Movies - Death in Venice

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	Movies - Death in Venice

The novella Death in Venice was written in German by Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1912 as Der Tod in Venedig. It is often said to be Mann's most important short narration.

A film version directed by Luchino Visconti was made in 1971, with Dirk Bogarde as Gustav von Aschenbach and Björn Andresen as Tadzio. Benjamin Britten wrote an operatic version of the story on a libretto by Myfanwy Piper (premiered 1973).

Summary of the plot

Aged Gustav von Aschenbach - a novelist in the novel, a composer in the film - travels to Venice, where he becomes obsessed with the stunning beauty of an adolescent boy named Tadzio. An epidemic of Asiatic cholera has just broken out and von Aschenbach plans to leave but changes his mind because of Tadzio, even though he never even has the opportunity to develop his boylove by talking to the boy. As his vacation continues, von Aschenbach's entire existence begins to revolve around following this young boy, both a symbol of faded youth and of attractions that von Aschenbach never made reality.

The novel ends on the Lido beach where von Aschenbach is watching Tadzio play with his friends. The boy wanders out to sea but turns and shares the last eye contact with the old man, and von Aschenbach dies. He is totally entranced by the boy's unattainable beauty, explicitly showing the homoerotic dimension of Mann's writings and his eroticism .

Behind the story

The character of Aschenbach has been said to be based in part on the composer Gustav Mahler (the film soundtrack makes use of Mahler's compositions). Thomas Mann's wife Katia recalls that the idea for the story came from the events of an actual holiday in Venice, which she took in the spring of 1911 with Thomas:

: All the details of the story, beginning with the man at the cemetery, are taken from experience … In the dining-room, on the very first day, we saw the Polish family, which looked exactly the way my husband described them: the girls were dressed rather stiffly and severely, and the very charming, beautiful boy of about thirteen was wearing a sailor suit with an open collar and very pretty lacings. He caught my husband's attention immediately. This boy was tremendously attractive, and my husband was always watching him with his companions on the beach. He didn't pursue him through all of Venice — that he didn't do — but the boy did fascinate him, and he thought of him often … I still remember that my uncle, Privy Counsellor Friedberg, a famous professor of canon law in Leipzig, was outraged: 'What a story! And a married man with a family!'

(Katia Mann, Unwritten Memories)

Gustav von Aschenbach's name seems to be inspired by the homosexual German poet August von Platen (August --> Gustav; Ansbach, von Platen's birthplace --> Aschenbach).

"Tadzio" is thus said to have been based on a young baron Władysław Moes, whose first name was usually shortened as Władzio or just Adzio. The story was uncovered by Thomas Mann's translator Andrzej Dołęgowski around 1964 and published in the German press in 1965. Some sources link this discovery with the release of the movie, probably incorrectly, because a picture said to date from 1964 of Moes and Dołęgowski together does exist. Władysław Moes was born in 1900 and died in 1986, at an age much greater than Mann thought possible in his novella; Mann may also have overestimated Moes' age, apparently... (but the German press article states Moes was 68 in Aug. 1965). 'Tadzio' is interred at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.

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