Reading Order
Death in Venice Reading Order
Death in Venice (1912) by Thomas Mann is the most perfect and most disturbing of his novellas — the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a writer of the highest reputation who has achieved his eminence through iron discipline and the suppression of everything in himself that is not dedicated to work, who travels to Venice and falls into a catastrophic passion for a Polish boy named Tadzio. The novella is organized around the myth of Dionysus and Apollo: Aschenbach has lived entirely in the Apollonian mode (discipline, form, control, clarity) and the passion for Tadzio is the Dionysian irruption that destroys him. He knows there is a cholera epidemic in Venice; he stays anyway; he follows Tadzio through the city; he dies at the beach, watching Tadzio in the water. Mann uses classical mythology (the opening vision of the exotic bird; the figure of Hermes; the god in the sea at the end), the Platonic dialogues on beauty, and the Apollonian/Dionysian opposition he found in Nietzsche to give the story its extraordinary density. Death in Venice is one of the most analyzed short works in twentieth-century literature.
Where to start
Death in Venice (1912) — the complete novella in the Michael Henry Heim or the David Luke translation. Best Mann reading order: Tonio Kröger → Death in Venice → Buddenbrooks → The Magic Mountain → Doctor Faustus.
Complete Death in Venice Book List
- 1Buy
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann·1912·The complete novella — Aschenbach, Tadzio, and the cholera in Venice. One of the most analyzed short works in twentieth-century literature; the David Luke translation (Bantam) is widely regarded as the finest; the Luchino Visconti film (1971) with Dirk Bogarde is a major interpretation - 2Buy
Tonio Kröger
Thomas Mann·1903·The companion — Tonio's relationship to the bourgeois world he loves and cannot enter. The companion investigation of the same theme: the artist's relationship to the beautiful person who embodies the life he has renounced; but where Tonio's conclusion is loving, Aschenbach's is catastrophic - 3Buy
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann·1924·The companion — Hans Castorp at the sanatorium. The companion investigation of the same theme on a much larger scale: the individual educated out of his discipline by an encounter with the extraordinary - 4Buy
Doctor Faustus
Thomas Mann·1947·The companion — Adrian Leverkühn's pact with the Devil. The companion investigation of the same theme: the artist who renounces ordinary human warmth for creative power, and the catastrophic consequences - 5Buy
The Birth of Tragedy
Friedrich Nietzsche·1872·Nietzsche's companion investigation of the Apollonian and Dionysian in Greek art. The companion philosophical text: Mann uses Nietzsche's opposition to structure Death in Venice — Aschenbach's entire career has been Apollonian, and the passion for Tadzio is the Dionysian force that his life has suppressed and that returns to destroy him - 6Buy
The Symposium
Plato·-385·Plato's companion dialogue on love and beauty. The companion philosophical text: Mann uses Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium to give the passion for Tadzio its philosophical dimension — Aschenbach quotes Socrates to himself as he watches Tadzio, and the irony of using Platonic philosophy to justify a passion that destroys its user is central to the novella - 7Buy
A Rebours
Joris-Karl Huysmans·1884·Huysmans's companion novel about Des Esseintes — the man who has retreated from life into art and artifice. The companion investigation of the same theme: the aesthete whose extraordinary sensitivity has cut him off from ordinary life, and who is destroyed by the contact with the real world he has avoided - 8Buy
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov·1955·Nabokov's companion — Humbert Humbert's passion for Dolores Haze. The companion investigation of the same catastrophic passion for an unattainable, inappropriate beloved: both are organized around a man of high cultivation who is destroyed by a passion he cannot control and whose narrative is the attempt to make art out of the destruction
Death in Venice — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the symbolism in Death in Venice?
Death in Venice is saturated with symbolic systems that reinforce each other. The most important is the Apollonian/Dionysian opposition from Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy: Aschenbach has lived entirely in the Apollonian mode (discipline, form, control), and the passion for Tadzio is the Dionysian irruption — the return of the repressed, the chaos beneath the order. The mythological apparatus reinforces this: the exotic figure at the cemetery in Munich (who triggers Aschenbach's journey) is identified with Hermes-Psychopomp, the guide of souls to the underworld; and the figure Aschenbach sees in Tadzio in the sea at the end is described in terms that identify him with Hermes or Apollo — the god beckoning from the sea. Tadzio himself is organized through the Platonic theory of beauty: he is the beautiful particular through which the beautiful universal can be glimpsed, and Aschenbach's passion for him is philosophically organized around Plato's Phaedrus.
Did Thomas Mann base Death in Venice on a true story?
Death in Venice is closely based on an actual experience. In 1911, Mann traveled to Venice with his wife Katia and his brother Heinrich; they stayed at the Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido. There was indeed an actual young boy — later identified as Władysław Moes, a Polish aristocrat — who became the basis for Tadzio; Mann observed him from a distance, as Aschenbach does in the novella. There was also a real cholera epidemic (or rather a genuine health scare) that the Venetian authorities were attempting to conceal. Katia Mann wrote a memoir in which she describes seeing her husband fixated on the beautiful boy; and the details of the Venetian setting (the waterway, the hotel, the beach, the city) are drawn directly from what Mann saw. The psychological experience — the dissolution of a disciplined artist by a passion he cannot control — is what Mann imagined and elaborated from these literal materials.
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