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    Death in Venice (MAXNotes Literature Guides)
    Death in Venice (MAXNotes Literature Guides)
    Death in Venice (MAXNotes Literature Guides)
    Ebook150 pages1 hour

    Death in Venice (MAXNotes Literature Guides)

    By Boria Sax

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    About this ebook

    REA's MAXnotes for Thomas Mann's Death in Venice MAXnotes offer a fresh look at masterpieces of literature, presented in a lively and interesting fashion. Written by literary experts who currently teach the subject, MAXnotes will enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the work. MAXnotes are designed to stimulate independent thought about the literary work by raising various issues and thought-provoking ideas and questions. MAXnotes cover the essentials of what one should know about each work, including an overall summary, character lists, an explanation and discussion of the plot, the work's historical context, illustrations to convey the mood of the work, and a biography of the author. Each chapter is individually summarized and analyzed, and has study questions and answers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResearch & Education Association
    Release dateJan 1, 2013
    ISBN9780738673141
    Death in Venice (MAXNotes Literature Guides)

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      Death in Venice (MAXNotes Literature Guides) - Boria Sax

      Bibliography

      SECTION ONE

      Introduction

      The Life and Work of Thomas Mann

      Perhaps no other writer of the twentieth century has cut quite such an imposing figure as Thomas Mann. He wrote dense, learned prose, filled with literary references and parodies. He constantly paid homage to the patriarchs of German letters, whose ranks he obviously expected to join. He could honor the illustrious dead without sounding unduly subservient then claim their heritage without sounding arrogant. In all the many volumes that Mann wrote, it is hard to find a single careless sentence. When he died in 1955 at the age of 80, most people thought of Thomas Mann as a very intimidating figure. Although he cultivated that image, he also warned people against taking it too seriously.

      Thomas Mann was born in 1875 into a prominent mercantile family in the medieval city of Lübeck, where he was raised together with two brothers and two sisters. The circles in which the Mann children were brought up placed an enormous value on order and propriety, which the young people often found stifling. The children were never allowed to forget their position, or the responsibilities that came with it, in the highly stratified German society

      To the great frustration of Thomas Mann’s father, Heinrich Mann Sr., none of his children showed any interest or aptitude for running the family business. Instead, they were drawn to the rather glamorous, though slightly disreputable, world of the arts. The eldest son, Heinrich Jr., who would sometimes be a close companion to Thomas and sometimes a bitter rival, was an excellent student. He declined, however, to learn a practical trade and chose to pursue the vocation of writer. Thomas proved a highly inept student who failed repeatedly and was unable to finish high school. He envied those who were more worldly, but he considered himself a social outsider. This left him, Thomas felt, little choice but to follow the example of his brother Heinrich, and he began to devote all his efforts to literature.

      In 1901, he published his first novel, Buddenbrooks, a fictionalized account of his family history, which quickly established Thomas Mann as one of the leading young authors of Germany. This was followed by Royal Highness and several shorter works including Tonio Kröger. The novella Death in Venice was published in 1912. By the time World War I broke out, Thomas Mann had married, had started a family, and had become famous. Thomas, however, believed that the dramatic political developments did not allow him to simply devote himself to his career and his private life. Though too thoughtful and reflective to be a conventional propagandist, he wished to put his prestige and talent in the service of Germany. His Reflections of a Non-Political Man, published in 1918, was a collection of radio broadcasts and essays on the subject of German character and destiny.

      After the German defeat, Thomas gradually began to take a friendlier view of Anglo-American and French democratic traditions. In 1924, he published The Magic Mountain, often considered his finest novel, which affectionately satirized the intense intellectual debates in Germany. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929.

      Reluctant to become involved in political affairs again, Thomas Mann was not very prepared to respond when Hitler came to power in 1933. Because his wife was Jewish, and the works of his brother Heinrich were banned, Thomas decided not to return from a speaking tour and went into exile. For a time, he still declined to speak out publicly against the regime of Hitler, preferring to work in Switzerland on a series of novels based on the Biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. Then, in 1938, Thomas moved to the United States, where his enormous reputation made him a spokesman for the German literary community in exile.

      Unlike many writers, Thomas Mann loved ceremonial occasions, and he proved adept at cultivating and handling public affairs. However, his real passion was, as always, literature. In 1947 he published his last major work, Dr. Faustus, a somber novel about a musician who sells his soul to produce the supreme work of art. After the war, he moved to Switzerland, where he died in 1955.

      Until fairly recently, almost all critics accepted the image Mann liked to project of himself, a dignified family man who practiced an unwavering morality. More recently, biographers and critics have viewed this as simply a public mask. But, if that is so, what did it conceal? According to some, it concealed a confused human being, leading a fairly chaotic life. Other critics see a man who, like Gustave von Aschenbach at the beginning of Death in Venice, lived only for his art and had little hesitation about exploiting other people.

      The reader will have to form his or her own opinion about Thomas Mann, but it is important to raise the issue. The works cannot entirely be separated from their author. We do know that the strain of balancing his public image with his personal life, of being both a writer and a man of affairs, often proved a burden; and writing was partly a sort of therapy for Thomas Mann.

      Almost all his works, particularly Death in Venice, show the tension between a need to confess and a desire for privacy. Though Thomas Mann constantly shows us glimpses of his life, which excite our interest and curiosity, he is almost never frank or direct. Few writers have written about themselves as persistently as Thomas Mann. His prose, however, almost always seems impersonal. Readers who seek a sort of intimacy with their authors may feel disappointed by him, but the human being behind the works may not be so unknowable as he has often appeared. Those who look for intellectual content or literary technique will always find much in Thomas Mann to admire.

      The tone of Death in Venice changes with great subtlety, though not all of this comes through in translation. For the first few pages, the story, told in the third person, seems to be narrated with the detachment of a scientist. The style here seems a bit like the way we are led to imagine the writing of the protagonist, Gustave von Aschenbach: dignified, objective, and austere. We gradually, however, see that this detachment is an ironic pose, almost a joke. The narrator tells everything exclusively from the point of view of

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