- For other uses, see Death in Venice (disambiguation).
The novella Death in Venice was written by the German author Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1912 as Der Tod in Venedig. Death in Venice book cover This image is a book cover. ...
Paul Thomas Mann (June 6, 1875 – August 12, 1955) was a German novelist, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate, lauded principally for a series of highly symbolic and often ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and intellectual. ...
A novella is a short novel; a narrative work of prose fiction somewhat longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. ...
A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ...
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Death in Venice may refer to: Death in Venice, a 1912 novella by Thomas Mann Death in Venice (film), a 1971 film starring Dirk Bogarde Death in Venice (opera), an opera by Benjamin Britten Category: ...
A novella is a short novel; a narrative work of prose fiction somewhat longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. ...
Paul Thomas Mann (June 6, 1875 – August 12, 1955) was a German novelist, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate, lauded principally for a series of highly symbolic and often ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and intellectual. ...
See also: 1911 in literature, other events of 1912, 1913 in literature, list of years in literature. ...
Plot Summary Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. The main character is Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous author in his early fifties who has recently added the "von" to his name. He is a dedicated artist, disciplined and ascetic to the point of severity, and was widowed at a young age. As the story opens, while strolling through a cemetery, he sees a coarse-looking red-haired man who stares back at him belligerently. Aschenbach walks away, embarrassed but curiously stimulated. Soon afterwards, feeling a hunger for a little adventure, he resolves to take a trip.
He decides on Venice, reserving a suite in the Grand Hotel des Bains on the Lido island. While en route to the island by vaporetto (a gasoline-powered ferry), he sees an apparition: an elderly man, in company with a group of high-spirited youths, has tried hard to create the illusion of youth with dyed hair, false teeth, makeup, and foppish attire. Aschenbach turns away in disgust. Venice, (Italian: Venezia, Venetian: Venexia) is the capital of the region of Veneto and the province of the same name in Italy. ...
Lido and the Venetian Lagoon. ...
Gasoline, also called petrol, is a petroleum-derived liquid mixture consisting mostly of hydrocarbons and enhanced with benzene or iso-octane to increase octane ratings, used as fuel in internal combustion engines. ...
Aschenbach checks into his hotel, dresses for dinner, and goes downstairs. As he eats, he sees an aristocratic Polish family at a nearby table. Among them is an adolescent boy in a sailor suit; Aschenbach, startled, realizes that the boy is beautiful. His sisters, however, are so severely dressed that they look like nuns. Aschenbach conceives what he tells himself is an abstract, artistic interest in the lad, whose name, Tadzio, he overhears on the beach the next day.
Soon, the hot, humid weather begins to affect Aschenbach's health, and he decides to leave early and move to a more salubrious location. On the morning of his planned departure, he sees Tadzio again, and a powerful feeling of regret sweeps over him. When he reaches the station and discovers his trunk has been misdirected, he pretends to be angry, but is really overjoyed; he decides on the spot to remain in Venice, waiting for his lost luggage. He happily returns to the hotel, and thinks no more of leaving.
Over the next days and weeks, Aschenbach's interest in the beautiful boy develops into an obsession; he watches him constantly, and secretly follows him about Venice. One evening, the boy actually directs a charming smile at him, looking, Aschenbach thinks, like Narcissus smiling at his own reflection. Disconcerted, he rushes outside, and in the empty garden says "I love you!" In Greek mythology, Narcissus or Narkissos (Greek ÎάÏκισσος), was a hero of the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. ...
Aschenbach next takes a trip into the city of Venice, where he sees a few discreetly-worded notices from the Health Department, warning of an unspecified contagion, and advising people to avoid eating shellfish. He smells an unpleasant hospital odor everywhere, and later realises it is disinfectant. However, the tourists continue to wander the city, apparently oblivious. Aschenbach at first ignores the danger because it somehow pleases him to think that the city's disease is like his own hidden, corrupting passion for the boy. Later, his attitude temporarily changes; he decides to discover the reason for the health notices posted in the city so he can warn Tadzio's mother. After being repeatedly assured that the scirocco is the only health risk, he finds a British travel agent who reluctantly admits that there is a terrible cholera epidemic in Venice. Aschenbach, however, funks his resolution to warn the Polish family, knowing that if he does, Tadzio will leave the hotel and be lost to him. This article is about the Mediterranean wind. ...
Cholera is a water-borne disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which is typically ingested by drinking contaminated water, or by eating improperly cooked fish, especially shellfish. ...
One night, a dream filled with erotic pagan imagery reveals to him the true nature of his feelings for Tadzio, and he finally surrenders to the humiliating truth: he is sexually attracted to the lad. Afterwards, he begins staring at the boy so openly and following him so persistently that his mother finally notices, and takes to warning Tadzio whenever he approaches too near the strange, solitary man. However, Aschenbach's feelings, though intense, are silent; he never touches Tadzio, or even speaks to him, and, while there is some indication that Tadzio is aware of his admiration, the two exchange nothing more than the occasional surreptitious glance.
Aschenbach begins to fret about his aging face and body. In an attempt to look more attractive, he visits the hotel's barber shop almost daily, where the barber eventually persuades him to let his hair be colored and his face painted to look less pale and more youthful. The result is a fairly close approximation to the old man on the vaporetto who so appalled Aschenbach. Later, freshly dyed and rouged, he again shadows Tadzio through Venice, despite the oppressive heat. He loses sight of the boy in the heart of the city; then, thirsty and exhausted, he purchases and eats some overripe strawberries before returning to the hotel.
A few days later, Aschenbach goes to the lobby feeling ill and weak, and discovers that the Polish family plans to leave after lunch. He goes down to the beach to his usual deck chair. Tadzio is there, unsupervised for once, and accompanied by an older boy. A fight breaks out, and Tadzio is quickly bested; he then angrily leaves his companion and wades over to Aschenbach's part of the beach, where he stands for a moment looking out to sea, then turns halfway around to look at his "lover." To Aschenbach, it seems as if the boy is beckoning him, and he tries to rise, only to fall back into his chair.
His body is discovered a few minutes later. When news of his death becomes public, the world decorously mourns the passing of a great artist.
Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science Gustav von Aschenbach's name seems to be inspired by the homosexual German poet August von Platen. The character's last name may be derived from von Platen's birthplace, Ansbach. The character of von Aschenbach may have been based in part on the composer Gustav Mahler (the film soundtrack makes use of Mahler's compositions, particularly the "Adagietto" movement from the Symphony No. 5). August Graf von Platen-Hallermünde (October 24, 1796 - December 5, 1835), German poet and dramatist, was born at Ansbach, the son of the Oberforstmeister in the little principality of that name. ...
Ansbach, or Anspach, originally Onolzbach, is a town in Bavaria, Germany. ...
This article cites its sources but does not provide page references. ...
The Symphony No. ...
Director Ken Russell also made an eponymous film about Mahler. Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell, known as Ken Russell (born July 3, 1927), is a controversial English film director, particularly known for his films about famous composers. ...
An eponym is a person (real or fictitious) whose name has become identified with a particular object or activity. ...
Mahler refers to: Alma Maria Mahler-Werfel, or Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler Anna Mahler Arthur Mahler, Austrian archeologist Bruce Mahler, actor David Mahler, composer Eduard Mahler, Austrian astronomer; born in Hungary Gustav Mahler, Bohemian-Austrian composer and conductor Halfdan T. Mahler, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) from...
Thomas Mann's wife Katia recalls that the idea for the story came during an actual holiday in Venice, which she and Thomas took in the spring of 1911:
- All the details of the story, beginning with the man at the cemetery, are taken from experience … In the dining-room, on the very first day, we saw the Polish family, which looked exactly the way my husband described them: the girls were dressed rather stiffly and severely, and the very charming, beautiful boy of about thirteen was wearing a sailor suit with an open collar and very pretty lacings. He caught my husband's attention immediately. This boy was tremendously attractive, and my husband was always watching him with his companions on the beach. He didn't pursue him through all of Venice — that he didn't do — but the boy did fascinate him, and he thought of him often … I still remember that my uncle, Privy Counsellor Friedberg, a famous professor of canon law in Leipzig, was outraged: "What a story! And a married man with a family!" [1]
Mann himself mentioned this story in a letter to his friend Phillipp Witkop on 7/18/1911, as he was working on it: - I am in the midst of work: a really strange thing that I brought with me from Venice, a novella, serious and pure in tone, concerning a case of pederasty in an aging artist. You say, "Hum, hum!" but it is quite respectable.[2]
The real boy who inspired "Tadzio" is said to be Baron Władysław Moes, whose first name was usually shortened as Władzio or just Adzio. This story was uncovered by Thomas Mann's translator Andrzej Dołęgowski around 1964, and was published in the German press in 1965. Some sources report that Moes himself did not learn of the connection until he saw the 1971 film version of the novel. Moes was born in 1900, making him a few years younger than Mann guessed. Moes died in 1986 and is interred at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw. The term pederasty or paederasty embraces a wide range of erotic practices between adult males and adolescent boys. ...
Baron is a specific title of nobility or a more generic feudal qualification. ...
1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ...
1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ...
1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1971 calendar). ...
1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, but a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. ...
1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
PowÄ…zki Cemetery (Polish Cmentarz PowÄ…zkowski) is the oldest and most famous cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, which is situated in the western part of the city. ...
Warsaw (Polish: , , in full The Capital City of Warsaw, Polish: Miasto Stołeczne Warszawa) is the capital of Poland and its largest city. ...
References - Frank Donald Hirschbach, The Arrow and the Lyre: A Study of the Role of Love in the Works of Thomas Mann (The Hague, M. Nijhoff, 1955), passim (but especially the section ‘The Loves of Two Artists: Tonio Kröger and Death in Venice’, op. cit., pp. 14ff.).
- Lee Slochower, ‘The Name of Tadzio in Der Tod in Venedig’, German Quarterly, vol. 35, No. 1 (January 1962).
See also Death in Venice is a 1971 film directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach and Björn Andresen as Tadzio. ...
Death in Venice is an opera in two acts by Benjamin Britten, his last. ...
Pedophilia and romantic or sexual relations between adults and children have been the main theme of many books and several films. ...
Love and Death on Long Island is a 1997 movie directed by Richard Kwietniowski and starring Jason Priestley, John Hurt and Fiona Loewi. ...
Notes - ^ Katia Mann, Unwritten Memories
- ^ From Death in Venice, translated and edited by Clayton Koelb, Norton Critical Edition; p.93.
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