I have to start this review with a confession: I did not read this translation of Death in Venice. I didn't even read a printed book version of Death in Venice; rather, I found a translated version of the text online. (I sure hope it was posted legally...) So since I can't say a whole lot about this translation, I will have to limit myself to talking about Mann's story--which, I do hope, is more enthralling in its native German than it is in translation.

The novella's plot concerns Gustav von Aschenbach, a world-famous author who has recently been ennobled and has decided, through a set of unusual circumstances, that he needs to take a break. He decided to vacation in Venice, where he becomes infatuated with a young Polish boy, Tadzio, who is vacationing there with his family. The better part of the tale involves Aschenbach's steadily increasing interest in the young boy, and the lengths that he goes to for this longing.

The real strength of the novella is in the character of Gustav, who is dominant in every scene, despite the work being told in the third-person. He comes off at first as a very snooty type, but the more time we spend with him--and the more unhinged he becomes as a result of his obsession--the more interested we become in him. His depth is revealed slowly and patiently by Mann: we begin by knowing only his reputation, we then get a fine sense of the person beneath the veneer, and are left with a final sentence that is both achingly sad and bring the whole tale full-circle.

Nevertheless, the story does suffer from exceptionally slow pacing at its start, a problem that I hesitate to blame on the long, languorous construction of the original German prose. The first two chapters, as Aschenbach prepares to depart for Venice, crawl along at a snail's pace, providing us with extraordinary insight into Aschenbach's creative faculties and theories of aesthetics, but not giving us enough reason to remain invested in it. The purpose ultimately reveals itself as his obsession with Tadzio becomes more complete (and more artistic, technically), but there feels like too much of a divide between the theory and the practice, and it ends up falling short.

Some may very well give up on the novella before they get very far into it, and I would hardly blame them: I almost did myself. But if you can get past the exposition and reach Venice with Aschenbach, Mann takes hold and steers the story well from there. There's enough mystery and intrigue to keep the reader on his toes--even if the title of the work renders the ending less than a surprise--and there are passages of true beauty throughout. As long as you can get through the slow start, Death in Venice proves itself to be a worthy and enrapturing read.

Some brilliant classics never age. Their eternal conflicts remain relevant and their complexity is sufficient to provide a challenge with each reading. Death in Venice is one of those.

In this novella, Mann investigates the battle between the mind and the body, the head and the heart, the noble and the savage. Gustav von Aschenbach, an aging writer, has dedicated his life to intellectual pursuits, living each day on the highest plane of a carefully-controlled artistic and spiritual life. But a sudden desire for the exotic takes him to Venice, where his life of dignity and restraint falls away. Caught by lust in a climate of decadence and disease, he is helpless to resist the lure of hedonism that finally spells his doom. ( )

Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom. In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. 'It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom,' Mann wrote. 'But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity.'

I struggled with this short story and might have given up on it if it had been longer, but I enjoyed the images of Venice. I read only "Death in Venice" (not the other stories). ( )

A literary achievement with the psychology of Tolstoy and a Greek commitment to the story itself; and that is not the only thing about this book that is 'Greek'. A treatise on Death, Life, Sex, Desire, and Fear which is both enticing and terrifying, and for the self-same reason.

Here is the face of wretched animal man, teeth bared and cloudy desperation mocking the vision. Mann's most succinct and powerful images and meanings are always reversed, for the sense that the raw and brutal emotion herein is become feral is mitigated by the fact that it is twisted back upon the self as only such a morally indistinct, labyrinthine mass may so twist.

Eminently pleasing and disturbing, this battle between the barely-restrained Epicurean and the resignedly Absurdist meets the latter's comic fruition in the former's faux-tragic inaccessibility. ( )