Death in Venice

by Thomas Mann

the mysterious connection that must be established between the generic and the particular to produce human beauty

a propensity for the unarticulated, the immoderate, the eternal, for nothingness. To repose in perfection is the desire of all those who strive for excellence, and is not nothingness a form of perfection?

Day after day now the god with the flaming cheeks soared upward naked, driving his team of four fire-breathing horses through heaven’s acres, his yellow ringlets fluttering wild in the gale of the east wind.

language can only praise physical beauty, not reproduce it.

Such was Venice, the wheedling, shady beauty, a city half fairy tale, half tourist trap,

whirling men and beasts, a swarm, a raging horde, inundating the slope with bodies, flames, bedlam, a reeling round-dance: women, stumbling over long hide garments hanging free from the waist, shaking tambourines over heads flung back and moaning, brandishing blazing, sparking torches and naked daggers, holding up snakes with flickering tongues by the middle of their bodies, or cupping their breasts in both hands and shrieking; men with horns coming out of their foreheads, fur loincloths, and shaggy torsos, with necks bent and arms and thighs raised, with a pounding of brazen cymbals and the frenzied beating of drums;