Death in Venice

Summary

Death in Venice follows the last weeks of Gustav von Aschenbach, a celebrated German writer in his fifties, ennobled on his fiftieth birthday, whose prose epic on Frederick the Great and other works have made him a model of disciplined art. Thomas Mann published the novella in 1912, and it is told in five chapters by a narrator who comments on Aschenbach with a mixture of sympathy and irony. Chapter I opens in Munich on a spring afternoon. Overworked and unable to rest, Aschenbach walks to the Northern Cemetery, where a red-haired stranger with a pilgrim's air stares at him from the steps of a mortuary chapel. Aschenbach is seized by a vision of a tropical swamp with a crouching tiger and decides to travel. Chapter II reviews his life: a widower with one married daughter, a man who rises early to work, whose motto is endurance, and whose heroes, like Saint Sebastian, keep their composure while wounded. In Chapter III he goes first to an island in the Adriatic, dislikes it, and sails for Venice. On board an old man with dyed hair and false teeth, painted to look young, carouses with a group of clerks. An unlicensed gondolier rows Aschenbach to the Lido against his wishes and vanishes without being paid. At the hotel Aschenbach notices a Polish family, three plainly dressed girls, their governess, and a long-haired boy of about fourteen, whose beauty strikes him as that of Greek sculpture. The sirocco makes him unwell, and he decides to leave, but when his trunk is sent on the wrong train he returns to the hotel with secret joy. In Chapter IV, under bright summer skies, Aschenbach watches the boy, whose name he learns is Tadzio, on the beach each day. He thinks of Socrates teaching Phaedrus about beauty, and he writes a short essay in the boy's presence. When Tadzio smiles at him, he flees into the dark garden and whispers a confession of love. Chapter V brings the epidemic. Aschenbach smells disinfectant, reads German newspapers hinting at sickness, and is finally told by an English clerk at a travel bureau that Asiatic cholera has reached Venice and that the authorities are concealing it. He resolves to warn Tadzio's mother and does not. He follows the family through the city, has his hair dyed and his face rouged by the hotel barber, and suffers a dream of a Dionysian rite in which he joins the worshippers of a foreign god. Exhausted, he eats overripe strawberries in a deserted square and dozes into a reverie on Phaedrus, beauty and the abyss. On the day the family is to depart, he watches Tadzio walk out on a sandbar, seems to see the boy beckon toward the sea, and dies in his beach chair. The library text is Kenneth Burke's translation, first printed in The Dial in 1924 and issued as a book in 1925. There are no sexual acts; the subject is a disciplined man's infatuation and collapse.

Plot or Argument

• Chapter I: the stranger at the cemetery

  Aschenbach, exhausted by work in Munich, sees a red-haired foreign-looking traveller at the Northern Cemetery and is overtaken by a vision of a tropical swamp and a tiger. He decides that a journey would refresh him.

• Chapter II: the life and work of Aschenbach

  The narrator reviews Aschenbach's Silesian background, early fame, ennoblement, widowhood and working method. His art is built on endurance in spite of weakness, and his heroes resemble Saint Sebastian, composed amid the arrows.

• Chapter III: the voyage, the gondolier and the boy

  After a disappointing stop on an Adriatic island, Aschenbach sails to Venice, meets the painted old man on the ship, and is rowed to the Lido by a sinister gondolier. At the hotel he first sees Tadzio. He tries to leave because of the sirocco, but the misrouted trunk gives him an excuse to return.

• Chapter IV: the beach and the Phaedrus

  Days on the beach become a contemplation of Tadzio, framed by Aschenbach's memories of Plato's Phaedrus on beauty as the visible form of the spiritual. He writes a short essay in the boy's presence; at the end of the chapter Tadzio's smile drives him to whisper that he loves him.

• Chapter V: cholera and concealment

  Disinfectant, rumours and a street singer's evasions lead Aschenbach to the English clerk who tells the truth: Asiatic cholera has spread to Venice and is being hidden by the authorities. Aschenbach keeps the secret and does not warn the Polish family.

• Chapter V: the dream and the barber

  A dream of a Dionysian rite overwhelms his resistance. He follows Tadzio's family through the infected city, lets the barber dye his hair and paint his face, and eats overripe strawberries before a half-dreamed speech to Phaedrus on the artist's road through the senses toward the abyss.

• Chapter V: death on the beach

  On the family's last day, Tadzio, after a rough wrestling match with his friend Jaschu, walks out alone on a sandbar and looks back toward the shore. Aschenbach seems to see him beckon, rises in spirit to follow, and is found dead in his chair.

Characters

• Gustav von Aschenbach, protagonist

  Renowned German writer in his fifties whose discipline gives way to infatuation and death in Venice.

• Tadzio, object of fascination

  Polish boy of about fourteen staying at the Lido hotel with his family; he never speaks to Aschenbach.

• Jaschu, minor character

  Tadzio's dark-haired friend and playmate on the beach, who wrestles him roughly in the final scene.

• The stranger at the cemetery, messenger figure

  Red-haired traveller whose stare in Munich awakens Aschenbach's longing to travel.

• The painted old man, foreshadowing figure

  Elderly passenger with dyed hair, rouge and false teeth who imitates youth on the ship to Venice.

• The gondolier, minor character

  Unlicensed oarsman who takes Aschenbach to the Lido against his wishes and disappears unpaid.

• The street singer, minor character

  Coarse performer at the hotel who smells of carbolic and evades questions about the sickness.

• The English clerk, truth-teller

  Young employee at a British travel bureau who tells Aschenbach that cholera has reached Venice.

• The hotel barber, minor character

  Talkative barber who dyes Aschenbach's hair and paints his face to restore a look of youth.

Lessons

• Discipline that never learns rest

  Aschenbach's whole career rests on holding out in spite of weakness, and Chapter II presents that endurance as a real achievement. The novella then shows how a life that has denied every other need is undone once a single desire breaks through. Mann sets the discipline and the collapse side by side without simply condemning either.

  • What does Chapter II admire in Aschenbach's way of working?
  • Is Aschenbach's collapse the opposite of his discipline or its consequence?
  • What kind of rest might have saved him?

• Beauty as a road and a precipice

  Aschenbach borrows Plato's Phaedrus to justify his fascination, telling himself that beauty is the one spiritual form visible to the senses. In his final reverie he turns the same argument around and calls the artist's road through the senses perilous and sinful. The story asks what beauty is for and what happens when it is loved without measure.

  • How does Aschenbach's use of the Phaedrus change between Chapter IV and Chapter V?
  • Does the novella agree with Socrates, or with Aschenbach's final reverie?

• The cost of a kept secret

  When Aschenbach learns of the cholera, he resolves to warn Tadzio's mother and then stays silent, because the warning would end his days of watching. The city's authorities conceal the epidemic for the sake of trade; Aschenbach conceals it for the sake of his passion. Mann joins private and public concealment in one chapter.

  • Why does Aschenbach not warn the Polish family?
  • How does the city's concealment of the cholera mirror Aschenbach's own?
  • Who in the story tells the truth, and why does Mann make him a foreigner?

• The mirror of the painted old man

  On the ship Aschenbach is disgusted by an old man painted to look young; in Chapter V he lets the barber paint him the same way. Mann builds the story out of such recurring figures and returns, so that the reader sees Aschenbach becoming what he once scorned.

  • Which figures in the story seem to repeat or echo one another?
  • What does Aschenbach's visit to the barber show about his state of mind?

Context

Mann wrote Death in Venice on the eve of the First World War, when German letters were divided between disciplined classicism and an interest, fed by Nietzsche, in the irrational forces beneath culture. Venice was a resort for wealthy Europeans on the Lido and a city whose health was a matter of commerce. Cholera, carried from the Ganges basin along trade routes, had struck Europe repeatedly in the nineteenth century, and Italy saw outbreaks in 1910-1911, including in Venice, which officials sought to keep quiet.

Composition

Mann stayed on the Lido with his wife Katia and his brother Heinrich in May 1911, and later accounts trace several details, including a Polish boy at the hotel, to that visit. News of Gustav Mahler's death that month also entered the story; Mann said he gave Aschenbach Mahler's first name and something of his appearance. The novella appeared in the Neue Rundschau in October and November 1912 and as a book the same year. Kenneth Burke's English translation ran in The Dial in 1924 and was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1925.

Reception

The story was quickly recognized as one of Mann's finest works and became a standard text of German modernism. Critics have read it through Nietzsche's opposition of the Apollonian and Dionysian, through Plato's dialogues on love, and as a study of the artist's divided life. Luchino Visconti filmed it in 1971, making Aschenbach a composer, and Benjamin Britten made it his last opera in 1973. Later translations by H. T. Lowe-Porter (1928) and others replaced Burke's in many editions.

Comparisons

• the-birth-of-tragedy

  Nietzsche's contrast of Apollonian form and Dionysian frenzy is the clearest background for Aschenbach's disciplined art and for the Chapter V dream of the foreign god's rite.

• phaedrus-and-letters-vii-and-viii

  Aschenbach recalls Socrates instructing Phaedrus on beauty, madness and love; reading Plato's dialogue shows how selectively he uses it and how the dialogue's ascent toward the good is missing from his reverie.

• the-metamorphosis

  Kafka's story, published in 1915, also follows a dutiful working man whose ordered life is overturned by an inner change, ending in a death that the household and the world absorb with little pause.

• camus-the-plague

  Camus's Oran and Mann's Venice both face epidemics that officials are slow to name; Camus's doctor Rieux fights the disease openly, while Aschenbach keeps silent for private reasons.

• the-picture-of-dorian-gray

  Wilde's novel also joins a cult of youthful beauty to art and decay; its painted portrait and Aschenbach's painted face both make visible the cost of trying to stop time.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The red-haired stranger at the Munich cemetery in Chapter I, and the later figures who resemble him: the gondolier and the street singer.
• Chapter II's account of Aschenbach's art of endurance and the image of Saint Sebastian.
• The painted old man on the ship in Chapter III, and Aschenbach's own visit to the barber in Chapter V.
• The misrouted trunk in Chapter III, which turns a failed departure into a chosen return.
• How the cholera is first hidden by smells, rumours and official denials before the English clerk names it.

Key terms and names

Aschenbach's motto of endurance

Chapter II describes Aschenbach's life and work as a holding out against weakness. The story asks what happens when that discipline gives way.

Saint Sebastian

The martyr shown pierced by arrows; the narrator uses him as the emblem of Aschenbach's heroes, who stay composed while wounded.

Lido

The long sandbar island across the lagoon from Venice, with its beach hotels, where Aschenbach stays and watches Tadzio.

Sirocco

The hot, humid south wind that makes Aschenbach ill in Chapter III and is later blamed by Venetians to explain the smell of disinfectant.

Asiatic cholera

The epidemic disease the English clerk describes in Chapter V, spreading from the Ganges delta to Venice and concealed by the city's authorities.

Phaedrus

Plato's dialogue on love and beauty, which Aschenbach imagines Socrates teaching beneath a plane tree. He returns to it in his final reverie.

Apollonian and Dionysian

Nietzsche's terms for measured form and ecstatic frenzy. Aschenbach's disciplined art and his dream of the foreign god's rite in Chapter V map onto them.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What leads Aschenbach to leave Munich, and why does he change his destination from the Adriatic island to Venice?
2. Comprehension Why does Aschenbach's first attempt to leave Venice fail, and how does he feel about it?
3. Comprehension How does Aschenbach finally learn the truth about the sickness in Venice, and what does he decide to do?
4. Interpretation What do the stranger at the cemetery, the gondolier and the street singer have in common, and what might Mann mean by repeating such figures?
5. Interpretation Aschenbach first despises the painted old man and later becomes like him. What does this change reveal about him?
6. Interpretation How does Aschenbach's final speech to Phaedrus in Chapter V revise what he thought about beauty in Chapter IV?
7. Big Question Can a life of strict self-discipline protect a person against disordered desire, or does it need something more?

Faith Connections

• James 1:14-15 (Scripture)

  James describes desire that draws a person away, conceives, and brings forth death. Aschenbach's course in Venice, from first glance to silence about the cholera to his collapse on the beach, follows a similar sequence of steps.

• Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 (Scripture)

  The Preacher's picture of age, the failing body and the silver cord loosed stands against Aschenbach's attempt, at the barber's chair, to disguise his years rather than remember his Creator in them.

• Augustine, Confessions X.27 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine confesses that he once rushed upon the beautiful things God had made, kept from God by the very things that would not exist without him. Mann's story shows the same misdirection of love toward created beauty, without Augustine's return.

• Plato, Phaedrus 249d-256e (Great Conversation)

  Socrates teaches that the sight of beauty can lift the soul toward the eternal Forms if the lover's desire is governed by reason and reverence. Aschenbach quotes the beginning of this teaching but not its demand for self-rule.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Aschenbach's greatness rests on willed endurance in spite of weakness. A discipline that suppresses rather than orders desire cannot withstand a desire that returns with full force. Venice, with its beauty, sickness and concealment, supplies that force. Therefore the master of form is undone, and the novella presents his fall as the hidden cost of the very discipline that made him great.

Rhetorical device: foreshadowing through recurring figures (leitmotif). The red-haired stranger of Chapter I, the gondolier of Chapter III and the street singer of Chapter V share bared teeth and an insolent, foreign air, and the painted old man of Chapter III returns in Aschenbach's own made-up face, just after the narrator says he detested his aging body (quotes[4]).

Debate: Resolved: Aschenbach's silence about the cholera is a greater failure than his infatuation.

Memory Work

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.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Argue whether Aschenbach's collapse is caused more by forces outside him (the city, the epidemic, the messenger figures) or by something already present in his character as described in Chapter II.

Comparison with The Birth of Tragedy: Using Nietzsche's account of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, analyze the dream in Chapter V of Death in Venice. Does Mann's story confirm Nietzsche's hope that the two can be joined in great art, or show what happens when one overwhelms the other?

Medical Lens

The novella is a precise period account of epidemic cholera. Mann's English clerk traces Asiatic cholera from the Ganges delta along caravan and shipping routes to the Mediterranean, describes the vibrios found in the bodies of the first victims, the high mortality and the dehydrating dry form, and names the Ospedale Civico pesthouse and the traffic to the cemetery island of San Michele. The story's public-health drama is concealment: disinfectant, official denials, and an administration protecting the tourist trade, echoing real Italian outbreaks of 1910-1911. Aschenbach himself is introduced as overworked and short of healing sleep, and his decline runs through nervous exhaustion, an unbidden vision, an overwhelming dream, and a fixed preoccupation he cannot leave. The novella does not name his final illness; the overripe strawberries and his thirst, fever and collapse leave cholera the implied cause. Readers in psychiatry have used the story to discuss obsession, late-life crisis and the vulnerability of a rigidly controlled personality; these remain interpretive readings of a literary figure.

• Chapter I

  Aschenbach, unable to rest after a morning's work and missing his midday sleep, walks out and experiences a hallucination-like vision of a tropical swamp.

  Sleep Insomnia Neurosis Anxiety Altered States
• Chapter III

  The sirocco leaves Aschenbach feverish and short of breath, prompting his failed attempt to leave Venice.

  Fever Infection
• Chapter V

  The English clerk's account of cholera's spread, its symptoms, mortality, the pesthouse, and the city's concealment of the epidemic.

  Plague Epidemic Public Health Sanitation Death Dying
• Chapter V

  The dream of the Dionysian rite, described as a bodily and mental experience that crushes Aschenbach's resistance.

  Dreams Nightmares Altered States Obsession Monomania
• Chapter V

  The barber dyes Aschenbach's hair and paints his face, echoing the painted old man on the ship.

  Aging Senescence
• Chapter V

  Thirsty and feverish, Aschenbach eats overripe strawberries in the city; his collapse on the beach follows days later.

  Fever Infection Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Trace the recurring messenger figures, the stranger at the cemetery, the painted old man, the gondolier and the street singer, and argue what they add to a story that could be told realistically without them.

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation Aschenbach planned but never had, in which he warns Tadzio's mother about the cholera.

• Classroom

  Have students compare Aschenbach's Chapter IV and Chapter V speeches to Phaedrus with the relevant passage in Plato's Phaedrus and chart what he keeps and what he leaves out.

Further Reading

• Tonio Kröger, Thomas Mann

  Earlier novella (1903) on the artist's distance from ordinary life.

• The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann

• Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, Anthony Heilbut

• Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, Richard J. Evans

• Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884-1911, Frank M. Snowden