Mann: Death in Venice

I was waiting to review this one because, simply put, I didn't have much of a reaction to this novella. This story about a man who decides to head to Venice for inspiration and who finds himself enamored with a little boy at his hotel while a disease starts to spread through the town, just didn't really impress me. I formed no real opinion on the main character, not even to his pedophilic tendencies nor did I really attach to Mann's writing.

There were two other stories included in my book. Tristan and Le chemin du cimetiere (Path to the Cemetery). Tristan was the more interesting of the three stories, I found, based on two patients in a sanitorium who form a relationship despite one patient being married.

Path to the Cemetery tells of a drunk, older man who is run over by a kid on his bicycle while on path. As he falls down and starts to shout about the indecency of the youth, a crowd forms around him as Mann makes his social commentary on life.

Overall, I preferred the two non-featured stories of the book rather than the more famous Death in Venice. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll remember anything about all three of these stories in a few years time.

That's one I still have to read -- alas, it's the only story in my copy.

I find Thomas Mann a bit stiff and cerebral. To discover the beauty of his works requires patience, a degree of erudition or willingness to read more about it, and probably also life experience. For instance, i think it would be hard to appreciate Der Tod in Venedig without having had the experience of the touch of beauty felt for fairly random people around oneself, combined with the recognition that love makes blind, or even distorts reality completely.

Although I like Visconti's film Death in Venice a lot, I hate the way it interacts with my reading and appreciation of the novella.

I think, like some other classics, Der Tod in Venedig is a book to re-read, probably a few times over a life time.

I just read this as part of a collection that I bought recently, which also included "Tristan." I wasn't overly taken with it, or with the stories in general, although I love Mann's longer works.

First, I don't think the use of the term "pedophile" in terms of von Aschenbach is accurate. I know that it's currently used in the United States for virtually all sexual desire by adults for people under the legal age of consent. However, technically it refers to adults who have persistent sexual feelings for per-pubescent children. The term "ephebophile" is used for adults who are attracted to pubescent and post-pubescent people who are legally under the age of consent. The difference is that, while a pre-pubescent young person cannot be interested in sex in the same way as an adult, a pubescent or post-pubescent young person may indeed be interested in sexual relations, but is often unschooled in the practices of sex among adults. So while both groups can in exploited, the older young person may actually be interested in participating, though not in being exploited.

Mann makes clear the Tadzio is definitely pubescent and possibly interested in von Aschenbach (though that comes from von Aschenbach's pov and is untrustworthy). Clearly Mann doesn't want us to think of von Aschenbach as preying on a happy, blissful child, so much as attracted to a person who is just coming to an awareness of his sexuality, which, quite frankly, so is von Aschenbach.

I think the mixed metaphors of emerging sexuality with an epidemic is what makes the piece important, though I'm with rebeccanyc -- it's much too claustrophobic for me, and I've had no desire to re-read it in the forty years since I first read it, even after encountering foggy canals and the winding narrow streets in Venice.

I have to say I was fully expecting von Aschenbach to die from the epidemic instead of how he died. I do think I missed a lot, but somehow the idea of sexual feelings and epidemics being associated not only with each other but with the south (as opposed to orderly Germany) was disturbing. And I wouldn't call him a pedophile either -- the novella to my mind is about his repressed feelings emerging, but not being acted on except in his creepy stalking of Tadzio.

5, aulsmith -
Yes, the word pedophile isn't the word I wanted to use since I know there are more appropriate terms available, but those words just never want to stick in my brain! So yes, what you said is much more accurate than what I was able to write, thank you.

7: I had to look it up myself.