This is addressed to the CS students: I would like you to have your own interpretation of Death in Venice, so please, while listening to the lecture , think about the following question:
1.
2.
Is Death in Venice about: The death of the repressed, restrained, cold, calculating and self-disciplined artist?
Or is it about: The death of the passionate, obsessed, infatuated, enamored and self-abandoned artist?

“……THE BEAUTY THAT BREAKS HEARTS.” Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, p.26
March 7, 2016

The actual experiences of Mann’s trip do not constitute the foundation of DEATH IN VENICE , written between 1911 and 1912. They are sources of the writer’s inspiration.
 I will focus on the Freudian perspective in the novella

 Major Themes: Art and beauty.
The artist’s fatal obsession with Beauty.
 Thomas Mann: DEATH IN VENICE is a story about the dignity of the artist.

Gustav Aschenbach is the main character in the novella, a distinguished artist and writer in his early fifties.

 He conforms to a pattern of self-discipline and self conquest which he inherits from his father, cerebral, dedicates long hours to his work, labors at the edge of exhaustion…  “His whole career had been one conscious and overweening ascent to honor…”

 His genius is cold and calculated to win the admiration of the public and the nation, “Too busy with tasks imposed upon him by his own ego and the European soul, too laden with the care and duty to create…”  In his thirty –fifth year, an observer says “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 open hand hang relaxed from the back of his chair.”

 The closed fist symbolizes the enslaved and repressed emotions of Aschenbach…  His art is war, he is the soldier/artist who fulfills all the requirements of civilization-- order, self-command, self conquest, repression and mastery of instincts but the price the repressed artist pays is his loss of happiness that Freud discusses in chapter 8 of CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS.

 He decides to go on a journey, from North to South, from Munich to Venice. “Has not been written that the sun beguiles our attention from things of the intellect to fix it on things of the sense? The sun, they say, dazzles; so bewitching reason and memory that the soul for very pleasure forgets its actual state.”

VENICE: THE VICTORIOUS ID, THE VANQUISHED EGO AND SUPER-EGO INTOXICATED EMOTIONS

 Aschenbach is “Solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of the gregarious man. ….Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous-to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”  These few lines are a prediction of the artist’s proneness to disproportionate feelings, paying homage to beauty.

 He notices the perfect and “god-like beauty” of Tadzio who is as “Beautiful as a tender young god”. The face of Tadzio “Recalled the noblest moment of Greek sculpture-pale with sweet reserve…the brow and nose descending in one line, the winning mouth, the expression of pure and godlike serenity. He has never seen in art or in nature such perfection of form and personal charm.”

 The contemplation of the beauty of the boy is aesthetic in nature, compared to the artist’s ravishment over a masterpiece, a masterpiece “From nature’s own hand.”  The admiration of Ashenbach is unbounded “The delight of his eye unending.”

 “His beauty is lovelier than words could say.”

 Now daily Ashenbach waits for Tadzio, his day is over when Tadzio departs from his sight. He follows the boy in every move, in the piazza, to the Sunday mass at San Marco’s church; fully aware that his behavior will seem ridiculous to whoever is watching. Sometimes their glances meet, “There can be no relation more strange, more critical, than that between two beings who know each other only with their eyes, who meet daily, yes, even hourly…”

 The obsession with Tadzio signals the beginning of the downfall of Ashenbach, the collapse of the ego-(reality principle) and the super-ego.

 In the fourth week of his stay in Venice, the lover feels drunk, intoxicated, “Mind and heart were drunk with passion, his footsteps guided by the daemonic power whose pastime it is to trample on human reason and dignity.”

 One evening when Aschenbach did not expect to see the dear Tadzio, the lovely boy appears, he smiles at Aschenbach, “A speaking, winning, captivating smile, with slowly parting lips. With such a smile it might be that Narcissus bent over the mirroring pool, a smile profound, infatuated, lingering, as he put out his arms to the reflection of his own beauty...”

 “How dare you smile like that! No one is allowed to smile like that.”  Here the master, the distinguished writer, sits on a bench, his arm hanging down (notice the open fist in contrast to closed fist in Munich), he whispers his love and longing for Tadzio.

 “He told himself that what he saw was beauty’s very essence, form as divine thought, the single and pure perfection which resides in the mind, of which an image and likeness, rare and holy, was raised up for adoration.”  “For Beauty, my Phaedrus, beauty alone is lovely and visible at once…”.  Socrates adds that beauty is “The artist’s way, little Phaedrus, to the spirit.”

 Aschenbach falls under the spell of the destructive forces of the “death drive”, both directed outwards towards Tadzio and inwards towards himself.  He notices a peculiar, medicinal smell in the streets of Venice, the same smell that is associated with wounds, the smell of disinfectants. He finds out from the British travel bureau that the city in infected with Cholera.

 He refrains from warning the Polish family for fear of losing Tadzio, he even imagines that death and fear will clear the island and leave him alone with the lovely Tadzio “The city’s evil secret mingled with the one in the depths of his heart.”  Instead of obeying the dictates of the reality principle, he decides to stay close to the boy, gives in to the Id which dismantles his ego. He realizes he cannot exist were Tadzio to pass from his sight.

 He leans against the door of his beloved’s chamber in a state of utter drunkenness, powerless, unable to tear himself away, unable to see the danger of being seen in “so mad an attitude.”  “And he gave a melancholy smile. What would they have said?”  He feels he shares the city’s guilt, makes no attempt to flee the city.

Ashenbach Opposition between Munich and Venice.
MUNICH VENICE EGO-SUPER EGO ENSLAVED EMOTIONS ASCENT TO HONOR-DIGNITY PREOCCUPATION WITH EXCELLENCE ID INTOXICATED EMOTIONS SELF-DEGRADATION RECKLESSNESS ENNOBLED ARTIST ENAMORED LOVER MODEL: FREDRICK OF PRUSSIA MODEL: DIVINE BEAUTY OF TADZIO PAYING HOMAGE TO THE INTLLECT REASON SELF-CONQUEST, RENOUNCES SYMPATHY WITH THE ABYSS BOWING DOWN AND PAYING HOMAGE TO BEAUTY SELF ABANDONMENT, SINKS INTO THE ABYSS

ASHENBACH PASSION COMPARED TO CRIME REFRAINS FROM WARNING THE POLISH FAMILY VENICE CRIMINALITY OF THE AUTHORITIES THE AUTHORITIES REFRAIN FROM WARNING THE TOURISTS FEAR OF LOSING TADZIO FEAR OF BEING OUT OF POCKET HIDDEN SECRET DIVULGED SECRET CONCEALS OLD AGE WITH COSMETICS CONCEALS THE INFECTION OF THE CITY WITH SWEET SMELLING DISINFECTANTS SICKNESS, DEATH OF ASHENBACH DECAY AND DECADENCE

 Aschenbach sits down on the steps of a well leaning his head on the rim, sliding, sinking into the abyss “There he sat, the master, this was he who had found a way to reconcile art and honours…renounced bohemianism and all its works, all sympathy with the abyss…This was he whose renown had been officially recognized and his name ennobled, whose style was set for a model in the schools. There he sat.”

 And there he sat on the beach.  Tadzio smiles and beckons at him “and as often he rose to follow.”  Unable to rise, he collapses in his chair and dies. Unable to follow the beauty that breaks hearts.


“For in almost every artist nature is inborn a wanton and treacherous proneness to side with the beauty that breaks hearts..”