Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories - Softcover

Thomas Mann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679722068 ISBN 13: 9780679722069

Publisher: Vintage, 1989

Synopsis

Eight complex stories illustrative of the author's belief that "a story must tell itself," highlighted by the high art style of the famous title novella.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) was from Germany. At the age of 25, he published his first novel, Buddenbrooks. In 1924, The Magic Mountain was published, and five years later, Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Following the rise of the Nazis to power, he left Germany for good in 1933 to live in Switzerland and then in California, where he wrote Doctor Faustus (first published in the United States in 1948).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Death in Venice

And Seven Other StoriesBy Thomas Mann

Vintage Books USA

Copyright © 1989 Thomas Mann
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0679722068

Chapter One

Gustav Aschenbach or von Aschenbach, as he hadofficially been known since his fiftieth birthday,set out alone from his residence in Munich's Prinzregentenstrasseon a spring afternoon in 19.. -- a year thatfor months had shown so ominous a countenance to ourcontinent -- with the intention of taking an extendedwalk. Overwrought from the difficult and dangerouslabors of the late morning hours, labors demanding theutmost caution, prudence, tenacity, and precision ofwill, the writer had even after the midday meal beenunable to halt the momentum of the inner mechanism-- the motus animi continuus in which, according toCicero, eloquence resides -- and find the refreshing sleep that the growing wear and tear upon his forceshad made a daily necessity. And so, shortly after tea hehad sought the outdoors in the hope that open air andexercise might revive him and help him to enjoy a fruitfulevening.

It was early May, and after a few cold, wet weeks amock summer had set in. The Englischer Garten, thoughas yet in tender bud, was as muggy as in August and fullof vehicles and pedestrians on the city side. At Aumeister,to which he had been led by ever more solitarypaths, Aschenbach briefly scanned the crowded andlively open-air restaurant and the cabs and carriagesalong its edge, then, the sun beginning to sink, headedhome across the open fields beyond the park, but feelingtired and noticing a storm brewing over Föhring, hestopped at the Northern Cemetery to wait for the tramthat would take him straight back to town.

As it happened, there was no one at the tram stop orthereabouts. Nor was any vehicle to be seen on the pavedroadway of the Ungererstrasse -- whose gleaming tracksstretched solitary in the direction of Schwabing -- or onthe road to Föhring. There was nothing stirring behind the stonemasons' fences, where crosses, headstones, andmonuments for sale formed a second, uninhabited graveyard,and the mortuary's Byzantine structure oppositestood silent in the glow of the waning day. Its façade,decorated with Greek crosses and brightly hued hieraticpatterns, also displayed a selection of symmetricallyarranged gilt-lettered inscriptions concerning the afterlife,such as "They Enter into the Dwelling Place of theLord" or "May the Light Everlasting Shine upon Them,"and reading the formulas, letting his mind's eye lose itselfin the mysticism emanating from them, served to distractthe waiting man for several minutes until, resurfacingfrom his reveries, he noticed a figure in the portico abovethe two apocalyptic beasts guarding the staircase, andsomething slightly out of the ordinary in the figure'sappearance gave his thoughts an entirely new turn.

Whether the man had emerged from the chapel'sinner sanctum through the bronze gate or mounted thesteps unobtrusively from outside was uncertain. Withoutgiving the matter much thought, Aschenbach inclinedtowards the first hypothesis. The man -- of mediumheight, thin, beardless, and strikingly snub-nosed -- was the red-haired type and had its milky, freckled pigmentation.He was clearly not of Bavarian stock and, ifnothing else, the broad, straight-brimmed bast hat coveringhis head lent him a distinctly foreign, exotic air.He did, however, have the customary knapsack strappedto his shoulders, wore a yellowish belted suit of whatappeared to be loden, and carried a gray waterproofover his left forearm, which he pressed to his side, andan iron-tipped walking stick in his right hand, and havingthrust the stick diagonally into the ground, he hadcrossed his feet and braced one hip on its crook. Holdinghis head high and thus exposing a strong, bareAdam's apple on the thin neck rising out of his loose,open shirt, he gazed alert into the distance with colorless,red-lashed eyes, the two pronounced verticalfurrows between them oddly suited to the short,turned-up nose. Thus -- and perhaps his elevated andelevating position contributed to the impression -- there was something of the overseer, something lordly,bold, even wild in his demeanor, for be it that he wasgrimacing, blinded by the setting sun, or that he had apermanent facial deformity, his lips seemed too short: they pulled all the way back, baring his long, whiteteeth to the gums.

Aschenbach's half-distracted, half-inquisitive scrutinyof the stranger may have been lacking in discretion, forhe suddenly perceived that the man was returning hisstare and was indeed so belligerently, so directly, so blatantlydetermined to challenge him publicly and forcehim to withdraw it that Aschenbach, embarrassed,turned away and set off along the fence, vaguelyresolved to take no further notice of him. A minutelater he had forgotten the man. It may have been thestranger's perambulatory appearance that acted uponhis imagination or some other physical or psychologicalinfluence coming into play, but much to his surprise hegrew aware of a strange expansion of his inner being, akind of restive anxiety, a fervent youthful craving forfaraway places, a feeling so vivid, so new or else so longoutgrown and forgotten that he came to a standstilland -- hands behind his back, eyes on the ground, rootedto the spot -- examined the nature and purport of thefeeling.

It was wanderlust, pure and simple, yet it had come upon him like a seizure and grown into a passion -- no,more, an hallucination. His desire sprouted eyes, hisimagination, as yet unstilled from its morning labors,conjured forth the earth's manifold wonders and horrorsin his attempt to visualize them: he saw. He saw alandscape, a tropical quagmire beneath a steamy sky --sultry, luxuriant, and monstrous -- a kind of primordialwilderness of islands, marshes, and alluvial channels; sawhairy palm shafts thrusting upward, near and far, fromrank clusters of bracken, from beds of thick, swollen,and bizarrely burgeoning flora; saw fantastically malformedtrees plunge their roots through the air into thesoil, into stagnant, shadow-green, looking-glass waters ...

Continues...

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Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679722068
• ISBN 13: 9780679722069
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 402