Death in Venice in Never too Late to Read Classics

Feb 08, 2020 Sara rated it really liked it

Shelves: kindle-purchase, short-stories-novellas, classics, literary-fiction, death

This is my first experience of Thomas Mann and I am staggered by how much he can pack into a book that I would term more a novella than a novel. First off, nobody would accuse Mann of not being intellectual enough. I stopped several times to ponder the classical allusions that were scattered throughout the story, some of them obvious references and some of them so subtle that they might easily escape your notice. None of them irrelevant, however; all contributing something to the meaning and und This is my first experience of Thomas Mann and I am staggered by how much he can pack into a book that I would term more a novella than a novel. First off, nobody would accuse Mann of not being intellectual enough. I stopped several times to ponder the classical allusions that were scattered throughout the story, some of them obvious references and some of them so subtle that they might easily escape your notice. None of them irrelevant, however; all contributing something to the meaning and understanding of the story and most foreshadowing the outcome.

The strange conveyance, handed down without any change from days of yore, and so peculiarly black--the only other thing that black is a coffin--recalls hushed criminal adventures in the night, accompanied only by the quiet splashing of water; even more, it recalls death itself, the bier and the dismal funeral and the final taciturn passage. And have you observed that the seat in such a boat, that armchair painted black like a coffin and upholstered in a dull black, is the softest, most luxurious and enervating seat in the world?

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.

There is a predatory element to this novel that makes the reader cringe. Unlike the perversion in Lolita, this perversion is kept in the right perspective for me; the child is innocent and there is no pretense that there is anything pure or acceptable about the thoughts of this old man.

There are numerous themes running through this novel. The irony of a man who criticizes others for faults he so obviously shares; the contrast between youth and old age, innocence and corruption; the presence of death in the midst of life; and the corrosive nature of self-importance. It is a novel that begs to be dissected with a scalpel. Can’t say I “enjoyed” it, but I do think it is an important piece of literature that conjure up Poe’s Mask of the Red Death and Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey for me. ...more

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Jan 07, 2022 Gerhard rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-fiction, 2022, gay-interest

Trailing the beautiful boy one afternoon, Aschenbach penetrated the stricken city’s tangled core. His sense of direction having failed him—the alleys, canals, bridges, and tiny squares in the labyrinth were too much alike—he was no longer certain of even the compass points; all he cared about was keeping track of the vision he was so ardently pursuing...

I decided to read this novella in preparation for ‘The Magician’ by Colm Tóibín. (I also have yet to read ‘The Master’, which is Tóibín’s take o Trailing the beautiful boy one afternoon, Aschenbach penetrated the stricken city’s tangled core. His sense of direction having failed him—the alleys, canals, bridges, and tiny squares in the labyrinth were too much alike—he was no longer certain of even the compass points; all he cared about was keeping track of the vision he was so ardently pursuing...

I decided to read this novella in preparation for ‘The Magician’ by Colm Tóibín. (I also have yet to read ‘The Master’, which is Tóibín’s take on the life and times of Henry James.) Interestingly, I see that Scribner has reissued ‘Death in Venice’ with an introduction by Tóibín and an extract from the novel itself.

Tóibín writes that Mann “thought constantly about a sexual life that was not available to him, that would have to reside mostly in eager thoughts about young men.” He adds:

There was so much concealment. Thomas Mann was the most respectable German of his time, the father of six children. Even when ‘Death in Venice’ appeared in 1912, no one imagined that it was based on real desires, real happenings.

If this strains incredulity for the modern reader, one has to remember that it was a very different world that Mann was writing (and living) in. Much of Aschenbach’s infatuation with Tadzio is couched in rarified talk about the Muse and perfection instilled through art.

It is only with the fateful declaration “I love you!” that the Great Man’s downfall truly begins (largely in part due to the belief that a true artist has to shield him [or her] self from sordid reality and the even baser desires imposed by the human condition.)

The HarperCollins edition I read has a fascinating introduction by Michael (‘The Hours’) Cunningham that gives much insight into the ‘new’ translation by Michael Heim. This updates the traditional 1930 translation by H.T. Lowe-Porter, who apparently disapproved of the book’s subject matter (and Mann himself probably).

Hence the old translation is a bit of a whitewash. Lowe-Porter, for example, gets the name of ‘Phaedrus’ wrong and completely misses the Greek reference, according to an article I read in ‘The Guardian’.

I was unaware that ‘Death in Venice’ as a title has a double allusion. What I found interesting is how Mann transforms Venice into such a brooding cesspit of a place, which is in total contrast to its traditional appeal as the City of Love.

The novella has lost none of its disturbing power, and one can only imagine what Mann would have thought of this slight tome becoming his enduring legacy (or how he would have reacted to Tóibín concocting an ‘autobiographical experiment’ that focuses on some of the more lurid details of his life). ...more

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Jun 09, 2020 Manybooks rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-reviews, thomas-mann, classics, german-literature, short-stories, unlikable-characters, wonderful-writing-style

So really, and from an entirely structural and writer's craft point of view (and of course also in my humble opinion), Thomas Mann's 1911 novella Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice) is most definitely and absolutely brilliant story telling, richly nuanced, full of both exquisite descriptiveness and a power of observation that actually almost seems to even defy reality. And yes, I do therefore also very much and very vociferously proclaim and state that for many readers, including myself, Thomas So really, and from an entirely structural and writer's craft point of view (and of course also in my humble opinion), Thomas Mann's 1911 novella Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice) is most definitely and absolutely brilliant story telling, richly nuanced, full of both exquisite descriptiveness and a power of observation that actually almost seems to even defy reality. And yes, I do therefore also very much and very vociferously proclaim and state that for many readers, including myself, Thomas Mann's way with words is indeed considered utterly magical, that Thomas Mann's writing and his stylistics are absolutely and marvellously wonderful perfection in every manner of speaking.

However, and even though with regard to the "how" of Thomas Mann's penmanship, I do in fact and rather obviously from my words above generally think of him as one of my hands-down favourite German authors (and really also usually above and beyond any and all specifically style related criticisms), I nevertheless and rather frustratingly also often do tend to encounter in Thomas Mann's prose (in both his shorter fiction and actually even more so in his novels) an annoying and even rather majorly problematic at times dichotomy and tension between writing style (between Thomas Mann's expressivity and descriptiveness) and that which is used as thematics and contents. And yes indeed, Der Tod in Venedig is most definitely no exception to this, because honestly, albeit that I am totally in reading love with Thomas Mann's writing as it is presented both structurally and with regard to how he uses his printed words to create such an interesting and wonderfully descriptive portrait of turn of the century Venice, the actual contents and the specific thematics of Der Tod in Venedig have always left me both rather unsatisfied at best and also often majorly and unfailingly uncomfortable (with feelings of being far too often full of animosity for and anger at main protagonist Gustaf von Aschenbach as well as far too much being majorly creeped out by von Aschenbach's sexual deviances).

For really, Gustaf von Aschenbach is not AT ALL a character I have ever (and since first reading Der Tod in Venedig in 1996) found either all that relatable to or someone I could remotely accept and handle as even just a very casual acquaintance. And yes, that throughout Der Tod in Venedig Gustaf von Aschenbach blithely, selfishly and very much arrogantly keeps following young and innocent Tadzio around throughout Venice, thereby delaying von Aschenbach departing from Venice even though there is an epidemic raging (and yes, even if this homoeroticism is mostly just endangering von Aschenbach's own life by making him act foolishly and imprudently), this has always made Der Tod in Venedig a mostly not all that pleasant and engagingly satisfying personal reading experience, with the only reason why Der Tod in Venedig still rates with three stars for me, being that I do in fact very much enjoy how with regard to style and written expression the story of Gustaf von Aschenbach's decline and death in Venice is being told to us by Thomas Mann, even though, even as I personally really cannot stand and cannot at times even stomach the specific contents of Der Tod in Venedig and especially the pedophilic homoeroticism of Gustaf von Aschenbach. ...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Jenn Avery rated it really liked it

Shelves: strange-children, body-politics, art-of-seeing, alchemic-romance, grotesque-bodies, affect-theory, love, pedophilia

When I was called out for teaching some provocative contexts in my “Strange Children” course this quarter, my supervisor came to my defense by saying, “Well, it’s not like you’re teaching Death in Venice, or anything.” I had heard of Thomas Mann’s novella — and really enjoyed reading the obscure The Transposed Heads, which I consider a really masterful work despite some scathing criticisms to the contrary — but had never read it. I headed to the library and checked it out right away. Would Mann When I was called out for teaching some provocative contexts in my “Strange Children” course this quarter, my supervisor came to my defense by saying, “Well, it’s not like you’re teaching Death in Venice, or anything.” I had heard of Thomas Mann’s novella — and really enjoyed reading the obscure The Transposed Heads, which I consider a really masterful work despite some scathing criticisms to the contrary — but had never read it. I headed to the library and checked it out right away. Would Mann prove to be more dirty and provocative than Alice’s Adventures? Was it possible?

Death in Venice is plenty provocative and dirty, alright, if you’re into affect theory. If you’re a gender or sexuality theorist, however, I must say, it misses the mark somewhat. The story alarmed me much more for its depiction of feeling than it ever could have for its wispy, barely lukewarm invocation of pedophilia.

After four pages of Mann’s text I was struck by his fierce exploration of both hidden and blatant affect — which occurs sometimes simultaneously. (In fact, I am determined to teach it as a course on emotion in literature.)

The foreboding lifelessness that stretches itself out before Gustav Aschenbach’s life can be summarized by a series of words/phrases that arise consistently or at key moments, such as: “red,” “false midsummer,” or “diseased city.” But the “unchastity and fury of decay” that epitomizes Aschenbach’s experience in Venice — and with the sickly Polish “god” with whom he falls in love from afar — is best articulated through Mann’s overuse of adjectives that relate directly to rampant emotion and, conversely, emotionlessness.

Feeling is a sense like smell. The graying legend Aschenbach is surrounded by smells (of hospital, gaiety, food, beach) that bring out depth of affect which runs the gamut of “sinister revels of emotion:” sympathy, fear, pity, hopelessness, desire, shame, elation, anxiety, satisfaction, etc.

For Mann’s protagonist, “passion is our exultation” but also his demise. Passion is the strong feeling of desire or excitement, but I am also reminded of the definition of passion from House of Leaves: “Passion has little do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”

Aschenbach’s passion reflects both definitions: it is suffering and jubilation.

Yet, despite the war of feeling that he locks in his aged body, he shows little external signal of such power until, on the day of his death, he heads to the salon to be made up in a fashion that reflects the grotesque fop whom he criticizes on the ship. The disease that finally kills him seems less the sickness of Venice from the Middle East (which reminded me somewhat of Bruges-la-Morte) and more the inevitable finale of emotion of this caliber.

Death is the ultimate portrayal of patience.

Is it, then, a useful symbol of passion? For Aschenbach, such seems to be the case.

How beautiful.

So beautiful, in fact, that I almost forgot about the Platonic “beautiful boy,” that god Eros who catalyzes the war. Then again, Mann suggests that this war was raging before Tadzio comes along, doesn’t he? I was inclined to toss Tadzio away.

He is like the wine that brings out the flavor of an aged and beautiful cheese. ...more

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Aug 27, 2020 GONZA rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: abbandonato

Ich fing an, dieses Buch mit den besten Absichten auf Deutsch zu lesen, dann wechselte ich zur italienischen Version, weil ich dachte, das Problem sei die Sprache, dann schloss ich mit Wikipedia, weil es offensichtlich das Thema war, das ich nicht ausstehen konnte.
Glücklicherweise hat dieser Autor auch Buddenbrooks, Doktor Faustus und Der Zauberberg geschrieben, und die habe ich zuerst gelesen.

Ho cominciato a leggere questo libro in tedesco con tutte le migliori intenzioni, poi sono passata all ...more

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Jun 12, 2020 Lynn rated it really liked it

An austere, aging German author travels to the city of Venice where he becomes obsessed with a beautiful young Polish boy whose family is staying in the same hotel.

What this short novella lacks in plot it makes up for in its pitch-perfect prose and its piercing examinations of creativity, the nature of art and artists, Greek antiquity, and erotic fixation. I'm sure that much of Mann's brilliance is lost on me, but his magnificent writing was enough to propel me through the pages even if I didn't ...more

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