The Greatest Literature of All Time

First line:
On a spring afternoon of the year 19—, when our continent lay under such threatening weather for whole months, Gustav Aschenbach, or von Aschenbach as his name read officially after his fiftieth birthday, had left his apartment on the Prinzregenstrasse in Munich, and had gone for a long walk.

Last line:
And on the same day a respectfully shocked world received the news of his death.

Desire in fact

The argument over Death in Venice is always about whether the theme is homosexual desire. Which is too bad really.

When I first read Thomas Mann's short novel as a young person myself, I was adamant in defending it against the interpretation that it was about repressed sexual yearning. Yes, sexuality—or sensuality, rather—plays a role, but the story is really about a platonic ideal, I argued then. It's about the ideal of perfection that the writer Gustav Aschenbach has sought in his work, but which he finds just beyond his grasp, as represented by the beautiful boy Tadzio with whom he has no physical contact. On the beach at Venice, Tadzio becomes aware he is being watched by the older man and once—possibly more often (we don't know how much to trust the perceptions of Aschenbach the narrator)—he acknowledges it. He entices his admirer with a familiar smile, much as perfect Truth and Beauty tantalize while remaining beyond the artist's reach.

But this now seems pathetically naive. Read the description of Aschenbach's reaction to that smile. He finds himself a dark corner in which to hide and hyperventilate over the gift he has been given:

Strangely indignant and tender admonitions wrung themselves out of him: "You dare not smile like that! Listen, no one dare smile like that to another!" He threw himself down on a bench; in a frenzy he breathed the night smell of the vegetation. And leaning back, his arms loose, overwhelmed, with frequent chills running through him, he whispered the fixed formula of desire—impossible in this case, absurd, abject, ridiculous, and yet holy, even in this case venerable: "I love you!"

No way that's an artist contemplating his philosophical ideals.

It's love, or infatuation, with somebody for whom one fears one should not have such feelings. But there's more. It's shock that the object of one's emotions should be so brazen about it. It's supposed to be a publicly suppressed, secretly savoured, highly personal experience. Aschenbach is comfortable with keeping a discreet distance, with intellectualizing the attachment within his private thoughts. But the boy makes it clear that his beauty exists not as an ideal, as an abstraction, but as a flesh-and-blood fact. He cuts through (or at least Aschenbach senses it thus) all the middle-aged man's intellectual defences and, in effect, says narcissistically, "Here I am. Aren't I beautiful? Don't you want me?" It is this reality check that brings Aschenbach down. The brute, unfair, undemocratic, sensual existence of beauty. And of desire.

It's too bad the issue of homosexuality keeps arising in discussing this novella, as well as the movies based on it. The sex of the love object makes the infatuation all the more illicit, but it is not essential to the story. Rather it's Mann's choice because that is how he as an individual can envision the story, for whatever personal reasons may be locked in his own head. But if Tadzio were a coquettish young girl instead, I believe the the story would have proceeded almost identically. Almost the exact same themes and emotions could have been dealt with.

What would have been missed in that case would be the air of taboo that surrounds Death in Venice. The story would have been slightly less intriguing for a readership of a certain era. But some years from now, when I hope the gender of the love object is no longer an issue (although the age of the love object may still be), the themes of intellect and sensuality can be discussed without taint and we can see more clearly whether this is an enduring great work of art.

— Eric

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