SOURCE: Rotkin, Charlotte. “Form and Function: The Art and Architecture of Death in Venice.” Midwest Quarterly 29, no. 4 (summer 1988): 497-505.

[In the following essay, Rotkin considers a series of polarities in Mann's life and work and maintains that Death in Venice “reveals Mann's abiding concern with the artist's responsibility regarding the form and function that his life and art assume.”]

In the voluminous canon of Thomas Mann's work, several autobiographical themes recur. Of primacy is the artist's struggle for control over antagonistic forces that compete for his loyalty. Mann's involvement with polarities began during his formative years in the medieval town of Lubeck. During childhood, Mann was privy to the conflict between two rival forces, the mercantile aspirations of his German father and the bohemian inclinations of his West Indian and Portuguese mother. Tension between the opposing familial factions of the bourgeois and the romantic exerted a profound influence on the structure of Mann's life and on the form of his art. Irreconcilable forms of conduct attendant upon the pursuit of either commerce or culture coalesce in his works as re-told tales of memory infused with art. The dichotomy between his mother's artistic temperament and his father's political ambitions formed part of the narrative substance of, and were immortalized in the autobiographical Buddenbrooks (1901), a novel of merchant life. Written at the age of twenty-five in a period of suicidal depression, Buddenbrooks attests to Mann's transcendence over despair by creative productivity. In the realm of creativity, a related schism between the powers of discipline and lust informs the author's most famous and poignant novella, Death in Venice (1913).

Death in Venice reveals Mann's abiding concern with the artist's responsibility regarding the form and function that his life and art assume. The form that the artist's life takes is juxtaposed against the paradoxical forces of volition and eros. These dichotomous energies are linked to and derive from the early conflict between bourgeois and romantic and interweave in a novella that is considered the culmination of Mann's early career.

One of the distinguishing features of Death in Venice is its intricate fusion of symbolism, psychology, and myth. Mann's intention in this complex novella is both concealed and revealed by his technique of intertwining mythology, allegory, and psychology into a formula that gives universal and timeless scope to the actions of his protagonist. An ironic tone, superimposed on the formula, testifies to Mann's condemnation of spiritual malaise as the underlying leitmotif of the novella.

Mann's choice of the novella as the literary genre in which to present Gustave von Aschenbach's tragedy serves numerous functions in synthesizing the guiding motif of Death in Venice with its characters, subject, and setting. On a literal level, the novella, a precursor of the novel, is distinguished from the latter by its abbreviated length and concentrated narrative mode. The name is derived from the Italian novella, which means ‘a little new thing.’ Conceptually, the idea of the novella incorporates a definition of the short novel as form. Symbolically, the form of Death in Venice contains indirect referents to the middle-aged protagonist Aschenbach who, at the inception of the tale perceives himself to be in need of ‘a little new thing,’ a change of scene, which he hopes will assuage an onset of lethargy. Historically, the novella is a venerable and popular literary form, thereby alluding once more to Aschenbach, who is a revered and celebrated author. On another plane, the novella has traditionally given form to either grave or improper material for its subject matter, thus making further dual references to the writer, who is conscious of weighty responsibilities to his public. Furthermore, in the pivotal arena of his inner conflict, Aschenbach's unfulfilled longing for an homoerotic relationship is deemed untoward, in part by the protagonist and in general by the bourgeois society of the early twentieth century.

Stylistically, the novella begins with a descriptive allegory of a political prophecy, the menace of future war. Moving forward on a literal level, it depicts Aschenbach as a solitary stroller in the environs of a graveyard. It is early spring and after “weeks of cold and wet a mock summer had set in” (1). Combining realistic detail with an ironic tone, the verb ‘mock’ employed as adjective, forces to the surface an irony that foreshadows the introduction of the Dionysiac into the Apollonian world. A reference to the protagonist's nerve-taxing work furthers the inference by alluding to the intellectual and disciplined plane on which he functions. As the narrative and characterization develop, isolation emerges as an element in Aschenbach's art, precluding his awareness of the totality of his identity and therefore secluding him from certain aspects of himself and from others. Aschenbach's partial self-cognition is a key factor in the development of theme.

In its synthesis of theme, setting, and characterization, the imagistic forms enumerated during Aschenbach's journey are symbolic representations of form as a mode of existence, one in which Aschenbach firmly believes and in vain endeavors to pursue. He had, at one point in his successful career, stated that “nearly everything great which comes into being does so in spite of something—in spite of sorrow, poverty, destitution, physical weakness, depravity, passion or a thousand other handicaps.” Mann comments that his protagonist's remark was not merely an observation, but a discovery, the formula of Aschenbach's life and reputation, the key to his work. Aschenbach's fictional heroes mirror the trait Mann has ascribed to him, that of a “cold strict service to form.” Aschenbach, author of a roman à clef about Frederick, King of Prussia, and ironically titled Maya, mirrors Mann's bi-cultural background with its emphasis on the work ethic. Initially Mann anchors Aschenbach to a life of discipline and dignity, until the protagonist comes face to face with Tadzio, the image of sensual form.

In a penetrating analysis of Death in Venice, Eric Kahler illumines Mann's concern with the artist's struggle between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Kahler states that the sustaining control of the Apollonian safeguards the artist, while the force of the Dionysian unbalances the artist psychically, destroying both art and man. Mann's technique of meshing classical myth with modern psychology operates as a refuge for Aschenbach, an escape from unfamiliar and overpowering feelings. When the objective world in which he meets Tadzio becomes too threatening for the protagonist, he seeks safety in images of Hellenism. In Mythopoesis, Slochower observes “the attraction of myth offers man symbolic hope and in all civilizations men face analogous situations, undergo similar experiences,” (14) so that Aschenbach's flight into the ancient Greek civilization also acts to diminish his sense of isolatedness in the objective world. However, when Hellenistic forms evoke unbearable ecstasy, Aschenbach takes flight into reality. Aschenbach is the vehicle through which Mann's method of “myth plus psychology” (Gronicka, 47), is dramatized. In his transit from objective world to mythic universe and back again, Aschenbach becomes the conveyor of Mann's method.

An ascetic and austere man, Aschenbach has achieved literary fame by strict adherence to discipline, channeling loneliness into an ordered existence. Suddenly at middle age he finds himself unable to write. Although he believes himself to be dedicated to the Apollonian principle of enlightenment, he avoids introspection of his depressed state. His image of himself is therefore suspect. Foregoing the solidity of the mountains, Aschenbach paradoxically elects as haven a seaside resort, a setting of oceanic formlessness bounded by land. He travels to Venice, the central locale of the novella. In this city of splendor and decay, he encounters Tadzio, the youthful embodiment of the image of classical form.

The sensual, personified in the beauty of the Polish youth intrudes upon the intellectual world of the writer. He attempts to compose; he watches Tadzio instead. Observing the boy with an expanse of sand separating them is, in part, a symbolic reenactment of early and prolonged isolation from intimacy. On the beach, in the dining room and from his hotel window, Aschenbach gazes at the Adonis from a distance.

Distance, as Mann uses it in Death in Venice, combines psychological and mythical elements. The distance separating Aschenbach from the youth is an aspect of the Apollonian in that it precipitates his awareness of the Dionysiac. Aschenbach is able to admit his desire for Tadzio, since he is physically removed from the handsome young man. Ironically, when Aschenbach is placed in close proximity to the boy, he is inhibited from speech, isolated in fact from his covert yearnings. During a lifetime of devotion to discipline, he has repressed the erotic and is, at this moment of self-scrutiny, powerless to accept eros completely, even as he acknowledges its power.

Engaged in an inner conflict between the contradictory forces of discipline and lust, Aschenbach increasingly succumbs to the lyricism inherent in the Dionysiac. When Tadzio emerges from the ocean to show his mother the sea animals he has found, Aschenbach does not understand one word the Polish youth utters, but to him Tadzio's unintelligible sounds become “mingled harmonies.” On an allegorical level, the unleashing of the Dionysiac functions as a foreign and fascinating tongue to Aschenbach.

The merged harmonies of the exotic language serve several purposes for Mann in defining the relationships between Tadzio, his mother, and Aschenbach. On one plane the mother's presence thwarts any possibility of commingling between Tadzio and Aschenbach. On another level the mother's close proximity to her son reinforces the image of the existing harmony between them. The mother hovers in the background, a regal figure in grey, adorned with fabulous pearls, “the size of cherries.” The image Mann creates for her is emblematic; the objectified symbol consists of the pearls the mother wears to adorn her garments. The exceptional beauty of her pearls and of her son signify the mother's possessions, and, reverberating, connote the archetypal maternal symbolism of sea, pearl, and power.

Critical commentary has focused on the archetypal symbolism of the sea in terms of its prototypical pattern of death and rebirth. However, scant attention has been accorded the allegorical significance of sea shells, sea horses, jellyfish, and sidewards-running crabs. The disclosure of the interrelationship of seemingly superficial sea animals reinforces Mann's criticism of moral lassitude, which he equates with a denial of life and art. His ironic enumeration of the sea creatures both parallels and illustrates the importance of their function and design to characterization and conclusion. The connotative meaning of each oceanic organism reverberates backward and forward to presage Aschenbach's behavior and to make manifest the pattern and form of his previous actions in the conflict between volition and eros.

The segment of the tale in which Tadzio captures the sea treasures operates on multifarious strata to strengthen characterization and to foreshadow conclusion by its sequential ordering of imagery. The symbolic significance of sea shells, sea horses, jellyfish, and sidewards-running crabs echoes backward and forward to recall Aschenbach's prior actions and to prefigure his future indecisiveness. Structurally, the scene interweaves the ironic discussion of moral resolution at the beginning of the narrative with the similarly ironic address to Phaedrus at the end. Strategically situated at mid-point in the novella, this allegorical scene illustrates Aschenbach's failure of moral resolve and foretells his tragic death. The shells, sea horses, jellyfish, and side-stepping crabs strengthen the thematic fabric of the novella by evoking four corresponding symbols of pearls, sensuality, weakness, and evasion. The shells, jellyfish, and crabs suggest generally accepted connotations, in contrast to that of the sea horse. The interpretation of the symbolism of the sea horse bears a resemblance to the process of dream analysis that Freud describes. Freud states that the analysand's personal associations are critical to the analyst's interpretation of the patient's dream. The sea horse, summoning forth sensuality, is a poetic symbol deriving solely from the complex of associations that Mann has created within the novella.

The represented images of the sea creatures, operating on allegorical and philosophical planes, intertwine the figures of mother, Tadzio, and Aschenbach. Each specified form of sea life connotes a multiplicity of meanings in direct proportion to the order in which it is enumerated in the series. Shells suggest images of the hard outer covering of mollusks, which conjure images of pearls, which evoke a picture of the mother. Sea horses inspire images of prehensile tails, which connote the notion of seizing, which summons the idea of the sensuality that has taken possession of Aschenbach via Tadzio, who has captured the sea horse. Jellyfish elicit increasingly vivid images; the vision of trailing tentacles, which reinforces the concept of prehensility, in addition to the image of Medusa, which prompts an image of Tadzio's alluringly disheveled hair. In the vernacular, the idea called forth by jellyfish is one of human weakness. Retrospectively, the latter idea contains an ironic reference to Aschenbach, an allusion whose total implication remains elusive until the conclusion of the novella. Sidewards running crabs underscore the moral choice Aschenbach neglects to make at the end of the story. The side-stepping crabs invoke the mental image of the circuitous route by which Aschenbach's feelings of lethargy initially lead him “to go a journey.”

The journey, which underlines the moral dilemma the novella raises, is linked to the sea animals whose symbolism connects with the address to Phaedrus. In the Phaedrus address, Aschenbach ironically remains in a state of partial enlightenment. He acknowledges that all roads lead to death and that “knowledge is the abyss.” He asserts that pursuit of the Apollonian leads to the Dionysian, which in turn, leads to the “bottomless pit.” However, he evades the crucial question of the artist's responsibility to creativity during his journey toward death. In his reluctance to probe further into the philosophical inquiry that might result in uninhibited self-knowledge, Aschenbach exhibits an evasive trait. Symbolically, he pursues a sidewards-running motion away from enlightenment.

A lifelong examination of the simultaneous function of art and of the artist's responsibility to society has been a central theme in the design of Mann's work. The artist's self-imposed discipline verifies his art and maintains it within the parameters of social responsibility. In his empathic rendering of an “unheroic hero” (Kahler, 57) Mann illustrates the opposing forces of volition and eros that vie for the artist's allegiance.

In this complex novella of human suffering, the interweaving of timeless myth with modernity reinforces the universality of conflict between demon and discipline. Ironically, the emergence of form signifies the most notable aspect of knowledge to which Aschenbach does not attain. Mann's emphasis on form functions to clarify the intricate fusion of characterization, theme, and myth that unify Death in Venice and illuminate the artist's dual quest for self-actualization. Form is Mann's answer to the artist's agony on the journey toward death. Mann comes to terms with the tragic dimension of the “voluptuousness of doom” (11) by his adherence to form. The form that art and life adopt in Death in Venice differs from Mann's prior works, which point to a disaccordance between the act of creating and the act of being. In Death in Venice, artistic prowess and life force unite in “mingled harmonies” in an intricate design that illumines, by negative implication, Mann's affirmation of the Apollonian. Through a dialectic negation of existence, Death in Venice paradoxically validates and celebrates the unification of life and art.

Works Cited

Freud, Sigmund. “Revision of the Theory of Dreams.” New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. New York, 1933.

Gronicka, Andre von. “Myth Plus Psychology.” In Thomas Mann: A Collection of Critical Essays. New York, 1956.

Kahler, Eric. “The Devil Secularized.” Commentary, April, 1949.

Letters of Thomas Mann. Trans. Winston. New York, 1971.

Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice. New York, 1930.

Rotkin, Charlotte. “Oceanic Animals: Allegory in Death in Venice.” Papers on Language and Literature, 23, I (Winter, 1987), 84-88.

Slochower, Harry. Mythopoesis. Detroit, 1970.

———. “Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.” American Imago, 26 (Summer 1969).

———. Thomas Mann's Joseph Story. New York, 1938.