Rating: 
Summary: A profound novel about art, beauty and love
Review: Most of what I would say is well covered in other reviews. I strongly agree with many others that "Death in Venice" is a profound work about art and beauty and love (among other things) and one of the best novels of the twentieth century. So I will keep my review short and just mention a couple of things that particularly impress me about "Death in Venice."First, I find the drunken old man in the boat to be a particularly huge stroke of genius. The old man jokes around with a group of young men, and Aschenbach wonders how the young men can possibly tolerate him. At first I could not understand why Mann would go into such detail about this situation and Aschenbach's shocked reaction to it. Until, that is, I got to the end and saw how it underlines the completeness of Aschenbach's transformation: he has turned into just what he despised. Also, Mann's use of the cholera epidemic is devastating: not only will Aschenbach risk his own life to keep alive the hope that his desire might be satisfied, but he is willing to keep his knowledge to himself and thereby risk his young love's life as well. As Mann describes, people with unspeakable desires secretly hope for chaos in the midst of which anything might become permissible. Rarely, maybe never, have I seen such a unique and profound insight illustrated so perfectly. The beginning of the novel is somewhat tough reading, especially the very theoretical description of Aschenbach's career. But it is well worth working through. The book is as perfectly structured as a novel can be, and everything at the beginning has something that counterbalances it at the end. There are few novels that I would recommend more highly than "Death in Venice."
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, beautiful adaptation of Nietzche
Review: One cannot read this book without having some knowledge of Nietzche's philosophy of the rational and the irrational. I highly suggest reading The Birth of Tragedy -- or at least a synopsis of it. Having read both, I feel there are no homosexual overtones. Indeed, there are no sexual overtones at all. It is the story of a man seeking balance within himself, and failing. He succumbs to the irrational, the utterly useless and beautiful, and he dies. He is not gay, nor is he a pedophile. The boy is inconsequential... he could have been a pretty potted plant. This book is also beautifully written. Mann's command of language is astounding.
Rating: 
Summary: une beauté mortifère
Review: Rien en la personne d'ascenbach n'aurait pu nous informer sur cette fin de vie solitaire et tragique. La vision du jeune adolescent,beauté absolue, fut la seule responsable de sa mort prématurée.Cependant son dernier regard fut pour lui-"statue mystérieuse et charmant de l'Eros funèbre qui ramène à la mort et à la nuit l'âme désemparée"-.l'écrivain,déjà anéanti par les préliminaires du choléra n'est plus,dès lors, qu'une loque humaine,qu'un corps vide d'espoir et que seuls les souvenirs et la vision du jeune Tadzio garde en vie. L'aliénation d'ascenbach pour l'objet de sa fascination l'achèvera spirituellement d'abord, pour enfin le détruire physiquement.
Rating: 
Summary: Much less to this than I had supposed
Review: There is an old review of mine in this page that praises _Death in Venice_ as "one of the greatest works of short fiction ever written." After seeing Visconti's film adaptation I realized that I had been quite wrong. _Death in Venice_ is actually a rather slight story of homosexual infatuation made to look like it has the gravity of the ages by Mann's skill at ellipsis. But the movie is forced to make it all explicit, revealing that the Reason vs. Emotion debate is in fact rather hackneyed, and that the "voluptuousness of doom" Mann speaks of is just an older man's obsession with a pretty little boy. My hat goes off to Mann as a stylist, but I am ashamed I was taken in by this.
Rating:
Summary: Literally, A Beautifully Written Escape
Review: This is a remarkable short story classic that will stay with you a few days after you finish reading it. Thomas Mann, the author, in a well reknown German-born author who gained success from his novellas. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929. He left Hitler's Germany in 1933 & settled in the US in 1938 until he eventually returned to Europe & died in Switzerland in 1955. This 'Death In Venice' story had a curious draw for me at is was referenced in the book Density Of Souls by Christopher Rice and in another book I'd read. The story is short and very philosophical about an aging artist on vacation in Venice, Italy. It is literally a beautifully written 'escape'. You feel the aura of Venice as you conjure mythic images in what the artist sees as beautiful. It really is a magical book in more ways than one. I loved reading the following lines in the book (just to pick a few): To persevere through all, however, had always been his motto.; To know is to forgive.; Art-understood as personal experience, too--is life raised to the higher power.; ...the foreign tongue turned the boy's speech to music...; Ultimately, we are only as old as we feel in our hearts and minds.; ...passion is our inspiration, and our true longing must always remain a desire for love. So...as you can tell, this short novella can be as deep as you make it. Excellent!!!
Rating:
Summary: Literally, A Beautifully Written Escape
Review: This is a remarkable short story classic that will stay with you a few days after you finish reading it. Thomas Mann, the author, in a well reknown German-born author who gained success from his novellas. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929. He left Hitler's Germany in 1933 & settled in the US in 1938 until he eventually returned to Europe & died in Switzerland in 1955. This 'Death In Venice' story had a curious draw for me at is was referenced in the book Density Of Souls by Christopher Rice and in another book I'd read. The story is short and very philosophical about an aging artist on vacation in Venice, Italy. It is literally a beautifully written 'escape'. You feel the aura of Venice as you conjure mythic images in what the artist sees as beautiful. It really is a magical book in more ways than one. I loved reading the following lines in the book (just to pick a few): To persevere through all, however, had always been his motto.; To know is to forgive.; Art-understood as personal experience, too--is life raised to the higher power.; ...the foreign tongue turned the boy's speech to music...; Ultimately, we are only as old as we feel in our hearts and minds.; ...passion is our inspiration, and our true longing must always remain a desire for love. So...as you can tell, this short novella can be as deep as you make it. Excellent!!!
Rating:
Summary: One of the classics..
Review: This is one of the most beautiful books the 20th century has yet produced. There i s some action in the book, but that is rarely what readers remember afterwards. Somehow, what lingers in the memory is the melancholy and almost dreamy atmosphere that dominates each page. Personally, when I saw Visconti's excellent film version I found I had forgotten the greater part of the actual action. However; to give potential readers an idea of what to expect I suppose I should tell you that the central character is the greatly respected, but ageing professor Von Achenbach, who at the turn of the century leaves his native Germany for a holiday in Venice. Once installed in a comfortable hotel he notices among the guests an almost unaturally beautiful Polish boy, Tadzio. Von Aschenbach is slowly but surely obsessed, and we come to realize that the boy represents the Angel of Death..
Rating:
Summary: A haunting tale about the inner power of corruption
Review: This is, without a doubt, one of the greatest masterpieces of short fiction ever written. The style is simple, but the narrative is lush, subtle and deeply hauting. The end-result is one of the most quietly disturbing pieces I have read. Mann himself described it as a tale concerned with "corruption, and the voluptuousness of doom." The protagonist, Aschenbach, a famous writer whose work champions reflected self-control, is ultimately destroyed by an overwhelming fascination with a child of unusual physical beauty. His obsession is apparently innocent, but its takes over his mind and becomes his doom. A testimony to the strange and destructive powers that live in us.
Rating: 
Summary: Combine the past and future masters to get this
Review: This was published in 1912; Gide's THE IMMORALIST was printed in 1902; Camus's THE PLAGUE in 1947. Take Gide's infatuation, along with the literal (then metaphorical) plague by Camus, and you have the plot of Mann's short.
Rating:
Summary: Combine the past and future masters to get this
Review: This was published in 1912; Gide's THE IMMORALIST was printed in 1902; Camus's THE PLAGUE in 1947. Take Gide's infatuation, along with the literal (then metaphorical) plague by Camus, and you have the plot of Mann's short.
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