DEATH IN VENICE AND OTHER STORIES

Author: Thomas Mann

Year: 1962 (1902, 1903, 1905, 1912, 1940, 1944)

Publisher: Fischer Bücherei KG

Language: German

My first encounter with Thomas Mann coincided with Gustav von Aschenbach’s first encounter with Tadzio. This was 1998. I was an exchange student in Göttingen and the novella “Der Tod in Venedig” (”Death in Venice”) in its original language was put in front of me by one of my flatmates. I was immediately dazzled by the intensity of Mann’s storytelling genius and his sparse but precise narration technique. Still, the plot provoked consternation in me, in the beginning. What kind of man writes a romanticised story about an elderly artist who falls in love with a teenage boy? But it did not take long before I realised there was something more to the story. Twenty years later, I find it easier albeit far from effortless to penetrate some of the layers of this remarkable and troubling story.

”Der Tod in Venedig” is an account of the famous writer Gustav von Aschenbach and his imminent descent from the pedestal of puritan honour and dignity into the morass of carnal lust and debauchery from which he is barely saved only through his death. The story is certainly partly autobiographic as Aschenbach’s crisis must have been all too familiar to Mann who grew up in the strict social environment of northern Germany and most of his life wrestled with his own homosexuality. But more importantly, at least in my opinion, is Mann’s brush with art in itself. In the guise of the protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach, Mann portrays an artist who has been completely subdued by moral expectations and the narrow path to social acceptance, to the point of having stopped producing any new output for fear of jeopardising the good name he earned by his existing pieces.

The whole story is filled with symbols of death, long before Aschenbach finally perishes. The first thing that happens in the story is that Aschenbach visits a cemetery. When he arrives in Venice, the gondola that takes him to his hotel is unusual in its pitch black colour resembling a coffin. Also, his very name, Aschenbach meaning ash-brook in German, sounds like an allusion to death and the canals of Venice. Knowing Mann’s fascination with ancient mythology, I even like to think that the brook refers to the river Styx; another symbol of death in the novella.

Still, it is not the biological death of a man that is the main plot of the story. It is the death of an idea. The death of the puritan when confronted with emotions. The defeat of the artificially appropriate artistry when faced with pure and natural beauty. Aschenbach, who becomes increasingly and  irreversibly obsessed with the young boy, in whom he spots immaculate perfection, suddenly regains his creative power but prevented as he is by his moral shackles to harness it and, by necessity rather than by choice, finally crosses the river Styx and takes with him the art that he could have generated, had his pleasure not been forbidden. It is the price of truth. It is non-negotiable.

If in “Death in Venice”, Mann deals with the relationship between art and society, in another short story in the collection, he settles the score with the relationship between art and religion. In ”Gladius Dei”, he lets his protagonist Hieronymous, try to harass a gallery owner into taking down and ultimately burning a painting depicting the Madonna with child, which he finds blasphemous in the way Our Lady’s femininity is depicted. He argues that art should not aim at extolling beauty but that its purpose is only to glorify God. As the confrontation between Hieronymous and the gallery owner unfolds, what began as a modest request to take a certain painting down evolves into a belligerent demand that all the paintings in the gallery be burned. In the end, Hieronymous is unceremoniously tossed out of the gallery having accomplished nothing at all. Art does not take orders from religion.

Mann is careful not to make Hieronymous a formal representative of the Church. He is neither a monk nor a priest nor in any other way formally connected to churchly affairs. He is described as simply a layman zealot and as such represents not the direct challenge by the religious institutions, but by their proxies; society and its moral code. Very much like the challenge Gustav von Aschenbach was faced with.

There are four more novellas and short stories in this compilation: “Tristan”, “Die vertauschten Köpfe” (“The Transposed Heads”), “Schwere Stunde” (“A Weary Hour”), and “Das Gesetz” (“The Tables of the Law”)., all of which except the last I read with great interest and pleasure. “Das Gesetz” is Mann’s interpretation of the Book of Exodus, and I just hands down admit that I had a hard time to understand the purpose of this work. Granted, it paints a more personal and human picture of Moses and his deeds as he led the Israelites out of Egypt and let them conquer the Promised Land, but I was sadly unqualified to discern the deeper meaning of re-telling this well-known story in new words as, in my simple mind, it brought nothing new to my knowledge of the Scripture. I also tried to read it through the prism of art-vs.-society as that seems to be the theme that runs like a thread through all the stories in the book, but still failed. If you who read these words can help me understand, do share!

All in all, these novellas and short stories are for slow and focused reading

THE WORLD WAR

Author: Various
Year: 1938-1939
Publisher: Världskrigets förlag A.B.
Language: Swedish

Imagine that you are a tourist standing on one of the signal towers of the Great Wall of China and looking into the distance following the stretch of the seemingly endless structure as it whirls and turns across hills and valleys, lakes and rivers, forests and plains relentlessly pursuing the horizon. You see the trenches, turrets, gates, edges and fortifications and the further you try to see, the more you have to strain your eyes.

A few kilometres down the wall, a different viator is standing in a different tower but looking in the same direction as you are. His tower is on a different altitude, angle and relative distance from the sector of the wall you were trying to see. To this person, the tower is equally winding and equally endless, but he sees the items that you see from a different perspective. Maybe he can see something that is too far away for you to properly identify. Maybe you can see something that is blocked from his view. You are looking back to the same wall, and see the same portions of it, and yet your observations would differ.

Looking back into the history of mankind is no different. We know things today that those before us did not know. Our preferences and tastes change. Our expectations evolve. And when we are faced with accounts of events from eras that came and went, we are aghast to learn about developments that seemed so easily avoidable and yet crashed down on our forefathers without mercy or recourse. We see things they did not see, and they saw things that are out of view for us.

It is, therefore, a useful exercise to read historical accounts written before our era as seen by observers on a different point on the timeline. Voltaire’s book about Charles XII of Sweden is one such example. “Världskriget” (not available in English but the title translates to “The World War”) is another. In and by itself, it is already a fascinating read, but there is one fact in particular that makes this compilation particularly fascinating. The clue is in the title: it was published in 1938 and 1939, i.e. before they knew that there was going to be a second world war, even ghastlier than the previous one.

I have read the 14 volumes of Världskriget on and off over the course of the last five years and finally finished it in time to celebrate the centenary of the end of the war. It is a comprehensive collection of essays on the most diverse aspects of the First World War. The essays cover all sorts of perspectives on the Great War. They certainly cover the mandatory chapters on the political alliances, the shots in Sarajevo, the mobilisation across Europe and beyond, the diplomatic efforts to stave off the disaster, the troop movements and the battles, and the final capitulation of the defeated Central Powers. But apart from that, they also include more specialised titles such as “The Exploits of the German destroyer S.M.S.‘Emden’”, “Mines and the Use Thereof During the War”, “The Horse During the World War”, “The Irish Uprising of 1916”, “Sanitary Services”, “The Press and the War”, “German/French/British Marching Songs”, “The Rise and Success of National Socialism”, “The New Italy”, “Military Expenses”, “Russian Generals”, “Tetanus”, and “War humour”. Surprisingly, despite several articles on blimps, aviation, and individual feats of valour, not once was Manfred von Richthofen (a.k.a. the Red Baron), the most celebrated fighter pilot of the era, mentioned.

It is, without a doubt, both chilling and awe-inspiring to read the accounts, thoughts, analyses, and arguments of people who had no way of knowing what horrors stood before them. The heroic introduction to the Nazi movement in Germany and the apotheosis of Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini are particularly horrifying.

What saddened me the most was how pundits, politicians, historians, and the general public until the night before the war refused to fully accept the impending calamity. The efforts to downplay, devalue, or ignore the threat and even ridicule those who called for attention to the matter sounds familiar to my 21st-century ears. I am reminded of the myopic misunderstanding that material wealth, trade, and economic development will trump pride and nationalism. I see the naïve hope that rational thought and education will conquer emotions and fear. I recognise the disastrous equation of justice with revenge. Our forefathers did it, and we are doing it again.

Which ultimately leaves me with the disturbing hunch that this is the hamartia that repeatedly prevents us from ever really saying ”farewell” to the past and compels us to repeatedly part with “until we meet again.”