“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous—to poetry”
Author: Paul Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955)
Genre: Novella
Tone: Ironic, Philosophical
Setting: Venice and Munich
Themes: Lust | Foreignness | Literature and Writing | Mortality
Main Characters in Death in Venice
Gustav Von Aschenbach –
An aging writer, honorable, and repressed, of high public status in Germany.
Tadzio –
An intensely beautiful Polish boy of about fourteen.
Jashu –
Tadzio’s closest companion at the hotel.
Famous Quotes in Death in Venice
- “It was an urge to escape. This desire for liberation, for unburdening and oblivion-an urge to leave behind his work.”
- “He was afraid of the summer in the country, alone in the little house.”
- “Aschenbach has only lived like this’—and the speaker closed the fingers of his left hand into a tight fist.”
- “It was the smile of Narcissus bending over his reflection in the water.”