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    Death in Venice: And Other Stories
    Death in Venice: And Other Stories
    Death in Venice: And Other Stories
    Ebook115 pages2 hours

    Death in Venice: And Other Stories

    By Thomas Mann

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    About this ebook

    The Nobel Prize–winning author’s masterful novella of eros and obsession, presented alongside other short works of lyrical beauty and psychological depth.

    In Thomas Mann’s immortal novella A Death in Venice, renowned author Gustave Aschenbach faces both middle age and a severe case of writer’s block. He resolves to go on holiday in search of inspiration, only to find himself awestruck by the classical beauty of a fourteen-year-old boy. Submitting to his obsession with the youth, Gustave slowly loses himself, his dignity, and finally his life.

    This volume includes six short works by Mann, including “Little Herr Friedmann,” “Gladius Dei,” Tristan,” and “Tonio Kroger,” among others.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateJan 5, 2021
    ISBN9781504066266
    Death in Venice: And Other Stories
    Author

    Thomas Mann

    Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, and essayist. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. Mann won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929.

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    Reviews for Death in Venice

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    • 3/5
      Another book that has been luking on my shelves for years. I did try to read this book when I first got it but could not get past the first chapter - I found it tedious and overblown. On trying for a second time I found myself enjoying the intellectual challenge of the writing although perhaps not the the central focus of the storyline - ageing German intellectual falls in love and starts stalking a Polish adolescent he encounters during a summer stay in the increasingly pestilential city of Venice. Some heavyhanded use of repeating motifs but overall worth the effort.
    • 3/5
      I'm not sure what the problem was with this audiobook & myself, but I just couldn't get into it. Perhaps I was distracted while listening & didn't get a full appreciation, but I honestly just couldn't wrap my head around it & when the ending came, rather abruptly, I had to rewind several times to be sure it really was the end. And still, I was left with a dazed look on my face. Having not previously read this or any translation of it, I think I may have been better off not going with the audio.
    • 3/5
      Not gay enough.
      lol jk
      I can see why people make comparisons about Death In Venice to Lolita (Tadzio is basically the male version of Lolita) but the themes are so different, so idk. It's not even really about erotic obsession. Will probably reread at some point when I'm more interested in the "dignity of the author" rather than the gheyness.
      Oh yeah, and this? Totally autobiographical. You know Mann totally had a boner for some teenage Polish boy.
    • 3/5
      This edition was a collection of 7 of Mann's short stories, of which Death in Venice was the last. The others were 'Little Herr Freidemann', 'The Joker', 'The Road to the Churchyard', 'Gladius Dei', 'Tristan', and 'Tonio Kroeger'.I started off with very high hopes - I loved the first story 'Little Herr Friedemann', about a disabled young man whose unrequited love for the wife of the town's new lieutenant-colonel ends tragically. It was beautifully written and very compelling.Unfortunately, as I worked my way through the stories I grew more and more disenchanted with them. The majority of the stories felt like they were building up to a great twist which never happened. More often than not they ended with the inner turmoil and wrangling of the protagonist about either his own soul or that of society in general. Mann was heavily influenced by Freud and Neitzsche, and in many stories there was a lot of psychological introspection and classical allusions which grew tiring after a while.As 'Death in Venice' is the most well known of Mann's short stories, I expected that the best had been kept till last, but alas by the time I'd got to it I was worn down by the ever decreasing circles of the previous stories and found it over-hyped. His obsession with the young boy in Venice didn't engage me - I again felt there was too much psycho-babble which distracted from the story and the emotions of the protagonist.Perhaps if I'd read the story 'Death in Venice' in isolation I'd have enjoyed it more, but I just felt there was too much repetition of the same theme throughout most of the stories. I almost feel disappointed that this is my conclusion; there is no doubt that Mann can be an exquisite writer, and each story started with a fantastically imaginative setting. I just wish that he'd concentrated more on the plot and less on the philosophising.I can see how many would enjoy his work, but this just wasn't for me.
    • 2/5
      Another classic book I felt I should read... Well, I read it. And you can get the same emotional impact by reading the Wikipedia article.
    • 4/5
      Portuguese translation of the german original Der Tod in Venedig. The story of a forbidden and self-destructive passion of an old writer by a boy incarnating his ideal of classical beauty. A poignant portrait of love and decadence.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful thoughts on beauty. Feeling Mann's 'sehnsucht' was a confronting experience. Embracing it is still one of the best choices I ever made.
    • 5/5
      I remember reading "Buddenbrooks" in high school and didn’t enjoy it. However, after reading "Death in Venice", I just may give Mann’s earlier work another try. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Though there’s really not much to the storyline, I was intrigued by the main character. At times, Mann’s elongated prose, slowly inching the plot along, frustrated me. But, I couldn’t shake this pressing desire to learn of Gustav Aschenbach’s fate. Now looking back, the pages and pages of poetic “tension” only intensified my longing to read to the end. I was left remembering a Goodreads quote I saved years ago to my page: “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.”- Sigmund Freud
    • 4/5
      This book by Thomas Mann is a novella that can give the reader a taste of the author's style. Thomas Mann writes with beauty and depth. The story is of an older artist, author who is suffering from writer's block. He decides to travel. At first he goes one place but "it isn't right" or he still can't write, so off to Venice he goes. On the way, he is annoyed by an older man trying to look young and hang out with youth. In Venice, he again feels suffocated and thinks to leave but circumstances occur and he stays where is obsession with a adolescent youth takes away any sense, logic and replaces it with passion and poor judgement. Nothing ever occurs, yet this love affair of the mind, leads to decay and death. A short but powerful story.
    • 3/5
      I appreciated the beauty of the writing. The descriptions at times were stunning, but the initial coolness in the writing meant I struggled to feel sympathy with the characters. Aschenbach is self centred and leaves no room for anyone else's emotions, but his descent into obsession and his surrender to passion was compelling and I ended by finding him very human. I thought Mann cleverly drew parallels between Ancient Greek society and that of early 20th century Europe, but it felt more like an intellectual exercise than a novel at times. The motifs of death, fate, obsession and trying to stir up passion in a regulated heart were interesting, but real feelings seldom broke through the cleverness, and only really succeeded towards the end. That kept me from loving the book.
    • 4/5
      The Book Report: I feel a complete fool providing a plot precis for this canonical work. Gustav von Ascherbach, literary lion in his sixties, wanders about his home town of Munich while struggling with a recalcitrant new story. His chance encounter with a weirdo, though no words are exchanged between them, ignites in Herr von Ascherbach the need to get out of town, to get himself to the delicious fleshpots of the South. An abortive stay in Illyria (now Bosnia or Montenegro or Croatia, no knowing which since we're not given much to go on) leads him to make his second journey to Venice. Arriving in the sin capital of the early modern world, and even in the early 20th century possessed of a louche reputation, brings him into contact with two life-changing things: A beautiful teenaged boy, and cholera. I think the title fills you in on the rest.My Review: I know this was written in 1911-1912, and is therefore to be judged by the standards of another era, but I am bone-weary of stories featuring men whose love for other males brings them to disaster and death. This is the story that started me on that path of dislike. Von Ascherbach realizes he's in love for the first time in his pinched, narrow life, and it's with a 14-year-old boy; his response is to make himself ridiculous, following the kid around, staying in his Venetian Garden of Eros despite knowing for sure there's a cholera epidemic, despite being warned of the dangers of staying, despite smelling decay and death and miasmic uccchiness all around, because he's in love. But with the wrong kind of person...a male. Therefore Mann makes him pay the ultimate price, he loses his life because he gives in and falls hopelessly, stupidly in love. With a male. Mann makes his judgment of this moral turpitude even more explicit by making it a chaste, though to modern eyes not unrequited, love between an old man and a boy. Explicit references to Classical culture aside, the entire atmosphere of the novel is quite evidently designed to point up the absurdity and the impossibility of such a love being rewarding or rewarded. It's not in the least mysterious what Mann's after: Denial, denial, denial! It's your only salvation, faggots! Deny yourself, don't let yourself feel anything rather than feel *that*!This book offends my sensibilities. Gorgeously built images and sonorously elegant sentences earn it all of its points.
    • 5/5
      A great book with a very appropriate ending. Very beautifully written.
    • 1/5
      This is a book which I really struggled to finish as on numerous occasions was so tempted to just pack it in. I was certainly grateful that it only ran to 64 pages. I found myself reading nearly every paragraph twice as each seemed so conveluted. I believe in free speech and not in censorship so have no real problem with the subject matter even if it does smack of paedophilia, which to every right-minded person should be abhorant. All the same I am amazed that a book like this was ever published but then perhaps paedophilia was not as well publized by the press as it is today. I believe that Mann himself struggled with his own sexuality so perhaps this book is a symbol of that inner struggle.I did not like the main character much and felt him conceited and self-centred. The writing style and plot was painfully slow. I am not too great on my Greek mythology so struggled to the relevance on more than one occasion and the ending seemed somewhat inadequate.On the whole not my type of book and not one that will live long in the memory. If truth be told it felt like a book written with the express aim of winning a literary prize, to satisfy the so called intelligenzia rather than for the pleasure of the general public but at least it was so short
    • 4/5
      This one creeps up on you slowly throughout. It begins very slowly and frankly rather tediously, with the author spending a large number of words on very little. But the protagonist's obsessions, with the young boy he stalks, and with his fear of and longing for oblivion, gradually take over the narrative, and his mental decay mirrors the physical decay of Venice and the growing menace of the disease plaguing the city. Leave quite an emotional impact.
    • 3/5
      So this tale is brief, somewhere between a short story and a novella. The first portion introduces the main character and discusses his views on literature, some of which are striking and some of which are gobbledygook. The setting then changes to Venice, where the main character falls in love with a fourteen year-old boy. Though you could argue the love stems from the perspective of a lover of beauty, or the old pining for the virtues of the young, the clearest explanation is that the main character feels romantic love towards the young boy. This is by no means a death-stroke to a story; Lolita dealt with a similar premise, and the crowning achievement of that novel was that it made you sympathize with the main character even with his reprehensible behavior and views. Once you took the time to consider the situation in the abstract the main character's behavior became abhorrent, but before that occurred the narrative made you sympathize with a character who was engaged in some of the most terrible actions possible, forcing you to re-examine your sympathies and they ways that fiction and point-of-view can warp your perspective.

      Here the narrative spurs no such higher-level analysis. Instead we are left with the narrative of an old man pining for the underage boy from afar, then meeting his fate. This makes for less than an appealing story, and the prose does not make up for this defect. This novella isn't horrible, but you're better-off rereading Lolita or reading anything with a character that is more dynamic. I will probably try another Thomas Mann work (likely The Magic Mountain), but this book has tempered my expectations.
    • 4/5
      I actually liked this one more than I thought I was going to. At first I thought I was going to be turned off by the topic, an older man chasing after a young boy, which I will admit is somewhat creepy. However, once you get past that the you find that the book has many layers. To get the most out of the book one should have some passing knowledge of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, as one of the central themes is how Aschemback goes from Appolonian restrained life to a Dionysian one of obsession once he meets Tadzio and how he struggles and is eventually doomed by this. There was also nice irony in that the inspiration for Ashenmack's urge to travel came from a personification of Death and that when he finally reaches Venice he's ferried across the lagoon by a representation of Charon who ironically says that you will pay. In fact Aschemback is visited many times throughout the book by personifications of Death each representing a point where he could turn back, yet as Aschemback slips deeper into the Dionysian mode he ignores the warnings. Overall if you can get past the creepy man stalking a young boy and look at it through its Greek & Nietzsche influences you will find a very enjoyable book.
    • 4/5
      4/20. A gorgeous, sensual, intellectually brilliant novella. The caveat is simple: the second chapter is torture. Torture. You have to trust Mann to know what he's doing, and sure enough, he does, and soon we're plunged into the vivid, sweltering world of venice, whose influence slowly overcomes Aschenbach's moralistic, rational thoughts and plunge him into a dionysion revel of passion and sensuous emotion. Watch out for the many red-haired men, and be prepared for the last chapter, when the whole novel seems to plunge into a bachanaid. Here's how it works: at first, I had to force myself to read it (coincides with rationalist part of Aschenbach's mind) with thoughts of "famous novel, famous novelist, I'm sure it gets better ARGH!" Then I had to force myself to stop (coincides with passionate overthrow of reason). A brilliant construction.
    • 2/5
      a 160 page celebration of a pederast and his target. I find it interesting that Mann is revered as an author, but most people would be hard-pressed to come up with 3 books that he wrote. I found this book unimaginative and prone to rambling. Not my idea of a good book.
    • 1/5
      Not my cup of tea at this time
    • 3/5
      I must admit to a dose of uneasiness with the protagnist's creepy paiderastial stalking, but I put it down to a sign of the times much like one would with the stalker-story lyrics in Daddy Cool's "Come Back Again". But as Appelbaum (the translator) suggests in the notes, in basing the novel on an the author's personal experience, Mann "preserved his decorum and his wits, or we would never have had a story", so the reader need not get too morally involved in the details. At first glance some recurring grotesque characters belie the Dionysion versus Appolonian development of the plot as Aschenbach's infatuation takes over. The title, of course, does not hide the ending. Nonetheless, Mann's interweaving of Greek mythology in support of the central theme neatly presents German philosophy in this rather deep novella. I have started to watch the 1971 movie based on this novel but I must say I am glad (as always) at having read the book first - the mythological figures which one can re-imagine after my initial reading of the characters is most certainly lost in the opening scenes of the movie - but that should come as no surprise.
    • 4/5
      [Death in Venice] by [[Thomas Mann]]Gustav Aschenbach, writer and nobleman, spurred by artistic restlessness, embarks on a trip to Venice. Once there he falls in love with a beautiful young boy. Meanwhile, Venice is dealing with an epidemic. Aschenbach slowly succumbs to both the disease of the body and the temptations of his own mind.Aschenbach’s obsession with the boy Tadzio is extremely complex, an aspect that made the stalking relationship . Tadzio is both an object of art and a vestige of Aschenbach’s lost youth. “Icon and mirror!” Ultimately, Aschenbach’s inability to escape his excess is a mark of his artistic nature – what today we would consider living on the fringe becomes damning. “We may deny the abyss and acquire dignity but, no matter how we try, it attracts us.” Mann was convinced that any artist could only deny their passions for so long. Even in translation, one can see what a gifted writer Mann is. The story is meticulously crafted. Varying motifs are repeated throughout, piecing together parts of the story and larger classical references. But my favorite portions were Mann’s observations on the human mind – things I have thought from time to time but wondered if anyone else ever thought this way. Deep insights that become silly in a few moments of thought:“Weary and yet mentally agitated, he spent the protracted mealtime considering abstract, in fact transcendental matters; he reflected on the mysterious combination of regularity and individuality that is requisite for the creation of human beauty; this led him to general problems of form and art; and finally he concluded that these thoughts and discoveries of his resembled those apparently felicitous inspirations in dreams which, when you are fully awake again, prove to be totally insipid and worthless.” And the daily interactions of strangers: “Nothing is stranger or more ticklish than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and observe each other daily – no, hourly – and are nevertheless compelled to keep up the pose of an indifferent stranger, neither greeting nor addressing each other, whether out of etiquette or their own whim. Between them there exists a disquiet, a strained curiosity, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally repressed need for recognition and exchange of thoughts – and also, especially, a sort of nervous respect.”
    • 5/5
      It was nice to hear this translation, which is different from and much easier for the modern reader the one that I read in college. I enjoyed hearing the names and places spoken by a reader on this CD version rather than stumbling over them in print. As a warning, if you aren't familiar with the story, I would save the forward for the end. Michael Cunningham has written an excellent and insightful forward, but it does discuss the plot in detail, so if the story is new to you, skip the first two tracks on the first disk, then come back and listen to them at the end. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Gustav von Aschenbach, a lonely German author, decides to take a long vacation in Venice, away from the drudgery of his normal life. In Venice he spies a young Polish boy, vacationing with his family. von Aschenbach becomes obsessed with this beautiful young boy trying to catch sight of him all over the city. Many people compare this to Lolita except von Aschenbach is a pedophile interested in young boys. Although he is definitely attracted to the boy, he never really approaches him, or crosses that line where he plots a seduction. For me, the story was just ok, but I really enjoyed the intro to this audiobook. Author Michael Cunningham who discusses the new translation of this German novella and all the nuances and little decisions involved in creating a good translation of a classic
    • 2/5
      I know this will mark me as a philistine, but here is my two sentence review of this book. There's no fool like an old fool. Thank God this novella is only 60 pages long
    • 4/5
      How I wish I discovered Mann earlier
    • 4/5
      Strange desire for death, strange compulsion for beauty.
    • 4/5
      I liked and disliked this book. Mann has his character, Aschenbach, preach a little more than I like, preaching his thoughts about beauty and writing and control. That's what I disliked. For the first third of the book, I could barely force myself to keep reading.Then Aschenbach falls in love and begins to tail the object of his affection all over Venice. The story takes a different turn and the writing moves from a rant about virtue to a real story. Venice is beautifully depicted and Aschenbach becomes a real, brilliant, tortured human being. That's what I liked.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      Though it had some really well-written passages, I couldn't really connect with it. I know the point isn't the minimal plot, but that the plot is more of a jumping off point for Mann's theories about beauty, youth, art and erotics. But this "point" somehow seems heavyhanded to me, and not very interesting, especially near the end."If you open a newspaper today, almost all you read about is Thomas Mann. He's been dead thirty years now, and again and again, endlessly, it's unbearable. Even though he was a petty-bourgeois writer, ghastly, uninspired, who only wrote for a petty-bourgeois readership. That could only interest the petty-bourgeois, the kind of milieu he describes, it's uninspired and stupid, some fiddle-playing professor who travels somewhere, or a family in Lübeck, how lovely, but it's nothing more than someone like Wilhelm Raabe. What rubbish Thomas Mann churned out about political matters, really. He was totally uptight and a typical German petty-bourgeois. With a greedy wife." -- Thomas Bernhard

    Book preview

    Death in Venice - Thomas Mann

    I

    On a spring afternoon of the year 19—, when our continent lay under such threatening weather for whole months, Gustav Aschenbach, or von Aschenbach as his name read officially after his fiftieth birthday, had left his apartment on the Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich and had gone for a long walk. Overwrought by the trying and precarious work of the forenoon—which had demanded a maximum wariness, prudence, penetration, and rigor of the will—the writer had not been able even after the noon meal to break the impetus of the productive mechanism within him, that motus animi continuus which constitutes, according to Cicero, the foundation of eloquence; and he had not attained the healing sleep which—what with the increasing exhaustion of his strength—he needed in the middle of each day. So he had gone outdoors soon after tea, in the hopes that air and movement would restore him and prepare him for a profitable evening.

    It was the beginning of May, and after cold, damp weeks a false midsummer had set in. The English Gardens, although the foliage was still fresh and sparse, were as pungent as in August, and in the parts nearer the city had been full of conveyances and promenaders. At the Aumeister, which he had reached by quieter and quieter paths, Aschenbach had surveyed for a short time the Wirtsgarten with its lively crowds and its border of cabs and carriages. From here, as the sun was sinking, he had started home, outside the park, across the open fields; and since he felt tired and a storm was threatening from the direction of Föhring, he waited at the North Cemetery for the tram which would take him directly back to the city.

    It happened that he found no one in the station or its vicinity. There was not a vehicle to be seen, either on the paved Ungererstrasse, with its solitary glistening rails stretching out toward Schwabing, or on the Föhringer Chaussee. Behind the fences of the stonemasons’ establishments, where the crosses, memorial tablets, and monuments standing for sale formed a second, uninhabited burial ground, there was no sign of life; and opposite him the Byzantine structure of the Funeral Hall lay silent in the reflection of the departing day, its façade ornamented in luminous colors with Greek crosses and hieratic paintings, above which were displayed inscriptions symmetrically arranged in gold letters, and texts chosen to bear on the life beyond, such as They enter into the dwelling of the Lord or The light of eternity shall shine upon them. And for some time, as he stood waiting, he found a grave diversion in spelling out the formulas and letting his mind’s eye lose itself in their transparent mysticism, when, returning from his reveries, he noticed in the portico, above the two apocalyptic animals guarding the steps, a man whose somewhat unusual appearance gave his thoughts an entirely new direction.

    Whether he had just now come out from the inside through the bronze door, or had approached and mounted from the outside unobserved, remained uncertain. Aschenbach, without applying himself especially to the matter, was inclined to believe the former. Of medium height, thin, smooth-shaven, and noticeably pug-nosed, the man belonged to the red-haired type and possessed the appropriate fresh milky complexion. Obviously, he was not of Bavarian extraction, since at least the white and straight-brimmed straw hat that covered his head gave his appearance the stamp of a foreigner, of someone who had come from a long distance. To be sure, he was wearing the customary knapsack strapped across his shoulders, and a belted suit of rough yellow wool; his left arm was resting on his thigh, and his gray storm cape was thrown across it. In his right hand he held a cane with an iron ferrule, which he had stuck diagonally into the ground, while, with his feet crossed, he was leaning his hip against the crook. His head was raised so that the Adam’s apple protruded hard and bare on a scrawny neck emerging from a loose sport shirt. And he was staring sharply off into the distance, with colorless, red-lidded eyes between which stood two strong, vertical wrinkles peculiarly suited to his short, turned-up nose. Thus—and perhaps his elevated position helped to give the impression—his bearing had something majestic and commanding about it, something bold, or even savage. For whether he was grimacing because he was blinded by the setting sun, or whether it was a case of a permanent distortion of the physiognomy, his lips seemed too short, they were so completely pulled back from his teeth that these were exposed even to the gums, and stood out white and long.

    It is quite possible that Aschenbach, in his half-distracted, half-inquisitive examination of the stranger, had been somewhat inconsiderate, for he suddenly became aware that his look was being answered, and indeed so militantly, so straight in the eye, so plainly with the intention of driving the thing through to the very end and compelling him to capitulate, that he turned away uncomfortably and began walking along by the fences, deciding casually that he would pay no further attention to the man. The next minute he had forgotten him. But perhaps the exotic element in the stranger’s appearance had worked on his imagination; or a new physical or spiritual influence of some sort had come into play. He was quite astonished to note a peculiar inner expansion, a kind of roving unrest, a youthful longing after far-off places: a feeling so vivid, so new, or so long dormant and neglected, that, with his hands behind his back and his eyes on the ground, he came to a sudden stop, and examined into the nature and purport of this emotion.

    It was the desire for travel, nothing more; although, to be sure, it had attacked him violently, and was heightened to a passion, even to the point of a hallucination. His yearnings crystallized; his imagination, still in ferment from his hours of work, actually pictured all the marvels and terrors of a manifold world which it was suddenly struggling to conceive. He saw a landscape, a tropical swampland under a heavy, murky sky, damp, luxuriant and enormous, a kind of prehistoric wilderness of islands, bogs, and arms of water, sluggish with mud; he saw, near him and in the distance, the hairy shafts of palms rising out of a rank lecherous thicket, out of places where the plant life was fat, swollen, and blossoming exorbitantly; he saw strangely misshapen trees lowering their roots into the ground, into stagnant pools with greenish reflections; and here, between floating flowers which were milk-white and large as dishes, birds of a strange nature, high-shouldered, with crooked bills, were standing in the muck, and looking motionlessly to one side; between dense, knotted stalks of bamboo he saw the glint from the eyes of a crouching tiger—and he felt his heart knocking with fear and with puzzling desires. Then the image disappeared; and with a shake of his head Aschenbach resumed his walk along past the fences of the stonemasons’ establishments.

    Since the time, at least, when he could command the means to enjoy the advantages of moving about the world as he pleased, he had considered traveling simply as a hygienic precaution which must be complied with now and then despite one’s feelings and one’s preferences. Too busy with the tasks arranged for him by his interest in his own ego and in the problems of Europe, too burdened with the onus of production, too little prone to diversion, and in no sense an amateur of the varied amusements of the great world, he had been thoroughly satisfied with such knowledge of the earth’s surface as anyone can get without moving far out of his own circle; and he had never even been tempted to leave Europe. Especially now that his life was slowly on the decline, and that the artist’s fear of not having finished—this uneasiness lest the clock run down before he had done his part and given himself completely—could no longer be waved aside as a mere whim, he had confined his outer existence almost exclusively to the beautiful city which had become his home and to the rough country house which he had built in the mountains and where he spent the rainy summers.

    Further, this thing which had laid hold of him so belatedly, but with such suddenness, was very readily moderated and adjusted by the force of his reason and of a discipline which he had practiced since youth. He had intended carrying his life work forward to a certain point before removing to the country. And the thought of knocking about the world for months and neglecting his work during this time, seemed much too lax and contrary to his plans;

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