Quotes · Quote card
Quotation from Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
“nearly everything great which comes into being does so in spite of something--in spite of sorrow or suffering, poverty, destitution, physical weakness, depravity, passion, or a thousand other handicaps.”
Death in Venice, Chapter II, trans. Kenneth Burke (1925)
The narrator states the formula of Aschenbach's life and art, which the rest of the story will test.
Citation: "nearly everything great which comes into being does so in spite of something--in spite of sorrow or suffering, poverty, destitution, physical weakness, depravity, passion, or a thousand other handicaps." — Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, Chapter II, trans. Kenneth Burke (1925). (id mann-death-in-venice-q1)
Portrait: Thomas Mann 1929, Nobel Foundation, Public domain.
