[In the following essay, Rotkin explores the allegorical significance of the sea creatures in Death in Venice.]

One of the characteristic features of Death in Venice is its intricate fusion of symbolism, psychology, and myth. Mann's intention in this novella of dissolution is both concealed and revealed by his technique of intertwining mythology, allegory, and psychology into a form that gives universal scope to the actions of his protagonist. An ironic tone, superimposed on the structure, testifies to Mann's condemnation of spiritual malaise as the underlying leitmotif of the novella.¹

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 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 of his prior actions in the conflict between volition and eros.

In a penetrating analysis of Death in Venice, 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.² Mann's technique of meshing classical myth with modern psychology operates as a refuge for Aschenbach, an escape from overpowering feelings. When the objective world becomes too threatening for the protagonist, he seeks safety in images of Hellenism. When Hellenistic images evoke unbearable ecstasy, Aschenbach takes flight into reality. Aschenbach is the vehicle through which Mann's method of “myth plus psychology”³ 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.⁴ 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, 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 force.

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” (43). 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” (27). The image Mann creates for her is emblematic; the objectified symbol consists of the pearls which the reader envisions whenever reference is made to her. In addition, her portrait reveals an unspecified concept. The mother has produced a fabulous creature and dressed him in decorative attire, as the sea has spawned the astonishing 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.

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 previous behavior 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 tale 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 essential to the analyst's interpretation of the patient's dream.⁵ 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 led him “to go a journey” (8).

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” (72). He asserts that pursuit of the Apollonian leads to the Dionysian, which in turn, leads to the “bottomless pit” (73). 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 Mann's work.⁶ 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”⁷ 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. The oceanic animals serve as a symbolic dramatization of the demonic inherent in the Dionysiac, and, by negative implication, reveal Mann's affirmation of the Apollonian. Through a dialectic negation of existence, Death in Venice paradoxically validates life. The inclusion of the allegorical episode of the sea creatures functions to enhance and 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.

Notes

1. Thomas Mann, Death in Venice: and Seven Other Stories, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (1930; New York: Vintage, 1954) 3-76. All references are to this edition and are cited in the text by page number.

2. Erich Kahler, “The Devil Secularized: Thomas Mann's Faust,” Commentary (April 1949): 348.

3. Andre von Gronicka, “Myth Plus Psychology: A Stylistic Analysis of Death in Venice,” in Thomas Mann: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Columbia UP, 1956) 47.

4. von Gronicka 53.

5. Sigmund Freud, “Revision of the Theory of Dreams,” in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey (1933; New York: Norton, 1964) 12.

6. Kahler 350.

7. von Gronicka 57.