Death in Venice by Thomas Mann Stupendous

 Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

Stupendous

 

 

Death in Venice is acclaimed as one of best stories and yet there is more to it than that.

I would start by questioning the love of Gustav von Aschenbach for the fourteen year old Polish boy named Tadzio- most likely.

Yes, we are talking about Platonic love and nothing improper happens, and yet, while looking with a perhaps too critical eye I did not like this affection.

On the other hand, it may raise an interesting question:

-          Where is the boundary between admiration and guilty lust?

-          What is admirable and worth praising and where do you start criminalizing an attitude?

Perhaps I am falling prey to an ever increasing worry about pedophiles and other kinds of sex criminals.

This is just a work of art, just like Lolita where there is another odd love, for a middle aged man, this time for a teenage girl.

But I will abandon this venue and come back to the mainstream.

Thomas Mann is one of my favorites, with the long Magic Mountain read twice and planned for a further reading.

Gustav von Aschenbach is a very complex and interesting main character, that I wonder if and how much may have borrowed from his creator.

He comes to Venice for a holiday which is from the start under some weird auspices. Before entering the lagoon, the writer meets a rather old man who wants to pass for a young stud, even if his body betrays a progressive decay.

In a twist of fate, later on Aschenbach himself follows a similar pattern, after falling in love with the adolescent Tadzio, coloring his hair and using makeup to look younger.

To add to the new look, he uses colors that are perhaps to bright and mixed to suggest youth and to my mind the “rainbow „associated with the gay community.

Venice is the setting of the story but seems to play a larger role. And this makes me think of an essay by Marguerite Yourcenar.

She has the view that Thomas Mann has an extreme depth in his writing going deeper even than Proust and Joyce.

So I wonder what the significance of Venice is.

It has extreme beauty and attractions, but it also falls into decay.

Cholera has an outbreak in the city, which everybody denies.

From the barber to the travel agent, they all try to keep tourists in.

Their livelihood is at stake and so they lie.

But the stench is in the air and people start dying.  

A wonderful, fantastic story albeit with accents of horror.

 

PS- this is another reading, maybe the third or more… I have it listed somewhere as read, but it is ok, since this is encore une fois read, yet again.