When one wanted to arrive over night at the incomparable, the fabulous, the like nothing else in the world, where was it one went? Venice is the outpost of the East, half Byzantium, half Bruges, flower of the Italian Renaissance and yet in contact with Asia it is a city of mystical longing and romantic expansiveness-the natural complement to Florence, which is purely rational and western. Unwilling however to undertake so long and difficult a journey, he happily recognizes the natural goal he should choose. Aschenbach's craving for release is first expressed in a vision of the East, the tropical marshland, the jungle.
As Aschenbach succumbs to long-repressed spiritual and physical desires, he loses control of his will, and his resulting degradation leads to his death. There the sultry Venetian setting incites Aschenbach's homoerotic passion for Tadzio, a beautiful god-like youth. This classic situation is depicted in the decline and ultimate collapse of Mann's artist-hero Gustav von Aschenbach, a renowned German author who, after years of living a morally and artistically ascetic life, surrenders to the sensual side of his nature during a sojourn in Venice. The work skillfully combines the psychological realism and mythological symbolism to create a multi-dimensional story that explores the moral transformation undergone by the artist in quest of perfect beauty. Death in Venice is considered among the finest novellas in world literature. Published in 1913, Death in Venice marks the end of the earliest phase of Mann's career and the beginning of a transitional phase in which the author wrote only non-fiction works for several years.
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