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Online Journal
- 30.6.2010
The title of Thomas Mann's famous novella is usually translated into
English as Death in Venice (compare also the Italian title of Luchino
Visconti's film adaptation: Morte a Venezia); however, this somewhat
obscures that the original German title carries a definite article:
Der Tod in Venedig. So what the tale is about isn't just
something generic about dying in Venice (of which, one might think then, the
particular death of Aschenbach, Mann's protagonist, is just one instance).
It really is about an individual death — the culmination of a
specific life characterized by unique determination, discipline and
success on the one hand and on the other an incapacity to withstand, against
all better judgment, the weakening influence of a certain constellation of
circumstances. (Perhaps it's not merely an incapacity to resist them, but
also an element of actively seeking and following them that is in play here.)
It's also, crucially, an artist's life that is portrayed, but then
again a life originating in a family tradition centered around a sense of
duty, an adherence to discipline and austerity. There are, in other words,
not so many people who could die such a death (in Venice or elsewhere) as
Aschenbach's; and it's the individual end of such a life that Mann portrays
— an aspect that is obscured by the imprecise translation.
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