Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice is an easy subject for psychoanalytic criticism. Given that Freud’s theory of unheimlich (the uncanny) has been construed as a “latter-day theory of the sublime, of the imagination overwhelmed in a moment of bafflement but also exhilaration,” Aschenbach’s various obsessions make more sense (Sandner, 2004, p. 74). Of course, other aspects of Freudian discourse can be used as lenses through which to read Death in Venice, but unheimlich offers the broadest insight into Aschenbach’s overall character. The entire novella unfolds as a series of cascading coincidences, and if it were not set in the dreamy world of the Venetian archipelago, Mann’s novella would be less believable and even more surreal than it already is. Yet Venice offers the perfect landscape within which to explore the resurfacing of unconscious thoughts, dreams, desires, and fears that occupy the unconscious mind. The reader becomes trapped inside of Aschenbach’s own mind, seeing the strange characters he meets through his warped state of being. Primarily, the reader learns of Aschenbach’s triple obsessions: his obsession with his appearance and simultaneously, his youth; his obsession with Venice; and his obsession with Tadzio. Understood through the principle of unheimlich, Aschenbach’s obsessions intermingle to provide a portrait of an aging man consumed by a fear of losing his sexual and aesthetic potency. For Freud, the uncanny was much more than uncanny coincidences or strange situations at the surface of daily life. Unheimlich has a dual...

It relates first to aesthetics, and paradoxically at the same time to “all that is terrible...all that arouses dread and creeping horror,” (Freud, 1919, p. 1). The juxtaposition of the beautiful and the terrible is one of the primary themes of Death in Venice. Through Aschenbach’s eyes, we see the most hideous of strangers starting with “a man of unpleasing, even violent physiognomy,” (Mann, 1912, p. 15). Mann mingles the grotesque and phantasmagoric with the sublime beauty of his surroundings in Venice and of course, the otherworldly, eternal, but ephemeral beauty of the young boy. As Freud (1919) points out, unheimlich must be understood by contrasting it with heimlich, the familiar. The familiar is stagnant and cannot give rise to the creative impulse that wells up when confronted with the uncanny, which is why writers like Aschenbach must occasionally uproot themselves and place themselves in unfamiliar surroundings, with unfamiliar people, languages, and foods. From an encounter with the uncanny, the writer theoretically delves into the unconscious, the repository of fears, phantasmagoria, and dreams, and then resurfaces in the familiar world with remarkable tales to tell.
Aschenbach has deliberately decided to go to Venice to exercise his mind and creativity as a writer. As such, Aschenbach offers a proxy for Mann himself. Being a place that is unfamiliar and strange, Aschenbach delves into the unheimlich because it provides his mind with the liberating stimuli he needs to create. He is quite aware of the impulse to delve into the uncanny…