Death in Venice (A Norton Critical Edition) - Softcover

Mann, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393960137 ISBN 13: 9780393960136

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994

Synopsis

Thomas Mann is widely acknowledged as the greatest German novelist of this century. His 1912 novella Death in Venice is the most frequently read example of Mann's early work.

Clayton Koelb's masterful translation improves upon its predecessors in two ways: it renders Mann into American (not British) English, and it remains true to Mann's original text without sacrificing fluency. For American readers, this is the translation of choice.

"Backgrounds and Contexts" includes Mann's working notes, which allow students to observe the author's creative process. The notes are available here for the first time in English.

Illuminating selections from Mann's essays and letters are also reprinted, as are period maps of Munich, Venice, and the Lido.

"Criticism" includes six essays―by Andre von Gronicka, Manfred Dierks, T. J. Reed, Dorrit Cohn, David Luke, and Robert Tobin―sure to stimulate classroom discussion.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

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 Gustave Aschenbach, an aging writer who visits Venice.  In the decaying city, which is besieged by a cholera 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."
"Tonio Kroger" deals with a homoerotic passion that is transmuted into heterosexual love, the relation between the artist and the confidence man, and the dichotomy between "art" and "life".  In "Tristan", Mann explores death and eros, and in "Felix Krull" (a fragment of what would become Mann's last novel), the notion of the artist as con man is taken up directly.  "Disorder and Early Sorrow", "A Man and His Dog", "The Blood of the Walsungs", and "Mario and the Magician", Mann's chilling parable of fascism, complete this collection.

From the Back Cover:

"Who am I, whence do I come that I am as I am, and am neither able or willing to be anything else?" --Thomas Mann

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0393960137
• ISBN 13: 9780393960136
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Koelb Clayton