Death in Venice
Thomas Mann
Immortalized for many by the few final moments of its famous film adaptation, Death in Venice is an intriguing, slightly inaccessible look at beauty and the intoxicating power of raw emotion over otherwise rational individuals. The inevitable decline of protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach is at once flamboyant and timid, maintaining an uneasy balance marvelously evoked by Mann when his full attentions are on the task at hand. Though frequent philosophical digressions routinely adorn the text and leave little room for ambiguity, they are often detached from the story at hand and seem to operate independently of Aschenbach. The intention behind these detours is pretty clearly to illuminate the depth of complications arising from Aschenbach's solitude and his growing fascination with a pretty young thing, but Mann's extended meditations on the eternal conflicts between the desire for beauty and truth in art, between the intuitive and the rational, or between the unspoken and overt come at the heavy cost of readers' attention and interest. These passages are illuminating but demanding both in their placement surrounding, rather than really integrated into, the narrative and in the richness of their topics. Death in Venice may be a short novella, but it requires far more attention than most novels I have read, and any lapse is likely to send the reader into a vortex of inscrutable confusion. That the book is short should not be surprising, given the small scope of a plot (insofar as plot exists), that feels abbreviated even after its natural concision is taken into account. The result is that the slender volume feels quite inflated with the author's insights and editorializing.
Not quite a character study and not quite a philosophical allegory, the novella flails a bit while attempting to strike a balance between protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach's increasingly obsessive, and not a small bit creepy, infatuation with a young teenager and Mann's observations on the nature of the human psyche. Despite lacking interest for a general audience, the book does display some deft skill. There are the usual clever turns of phrase that decorate most esteemed literary works, but what is best conveyed throughout the novella is a sense of foreboding, at once overt and subtle. Mann is not shy about setting the tone and deploying an array of repetitive cues to signify Aschenbach's most important observations; when these do come, they are not despite their obviousness in any way obtrusive, and indeed it is refreshing to get inside the fictional writer's head rather than his real-life author's.
Mann may be forgiven for hitting the theme heavily in those moments when the story advances, and indeed his consistency is refreshing and grounds the text after so many distractions. His view of plagued Venice is deeply unsettling, but he is able to convey strong, severe images of decay without relying heavily on meaningless exposition. The inevitable sense of deterioration accelerates meaningfully with the plot, though these tandem developments could have been handled with more skill, and the overall effect of the novel is as deeply intellectual as intended. Like the book itself, the month or so that occupies the bulk of the story moves by with a kind of dreamlike quality, each revelation fading into another until an irrevocable decision is reached and a fate duly sealed. Though it is difficult to actually read and enjoy due to a surplus of attention to unwieldy intellectualism, Death in Venice is obviously crafted with skill and offers rewards for readers who will have a chance to probe its surprising density in greater depth.
Grade: B
Thomas Mann
Immortalized for many by the few final moments of its famous film adaptation, Death in Venice is an intriguing, slightly inaccessible look at beauty and the intoxicating power of raw emotion over otherwise rational individuals. The inevitable decline of protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach is at once flamboyant and timid, maintaining an uneasy balance marvelously evoked by Mann when his full attentions are on the task at hand. Though frequent philosophical digressions routinely adorn the text and leave little room for ambiguity, they are often detached from the story at hand and seem to operate independently of Aschenbach. The intention behind these detours is pretty clearly to illuminate the depth of complications arising from Aschenbach's solitude and his growing fascination with a pretty young thing, but Mann's extended meditations on the eternal conflicts between the desire for beauty and truth in art, between the intuitive and the rational, or between the unspoken and overt come at the heavy cost of readers' attention and interest. These passages are illuminating but demanding both in their placement surrounding, rather than really integrated into, the narrative and in the richness of their topics. Death in Venice may be a short novella, but it requires far more attention than most novels I have read, and any lapse is likely to send the reader into a vortex of inscrutable confusion. That the book is short should not be surprising, given the small scope of a plot (insofar as plot exists), that feels abbreviated even after its natural concision is taken into account. The result is that the slender volume feels quite inflated with the author's insights and editorializing.
Not quite a character study and not quite a philosophical allegory, the novella flails a bit while attempting to strike a balance between protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach's increasingly obsessive, and not a small bit creepy, infatuation with a young teenager and Mann's observations on the nature of the human psyche. Despite lacking interest for a general audience, the book does display some deft skill. There are the usual clever turns of phrase that decorate most esteemed literary works, but what is best conveyed throughout the novella is a sense of foreboding, at once overt and subtle. Mann is not shy about setting the tone and deploying an array of repetitive cues to signify Aschenbach's most important observations; when these do come, they are not despite their obviousness in any way obtrusive, and indeed it is refreshing to get inside the fictional writer's head rather than his real-life author's.
Mann may be forgiven for hitting the theme heavily in those moments when the story advances, and indeed his consistency is refreshing and grounds the text after so many distractions. His view of plagued Venice is deeply unsettling, but he is able to convey strong, severe images of decay without relying heavily on meaningless exposition. The inevitable sense of deterioration accelerates meaningfully with the plot, though these tandem developments could have been handled with more skill, and the overall effect of the novel is as deeply intellectual as intended. Like the book itself, the month or so that occupies the bulk of the story moves by with a kind of dreamlike quality, each revelation fading into another until an irrevocable decision is reached and a fate duly sealed. Though it is difficult to actually read and enjoy due to a surplus of attention to unwieldy intellectualism, Death in Venice is obviously crafted with skill and offers rewards for readers who will have a chance to probe its surprising density in greater depth.
Grade: B
No comments:
Post a Comment