In many respects - including the trip to Italy and the distant but intense infatuation with a Polish boy - Mann’s story was autobiographical by his own admission and despite being married with six children, he fell in love with a number of men throughout his life, leaving behind only the question of whether any of these relationships were consummated. Most of the action unfolds in Aschenbach’s mind where he wrestles with doubts, melancholy, and increasing helplessness as he watches a life and career built on intellectual order unravel in the face of Tadzio’s beauty. After Aschenbach sees Tadzio, he remembers “eelings he had had long ago, early and precious dolors of the heart, which had died out in his life’s austere service and were now, so strangely transformed, returning to him.”īefore you get too creeped out by the pederastic nature of the attraction - which is not in any way to deny its creepiness - it’s worth noting that except for some returned glances of indeterminate meaning from Tadzio, who is not unaware of the older man staring at him and (eventually) following him around, the relationship remains through the end completely one-sided.

Mann’s character is what we would now probably call a “closet case,” someone who has long had homosexual feelings but possessed the “common sense” and “self-discipline” (Mann’s words) not to act on them. One day, after basically being cruised (Mann does not use the expression, of course) by another man on the train platform in Munich, Aschenbach makes the impulsive decision to travel to Venice, where he quickly finds himself in the grips of an obsession for a 14-year-old Polish boy of “godlike beauty” named Tadzio, who is staying at the same hotel.

All three works feature middle-aged men ensconced in intellectual careers who find themselves unexpectedly obsessed with much much-younger men - or in Death in Venice, a 14-year-old boy - of great or “classical” beauty in the ancient Greek tradition, which leads to crisis, self-evaluation, and - ultimately - destruction.ĭeath in Venice is about a 50 year-old famous writer - Gustav von Aschenbach - who was once married (his wife died long ago) and is the father of a now-grown daughter. Is it possible for an otherwise straight man to be struck by a bolt of gay lightning and next scene end up declaring his undying love to a beautiful young Adonis? It’s a question Thomas Mann addressed with searing insight and eloquence almost 100 years ago in his famous novella Death in Venice, and one that was more recently revived in novels by Michael Cunningham ( By Nightfall) and Chad Harbach ( The Art of Fielding).

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