Death in Venice

After my holidays in Italy this year I somehow craved for a book which sums up about the beauty of Venice, a remarkable City I've visited so I've chosen to fresh up my memories while reading "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann. This read turned out to lead to quiet a different path I've actually expected. To put it into a nutshell: Mann's novella tells the story of a german/preussian writer, Gustav von Aschenberg, who suffers from a writer's block and decides to travel to Venice. He's searching for inspiration and believes to have found it after meeting a beautiful teenage boy named Tadzio. Von Aschenberg never speaks with him. However he's struggeling between sense he build up many years ago and passion he tries to supress. And of course....there is a death in Venice! How unexpected, right? At the very beginning this plot sounded pretty promising. Inner struggle between right and wrong, a coming death, the protagonist's attempt to feel young again all these things leading to a bloody grecian tragedy.(note to myself: NEVER EXPECT TO MUCH OF A CLASSIC! The disappointment will be great...) Although Thomas Mann describes von Aschenberg's struggle quiet well, the rest of the story left me untouched. The narration is dry and (to me)lifeless so that you can't get into what happens nor can't you sympathize with the protagonist. "This story's about homosexuality/a forbidden relationship between an adult and teenager (...)" Whether I misunderstood it or people just exaggerate. To me it didn't seemed like a pedophile relationship because we can hardly say that there's a "real" relationship. It's more like a midlife-crisis von Aschenberg is facing and desperately tries to feel youthful again to change things in a better way and Tadzio who's described almost as a greek god, showed him that he can't turn time back. Like I already said, I was quiet disappointed about the fact that Mann didn't really catch the beauty of Venice and his charme. Well it's a short book so I'll forgive him. What I liked about the novella was Mann's "Special" writing style. In "Death n Venice" you can find a blending of mythology, allusion and symbolism which sometimes makes it difficult to follow the story without having read Plato, but if you're a fan of this kind of writing go for it. my fav. quote: “Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.”

After my holidays in Italy this year I somehow craved for a book which sums up about the beauty of Venice, a remarkable City I've visited so I've chosen to fresh up my memories while reading "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann. This read turned out to lead to quiet a different path I've actually expected. To put it into a nutshell: Mann's novella tells the story of a german/preussian writer, Gustav von Aschenberg, who suffers from a writer's block and decides to travel to Venice. He's searching for inspiration and believes to have found it after meeting a beautiful teenage boy named Tadzio. Von Aschenberg never speaks with him. However he's struggeling between sense he build up many years ago and passion he tries to supress. And of course....there is a death in Venice! How unexpected, right? At the very beginning this plot sounded pretty promising. Inner struggle between right and wrong, a coming death, the protagonist's attempt to feel young again all these things leading to a bloody grecian tragedy.(note to myself: NEVER EXPECT TO MUCH OF A CLASSIC! The disappointment will be great...) Although Thomas Mann describes von Aschenberg's struggle quiet well, the rest of the story left me untouched. The narration is dry and (to me)lifeless so that you can't get into what happens nor can't you sympathize with the protagonist. "This story's about homosexuality/a forbidden relationship between an adult and teenager (...)" Whether I misunderstood it or people just exaggerate. To me it didn't seemed like a pedophile relationship because we can hardly say that there's a "real" relationship. It's more like a midlife-crisis von Aschenberg is facing and desperately tries to feel youthful again to change things in a better way and Tadzio who's described almost as a greek god, showed him that he can't turn time back. Like I already said, I was quiet disappointed about the fact that Mann didn't really catch the beauty of Venice and his charme. Well it's a short book so I'll forgive him. What I liked about the novella was Mann's "Special" writing style. In "Death n Venice" you can find a blending of mythology, allusion and symbolism which sometimes makes it difficult to follow the story without having read Plato, but if you're a fan of this kind of writing go for it. my fav. quote: “Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.”

After my holidays in Italy this year I somehow craved for a book which sums up about the beauty of Venice, a remarkable City I've visited so I've chosen to fresh up my memories while reading "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann. This read turned out to lead to quiet a different path I've actually expected. To put it into a nutshell: Mann's novella tells the story of a german/preussian writer, Gustav von Aschenberg, who suffers from a writer's block and decides to travel to Venice. He's searching for inspiration and believes to have found it after meeting a beautiful teenage boy named Tadzio. Von Aschenberg never speaks with him. However he's struggeling between sense he build up many years ago and passion he tries to supress. And of course....there is a death in Venice! How unexpected, right? At the very beginning this plot sounded pretty promising. Inner struggle between right and wrong, a coming death, the protagonist's attempt to feel young again all these things leading to a bloody grecian tragedy.(note to myself: NEVER EXPECT TO MUCH OF A CLASSIC! The disappointment will be great...) Although Thomas Mann describes von Aschenberg's struggle quiet well, the rest of the story left me untouched. The narration is dry and (to me)lifeless so that you can't get into what happens nor can't you sympathize with the protagonist. "This story's about homosexuality/a forbidden relationship between an adult and teenager (...)" Whether I misunderstood it or people just exaggerate. To me it didn't seemed like a pedophile relationship because we can hardly say that there's a "real" relationship. It's more like a midlife-crisis von Aschenberg is facing and desperately tries to feel youthful again to change things in a better way and Tadzio who's described almost as a greek god, showed him that he can't turn time back. Like I already said, I was quiet disappointed about the fact that Mann didn't really catch the beauty of Venice and his charme. Well it's a short book so I'll forgive him. What I liked about the novella was Mann's "Special" writing style. In "Death n Venice" you can find a blending of mythology, allusion and symbolism which sometimes makes it difficult to follow the story without having read Plato, but if you're a fan of this kind of writing go for it. my fav. quote: “Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.”