Eissi, who in his bath is very handsome; find it very natural that I am in love with my son';
'Eissi lay reading in bed with his brown torso naked, which disconcerted me';
'… surprised Eissi completely naked. Strong impression of his pre-masculine, gleaming body. Disquiet.'
Well, most parents 'fall in love' with our children to the extent of finding everything about them exquisite and delightful – but the delight evoked by our children's bodies is quite different to the delight evoked by a lover's, and when that difference becomes blurred we have more than 'disquiet', we have perversion, we have incest, we have abuse.
So were does all this leave Thomas Mann in general, and 'Death In Venice' in particular? I'm actually not sure. I'm not sure, for example, as the mother of daughters, whether I would feel the same about either the book or the film if the adolescent in question were a young girl. I can only re-state that because neither contain any depictions or fantasies of abuse, and concentrate instead upon the inner struggle of the protagonist without any attempt to excuse, condemn, or sympathise with his self-delusion, I can read the one, and view the other, with appreciation rather than with discomfort. Do feel free to differ!
'Death In Venice' is the final story of the selection, and it is, as the translator says, the best. I was surprised to discover how closely the Visconti film does actually follow the original text, given the critics' observations quoted in my 2nd May blog. I would not now agree that the film 'loses the philosophical content of the Thomas Mann work', or that there is 'no indication in the novel that Tadzio is anything more than vaguely aware of the older man's interest.' Granted, the whole weight of the story rests upon von Aschenbach's struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of his obsession with a fourteen year old boy, and to identify his infatuation as aesthetic appreciation (Platonic Eros) rather than middle-aged lust (Dionysos); but the 'Apollonian/Dionysian' dichotomy so beloved of Mann's hero Friedrich Nietzsche is very evident in the film, heartbreakingly portrayed in Dirk Bogarde's performance.
As regards Tadzio's awareness of Aschenbach's interest, the novella makes it pretty explicit!
'With a surge of joy the older man became aware that his interest and attention were not wholly unreciprocated. Why, for example, when the beautiful creature appeared in the morning on the beach, did he now never use the boarded walk behind the bathing cabins, but always take the front way, through the sand, passing Aschenbach's abode and often passing unnecessarily close to him, almost touching his table or his chair as he sauntered towards the cabin where his family sat?'
'Through the vaporous dimness and the flickering lights, Aschenbach saw the boy, up there at the front, turn his head and seek him with his eyes until he found him.'
'... he would turn his head hesitantly and cautiously, or even quickly and suddenly as if to gain the advantage of surprise, and look over his left shoulder to where his lover was sitting.'
'Tadzio walked behind his family ...he sometimes turned his head and glanced over his shoulder with his strange, twilight-grey eyes, to ascertain that his lover was still following him.'
And inevitably, Tadzio's family notice that something is going on:
'... at the point things had now reached, the enamoured Aschenbach has reason to fear that he had attracted attention and aroused suspicion. Indeed, he had several times, on the beach, in the hotel foyer and on the Piazza San Marco, been frozen with alarm to notice that Tadzio was being called away if he was near him, that they were taking care to keep them apart – and although his pride withered in torments it had never known under the appalling insult that this implied, he could not in conscience deny its justice.'
Aschenbach's attempt to deny the sexual side of his infatuation is of course doomed to failure, and when he collapses and dies on the beach on the morning of the Polish family's departure from the Lido he is a pathetic figure, dyed and rouged in an attempt to recapture his own lost youth - a mirror image of the 'dandified', 'babbling' 'sniggering' old man that so repulses him at the beginning of the story. Platonic Eros who clothes abstract Beauty in human form for mankind's spiritual benefit has been thoroughly vanquished as Dionysos rides roughshod over all his highfalutin pretensions. It's a sad story, but I don't find it a sordid one. It's a very different read from, for example, Lolita; for one thing, no sexual abuse takes place, nor are we made privy to any fantasies implying that, given opportunity, it would. It does however, as David Luke says in his introduction, describe with extraordinary vividness 'the process of falling in love'.
'Death In Venice ' is apparently based on two real-life encounters: the literary giant Goethe Johann Wolfgang von 1749-1832's brief infatuation, at the age of seventy-four, with seventeen-year-old Ulrike von Levetzow during a holiday in Marienbad in 1823; and Mann's own fascination with an eleven-year-old boy, Wladyslaw Moes (called by his family 'Wladzio' or 'Adzio'), while holidaying in Venice in 1911 - a fascination confirmed by his wife, Katia, though she emphasised that it never reached the fever-pitch recounted in Aschenach's story, and that her husband was not in the habit of following the boy and his family around.
Obviously Mann felt the need to increase the age of 'Tadzio' to fourteen in his novella; and just as it is not Visconti's beautiful film but the shocking lack of protection given to its juvenile lead that bothers me about his production, so it is this real-life detail, and not the story itself, that makes uncomfortable reading for me.
Mann's own bisexuality is very apparent in his diaries – no problem there, to a modern reader – but a series of entries regarding his own adolescent son, Klaus (pet name 'Eissi') seem to enter more dangerous territory:
'Delight over Eissi, who in his bath is very handsome; find it very natural that I am in love with my son';
'Eissi lay reading in bed with his brown torso naked, which disconcerted me';
'… surprised Eissi completely naked. Strong impression of his pre-masculine, gleaming body. Disquiet.'
Well, most parents 'fall in love' with our children to the extent of finding everything about them exquisite and delightful – but the delight evoked by our children's bodies is quite different to the delight evoked by a lover's, and when that difference becomes blurred we have more than 'disquiet', we have perversion, we have incest, we have abuse.
So were does all this leave Thomas Mann in general, and 'Death In Venice' in particular? I'm actually not sure. I'm not sure, for example, as the mother of daughters, whether I would feel the same about either the book or the film if the adolescent in question were a young girl. I can only re-state that because neither contain any depictions or fantasies of abuse, and concentrate instead upon the inner struggle of the protagonist without any attempt to excuse, condemn, or sympathise with his self-delusion, I can read the one, and view the other, with appreciation rather than with discomfort. Do feel free to differ!
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Wow that's fascinating Bryn, I am indeed interested in Tchaikovsky and I've put that biography on my 'to read' list. I read 'The Music Lovers' as a teenager and of course swallowed the whole thing about any homosexual expression inevitably resulting in unhappiness and ostracism. I'm glad to hear he had some happiness in his life! But the thing about there being no such thing as 'underage' (at least where boys are concerned) came from Greek attitudes I think, and Ancient Greece was something gay men like Wilde were continually championing as the ideal civilisation. In fact I remember even in the 1980s, when the age of consent here in the UK was 21 for (male) homosexual sex, overhearing or even taking part in conversations with gay men where young boys were shockingly objectified, and basically thinking nothing of it - because after all, they were males and males are always up for sex at any age … I know better now of course, from my experience as a parent and step-parent, and also because my husband was abused as a young boy by his grandfather. But it's only really post-Savile that the extent of abuse concerning young boys, and the damage caused, has become public knowledge. Anyway, it all leaves us with the dilemma of how to approach and appreciate literature from an age that doesn't recognised the concept of 'underage', and the actions of Wilde, Mann and Pyotr Ilyich in that respect. I don't think there are any easy answers here!
So I read a biography of Thomas Mann, one specifically by a gay man that addressed his sexuality, but I found it fairly unsatisfactory and don't feel I got closer to an understanding of him.
I'd hoped it would be like a wonderful Tchaikovsky biography I read: Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man. I don't know whether you are into Tchaikovsky. But you are into Wilde; so much changed for gay men in a post-Wilde world, including in Russia for Pyotr Ilyich. It also totally changed how his life story was received, particularly by British scholars/biographers. It turns out, embarrassed British scholars invented that legend of the tormented Tchaikovsky who escaped his sexuality in marriage and possibly suicided because of it. But the Brits wrote him this way, immediately post-Wilde and onwards into recent biographies, because straight British men could only sympathise with him if he struggled against his sexuality.
Turns out, he didn't. He led an active and quite happy sexual and romantic life. The only unease and guilt he seemed to experience, from the primary documents used in this biography, was about the young. *At last I get to the relevant part*. The only omission in this biography -- which taught me so much about gay lives in 19thC Russia -- was to examine what became clear from the documents themselves: somewhat late, Pyotr Ilyich began to be disturbed by how his brother Modest, other friends, himself in the past, thought nothing of influencing boys, of being in love with boys along with youths and men. Now, it seemed to me that Tchaikovsky had simply no social guidance or help in this unease that grew upon him. There seemed to be no distinction made between underaged and grown-up, and Pyotr Ilyich almost 'invented' his concerns for himself.
It was after he freaked out about Modest as a live-in tutor romanticising and eroticising his students -- not that Pyotr hadn't ignored age himself -- that he concluded they were a Bad Influence, perhaps were Bad, and he ran off into his immediately disastrous marriage.
I found this so interesting, but the age question was me reading between the lines of this biography. I thought, if a biographer were to tackle this head-on, talk about age and attitudes to it, with the new unembarrassment of this biography (because it's the only one) -- what on earth would we think of Tchaikovsky? How would we judge him? The total lack of a concept of 'underage'. Yet Pyotr's late-acquired unease, to the point of him thinking him and his brother almost evil. Even while casual encounter in bathhouses, and Pyotr's grovelling love of a servant, went on merrily, without guilt.
I have been wondering about the issue ever since, with no opportunity to talk about it, so I hope you excuse this extended comment!