The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann here in a new translation by Michael Henry Heim.
Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.
In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."
The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann here in a new translation by Michael Henry Heim.
Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.
In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."
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Overview
The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann here in a new translation by Michael Henry Heim.
Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.
In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060813727 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 06/22/2005 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
About the Author
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was one of the finest and most prolific German novelists of our century. His most famous works include Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus, and the Joseph tetralogy.
Joachim Neugroschel has won three PEN translation awards and the French-American translation prize. He has also translated Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, both for Penguin Classics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Read an Excerpt
Death in Venice
By Thomas Mann
Buccaneer Books Inc
Copyright ©1983 Thomas MannAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0899664555
Chapter One
Gustav Aschenbach or von Aschenbach, as he had officially been known since his fiftieth birthday, set out alone from his residence in Munich's Prinzregentenstrasse on a spring afternoon in 19.. -- a year that for months had shown so ominous a countenance to our continent -- with the intention of taking an extended walk. Overwrought from the difficult and dangerous labors of the late morning hours, labors demanding the utmost caution, prudence, tenacity, and precision of will, the writer had even after the midday meal been unable to halt the momentum of the inner mechanism -- the motus animi continuus in which, according to Cicero, eloquence resides -- and find the refreshing sleep that the growing wear and tear upon his forces had made a daily necessity. And so, shortly after tea he had sought the outdoors in the hope that open air and exercise might revive him and help him to enjoy a fruitful evening.
It was early May, and after a few cold, wet weeks a mock summer had set in. The Englischer Garten, though as yet in tender bud, was as muggy as in August and full of vehicles and pedestrians on the city side. At Aumeister, to which he had been led by ever more solitary paths, Aschenbach briefly scanned the crowded and lively open-air restaurant and the cabs andcarriages along its edge, then, the sun beginning to sink, headed home across the open fields beyond the park, but feeling tired and noticing a storm brewing over Föhring, he stopped at the Northern Cemetery to wait for the tram that would take him straight back to town.
As it happened, there was no one at the tram stop or thereabouts. Nor was any vehicle to be seen on the paved roadway of the Ungererstrasse -- whose gleaming tracks stretched solitary in the direction of Schwabing -- or on the road to Föhring. There was nothing stirring behind the stonemasons' fences, where crosses, headstones, and monuments for sale formed a second, uninhabited graveyard, and the mortuary's Byzantine structure opposite stood silent in the glow of the waning day. Its façade, decorated with Greek crosses and brightly hued hieratic patterns, also displayed a selection of symmetrically arranged gilt-lettered inscriptions concerning the afterlife, such as "They Enter into the Dwelling Place of the Lord" or "May the Light Everlasting Shine upon Them," and reading the formulas, letting his mind's eye lose itself in the mysticism emanating from them, served to distract the waiting man for several minutes until, resurfacing from his reveries, he noticed a figure in the portico above the two apocalyptic beasts guarding the staircase, and something slightly out of the ordinary in the figure's appearance gave his thoughts an entirely new turn.
Whether the man had emerged from the chapel's inner sanctum through the bronze gate or mounted the steps unobtrusively from outside was uncertain. Without giving the matter much thought, Aschenbach inclined towards the first hypothesis. The man -- of medium height, thin, beardless, and strikingly snub-nosed -- was the red-haired type and had its milky, freckled pigmentation. He was clearly not of Bavarian stock and, if nothing else, the broad, straight-brimmed bast hat covering his head lent him a distinctly foreign, exotic air. He did, however, have the customary knapsack strapped to his shoulders, wore a yellowish belted suit of what appeared to be loden, and carried a gray waterproof over his left forearm, which he pressed to his side, and an iron-tipped walking stick in his right hand, and having thrust the stick diagonally into the ground, he had crossed his feet and braced one hip on its crook. Holding his head high and thus exposing a strong, bare Adam's apple on the thin neck rising out of his loose, open shirt, he gazed alert into the distance with colorless, red-lashed eyes, the two pronounced vertical furrows between them oddly suited to the short, turned-up nose. Thus -- and perhaps his elevated and elevating position contributed to the impression -- there was something of the overseer, something lordly, bold, even wild in his demeanor, for be it that he was grimacing, blinded by the setting sun, or that he had a permanent facial deformity, his lips seemed too short: they pulled all the way back, baring his long, white teeth to the gums.
Aschenbach's half-distracted, half-inquisitive scrutiny of the stranger may have been lacking in discretion, for he suddenly perceived that the man was returning his stare and was indeed so belligerently, so directly, so blatantly determined to challenge him publicly and force him to withdraw it that Aschenbach, embarrassed, turned away and set off along the fence, vaguely resolved to take no further notice of him. A minute later he had forgotten the man. It may have been the stranger's perambulatory appearance that acted upon his imagination or some other physical or psychological influence coming into play, but much to his surprise he grew aware of a strange expansion of his inner being, a kind of restive anxiety, a fervent youthful craving for faraway places, a feeling so vivid, so new or else so long outgrown and forgotten that he came to a standstill and -- hands behind his back, eyes on the ground, rooted to the spot -- examined the nature and purport of the feeling.
It was wanderlust, pure and simple, yet it had come upon him like a seizure and grown into a passion -- no, more, an hallucination. His desire sprouted eyes, his imagination, as yet unstilled from its morning labors, conjured forth the earth's manifold wonders and horrors in his attempt to visualize them: he saw. He saw a landscape, a tropical quagmire beneath a steamy sky -- sultry, luxuriant, and monstrous -- a kind of primordial wilderness of islands, marshes, and alluvial channels; saw hairy palm shafts thrusting upward, near and far, from rank clusters of bracken, from beds of thick, swollen, and bizarrely burgeoning flora; saw fantastically malformed trees plunge their roots through the air into the soil, into stagnant, shadow-green, looking-glass waters ...
Continues...
Excerpted from Death in Venice by Thomas Mann Copyright ©1983 by Thomas Mann. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
About the Series
About This Volume
PART I. DEATH IN VENICE: THE COMPLETE TEXT
Introduction: Biographical and Historical Contexts
The Complete Text [Translated by David Luke]
PART II. DEATH IN VENICE: A CASE STUDY IN CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM
Critical History of Death in Venice
Psychoanalytic Criticism and Death in Venice
What Is Psychoanalytic Criticism?
Psychoanalytic Criticism: A Selected Bibliography A Psychoanalytic Perspective:
Rodney Symington, The Eruption of the Other: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Death in Venice
Reader-Response Criticism and Death in Venice
What Is Reader-Response Criticism?
Reader-Response Criticism: A Selected Bibliography A Reader-Response Perspective:
Lillian R. Furst, The Potential Deceptiveness of Reading in Death in Venice
Cultural Criticism and Death in Venice
What Is Cultural Criticism?
Cultural Criticism: A Selected Bibliography A Cultural Perspective:
John Burt Foster Jr., Why Is Tadzio Polish? Kultur and Cultural Multiplicity in Death in Venice
Gender Criticism and Death in Venice
What Is Gender Criticism?
Gender Criticism: A Selected Bibliography A Perspective on Gender and Sexuality
Robert Tobin, The Life and Work of Thomas Mann: A Gay Perspective
New Historicism and Death in Venice
What Is New Historicism?
New Historicism: A Selected Bibliography A New Historicist Perspective:
Russell A. Berman, History and Community in Death in Venice
Glossary of Critical and Theoretical Terms
About the Contributors
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
"It may have been the stranger's perambulatory appearance that acted upon his imagination or some other physical or psychological influence coming into play, but much to his surprise he grew aware of a strange expansion of his inner being, a kind of restive anxiety, a fervent youthful craving for faraway humdrumplaces." -- from Death in Venice
When he crosses paths with a mysterious stranger while waiting at a tram stop in Munich, Gustav von Aschenbach is seized by a sudden need to escape the confines of his well-ordered life. An aging and successful writer, he yearns for "freedom, release, oblivion -- an urge to flee his work, the routine of a rigid, cold, passionate duty."
Aschenbach's wanderlust leads him to Venice, where the spiritual fulfillment he is seeking instead becomes an erotic quest with tragic consequences. Against the backdrop of a Venetian beachfront hotel, Thomas Mann charts the course of Aschenbach's infatuation with a fourteen-year-old Polish boy.
Aschenbach's relationship with Tadzio never progresses beyond one of sight -- they never exchange even a single word -- and yet for Aschenbach his passion intensifies with each passing day. Tadzio's youth and "truly godlike beauty" make Aschenbach acutely aware of his own rapidly fading years. He slides deeper into an abyss of his own making, even daring to follow Tadzio and his family through the streets of Venice.
As Aschenbach's preoccupation with Tadzio escalates into an obsession, so too does his determination to uncover the secret that is being harbored to protect the tourist trade -- Venice is bracing for an epidemic. When he finally learns that cholera has alreadyclaimed several lives, he refuses to leave the city as long as Tadzio remains.
Death in Venice was published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks, had established him as a literary celebrity at the age of twenty-six. One of Mann's most celebrated and compelling works, Death in Venice embodies many of the themes that he expressed throughout his work -- particularly the conflict between the artist's inner self and outward persona. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote about Death in Venice. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."
A work of psychological intensity, Death in Venice is an exploration of art and beauty, life and death, obsession and reality, love and despair -- a graceful and tragic portrait of an aging man at odds with his soul.
Discussion Questions
- What was your initial perception of Aschenbach -- both as a writer and as a man -- and did that perception change as the story progressed?
- What ignites Aschenbach's wanderlust and compels him to leave his home on a holiday? What does he hope to gain during his travels?
- When Aschenbach sets out on his journey from Munich, he does not have a destination in mind. What ultimately leads him to Venice?
- In what ways does Aschenbach embody both his father's "sober, conscientious nature" and the "darker, more fiery impulses" (pg 12) of his mother?
- Other than physical beauty, what is it about Tadzio that attracts the interest of Aschenbach? Is the attraction merely sexual in nature, or does Tadzio represent something more to Aschenbach?
- How does Mann's use of Greek mythology illuminate Aschenbach's story?
- Is it possible to have a relationship with someone by sight only, as Aschenbach believes in regard to himself and Tadzio (with whom he never speaks directly)? Does Aschenbach imagine Tadzio's returned interest?
- How does Aschenbach's fervent interest in learning the truth about the cholera outbreak mirror his obsession with Tadzio?
- Why does Aschenbach decide to stay in Venice despite the risk of contracting cholera, a disease that is often fatal?
- The book's title is an indication of how the story ends. Did having this foreknowledge affect your reading of Death in Venice?
- How do you interpret the story's ending?
- What, in your opinion, is the message Mann is conveying in Death in Venice?
About the author
Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck, Germany, on June 6, 1875. His first novel, Buddenbrooks, a multi-generational saga based on his family history, was published in 1901. A vocal opponent of the Nazi regime, Mann and his wife moved to Switzerland in 1933, shortly after the Nazis came to power. He later became an American citizen and lived in Santa Monica, California from 1941 to 1953. He then returned to Europe and made his home in Zurich, where he died in 1955. Mann's other works include The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus, and The Beloved Returns. A revered essayist, cultural critic, and novelist, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929.