First, it is important to appreciate how far removed from Mann’s habitual practice is so definite a moral verdict.98 Mann is famous for his ambiguity and his irony, both of which reflect his sensitivity to the nuances of circumstances.99 When his protagonist, feverish and frustrated in the pursuit of Tadzio, collapses at the fountain, the prose is apparently lucid and severe. Referring to Aschenbach as “the master,” “the great success,” “the author whose greatness had been officially recognized and whose name bore the title of nobility,” the narrator draws attention to his ignominy as he sits, slumped, in the rubbish-filled piazza, across which the gusts of wind bear fumes of the carbolic acid that has been used to mask the smells of decay; his eyes are mostly shut, he only occasionally opens his “cosmetically enhanced” lips, and his mumbled words reflect “the strange dream-logic” of his “half-dozing brain.” It is as clear a moral judgment as one might wish.100 Look how far this paragon of decency has fallen!
Too clear, in fact. The language here is exultant, as if the suspicions the narrative voice has been harboring have now been vindicated. For pages, the designations used for Aschenbach have lost their neutrality, tipping toward the condemnation now offered. In this fifth and final chapter of the novella, he becomes the confused one (“der Verwirrte”), the solitary (“der Einsame”), the lover (“der Liebhaber”), the possessed (“der Heimgesuchte”), the man who is feverish under his makeup (“der unter der Schminke Fiebernde”).101 The phrases, deliberately chosen to designate Aschenbach in a particular way, as if the property attributed to him identified his essence, distance us from him and contain in embryo the judgment eventually rendered when he collapses at the fountain.102 The tone of this narrative voice, that of a moralistic commentator who, losing patience with what he sees as an increasingly errant subject, ultimately issues a self-righteous verdict, is too earnest for Mann. Small wonder that more sophisticated critics have referred to the “second narrator” of Death in Venice and seen Mann’s characteristic irony in the presentation of moral judgment as if it were his own.103
A second reason to reject the reading is its overly simple account of Nietzsche’s famous dichotomy. Instead of denying the value of Apollonian art, The Birth of Tragedy insists on the significance of the works produced by Apollonian artists.104 Like the sculptor, the epic poet delights in clarity and beauty of form, creating appearances that can express his genius: though these are mere appearances, illusions, they are a great achievement.
Homeric “naïveté” can only be understood as the most complete victory of the Apollonian illusion: it is an illusion of the sort nature so often uses for the attainment of her ends. The true goal is covered with an illusory picture: we stretch out our hands toward it and reach the goal through the deception.105
The dithyrambic chorus, Nietzsche tells us, replaces the “virgins with laurel-wreaths in their hands” who retain their place as citizens (“behalten ihren bürgerlichen Namen”), and Greek tragedy, the Apollonian symbolic representation of Dionysian knowledge and effects, is divided by a great gulf from the epic tradition.106 Even if one accepts Nietzsche’s complex metaphysical argument for believing that tragedy probes reality more deeply than epic (an argument based partly on agreement with Schopenhauer, partly on divergence from him), there is no easy inference to the conclusion that the “beautiful illusions” of Apollonian art are without value—represented as they are, by Homer, who paints so vividly because he looks at so much more.107 Aschenbach’s dedication to beauty and to form, his resolute concern to link his art to canons of conventional decency, do not mean his writings are somehow worthless—or even less than great. Those writings have been canonized, included in books for schoolchildren; they have been read enthusiastically by an international public, from which Aschenbach receives a correspondence whose volume taxes his ability to reply. There is no reason to believe that those captivated by Aschenbach are any more benighted than the millions who have thrilled to Homer, or that the “respectfully shocked” world that learns of his death—a world that will, presumably, remain ignorant of the circumstances immediately preceding his death—will ever modify its high opinion of his accomplishment.108
The references to “the Apollonian” and “the Dionysian” that are almost de rigueur in discussions of Death in Venice should attend to the nuances of Nietzsche’s discussion. It is inadequate to suppose that what overtakes Aschenbach on the lido is an outbreak of “the Dionysian,” one that exposes the inadequacy of his previously “Apollonian” literary contributions.109 (As we shall see in chapter 3, this problematic idea receives a forceful but crude expression in Visconti’s film, in the dramatic scene where the student Alfred berates the older composer, Gustav Aschenbach, for his failure to embody “passion” in his music.) There is, however, a deeper problem with any hypothesis to the effect that Mann was leaning heavily on ideas drawn from The Birth of Tragedy. The Thomas Mann Archiv in Zürich contains copies of many of his books, and one can look at his edition of Nietzsche’s works.110 In contrast to the later revisionary foreword, part of Nietzsche’s critical discussion of Wagner, which is annotated, the text Nietzsche originally published in 1872 is completely unmarked. Absence of evidence must always be handled carefully,111 but the abrupt cessation after the first dozen pages of marginal lines and underlinings—which Mann uses to mark passages that particularly interest him—inclines me to think that he was drawn to the foreword because of his (often avowed) interest in the Nietzschean critique of Wagner and that the later parts had less impact on him.112 As has already been noted, Mann’s attitude to Nietzsche is subtle: the autobiographical sketch of 1930 protests the idea of simply taking over the provocative claims Nietzsche makes—Mann found the “philosophy of power” and the “blond beast” to be “an embarrassment.”113 “As to his idolization of ‘life’ at the price of intellect, this poetical conceit that has had such disastrous consequences for German thought—there was only one way for me to assimilate it: as irony.”114 Unlike the mature author of provocative paradoxes, the earnest young disciple who viewed Wagner as the great reviver of tragedy would not be of great interest to an author who read him in this way.115
A last reason for rejecting the common interpretative idea that Aschenbach is exposed as an inferior writer concerns the ending of the novella. Aschenbach collapses at the fountain, but Mann does not leave him there. After his murmured quasi-Socratic, anti-Socratic reflections116 on his predicament, the text breaks, offering not a sixth chapter but a coda.117 That coda finds Aschenbach back at the lido, physically unwell but on his way to his usual morning station at the beach. Departures from Venice have increased in frequency, and he observes luggage in the foyer. Learning from the hotel manager that the Polish family will leave after lunch, he continues his routine, taking his seat on the almost deserted beach. There he observes a fight between Jaschu and Tadzio, culminating in Jaschu’s thrusting of Tadzio’s face into the sand and the jerks of the defeated boy’s body as he struggles for air. Released, Tadzio walks into the sea and, standing on the sandbar, turns to look back at Aschenbach, as if beckoning, and, in response, Aschenbach half rises, before falling back in his chair, dead.118
There are two striking features of this coda. One is that it marks a return to an earlier tone in the narrative voice. Instead of the moralizing epithets, the writer is designated with full respect—the noble particle returns: “Einige Tage später verließ Gustav von Aschenbach … [A few days later, Gustav von Aschenbach left …].” The second is that, on the usual critical approach to Death in Venice, it seems quite unnecessary.
The obvious way in which to exhibit Aschenbach’s death as the result of his unsuccessfully bridled passions would be to have him die at the fountain. There, in pursuit of his obsession, he would be surrounded by, and part of, the corruption of Venice, at a place where the plague can be spread and surrounded by the stench of the carbolic acid that the city fathers use to hide its presence. True enough, if Aschenbach’s own death were to be ascribed to choler
a,119 then he would have to have eaten the presumably tainted strawberries somewhat earlier: Mann could not have him eat the infected fruit and die in the same paragraph. That, however, would have been easy to arrange, for the fifth chapter offers plenty of opportunities for some similar incident in which the disease could be transmitted. If the point is to unmask Aschenbach as writer and as morally upstanding citizen, what better place to leave him than the littered piazza? Why does the coda exist?
4
My aim has been to clear away some ideas about the “philosophical backdrop” of Death in Venice as a prelude to approaching it from a different philosophical angle. Plato, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche—the Nietzsche who wrote the sequence of works from “Schopenhauer as Educator” to Ecce Homo—hover over Death in Venice. Their fundamental influence on the novella derives from the question central to their major writings: How should one live? Mann’s frequently posed problem of reconciling art and bourgeois decency, of fusing Künstler and Bürger, is a special case of this question. Not all people perceive the problem, for there are those who live comfortably within bourgeois society, accepting its rules and winning its favor, “those who live lightly,” “the blond and blue-eyed ones,” as Tonio Kröger calls them. Possibly lives of this sort have genuine worth, even though they are unexamined—that remains to be determined. Yet even if we have not attended to Tonio Kröger’s lengthy explanation of himself, no reader of Death in Venice can avoid the suspicion that the light-hearted life—observed by Aschenbach from the outside as he sits at his “post” on the lido—may be insufficient.120 An older contemporary of Mann’s, a philosopher almost certainly unknown to him at the time he wrote the novella, formulated the suspicion about the lives of the “healthy-minded” in ways of which Mann might well have approved. William James is no subscriber to the metaphysics that moves Schopenhauer and those Schopenhauer “educates,” including Nietzsche, Wagner, and Mann, to think there is a deep challenge to the possibility of a valuable life, but James does worry that the “healthy-minded” have overlooked or ignored the real problem, not solved it.121 James supposes that the advances of the sciences have generated a picture of the human predicament:
Mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature’s portion. The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation.122
Those who view humanity in this image see more deeply, feeling a need to take up the issue of how lives can attain genuine worth and to identify sources of value, even if the values should turn out, in the end, to be those to which the untroubled ones independently conform.
Plato, at least as Mann reads him, raises the question of how the rigorously examined life can be worth living and offers a positive answer to it—although whether that answer could be exemplified in the lives of many actual ancient Greeks or early twentieth-century Germans is a separate question. One facet of the ideal society envisaged in the Republic is the availability to all of a particular type of valuable life, one in which individuals develop their talents, are guided into virtuous conduct, and contribute to a human enterprise larger than themselves: Socrates tells his interlocutors that “in establishing our city, we aren’t aiming to make any one group outstandingly happy but to make the whole city so, as far as possible.”123 People who are not suited for the lengthy education that prepares the philosopher-guardians to run the show are still able to fulfill their potential, to live the good life, even if they cannot understand just what they are doing. Like Mann’s “blond and blue-eyed ones” or James’s “healthy-minded” types, they do not examine their own lives or confront the real philosophical problem. The philosophers undertake that examination for them, probing the conditions of valuable lives and using their appreciation of those conditions to enable their more carefree fellows to flourish. They are the informed sources of value for all, precisely because they have apprehended the Forms,124 and, in consequence, their lives take on a higher type of value than any available to the less self-conscious citizens.
In the Phaedrus, a dialogue Mann read carefully in preparing his novella, Plato elaborates the metaphysical picture offered in the Republic, distinguishing kinds of people (or “souls”). Socrates explains to his young interlocutor how the highest kind of soul will be “delighted … to be seeing what is real and watching what is true” and will “feast” on the vision of “Justice” and “Self-Control” and “Knowledge.”125 In ordinary life, however, “justice and self-control do not shine out through their images down here” but only become visible to us through the perception of beauty.126 So, Plato explains, there can arise not only wisdom and understanding but an intense erotic love centered on the passion for virtue and accompanied by self-control. One who understands and enjoys this love can live a life of great worth and even guide others, whose comprehension is less, to lead valuable lives. The philosopher-guardian-lovers even achieve a kind of immortality, for their insights, teaching, and above all their exemplary lives inspire those who come after them and are reproduced in the souls of others—as Diotima tells Socrates, “Everyone would rather have such children than human ones.”127
The Platonic “solution,” just sketched in barest outline, is important to Death in Venice because, as we shall see later in this chapter and in the next, the novella is partly an extended exploration of tension between two elements linked in Plato’s account—self-control and the appreciation of beauty. Mann’s own view of that tension is framed by his sense of a challenge, posed by Schopenhauer and developed differently by Nietzsche—a challenge to which I have alluded but have so far left unexplained—according to which not only Plato’s own answer to the philosophical question but any answer currently available is inadequate.128 For all his admiration for Plato, Schopenhauer believes that a correct understanding of metaphysics, of the nature of reality, must recognize that the Platonic Forms are not what is ultimately real but rather general ways in which the fundamental reality—the Will—objectifies itself.129
Schopenhauer claims to have a cogent philosophical argument for thinking the problem of the valuable life to be insoluble, an argument that runs from what he takes as the correct insight at the heart of Kant’s transcendental idealism to the conclusion that reality is “blind Will,” apprehended in the world of experience as different individuals, within and between which there is inevitable strife and struggle.130 It follows that life is essentially suffering, so that the best we can achieve is a condition of abnegation of the will; if we attain that condition, we take on an attitude of compassion, one fundamental to the ethical life. Fully to understand the impossibility proof, he tells us, we must not only start at the beginning of his book with the Kantian insight but also acquaint ourselves with ancillary works in which he has elaborated some aspects of his correction of Kant in more detail: moreover, it is important to read the entire book (both volumes) at least twice, so that study of the preliminary material can be illuminated by thoughts that, of necessity, occur later in the exposition.131
Did Mann follow this rigorous program of reading? Almost certainly not. The intoxication induced by Schopenhauer was probably caused by the particular passages he mentions: the chapter (possibly Schopenhauer’s “most beautiful” and “deepest”) conveying the “sense for death,” the discussions of the insights attainable through art (and particularly music), the exploration of human suffering and its unavoidability.132 Mann’s focused praise indicates the parts of Schopenhauer he pored over most carefully: in the long argument of volume 1, we would expect his interest to be aroused in book 2, to become more lively in book 3, and to be most intense in book 4. The marginal markings and underlinings in the copy of Die Wel
t als Wille und Vorstellung in the Zürich archive reveal exactly this pattern. The opening metaphysics and the critique of Kant provoked no scribbling—hardly surprising, given the young Mann’s antipathy to Kant (an early entry in a friend’s collection of responses to particular questions specifies Kant as his “insuperable aversion” and characterizes the categorical imperative as “bureaucrats’ philosophy”).133 In reading Schopenhauer’s masterpiece, Mann’s passions were more highly aroused as the pessimism became more explicit.
In this, I suspect, he was typical of his many contemporaries who found reading Schopenhauer a life-changing experience. Despite the ingenuity of many of the arguments developed in books 1 and 2 of WWV 1 (and the corresponding chapters of WWV 2, as well as the “Appendix on Kant”),134 it is highly doubtful that the many young intellectuals who “rediscovered” Schopenhauer in the later decades of the nineteenth century worked through the reasoning, which the proud author viewed as forcing his pessimistic conclusions. Schopenhauer’s writing is sufficiently eloquent (and learned in unexpected ways), his sallies at his opponents are often witty, and the general vision sufficiently clearly presented to keep his readers moving through the early parts without pondering the details of the inferences.135 Once they reach book 3 they are rewarded with an elegant aesthetic theory, and book 4 brings a literarily rich and philosophically passionate exposition of a perspective on life that can easily be detached from the metaphysics and related to the reader’s experience.
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