I just finished
"Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann a few hours ago, which was promptly followed by the viewing of the eponymous film adaptation by Luchino Visconti, and both present "problems" that I will try to render to myself while bobbing my sleep-deprived head.
Flat out the movie version does not even come close to emulating Thomas Mann's masterpiece; it is an echo at best. Certain personal (as well as unconscious) revelations about the artistic temperament of the author are present in the book which matter just as much as what
is not present; namely, that he is operating his typewriter from a higher abode when "revealing" his near-lecherous affectation with the Polish boy Tadzio (or Wladzio, the real name of the boy which Mann met in his 1911 Venetian holiday). The more he reveals about the nature of the artist, of the writer, and of the frightful curse of talent (both in
Death in Venice and
Tonio Kroger), the more we can marvel at his Mariana-Trench-like depths of machination. Thomas Mann is sauntering effortlessly between the layers of Humanocracy; perfectly aware of the scandalous implication of his revelation, he is also aware of the new psychological and artistic persuasions of his era, as well as of his ego's own self-serving demands.
Of course, a true human sufferer as he was, accepting the challenge of the insurmountable, Thomas Mann was a great human being, and he was great where any lesser man would have thrived in mere trickery. His ego, which is appeased with the final, pathetic, and miserable destruction of Aschenbach, should really be identified as dignity.
But Thomas Mann had a few backups in case of wildfire. The Phaedrus references are no mere coincidence. Oh no. And way before we reached the scene of the dream in the hill with Socrates, my memory banks had already flocked to Plutarch's
Lives, and the quasi-homosexual relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, though the latter is nowhere mentioned in the book.
It is implied.
The Greek backyard would give him solicitude with the more pigheaded contingent of his readers; he is able to manufacture art, reveal much, and yet stand aloof and untouched. His truth, then, remains true; he was arrested by a passion over the beauty of this boy; his own wife Katya said as much. Aside from the revelations that we, as posteriors (no pun intended) of his generation are privy-to via personal letters, tell-all's, etc, the thought that one might be arrested by a sudden passion over an object of beauty under the very same circumstances is not difficult to believe and/or to experience. In fact,
it happened to me.
It was in Paris, early July 2004 and I was sitting at the base of the Eiffel Tower when this absolutely, positively beautiful girl sat down nearby with her parents. Now, while she wasn't necessarily "a girl", she couldn't have been more than 15 or 16 years old, while I was 25. To describe the strange conflagration of feelings that gathered in me at that moment is not easy, but it has been eased by Thomas Mann.
The first feeling that sank in my heart alongside the perception of this beauty was the inadequacy of this perception. The age differential made me feel ashamed, awkward, and upset, even when the feeling was of a pure sort, similar to those naive and tender feelings that one experiences when in elementary school. Disgust immediately followed this initial flurry of emotions; I'm not the type that "gets on" with the unblossomed variety of human beings, that's simply not my kink, so to feel rent by something other than indifference by the sight of this girl was extremely disturbing. I was then assailed by sadness. Right there and then I thought about that boy in Paris, or wherever this girl might call home; a boy who must surely be in love with her without ever having told her what he feels. The kind of boy that I once was, the kind of voluntarily unrequited love that I was too foolish to procure for myself.
I stirred memories that I had not touched in years; about those innocent tender moments in a distant classroom, where no one suspects, where no one is looking (or so you think) while you spend the whole class day staring at the object of your affection. Silly and pointless sleepless nights (like this one), the acuteness of some senses, like the sense of smell or touch, and the occlusion of others, like sight or hearing. The dreamlike serendipity of songs, the innocence of first love; all came back and was bestowed to one invisible boy whose place I thought I was usurping. It was he who should have been where I was, sitting at the base of the Eiffel Tower on a gorgeous summer afternoon, with the Champ de Mars to his right, and his beloved to his left. I weaved the future story according to my insights of life; she falls for another, a more colorful sort. He forgets her, but never really. She gets hurt, as such are men; once, twice, three times, until she finally falls for the very first time, with the very first guy that really cares. He's grown too, and he's come to Paris at 25, to the Eiffel Tower, like all tourists do eventually.
He sits where I sit, and it is a peaceful day just like this one, and then he stares into the spot where his erstwhile beloved sat 13 years ago and where I weaved these thoughts for him, and a strange pang of foreboding, of nostalgia, of emotion stills his heart. There is nothing there for him to feel this way, and yet he does, inexplicably so. Such is the origin of sudden and arresting feelings; the fabric of the cosmos that aches to tell us of the coincidences that lie hidden from our eyes, but immortalized in a particular space within the fluidity of time. And thus perhaps it was here that another man once dreamed for me while staring at my first love.
So
Tadzio's can happen. I've since forgotten the face of this creature I once saw in Paris, and the faces of many, many others in recent years with which I shared a single subway glance, an innocuous moment at a party, a stare at a coffee shop, a smile, a wink, a blindside kiss; love that is not even given the chance to blossom, that it rises inexplicably against the blunt force of apparent fate and sanity.
That is why there needed to be a Death in Venice, because Thomas Mann knew that inordinately falling for beauty inevitably leads to tragedy. He learned from Goethe's mistakes at Marienbad and did the only thing that a writer can really do: flesh it out the way it could have been, stand above it, know the ending, end it.
But while he killed his own alter-ego for the sake of his dignity, he nevertheless gave his momentary passion in that Venetian Holiday the one gift that contradicts his act; he gave it immortality.
And as long as this story continues to be read, there never really will be a Death in Venice.
