From the Publisher

This critical edition of Mann's 1912 modernist novella reprints the widely praised translation by David Luke. Accompanying this text, five critical essays examine the work from five contemporary critical perspectives:
Psychoanalytic Criticism, by Rodney Symington
Reader-Response Criticism, by Lilian Furst
Cultural Criticism, by John Burt Foster, jr.
Gender Criticism, by Robert Tobin
New History, by Russell Berman

A succinct introduction to the history, principles, and practice of each critical approach precedes each essay. Readers may also benefit from extensive bibliographies following the essays and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms.

The editor's introduction to the book discusses biographical and historical contexts for both Mann and his text. Her survey of critical responses to it starts in 1912 and ends in 1998.

Kirkus Reviews

New versions of 12 celebrated stories, including the famous title novella, many previously collected in Mann's seminal Stories of Three Decades. Neugroschel's persuasive "Preface" makes a strong case for fresh translations, given both this century's inevitable linguistic shifts and Mann's employment within individual works of specific vocabularies and styles (e.g., those of Wagnerian opera in the hair-raising "The Blood of the Walsungs"). And Neugr"schel essentially finesses the issue of revealing the stories' inherent sexuality; their author was, after all, a master of elegant indirection dedicated to muted presentations of matters that were anathema to both his public and his own sedulously respectable persona. That said, it's wonderful to have vivid, lucid English versions of Mann's sophisticated portrayals of sexual obsession and humiliation ("Little Herr Friedemann"), illness- as-metaphor in a tale ("Tristan") that concisely prefigures The Magic Mountain, and the transfiguring intersection of artistic with homosexual passion (Death in Venice, Tonio Kr"ger). Brilliant work, in any case, from one of the century's great writers.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

"It may have been the stranger's perambulatory appearance that acted upon his imagination or some other physical or psychological influence coming into play, but much to his surprise he grew aware of a strange expansion of his inner being, a kind of restive anxiety, a fervent youthful craving for faraway humdrumplaces." -- from Death in Venice

When he crosses paths with a mysterious stranger while waiting at a tram stop in Munich, Gustav von Aschenbach is seized by a sudden need to escape the confines of his well-ordered life. An aging and successful writer, he yearns for "freedom, release, oblivion -- an urge to flee his work, the routine of a rigid, cold, passionate duty."

Aschenbach's wanderlust leads him to Venice, where the spiritual fulfillment he is seeking instead becomes an erotic quest with tragic consequences. Against the backdrop of a Venetian beachfront hotel, Thomas Mann charts the course of Aschenbach's infatuation with a fourteen-year-old Polish boy.

Aschenbach's relationship with Tadzio never progresses beyond one of sight -- they never exchange even a single word -- and yet for Aschenbach his passion intensifies with each passing day. Tadzio's youth and "truly godlike beauty" make Aschenbach acutely aware of his own rapidly fading years. He slides deeper into an abyss of his own making, even daring to follow Tadzio and his family through the streets of Venice.

As Aschenbach's preoccupation with Tadzio escalates into an obsession, so too does his determination to uncover the secret that is being harbored to protect the tourist trade -- Venice is bracing for an epidemic. When he finally learns that cholera has alreadyclaimed several lives, he refuses to leave the city as long as Tadzio remains.

Death in Venice was published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks, had established him as a literary celebrity at the age of twenty-six. One of Mann's most celebrated and compelling works, Death in Venice embodies many of the themes that he expressed throughout his work -- particularly the conflict between the artist's inner self and outward persona. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote about Death in Venice. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."

A work of psychological intensity, Death in Venice is an exploration of art and beauty, life and death, obsession and reality, love and despair -- a graceful and tragic portrait of an aging man at odds with his soul.

Discussion Questions

1. What was your initial perception of Aschenbach -- both as a writer and as a man -- and did that perception change as the story progressed?


2. What ignites Aschenbach's wanderlust and compels him to leave his home on a holiday? What does he hope to gain during his travels?


3. When Aschenbach sets out on his journey from Munich, he does not have a destination in mind. What ultimately leads him to Venice?


4. In what ways does Aschenbach embody both his father's "sober, conscientious nature" and the "darker, more fiery impulses" (pg 12) of his mother?


5. Other than physical beauty, what is it about Tadzio that attracts the interest of Aschenbach? Is the attraction merely sexual in nature, or does Tadzio represent something more to Aschenbach?


6. How does Mann's use of Greek mythology illuminate Aschenbach's story?


7. Is it possible to have a relationship with someone by sight only, as Aschenbach believes in regard to himself and Tadzio (with whom he never speaks directly)? Does Aschenbach imagine Tadzio's returned interest?


8. How does Aschenbach's fervent interest in learning the truth about the cholera outbreak mirror his obsession with Tadzio?


9. Why does Aschenbach decide to stay in Venice despite the risk of contracting cholera, a disease that is often fatal?


10. The book's title is an indication of how the story ends. Did having this foreknowledge affect your reading of Death in Venice?


11. How do you interpret the story's ending?


12. What, in your opinion, is the message Mann is conveying in Death in Venice?

About the author

Thomas Mann was born in Lübeck, Germany, on June 6, 1875. His first novel, Buddenbrooks, a multi-generational saga based on his family history, was published in 1901. A vocal opponent of the Nazi regime, Mann and his wife moved to Switzerland in 1933, shortly after the Nazis came to power. He later became an American citizen and lived in Santa Monica, California from 1941 to 1953. He then returned to Europe and made his home in Zurich, where he died in 1955. Mann's other works include The Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus, and The Beloved Returns. A revered essayist, cultural critic, and novelist, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One


It was the nurse's fault. In vain Frau Consul Friedemann, when the matter was first suspected, had solemnly urged her to relinquish so heinous a vice; in vain she had dispensed to her daily a glass of red wine in addition to her nourishing stout. It suddenly came to light that the girl had actually sunk so low as to drink the methylated spirits intended for the coffee machine; and before a replacement for her had arrived, before she could be sent away, the accident had happened. One day, when little Johannes was about a month old, his mother and three adolescent sisters returned from a walk to find that he had fallen from the swaddling table and was lying on the floor making a horribly faint whimpering noise, with the nurse standing by looking stupidly down at him.

The doctor's face, as he carefully but firmly probed the limbs of the crooked, twitching little creature, wore an exceedingly serious expression; the three girls stood in a corner sobbing, and Frau Friedemann prayed aloud in her mortal anguish.

Even before the baby was born it had been the poor woman's lot to see her husband, the consul for the Netherlands, reft from her by an illness both sudden and acute, and she was still too broken in spirit to be even capable of hoping that the life of her little Johannes might be spared. Two days later, however, the doctor squeezed her hand encouragingly and pronounced that there was now absolutely no question of any immediate danger; above all, the slight concussion of the brain had completely cleared up. This, he explained, was obvious if one looked at the child's eyes; there had been a vacant stare in them at first which had now quitedisappeared . . . "Of course," he added, "we must wait and see how things go on—and we must hope for the best, you know, hope for the best . . ."

Chapter Two


The gray gabled house in which Johannes Friedemann grew up was near the north gate of the old, scarcely middle-sized merchant city. Its front door opened onto a spacious stone-paved hall, from which a stair with white wooden banisters led to the upper floors. On the first was the living room with its walls papered in a faded landscape pattern, and its heavy mahogany table draped in crimson plush, with high-backed chairs and settees standing stiffly round it.

Here, as a child, he would often sit by the window, where there was always a fine display of flowers; he would sit on a little stool at his mother's feet, listening perhaps as she told him some wonderful story, gazing at her smooth gray hair and her kind gentle face, and breathing in the slight fragrance of scent that always hung about her. Or perhaps he would get her to show him the portrait of his father, an amiable gentleman with gray side-whiskers. He was (said his mother) now living in heaven, waiting for them all to join him there.

Behind the house was a little garden, and during the summer they would spend a good deal of time in it, notwithstanding the almost perpetual sickly sweet exhalations from a nearby sugar refinery. In the garden stood an old gnarled walnut tree, and in its shade little Johannes would often sit on a low wooden stool cracking nuts, while Frau Friedemann and her three daughters, now grown up, sat together in a gray canvas tent. But Frau Friedemann would often raise her eyes from her needlework and glance tenderly and sadly across at her son.

Little Johannes was no beauty, with his pigeon chest, his steeply humped back and his disproportionately long skinny arms, and as he squatted there on his stool, nimbly and eagerly cracking his nuts, he was certainly a strange sight. But his hands and feet were small and neatly shaped, and he had great liquid brown eyes, a sensitive mouth and soft light brown hair. In fact, although his face sat so pitifully low down between his shoulders, it could nevertheless almost have been called beautiful.

Chapter Three


When he was seven he was sent to school, and now the years passed uniformly and rapidly. Every day, walking past the gabled houses and shops with the quaintly solemn gait that deformed people often have, he made his way to the old schoolhouse with its Gothic vaulting; and at home, when he had done his homework, he would perhaps read some of his beautiful books with their brightly colored illustrations, or potter about in the garden, while his sisters kept house for their ailing mother. The girls also went to parties, for the Friedemanns moved in the best local society; but unfortunately none of the three had yet married, for their family fortune was by no means large and they were distinctly plain.

Johannes, too, occasionally got an invitation from one or other of his contemporaries, but it was no great pleasure for him to associate with them. He was unable to join in their games, and since they always treated him with embarrassed reserve, it was impossible for any real companionship to develop.

Later there came a time when he would often hear them discuss certain matters in the school yard; wide-eyed and attentive, he would listen in silence as they talked of their passions for this little girl or that. Such experiences, he decided, obviously engrossing though they were for the others, belonged like gymnastics and ball games to the category of things for which he was not suited. This was at times a rather saddening thought; but after all, he had long been accustomed to going his own way and not sharing the interests of other people.

It nevertheless came to pass—he was sixteen years old at the time—that he found himself suddenly enamored of a girl of his own age. She was the sister of one of his classmates, a blond, exuberant creature whom he had met at her brother's house. He felt a strange uneasiness in her company, and the studied self-conscious cordiality with which she too treated him saddened him profoundly.

One summer afternoon when he was taking a solitary walk along the promenade outside the old city wall, he heard whispered words being exchanged behind a jasmine bush. He cautiously peeped through the branches, and there on a seat sat this girl and a tall red-haired boy whom he knew very well by sight; the boy's arm was round her and he was pressing a kiss on her lips, which with much giggling she reciprocated. When Johannes had seen this he turned on his heel and walked softly away.

His head had sunk lower than ever between his shoulders, his hands were trembling and a sharp, biting pain rose from his chest and seemed to choke him. But he swallowed it down, and resolutely drew himself up as straight as he could. "Very well," he said to himself, "that is over. I will never again concern myself with such things. To the others they mean joy and happiness, but to me they can only bring grief and suffering. I am done with it all. It is finished for me. Never again."

The decision was a relief to him. He had made a renunciation, a renunciation forever. He went home and took up a book or played the violin, which he had learned to do despite his deformity.

Chapter Four


At seventeen he left school to go into business, like everyone else of his social standing, and he became an apprentice in Herr Schlievogt's big timber firm down by the river. They treated him with special consideration, he for his part was amiable and cooperative, and the years passed by in a peaceful and well-ordered manner. But in his twenty-first year his mother died after a long illness.

This was a great sorrow for Johannes Friedemann, and one that he long cherished. He savored this sorrow, he surrendered himself to it as one surrenders oneself to a great happiness, he nourished it with innumerable memories from his childhood and made the most of it, as his first major experience.

Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a "happy" one? Johannes Friedemann felt that this was so, and he loved life. He had renounced the greatest happiness it has to offer, but who shall say with what passionate care he cultivated those pleasures that were accessible to him? A walk in springtime through the parks outside the town, the scent of a flower, the song of a bird—surely these were things to be thankful for?

He also well understood that a capacity for the enjoyment of life presupposes education, indeed that education always adds at once to that capacity, and he took pains to educate himself. He loved music and attended any concerts that were given in the town. And although it was uncommonly odd to watch him play, he did himself become not a bad violinist and took pleasure in every beautiful and tender note he was able to draw from his instrument. And by dint of much reading he had in the course of time acquired a degree of literary taste which in that town was probably unique. He was versed in all the latest publications both in Germany and abroad, he knew how to savor the exquisite rhythms of a poem, he could appreciate the subtle atmosphere of a finely written short story . . . One might indeed almost say that he was an epicurean.

He came to see that there is nothing that cannot be enjoyed and that it is almost absurd to distinguish between happy and unhappy experiences. He accepted all his sensations and moods as they came to him, he welcomed and cultivated them, whether they were sad or glad: even his unfulfilled wishes, even his heart's longing. It was precious to him for its own sake, and he would tell himself that if it ever came to fulfillment the best part of the pleasure would be over. Is not the sweet pain of vague desires and hopes on a still spring evening richer in delight than any fulfillment the summer could bring? Ah yes, little Herr Friedemann was an epicurean and no mistake.

This was something of which the people who passed him in the street, greeting him with that mixture of cordiality and pity to which he had so long been accustomed, were doubtless unaware. They did not know that this unfortunate cripple, strutting so quaintly and solemnly along in his light gray overcoat and his shiny top hat (for oddly enough he was a little vain of his appearance) was a man to whom life was very sweet, this life of his that flowed so gently by, unmarked by any strong emotions but filled with a quiet and delicate happiness of which he had taught himself the secret.

Chapter Five


But Herr Friedemann's chief and most absorbing passion was for the theater. He had an uncommonly strong sense of drama and at moments of high theatrical effect or tragic catastrophe the whole of his little body would quiver with emotion. At the principal theater of the town he had a seat permanently reserved for him in the front row, and he would go there regularly, sometimes accompanied by his three sisters. Since their mother's death they had lived on in the big house which they and their brother jointly owned, and did all the housekeeping for themselves and him.
They were, alas, still unmarried; but they had long reached an age at which one sets aside all such expectations, for the eldest of them, Friederike, was seventeen years older than Herr Friedemann. She and her sister Henriette were rather too tall and thin, whereas Pfiffi, the youngest, was regrettably short and plump. This youngest girl moreover had an odd habit of wriggling herself and wetting the corners of her mouth whenever she spoke.

Little Herr Friedmann did not pay much attention to the three girls, but they stuck loyally together and were always of the same opinion. In particular, whenever any engagement between persons of their acquaintance was announced, they would unanimously declare that this was very gratifying news.

Their brother went on living with them even after he had left Herr Schlievogt's timber firm and set up on his own by taking over some small business, some sort of agency which did not demand much exertion. He lived in a couple of rooms on the ground floor of the house, in order not to have to climb the stairs except at mealtimes, for he occasionally suffered from asthma.

On his thirtieth birthday, a fine warm June day, he was sitting after lunch in the gray tent in the garden, leaning against a new soft neck rest which Henriette had made for him, with a good cigar in his mouth and a good book in his hand. Now and then he would put the book aside, listen to the contented twittering of the sparrows in the old walnut tree and look at the neat gravel drive that led up to the house and at the lawn with its bright flower beds.

Little Herr Friedemann was clean-shaven, and his face had scarcely changed at all except for a slight sharpening of his features. He wore his soft light brown hair smoothly parted on one side.

Once, lowering the book right onto his lap, he gazed up at the clear blue sky and said to himself: "Well, that's thirty years gone. And now I suppose there will be another ten or perhaps another twenty, God knows. They will come upon me silently and pass by without any commotion, as the others have done, and I look forward to them with peace of mind."

Chapter Six


It was in July of that year that the new military commandant for the district was appointed, a change of office that caused a considerable stir. The stout and jovial gentleman who had held the post for many years had been a great favorite with local society, and his departure was regretted. And now, for God knows what reason, it must needs be Herr von Rinnlingen who was sent from the capital to replace him.

It seemed, in fact, to be not a bad exchange, for the new lieutenant colonel, who was married but had no children, rented a very spacious villa in the southern suburbs, from which it was concluded that he intended to keep house in some style. At all events the rumor that he was quite exceptionally rich found further confirmation in the fact that he brought with him four servants, five riding and carriage horses, a landau and a light hunting brake.

Shortly after their arrival he and his wife had been to pay calls on all the best families, and everyone was talking about them; the chief object of interest however was definitely not Herr von Rinnlingen himself, but his wife. The men were dumbfounded by her and did not at first know what to think; but the ladies most decidedly did not approve of Gerda von Rinnlingen's character and ways.

"Of course, one can tell at once that she comes from the capital," observed Frau Hagenstrom, the lawyer's wife, in the course of conversation with Henriette Friedemann. "One doesn't mind that, one doesn't mind her smoking and riding—naturally not! But her behavior isn't merely free and easy, its unrefined, and even that isn't quite the right word . . . She's by no means ugly, you know, some might even think her pretty—and yet she totally lacks feminine charm, her eyes and her laugh and her movements are simply not at all calculated to appeal to men. She is no flirt, and far be it from me to find fault with her for that, goodness knows—but can it be right for so young a woman, a woman of twenty-four, to show absolutely no sign of . . . a certain natural grace and attractiveness? My dear, I am not very good at expressing myself, but I know what I mean. The men still seem to be quite stunned, poor dears: mark my words, they will all be sick to death of her in a few weeks' time."

"Well," said Fraulein Friedemann, "she has made a very good marriage, anyway."

"Oh, as to her husband!" exclaimed Frau Hagenstrom. "You should see how she treats him! You will see it soon enough! I am the last person to deny that up to a point a married woman should act toward the opposite sex with a certain reserve. But how does she behave to her own husband? She has a way of freezing him with her eyes and calling him 'mon cher ami' in pitying tones, which I find quite outrageous! You have only to look at him—a fine upstanding first-class officer and gentleman of forty, well behaved and well mannered and very well preserved! They've been married for four years . . . My dear . . ."

Read a Sample Chapter

Death in Venice

Buccaneer Books Inc

Chapter One

Gustav Aschenbach or von Aschenbach, as he had officially been known since his fiftieth birthday, set out alone from his residence in Munich's Prinzregentenstrasse on a spring afternoon in 19.. -- a year that for months had shown so ominous a countenance to our continent -- with the intention of taking an extended walk. Overwrought from the difficult and dangerous labors of the late morning hours, labors demanding the utmost caution, prudence, tenacity, and precision of will, the writer had even after the midday meal been unable to halt the momentum of the inner mechanism -- the motus animi continuus in which, according to Cicero, eloquence resides -- and find the refreshing sleep that the growing wear and tear upon his forces had made a daily necessity. And so, shortly after tea he had sought the outdoors in the hope that open air and exercise might revive him and help him to enjoy a fruitful evening.

It was early May, and after a few cold, wet weeks a mock summer had set in. The Englischer Garten, though as yet in tender bud, was as muggy as in August and full of vehicles and pedestrians on the city side. At Aumeister, to which he had been led by ever more solitary paths, Aschenbach briefly scanned the crowded and lively open-air restaurant and the cabs andcarriages along its edge, then, the sun beginning to sink, headed home across the open fields beyond the park, but feeling tired and noticing a storm brewing over Föhring, he stopped at the Northern Cemetery to wait for the tram that would take him straight back to town.

As it happened, there was no one at the tram stop or thereabouts. Nor was any vehicle to be seen on the paved roadway of the Ungererstrasse -- whose gleaming tracks stretched solitary in the direction of Schwabing -- or on the road to Föhring. There was nothing stirring behind the stonemasons' fences, where crosses, headstones, and monuments for sale formed a second, uninhabited graveyard, and the mortuary's Byzantine structure opposite stood silent in the glow of the waning day. Its façade, decorated with Greek crosses and brightly hued hieratic patterns, also displayed a selection of symmetrically arranged gilt-lettered inscriptions concerning the afterlife, such as "They Enter into the Dwelling Place of the Lord" or "May the Light Everlasting Shine upon Them," and reading the formulas, letting his mind's eye lose itself in the mysticism emanating from them, served to distract the waiting man for several minutes until, resurfacing from his reveries, he noticed a figure in the portico above the two apocalyptic beasts guarding the staircase, and something slightly out of the ordinary in the figure's appearance gave his thoughts an entirely new turn.

Whether the man had emerged from the chapel's inner sanctum through the bronze gate or mounted the steps unobtrusively from outside was uncertain. Without giving the matter much thought, Aschenbach inclined towards the first hypothesis. The man -- of medium height, thin, beardless, and strikingly snub-nosed -- was the red-haired type and had its milky, freckled pigmentation. He was clearly not of Bavarian stock and, if nothing else, the broad, straight-brimmed bast hat covering his head lent him a distinctly foreign, exotic air. He did, however, have the customary knapsack strapped to his shoulders, wore a yellowish belted suit of what appeared to be loden, and carried a gray waterproof over his left forearm, which he pressed to his side, and an iron-tipped walking stick in his right hand, and having thrust the stick diagonally into the ground, he had crossed his feet and braced one hip on its crook. Holding his head high and thus exposing a strong, bare Adam's apple on the thin neck rising out of his loose, open shirt, he gazed alert into the distance with colorless, red-lashed eyes, the two pronounced vertical furrows between them oddly suited to the short, turned-up nose. Thus -- and perhaps his elevated and elevating position contributed to the impression -- there was something of the overseer, something lordly, bold, even wild in his demeanor, for be it that he was grimacing, blinded by the setting sun, or that he had a permanent facial deformity, his lips seemed too short: they pulled all the way back, baring his long, white teeth to the gums.

Aschenbach's half-distracted, half-inquisitive scrutiny of the stranger may have been lacking in discretion, for he suddenly perceived that the man was returning his stare and was indeed so belligerently, so directly, so blatantly determined to challenge him publicly and force him to withdraw it that Aschenbach, embarrassed, turned away and set off along the fence, vaguely resolved to take no further notice of him. A minute later he had forgotten the man. It may have been the stranger's perambulatory appearance that acted upon his imagination or some other physical or psychological influence coming into play, but much to his surprise he grew aware of a strange expansion of his inner being, a kind of restive anxiety, a fervent youthful craving for faraway places, a feeling so vivid, so new or else so long outgrown and forgotten that he came to a standstill and -- hands behind his back, eyes on the ground, rooted to the spot -- examined the nature and purport of the feeling.

It was wanderlust, pure and simple, yet it had come upon him like a seizure and grown into a passion -- no, more, an hallucination. His desire sprouted eyes, his imagination, as yet unstilled from its morning labors, conjured forth the earth's manifold wonders and horrors in his attempt to visualize them: he saw. He saw a landscape, a tropical quagmire beneath a steamy sky -- sultry, luxuriant, and monstrous -- a kind of primordial wilderness of islands, marshes, and alluvial channels; saw hairy palm shafts thrusting upward, near and far, from rank clusters of bracken, from beds of thick, swollen, and bizarrely burgeoning flora; saw fantastically malformed trees plunge their roots through the air into the soil, into stagnant, shadow-green, looking-glass waters ...

Continues...

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Excerpted from Death in Venice by Thomas Mann Copyright ©1983 by Thomas Mann. Excerpted by permission.
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