Thomas Mann: Death in Venice

Death in Venice was first published in 1912. A short novelette of less than hundred pages is one of Thomas Mann´s best narrations, still under 40 when he wrote it. This is perhaps worth noting, as some claim that his best novel was Buddenbrooks, published at 25 and one of the key works responsible for his 1929 Nobel Prize. 

Death in Venice is a very introspective novel, filled with subtle and complex ideas. The clever references from classical culture will be esential in the protagonist´s intellectual path and the evolution of his increasingly disrupted inner world.

 It is also an enigmatic story, which has been the object of many interpretations since its first appearance a century ago. Also there is a celebrated 1972 movie version by Luchino Visconti, with Dirk Bogarde as Gustav Von Aschenbach. The movie´s elegant images, the talented interpretations and the suitable soundtrack of Mahler´s 5th Simphony have strongly contributed to the picture we still have today of Death in Venice.

The story is known. Van Aschenbach, a respected writer and critic from Munich is going through the usual creative block. One day, he goes out onto the city streets to try to grasp some ideas for his writing. At some point, he encounters one stranger whose vision will give rise in him some sort of fascination and an irresistible wish to leave Munich, set out to travel and see the world.

As a first stage of this proposed new set of experiences, he will choose Venice. Once there, he will first enjoy some pleasant iddle days, keeping himself entertained with walks and seeing monuments, his sensibility in full swing, his mind constantly generating ideas and outlines for future works.

One day, while having lunch at the hotel restaurant, Aschenbach spots a Polish family. One of the members is a preadolescent boy of some 14 years of age, named (he finds out) Tadzio. In the next days and weeks, Aschenbach will gradually become obssesed by the kid´s classical beauty. This the artist seems to consider some sort of incarnation of all greek and classical aesthetics, and he goes through, or attempts to, a process of intellectual sublimation. It has been said that Death in Venice is about repressed homosexuality or even pederasty. Some have even claimed that Mann´s novel made pederasty acceptable for the upper-middle classes.

This is a narrow vision and the novel goes further beyond that. It talks about the intangibility of life, a risk of some artists or intelectuals, with an excesively "platonian" view of life and culture. Theirs is a magnificent mental existence, of forms and ideas, a purely working of the mind. This full spirituality may be fascinating and beautiful. But its inevitable coldness gets in the way sooner or later. The "study of the flame", its contemplation, its chemical mechanism, could be a first aesthetic and philosophical experience, but the knowledge we may get is uncomplete if we dont also dare to put our hand on it, get a little bit "burnt". Science and theoretical knowledge, or pure aesthetics, must be at some point complemented by first hand experience, the adition of a a bit of sensuality. Life is a body-and-mind matter, and must have some tangible dimension. The issue is then building up, at one´s risk, a moral system which is neither excesively narrow nor self-referential, that makes it all compatible.

The mind has infinite possibilities and culture, as the product of the human mind, is as powerful as to compete with the richness of material reality. We have a mind potentially capable of the creation of huge worlds, but we also have a body. And this was not programmed by evolution to be ignored at no cost in the only benefit of the huge brain that this same evolutinary process gave us.

Aschenbach´s error was the radical choice he made at a young age, a choice he thinks was free: that of denying the physical and imposing himself an exile in an all-mental world of forms and colours, visual impressions, verbal constructions. But the "senses", widely speaking, should not be absent, and we are not necessarily talking of leading a torrid erotic life. Only that sensuality should be within the lot, otherwise we may run the risk of getting it bursting at the wrong stimuli later in life. Which is what happens to Aschenbach and it is expressed by Mann in a Jamesian, encapsulated way.

The book is an enjoyable read that leaves you intellectually "exhausted" with its many ideas, arguments and beautiful images.

Death in Venice, 1912. Thomas Mann.