Death In Venice Classicism

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The themes of classicism related to art, literature, and mythology are specifically woven around the persona of Aschenbach in Mann’s novella, Death in Venice. Artfully crafted, a reader easily identifies with the narrator’s condescending attitude, but also questions the true purpose of Mann’s allusions. Mann would have the reader closely identify with Aschenbach’s love of classical literature and beauty as justification for Aschenbach’s behavioral decline. However, the mood of this novella remains cloaked, in disguise of the fact of Aschenbach’s true aching illness: pederasty. The Oxford English Dictionary, defines pederasty as homosexual relations between a man and a boy. One should look through the shroud of classicism to understand Mann’s novella realistically, because the disturbing aspects of obsession and stalking speak out more loudly than the attractiveness of myth or classical allusion. Scholars predominantly discuss classicism as applied to realism, or ambiguity surrounding Mann’s Death in Venice. While scholars aptly maintain tolerance of homosexual love, they …show more content…
Sizemore suggests that “classical Greco-Roman allusions serve as guides and signifiers as related to Nietzsche’s work on aesthetics in The Birth of Tragedy” (239). Sizemore relates the Apollonian god evident in Aschenbach’s character as a foil to the Dionysian god-like Tadzio, whom he becomes obsessed with. In this way, Aschenbach feels compelled to succumb to his Dionysian tendencies, and urges of repressed fantasy (235). Aschenbach struggles to maintain “prudence and sobriety,” yet longs for reckless abandon. Further, Sizemore reminds a reader of Hermes’ influence as conductor of souls to the under-world, in the figure of the red-haired man, and Aschenbach’s instigating reason for being in Venice. Thus, an internal conflict supervenes in an otherwise stoic and disciplined

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