Death in Venice and Other Stories Quotes

“Nothing is stranger, more delicate, than the relationship between people who know each other only by sight—who encounter and observe each other daily, even hourly, and yet are compelled by the constraint of convention or by their own temperament to keep up the pretense of being indifferent strangers, neither greeting nor speaking to each other. Between them is uneasiness and overstimulated curiosity, the nervous excitement of an unsatisfied, unnaturally suppressed need to know and to communicate; and above all, too, a kind of strained respect. For man loves and respects his fellow man for as long as he is not yet in a position to evaluate him, and desire is born of defective knowledge. It”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“Δεν ήταν γραμμένο κάπου πως ο ήλιος στρέφει την προσοχή μας από το πνεύμα στην αίσθηση; Ναρκώνει και μαγεύει, έγραφε, τη λογική και τη μνήμη τόσο, που η ψυχή ξεχνά από ευχαρίστηση την πραγματική της κατάσταση, και γεμάτη κατάπληξη και θαυμασμό προσηλώνεται στα πιο όμορφα απ’ τα αντικείμενα που φωτίζει ο ήλιος: ναι, και μόνο με τη βοήθεια ενός σώματος μπορεί κατόπιν να υψωθεί στη θεώρηση ανώτερων πραγμάτων. Ο έρωτας, πράγματι, συναγωνίστηκε τους μαθηματικούς που δείχνουν στα λιγότερο ικανά παιδιά απτές εικόνες των αφηρημένων μορφών. Το ίδιο και ο Θεός, για να μας κάνει ορατό το πνεύμα, χρησιμοποίησε τη μορφή και το χρώμα της ανθρώπινης νιότης σαν όργανο της μνήμης, στολίζοντάς τη με όλη τη λάμψη της ομορφιάς, κι εμείς φλεγόμαστε από πόνο κι ελπίδα στη θέα της.
[…] Και με φιλοφροσύνες, πνευματώδεις και υπαινικτικούς αστεϊσμούς μιλούσε ο Σωκράτης στο Φαίδρο για τον πόθο και την αρετή. Του μιλούσε για τον πύρινο τρόμο που κυριεύει τον αισθανόμενο άνθρωπο όταν τα μάτια του αντικρίζουν το σύμβολο του αιώνιου κάλλους• του μιλούσε για τους πόθους του αμύητου και φαύλου, που είναι ανίκανος να συλλάβει την ομορφιά και να νιώσει σεβασμό απέναντί της αν και βλέπει μπροστά του το είδωλό της• μιλούσε για τον ιερό φόβο που κυριεύει την ευγενική ψυχή όταν μια θεϊκή μορφή, ένα τέλειο κορμί παρουσιάζεται μπροστά της, πόσο συγκλονίζεται κι αναστατώνεται και δεν τολμά καν να το κοιτάξει και λατρεύει αυτόν που έχει την ομορφιά, κι αν δεν φοβόταν πως θα φανεί τρελός στους άλλους, θα ‘φτανε να του προσφέρει ακόμη και θυσίες σαν σ’ έναν ανδριάντα. Γιατί μόνο η ομορφιά, Φαίδρε μου, αξίζει ν’ αγαπηθεί και είναι συνάμα ορατή: είναι, πρόσεξέ το αυτό! η μοναδική πλευρά του πνεύματος που εμείς μπορούμε να δούμε και ν’ αντέξουμε με τις αισθήσεις. Τι θα γινόμασταν αν το θεϊκό εμφανιζόταν μπροστά μας αλλιώτικα, αν ο λόγος, η αρετή και η αλήθεια μας μιλούσαν μεσ’ απ’ τις αισθήσεις; Δε θα μας αφάνιζε, δε θα μας έκαιγε η αγάπη, όπως έκαψε κάποτε τη Σεμέλη ο Δίας; Η ομορφιά λοιπόν είναι ο δρόμος που οδηγεί απ’ το συναίσθημα στο πνεύμα –είναι ο τρόπος, ένα μέσο μονάχα, μικρέ μου Φαίδρε… Κι ύστερα είπε ότι αυτός που αγαπάει είναι πιο θεϊκός από κείνον που αγαπιέται, γιατί μέσα του υπάρχει ο Θεός, που δεν υπάρχει στον άλλον- αυτή την πιο τρυφερή και σκωπτική σκέψη ίσως που έχει ποτέ σκεφτεί ο νους του ανθρώπου, απ’ όπου πηγάζει όλη η πανουργία και η πιο κρυφή ηδονή της επιθυμίας.”
― thomas mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“the lover is more blessed than the beloved because God resides in the former, not the latter—probably”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought—these are the artist's highest joy. And our solitary protagonist felt in himself at this moment power to command and wield a thought that thrilled with emotion, an emotion as precise and concentrated as thought: namely, that nature herself shivers with ecstasy when the mind bows down in homage before beauty.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice & Seven Other Stories

“The sight of that dear form was unexpected, it had appeared unhoped-for, without giving him time to compose his features. Joy, surprise, and admiration might have painted themselves quite openly upon his face - and just at this second it happened that Tadzio smiled. Smiled at Aschenbach, unabashed and friendly, a speaking, winning, captivating smile, with slowly parting lips. With such a smile it might be that Narcissus bent over the mirroring pool, a smile profound, infatuated, lingering, as he put out his arms to the reflection of his own beauty; the lips just slightly pursed, perhaps half-realizing his own folly in trying to kiss the cold lips of his shadow—with a mingling of coquetry and curiosity and a faint unease, enthralling and enthralled.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“Sun and sea air could not burn his skin, it was the same creamy marble hue as at first—though he did look a little pale, either from the cold or in the bluish moonlight of the arc-lamps. The shapely brows were so delicately drawn, the eyes so deeply dark—lovelier he was than words could say, and as often the thought visited Aschenbach, and brought its own pang, that language could but extol, not reproduce, the beauties of the sense.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“Aschenbach noticed with astonishment the lad's perfect beauty. His faced recalled the noblest moment of Greek sculpture—pale, with a sweet reserve, with clustering honey-coloured ringlets, the brow and nose descending in one line, the winning mouth, the expression of pure and godlike serenity. Yet with all this chaste perfection of form it was of such unique personal charm that the observer though he had never seen, either in nature or art, anything so utterly happy and consummate.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“He surrendered utterly to the power that to him seemed the highest on earth, to whose service he felt called, which promised him elevation and honours: the power of intellect, the power of the Word, that lords it with a smile over the unconscious and inarticulate. To this power he surrendered with all the passion of youth, and it rewarded him with all it had to give, taking from him inexorably, in return, all that it is wont to take.

It sharpened his eyes and made him see through the large words which puff out the bosoms of mankind; it opened for him men’s souls and his own, made him clairvoyant, showed him the inwardness of the world and the ultimate behind men’s words and deeds. And all that he saw could be put in two words: the comedy and the tragedy of life.

And then, with knowledge, its torment and its arrogance, came solitude; because he could not endure the blithe and innocent with their darkened understanding, while they in turn were troubled by the sign on his brow. But his love of the word kept growing sweeter and sweeter, and his love of form; for he used to say (and had already said it in writing) that knowledge of the soul would unfailingly make us melancholy if the pleasures of expression did not keep us alert and of good cheer.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“Inborn in almost every artistic nature is a luxuriant, treacherous bias in favor of the injustice that creates beauty, a tendency to sympathize with aristocratic preference and pay it homage. A”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“Gustav Aschenbach was the writer who spoke for all those who work on the brink of exhaustion, who labor and are heavy-laden, who are worn out already but still stand upright, all those moralists of achievement who are slight of stature and scanty of resources, but who yet, by some ecstasy of the will and by wise husbandry, manage at least for a time to force their work into a semblance of greatness. There are many such, they are the heroes of our age. And they all recognized themselves in his work, they found that it confirmed them and raised them on high and celebrated them; they were grateful for this, and they spread his name far and wide. He had been young and raw with the times: ill advised by fashion, he had publicly stumbled, blundered, made himself look foolish, offended in speech and writing against tact and balanced civility. But he had achieved dignity, that goal toward which, as he declared, every great talent is innately driven and spurred; indeed it can be said that the conscious and defiant purpose of his entire development had been, leaving all the inhibitions of skepticism and irony behind him, an ascent to dignity. Lively, clear-outlined, intellectually”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“Elegant self-control concealing from the world’s eyes until the very last moment a state of inner disintegration and biological decay; sallow ugliness, sensuously marred and worsted, which nevertheless is able to fan its smouldering concupiscence to a pure flame, and even to exalt itself to mastery in the realm of beauty; pallid impotence, which from the glowing depths of the spirit draws strength to cast down a whole proud people at the foot of the Cross and set its own foot upon them as well; gracious poise and composure in the empty austere service of form; the false, dangerous life of the born deceiver, his ambition and his art which lead so soon to exhaustion—to contemplate all these destinies, and many others like them, was to doubt if there is any other heroism at all but the heroism of weakness. In any case, what other heroism could be more in keeping with the times?”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“Hidden away among Aschenbach’s writings was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work;”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“People, after all, only love and respect other people so long as they remain unable to judge them. Longing is a child of ignorance. It”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“thought Aschenbach. He’s probably not long for this world. And he refused to analyze a certain feeling of satisfaction, or reassurance, which accompanied this thought. He”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories

“The one who loves most becomes subordinate and must suffer—his”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Stories