Triumph of Disaster in Death in Venice

As Death in Venice begins, Gustav von Aschenbach, the distinguished author of Munich, goes for a stroll
on a May afternoon. While waiting for the train back home, he spots a man ahead of him, a man by whom
he is intrigued. Defiantly, even fiercely, the angular face of the man returns Aschenbach's gaze.
Aschenbach quickly turns away from the stranger, who soon disappears. Whether it was the intriguing
stranger or the warm temperature, he doesn't know; nevertheless, Aschenbach is clutched by a burning
desire to travel. A strict ascetic, Aschenbach never knew the sweet idleness that belonged to youth. In the
novel, an observer compliments Aschenbach by saying, " 'You see, Aschenbach has always lived like this
'--here the speaker closed the fingers of his left hand to a fist-- 'never like this '--and he let his hand hang
relaxed from the back of his chair." This particular day, however, shuddering at the thought of laboring
over his work for yet another summer, he obeys his primeval, exotic side, and resolves to take a brief
vacation. He leaves for Treiste, but after a sojourn of only ten days, he concludes he dislikes the area and
leaves for Venice on a small boat. On the boat, he notices a blatantly old man trying to recapture his
youth, and is disgusted by the gigolo. Hailing a gondolier, Aschenbach makes his way to the beautiful city
of Venice and promptly checks into a hotel.
Making himself comfortable in the drawing room, he takes time to examine his surroundings and the
people with whom he shall be vacationing. The party at the table next to him, he notices, is of Polish
descent, and his attention is quickly drawn by a youth, a strikingly handsome boy of fourteen. Pale and
long-haired, he reminds Aschenbach of a Greek statue. This, combined with exceptional personal charm,
forces Aschenbach to acknowledge he has never seen anything so perfect as the Polish boy, not in nature
nor in art.
The next morning, Aschenbach detects a corrupt smell issuing from the lagoons; repulsed and
disheartened by this site as well, he decides to depart. However, a misunderstanding concerning his
luggage, which was sent ahead of him, impels him to remain in Venice; when he returns indefinitely and
passes the beautiful boy, whose name he has learned to be Tadzio, he perceives that subconsciously his
leave of Venice had been difficult for the sake of the boy. Now, Aschenbach gives himself over completely
to contemplate "every line and pose" of Tadzio's exquisite body.
As the days go by, Aschenbach finds himself more and more attracted to the godlike youth. On one
occasion when Tadzio catches his admirer staring at him, he smiles at him in a friendly manner. Upon
seeing this, Aschenbach, elated by the gift lavished on him, flees joyfully into the darkness of the park.
Tormented as well as exhilarated, he mutters in a sacred manner, no matter how absurd, "I love you."
When Aschenbach concedes to his infatuation over Tadzio, the climax of "Death in Venice" occurs.
However dignified and disciplined Aschenbach once was, here it is apparent that his passion over Tadzio
has engulfed him in an emotional and sensual whirlpool that will cause his disintegration. He is no longer

just contemplating Tadzio's beauty as was his intent, but obsessing over him to the point of personal
degradation and crude sensuality. Now that he has admitted to himself his plight, neither standards nor
humility can restore him.
No longer satisfied with seeing his love only by chance, Aschenbach devotes himself to literally stalking
the Polish vacationers. Meanwhile, he receives some definitive information about the epidemic hitting
Venice. His suspicions of the increasing stench and disappearing vacationers were not mistaken; Asiatic
cholera, fatal in most cases, has invaded Venice. As the summer draws to a close, the city of Venice,
which burdened his health once before, begins to take a toll on him. However, he cannot bring himself to
leave Tadzio, his love for whom now revealing itself as sexual desire.
As described by Mann himself, the theme of this novel is the "fascination with the death idea." Recounting
the pathetic tale of a once morally resolute man losing command of himself over a disorderly desire, this
novel illustrates the triumph of disaster against the powers of discipline, and thus manifests Mann's thesis.
Although the chronicle firmly conveys his theme, Mann assures its transfer through the extent of his
writing arsenal.
Like all celebrated authors, Mann displays his abilities as a writer in this classic. By applying them so they
become imperative to the novel, Mann exploits his strengths well. One such adequacy in "Death in
Venice" is displayed when, on the ship, Aschenbach is disgusted by the old man trying to defy time
through a wig, false teeth, and rouge. Little did he know that he himself will soon come to resemble the
old man, and so Aschenbach's reaction to the man is actually ironical. However, this irony is meaningful:
by displaying Aschenbach's initial opinion on the old man's behavior, the fact that Aschenbach himself
behaves like that exemplifies to the reader Tadzio's control over him. Vivid imagery is also a proficiency of
"Death in Venice":
Now daily the naked god with cheeks aflame drove his four fire-breathing steeds through heaven's
spaces; and with him streamed the strong east wind that fluttered his yellow locks. A sheen, like white
satin, lay over all the idly rolling sea's expanse. The sand was burning hot. Awnings of rust-coloured
canvas were spanned before the bathing-huts, under the ether's quivering silver-blue; one spent the
morning hours within the small, sharp square of shadow they purveyed. But evening too was rarely lovely:
balsamic with the breath of flowers and shrubs from the near-by park, while overhead the constellations
circled in their spheres, and the murmuring of the night-girted sea swelled softly up and whispered to the
soul. Such nights as these contained the joyful promise of a sunlit morrow, brim-full of sweetly ordered
idleness, studded thick with countless precious possibilities.
Not only is this a perfect example of Mann's mastery of the English language, it is laden with complex
figurative speech, and thus an accurate representation of the book's style. Through the imagery paints
Mann an authentic picture of a truly breathtaking specimen of human, perhaps semi-divine, beauty;
otherwise, the reader would find it difficult to believe a man of such dignity and ethics falling woefully in

love. He says of Tadzio, "His face recalled the noblest moment of Greek sculpture--pale, with a sweet
reserve, with clustering honey-coloured ringlets, the brow and nose descending in one line, the winning
mouth, the expression of pure and godlike serenity." Understanding the necessity of showing but not
telling of Tadzio's beauty, Mann uses rich imagery in his descriptions of Tadzio, as well as throughout the
entire novel.
Yet, more than irony or imagery, "Death in Venice's" prowess, the point most deserving of deep analysis,
is its symbolism. From early in the novel, as early as the title itself, Mann centers his theme around death,
and so the crucial symbolism centers around death as well. While some of it is blatant, there are times
when the reader must at least be alert of or even consciously probe for symbolism. In either case, it is
important for the reader to be aware of Mann's endeavors early in the novel, or the point may be
altogether missed. The exotic stranger Aschenbach encounters in the opening is the first of many "tokens"
of death. Mann suggests this in his description of the stranger:
His chin was up, so that the Adam's apple looked very bald in the lean neck rising from the loose shirt;
and he stood there sharply peering up into space out of colourless, red-lashed eyes.... At any rate,
standing there as though at survey, the man had a bold and domineering, even a ruthless air, and his lips
completed the picture by seeming to curl back, either by reason of some deformity or else because he
grimaced, being blinded by the sun in his face; they laid bare the long, white, glistening teeth to the gums.
This passage almost implies that the man is a skeleton, or at least that he is ghostly, with the bared teeth
of a skull. The reader knows nothing about the stranger, is soon disappointed to learn nothing of him, and
yet the stranger has already served his purpose: he is the first envoy of death in the novel. Also, the fact
that the scene occurs in the vicinity of a cemetery is no coincidence.
Later on, when Aschenbach arrives in Venice, Mann introduces symbolism to death once more. Trying to
suppress his excitement of stepping into a Venetian gondola, Aschenbach describes the comfortable boat
as "[that] singular conveyance, come down unchanged from ballad times, black as nothing else on earth
except a coffin...." Mann refers to death again when he says of the gondola, "...what pictures it calls up of
lawless, silent adventures in the plashing night; or even more, what visions of death itself, the bier and
solemn rites and last soundless voyage!" Once this symbolism is discerned, the reader quickly realizes
the gondolier, the "despotic boatman," embodies none other than Charon, ferryman of the Styx in Hades!
Thus far in the novel, symbolism only emphasizes the importance of death. Later, through allegory,
symbolism begins to denote the vital ideas of "Death in Venice". By the end, Tadzio, who until then has
essentially been a one-dimensional figure, takes on integral significance and is interpreted as a symbol.
As Hermes, messenger of the gods, Tadzio is the one who proclaims Aschenbach's imminent death. With
a smile like a kiss of death, he summons the artist to his destruction. On a more prominent level, Tadzio's
function in the entire novel is to emancipate Aschenbach's soul from the grapple of impure matter. Tadzio,
whose beauty is the reflection of the world of the spirit, instead of the reason for Aschenbach's death,

alters and becomes the means of Aschenbach's soul's liberation. This last endeavor furnishes the most
profound and most stimulating significance of the story's symbolism. In the end, all the representation of
death presented as presages coalesces with the decease of Aschenbach, the event which the reader has
anticipated since deducing the first harbinger.
Studying Mann's personal experiences reveal from where he derives his attitude toward death. Certainly,
he is not unfamiliar to its lurid face; at an early age, both of his sisters committed suicide. When he was
only seventeen, his father passed away due to blood poisoning. The raw material of "Death in Venice"
came from his vacation in the Lido, a beach in Venice. Oddly enough, this trip was taken in May of 1911,
the same month ( and possibly year) when Aschenbach's story begins.
In Mann's own life, the novel is greatly emblematic in that much of Aschenbach is autobiographical. Just
like Aschenbach, Mann enjoyed status early in life; feeble health was a shared complication; and both
exercised self-imposed order (Mann, too, conducted all his literary work during first light). The
determination to sustain and survive existed in the spirit of both artists. Yet "Death in Venice" is by no
certain means a narrowly autobiographical narrative. Nevertheless, much that is the artist Aschenbach is
part of the artist Mann, and thus can be interpreted as a faint symbol of Mann. Perhaps Aschenbach is an
extreme example of the imperfections Mann combated during his own lifetime; if this indeed is the case,
then Aschenbach is not only a token of the frailty of Mann, but an emblem of the fallacies plaguing us all.

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"The Triumph of Disaster in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice." 123HelpMe.com. 22 Apr 2015
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