Discuss Thomas Manns major thematic concerns in Death in venice free essay sample

Death in Venice (1912) is a novella by Thomas Mann. It is the story of Gustave von Aschenbach, a successful German writer, who has lived a life of personal discipline and dedication to his art. He is a renowned novelist, who has devoted intense effort toward having a successful career as a writer. He lives a solitary life. His wife is dead, his daughter is married. One day, Aschenbach takes a walk from his home in Munich to a park that leads to a cemetery. As he is waiting for a streetcar to take him back home, he becomes aware of a tall stranger who is watching him from the chapel in the cemetery. The stranger seems to be staring at him, and has an expression of hostility. Aschenbach feels a desire to leave the cold spring climate of Munich, and to travel to the warmer climate of the south. He takes a train to Trieste, where he stays for only a day, and then continues his journey. He travels to an island resort in the Adriatic, where he stays for ten days, before leaving on a ship for Venice. On the ship, the passengers include a group of young clerks, among whom is an old man wearing a wig and false teeth, who is dressed in the clothes of a dandy. The old man is making a ridiculous and ghastly attempt to appear as a younger man. As the ship arrives in Venice, the young-old man says a drunken farewell to Aschenbach, who ignores him. Aschenbach boards a gondola, but discovers that the gondolier is taking him out to sea, instead of toward the city. The gondolier, in fact, resembles the stranger at the cemetery in Munich, and the gondola resembles a black coffin, and thus the voyage in the gondola becomes symbolic of the journey of life toward death. The gondolier explains to Aschenbach that a vaporetto will not carry luggage from the steamboat landing, so the gondolier instead takes him to another landing. Aschenbach’s luggage is unloaded from the gondola at the landing, but the gondolier leaves suddenly, because he does not have a license, and does not want to be arrested. Aschenbach arrives at the Hotel des Bains, which has a terrace facing the sea. He takes a walk along the promenade near the shore. At the hotel, he encounters a Polish family, including a mother, her three daughters, and son. Her son is a beautiful, long-haired boy, who is about fourteen years old. Aschenbach is attracted to the boy, whom he sees as an ideal of perfect beauty. Aschenbach discovers that the boy’s name is Tadzio. Aschenbach is fascinated by Tadzio. He continues to observe him. They do not exchange any words. But Aschenbach’s attraction to the boy soon becomes a hopeless passion. Aschenbach’s admiration for Tadzio, whom he sees as an example of artistic beauty, becomes a consuming desire, a hidden longing. Aschenbach, the consummate artist, is overwhelmed by his attraction to the fourteen-year-old boy, and cannot transform his admiration for Tadzio into a motivation to produce art. For Aschenbach, beauty means form and discipline, but his attraction to Tadzio makes him feel the urge to surrender to the uncontrolled, unreasoning impulses of sensual desire. His attraction to Tadzio becomes a paralyzing obsession which propels Aschenbach toward his own doom. Aschenbach follows and watches Tadzio, without speaking to him. Although Aschenbach learns that there is a cholera epidemic in Venice, he finds himself unable to leave the city, because he is obsessed by his longing for Tadzio. Aschenbach attempts to recover his own youth, by allowing a barber to dye his hair, not realizing that this makes him similar to the young-old man whom he had found to be so ridiculous on the ship to Venice. One day, Aschenbach follows Tadzio’s family through the city. Aschenbach is hungry and thirsty afterward, and eats some overripe strawberries at a fruit shop. A few days later, he becomes ill and dies, after he sits on a chair at the beach, watching Tadzio walk to the sea. Themes of Death in Venice include the conflicts between life and death, youth and aging, growth and decay. Aschenbach portrays the conflict between self-discipline and self-indulgence, restraint and spontaneity, morality and immorality, reason and emotion. Mann examines the conflict between the impulses for order or disorder, form or chaos, rationality or irrationality, and shows how the interaction of these impulses may be important to the personality of the artist. He also shows how important it may be for these contradictory impulses to be reconciled. Mann is influenced by Nietzsche’s distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian impulses in art. The Apollonian impulse is toward order, form, rationality, and control. The Dionysian impulse is toward disorder, irrationality, spontaneity, and emotional intensity. Thus, works of art may be produced by the interaction or conflict between these Apollonian and Dionsyian impulses. For Aschenbach, Tadzio is an ideal of artistic beauty, representing an aesthetic concept of creative form. When Aschenbach, at the end of the novella, sees Tadzio walking on the shore, he sees the contrast between Tadzio’s form and the formless background of the sea. Aschenbach, as he nears death, is able to accept the conflicting aspects of form and formlessness, of order and chaos, as ‘an immensity of richest expectation,’ a vast realm of creative possibility. Death in Venice March 10, 2011 by Professor Rollmops This is an essay written for my Masters in Creative Writing, c. 2005. It is not particularly well researched, but seems relevant and eloquent enough to warrant posting. Death in Venice Death in Venice is a brief, yet complex novel which ought really to be called a novella. [1] Within its eighty-odd pages, Thomas Mann combines psychology, myth and eroticism with questions of the nature and role of the artist and the value of art. It is a metaphorical and allegorical novel which deals with themes common to German Romanticism, namely the proximity of love and death. That all this takes place within the context of a simple and linear story about an ageing writer’s homoerotic obsession with a fourteen year-old Polish boy in Venice makes it all the more remarkable. Two of the major themes I wish to touch on in this discussion are those of Mann’s understanding of and concern with the role of the artist, and the manner in which he has made use of personal experience in his work. I will also examine the way in which this novella developed from its initial conception as a rather different story altogether. Thomas Mann’s early work focused almost entirely on the problem of art and the role of the artist. Mann was conflicted between immense distrust of art as a â€Å"decadent evasion† and the elevation of art as â€Å"a source and medium of the interpretative critique of life. †[2] His thinking was to a great degree informed by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, yet he was certainly not as strictly Nietzschean as many of his contemporaries. In his 1903 work, Tonio Kroger, Mann explored the impact of a devotion to art and a bohemian lifestyle on the ability to live a normal life and retain a normal range of emotions. The character of Tonio Kroger â€Å"suffers from the curse of being the ‘Literat’, the writer who stands fastidiously apart from experience precisely because he has seen through it all. His critical, knowing, sceptical stance conflicts with his craving for ordinary, unproblematic living. †[3] In a sense Mann established a sort of artistic manifesto through the character of Tonio who concludes that his art must be â€Å"an art in which formal control does not become bloodless schematism, but is, rather, able to achieve a lyrical – almost ballad-like – intensity and simplicity; an art which combines a precise sense of mood, of place with passages of reflection and discursive discussion; an art which is both affectionate yet critical, both immediate yet detached, sustained by a creative eros that has the capacity for formal control, for argument in and through the aesthetic structure. †[4] Though Tonio Kroger predates Death in Venice by almost ten years, many of the conclusions reached in its composition inform the structure and purpose of his later work. In Death in Venice, Mann once again displays his focus on questions about the nature of the artist and his art. After introducing his character of Gustave von Aschenbach and providing the inspiration behind his trip to Venice, Mann seems impatient to unload as much character detail as possible. He outlines Aschenbach’s career as a writer with both overt and covert cynicism which pinpoints the ironies inherent in his gradual transition from energetic bohemian to clockwork establishment figure. This dense and often turgid biography acts as a sort of premise to a novella that in many ways constitutes a narrative critique of art and artists and the nature of beauty, to name two of its principal themes. Thomas Mann makes this plain early on in the following passage: The new type of hero favoured by Aschenbach, and recurring many times in his works, had early been analysed by a shrewd critic: ‘The conception of an intellectual and virginal manliness, which clenches its teeth and stands in modest defiance of the swords and spears that pierce its side. ’ That was beautiful, it was spirituel, it was exact, despite the suggestion of too great passivity it held. Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph; and the figure of Sebastian is the most beautiful symbol, if not of art as a whole, yet certainly of the art we speak of here. Within that world of Aschenbach’s creation were exhibited many phases of this theme: there was the aristocratic self-command that is eaten out within and for as long as it conceals its biologic decline from the eyes of the world†¦ [5] It is no accident that the first theme here mentioned should conform so closely to the tale that is to follow. Mann had long been intrigued by the concept of an older man who has given himself single-mindedly to high achievements, only to be seized, late in life, by love of an inappropriate object who will prove his downfall. †[6] Thomas Mann had never shied away from using his characters and the situations into which he placed them as a forum for self-analysis. As far as he was concerned, â€Å"the personal was given its highest value when converted to literature. †[7] This was made nowhere more plain than in his brother, Heinrich’s, play about their sister, Carla’s suicide. Thomas Mann championed the play and ensured it got produced and he and his brother caused a scandal when they stood up and applauded vigorously on the opening night. Mann was later to write: â€Å"The personal element is all. Raw material is only the personal. †[8] One of the most interesting aspects of Death in Venice is the degree to which it is based on real events. Within the context of this class, we have already to some degree addressed the question of how much of ourselves we might incorporate into our works; what elements of our personal experience might we deploy within the context of a piece of writing and how might we disguise or manipulate these. Death in Venice is an example both of great skill and great good fortune for almost the entire story derives from real events which are described in minute detail with a desire to be faithful to recollection. In his memoir entitled, Sketch of my Life, Mann wrote that: Nothing is invented in Death in Venice. The â€Å"pilgrim† at the North Cemetery, the dreary Pola boat, the grey-haired rake, the sinister gondolier, Tadzio and his family, the journey interrupted by a mistake about the luggage, the cholera, the upright clerk at the travel bureau, the rascally ballad singer, all that and anything else you like, they were all there. I had only to arrange them when they showed at once and in the oddest way their capacity as elements of composition. Perhaps it has to do with this: that as I worked on the story – as always it was a long-drawn-out job – I had at moments the clearest feelings of transcendence, a sovereign sense of being borne up such as I had never before experienced. [9] Mann had indeed travelled with his wife and brother to an Adriatic resort, only to find it dull and oppressive, and had then made the decision to move on to Venice. He bought a ticket as described, saw the old fop on the boat as they were setting out and, upon arrival in Venice, he and his family were then transported to the Lido by an unlicensed Gondolier who dropped them off and fled without paying after unloading their luggage. The Polish family were also present and are rendered as faithfully as possible. The accuracy of Mann’s descriptions were later attested in anecdotes and photographs provided by Count Wladyslaw Moes, upon whom Tadzio was based and who was tracked down by Mann’s daughter, Erica, in the 1960s. He also acknowledged that the tussle on the beach between Tadzio and Jaschiu had taken place in precisely the way described and even claimed to have been aware of a mysterious man who watched him continually during his stay. [10] Not only did Mann base the context and characters upon what he witnessed and encountered, but the character of Aschenbach was a combination of himself and Gustave Mahler, who was a close personal friend of Mann and who was, at the time of Mann’s holiday in Venice, on his death-bed. During his stay in Venice, Mann read regular newspaper reports concerning Mahler’s declining health and this seems to have inspired him to borrow Mahler’s age and appearance for the character of Aschenbach. [11] On the other hand, Aschenbach’s habits and profession are of an accurate autobiographical nature; his three hours of writing every morning, his midday nap, his tea-time and afternoon walks which are taken precisely where Mann took his, his devoting his evenings to writing letters, and his special interest in prepubescent boys. [12] While very little of the context and events of the story might be invented, it certainly did not present itself to Mann as a whole already plotted. The prevailing themes of art and beauty in Death in Venice were originally earmarked for a different sort of story altogether. What I originally wanted to deal with was not anything homoerotic at all. It was the story – seen grotesquely – of the aged Goethe and that little girl in Marienbad whom he was absolutely determined to marry, with the acquiescence of her social-climbing mother and despite the outraged horror of his own family, with the girl not wanting it at all – this story with its terribly comic, shameful, awesomely ridiculous situations, the embarrassing, touching, and grandiose story is one which I may someday write after all. What was added to the amalgam at the time was a personal, lyrical travel experience that determined me to carry things to an extreme by introducing the motif of â€Å"forbidden† love. [13] Mann’s great achievement with Death in Venice was to find such strong, if simple, narrative strain within an otherwise non-narrative sequence of events from the basis of a desire to examine a theme. One of the paradoxes of Mann’s style in Death in Venice lies in the fact that despite its thorough realism, which derives to a very great degree from his detailed description of personal experiences, the story allows myth and legend to have a very palpable existence. In every regard, Death in Venice is a â€Å"highly stylised composition characterised by a tense equilibrium of realism and idealisation. †[14] Rich in metaphor, myth and psychology; its very title is unequivocal in establishing the teleological nature of the story. Nowhere is the palpability of mythical elements more strongly realised than in the figure of the stranger, through whose various manifestations Aschenbach is guided inexorably to his fate. The stranger takes the form of the traveller at the cemetery, the goatee’d captain of the ship from Pola, the Gondolier and finally the musician, all of whom share devilish qualities in their appearance or assume a devilish quality through their actions and context. [15] The stranger at the cemetery first appears â€Å"standing in the portico, above the two apocalyptic beasts. †[16] The ship’s captain makes the simple act of purchasing a ticket take on the trappings of a magic show through his flourishes. He made some scrawls on the paper, strewed bluish sand on it out of a box, thereafter letting the sand run off into an earthen vessel, folded the paper with bony yellow fingers, and wrote on the outside†¦ †¦ His copious gestures and empty phrases gave the odd impression that he feared the traveller might alter his mind. [17] The process becomes more akin to the signing of a devil’s contract and once again, Aschenbach is being drawn towards his fate. When the Gondolier rows him across to the Lido, it is as though he is being taken across the Styx by Charon in a coffin. Finally he encounters the musician who reeks of death and who further acts to ensure that Aschenbach is not inclined to leave Venice by maintaining the deception regarding the outbreak of cholera. [18] Metaphor and suggestion are continually present. The graveyard at the very beginning has a chapel in the Byzantine style – uncommon and therefore distinct in Bavaria – and surely acting as a metaphor for Venice, with its Byzantine cathedral in San Marco, thus creating another link between Venice and death. [19] Aschenbach’s initial vision of faraway places, a vision of a â€Å"tropical marshland beneath a reeking sky, steaming, monstrous rank – a kind of primeval wilderness-world of islands, morasses and alluvial channels,† describes both the point of origin of the Cholera, and the unpleasant aspect which Venice assumes. [20] Indeed the cholera is merely the embodiment of a metaphysical process taking place within Aschenbach. Nothing is coincidental about the writing in this work, just as the chair in the gondola is â€Å"coffin black,† just as the foppish man with the dyed moustache and goatee, with the wig and rouge heralds the fate awaiting Aschenbach. In Death in Venice Mann uses contrast and counterpoint, combining modernity myth, realism and fantasy to make an otherwise minimalist and linear plot so engaging. [21] Metaphorically the story is that of the â€Å"tragedy of the creative artist whose destiny is to be betrayed by the values he has worshipped, to be summoned and destroyed by the vengeful deities of Eros, Dionysis and Death. † At a realistic level it is more a sombre parable about the physical and moral degradation of an ageing artist who relaxes his discipline. [22] Death in Venice also functions as a series of philosophical reflections on the nature of beauty. The descriptions of Tadzio are variations on a sort of formulaic theme – that of him being representative of beauty’s very essence. At first Aschenbach’s obsession is portrayed as a realistic, psychological infatuation just as his fantasies are initially sublimated and artistic; likening Tadzio to works of art. As his fantasies become gradually more erotic, however, the language becomes increasingly baroque and mythological. As Aschenbach’s behaviour becomes increasingly inappropriate in his infatuated pursuit, culminating in his cosmetic attempt to look younger, so the language of his infatuation becomes more fantastical and ludicrous. By the end of the story the language has become as decadent and unrestrained as Aschenbach’s behaviour. [23] It is made clear at the start that Aschenbach is a writer whose style shows â€Å"an almost exaggerated sense of beauty, a lofty purity, symmetry and simplicity† and whose work shows a â€Å"stamp of the classical. † Apart from allowing Mann more easily to locate the discussion of beauty and art within the context of Platonic philosophy, it has been argued that through allusions to antiquity and its different moral standards, he was attempting to soften the blow of the prevailing theme of homosexuality. [24] Tadzio, is initially like one of the many youths for whom the Olympian gods â€Å"conceived a fondness† being likened to Ganymede, Hyacinthus, and eventually Eros and Hermes. He is paradoxically the inspiration and challenge to the artist’s creative urge and its nemesis. He combines both Apollonian and Dionysian qualities, an inspiration to work and a lure to dissipation, stupor and the final disintegration of the body and mind. [25] In a work that closely explores the spirit and mentality of the artist, Tadzio embodies everything that threatens to undermine discipline and the sacrifices that are required to produce great work. With the exception of its rather ponderous beginning, Death in Venice is a masterful combination of fantasy and realism within a novella that at times reads like an essay or philosophical tract. It is a very deliberate work by a writer who felt that art ought to have a purpose even if it was to undermine itself by debunking myths about its necessity and usefulness. What makes Death in Venice so remarkable is that even with all of this contrivance and artifice, it moves forward with such a meticulously sustained level of psychological realism that its mythical and metaphorical trappings seem rather ideally coincidental more so than they do artificially contrived. Mann achieves this through intensive detail derived from recent and fresh personal experiences and through exploration of the extremities of his own psychological predilections. Keeping the degree of autobiographical material in mind, it is tempting to conclude that Mann has achieved a daring and self-effacing exploration of his innermost feelings within the context of a speculative projection of one of his possible futures. On the other hand it could equally be said that Mann merely used elements of himself to give more truth to a scathing caricature of the German literary establishment. Either way, Death in Venice is an imaginative and intense piece of writing which raises important questions about the nature of beauty and the nature of the artist, and whilst it provides no clear answers, it offers very telling insights. Bibliography