Death in Venice

by Thomas Mann

Aschenbach had once stated quite plainly in some inconspicuous place that nearly everything great which comes into being does so in spite of something—in spite of sorrow or suffering, poverty, destitution, physical weakness, depravity, passion, or a thousand other handicaps. But that was not merely an observation; it was a discovery, the formula of his life and reputation, the key to his work.

Even as it applies to the individual, art is a heightened mode of existence. It gives deeper pleasures, it consumes more quickly. It carves upon the faces of its votaries the marks of imaginary and spiritual adventures; and though their external existence may be as quiet as a monk’s, in the long run it produces a fastidiousness, over-refinement, fatigue, and alertness of the nerves such as would not result from actual living, even if crammed with illicit passions and pleasures.

The experiences of a man who lives alone and in silence are both vaguer and more penetrating than those of people in society; his thoughts are heavier, more odd, and touched always with melancholy. Images and observations which could easily be disposed of by a glance, a smile, an exchange of opinion, will occupy him unbearably, sink deep into the silence, grow full of meaning, become life, adventure, emotion. Loneliness brings forth what is original, daringly and shockingly beautiful: the poetic. But loneliness also brings forth the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the illicit.

Almost every artist is born with a lush and treasonous tendency to look with tolerance upon injustices which have created beauty, and to meet aristocratic advantages with sympathy and reverence.

To be at rest in the face of perfection is the hunger of everyone who is aiming at excellence; and what is nothingness if not a form of perfection?

And he was stirred by a paternal affection, the profound leaning which those who have devoted their thoughts to the creation of beauty feel toward those who possess beauty itself.

“Beauty makes modest,”