Session 10 Notes

Mann, Death in Venice

I. Aschenbach’s restlessness   A. The opening scene: Aschenbach is restless and is provoked by a challenging, exotic figure.   “Whether the man had emerged from the chapel’s inner sanctum through the bronze gate or mounted the steps unobtrusively from outside was uncertain. Without giving the matter much thought, Aschenbach inclined towards the first hypothesis. The man—of medium height, thin, beardless, and strikingly snub-nosed—was the red-haired type and had its milky, freckled pigmentation.” (Mann, Death in Venice, trans. M. H. Heim, New York: HarperCollins, 2004: 3-4)

Image courtesy of Osvaldo

“…for be it that he was grimacing, blinded by the setting sun, or that he had a permanent facial deformity, his lips seemed too short: they pulled all the way back, baring his long, white teeth to the gums.” (Mann 4-5)

Images of this figure return throughout the book. Examples.

“He was clearly not of Bavarian stock and, if nothing else, the broad, straight-brimmed bast hat covering his head lent him a distinctly foreign, exotic air. He did, however, have the customary knapsack strapped to his shoulders, [and] wore a yellowish belted suit…” (Mann 4)

The figure symbolizes death. Aschenbach is not obsessed with death as a topic, but the way he experiences the world has to do with death. Mann reveals this not by way of argument but through a set of images. 

B. Aschenbach seeks control of his restlessness through writing. He manages artistic passion through discipline. Venice is supposed to be an avenue for this control, but it ultimately will not succeed.

“He needed a change of scene, a bit of spontaneity, an idle existence, a foreign atmosphere, and an influx of new blood to make the summer bearable and productive. He would travel, then; good, he was satisfied. Not too far, not all the way to the tigers.” (Mann 10)

C. Death entices Aschenbach, it lets him be overwhelmed. He wants to give up his discipline, but he is also required to give up his dignity. His passion can’t be managed and he is driven all the way to the tigers.

A. Aschenbach believes he can enjoy his beloved without being destroyed. He wants to be inspired by Tadzio.

“The honey-colored hair fell gracefully in ringlets at the temples and the back of the neck, the sun glimmered in the down of the upper spine, the fine delineation of the ribs and symmetry of the chest stood out through the torso’s scanty cover, the armpits were still as smooth as a statue’s, the hollows of the knees glistened, and bluish veins made the body look translucent. What discipline, what precision of thought was conveyed by that tall, youthfully perfect physique! Yet the austere and pure will laboring in obscurity to bring the godlike statue to light—was it not known to him, familiar to him as an artist? Was it not at work in him when, chiseling with sober passion at the marble block of language, he released the slender form he had beheld in his mind and would present to the world as an effigy and mirror of spiritual beauty?” (Mann 81)

Beauty inspires Aschenbach to be more productive. It’s the artist’s dignity that can create something beautiful and lasting, and Aschenbach is confident he can transfigure fleshly beauty into spiritual, eternal beauty.

            The significance of marble and its ambiguity

  Plato’s Phaedrus as a model for integrating dignity and erotic intoxication

            B. Art fails to control beauty

“Beauty, Phaedrus, mark thou well, beauty and beauty alone is at once divine and visible; it is hence the path of the man of the senses, little Phaedrus, the path of the artist to the intellect. But dost thou believe, dear boy, that the man for whom the path to the intellect leads through the senses can ever find wisdom and the true dignity of man? Or dost thou rather believe (I leave it to thee to decide) that it is a perilously alluring path, indeed, a path of sin and delusion that must needs lead one astray? For surely thou knowest that we poets cannot follow the path of beauty lest Eros should join forces with us and take the lead; yes, though heroes we may be after our fashion and chaste warriors, we are as women, for passion is our exultation and our longing must ever be love—such is our bliss and our shame. Now dost thou see that we poets can be neither wise nor dignified? That we must needs go astray, ever be wanton and adventurers of the emotions? The magisterial guise of our style is all falsehood and folly….” (Mann 136-7)

Aschenbach realizes his discipline becomes destroyed: even art could not control beauty. He cannot transfigure raw erotic passion into artistic production. 

Poetry is no more open to intoxication than philosophy or rationalization is in Socrates’s first speech in the Phaedrus.

When Aschenbach opens himself to erotic love, he has to give up the image of his own dignity.

Is Aschenbach defeated by love or transposed into something greater?