SOURCE: White, Richard. “Love, Beauty, and Death in Venice.” Philosophy and Literature 14, no. 1 (April 1990): 53-64.

[In the following essay, White regards Death in Venice as a meditation on the themes of art, beauty, love, and death and argues that the novella can be read as a “powerful response to Plato and every other philosopher who has argued in favor of the redemptive power of art.”]

Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice is a sustained and very powerful meditation upon the proper relations of art and beauty, eros and death. In particular, even though the story is set in what was then contemporary Venice, Mann emphasizes the perennial nature of the themes and issues that he considers by using imagery and allusion to evoke the mythical atmosphere of ancient Greece and by dwelling upon the classical parallels to Aschenbach's own obsession. Thus it is clearly the Socratic ideal of the older male lover and his younger male beloved which orients Aschenbach's own perception of his relationship to Tadzio, while this also forms the most obvious framework in terms of which we as readers are meant to understand and even to judge him. Again, at two crucial points in the text Mann inserts his own version of a conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus, in which Socrates' position in Plato's original dialogue is first affirmed and then emphatically rejected. In this respect, the final resolution of the story, with Aschenbach's moral degeneration and death, really seems to call into question the Platonic conception of beauty as a means to the higher end of the Good.

From the first discussion of Aschenbach's own artistry to the final verdict upon the power of art, Death in Venice may therefore be viewed as a paradigm case of a work of literature which comments effectively upon a philosophical position. In the present essay, I will argue that Death in Venice represents a powerful response to Plato and every other philosopher who has argued in favor of the redemptive power of art. Clearly, though, this discussion requires us to consider in what respect “literary” conclusions can have philosophical validity. For even if Mann's story is entirely compelling, it is not clear how it could serve as the critique of a particular philosophical position, which presumably stands or falls with argument. In effect, this analysis of Death in Venice can illuminate the interplay of philosophy and literature, and may force us, in the end, to question the absolute distinction between them.

I

The “story” of Death in Venice is quite straightforward and may be briefly told: Von Aschenbach, a distinguished German writer, is seized one day with a profound longing for travel. He decides to go to Venice, and after a couple of curious incidents with an “old-young man” on the ferry, and a mysterious gondolier, he arrives at his hotel. Here, Aschenbach soon notices an exceptionally beautiful Polish boy. After a futile attempt to leave, he gradually becomes obsessed with Tadzio, and he even follows his family on their excursions to Venice. Meanwhile, it is rumored that Venice is in the grip of a plague. Aschenbach eventually discovers the full extent of the sickness, but rather than leave he continues to follow Tadzio. On the same day that he finds out that the boy's family is leaving, he dies as he watches Tadzio on the beach.¹

Now although the actual events of Death in Venice are clear, the overall intention or “message” of the story remains profoundly ambiguous. It is fairly obvious, for example, that we are meant to associate the progress of Aschenbach's obsession with Tadzio with the progress of the plague. In the text, almost as soon as he admits his obsession (when he whispers the “hackneyed … I love you”), he discovers the full extent of the sickness in Venice (DV [Death in Venice], p. 52). Regardless of our own moral ideas, it is apparent that Mann wants us to regard Aschenbach's obsession as a moral degeneration which is the inward parallel of the plague itself. There must be some kind of a lesson here, but what is it that the story is warning us against? At this point, the indeterminacy of literature, the apparent impossibility of a final univocal meaning, stands as an obstacle to the philosophical appropriation of the text. Could it be that Aschenbach's insistence upon self-discipline is morally correct and that he fails only because in Venice he foolishly surrenders his guard? Or is this strict self-discipline the cause of his downfall, so that the emotional life that he has denied himself finally irrupts and destroys him? Perhaps a third interpretation is that art itself is an evil, and since any service to aesthetic form is oblivious to moral considerations, it is bound to result in moral degeneracy. There are clues in the text which can be used to support each one of these readings. As we will see, there are also resonances, and even direct references to Plato's theory of beauty and to other theories of art. More obviously than most literary works, Death in Venice defines itself in terms of “the problem of art” and the various positions which have been taken in the history of aesthetics. We must now ask whether it is possible to specify any further the nature of the work's overall claim, or whether its literary form must forever prevent this.

Let us begin by looking at the second section of Death in Venice, where Mann offers a detailed picture of Aschenbach's artistry. In a manner reminiscent of Nietzsche's account in Ecce Homo, he tells us that Aschenbach's forebears on his father's side were all official functionaries while his mother was the daughter of a composer. This union of “dry, conscientious officialdom and ardent, obscure impulse” (DV, p. 8) is supposed to determine Aschenbach as a writer distinguished not so much by innate “genius” as by an incredible scrupulosity and capacity for hard work. He has the self-discipline required to sit at his desk day after day, so that eventually he produces an astonishingly well-crafted work from scores of individual inspirations. We are also told about his daily regimen: “He began his day with a cold shower over chest and back; then setting a pair of tall wax candles in silver holders at the head of his manuscript, he sacrificed to art in two or three hours of almost religious fervor, the powers he had assembled in sleep” (DV, p. 10). Mann emphasizes that Aschenbach's power of self-control and self-denial is essential to his particular artistic nature. Not only does he modify his own existence in his service to art, living as a solitary and apparently without any emotional attachments, but his works themselves also testify to the validity of such a life of endurance. Aschenbach's heroes are those who struggle against all odds, who “hold fast” in the face of every danger both from within and from without, and continue in spite of everything. In this respect, Aschenbach is the champion of “the heroism born of weakness,” and he is aptly described as “the poet-spokesman of all those who labor at the edge of exhaustion” (DV, p. 12).

Mann suggests that the mature Aschenbach is successful because his work captures the spirit of his times. In fact, Aschenbach is the consummate “bourgeois” artist, who valorizes the bourgeois ideals of hard work and accomplishment, and who rejects any kind of moral ambivalence as decadent and corrupt. While the young Aschenbach had “overworked the soil of knowledge” and raised questions about the place of art, the mature writer is the champion of bourgeois decency who deliberately turns his back on the realm of knowledge lest it paralyze his actions. He is preoccupied with form. His refined style is regarded as exemplary, and his work is excerpted in school textbooks. Soon the bourgeois apologist becomes a bourgeois institution; and when nobility is conferred upon him he gladly accepts, for as Mann indicates, the self-regarding pursuit of recognition and fame is one of the chief spurs to his existence.

After establishing Aschenbach's severe self-mastery at the beginning, the rest of Death in Venice records the gradual undermining of his resolve. Thus, almost as soon as he arrives in Venice, Aschenbach begins to experience the pull of an alien force which gradually overcomes his will and destroys his self-mastery; and he quickly abandons himself to his obsession for Tadzio. When the mysterious gondolier rows him to the Lido against his wishes, the normally self-possessed Aschenbach finds it impossible to resist: “A spell of indolence was upon him. … The thought passed dreamily through Aschenbach's brain that perhaps he had fallen into the clutches of a criminal; it had not power to rouse him to action” (DV, p. 22). Likewise, when he discovers that his trunk has been misdirected, he does not experience annoyance so much as a “reckless joy” that seems to be bound up with the oblivion of personal responsibility and the happiness of self-dispossession. Later we are told that Venice alone “had power to beguile him, to relax his resolution, to make him glad” (DV, p. 41). Indeed, the city itself seems to lure Aschenbach into self-abandon, as he begins to live only for Tadzio, following the family all over Venice, and even resting his head, one evening, on the boy's bedroom door: “It came at last to this—that his frenzy left him capacity for nothing else but to pursue his flame; to dream of him absent, to lavish, loverlike, endearing terms on his mere shadow” (DV, p. 56). By the close of Death in Venice, Aschenbach is quite overwhelmed by all of those unreasonable forces and aspects of himself that he had previously sought to suppress: his spiritual destruction is therefore complete.

Towards the end, Aschenbach has a dream which seems to measure exactly how far he has fallen:

He trembled, he shrank, his will was steadfast to preserve and uphold his own god against this stranger who was sworn enemy to dignity and self-control. But the mountain wall took up the noise and howling and gave it back manifold; it rose high, swelled to a madness that carried him away. His senses reeled in the steam of panting bodies. … His heart throbbed to the drums, his brain reeled, a blind rage seized him, a whirling lust, he craved with all his soul to join the ring that formed about the obscene symbol of the godhead, which they were unveiling and elevating, monstrous and wooden, while from full throats they yelled their rallying-cry.

(DV, p. 68)

This is clearly a description of a Dionysian orgy, and it is based on Euripides' original depiction of this in The Bacchae. In Euripides' play, the ruler Pentheus is the champion of decency and self-control, who attacks Dionysus and will not recognize him as a god. In revenge, Dionysus makes him mad; by appealing to his curiosity, he tricks Pentheus into visiting the scene of the Dionysian orgy, where he is torn to pieces by Dionysus' followers. Just before he leaves, however, there is a very important scene in which Pentheus, now completely under Dionysus' spell, is persuaded to dress in women's clothing in order to visit the Bacchae undetected. This scene really represents Pentheus' final humiliation, since it was precisely his contempt and hatred for Dionysus as the effeminate “man-woman” that led him to see the latter as a threat to public decency in the first place. Significantly enough, there is a similar dressing scene in Death in Venice when Aschenbach goes to the hotel barber, having his hair dyed and his face rouged in order to look as young as possible for Tadzio. We are bound to recall the earlier incident on the ferry, when Aschenbach was totally repulsed by the appearance of the “old-young man” and the contemptible desire to pretend that one is much younger than one actually is. If Aschenbach now succumbs to the same temptation, we must regard it as his final degradation and humiliation, to be doing that which should disgust him more than anything else. But in this way, Dionysus the stranger-god punishes all those who deny him.

There is obviously a close parallel between Euripides' play and the progress of Death in Venice. Both works warn us of the dangers of rigid self-control and the refusal of the irrational part of our nature. And in this respect, it could be argued that both works offer a response to Plato's famous attack on poetry in the Republic. Here, in Book X of the Republic especially, Plato puts forward an ideal of rational self-constraint which allows him to condemn most poetry as a dangerous appeal to the unreasonable part of the soul. He only exempts “the unmixed imitation of the decent” as an acceptable way of promoting worthy ideals. In Death in Venice, Aschenbach serves as the representative of this “approved” kind of poetry insofar as his work confirms existing moral ideals and seems to threaten nothing. Nevertheless, such a stance leads to the disastrous explosion of his passionate nature. And from this it may be inferred that Death in Venice raises a profoundly anti-Platonic perspective. Having mapped out some basic themes, I shall now focus upon Death in Venice as an implicit critique of Plato.

II

Plato's discussion of beauty in the Phaedrus or Symposium has often been used to offset his extreme strictures against art in the last book of the Republic. For if it is true that the beautiful form can draw us towards the Absolute, then it follows that artistic beauty must also be charged with such power. This calls into question any literal reading of the argument of Book X, and forces us to reconstrue Plato's attack on poetry as at least rhetorical in part. In Death in Venice Thomas Mann rejects Plato's position in the Republic. A more interesting question now is to consider whether Plato's other account of beauty is espoused or rejected, since it is the latter which clearly informs the dramatic progress of Death in Venice.²

At the beginning of the Phaedrus, Socrates persuades Phaedrus to read him Lysias' speech, according to which it would be wiser for a boy to yield to someone who does not love him as opposed to someone who does. Challenged to produce a better speech on the same theme, Socrates argues, like Lysias, that the lover is a madman whose desire for total possession of his beloved can only lead to the spiritual detriment of the latter. Socrates reminds Phaedrus, however, that love is a god: hence, love cannot be evil, and he is bound to make a further speech, a “palinode,” to atone for what he has just said. In the palinode Socrates introduces his mythical description of the human soul, comparing it to a winged charioteer who drives a team of winged horses, one of which is good while the other is bad. As the charioteer struggles to follow the procession of the gods and contemplate the sights of pure Being beyond the heavens, the bad horse drags the chariot down to earth. As a result, the soul loses its wings, and it has to wait 10,000 years for its next celestial journey.

By elaborating this crucial image of the charioteer, Socrates is able to justify the lover's divine madness, and distinguish it from the ordinary carnal appetite which only aims at self-indulgence. He argues that when the soul approaches the image of beauty, as in the appearance of the beloved, it is reminded of the pure form of Beauty which it first encountered in the celestial procession: “Such a one, as soon as he beholds the beauty of this world, is reminded of true beauty, and his wings begin to grow” (P [Phaedrus], p. 92). And while the evil horse will drag the chariot towards the beloved in expectation of erotic fulfillment, if the charioteer pulls in the reins by not yielding to his physical desire, his wings will grow back and he will finally recover the divine vision of the eternal forms of Being. Plato develops a similar claim in the Symposium, where, according to Socrates' recollection of the mysteries, there is a direct connection between the love of a beautiful individual, love of all physical beauty, the love of moral and intellectual beauty, and finally love of the Good itself. In each case, an intense passion is mastered and controlled so that the individual is empowered to reach a higher level of knowledge and Being. From this perspective, beauty and the pursuit of the Good are inextricably linked.

Plato's account of love and beauty is given dramatic expression in several Socratic dialogues. In the Phaedrus it is clearly Phaedrus' enthusiasm and beauty which inspire Socrates to reach philosophical heights. Likewise, in the Charmides, Socrates is completely overawed by the beauty of the young boy—so much so that at one point he admits that he has “taken the flame,” and wonders whether he can maintain his self-control. In line with Plato's theoretical position, however, the passion that is generated by the beauty of Charmides leads eventually to a philosophical discussion of temperance. There is no formal resolution to this dialogue since no final definition of temperance is reached; but there is a dramatic resolution insofar as Socrates achieves temperance by the end of the dialogue. Once again, erotic passion is mastered, and the energy that is thereby released allows Socrates to penetrate further into the realm of Forms and attain the transcendence of philosophy.

All of the essential Socratic elements are also present in Death in Venice: the beautiful youth, the older enthusiast of beauty and morality, and the erotic atmosphere of Venice itself. Initially, of course, Aschenbach affects to respond to the boy's beauty as if he were a completely detached observer: “‘Good, oh, very good indeed!’ thought Aschenbach, assuming the patronizing air of the connoisseur to hide, as artists will, their ravishment over a masterpiece” (DV, p. 29). Soon after he returns from his abortive departure, however, it becomes clear to him that he cannot endure to be away from Tadzio. And after a long passage in which he reflects upon the boy's beauty as a godlike work of art, Aschenbach repeats the Socratic claim that it is the function of corporeal beauty to remind us of the spiritual realm by pulling us out of our attachment to the world and its ordinary pleasures: “the god,” he muses, “in order to make visible the spirit, avails himself of the forms and colours of human youth, gilding it with all imaginable beauty that it may serve memory as a tool, the very sight of which then sets us afire with pain and longing” (DV, p. 45). In the next paragraph, Aschenbach recalls the atmosphere of ancient Greece and the sacred grove where Socrates' conversation with Phaedrus took place. But after repeating some of the basic points of Socrates' original argument, he gives the following warning, that “beauty … is the beauty-lover's way to the spirit—but only the way, only the means, my little Phaedrus” (DV, p. 45). This is interesting because although it may be construed as “correct” Platonic doctrine, it is not a point that is emphasized or even made explicit in the Phaedrus itself. Hence the warning draws attention to itself; and the very denial forces us to consider whether Aschenbach might already be guilty of what he fears: that in spite of the Socratic justification, the pursuit of Tadzio has become an obsession and an end in itself.

Aschenbach decides that he will compose in the presence of Tadzio, using the boy's beauty as the catalyst for his own artistic powers. Once again, Aschenbach views his relationship to Tadzio in Socratic terms; for him, as for Socrates, beauty confronted and withstood is supposed to lead to an achievement of the spirit. As Mann tells us, he “fashioned his little essay after the model Tadzio's beauty set: that page and a half of choicest prose, so chaste, so lofty, so poignant with feeling, which would shortly be the wonder and admiration of the multitude” (DV, p. 46). Having said this, however, Mann deliberately forces us to question the analogy that Aschenbach has established by telling us at the end of the passage that, “When Aschenbach put aside his work and left the beach he felt exhausted, he felt broken—conscience reproached him, as it were after a debauch” (DV, p. 47). Later it becomes clear that Aschenbach's obsession will not lead to any kind of spiritual achievement or self-empowerment. And as he follows the boy and his family all over Venice it becomes evident that Aschenbach is to be associated with the “bad” kind of lover who cannot control himself.

What are we to make of all this? It might be suggested that Aschenbach is simply a moral failure, who manages to deceive himself about the purity of his concern for Tadzio, when in fact he is not really interested in the boy's welfare at all, only his own delight in being near him. We are told, for example, that the thought of Tadzio dying young gives Aschenbach an unaccountable feeling of pleasure. Likewise he will not do what he knows he ought to do, and tell Tadzio's mother about the plague, because he fantasizes about surviving alone with Tadzio. Even so, the argument of Death in Venice goes deeper than this. It may be true that Aschenbach fails to measure up to the Platonic ideal and that he is not a good kind of lover. But given the story's final judgments on art and form, and the later conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus which ends with Socrates' admission of guilt, Death in Venice may be viewed as a challenge to every idealizing impulse, including that of Plato, which seeks to justify the erotic impulse or the pursuit of beauty for the sake of something higher.

Let us consider this point: in Plato's dialogues there is a nice mythology, an ideology of the lover and his beloved which is theoretically appealing and dramatically effective. For the most part this “myth” is accepted, both by Aschenbach and by ourselves, as the ultimate truth about the role of beauty in the achievement of a higher order of Being. But what if all of this is only a myth?—a false attempt at a justification for something which is basically oblivious to moral concerns? I would suggest that this is the point of Mann's encounter with Plato: Aschenbach is one who has simply accepted Plato's classical account of beauty as a force of redemption. In this way he justifies his obsession to himself. Nevertheless, as Mann had earlier suggested, the artist's devotion to beautiful form has two contradictory aspects: “Is it not moral and immoral at once: moral in so far as it is the expression and result of discipline, immoral—yes, actually hostile to morality—in that of its very essence it is indifferent to good and evil, and deliberately concerned to make the moral world stoop beneath its proud and undivided sceptre?” (DV, p. 13). In opposition to Plato, Death in Venice shows accordingly how the concern for beauty can ultimately lead to moral dissolution and death.

The final verdict of Death in Venice actually appears close to the end of the work in Socrates' second speech to Phaedrus. Aschenbach the great artist, and the representative of moral certainty, sits dazed and confused in the square; and at this point, Socrates makes his reappearance in order to condemn the activity of the artist, and the pursuit of beauty, as a “path of perilous sweetness” and way of transgression: “We may be heroic after our fashion, disciplined warriors of our craft, yet are we all like women, for we exult in passion, and love is still our desire—our craving and our shame. And from this you will perceive that we poets can be neither wise nor worthy citizens.” And he adds, “We must needs be wanton, must needs rove at large in the realm of feeling. Our magisterial style is all folly and pretense, our honorable repute a farce, the crowd's belief in us is merely laughable. And to teach youth, or the populace, by means of art is a dangerous practice and ought to be forbidden” (DV, p. 72). Although this judgment comes from Aschenbach's disordered brain, it represents a final moment of self-understanding in which Aschenbach rejects the myth of art that he had previously lived by. Here, Mann seems to be telling us the pure concern with form is by definition immoral, and it is a lie which says that art or beauty necessarily produces transcendence. Art may be used in the service of the good, but the essential thing about art is its independence and power of attraction. It would be false to say that art is of itself a force of redemption. In fact, the opposite appears to be true: that in standing outside of all moral considerations, beauty is the danger that leads us to death. In the final analysis, the power of art and beauty is to be celebrated and condemned.

All of this must lead us to appreciate the essentially complex nature of Mann's argument. On the one hand, as we have seen, Mann is no puritan. Death in Venice attacks Plato's strictures against art in Book X of the Republic by showing us what happens to someone who tries to exercise such a sovereign self-control and denial of the passions. Death in Venice is so lavishly written and so finely styled that we could never regard this work as simply a moral lesson against the excesses of feeling and form. On the other hand, while Mann obviously does value art and beauty as both delightful and necessary, he is under no illusion about the deadliness of these forces. In effect, his story argues powerfully against the romantic valorization of art as a redemptive power; and in this respect he obliges us to re-read Plato with suspicion.

III

I have argued that Death in Venice may be regarded as Thomas Mann's sustained response to Plato, insofar as it calls into question Plato's elevation of beauty as a means of achieving a higher realm of truth. In fact, it may be added that Death in Venice expresses the rejection of any philosophical theory which supports the redemptive power of art. Schopenhauer's philosophy, for example, is clearly suggested by the description and title of Aschenbach's book, Maia; for according to Schopenhauer “the veil of Maya” is supposed to hide relentless striving of the one primordial Will, and allows us to believe in our illusory individuation. Schopenhauer argues that art is a redemptive force since concentration upon the pure forms of beauty allows us to withdraw from our everyday concerns to achieve a disinterested repose, as pure will-less subjects of knowledge. In Death in Venice, however, this account is rejected, as Aschenbach's objective appreciation of Tadzio's beauty (“‘Good, oh, very good indeed!’ thought Aschenbach, assuming the patronizing air of the connoisseur …”) cannot be maintained. Here, Aschenbach's refined aesthetic sense does not save him but actually drags him deeper into the madness of the Will.

The two Nietzschean elements of the Apollonian and the Dionysian are also clearly present throughout Death in Venice. Aschenbach's strict self-control and his preoccupation with artistic form confirm him as the Apollonian artist par excellence. Mann's story describes the release of Dionysian powers through Aschenbach's obsession for Tadzio and the seductive charm of Venice; and this culminates with Aschenbach's dream of Dionysian orgy and excess. But while in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, the unity of Apollonian and Dionysian forces represents the empowering goal of art, in Death in Venice there is no possibility of a union between these extremes: either the rigid self-control of the artist or scholar or the self-abandonment of the lover. There is no chance of a mediation between these positions, and Nietzsche's ideal synthesis is accordingly a sham.

This brings us, then, to the nature of the relationship between literature and philosophy. A work of literature, such as Death in Venice, can be shown to serve as a useful commentary upon a particular philosophical position. But how is it possible for such a commentary to be effective and appropriate, given the essential ambiguity of literary texts, and the contrary ideal of a univocal philosophical meaning? Clearly, Death in Venice is not a didactic work. It is not a moral fable whose meaning is patently obvious for everyone to see. On the other hand, I have suggested that the text as a whole does have an overall intention which directs the reader towards a particular perspective on art and its philosophical relevance. In Death in Venice, Mann effectively challenges a philosophical position on the nature of art by giving us a convincing counter-example that calls the original philosophical model into question. More explicitly, because his account of Aschenbach's obsession is both convincing and compelling it can serve as the disproof of Plato's idealization of art and beauty.

Now it may be objected that whether or not a work of literature is dramatically convincing is really quite irrelevant to the question of its final validity or truth. This is undeniably correct. As Socrates knew, the most rhetorically effective speech is not necessarily the most veracious. Nevertheless, if a story is psychologically compelling, then this gives at least prima facie support for the vision of human nature that is embodied in the text. To argue that a work like Death in Venice is only dramatically effective without being philosophically interesting is to insist upon a distinction which is difficult if not impossible to maintain. Our analysis of Death in Venice forces us to make a closer scrutiny of works like Plato's Phaedrus, for it is plain that the philosophical claims of the latter also rely upon the evocation of an idyllic scene, where, in an erotically charged encounter with the beautiful youth, the ordinary restrictions on passionate discourse need not apply. The mythical context that is thereby established supports and gives credence to Socrates' visionary assertions on the nature of beauty and the soul. In Plato, as in Thomas Mann, the philosophical argument is therefore inseparable from the dramatic situation of the text, so that any fixed separation of “literary” as opposed to “philosophical” concerns must accordingly be challenged.

Notes

1. All page references to Death in Venice will be designated by DV and will refer to H. Lowe-Porter's translation contained in Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories (New York: Vintage, 1954).

2. Page references to the Phaedrus will be designated by a P and will refer to R. Hackforth's translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). An interesting account of Mann's appropriation of Plato may also be found in A. van Buren Kelly's “Von Aschenbach's Phaedrus: Platonic Allusion in Der Tod in Venedig,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 75 (1976): 228-40. Kelly argues for Aschenbach's failure in terms of the Platonic schema itself. Also interesting are A. Braverman and L. Nachman, “The Dialectic of Decadence: An Analysis of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice,” Germanic Review 45 (1970): 289-98; and a compelling “Christian” reading of the story by A. E. Dyson, “The Stranger God: Death in Venice,” Critical Quarterly 13 (1971): 5-20.