18.5.2010
Prefiguration is a writing technique wherein a later episode of the story
(typically one with a heavy importance for the characters) is symbolically
invoked in an earlier passage. Or, put differently, something happens to the
characters early in the text that can be interpreted as somehow symbolizing
the later episode.
Some of the most haunting uses of prefiguration I know of are made by
Thomas Mann in Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice)[1]. The
story in short: The successful but tired writer Aschenbach travels to Venice,
where he is stricken with the beauty of a young boy who stays at the same
hotel with his family; he gets obsessed with the youth, and unreasonably
staying on in unhealthy weather and in the middle of the outbreak of an
epidemy, he sees his firmness and strength drain away; he attempts to make
himself look younger and more attractive by various cosmetic means;
eventually he dies.
The first, and one of the most eminent, examples of the prefiguration
technique can be found directly at the beginning, in a scene in which
Aschenbach, in his home town of Munich, is gripped by an intense desire to
travel, accompanied by a daydream vision of a tropical landscape: "er sah
wie mit leiblichem Auge eine ungeheure Landschaft, ein tropisches Sumpfgebiet
unter dickdunstigem Himmel, feucht, üppig und ungesund, eine von
Menschen gemiedene Urweltwildnis aus Inseln, Morästen und Schlamm
führenden Wasserarmen [...] — und fŸhlte sein Herz pochen vor
Entsetzen und rätselhaftem Verlangen." (189) In view of how the
story will develop, it's not difficult to see the allusions, in this
passage, to Aschenbach's later stay in Venice, with its water channels and
illness bearing climate conditions. Moreover, his forceful state of desire
is triggered by the sight of a strange-looking man who seems to appear out
of nowhere. The description of this stranger combines a physiognomy that is
reminiscent of allegorical depictions of death (lean figure, pallid skin,
furrowed brow, a row of long, bared teeth; 187-188) with an appearance that
evokes exotic and far-away countries and a sense of wandering around ("das
Wanderhafte in seiner Erscheinung", 188).
Commentators have seen a prefiguration of death in this scene, both on
the experiential level (that is, the vision of the tropical landscape
symbolizes the realm of death that is soon to draw Aschenbach in) and in a
more tangible way as a quasi-personalization in the stranger. Both share a
quality that exerts a strong pull on Aschenbach and kick off the journey
that ends with his actual, physical death (not without a slide down a
degrading slope in mind and spirit beforehand, too).
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[1] Thomas Mann, "Der Tod in Venedig", in: Schwere Stunde.
Erzählungen 1903–1929. Frankfurt a.M: Fischer 1991,
186–266. Quoted with page numbers in the text.
