Although hauntingly-written (I had to follow along with an English translation side-by-side to insure I understood it all) with many devices that seemed almost cinematic such as the recurrent red-headed man, harbinger of death and aging in every case, I simply could not overcome my aversion to the idea of a middle-aged man (who in the early 20th century would have been closer to death than a similarly-aged European today) so attracted to a boy (14 in the story, but the story is based on an actual crush the author developed on a 12-year-old while visiting Venice) that he prolongs his stay.
I found little to like in the protagonist except for the acclaim he had won through his literary works, something that predated the events in the story. He was traveling alone without companions or family and this did not seem to bother him. The way he could refer to a boy with whom he exchanged not a word his "lover" was weird at many levels. Today we would condemn the protagonists as a pedophile if not a stalker. There is something unhealthy about this level of intrusive fantasy, even if he did not act on it, which would have been even more unhealthy and frankly dangerous. There was little all that interesting about the protagonist; we know he is bright and writes works he and a circle of literati are convinced have societal value, but what is his essential struggle? What problem is he trying to solve and how does this make a difference in the world? I could not help contrasting my own trip to Venice a few years ago with his: I carried my own luggage, unpacked it, was never rude to those serving me as he was on several occasions, beginning with the gondolier, and would never have dreamed of sitting on critical public health information simply so I could prolong my sense of amusement (the protagonist knew that the city was in the grip of an epidemic and that he should leave, but made no effort to pass this information along to the probably-less-well-informed Polish family who for all we know also succumbed to it). I could not help being distracted by my knowledge of the horrors that would follow in the decades after this book was published by other Germans with haughty callousness to those living in countries they viewed as inferior, even if Mann and his works were targets of the Nazi regime.
The title helps create the obvious set-up, of death hanging like a sword of Damocles, of a protagonist who could move out from under the sword but chooses not to out of the adoration of a child he does not know and who his caretakers - alerted to the man's voyeurism - clearly do not want him to know. But as a reader, I felt another danger, the danger that the protagonist might do more than look, and the impact this could have on the child.
Mann of course was a fan of Sigmund Freud who was all the rage among avant-garde intellectuals at the time this book was written, so perhaps this inspired him to create a story based on forbidden sexual urges. To be fair, the protagonist intellectualizes his sexual attraction to the boy early on, comparing it to the worship of a beautiful deity, more reverence than lust, but the carnal dream toward the end of the book (another favorite device of Freud) made it clear that however he tried to frame it in terms of antiquity, what he felt toward the boy was as feverish and dangerous at some level as the epidemic sweeping Venice (which itself was kept by the authorities just below the level of tourism-destroying consciousness). This was clever and effective, but it also showed what a gray, dull, duty-driven life this poor protagonist led and how some healthier outlets for his sexuality might have led to quite a different ending.
I purposely delayed reading about the real life events that inspired the book until I had read it because I think a work of literature should stand on its own merits and as much as possible we should approach it without the distractions of What Really Happened. I really did not know whose death the title referred to (my money was on the boy, who I imagined from the repeated descriptions of him was dying from some illness, and that his family took him to Venice to enjoy his last days), so this added some suspense for me. Yes, there was ample foreshadowing of the protagonist's demise from his wooziness and malaise (which could have been written off to the heat) to his urge to close his eyes and let himself be seduced by his gondola rides (which, if you have seen them, resemble large, comfortably upholstered coffins), to his fatal choice to stay at multiple points when he could have left (and almost did). But I chose to ignore them in the sake of a good story. And that, at some level, Der Tod in Venedig was.
The language was evocative and haunting, the scene set so vividly that I could almost imagine being there in the 19th century (of course, with a city like Venice that changes little and that we approached by water, conjuring up these images is easy to do). I thought much about the novella during and after my reading of it. Perhaps in the end that is all that matters.
I found little to like in the protagonist except for the acclaim he had won through his literary works, something that predated the events in the story. He was traveling alone without companions or family and this did not seem to bother him. The way he could refer to a boy with whom he exchanged not a word his "lover" was weird at many levels. Today we would condemn the protagonists as a pedophile if not a stalker. There is something unhealthy about this level of intrusive fantasy, even if he did not act on it, which would have been even more unhealthy and frankly dangerous. There was little all that interesting about the protagonist; we know he is bright and writes works he and a circle of literati are convinced have societal value, but what is his essential struggle? What problem is he trying to solve and how does this make a difference in the world? I could not help contrasting my own trip to Venice a few years ago with his: I carried my own luggage, unpacked it, was never rude to those serving me as he was on several occasions, beginning with the gondolier, and would never have dreamed of sitting on critical public health information simply so I could prolong my sense of amusement (the protagonist knew that the city was in the grip of an epidemic and that he should leave, but made no effort to pass this information along to the probably-less-well-informed Polish family who for all we know also succumbed to it). I could not help being distracted by my knowledge of the horrors that would follow in the decades after this book was published by other Germans with haughty callousness to those living in countries they viewed as inferior, even if Mann and his works were targets of the Nazi regime.
The title helps create the obvious set-up, of death hanging like a sword of Damocles, of a protagonist who could move out from under the sword but chooses not to out of the adoration of a child he does not know and who his caretakers - alerted to the man's voyeurism - clearly do not want him to know. But as a reader, I felt another danger, the danger that the protagonist might do more than look, and the impact this could have on the child.
Mann of course was a fan of Sigmund Freud who was all the rage among avant-garde intellectuals at the time this book was written, so perhaps this inspired him to create a story based on forbidden sexual urges. To be fair, the protagonist intellectualizes his sexual attraction to the boy early on, comparing it to the worship of a beautiful deity, more reverence than lust, but the carnal dream toward the end of the book (another favorite device of Freud) made it clear that however he tried to frame it in terms of antiquity, what he felt toward the boy was as feverish and dangerous at some level as the epidemic sweeping Venice (which itself was kept by the authorities just below the level of tourism-destroying consciousness). This was clever and effective, but it also showed what a gray, dull, duty-driven life this poor protagonist led and how some healthier outlets for his sexuality might have led to quite a different ending.
I purposely delayed reading about the real life events that inspired the book until I had read it because I think a work of literature should stand on its own merits and as much as possible we should approach it without the distractions of What Really Happened. I really did not know whose death the title referred to (my money was on the boy, who I imagined from the repeated descriptions of him was dying from some illness, and that his family took him to Venice to enjoy his last days), so this added some suspense for me. Yes, there was ample foreshadowing of the protagonist's demise from his wooziness and malaise (which could have been written off to the heat) to his urge to close his eyes and let himself be seduced by his gondola rides (which, if you have seen them, resemble large, comfortably upholstered coffins), to his fatal choice to stay at multiple points when he could have left (and almost did). But I chose to ignore them in the sake of a good story. And that, at some level, Der Tod in Venedig was.
The language was evocative and haunting, the scene set so vividly that I could almost imagine being there in the 19th century (of course, with a city like Venice that changes little and that we approached by water, conjuring up these images is easy to do). I thought much about the novella during and after my reading of it. Perhaps in the end that is all that matters.
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