Death in Venice

by Thomas Mann

It was an urge to travel, nothing more; but it presented itself in the form of a real seizure, intensified to the point of passionateness; in fact, it was like a delusion of the senses.

It was an urge to escape, he admitted it to himself, this longing for the distant and new, this desire for liberation, for unburdening and oblivion—an urge to leave behind his work and the everyday venue of a rigid, cold and passionate servitude.

nearly every great thing that exists exists “in despite,” and was brought to completion despite distress and torment, poverty, abandonment, physical weakness, vice, passion and a thousand obstructions.

The observations and encounters of a solitary, taciturn man are vaguer and at the same time more intense than those of a sociable man; his thoughts are deeper, odder and never without a touch of sadness. Images and perceptions that could be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions, occupy him unduly, become more intense in the silence, become significant, become an experience, an adventure, an emotion. Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden.—Thus