Customer Reviews

Death in Venice and Other Stories (Signet Classics)

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This collection of Thomas Mann's early short works presents one of the greatest authors of the 20th Century in an expert and fluent translation, unbowdlerized.The title story, Death in Venice, is an example of lush late Romanticism in its most extravagent and vivid form. Mann, as always, dramatizes the tension between the bourgeois life of strict propriety, symbolized by the renowned Gustav Aschenbach, the protagonist, a literary titan specializing in learned tomes, and the seductions of art and beauty as symbolized by Venice and Tadzio, the focus of Aschenbach's fatal obsession. Some might find the description of the dissolution and its content as repugnant. But if you allow yourself to visualize the words as written and at least allow yourself to feel something of what Aschenbach is feeling, you will be transported outside of yourself strangely and hauntingly .The other stories, including Tonio Kroger, an earlier work that brought Mann great renown after the publication of Buddenbrooks, his first novel, are also wonderful examples of how the tensions of art and life, growing up and thinking affect their main characters. Not to be ignored is the sexual tension that pervades all of Mann's work and is deeply embedded in his consciousness. (I highly recommend Anthony Heilbut's critical biography of Mann for an understanding of the man, his work and the context of German life, literature and history in which it was written.)

Thomas Mann's masterful short novel "Death in Venice" (1912) tells the story of a distinguished German writer, Gustav Aschenbach, who, at the age of 53 while on holiday in Venice, develops a passion for a 14-year old boy named Tadzio. Mann's story sets the demands and powers of eros, human sexuality, in the form of Aschenbach's feelings for Tadzio, against the life, of intellect, discipline, artistic creation, and order which Aschenbach had, before his fateful passion, attempted to realize in his life. Mann's story is highly organized and beautifully controlled, meeting the artistic and intellectual demands of his protagonist, Aschenbach. Yet the story exudes passion and eroticism, in Aschebach's homosexual attraction for a young adolescent, the dank gondolas of Venice, the fetid epidemic that plagues the city, and the atmosphere of death and destruction that Mann captures in his work. The story is full of allusions to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium and, I think, to the Bacchae of Euripides. Mann's story offers a disturbing picture of the claims of sexuality and eroticism, particularly on the life of the mind, and of the consequences of repressing them.

I was grateful for the opportunity to reread "Death in Venice" in a book group, and my understanding of the work was increased by this excellent collection of seven of Mann's early short stories in a volume edited by David Luke. It is available at a modest price. The six other stories in the volume were written earlier than "Death in Venice" and show a unity of theme with this great work. Each of the stories juxtaposes the life of the artist, the outsider trying to observe and understand, with the claims of passion. The artists involved, the passions, and the results differ among the stories, but the underlying theme remains the same.

"Tonio Kroger" (1903), an extended short story, shows an aspiring writer infatuated in his youth with a school friend and, subsequently, with the girl his friend marries. He years to be part of what he deems "the bright children of life, the happy, the charming, and the ordinary" while recognizing that this is not to be for him. "Tonio Kroger" was Mann's own favorite among his works and it presents the theme of "Death in Venice" -- intellect and passion in a different way and light.

The extended story "Tristan" (1903) also is based upon a conflict over a young woman, set in a sanitorium, between a dandified writer and her business-like matter-of-fact husband. Mann's love for Wagner and for music are also at the center of this story.

The remaining four stories also develop the theme of passion as a disturbing force in what appears to be a settled life. I particularly enjoyed the short opening work, "Little Herr Friedemann" (1897) in which a young man who becomes hunchbacked and reserved as a result of an accident in infancy is humiliated and rejected when he feels the stirrings of passion in the person of a beautiful 24 year old married woman.

In delving into the force eroticism exerts on human life, Mann's stories explore a theme which resonates deeply with me and with many readers. This book, with Luke's translation and introduction, is an excellent way of getting to know Mann's stories.

Robin Friedman

I know two Germans, both of whom read a great deal- one of them taught the language to me for two semesters; the other I know via the internet. Each of them seems to have very different ideas about their own culture. For instance, one insists that Goethe is over-rated and should not be read; the other promises me that he is the bedrock of that countries literature. Who to believe? I'm still trying to make my mind up...

However, both of them insisted that I read Thomas Mann.

They couldn't have been more right. To you, the potential reader, I want to pass on that advice: read Thomas Mann. Read him and reread him and study him. Do it with this book, the Bantam publication translated by David Luke.

Thomas Mann had an intelligence about his writing that can only be appreciated fully firsthand. This is not light material by any stretch of the imagination but neither is it so dense that it can't be understood or gotten through. The fact is that its perfect; it sits just right in your mind, beckoning you on page by page, intricately constructing the internal rhythm of its characters and their dilemmas in such a way that you find yourself hypnotized, pouring through the pages then digesting those over a period of several weeks as the moods he has created stick with you. The material haunts you; it grabs hold of your imagination in such a way that a deep footprint will be forever left.

Take the story of `Tonio Kruger' for example. Inside the material there are repetitions which occur, turns of phrases that are presented in happy times, then echoed later to recall to the reader, albeit almost subconsciously, those earlier moments. These little flourishes in the language are the craft of a man who took his work very seriously, presenting the writing as well as the subject as part of the experience. Anyone who has read Flaubert knows what pains some authors take in this striving for the bon mot; Mann is such an author, a person who writes at all levels; plot, character, technical presentation, and theme.

This is to say that the other pieces of the fiction (plot; characterization) work as well as these little technical echoes. The story `Tristan' is a good example: after finishing this one, try to erase from your mind the image of the writer pleading with the sickened wife to play the piano. Try to wipe away the lilt of language, the turn and tilt that bring to mind the piece by Wagner, a sound that you can almost hear in the just the words themselves. I assure you, it will stick to you. If you want to do any writing yourself you will find your mind wandering over this passage, trying to discern how it is that Mann achieved this feat in mere language.

And this brings me to another reason to buy this book- David Luke. Mr. Luke does a splendid rendering of the material, a translation that does not dumb it down, that is very conscious of the work and its brevity and that takes great pains to make sure to convey as many levels of the work to the reader as is possible. One good example- at one point a German word is used that can have more than one meaning in the context (Geist); this is noted at the bottom of the page instead of being accounted into the translation itself. Doing this instead of writing both contexts into the text gives the reader an appreciation for the original work that could not be had otherwise.

The introduction is splendid as well. In 50 pages Mr. Luke covers a brief synopsis of each of the stories, recounting to the reader what should be noted so that the brilliance of the work becomes more evident (I will admit, I did not notice the repetitions myself...). I would advise (as with any introduction) that this part should be read last; it contains spoilers that could curtail the experience of a fresh reading.

Bottom line: Add this to your collection of paperbacks. Each story is worth the price of the book as a whole and the fact that they can all be had so cheap leaves little reason not to buy it.

-LP

All of these stories were written when Mann was in his early twenties, and he always felt he would never surpass them. It is not hard to see why; they are suffused with the intensity and bitter-sweetness of despair that only youth can bring. By turns tragic and comic, the dark corners of Venice shall linger in the mind long after you have turned the page.

Thomas Mann at his best. These stories prove that Mann can display his genius also in a shorter form than in his novels. Death in Venice is definitely the most important story in this book. It magnificently shows how the poet Gustav Aschenbach from Munich slowly loses control over his long incarcerated world of feelings as he approaches death in Venice. Full of great symbolism

Like many German writers, Thomas Mann contained the cancerous seed of anti-semitism, which rears its ugly head in these stories, now and then, and he has a tendency toward pedantry, going on and on in an abstract vein about the strengths and weaknesses of the outsider, the artist, the sensualist, ho-hum. When I was younger, I worshiped his writing, and Buddenbrooks was one of my favorite novels of all time (still is).

Despite my recent and more mature awareness of his weaknesses, he remains a surprising, brilliant writer. His prose style is dynamic and I continue to emulate that. I was amused to find, however, that I liked the lesser known stories. I found "Death In Venice" ponderous. I liked the stories about the incestuous twins, the tragic man who was dwarfed from a childhood fall, the cuckolded buffoon who is talked into wearing a tutu at a community recital and the eccentric who is compelled to continually mutiliate his dog and heal him. Now these are what I would call real "case histories." I'm sure Mann would scorn me for being partial to these, scornfulness being one of his main attitudes in life. His very disdain of pretension, however, seems like a pretension in itself. Still - his command of language is like no other's.

The shorter tales are good but are really like imperfect sketches made in study for the grand finale piece Death in Venice. Most of the tales deal with sensual longing which is never satisfied or consummated and that gets a bit tiring unless you see the sensual longing representing some higher longing as well, the sensual longing perhaps being one in the same with spiritual and artistic longing. That way you are more in the frame of mind to see that Death in Venice is not just about an older mans lust for a younger man but a prolonged meditation about time and art and all those highly valued goods. I have to confess I get tired of Mann pretty quick because he dwells on the same themes over and over again but if you are a student of fiction he really is one of those writers who has much to teach. Still it sometimes seems to me that Mann's characters would be better off if they occasionally just went ahead and did it. That may sound to be an awful oversimplification but I think they would feel better and their already instable identities and worlds would not constantly be shaken to the ground by those too long suppressed desires. As for the spirit and artistic sense, they too would be happier, much more contented, with the occasional release and renewal of energies, a bit of fleshen contact would connect them to something more real than their "thoughts" about things. Anyway if you haven't already read Death in Venice you are lucky because it is a great read, though a strange and sometimes disturbed one. If you like your main characters made of more earthy substance than Mann's suffering spirits read D.H. Lawrence who also loved Italy by the way and who contemplated time and art in a much more relaxed manner.

A staid German author is suddenly inspired through the sight of a stranger to travel and selects Venice as his destination. Once he is there he becomes obsessed with a young boy he spies on the beach and begins stalking him as the city is being stalked by cholera. This is a taut psychological examination of obsession and the uncharacteristic behavior a person can be driven to under it's influence.

This collection of Thomas Mann's novellas and short stories thematically exhibits the alienation of being a passionate artist in a bourgeois society. "We artists despise no one more than the dilettante, the man of life who thinks that in his spare time, on top of everything else, he can become an artist," the title character tells a sympathetic friend in "Tonio Kroger," a story which seems at least partially autobiographical. Tonio, who has become a renowned writer as an adult, recalls an instance when he was a boy in which he tried to entice the interest of a friend -- a popular, athletic boy, everything that Tonio was not -- by enthusiastically explaining to him the plot of Schiller's "Don Carlos." The attempt was futile, however, and Tonio was left spiritually alone with his unusual love of literature.

"Tristan" takes the artist-bourgeois conflict to a setting that presages Mann's definitive novel "The Magic Mountain." The protagonist, an offbeat writer named Spinell confined to a tuberculosis sanatarium, takes an interest in a fellow patient, a businessman's wife who, he discovers, is a sensitive and tasteful amateur pianist. He writes her husband a derogatory letter, deploring him as a philistine who does not deserve to share his life with this secretly artistic woman, which results in a heated confrontation between the two men. In "The Child Prodigy," Mann's tone turns satirical as he focuses on an eight-year-old concert pianist giving an electrifying public performance to an audience whose various reactions -- wonder, jealousy, indifference -- are reflections upon themselves more so than on the performer.

"Death in Venice" is the boldest piece in this collection, unambiguously presenting homosexuality in an artistically positive light but also showing something of a German fascination with Italian culture and scenery. Gustav Aschenbach, the protagonist, again seems to reflect Mann to an extent as a middle-aged, widowed, respected author from Munich who becomes infatuated with a teenage boy while vacationing in Venice. Whether this love ever becomes mutual or physical is not as important as the mood Mann invokes about European cultural and moral decadence, possibly symbolized by the cholera epidemic that sweeps through the city.

"Man and Dog: An Idyll" is a brilliant meditation on the narrator's affectionate and occasionally difficult relationship with his pet pointer and also allows a glimpse of life in the industrialized and suburbanized Germany of the early twentieth century. To say that Mann gives the dog a human personality may seem a cliche, but few writers could achieve his level of empathy in relating a dog's behavior and desires in man's terms without resorting to outright personification. A disturbing inversion of this story is told in "Tobias Mindernickel," in which a lonely old man, given no personal background by Mann, ostracized in his neighborhood by adults and taunted by children, buys a dog and demands from it the obedience and respect he has never earned from people.

Mann is truly one of the most important figures in twentieth century literature. What he chose to portray, and the talent with which he portrayed it, brighten the legacy of a century that threatened to destroy art in so many ways for so many insane reasons.

This book is so full of pointless symbolism that when you toss the book away in disgust, you'll wonder at the symbolic significance of your action