Death in Venice (new)

The news of Thomas Mann

There is an autobiographical share in this news, which Thomas Mann, which went on a journey to Venice May 26th with the June 2nd 1911, recognized readily. It begins the drafting of Der Tod in Venedig as of July 1911, but only in July 1912 will complete it.

The main character is Gustav von Aschenbach, a writer Munich ois recognized (and anobli) in around fifty. Disturbed by a mysterious meeting at the time of a walk, it leaves on a journey on the Adriatic coast and ends up leading to Venice, a city in which it never felt at ease. In its hotel of the Lido, Aschenbach discovers Tadzio, a young Polish teenager who it fascine by his beauty. He does not dare to approach it and follows it in the town of Venice. Aschenbach, in prey with a dark melancholy and a kind of dionysiaque fever , succumbs to the epidemic of Asian Choléra which makes rage in the city then. He dies on the beach by contemplating last once the object of his fascination.

Admirably been useful by a very rich language, truffle of allusions to the ancient Greece and the Greek Mythology, all the account is rate/rhythm by the topics of death, art and nostalgia.

Interview of Thomas Mann

In 1951, Luchino Visconti met Thomas Mann and questioned it in connection with its news. Here the answer of the writer:

“ Nothing is invented, the traveller in the cemetery of Munich, sinks it boat to come from the Island of Pola, the old dandy, the suspect gondolier, Tadzio and its family, the departure missed because of the mislaid luggage, the cholera, the employee of the office of voyages which acknowledged the truth, the malicious travelling acrobat, whom I know… All was true…

the history is primarily a history of death, dead considered as a force of seduction and immortality, a history on the desire of death. However the problem which interested to me especially was that of the ambiguity of the artist, the tragedy of the control of its Article passion like disorder and degradation was the true subject of my fiction.

what I wanted to tell in the beginning did not have anything homosexual; it was the history of the last love of Goethe at sixty ten years, for Ulrike von Levetzow, an young girl of Marienbad: A history malicious, beautiful, grotesque, disturbing which became Death in Venice . To that the experiment of this lyric voyage was added and personnel who decided to me to push the things to the extreme by introducing the topic of the prohibited love. The erotic fact is here an adventure anti-middle-class woman, at the same time sensual and spiritual.

Stefan George said that in Death in Venice all that it higher is lowered there to becoming declining and it rightly ”.

(Source: Arte, in connection with film Died in Venice)

Shade of Gustav Mahler

One glosé much on the musical side of Death in Venice . For much, the portrait of Gustav von Aschenbach, the main character would be directly inspired by a photograph of Gustav Mahler, the Leader and Compositeur universally famous, for which Thomas Mann nourished a great admiration. However the absolute requirement and very Apollinian which Gustav Mahler towards its art had is well-known; just like the hero of the news. Moreover, Mahler died the May 18th 1911, one week only before the voyage of Mann with Venice. The death of Mahler had touched it much. The common first name would sign the resemblance.

Of aucuns risked a bringing together of Aschenbach with Bach ( the brook , but also the type-setter) and Asche ( ash ).

Venetian fascination

The news of Thomas Mann exerts in his turn a kind of fascination in particular on:

Luchino Visconti draws Morte from it has Venezia (1971), a film which the Adagietto haunts 5 {{E}} symphony of Mahler. Besides Visconti will make of the writer of the original account a type-setter.
Benjamin Britten composes in 1973 an opera entitled Death in Venice .

The similarities between Visconti and Britten are interesting. Both have a very musical vision of the work of Thomas Mann, a music inevitably melancholic person, which can be brought closer owing to the fact that the musician, like the scenario writer, both homosexual, already old, dies the same year, in 1976, little time after having created their work, as if they were them also identified with the hero of the news.

Tadzio truth

The Tadzio truth, that which inspired the teenager of the news, named Władysław Moes, hand one in general called it by the diminutives " Adzio" or " Władzio". It is a baron Polish born in 1900 and died in 1986 (that Thomas Mann actually met and observed during the voyage to Venice of spring 1911 mentioned earlier, like brought back by his Katia wife in her memories Thomas Mann - Memories to broken sticks , cf lower bond). It was found by the Polish translator of works of Mann, Andrzej Dołęgowski about 1964; articles were published in the German press in 1965. He lived much longer than Mann had not estimated probable taking into consideration its " délicatesse". Mann also over-estimated its age, although it is possible that its birth date is former: the German article said that it was 68 years old in 1965. “Tadzio” is buried with the Cimetière of Powązki to Warsaw.

In a test published in 2001, Gilbert Adair presents his research about “truth” Tadzio, its life along last century and its reactions compared to the fact that it inspired a true icon of the homosexual culture and pederast.

the dionysiaque influence

The dionysiaque influence is palpable in the work of Mann. The hero is taken of a true dionysiaque fever, extasiante which will lead it to its loss. He thus recalls it near publication to the birth of the tragedy of Nietzsche, which analyzes the dionysiaques components of the tragedy, opposed to the share appolinienne of work.

Random links:

Angervilliers | Copa America 1979 | Rising Forces Online | Anaconda | Kommersant