Death in Venice

"Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous—to poetry.”

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Death in Venice (1971) - A film by Luchino Visconti - Dirk Bogarde, Björn Andrésen (Full HD 1080)

Death in Venice (original Italian title: Morte a Venezia) is a 1971 Italian-French drama film directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Dirk Bogarde and Björ...

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Charlotte Rotkin, “Oceanic Animals in Death in Venice”

       Charlotte Rotkin’s psychoanalytic essay “Oceanic Animals in Death in Venice” focuses on the “intricate fusion of symbolism, psychology, and myth” that occurs in the novella (Rotkin 84). She provides an in-depth assessment of the allegorical significance of the sea shells, sea horses, jellyfish, and sidewards-running crabs that appear during the beach scenes when Tadzio is playing. Rotkin takes these often-overlooked objects, and uses them to “reinforce Mann’s criticism of moral lassitude” (Rotkin 84). The oceanic animals act as indicators of Aschenbach’s future behavior, and the physical manifestation of his conflict between volition and Eros (Rotkin 84). The oceanic animals’ main connection is to Aschenbach’s Phaedrus address. During the address, Aschenbach is in a state of enlightenment, but denying the dark of his fascination with Tadzio. Rotkin states, “the interweaving of myth and modernity reinforces the universality of demon versus discipline” (Rotkin 88). Rotkin’s article also focuses on the battle between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The oceanic animals are symbolic of the demonic that is inherent in the Dionysian, and they reveal Mann’s desire to affirm the Apollonian.

       The article distinguishes between the Apollonian and the Dionysian by stating that, “the sustaining control of the Apollonian safeguards the artist, while the force of the Dionysian unbalances the artist physically, destroying both art and man” (84). This observation gets at the heart of the issues of deterioration in the novella. Both Venice’s and Aschenbach’s submersion in Dionysian laxity results in their individual corruptions. To escape the reality of his situation, Aschenbach succumbs to images of Hellenism (85). Rotkin calls Aschenbach “the vehicle through which Mann’s method of myth plus psychology is dramatized (85).

            Aschenbach begins the novella believing that he is a man who strictly adheres to the Apollonian principles of enlightenment; however, he refuses to be introspective of his own state of decay. He travels to Venice, “a setting of oceanic formlessness” (85). It is here that Aschenbach meets the sensual Tadzio who intrudes upon his intellectual world. His daily observation of the beautiful youth from a distance is a “symbolic reenactment of early and prolonged isolation from intimacy” (85). Rotkin says that distance, as Mann uses it, combines psychological and mythical elements (85). The distance alerts Aschenbach to the Dionysian; he can admit his desire for Tadzio, and physically removes himself from Tadzio’s presence. In Tadzio’s presence, Aschenbach becomes overwhelmed, he is unable to speak. His lifetime devotion to discipline has caused him to repress the erotic, and he is unable to accept Eros completely, even while acknowledging its powerful force (85).

        Tadzio’s mother ‘s presence inhibits any interaction between the boy and Aschenbach. The mother constantly hovers in the background, wearing pearls “the size of cherries” (Mann 27). Rotkin connects the mother’s relationship to Tadzio to the oceanic, saying:

       The mother has produced a fabulous creature and dressed him  in  decorative attire,  as the sea has spawned the astonishing pearls the mother wears to adorn her garments. The exceptional beauty of her pearls and of her son signify the mother's possessions, and, reverberating, connote the archetypal maternal symbolism of sea, pearl, and power (86).

The pearls are not the only items of oceanic symbolism in the novella. Tadzio’s collection of the sea treasures foreshadows conclusion by its sequential ordering of imagery (86). The sea shells, sea horses, jellyfish, and sidewards-running crabs are used to recall Aschenbach’s previous behavior and prefigure his future indecisiveness (86).

         Rotkin views this beach scene in the book as interweaving the “ironic discussion of moral resolution at the beginning of the narrative with the similarly ironic address to Phaedrus at the end” (86). The scene foreshadows Aschenbach’s failure of moral resolve and his inevitable death. The sea shells, sea horses, jellyfish, and sidewards-running crabs are symbols of pearls, sensuality, weakness, and evasion (86). Shells are symbolic of mollusks, which produce pearls, which evoke an image of the mother. Sea horses are symbolic of sensuality and seizing, which relates to the idea that sensuality has taken possession of Aschenbach via Tadzio, who captured the sea horse (87).

The jellyfish’s long tentacles are reminiscent of the mythological (Medusa), as well as Tadzio’s own disheveled hair (87). Rotkin says “in the vernacular, the idea called forth by jellyfish is one of human weakness” (87).

The sidewards-running crabs are an allusion to Aschenbach’s avoidance of making a moral choice at the end of the story. It reminds the reader of the circuitous route by which Aschenbach’s feelings of lethargy led him “to go a journey” (Mann 8).

       That journey, according to Rotkin, underlines the moral dilemma Mann’s novella raises, and is linked to the sea animals, whose symbolism connects to the Phaedrus address (87). In this address, Aschenbach remains in a state of partial enlightenment. He states that the pursuit of the Apollonian leads to the Dionysian, which in turn, leads to the “bottomless pit” (87). He refuses to face the question of his own responsibility in the matter. Symbolically, he engages in a sidewards-running motion away from total enlightenment (87).

--Amy Wert

 Works Cited

Mann, Thomas, and Kenneth Burke. Death in Venice. New York: Knopf, 1965. Print.

Rotkin, Charlotte. "Oceanic Animals: Allegory in Death in Venice." (2003): 84-88. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

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Structure

      The most accurate way to view the structure of Mann’s “Death in Venice” is as a journey story: It is a journey away from home that has no return. The structure of the novella mirrors Aschenbach’s Eastward journey from the Apollonian to the Dionysian. Aschenbach begins his journey wound tightly; like the clenched fist he commonly makes whilst writing. The novella ends as his journey ends: relaxed and free in death.

      The novella begins with Aschenbach leaving his home in Germany to go on a walk, “in hopes that the fresh air and activity would restore him and help him have a profitable evening” (Mann 1). His journey begins near the Hall of Last Rites, where he sees a red-haired stranger instills him with the insatiable desire to travel. The urge strikes him and Aschenbach is transfixed; he stands, “his hands clasped behind him and his eyes fixed on the ground, in order to examine the nature and purpose of this sensation” (3).  His clasped hands signify his extreme self-discipline that Aschenbach has practiced since his youth. Like Aschenbach, the text is also reserved and controlled in the opening. The structure of the first two chapters is the opposite of flowery prose. It is straightforward description, with an almost complete lack of investment and emotion. This changes of course in chapters four and five as Aschenbach changes under Tadzio’s influence.

      Aschenbach’s eastward journey takes him to Venice, where his, and the novella’s structure changes. It is in this deteriorating city that Aschenbach meets Tadzio, the beautiful youth who becomes the object of Aschenbach’s affection (and many would say, obsession). It is interesting that the reader never Aschenbach at his home in Germany, because he seems to find his home in Venice, where Tadzio can be found. Once Aschenbach sees Tadzio, he never wants to leave Venice. More than that, he never wants to have the boy out of his sight. Aschenbach’s structured lifestyle begins to dissipate the longer he is away from his home in Germany. The text opens up as Aschenbach does, with the ending of chapter four showcasing a much wilder, passionate structure than earlier chapters. Aschenbach portrays a Dionysian attitude when he is “beside himself” and inhales “the nighttime fragrance of the plants”. Aschenbach leans back, his arms dangling, and absurdly and sacredly admits that he loves Tadzio. This image of Aschenbach is very different from those earlier in the novella. And with his emotional change, Mann’s prose changes; it becomes more robust and vibrant and instead of boring description, the reader is greeted with sentences full of life and passion. The structure and Aschenbach have moved from the reserved Apollonian and the Western, to the sensual and spontaneous Dionysian/Eastern. The structure shift of the text reaches its height in the fifth chapter. Aschenbach has a wild, orgiastic, lascivious dream that is a complete departure from the structure of the novella up to this point. The text, and Aschenbach, has become unbuttoned and unhinged. It is no longer restricted and reserved and tightly clenched. The structure spirals free of all Apollonian restraints and Aschenbach’s dream is a perfect testimony to that fact. After having this dream, Aschenbach no longer cares what anyone in the hotel thinks or says about him. He has given himself over to the Dionysian completely; he realizes that his journey ends wherever Tadzio is located. The entire novella, he ached at the thought of being separated from Tadzio. Tadzio is Aschenbach’s true home. His journey concludes not at home, in Germany, but in Venice, with Tadzio in his sight.

      The movement of the text is paralleled by the evolution of Aschenbach from a standing figure to a sitting figure. Aschenbach begins the text on his feet, walking through Germany. He continues his journey story on his feet: standing on the boat, walking through the streets of Venice, standing on the beach watching Tadzio with his playmates. There is a significant structural change in regards to this near the end of the novella. In this portion, there are many instances of Aschenbach sitting down. He spends much time sitting down in the hotel barber’s chair as he receives treatments to make him look younger. He is unable to follow Tadzio and his family through the streets of Venice anymore; exhausted by “passion” (which is really cholera) Aschenbach needs to sit down in the middle of the square. Finally, and most importantly, he dies sitting down, his arms extended and his hands open, in a chair at the beach.

       Aschenbach’s journey ends, not with him back where he started, but within Tadzio’s aesthetic glow. For him, the journey home ends where he can bask in Tadzio’s overwhelming presence, and give in completely to his Dionysian desires. Aschenbach and the structure of the text go on parallel journeys throughout the novella, and the culmination for both is freedom and fulfillment in death: the true end of the journey home for both of them.

                                                                                                              --Amy Wert

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Plague

There were multiple pandemics of cholera from 1817-1923 in Venice. The sixth outbreak of the disease known as Asiatic Cholera or the “flow of bile” spread from the Ganges Delta in India through the trade routes of Asia to the coastal cities of the Mediterranean. Cholera’s origins can be traced back through Hippocratic pathology as one of the diseases of the middle ages. Known as the disease of the 19th century, cholera is a water born disease, originally contracted from the polluted waters of the Ganges River in India, which would often be used for bathing.

From its formation in 1600, The British East India Company, by opening trade routes to the east, was one of the leading causes of the spread of cholera. Its position as a leading power of trade in India in 1757 all led up to the first cholera pandemic in 1817. The second pandemic starting in 1826, hit Russia, Poland, Paris, and England, and quickly crossed the Atlantic, reaching Canada and the US, commencing the third pandemic. The major spread of cholera was due in large part to travel. Through its spread into New Orleans in 1848, thousands of men migrated to California by land and sea in search of gold, who were referred to as the Forty-niners. They brought cholera with them in their travels in 1849, pushing the disease swiftly into Mexico across the Pacific coast. By 1850, cholera had spread to China, Japan, Korea, North America, and the East Indies. By 1854, there was a large outbreak in London killing over 500 people in the span of ten days. After the epidemic that occurred in London in 1854, “John Snow, the physician of Queen Victoria, noted that the cases had occurred in the surroundings of a pump located on Broad Street, now Broadwick Street. Through statistical estimations he was able to establish the relationship between the quality of the water source and the cases of cholera” (Bottasso, 148). Through his research, Snow was able to deduce that the quality of water had a direct connection to the cases of cholera. John Snow was the first to begin inferring things about the origins and pathology of cholera, and to question how it was passed in ways no one else had done before. For the first time, cholera was being described in psychoanalytical, pathological, political and mythological terms. Snow, “begins by mentioning some objections to the hypothesis that cholera is communicable, but points out that these objections hold only on the assumptions that cholera is communicated through effluvia given off by the sick… his second hypothesis—that cholera is propagated through patients’ evacuations and spread by either direct contact with cholera victims or else through items contaminated by someone afflicted with cholera” (Tulodziecki, 310).

(The Cholera Epidemic of 1873 in the United States, 1875)

(Quarantine. The female dormitory. France–Italy border during the cholera epidemic of 1865–1866.)

(Disinfecting clothing. France–Italy border during the cholera epidemic of 1865–1866.)

The pandemic of cholera in Venice was much like the one represented in Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice; the unnamed horror lurks in the background of the text before making its grand entrance towards the end of chapter 5. Much like the cholera in the text, Venetian authorities tried to get rid of the fear surrounding the disease by not mentioning it at all. The Venetian cholera epidemic of May 1911 was something Mann himself came in direct contact with on trips to both Brioni and Venice, right at the height of the outbreak. Chronologically speaking, Mann left Venice to return to Munich on June 2nd, the same date he has his protagonist Aschenbach arrive in Venice for his holiday in the novella. Cholera in Venice spread quickly with one case reported on May 22nd and six new cases a day by the 28th. Everything in the beginning was simply rumor and speculation; the Venetian press and authorities kept a tight lip on the situation in fear of people refusing to come to Italy anymore for travel. The main reasons behind the hush up by both press and authorities was due to:

            the potential commercial, economic, political and social implications of a disclosure of the true state of affairs had led to a nationally decreed policy of silence and appeasement… another crucial factor in the official cover-up were the constitutional festivities planned for 4th June, which were to mark the 50th anniversary of Italian unification with much pomp and the unveiling of a national monument to King Vittorio Emanuele in Rome.” (Rütten, 269)

The Venetian press was told to keep quiet on the subject of cholera and were told to deny any rumors related to the disease. Death in Venice’s portrayal of the Venetian cholera pandemic was consistent with historical facts of the time due to the fact that Mann witnessed much of these occurrences himself either through rumors, or through his direct contact with it during his trip to Venice.

-- Alyssa Q.

Bibliography:

Bottasso, Oscar. "Venice: A Meeting, a Plague, a Death." JMM 2 (2006): 143-48. Ediciones Universidad De Salamanca . Print.

Brody, Howard, Michael Russell Rip, Peter Vinten-Johansen, Nigel Paneth, and Stephen Rachman. "Map-making and Myth-making in Broad Street: The London Cholera Epidemic, 1854." The Lancet 356.9223 (2000): 64-68. Web.

Howard-Jones, Norman. “Cholera nomenclature and nosology: a historical note.” Bull World Health Organ. 51. (1974): 317–324. Print.

Rütten, Thomas. "Cholera in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice." Gesnerus 66.2 (2009): 256-87. Print.

Tulodziecki, Dana. "A Case Study in Explanatory Power: John Snow’s Conclusions about the Pathology and Transmission of Cholera." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42.3 (2011): 306-16. Web.

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/cholera.html

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Gorman Beauchamp,“Two Orders of Myth in Death in Venice”

      Gorman Beauchamp’s essay entitled “Two Orders of Myth in Death in Venice” examines chapter four of the novella and Mann’s use of myth and psychology as a narrative method. According to Beauchamp,Aschenbach employs, “classical myth as a means of extenuating, of ennobling even, an obsession that would otherwise seem sordid and perverse. Myth becomes rationalization”(388). Aschenbach’s involvement of classical mythology is used as a defense mechanism or a justification for his feeling for Tadzio, stating that, “if gods themselves felt and followed such erotic impulses, what hope for a mere mortal? (388). Aschenbach wishes to maintain some form of self-respect by rationalizing his desires in order to deter some of the ignominy.

      The essay first analyzes the opening line of chapter four in Death in Venice, “The god with fiery cheeks now, naked, directed his horses, four-abreast, fire breathing, day by day through the chambers of heaven, and his yellow curls fluttered along with the blast of the east wind,”[1] which introduces a shift in subject from a historically and economically accurate straightforward recount of Aschenbach’s experience in Venice to one of myth. Aschenbach transforms from a man who lived life disciplined with a clenched fist to one who is drawn to stay in Venice because of love. Chapter four institutes a new idiom, one of mythic-allusive rhapsody. Through free indirect discourse, mythic rhapsody exposes, “Aschenbach’s imagination, his projections, his rationalizations”(388). This mythic allusive rhapsody is contradicted by Aschenbach’s physical desire for Tadzio and his seeking to justify the infatuation by stating that gods too were victims to the obsession of love and the appreciation of beauty. This attempt to associate himself with the gods is a weak attempt to preserve his pride.

      Beauchamp presents argument against the allusions employed in Death in Venice stating that they are not implemented to underline the homoeroticism of Aschenbach’s thoughts and imaginations in relation to Tadzio, but more to reveal to us his plan of protection and rationale. Even at his lowest moments, Aschenbach justifies his lovelorn actions by comparing himself to the gods who have too found themselves casualty to the throes of love, as Eros god of love bewitched the heroes of antiquity.

      Mann uses a, “combination of myth plus psychology…classical Greek mythology, codified, transcribed, and pedestaled”(389) as narrative technique.According to Beauchamp, "Mann’s auctorial equation engages all the energy and persuasive force of the twentieth-century’s dominant organon for explaining the workings of the human personality…the classical allusions drawn from Aschenbach’s erudition, is itself transmuted into psychology, reference into rationalization”(391).

       The representation of Aschenbach’s character from a psychological standpoint brings with it the ideals of the modernist era with its emphasis on the subjective. Death in Venice has an omniscient narrator, which would seem quite regressive in the modernist genre, thus representing Mann’s approach to classic modernism as un-modernistic or unorthodox. Beauchamp touches on an idea offered by Dorrit Cohn in an essay entitled “The Second Author of Death in Venice," which reads and assesses the novella’s narrator under different terms. Cohn suggests that the narrator of Death in Venice is an unreliable narrator, an opinion that Beauchamp agrees with. Cohn “provides a provocative argument for questioning the judgment of Mann’s judgmental narrator, undermining the certainty offered by omniscient narration”(392). The device of the unreliable omniscient narrator challenges our reading of the text by creating a paradox or a suspicion; more importantly it represents Aschenbach’s struggle as both Apollonian, representing him as a master of his field and Dionysian, as a man descending into ruination.

      Mann’s narrator “witnesses intimately, with full access to Aschenbach’s inmost thoughts, the writer’s descent into the abyss and, as we have seen, passes increasingly harsh, disdainful judgments…the narrator’s seeing but not observing arises from his obliviousness to any of the suprapersonal forces at work in the story, guiding Aschenbach into the abyss”(394). The obtuseness of the narrator is further dislayed through Aschenbach’s lack of acknowledgement to the similarities that lie between the mysterious man who prompted him to travel that he witnessed in Munich, the old man trying to represent himself as a young on the boat to Venice, the disappearing gondolier, and the sarcastic street performer. Cohn examines how Aschenbach never sees anything supernatural or out of the ordinary with these different figures, “though he meticulously describes each stranger, he passes silently over their obtrusive likeness, to all appearances studiously closing his eye to it. This willed blindness may be readily understood as the counterpoint to the moralistic, realistic, and rationalistic views he voices throughout”(394).

       Through Aschenbach’s self-justification rationalization, he is unable to comprehend, “the mythic forces at work in the story; where psychology reduces the first order of myth to feeble flourishes, this second order of myth reveals the limitations of the narrator’s awareness, his inability to perceive that there are more things in heaven and in earth that are dreamt of in his psychology”(395). The narrator’s lack of information contributes to Aschenbach’s blunders while the author has the power of dictating his destiny. Aschenbach’s involvement of Greek mythology as rationalization for his thoughts is discredited by psychology, while the narrator combines both ancient and modern for an unmodernist depiction of what Beauchamp calls meta-myth. Through Beauchamp’s psychoanalytical examination of Aschenbach and the influence the narrator has over his thoughts and actions, we are able to see the cause of his transgression and his true nature. Aschenbach is, “nihilistic, self-destructive, and, if generalized in any way, socially destructive”(400).

 -- Alyssa Q.

Work Cited:

Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice. Trans. and ed. Clayton Koelb. New York: Norton Critical Edition, 1994. Print.

Beauchamp, Gorman. "Two Orders of Myth in Death in Venice." Papers on Language and Literature. 47.4 (2011): 386-403. Print.

[1] Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice. Trans. and ed. Clayton Koelb. New York: Norton Critical Edition, 1994. Print.

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Reader Response: Text Messages

      The inspiration for my Reader Response paper is very simple: text messaging. What would communication between the characters of Death in Venice be like if they existed in the 21st century? The idea sounded like it would produce some comical results, so I set out to capture the personality of the characters in texting form. I included six examples of fake text messages between different sets of characters. The text presented a slight challenge because of the lack of actual dialogue. Most of the novella takes place within Achenbach’s mind and the reader only has insights into his thoughts and perceptions. I really wanted to capture Tadzio’s point of view, and even the point of view of more obscure characters, like Tadzio’s mother, and Jashu.

       The first text exchange shaped the vision for the entire series. While I was reading the book, I could not stop thinking about whether or not Tadzio and his family noticed Aschenbach’s stalker-like behavior. That question became the inspiration for this text exchange. What follows is a series of text messages between characters that I imagine happening, if cell phones had been available in Venice at this time. One of my favorite conversations is the last text message screenshot I made. Tadzio tells his mother that Aschenbach has died at the beach. I alluded to Tadzio’s poor health, which is constantly referred to throughout the novella. The conversations are as follows:

Text 1: Tadzio to his mother

Text 2: Aschenbach to the Red-haired Gondolier

Text 3: Tadzio’s mother to Tadzio

Text 4: Aschenbach to the hotel barber

Text 5: Tadzio to Jashu

Text 6: Tadzio to his mother

--Amy Wert

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Reader Response: Twitter Account

https://twitter.com/VeniceDude1912

         Throughout the plot of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, the main character Gustav von Aschenbach encounters numerous individuals.  Staying at a hotel, wandering a city, and utilizing public transportation forces Aschenbach into brief relationships with several people, but few are featured in Mann’s text.  For a story set in a populous city, and inside a hotel, there are not many references to supporting characters that interact with Aschenbach.  Because of this, it was relatively easy to create a fake twitter account for an unseen intern in the hotel.  Aschenbach never actually interacts with this intern, but the intern is able to watch and follow Aschenbach without the fictional Aschenbach ever noticing. 

          Creating a simple backstory was easy, and so began the life of Barnaby Deadman.  Deadman was actually a common last name in England during the 1900s, and Barnaby means son of the prophet.  With a modern twist, this English born twenty-something finds himself at an unpaid internship in Venice.  With minimal access to Twitter, and a limited understanding of the internet, Barnaby embarks on a journey filled with puns, and translation difficulties.  Asking a tailor for help fixing his collar, Barnaby is confused when the man runs away scared- apparently mishearing collar for cholera.  Joking aside, Barnaby is assigned to watch the famous author Aschenbach and monitor his relationship with the young boy at the hotel.  Seemingly assigned this post in case the hotel had a scandal on its hand, Barnaby explores Venice, learns ancient Greek philosophy, and has a relatively miserable time in the plague-ridden Venice.

--Charlotte Ference

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Community Post: 5 Ways You Know You're In Thomas Mann's Death In Venice

Sometimes life is like a classic novel.

-- Kaylynn Murchison

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Architecture

      As the title suggests Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice occurs in the famous historic city for tourism Venice. As the ticket agent suggests to Aschenbach, “Ah! Venice! A splendid city! A city of irresistible attraction for an educated man, not only for its history but also for its present-day charms” (Mann 12). The history that the ticket agent is referring to is primarily Venice’s history in art and architecture. Particularly in the eighteenth century, Venice became an epicenter for tourism due to “The city's architecture, which is inflected by its geographic position and by the particular conditions of a maritime environment, and the wealth and richness of its painting, sculpture, and decoration” (Baetjer). The value found in visiting Venice was in its aesthetic. Works like John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, written between 1851-53, frame the architecture of Venice as not only aesthetic, but moral. Ruskin states, “if either arch or man expose themselves to their special temptations or adverse forces, outside of the voussoirs or proper and appointed armor, both will fall” (126). As a novel that primarily struggles with the dangerous allure of aesthetics as an allegory for the corrupt European soul, Venice serves as the perfect background.  Aschenbach falls because he gives into his temptation of a decadent appreciation of beauty, falls in love with Tadzio, and allows this love to consume him.             

        The places that Aschenbach visits in the novel actually existed. The hotel that Aschenbach stays at called the Excelsior in the work is actually The Grand Hôtel des Bains where Mann stayed when he visited Venice and the entire topography of the novel can be discovered.

The Grand Hôtel des Bains, circa 1920.  Photograph: Neil Lang Archive/Alamy via theguardian.com

Present day Grand Hôtel des Bains via www.grandhoteldesbainsvenezia.com

       All of the places that Mann suggests that Aschenbach visited did exist. Using the places cited in the novel it would be easy to create a walking tour of Mann’s Venice. Many of the places that Mann points to, such as St. Mark’s Cathedral, are mixes between Gothic and Byzantine architecture. For Ruskin, these were the preferred styles and he placed them highly above the style that followed which was the Renaissance. Particularly for Byzantine art, the simplicity of the style invites the viewer to ponder on it but to not be consumed with aestheticism. This understanding of Byzantine art is interesting in the novel when Aschenbach follows the polish family to church. Mann writes, “he guessed that they went to Mass at St. Mark’s, hurried there and, stepping out of the heat of the square into the golden twilight of the sanctuary, he found the boy he had missed bending over a prie-dieu, at worship” (44). This scene is particularly interesting because Mann asserts the aesthetic beauty of the cathedral but Aschenbach fails to appreciate it because all he can do is appreciate the boy.  

         Overall, as a city rich with aesthetics Venice serves as the perfect background for Mann’s novella. The protagonist Aschenbach does not fall victim to the simplistic aesthetic beauties that the city has to offer but instead is consumed by his aesthetic appreciation of Tadzio. Like Ruskin’s analysis of arches, Mann falls because he allows himself to be unguarded and become morally corrupt. By understanding Venice as an artistic city the weight of the aesthetic implications in the novel have a deeper significance.             

--Kaylynn Murchison

Works Cited

Baetjer, Katharine. "Venice in the Eighteenth Century". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.             http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/venc/hd_venc.htm (October 2003)

Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin. New York and Chicago: National Library Association, 2009. Project Gutenberg. Web.

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Motif: Deterioration

      The motif of deterioration can be seen throughout Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and reflects the novella’s allegorical interest in the deterioration of the European soul. 

      We first see the motif of deterioration when Aschenbach meets the old man pretending to be a young man on the boat.  Mann writes, “The faint crimson of his cheeks was rouge; the brown hair beneath the straw hat with its colorful band was a wig; his neck was scraggy and sinewy; his litte stuck-on mustache and the tiny beard on his chin were dyed” (13). Mann presents his reader with a representation of youth in conflict with the reality of old age. The old man that Aschenbach encounters appears to have rosy cheeks but it is makeup. His hair appears youthful and free from grays because it is a wig. What truly reveals his age is that his skin is not taut instead it is scraggy. In trying to hide his old age what the old man is truly trying to cover up is his physical deterioration.                        

      Beauty that covers up physical deterioration is even present in the beautiful Tadzio. When Aschenbach first encounters Tadzio he thinks, “ Was he ill? -because the skin of his face stood out white as ivory against the darker gold of the encircling curls” (Mann 21). Aschenbach’s questioning of Tadzio’s health is significant because it points to the idea that even though Tadzio is physically beautiful, this beauty may be covering up an inner corruption. Here Aschenbach suggests that Tadzio’s beauty is in fact covering up physical decay. 

      While the city of Venice itself is beautiful, in the novella it is discovered that even the beautiful city is harboring a secret. During Aschenbach’s stay there is a chlorella outbreak in Venice. Aschenbach discovers this and, “felt a hidden satisfaction with the events in the dirty alleys of Venice that were being covered up by the authorities -this criminal secret of the city which coincided with his own dark secret, and which he was so very anxious to keep” (Mann 44). Aschenbach’s moral deterioration is also reflective in the decay of Venice. The authorities are anxious to keep the chlorella outbreak under wraps because it will negatively affect tourism which is the city’s main economic source.

            As all of the characters and the city deteriorate in the novel so does the moral tone of the work. Aschenbach starts off with a strong moral character and reacts in disgust of characters who have questionable moral character. This is why Aschenbach is so repulsed by the old man, however, he seems to signal Aschenbach’s fate of deterioration when he says, “‘Our compliments,’ he babbles, two fingertips alongside his mouth, ‘our compliments to your darling, to your dearly beloved, the most beautiful darling’” (Mann 16). Aschenbach is traveling alone so there is no beautiful darling for the old man to be remarking on. However, as the old man is morally corrupt and trying to hide his age he may have the foresight and ability to recognize his own character in Aschenbach. The obsession with youth and beauty found in the old man is precisely how Aschenbach comes to be corrupted. The consequence of allowing beauty to corrupt a person’s soul in the novella is death, as Aschenbach dies at the end of the work and many tourists die from cholera.      

--Kaylynn Murchison

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“‘Death in Venice’ – A Jungian View” by L. Zinkin (1977)

       Jungian analyst L. Zinkin tries to connect Aschenbach’s obsession with Tadzio to the illness of pedophilia and Jung’s theory of individuation. Zinkin argues that while Aschenbach may not be clearly labeled as a pedophile, his attention to Tadzio is undesirable and suggests “a deep longing for an experience that would somehow give meaning to their [his two patients and Aschenbach’s] lives” (354). Zinkin suggests that Aschenbach’s attraction to the “puer aeternus,” or eternal boy is a reflection of his search for meaning and what Zinkin calls Aschenbach’s mid-life individuation crisis (355-56). The individuation crisis is defined by the “splitting of the self, dissolution of the persona and end[s] in death of the self” (Zinkin 355). As Zinkin suggests, Aschenbach experiences all of these stages yet he might have been saved from deterioration if he could relate to Tadzio in terms of a father-son model. Overall, Zinkin’s psychological analysis of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice offers another understanding of Aschenbach’s obsession with Tadzio and a new way to analyze Aschenbach’s character.                                                       

       To understand Zinkin’s analysis of Aschenbach one must first understand Jung’s view of individuation. According to Zinkin, the mid-life individuation crisis entails a sense of life no longer having its meaning and an inability to understand one’s place in the world. It seems that individuation means recognizing oneself as an individual whose life has a purpose and meaning separate from the rest of the world. Zinkin writes, “[Aschenbach’s] work, for which he has lived, no longer has meaning; he can still write as well as ever; no doubt he would be as successful as ever in the eyes of the world; but to himself he would be dead” (356). Zinkin goes on, “The crisis of not knowing who you are is the crisis of establishing the individual out of the collective” (357). For Zinkin, Aschenbach’s crisis of not knowing who he is stems from his loss of purpose in his work and leads to his overt homosexual feelings towards Tadzio.                                       

        This individuation crisis forces the individual to adopt a persona. Zinkin writes, “The persona becomes a mask at the onset of the individuation process, because it is split off from the self” (357). What the persona allows a person to do is to hide their true selves from the world and themselves. It further removes an individual from individuation because it is a false person outside of himself or herself. If the only way for a person to reach their true innermost self is through interaction with another individual, such a false self isolates the individual further.

        The only person in the novel who may be able to help reveal Aschenbach’s innermost self is Tadzio.  As Zinkin states, “The core within, which he [Jung] was seeking, does exist, but though deep inside it can be established only with the help of another person” (358). However, Aschenbach sinks further away from individuation because he cannot connect with him.                   

        Tadzio is the only person in the novel who can allow Aschenbach to connect to his innermost self because he represents something that Aschenbach lacks. As Zinkin suggests, “Aschenbach sees in the young boy, Tadzio, all the perfection he has been struggling to achieve” (358). This is why Aschenbach is attracted to the young boy. But the only way for Aschenbach to engage with Tadzio, without corrupting his perfection, would be to establish a father-son relationship with him. Considering that individuation needs to occur with the help of another person Zinkin writes, “Perhaps Aschenbach could have been saved if he could have found a way of relating to Tadzio as a real person” (364). However, this was impossible for Aschenbach and instead he falls victim to Tadzio’s beauty.

       Zinkin’s purpose is to instruct therapists in how to respond to their patients,. Aschenbach’s failure allows Zinkin to argue that in order for an analyst to truly help their patients they must be able to identify the sub-personalities, the different personas, and be able to “cure” them with transference and counter transference (365).   Death in Venice exposes four of these personalities: the stranger at the cemetery, the stranger on the boat, the gondolier and the street musician all represent repressed, dangerous aspects of Aschenbach’s personality.  Zinkin argues that Aschenbach needs to integrate these aspects into himself, in order to become a true self who can have a healty interaction with Tadzio.             

        Zinkin’s Jungian analysis of Aschenbach portrays the tragedy of Death in Venice as a psychological allegory that provides a way to understand Aschenbach’s obsession with beauty. But operating under this lens, Zinkin fails to examine if Aschenbach’s obsession is simply due to aesthetic appreciation that is prevalent throughout the text. Overall, Zinkin provides a useful tool, Jung’s theory of individuation, to explore and understand Aschenbach’s deterioration of self and his obsession with Tadzio.       

-- Kaylynn Murchison

  Works Cited

Zinkin, L. "'Death in Venice'--A Jungian View." Journal of Analytical Psychology. 22.4 (1977): 354-366. Print.

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The latest Tweets from Barnaby Deadman (@VeniceDude1912). Musings of an unmentioned, ignored, and nonexistent character in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. Only fictional puns, and unapologetic lies found here!

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Plato

     In Death in Venice, Thomas Mann draws on Plato’s treatment of love in the Symposium. Plato’s treatment of the nature of love, spoken through the character Diotima, is important to understanding the relationship between love and creativity in Mann’s character, Gustav von Aschenbach.

         There are three essential stages to Diotima’s argument that correspond with parts of Aschenbach’s character development. First, Diotima informs Socrates that Love itself is neither good nor bad, but instead is a mediating force between the Gods and humans. It is defined as the eternal possession of goodness. Her second claim is that all men desire immortality;  since all men desire immortality of the good, and therefore love is connected to immortality. The third element of Diotima’s treatment of love in Plato’s Symposium is that it is a stepping-stone; first to see beauty, and then to see the form of Beauty.  This transformation transcends traditional arguments about love of youth or immortality being the summation of love’s goals. Instead, love can initiate productive and creative change in the souls of men.

       Aschenbach’s character is not condemned due to his love for the young boy Tadzio, but is condemned due to his poor method of loving Tadzio.  The love for Tadzio first inspires Aschenbach to create a beautiful text. Mann describes this productivity in Aschenbach by writing:

            Never had he felt the joy of the word more sweetly, never had he  known so clearly  that Eros dwells in language, as during those perilously precious hours in which, seated at his rough table under the awning, in full view of his idol and with the music of his voice in his ears, he used Tadzio’s beauty as a model for his brief essay- that page and a half of           exquisite prose which with its limpid nobility and vibrant controlled passion was soon to win the admiration of many.  (Mann 253).

      Diotima’s passage on love illustrates love as that which begets creation, physical love creating human life, and a soul’s love creating intellectual life.  But Aschenbach’s sublimation soon gives way to obsession, carrying him back downward to the sensual world.

        The second connection between Diotima’s explanation of love and Mann’s characterization of Aschenbach is found in the exploration in the theme of immortality. Diotima says, “Because to the mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and immortality…and if, as has been already admitted, love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: Wherefore love is of immortality.” She continues,  “… if you believe that love is of the immortal… the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old.” (Plato 53-4).  The lover of wisdom and the one who desires to fully know Beauty, “wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget offspring…” (Plato 55).  The only way to create a transcendental new thing is through the desire to have what is beautiful.  Love of physical beauty and of material things properly lead to physical and material creation. Immortality is then possible only through the creation of something new, and that is how love is related so closely with the immortal.  Generation and creation are necessary to be content with love, and to begin the journey to understanding the higher Form of Love. Aschenbach’s preoccupation with growing old is in part due to his inability to create something before Tadzio, but also because he is approaching a time in his life when there will no longer be a change.  Diotima argues that man is constantly becoming immortal, as hairs and muscles and flesh renew themselves and recreate.  Aschenbach has reached a level in his life where death forces an end to the immortality.

            The third connection with Diotima’s treatment of Love is linked to her clear instructions to move past the entrancement with physical beauty, in order to become one with the Form.  She tells Socrates that a man attempting to truly transcend desires for common goods ought to

            … perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another…And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form (Plato 56).

Because Aschenbach does not move past his violent love of Tadzio, and dies too soon to progress to the next stage, he is unable to understand what the truly aesthetic process demands.  Diotima continues her discussion of the consequence of worshiping simple beauty and explains that “…in the contemplation of beauty absolute… you would see not to be after the measure of gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you… But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty… not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life…” (Plato 57-8). In the abandonment of violent love toward fleeting and impermanent things, humans might be capable of reaching a purer form of Love; one that recognizes the Form of Beauty, not merely the representations that Beauty has in common things.

       Given the broader understanding of Diotima’s lesson in Plato’s text, Aschenbach is not necessarily an inherently failed student of aestheticism. Diotima recognizes that appreciation of the Form of Beauty is a process, and might take a long time. Plato’s treatment of understanding the forms is shown in his cave allegory, where the introduction to the forms is painful, blinding, and causes much discomfort. The failings seen in Aschenbach are failings of time. Aschenbach is ultimately unable to move beyond his love of the young boy, but this inability is due to death’s interruption of his aesthetic process.

                                                                                                            --Charlotte Ference

Works Cited

Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice and Other Stories. Trans. David Luke. Toronto: Bantam, 1988. Plato. Symposium. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1871. 

http://www.stpeterslist.com/11759/60-philosophy-memes-for-you-lovers-of-wisdom/

http://www.treasures.uwa.edu.au/treasures/49/

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Motif: East

      The relationship between the Western world, and the perceived incoming dangers of the East in the eighteenth and nineteenth century is crucial to any discussion of themes and motifs in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. Mann writes his text with a careful balance between praising the East and criticism of Western culture. As long as it is unclear whether it is the overly lustful goal that Aschenbach set out to achieve in his relationship with Tadzio, or the harshness of a purely rational society from which Aschenbach sought relief that causes Aschenbach’s downfall, Mann’s text neither advocates for or against a preferable way of life. Because of this, Death in Venice functions as an ideal narrative to depict the influence that the East has on Western thinking in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

      Mann introduces the conflict between the East and the West in only the third paragraph of his text. Aschenbach begins to desire travel, and feels pressure to succumb to his wanderlust while watching an old Byzantine style church, with Greek styled crosses. From out of this church, Aschenbach presumes, comes the Foreigner who inspires in Aschenbach a sudden desire to escape. After fleeing the West, Aschenbach ends up in Venice, a city situated on the edge of the West, and steeped in Eastern culture. Venice, for hundreds of years, welcomed the influences of traders from the East, and developed a culture that mixed the aesthetics of the two regions. Despite this, where Aschenbach stays in Venice is one of the more Western influenced areas. Pankaj Mishra writes of his travels to Venice that, “The Lido, with its broad avenues and promenades, was recognizably of the West, like the cities I had seen since I left India in 1996,” (Mishra,1). Venice represents more to Aschenbach than just a different version of scenery than his home, and requires of Aschenbach a different mindset.

     When Aschenbach wanders Venice on his own, he initially feels distaste at the stagnant lagoon air, and the wind blowing from the West. Mann writes, “… the weather did not seem to be improving. The wind was from landward. Under a pallid overcast sky the sea lay sluggishly still and shrunken-looking …Vexation overcame [Aschenbach]. The thought of leaving occurred to him then and there,” (Mann, 236). Despite this vexation, Aschenbach’s attempt to leave is prevented by the loss of his luggage, which gives him a revived desire to stay in the city. When introducing Aschenbach’s hesitant excitement at causes outside of his control that seem to work in favor with his internal desires, Mann writes, “There would be explanations to be given… a disaster would have been averted… and everything he thought he had turned his back on for good would lie open again for him to enjoy, would be his for as long as he liked . . . And what was more, did the rapid movement of the motor launch deceive him, or was there really now, to crown all else, a breeze blowing from the sea?” (Mann, 247). The breeze from the sea that brings clean air, fresh smells, and revives Aschenbach’s hope is an eastern breeze. Despite the apparent cleansing of Venice’s smells, the Eastern sea breeze also brings traders from the East, which is where the initial cholera outbreaks began. By setting the novella in Venice, Mann allows for concerns regarding the east to flourish, and where once Venetians incorporated silks and mosaic patterns into their world, now the city of Venice incorporates eastern-born illness.

    Mann’s treatment of Cholera as a disease that is secretly ambushing the population of Venice is not merely a discussion of the disease, but also a reflection of how Eastern ideas permeated Western thinking. Cholera is not something that can be kept secret for long, and yet the British travel clerk tells Aschenbach “For years now, Asiatic cholera had been showing an increased tendency to spread and migrate… But in the middle of May this year, in Venice, the dreadful comma-bacilli had been found on one and the same day in the emaciated and blackened corpses of a ship’s hand and of a woman who sold green groceries. The two cases were hushed up (Mann, 271). Cholera’s pervasive nature is seen as something that, coming from the East, has the potential to wipe out those who remain in its path. Cholera’s connections to the East mean that it is not a disease that can be explained as an accident. Cholera is carried from place to place, and the avoidance of places that may be contaminated by cholera is the avoidance of places with other Eastern influences. Mary Russo writes, “Venice… [is] a crossroads city for the East-West and the North-South axis. Our Venice (as in Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice) is the stazione termine for modernist anxieties about the end of Western culture...” (Russo, 244). Fearful travellers who had heard rumors of Cholera generally avoided those places to which the East had some hold over.

      While living in a city affected by the East, Aschenbach’s method of navigating through Venice as a foreigner appears to be to adopt ancient Greek concepts that were consistent with an adoration of things the East supposedly values. Aschenbach references Hyacinthus when watching Tadzio, and by doing so invites a discussion regarding the flaws of the Western winds. Hyacinthus was loved by both Apollo and Zephyr, and it was his rejection of Zeyphr’s love that causes Zephyr to kill Hyacinthus. Zephyr, the Greek God of the West Wind, causes Hyacinthus’ death, but is ultimately protected because his act was done in the name of love. Ellis Shookman writes, “…in the topography of Mann’s spiritual sphere, the North, South, East, and West stand, respectively, for melancholy, decadence, lust, and rationality…” (Shookman, 108). The rationality of the West kills the boy loved by the West Wind and Apollo, and Aschenbach’s perception of Tadzio as Hyacinthus is essential in understanding how Aschenbach misused Greek thinking in an attempt to justify his actions. Shookman’s interpretation of the West as rational is dependent on the East being primarily focused on lust. In making these distinctions, any relationship between the rational and the lustful is doomed to be forever misunderstood, and yield tragic consequences.

    Thomas Mann’s novella, Death in Venice, uses the theme of the east to display the tragic consequences of acting too far toward any one extreme. The reason there can never be a complete rejection of either the East or the West is that the Aschenbach’s desire to escape the West and his attempt to only embrace Eastern concepts denies his ability to be fully human. Human emotion does not exist within clear lines, borders between rationality and lust are blurred in everyday life. By creating a character that fails to act appropriately in both Western and Eastern worlds, Mann has utilized the theme of the East in his text to illuminate the impossibilities of ever distinguishing the better method of living. Any distinction made between the West and the East is inherently arbitrary; human cultures may vary, but the humanity that makes up each culture remains the same. The East is used to explain the West, and the West is used to explain what is different from the East, but only by recognizing the Other does each gain its own identity.

                                                                                                          --Charlotte Ference

Works Cited

Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice and Other Stories. Trans. David Luke. Toronto: Bantam, 1988.

Mishra, Pankaj. "West Meets East in Venice." Travel + Leisure. N.p., Dec. 2004. Web. Nov. 2014.

Russo, Mary J. "Venice, Venice, and L.A." Revisioning Italy National Identity and Global

Culture. Ed. Beverly Allen and Mary J. Russo. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1997.

Shookman, Ellis. Thomas Mann's Death in Venice: A Novella and Its Critics. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003.

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Gary Johnson: Death in Venice and the Aesthetic Correlative

        Gary Johnson’s argument in the article “’Death in Venice’ and the Aesthetic Correlative”attempts to fill a void in critical conversation about aestheticism in Death in Venice.  Despite the vast amount of criticism the text has sparked, Johnson argues that aestheticism is not only essential to understanding the author and protagonist, but is the only way such an author and protagonist could have existed.  While recognizing that much cultural context is essential in developing Mann’s characters, Johnson sees this field as too narrowing on the influences to which Mann was subjected.  Not only was Mann writing in a history dealing with political conflicts, gender issues, sexual-orientation stigma, and the struggle to have a western culture distinct from the east, but Mann is also subject to a long tradition of aestheticism.  Johnson writes, “Specifically, I believe that Aschenbach’s character issues from a distinct aesthetic history and that that history in turn demines Aschenbach’s attempt to contrast a public identity and his response to the figure of Tadzio,” (Johnson 84). The identification of the aesthetic history allows for a deeper understanding of the relationship between Aschenbach and Tadzio.  Johnson asserts Aschenbach is a direct result of aesthetics, both in producing his personality, but also in producing him as a character. 

            Johnson illustrates that once aestheticism is the standard by which the author and protagonist are judged, there is also a constant thread of irony in the text. The consequence of having Aschenbach’s produced work hidden from the reader, who knows the context of the writing, and beautiful only to those unaware of what inspired it yields is that Aschenbach’s created beauty is only beautiful to those who do not know it fully.  Johnson believes that understanding Aschenbach’s aesthetic reaction to Tadzio allows the reader to understand Tadzio’s aesthetic value to the reader.  The beauty of Tadzio for Aschenbach is not merely a physical beauty, but one that inspires a goal to transform the aesthetic object into an allegory.  Johnson’s argument is that, “the successful transformation of Tadzio into an aesthetic allegory would represent the ultimate artistic achievement for the intellectual Aschenbach, for Tadzio seems to represent the kind of life force that stands in opposition to the intellectual artist who labors for years to create a single work,” (Johnson 85).  The transition from the intellectual Aschenbach to the aesthetic Aschenbach is one that is understandable through what Johnson calls the “aesthetic correlative”.  Comparable to Eliot’s objective correlative, Johnson sees the aesthetic correlative as something that can solve problems introduced by Eliot’s theory.  Johnson quotes Eliot’s definition of the objective correlative:

            The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective   correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked, (Johnson, 85).

Johnson reaches his claim of arguing that Aschenbach is attempting to find meaning in an allegory by developing the use of the aesthetic correlative in contrast to the objective correlative.  Using Eliot’s objective correlative, Death in Venice would be an artistic failure, as the objects and plot of the story never completely explain or defend the character’s actions.  Essential to understanding Johnson’s article is the argument that Eliot’s set of objects, or chain of events are not enough to understand the emotions of the characters, but one must instead search for a chain of aesthetic histories in order to discover the key to understanding Aschenbach through the aesthetic correlative.

            Johnson understands Tadzio to be an inadequate inspiration for Aschenbach’s actions if one were to read this solely as a character-character relationship.  Understanding the inspiration for Aschenbach as a character-ideal relationship allows Johnson to examine Aschenbach’s character in determining what the aesthetic correlative might be.  Johnson uses Friedrich Schiller’s theory of the modern poet’s longing for nature to transcend Aschenbach’s immediate character representation.  Johnson sees Aschenbach’s unsettled nature in the beginning of the text as a clear example of the “type of nostalgia for the naïve and the natural…” (Johnson 87).  Aschenbach then, finds in Tadzio a return to the natural purity that his life was lacking in intellectual and modernized cities.  The distance Aschenbach first achieves in his adoration for Tadzio makes the discovery of such an aesthetic object in Tadzio possible.  When Aschenbach first sees Tadzio, all utterances of amazement and reverence are uttered by an “onlooker” or “observer” and the author pauses in using Aschenbach’s specific pronouns, preferring instead to distance the observer from the observed.  Johnson writes, “Ultimately, we will find that Aschenbach desires to function allegorically, as a figure that through his emotions and responses points beyond himself to something other,” (Johnson 86).  In doing so, Johnson views the author’s decision to keep Aschenbach as an onlooker as another connection to the novel’s tendencies toward an allegory. 

            Johnson also uses German Aestheticism to trace the influence that aestheticism made on Aschenbach, as a part of his process to prove the aesthetic correlative.  Using German philosopher Johann Winckelmann as a primary influence on Aschenbach’s character, Johnson illuminates a cohesive argument regarding aestheticism’s pressure on Aschenbach.  Winckelmann understands the Ancient Greeks to not only be more naïve and natural than modern men, but also to have been naturally more beautiful and better preserved than modern bodies.  Johnson quotes Winckelmann, “Just as the depths of the sea always remain calm however much the surface may rage…so does the expression of the figures of the Greeks reveal a great and composed soul even in the midst of passion,” (Johnson 91). Johnson sees Aschenbach’s attempt to become connected to the young Tadzio as a failed attempt at maintaining Winckelmann’s ideals of the aestheticism.  In keeping with the well-rounded argument that Johnson seeks to complete in order to fill the missing discussions of aestheticism’s power in Death In Venice, Johnson also compares Aschenbach to a very different German philosopher interested in aestheticism.  Using Gotthold Lessing’s analysis of Ancient Greek emotion and philosophy, Johnson lends another dimension to his interpretation of Aschenbach.  Lessing’s interpretation of the Ancient Greek is that Greek art did not adequately reflect the spirit of the Greek soul.  Johnson quotes Lessing, “The demands of beauty could not be reconciled with the pain in all its disfiguring violence, so it had to be reduced.  The scream had to be softened to a sigh, not because screaming betrays an ignoble soul, but because it distorts the features in a disgusting manner,” (Johnson 93).  The nobility of one’s character is not linked to a detachment from emotion for Lessing, indeed it is the expression of emotion in literature that often allows for the reader to find nobility in the character.  Johnson however, acknowledges that Aschenbach is not noble enough to fulfil these ideals, “By borrowing the rhetoric of these critics for his characterization of Tadzio, Aschenbach hopes to characterize himself in a flattering light,” (Johnson 94).

            The flaws in Johnson’s article are evident in his conclusion, as he continuously falls back on declaring the text ironic when it presents anything contrary to his theory.  Johnson writes, “Death in Venice would have had a more aesthetically fitting ending were it to terminate at the end of the third chapter… In keeping with the pervasive ironic mode, however, the plot of Death in Venice continues forward, forcing Aschenbach down from his pedestal,” (Johnson 95). Johnson’s portrayal of Death In Venice as one in which the attempt toward allegory is so important is undercut by the inevitability of addressing the decadence and decay. Johnson explains this, “that is not to say that Mann has failed, but rather to acknowledge that Aschenbach’s moral decline and physical decay trump the beautiful allegory he sought to create… the protagonist’s allegory is fatally undermined by the dual realities of human morality and mortality,” (Johnson 96).  This conclusion however, depends on the failed allegory to be an ironic construction of the author, rather than a purposeful critique of aestheticism.  Johnson’s arguments seem to suggest that the aesthetic allegory that Aschenbach sought failed due to Aschenbach’s character as a human.  If that were the case, any successful aesthetic relationship would exist only in allegory, never in reality or novels.  Mann’s work may have been deeply motivated by existing aesthetic philosophies, but Johnson’s identification of the desire of an allegory does not fully account for the implications of his own argument.  All humans suffer problems of morality and mortality, leaving the attempt of aestheticism something that is never attainable. Johnson does not follow his argument through to the fullest conclusion, but its development of the impact that philosophy from Ancient Greek thought to eighteenth-century German aestheticism has on Mann’s text is profound.

-- Charlotte Ference

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Dionysian versus Apollonian

       One manner in which to examine the deterioration of Gustav Von Aschenbach in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice is through the conflict of the Dionysian versus the Apollonian. Nietzsche first coined these terms in his work, The Birth of a Tragedy (Taylor).In Greek mythology, Dionysus is the God of the Earth and Apollo the God of the Sun. Therefore, the Apollonian elements are those such as form, reason, and self-control, where the Dionysian are much the opposite: destruction, chaos, emotion, irrational (Atassi). Nietzsche claimed that the conflict between emotion (Dionysus) and reason (Apollo) was the cause of the age of Greek Tragedy. He also believed that the ideal person needed to maintain a balance of the qualities embodied by the two Gods (Taylor).

       Using these concepts, it is easy to understand Aschenbach’s internal conflict in Death in Venice as a struggle between the Dionysian and Apollonian. In the beginning of the novella, we see how Aschenbach is an artist of Apollonian principles. He is disciplined, prides himself on self-control, and represses all irrational and emotional desires. Even though he has a desire to travel, Aschenbach is “tempered and corrected by the reason and restraint that he [has] exercised from his younger years on” (Mann 5).

       Additionally, Mann says of Aschenbach, “discipline [was] most important to him” (7). “[H]e never knew the idleness and carelessness of youth,” and it is evident that he has lived his whole life according to Apollonian principles. He has been able to suppress his desires and any inclination towards the Dionysian. But when he sees the man in the cemetery he is inspired to indulge his desire to travel, and takes a vacation to Venice.

       While in Venice, Aschenbach encounters a young boy named Tadzio and instead of balancing the Apollonian with the Dionysian, he falls completely and immorally into the Dionysian. Having suppressed his emotions and desires (the Dionysian side of himself), for so long, Aschenbach is unable to restrain himself once he lets go of his rigid Apollonian principles. Aschenbach sees in Tadzio, the epitome of beauty and youth, and idolizes the young boy: “The boy was absolutely beautiful. His face, pale and of a graceful reserve, surrounded by honey-colored curls, with its straight nose, lovely lips, earnest expression, sweet and godly, all recalled Greek statues of the noblest era…” (Mann 19).

       Tadzio becomes the vehicle for Aschenbach’s Dionysian desires to become free, but as this occurs, Aschenbach lets go of his Apollonian side completely. He no longer has any self-control or discipline, and because of this he deteriorates into immorality. Aschenbach stalks Tadzio, following him around Venice, and even when he hear that there is a cholera outbreak in the city, he risks his own life and the lives of Tadzio and his family, by keeping the information a secret. He considers telling the family, the reasonable action to take, but he can’t: “But he immediately felt he did not really want to take that step. It would lead him back, give his soul back to himself; but when one is frantic, the last thing one desires is to be oneself again” (Mann 47).

      Instead of combining the qualities of the two Gods, as Nietzsche suggested was necessary in a person, Aschenbach jumps from one extreme to the other. He begins firmly rooted in the world of the Apollonian. Suppressing his desires and sensual nature, even in his art, when he finally gives in to the Dionysian side of emotion and irrationality, he is unable to control himself at all. He turns a young boy into an idealized image of beauty and perfection. In doing so, Aschenbach becomes so obsessed with the boy and his desires and emotions overtake him. His inability to combine the Apollonian and the Dionysian causes his moral deterioration, and eventually death at the hands of the cholera epidemic.

      Passion can be confusing and degrading, but in Death in Venice we see what happens when a person tries to eliminate passion from his life. It is a human example of the law of physics that states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Aschenbach ís life up to his meeting with Tadzio has been extremely Apollonian; therefore his swing to the Dionysian will be equally extreme. (12)

-- Randa Kriss

Works Cited

Larner, James M., "Benjamin Britten and Luchino Visconti: Iterations of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice" (2006). Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations. Paper 3272.

Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice. Trans. Martin C. Doege. N.p.: n.p., 1912. Internet Archive. Web. 10   Dec. 2014. <https://archive.org/details/DeathInVenice>.

Mejcher-Atassi, Sonja, Dr. "Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice." 18 Nov. 2008. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. <http://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/cvsp/Documents/Thomas%20Mann.pdf>.

Taylor, Nancy A. "Apollonian vs. Dionysian Lecture." "Apollonian Vs. Dionysian" Online Discussion Outline. California State University Northridge, n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. <http://www.csun.edu/nancytaylor/ad.html>.