Death in Venice in Thomas Mann\'s Novella

Death in Venice

In Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice, a writer goes to the title city in order to find inspiration and to ease his writer's block. During his time there, he discovers and then becomes obsessed with a young boy who he sees as incomparably beautiful. Instead of physically expressing his emotions for the boy, he forces the emotions to remain internal, something which eventually leads to his destruction. Although Gustov von Aschenbach, the protagonist of the novella, actually dies of cholera which is widespread in the area, it can be seen that it is actually the internal struggle to possess and also repulse the youth that is really the reason for his death. In this conflict, Gustov represents the perspective of duality theorized by Nietzsche wherein people possess antagonistic characteristics which force the individual to be constantly at war with him or herself. The gods of Greek myth Apollo and Dionysus represent restraint and excess respectively and Aschenbach shows himself to be made up of attributes which characterize both gods as opposed to exhibiting the traits of one over the other ultimately being defined as a mixture of both.

Aschenbach exhibits the Apollonian side of his personality in his artistic dedication. He is first and foremost an artist who wants to make something beautiful, but also sees his art as a means of forcing the world to fit into a form of his choosing. The Apollonian side of one's character includes anything that makes a person an individual (Nietzsche 56). In the case of Aschenbach, this is his artistic ability and his dedication to his craft. His intellect is another Apollonian characteristic. Mann writes that for Aschenbach, "Everything conspicuously great is great in despite: has come into being in defiance of affliction and pain; poverty, destitution, bodily weaknesses, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstructions. And that was more than observation -- it was the fruit of experience, it was precisely the formula of his life and fame, it was the key to his work" (2). When he has his interactions with the youth, it is his Apollonian side which prohibits him from engaging in physical activity with the boy, or perhaps it is the understanding that he does not have much of a chance of attracting the younger man to the point of actual sexual interaction.

The protagonist shows his Dionysian side in his attraction and obsession with the boy Tadzio. According to Nietzsche, the Dionysian forces the individual to lose his sense of propriety and autonomy and give into his baser humanistic instincts (Nietzsche 56). When Aschenbach sees the boy, he equates his physical beauty with the statues of the gods and feels inspired. Although he never touches the young man, he does give in to the passionate impulse to tell the boy that he loves him. Aschenbach makes this statement, disregarding the potential consequences for his choices. This is also the case when he gives into his impulse to remain in Venice even though it means that his health will continue to deteriorate. It is the Dionysian that also prevents Aschenbach from telling Tadzio's mother about the cholera outbreak. Since he knows that a responsible mother would leave the city to save her son, he allows them all to remain exposed to the deadly disease. At this point, the man's lust has more important than his own life or the life of the boy with whom he is obsessed. When he has finally succumbed to his Dionysian side, Aschenbach imagines a conversation with Socrates and Plato. He says, "We poets cannot walk the way of beauty without Eros as our companion and guide. We may be heroic after our fashion, disciplined warriors of our craft, yet we are all like women, for we exult in passion, and love is still our desire- our craving and our shame" (Mann 72). This is almost the exact opposite of Aschenbach's idea of poets and writers from the start of the story. Once he has given into his Dionysian side, there is no going back to the analytical for him.

At the beginning of the story, Aschenbach tells the reader that he is a writer and an artist who works for the pure aesthetic pleasure rather than for capitalistic gains. Throughout the story, he still possesses the eye for aesthetic beauty and the ability to analyze that he possessed in the beginning. However, this ability has been used for a more lascivious purpose than his better nature would have originally approved of. In the early part of the story, Aschenbach sees an older man who has tried to disguise his advanced age. The man wears a wig and has obviously fake teeth. This disgusts Aschenbach because he sees the man as insulting his integrity by pretending to be something he is not. By the end of the novella, Aschenbach himself has dyed his hair and wears makeup in the hope that it will make him seem younger than his forty-something years and thus more appealing to the fourteen-year-old boy that attracts him so much. Every person has both the Dionysian and the Apollonian within them, but Aschenbach repressed his desires for so long that the two could no longer co-exist. For him, "Passion paralyses good taste and makes its victim accept with rapture what a man in his senses would either laugh at or turn from with disgust" (Mann 59). He could be all Apollo or all Dionysus for there was no room within him for both at the same time.