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Death in Venice · Death in Venice

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  Chapter one of Death in Venice by Thomas Mahnn. On a spring afternoon of
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  the year nineteen blank, when our continent lay under such threatening weather for whole
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  months, Gustav Oschenbach or Fawn Oschenbach, as his name read officially, after
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  his fiftieth birthday, had left his apartment on the Prince Regentinstrasse in Munich and
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  had gone for a long walk Overwrought by the trying and precarious work of the
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  forenoon, which had demanded a maximum wariness, prudence, penetration, and rigor
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  of the will, the writer had not been able, even after the noon
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  meal, to break the impetus of the productive mechanism within him, that motus
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  animi continuous, which constitutes, according to Cicero, the foundation of eloquence.
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  And he had not attained the healing sleep, which, what with the increasing
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  exhaustion of his strength, he kneaded in the middle of each day. So
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  he had gone outdoors soon after tea, in the hopes that air and movement
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  would restore him and prepare him for a profitable evening. It was the beginning
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  of May, and after cold, damp weeks, the false Midsummer had set
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  in the English gardens, although the foliage was still fresh and sparse, were
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  as pungent as in August, and in the parts nearer the city had been
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  full of conveyances and promenaders. At the Almeister, which he had reached by
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  quieter and quieter paths, Achenbach had surveyed for a short time the Verstgarden,
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  with its lively crowds and its border of cabs and carriages. From here,
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  as the sun was sinking, he had started home outside the park across the
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  open fields, and since he felt tired and a storm was threatening from the
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  direction of feeling, he waited at the North Cemetery for the tram which would
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  take him directly back to the city. It happened that he found no one
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  in the station or its vicinity. There was not a vehicle to be seen,
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  either on the paved ungr Strasse with its solitary glistening rails stretching out towards
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  Schwabing, or on the fillinger Shau Sea. Behind the fences of the Stonemason's
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  establishments, where the crosses, memorial tablets and monuments standing for sale formed a
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  second uninhabited burial ground. There was no sign of life and opposite him,
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  the Byzantine structure of the funeral hall lay silent in the reflection of the departing
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  day, its facade ornamented in luminous colors with Greek crosses and hieratic paintings,
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  above which were displayed inscriptions symmetrically arranged in gold letters and texts chosen to bear
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  on the life beyond, such as they enter into the dwelling of the Lord,
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  or the light of eternity shall shine upon them. And for some time
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  as he stood waiting, he found a grave diversion in spelling out the formulas
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  and letting his mind's eye lose itself in the transparent mysticism. When returning from
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  his reveries, he noticed in the portico above the two apocalyptic animals guarding the
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  steps the man, whose somewhat unusual appearance gave his thoughts an entirely new direction.
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  Whether he had just now come out from the inside through the bronze door,
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  or had approached and mounted from the outside unobserved, remained uncertain. Aschenbach,
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  without applying himself especially to the matter, was inclined to believe the former
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  of medium height, thin, smooth shaven, and noticeably pug nosed, the
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  man belonged to the red haired type and possessed the appropriate fresh milky complexion.
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  Obviously, he was not of Bavarian extraction, since at least the white and
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  straight brimmed straw hat that covered his head gave his appearance the stamp of a
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  foreigner, of someone who had come from a long distance. To be sure,
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  he was wearing the customary knapsack strapped across his shoulders and a belted suit
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  of rough yellow wool. His left arm was resting on his thigh, and
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  his gray storm cape was thrown across it. In his right hand, he
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  held a cane with an iron ferule, which he had struck diagonally into the
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  ground, and with his feet crossed, was leaning his hip against the crook.
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  His head was raised so that the Adam's apple protruded hard and bare on
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  a scrawny neck emerging from a loose sport shirt, and he was staring sharply
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  off into the distance with colorless, red lidded eyes, between which stood two
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  strong vertical wrinkles peculiarly suited to his short, turned up nose. Thus,
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  and perhaps his elevated position helped to give the impression. His bearing had something
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  majestic and commanding about it, something bold or even savage. For whether he
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  was grimacing because he was blinded by the setting sun, or whether it was
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  a case of a permanent distortion of the physiognomy, his lips seemed too short.
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  They were so completely pulled back from his teeth that these were exposed even
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  to the gums, and stood out white and long. It is quite possible
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  that Aushenbach, in his half distracted, half inquisitive examination of the stranger,
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  had been somewhat inconsiderate, For he suddenly became aware that his look was being
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  answered, and indeed so militantly, so straight in the eye, so plainly,
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  with the intention of driving the thing through to the very end, and
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  compelling him to capitulate that he turned away uncomfortably and began walking along by the
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  fences, deciding casually that he would pay no further attention to the man.
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  The next minute, he had forgotten him. But perhaps the exotic element in
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  the stranger's appearance had worked on his imagination, or a new physical or spiritual
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  influence of some sort had come into play. He was quite astonished to note
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  the peculiar inner expansion, a kind of roving unrest, a youthful longing after
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  far off places, a feeling so vivid, so new, or so long
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  dormant and neglected that with his hands behind his back and his eyes on the
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  ground, he came to a sudden stop and examined into the nature and purport
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  of this emotion. It was the desire for travel, nothing more, although
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  to be sure, it had attacked him violently and was heightened to a passion,
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  even to the point of an hallucination. His yearnings crystallized. His imagination,
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  still in ferment from his hours of work, actually pictured all the marbles
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  and terrors of a manifold world which it was suddenly struggling to conceive. He
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  saw a landscape, a tropical swamp land under a heavy, murky sky,
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  damp, luxuriant and enormous, a kind of prehistoric wilderness of islands, bogs,
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  and arms of water sluggish with mud. He saw near him and in
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  the distance, the hairy shafts of palms rising out of a rank, lecherous
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  thicket, out of places where the plant life was fat, swollen, and
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  blossoming exorbitantly. He saw strangely misshapen trees, sending their roots into the ground
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  into stagnant pools with greenish reflections. And here between floating flowers which were milk
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  white and large as dishes, birds of a strange nature, high shouldered with
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  crooked bills, were standing in the muck and looking motionless to one side.
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  Between dense knotted stalks of bamboo, he saw the glint from the eyes of
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  a crouching tiger, and he felt his heart knocking with fear and with puzzling
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  desires. Then the image disappeared, and with a shake of his head,
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  Aschenbach resumed his walk along past the fences of the Stonemason's establishments. Since the
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  time, at least when he could command the means to enjoy the advantages of
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  moving about the world as he pleased, he had considered traveling simply as an
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  hygienic precaution which must be complied with now and then, despite one's feeling and
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  one's preferences. Too busy with the tasks arranged for him by his interest,
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  in his own ego and in the problems of Europe, too burdened with the
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  onus of production, too little, prone to diversion, and in no sense
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  an amateur of the varied amusements of the great world. He had been thoroughly
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  satisfied with such knowledge of the Earth's surface as any one can get without moving
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  far out of his own circle, and he had never even been tempted to
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  leave Europe, especially now that his life was slowly on the decline, and
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  that the artist's fear of not having finished this uneasiness lest the clock run down
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  before he had done his part and given himself completely, could no longer be
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  waived. Aside as mere whim. He had confined his outer existence almost exclusively
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  to the beautiful city which had become his home, and to the rough country
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  house which he had built in the mountains, and where he spent the rainy
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  summers. Further, this thing, which had laid hold of him so belatedly
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  but with such suddenness, was very readily moderated and adjusted by the force of
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  his reason and of a discipline which he had practiced since youth. He had
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  intended carrying his life work forward to a certain point before he moving to the
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  country, and the thought of knocking about the world for months and neglecting his
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  work during this time seemed much too lax and contrary to his plans. It
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  really could not be considered seriously. Yet he knew only too well what the
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  reasons were for this unexpected temptation. It was the urge to escape, he
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  admitted to himself, this yearning for the new and the remote, this appetite
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  for freedom, for unburdening, for forgetfulness. It was a pressure away from
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  his work, from the steady drudgery of a coldly passionate service. To be
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  sure, he loved this work, and almost loved the innovating battle that was
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  fought daily between a proud, tenacious will, so often tested, and this
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  growing weariness, which no one was to suspect, and which must not betray
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  itself in his productions by any sign of weakness or negligence. But it seemed
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  wise not to draw the bow overtightly, and not to strangle by sheer obstinacy
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  so strongly persistent an appetite. He thought of his work, thought of the
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  place at which, yesterday and now again to day he had been forced to
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  leave off, and which it seemed would yield neither to patience and coaxing,
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  nor to a definite attack. He examined it again, trying to break through
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  or to circumvent the dedlock, but he gave up with a shudder of repugnance.
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  There was no unusual difficulty here. What balked him were the scruples of
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  aversion which took the form of a fastidious insatiability. Even as a young man,
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  this insatiability had meant to him the very nature, the fullest essence of
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  talent, and for that reason he had restrained and chilled his emotions, since
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  he was aware that they inclined to content themselves with a happy approximation, a
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  state of semi completion. Were these enslaved emotions now taking their vengeance on him
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  by leaving him in the lurch, by refusing to forward and lubricate his art,
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  And were they bearing off with them every enjoyment, every live interest in
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  form and expression. Not that he was producing anything bad. His years gave
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  him at least this advantage that he felt himself at all times in full and
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  easy possession of his craftsmanship. But while the nation honored him for this,
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  he himself was not content, and it seemed to him that his work lacked
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  the marks of that fiery and fluctuating emotionalism which is an enormous thing in one's
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  favor, and which, while it argues an enjoyment on the part of the
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  author, also constitutes more than any depth of content, the enjoyment of the
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  amateur. He feared the summer in the country, alone in the little house,
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  with the maid who prepared his meals and the servant who brought them to
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  him. He feared the familiar view of the mountain peak and the slopes which
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  would stand about him, and his boredom and his discontent. Consequently, there
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  was need of a break in some new direction. If the summer was to
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  be endurable and productive, he must attempt something out of his usual orbit.
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  He must relax, get a change of air, bring an element of freshness
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  into the blood to travel. Then that much was settled. Not far,
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  not all the way to the tigers, but one night on the sleeper and
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  a rest of three or four weeks at some pleasant resort in the south.
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  He thought this out while the noise of the electric tram came nearer along the
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  Ungler Strasse, and as he boarded it he decided to devote the evening to
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  the study of maps and timetables. On the platform, it occurred to him
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  to look around for the man in the straw hat his companion during that most
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  significant time spent waiting at the station, but his whereabouts remas uncertain, as
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  he was not to be seen either at the place where he was formerly standing,
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  or anywhere else in the vicinity of the station, or on the car
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  itself. End of chapter one, Chapter two, the author of that lucid
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  and powerful prose epic built around the life of Frederick of Prussia, the tenacious
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  artist, who, after long application, wove rich varied strands of human destiny
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  together under one single predominating theme in the fictional tapestry known as Maya, the
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  creator of that stark tale which is called the Wretch, and which pointed out
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  for an entire oncoming generation the possibility of some moral certainty beyond pure knowledge.
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  Finally the writer, and this sums up briefly the works of his mature period
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  of the impassioned Treatise on Art and the Spirit, whose capacity for mustering facts
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  and further whose fluency in their presentation led cautious judges to place this treatise alongside
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  Schiller's conclusions on naive and sentimental poetry. Gustav Aschenbach, then was the son
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  of a higher law official and was born in El, a leading city in
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  the province of Silesia. His forebears had been officers, magistrates, government functionaries,
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  men who had led severe, steady lives, serving their king, their
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  state. A deeper strain of spirituality had been manifest in them once in the
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  person of a preacher. The preceding generation had brought a brisker, more sensuous
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  blood into the family through the author's mother, daughter of a bohemian bandmaster.
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  The traces of foreigness in his features came from her. A marriage of sober,
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  painstaking conscientiousness with impulses of a darker, more fiery nature had an artist
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  as its result, and this particular artist, since his whole nature was centered
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  around acquiring a reputation, he showed himself, if not exactly precocious, at
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  least thanks to the firmness and pithiness of his personality. His accent ripened and
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  adjusted to the public at an early age, almost as a schoolboy, he
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  had made a name for himself. Within ten years he had learned to face
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  the world through the medium of his writing table to discharge the obligations of his
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  fame in a correspondence which, since many claims are pressed on the successful,
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  the trustworthy had to be brief as well as pleasant, and to the point
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  at forty wearied by the vicissitudes and the exertion of his own work, he
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  had to manage a daily mail which bore the postmarks of countries in all parts
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  of the world, equally removed from the banal and the eccentric. His talents
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  were so constituted as to gain both the confidence of the general public and the
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  stable admiration and sympathy of the critical. Thus, even as a young man
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  continually devoted to the pursuit of craftsmanship and that of no ordinary kind, he
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  had never known the careless freedom of youth. When around thirty five years of
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  age he had been taken ill in Vienna, one sharp observer said of him
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  in company, you see Aschenbach has always lived like this. And the speaker
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  contracted the fingers of his left hand into a fist, never like this,
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  and he let his open hand droop comfortably from the arm of his chair.
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  That hit the mark and the heroic. The ethical about it all was that
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  he was not of a strong constitution, and though he was pledged by his
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  nature to these steady efforts, he was not really born to them. Considerations
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  of ill health had kept him from attending school as a boy, and had
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  compelled him to receive instruction at home. He had grown up alone, without
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  comrades, and he was forced to realize soon enough that he belonged to a
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  race which often lacked not talent, but that physical substructure which talent relies on
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  for its fullest fruition. A race accustomed to giving its best early and seldom
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  extending its faculties over the years. But his favorite phrase was carrying through.
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  In his novel On Frederick, he saw the pure apotheosis of this command,
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  which struck him as the essential concept of the virtuous inaction and passion. Also,
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  he wished earnestly to grow old, since he had always maintained that the
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  only artistry which can be called truly great, comprehensive, yes even truly admirable,
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  is that which is permitted to bear fruits characteristic of each stage in human
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  development. Since he must carry the responsibilities of his talent on frail shoulders and
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  wanted to go a long way, the primary requirement was discipline, and fortunately,
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  discipline was his direct inheritance from his father's side. By forty fifty,
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  or at an earlier age, when others are still slashing about with enthusiasm and
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  are contentedly putting off to some later date the execution of plans on a large
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  scale. He would start the day early, dashing cold water over his chest
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  and back, and then with a couple of tall wax candles in silver candlesticks
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  at the head of his manuscript, he would pay out to his art in
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  two or three eager, scrupulous morning hours, the strength which he had accumulated
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  in sleep. It was pardonable. Indeed, it was a direct tribute to
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  the effectiveness of his moral scheme that the uninitiated took his Maya world and the
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  massive epic machinery upon which the life of the hero Frederick was unrolled as evidence
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  of long breath and sustaining power, while actually they had been built up layer
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  by layer in small daily allotments, through hundreds and hundreds of single inspirations,
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  and if they were so excellent in both composition and texture, it was solely
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  because their creator had held out for years under the strain of one single work,
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  with a steadiness of will and a tenacity comparable to that which conquered his
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  native province. And because finally he had turned over his most vital and valuable
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  hours to the problem of minute revision. In order that a significant work of
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  the mind may exert immediately some broad and deep effect, a secret relationship or
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  even conformity must exist between the personal destiny of the author and the common destiny
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  of his contemporaries. People do not know why they raise a work of art
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  to fame. Far from being connoisseurs. They believe that they see in it
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  hundreds of virtues which justify so much interest. But the true interest for their
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  applause is an unconscious sympathy. Aschenbach had once stated, quite plainly in some
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  remote place, that nearly everything great which comes into being does so in spite
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  of something, in spite of sorrow or suffering, poverty, destitution, physical
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  weakness, depravity, passion, or a thousand other handicaps. But that was
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  not merely an observation. It was a discovery, the formula of his life
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  and reputation, the key to his work. And what wonder then, that
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  it was also the distinguishing moral trait, the dominating gesture of his most characteristic
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  figures. Years before, one shrewd analyst had written of the new hero type
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  to which this author gave preference, and which kept turning up variations of one
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  sort or another. He called it the conception of an intellectual and youthful masculinity,
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  which stands motionless, haughty, ashamed, with jaw set, while swords
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  and spear points beset the body. That was beautiful and ingenious, and it
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  was exact, although it may have seemed to suggest too much passivity for to
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  be poised against fatality. To meet adverse conditions gracefully is more than simple endurance.
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  It is an act of aggression, a positive triumph. And the figure
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  of Sebastian is the most beautiful figure, if not of art as a whole,
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  at least of the art of literature. Looking into this fictional world,
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  one saw a delicate self mastery by which any inner deterioration, any biological decay,
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  was kept concealed from the eyes of the world. A crude, vicious
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  sensuality capable of fanning its rising passions into pure flame, yes, even of
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  mounting to dominance in the realm of beauty. A pallid weakness which draws from
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  the glowing depths of the soul the strength to bow whole arrogant peoples before the
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  foot of the cross, or before the feet of weakness itself, a charming
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  manner maintained in his cold, strict service to form a false, precarious mode
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  of living, and the keenly enervating, melancholy and artifice of the born deceiver
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  to observe such trials as this was enough to make one question whether there really
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  was any heroism other than weakness, And in any case, what heroism could
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  be more in keeping with the times. Gustav Aschenbach was the one poet among
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  the many workers on the verge of exhaustion, all those overburdened, used up,
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  tenacious moralists of production, who delicately built and destitute of means, can
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  rely for a time at least on wilp power and the shrewd husbandry of the
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  resources to secure the effects of greatness. There are many such, There are
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  the heroes of the period, and they all found themselves in his works.
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  Here they were indeed upheld, intensified, applauded. They were grateful to him,
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  they acclaimed him. In his time, he had been young and raw,
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  and misled by his age. He had blundered in public, he had
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  stumbled, had exposed himself. Both in writing and in talk. He had
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  offended against caution and tact, but he had acquired the dignity, which,
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  as he insisted, is the innate, good and craving of every great talent.
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  In fact, it could be said that his entire development had been a
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  conscious, undeviating progression away from the embarrassments of skepticism and irony, and towards
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  dignity. The general masses are satisfied by vigor and tangibility of treatment, rather
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  than by any close intellectual processes. But youth, with its passion for absolute,
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  can be arrested only by the problematical. And Aschenbach had been absolute problematical
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  as only a youth could be. He had been a slave to the intellect,
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  had played havoc with knowledge, had ground up his seed crops, had
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  divulged secrets, had discredited talent, had betrayed art. Yes, while his
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  modelings were entertaining the faithful votaries, filling them with enthusiasm, making their lives
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  more keen. This youthful artist was taking the breath away from the generation than
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  in its twenties by his cynicisms on the questionable nature of art, of artistry,
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  itself. But it seems that nothing blunts the edge of a noble,
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  robust mind more quickly and more thoroughly than the sharp and bitter corrosion of knowledge,
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  And certainly, the moody radicalism of the youth, no matter how conscious
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  anxious, was shallow in comparison with his firm determination as an older man and
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  a master, to deny knowledge, to reject it, to pass it with
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  raised head, in so far as it is capable of crippling, discouraging,
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  or degrading to the slightest degree our will, acts, feelings, or even
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  passions. How else could the famous story of the Wretch be understood than as
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  an outburst of repugnance against the disreputable psychologism of the times, embodied in the
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  figure of that soft and stupid half clown who pilfers a destiny for himself by
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  guiding his wife from powerlessness, from lusciviousness, from ethical frailty into the arms
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  of an adolescent, and believes that he may, through profundity commit vileness.
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  The verbal pressure with which he here cast out the outcast announced the return from
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  every moral skepticism, from all fellow feelings. With the engulfed it was the
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  counter move to the laxity of the sympathetic principle that to understand all is to
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  forgive all. And the thing that was here well begun even nearly completed.
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  Was that miracle of reborn ingenuousness, which was taken up a little later in
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  one of the author's dialogues expressly and not without a certain discrete emphasis strange coincidences.
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  Was it as a result of this rebirth, this new dignity and sternness,
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  that his feeling for beauty, a discriminating purity, simplicity and evenness of
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  attack, which henceforth gave his productions such an obvious, even such a deliberate
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  stamp of mastery and classicism showed an almost excessive strengthening about this time. But
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  ethical resoluteness in the exclusion of science, of emancipatory and restrictive knowledge. Does
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  this not in turn signify simplification, the reduction morally of the world to two
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  limited terms, and thus also a strengthened capacity for the forbidden, the evil,
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  the morally impossible, And does not form have two aspects? Is it
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  not moral and unmoral at once? Moral in that it is the result and
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  expression of discipline but unmoral, and even immoral, in that, by nature
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  it contains an indifference to morality, is calculated in fact, to make morality
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  bend beneath its proud and unencumbered scepter. Be that as it may, an
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  evolution is a destiny, And why should his evolution, which has been upheld
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  by the general confidence of a vast public, not run through a different course
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  from one accomplished outside the luster and the entanglements of fame. Only chronic vagabondage
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  will find it tedious and be inclined to scoff. When a great talent outgrows
• 28:56
  the libertine chrysalis stage, learn to seize upon and express the dignity of the
• 29:02
  mind, and superimposes the formal etiquette upon a solitude which had been filled with
• 29:07
  unchastened and rigidly isolated sufferings and struggles, and had brought all this to a
• 29:14
  point of power and honor among men. Further, how much sport, defiance,
• 29:19
  indulgence there is in the self formation of a talent. Gradually, something
• 29:25
  official didactic crept into Gustav Boschenbach's productions. His style in later life fought shy
• 29:33
  of any abruptness and boldness any subtle and unexpected contrasts. He inclined towards the
• 29:38
  fixed and standardized, the conventionally elegant, the conservative, the formal, the
• 29:45
  formulated. Nearly, and, as is traditionally said of Lewis fourteen, with
• 29:51
  the advancing years, he came to omit every common word from his vocabulary.
• 29:56
  And about this time it happened that the educationtional authorities included selected pages by him
• 30:03
  in their prescribed school readers. This was deeply sympathetic to his nature, and
• 30:07
  he did not decline when a German prince, who had just mounted to the
• 30:12
  throne raised the author of the Frederick to nobility on the occasion of his fiftieth
• 30:18
  birthday. After a few years of unrest a few tentative stopping places here and
• 30:23
  there, he soon chose Munich as his permanent home, and lived there in
• 30:29
  a state of middle class respectability, such as fits in with the life of
• 30:33
  the mind in certain individual instances. The marriage, which when still young he
• 30:40
  had contracted with a girl of an educated family, came to an end with
• 30:44
  her death. After a short period of happiness, he was left with a
• 30:48
  daughter, now married. He had never had a son, Gustav Vawn Ochenbach
• 30:55
  was somewhat below average height, dark and smooth shaven. His head seemed to
• 30:59
  be too large in comparison with his almost dapper figure. His hair was brushed
• 31:04
  straight back, thinning out towards the crown, but very full about the temples
• 31:10
  and strongly marked with gray. It framed a high, ridged forehead. Gold
• 31:15
  spectacles with rimless lenses cut into the bridge of his bold, heavy nose.
• 31:21
  The mouth was big, sometimes drooping, sometimes suddenly pinched and firm. His
• 31:27
  cheeks were thin and wrinkled. His well formed chin had a slight cleft.
• 31:33
  This head, usually bent patiently to one side, seemed to have gone through
• 31:37
  momentous experiences, and yet it was his art which had produced those effects in
• 31:42
  his face, effects which are elsewhere the result of hard and agitated living.
• 31:48
  Behind this brow, the brilliant repartee of the dialog on war between Voltaire and
• 31:53
  the King had been born. These eyes, peering steadily and wearily from behind
• 32:00
  their glasses, had seen the bloody inferno of the lazarette in the Seven Years
• 32:05
  War. Even as it applies to the individual, art is a heightened mode
• 32:09
  of existence. It gives deeper pleasures, It consumes more quickly it carves into
• 32:15
  its servants faces the marks of imaginary and spiritual adventures, and though their external
• 32:22
  activities may be as quiet as a cloister, it produces the lasting voluptuousness over
• 32:29
  refinement, fatigue, and curiosity of the nerves, such as can barely result
• 32:35
  from a life filled with illicit passions and enjoyments. End of Chapter two,
• 32:44
  Chapter three, Part one. Various matters of a literary and social nature delayed
• 32:50
  his departure until about two weeks after that walk in Munich. Finally, he
• 32:55
  gave orders to have his country house ready for occupancy within a month and one
• 33:00
  day. Between the middle and the end of May, he took the night
• 33:05
  train for Trieste, where he made a stop over of only twenty four hours,
• 33:09
  and embarked the following morning for Pola. What he was hunting was something
• 33:15
  foreigned and unrelated to himself, which would at the same time be quickly within
• 33:21
  reach, and so he stopped at an island in the Adriatic which had become
• 33:25
  well known in recent years. It lay not far off the Eastrian coast,
• 33:30
  with beautifully rugged cliffs fronting the open sea, and natives who dressed invariegated tatters
• 33:37
  and made strange sounds when they spoke. But rain and a heavy atmosphere,
• 33:43
  a provincial and exclusively Austrian patronage at the hotel, and the lack of that
• 33:49
  restfully intimate association with the sea which can be gotten only by a soft sandy
• 33:54
  beach irritated him and prevented him from feeling that he had found the place he
• 34:00
  was looking for. Something within him was disturbing him and drawing him. He
• 34:06
  was not sure where he studied sailing dates. He looked about him questioningly,
• 34:12
  and of a sudden as a thing both astounding and self evident. His goal
• 34:16
  was before him. If you wanted to reach overnight, the unique, the
• 34:21
  fabulously different, where did you go? But that was plain? What was
• 34:25
  he doing here? He had lost the trail he had wanted to go there.
• 34:30
  He did not delay in giving notice of his mistake in stopping here.
• 34:36
  In the early morning mist a week and a half after his arrival on the
• 34:38
  island, a fast motor boat was carrying him and his luggage back over the
• 34:44
  water to the naval port, and he landed there just long enough to cross
• 34:49
  the gangplank to the damp deck of a ship which was lying under steam ready
• 34:53
  for the voyage to Venice. It was an old hulk flying the Italian flag,
• 35:00
  decrepit, sooty and mournful in a cave like artificially lighted inside cabin where
• 35:07
  Aschenbach immediately upon boarding the ship was conducted by a dirty, punchbacked sailor who
• 35:13
  smirked politely. There was sitting behind a table, his hat cocked over his
• 35:19
  forehead and a cigarette stump in the corner of his mouth, a man with
• 35:22
  a goatee and with the face of an old style circus director, who was
• 35:28
  taking down the particulars of the passengers with professional grimaces and distributing the tickets to
• 35:36
  Venice. He repeated Aschenbach's request as he extended his arm, then plunged his
• 35:42
  pen into the pasty dregs of a precariously tilted ink. Well to Venice,
• 35:47
  first class, at your service, sir, And he wrote a generous scrawl,
• 35:52
  sprinkled it with blue sand out of a box, let the sand run
• 35:57
  off into a clay bowl, folded the paper with sallow, bony fingers,
• 36:01
  and began writing again A happily chosen destination. He chatted on ah Venice,
• 36:08
  a splendid city, a city of irresistible attractiveness for the educated, on account
• 36:15
  of its history as well as its present day charms. The smooth rapidity of
• 36:20
  his movements and the empty words accompanying them had something anesthetic and reassuring about them,
• 36:27
  much as though he feared lest the traveler might still be vacillating in his
• 36:31
  decision to go to Venice. He handled the cash briskly and let the change
• 36:37
  fall on the spotted table cover with the skill of a croupier. A pleasant
• 36:43
  journey, sir, he said, with a theatrical bow. Gentlemen, I
• 36:46
  have the honor of serving you, he called out immediately after, with his
• 36:52
  arm upraised, and he acted as if business were in full swing, although
• 36:57
  no one else was there to require his attention. Haschenbach returned to the deck
• 37:02
  with one arm on the railing. He watched the passengers on board and the
• 37:07
  idlers who loitered about the dock waiting for the ship to sail. The second
• 37:12
  class passengers, men and women, were huddled together on the fore deck,
• 37:17
  using boxes and bundles as seats. A group of young people made up the
• 37:22
  travelers on the first deck, clerks from Pola, it seemed, who had
• 37:27
  gathered in the greatest excitement for an excursion to Italy. They made a considerable
• 37:31
  fuss about themselves and their enterprise, chattered, laughed, enjoyed their own antics
• 37:37
  self contentedly, and leaning over the hand rails, shouted flippantly and mockingly at
• 37:44
  their comrades, who, with portfolios under their arms, were going up and
• 37:49
  down the water front on business and kept threatening the picnickers with their canes.
• 37:54
  One in a bright yellow summer suit of ultra fashionable cut, with a red
• 38:00
  necktie and a rakishly tilted panama, surpassed all the others in his crowing good
• 38:06
  humor. But as soon as Aschenbach looked at him a bit more carefully,
• 38:10
  he discovered with a kind of horror that the youth was a cheat. He
• 38:15
  was old, that was unquestionable. There were wrinkles around his eyes and mouth.
• 38:21
  The faint crimson of the cheeks was paint. The hair under his brilliantly
• 38:25
  decorated straw hat was a wig. His neck was hollow and stringy, His
• 38:30
  turned up mustache and the imperial on his chin were dyed. The full set
• 38:36
  of yellow teeth, which he displayed when he laughed a cheap artificial plate,
• 38:42
  and his hands, with signet rings on both index fingers, were those of
• 38:45
  an old man. Fascinated with loathing. Aschenbach watched him in his intercourse with
• 38:52
  his friends. Did they not know, did they not observe that he was
• 38:57
  old, that he was not entitled to wear their bright, foppish clothing,
• 39:01
  that he was not entitled to play it being one of them? Unquestioningly and
• 39:07
  as quite the usual thing, it seemed they allowed him among them, treating
• 39:12
  him as one of their own kind, and returning his jovial nudges in the
• 39:15
  ribs without repugnance. How could that be? Haschenbach laid his hand on his
• 39:22
  forehead and closed his eyes. They were hot since he had had too little
• 39:27
  sleep. He felt as though everything were not quite the same as usual,
• 39:31
  as though some dreamlike estrangement, some peculiar distortion of the world were beginning to
• 39:37
  take possession of him, and perhaps this could be stopped if he hid his
• 39:42
  face for a time and then looked around him again. Yet at this moment
• 39:47
  he felt as though he were swimming, and looking up with an unreasoned fear,
• 39:52
  he discovered that the heavy, lugubrious body of the ship was separating slowly
• 39:57
  from the walled bank. Inch by with the driving and reversing of the engine,
• 40:02
  the strip of dirty, glistening water widened between the dock and the side
• 40:07
  of the ship, and after cumbersome maneuvering, the steamer finally turned its nose
• 40:12
  towards the open sea. Aschenbach crossed to the starboard side, where the hunchback
• 40:19
  had set up a deck chair for him and a steward and a spotted dress
• 40:22
  coat, asked after his wants. The sky was gray, the wind damp,
• 40:29
  harbor and islands had been left behind, and soon all land was lost
• 40:32
  in the haze. Flakes of coal dust bloated with moisture, fell over the
• 40:38
  washed deck, which would not dry. After the first hour. An awning
• 40:44
  was spread since it had begun to rain. Bundled up in his coat a
• 40:49
  book in his lap, the traveler rested and the hours passed unnoticed. It
• 40:53
  stopped raining, the canvas awning was removed, The horizon was unbroken, the
• 41:00
  sea empty, like an enormous disk lay stretched under the curve of the sky,
• 41:06
  but in empty inarticulate space. Our senses lose also the dimensions of time,
• 41:12
  and we slip into the incommensurate as he rested, Strange shadowy figures,
• 41:17
  the old dandy, the goateee from the inside cabin passed through his mind with
• 41:23
  vague gestures, muddled dream words, and he was asleep. About noon he
• 41:30
  was called to a meal down in the corridor like dining hall into which the
• 41:35
  doors opened from the sleeping cabins. He ate near the head of a long
• 41:39
  table at the other end of which the clerks, including the old man,
• 41:44
  had been drinking with the boisterous captain since ten o'clock. The food was poor,
• 41:50
  and he finished rapidly. He felt driven outside to look at the sky
• 41:54
  to see if it showed signs of being brighter above Venice. He he kept
• 42:00
  thinking that this had to occur, since the city had always received him in
• 42:05
  full blaze. But sky and sea remained dreary and leaden. At times,
• 42:09
  a misty rain fell, and here he was reaching by water, a different
• 42:15
  Venice than he had ever found when approaching on land. He stood by the
• 42:20
  force days, looking in the distance, waiting for land. He thought of
• 42:23
  the heavy hearted, enthusiastic poet, for whom the domes and bell towers of
• 42:30
  his dreams had once risen out of these waters he relived in silence, some
• 42:35
  of that reverence, happiness, and sorrow, which had been turned then into
• 42:39
  cautious song, and easily susceptible to sensations already molded. He asked himself,
• 42:46
  wearily and earnestly, whether some new enchantment and distraction, some belated adventure of
• 42:52
  the emotions, might still be held in store for this idle traveler. Then
• 42:58
  the flat coast merged on the right. The sea was alive with fishing smacks.
• 43:04
  The bather's island appeared. It dropped behind. To the left, the
• 43:07
  steamer slowly entered the narrow port, which is named after it, and on
• 43:13
  the lagoon, facing gay ramshackled houses, it stopped completely, since it had
• 43:17
  to wait for the bark of the health department. An hour passed before it
• 43:22
  appeared he had arrived, and yet he had not. No one was in
• 43:28
  any hurry, no one was driven by impatience. The young men from Pola,
• 43:34
  patriotically attracted by the military bugle calls which rang over the water from the
• 43:38
  vicinity of the public gardens, had come on deck, and warmed by their
• 43:44
  asti they burst out with cheers for the drilling Burslieri. But it was repulsive
• 43:51
  to see what a state the primped up old man had been brought to by
• 43:54
  his comradeship with youth. His old head was not able to resist its wine.
• 44:00
  Like the young and robust. He was painfully drunk, with glazed eyes,
• 44:05
  a cigarette between his trembling fingers. He stood in one place, swaying
• 44:09
  backwards and forwards from giddiness and balancing himself laboriously, since he would have fallen
• 44:16
  at the first step. He did not trust himself from the spot, yet
• 44:22
  he showed a deplorable insolence, buttonholed. Everyone who came near him, stammered,
• 44:27
  winked, and tittered, lifted his wrinkled, ornamented index finger in a
• 44:31
  stupid attempt at bantering, while he licked the corners of his mouth with his
• 44:37
  tongue in the most abominably suggestive manner. Aschenbach observed him darkly, and a
• 44:44
  feeling of numbness came over him again, as though the world were displaying a
• 44:49
  faint but irresistible tendency to distort itself into the peculiar and the grotesque, a
• 44:54
  feeling which circumstances prevented him from surrendering himself to completely, for just then the
• 45:01
  pounding activity of the engines commenced again, and the ship, resuming a voyage
• 45:07
  which had been interrupted so near its completion, passed through the San Marco Canal.
• 45:14
  So he saw it again the most remarkable of landing places, that blinding
• 45:19
  composition of fantastic buildings which the Republic lays out before the eyes of approaching seafarers.
• 45:27
  The soft splendor of the palace, the bridge of size on the bank
• 45:30
  of the columns with Lyon and Saint, the advancing, showy flank of the
• 45:36
  enchanted temple, the glimpse through to the archway, and the huge giant clock.
• 45:42
  And as he looked on, he thought that to reach Venice by land
• 45:45
  on the railroad was like entering a palace from the rear, and that the
• 45:50
  most unreal of cities should not be approached, except as he was now doing
• 45:55
  by ship over the high seas. Engines stopped, gondolas pressed in the gangway
• 46:02
  was let down. Customs officials climbed on board and discharged their duties perfunctorily.
• 46:09
  The disembarking could begin. Aschenbach made it understood that he wanted a gondola to
• 46:16
  take him and his luggage to the dock of those little steamers which ply between
• 46:22
  the city and the lido. Since he intended to locate near the sea,
• 46:25
  his plans were complied with. His wants were shouted down to the water,
• 46:30
  where the gondoliers were wrangling with one another in dialect. He was still hindered
• 46:35
  from descending. He was hindered by his trunk, which was being pulled and
• 46:39
  dragged with difficulty down the ladder like steps, so that for some minutes he
• 46:45
  was not able to avoid the importunities of the atrocious old man, whose drunkenness
• 46:51
  gave him a sinister desire to do the foreigner parting honors. We wish you
• 46:55
  a very agreeable visit, he bleeded, as he made an awkward bow.
• 47:00
  We leave with pleasant recollections, a revois excuse, and bonjour, your excellency.
• 47:08
  His mouth watered, he pressed his eyes shut, He licked the corners
• 47:13
  of his mouth, and the dyed imperial turned up about his senile lips.
• 47:19
  Our compliments, he mumbled, with two finger tips on his mouth, Our
• 47:24
  compliments to our sweetheart, the dearest, prettiest sweetheart, And suddenly his false
• 47:31
  upper teeth fell down on his lower lip. Haschenbach was able to escape to
• 47:37
  our sweetheart, Our handsome sweetheart. He heard the cooing, hollow, stuttering
• 47:44
  voice behind him. While supporting himself against the handrail, he went down the
• 47:49
  gangway. Who would not have to suppress a fleeting shudder, a vague timidity
• 47:54
  and uneasiness if it were a matter of boarding of Venetian gondola for the first
• 48:00
  time or after several years. The strange craft an entirely unaltered survival from the
• 48:07
  times of Baladry. With that peculiar blackness which is found elsewhere only in coffins.
• 48:14
  It suggests silent criminal adventures in the rippling night. It suggests even more
• 48:19
  strongly death itself, the bier and the mournful funeral and the last silent journey.
• 48:25
  And has it been observed that the seat of such a bark, this
• 48:30
  armchair of coffin black veneer and dull black upholstery, is the softest, most
• 48:36
  luxuriant, most lulling seat in the world. Oschenbach noted this when he had
• 48:42
  relaxed at the feet of the gondolier opposite his luggage, which lay neatly assembled
• 48:46
  on the prow. The rowers were still wrangling, harshly, incomprehensibly, with
• 48:52
  threatening gestures, but the strange silence of this canal city seemed to soften their
• 48:59
  voice, to disembody them and dissipate them. Over the water, it was
• 49:05
  warm here in the harbor, touched faintly by the warm breeze of the si
• 49:09
  racco. Leaning back against the limber portions of the cushions, the traveler closed
• 49:15
  his eyes in the enjoyment of a lassitude which was as unusual with him as
• 49:20
  it was sweet. The trip would be short, he thought, if only
• 49:24
  it went on forever. He felt himself glide with a gentle motion, away
• 49:30
  from the crowd and the confusion of voices. It became quieter and quieter around
• 49:36
  him. There was nothing to be heard but the splashing of the oar,
• 49:39
  the hollow slapping of the waves against the prow of the boat as it stood
• 49:45
  above the water, black and bold and armed with its halberd like tip.
• 49:50
  And a third sound of speaking, of whispering, the whispering of the gondolier,
• 49:55
  who was talking to himself between his teeth, fitfully in words that were
• 50:00
  pressed out by the exertion of his arms. Hachenbach looked up and was slightly
• 50:06
  astonished to discover that the lagoon was widening and he was headed for the open
• 50:12
  sea. This seemed to indicate that he ought not to rest too much,
• 50:15
  but should see to it that his wishes were carried out to the steamer dock.
• 50:22
  He repeated, turning around completely and looking into the face of the gondolier,
• 50:27
  who stood behind on a raised platform and towered up between him and the
• 50:32
  dun colored sky. He was a man of unpleasant, even brutal appearance,
• 50:37
  dressed in sailor blue with a yellow sash. A formless straw hat, its
• 50:44
  weave partially unraveled, was tilted insolently on his head. The set of his
• 50:49
  face, the blonde, curly mustache beneath a curtly turned up nose undoubtedly meant
• 50:54
  that he was not Italian, although of somewhat frail build so that one would
• 51:00
  not have thought him especially well suited to his trade. He handled the oar
• 51:05
  with great energy, throwing his entire body into each stroke. Occasionally he drew
• 51:10
  back his lips from the exertion and disclosed his white teeth, Wrinkling his reddish
• 51:16
  brows. He gazed on past his passenger, as he answered deliberately, almost
• 51:22
  gruffly, You are going to the Lido, Haschenbach replied, of course,
• 51:29
  but I have just taken the gondola to get me across to San Marco.
• 51:32
  I want to use the vaporeto. You cannot use the vaparareto, sir?
• 51:38
  And why not? Because the vaporetto will not aul luggage. That was so,
• 51:45
  Haschenbach remembered. He was silent put the fellow's harsh, presumptuous manner,
• 51:52
  so unusual towards a foreigner here, seemed unbearable. He said, that is
• 51:57
  my affair. Perhaps I want to put my things in storage. You will
• 52:00
  turn back. There was silence. The oar splashed, the water thudded against
• 52:07
  the bow, and the talking and whispering began again. The gondolier was talking
• 52:12
  to himself between his teeth. What was to be done? This man was
• 52:16
  strangely insolent and had an uncanny decisiveness. The traveler, alone with him on
• 52:22
  the water, saw no way of getting what he wanted. And besides,
• 52:28
  how softly he could rest if only he did not become excited. Hadn't he
• 52:32
  wanted the trip to go on? And on forever. It was wisest to
• 52:37
  let things take their course, and the main thing was that he was comfortable.
• 52:43
  The poison of inertia seemed to be issuing from the seat from this low,
• 52:46
  black upholstered armchair, so gently cradled by the oar strokes of this imperious
• 52:52
  gondolier behind him. The notion that he had fallen into the hands of a
• 52:57
  criminal passed dreamily across Oschenbach's mind, without the ability to summon his thoughts to
• 53:04
  an active defense. The possibility that it was all simply a plan for cheating
• 53:09
  him seemed more abhorrent. A feeling of duty or pride, a kind of
• 53:15
  recollection that one should prevent such things, gave him the strength to arouse himself
• 53:21
  once more. He asked, what are you asking for the trip? Looking
• 53:25
  down upon him, the gondolier answered, you will pay. It was plain
• 53:31
  how this should be answered. Haschenbach said, mechanically, I shall pay nothing,
• 53:37
  absolutely nothing, if you don't take me where I want to go.
• 53:42
  You want to go to the Lido, but not with you. I am
• 53:46
  rowing you well. That is so, he thought, and relaxed, That
• 53:52
  is so. You are rowing me well. Even if you do have designs
• 53:55
  on my cash and send me down to Pluto with a blow of your oar
• 54:00
  from behind, you have rowed me well. But nothing like that happened.
• 54:06
  They were even joined by others, a boatload of musical brigands, men and
• 54:10
  women who sang to guitar and mandolin, riding persistently side by side with the
• 54:16
  gondola and filling the silence over the water with their covetous foreign poetry. A
• 54:22
  hat was held out and Ashenbach threw in money. Then they stopped singing and
• 54:29
  rode away. And again the muttering of the gondolier could be heard as he
• 54:32
  talked fitfully and jerkily to himself. So they arrived tossed in the wake of
• 54:38
  a steamer plying towards the city. Two municipal officers, their hands behind their
• 54:45
  backs, their faces turned in the direction of the lagoon, were walking back
• 54:49
  and forth on the bank. Aschenbach left the gondola at the dock, supported
• 54:54
  by that old man who was stationed with his grappling hook at each one of
• 54:59
  venice landing places. And since he had no small money, he crossed over
• 55:05
  to the hotel by the steamer wharf to get change and pay the rower what
• 55:08
  was due him. He got what he wanted in the lobby. He returned
• 55:14
  and found his traveling bags in a cart on the dock, and gondola and
• 55:17
  gondolier had vanished. He got out in a hurry, said the old man
• 55:23
  with a grappling hook. A bad man, a man without a license.
• 55:28
  Sir, he is the only gondolier who doesn't have a license. The others
• 55:32
  telephoned here. Haschenbach shrugged his shoulders. The gentleman rode for nothing, the
• 55:39
  old man said, and held out his hat. Aschenbach tossed in a coin.
• 55:45
  He gave instructions to have his luggage taken to the Beach Hotel, and
• 55:50
  followed the cart through the avenue, the white blossomed avenue, which lined on
• 55:55
  both sides with taverns, shops and boarding houses. Rode runs across the island
• 56:00
  to the shore. End of chapter three, Part one. Chapter three,
• 56:08
  part two. He entered the spacious hotel from the rear by the terraced garden
• 56:14
  and passed through the vestibule and the lobby until he reached the desk. Since
• 56:20
  he had been announced, he was received with obliging promptness. A manager,
• 56:24
  a small, frail, flatteringly polite man with a black mustache and a French
• 56:30
  style frock coat, accompanied him to the third floor in the lift and showed
• 56:35
  him his room. An agreeable place, furnished in cherrywood, it was decorated
• 56:40
  with strong smelling flowers, and its high windows afforded a view out across the
• 56:45
  open sea. He stepped up to one of them after the employee had left,
• 56:51
  and while his luggage was being brought up and placed in the room behind
• 56:54
  him. He looked down on the beach, it was comparatively deserted in the
• 57:00
  afternoon, and on the sunless ocean, which was at flood tide and was
• 57:04
  sending long, low waves against the bank in a calm, regular rhythm.
• 57:09
  The experiences of a man who lives alone and in silence are both vaguer and
• 57:15
  more penetrating than those of people in society. His thoughts are heavier, more
• 57:21
  odd, and touched always with melancholy images and observations, which could easily be
• 57:28
  disposed of by a glance. A smile and exchange of opinion will occupy him
• 57:34
  unbearably, sink deep into the silence, become full of meaning become life adventure
• 57:40
  emotion. Loneliness ripens the eccentric, the daring, and estrangingly beautiful, the
• 57:47
  poetic. But loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd,
• 57:53
  and the illicit. So the things he had met with on the trip,
• 57:59
  the ugly old f with his twaddle about sweethearts, the law breaking gondolier who
• 58:05
  was cheated of his pay, still left the traveler uneasy, without really providing
• 58:09
  any resistance to the mind, without offering any solid stuff to think over.
• 58:15
  They were nevertheless profoundly strange, as it seemed to him, and disturbing,
• 58:21
  precisely because of this contradiction. In the meanwhile, he greeted the sea with
• 58:27
  his eyes and felt pleasure at the knowledge that Venice was so conveniently near.
• 58:32
  Finally, he turned away, bathed his face, left orders to the chambermaid
• 58:37
  for a few things he still needed done to make his comfort complete, and
• 58:42
  let himself be taken to the ground floor by the green uniformed Swiss who operated
• 58:47
  the lift. He took his tea on the terrace facing the ocean, then
• 58:52
  descended and followed the boardwalk for quite a way. In the direction of the
• 58:57
  hotel Exalsior. When he returned, it seemed time to dress for dinner.
• 59:01
  He did this with his usual care and slowness, since he was accustomed to
• 59:07
  working over his toilette. And yet he came down a little early to the
• 59:12
  lobby, where he found a great many of the hotel guests assembled, mixing
• 59:16
  distantly and with a show of mutual indifference to one another, but all waiting
• 59:21
  for meal time. He took a paper from the table, dropped into a
• 59:25
  leather chair, and observed the company. They differed agreeably from the guests where
• 59:30
  he had first stopped. A wide and tolerantly inclusive horizon was spread out before
• 59:37
  him. Sounds of all the principal languages formed a subdued murmur. The accepted
• 59:43
  evening dress, the uniform of good manners brought all human varieties into a fitting
• 59:49
  unity. There were Americans with their long, wry features, large Russian families,
• 59:54
  English ladies, German children with French nurses. The lavic element seemed to
• 1:00:00
  predominate. Polish was being spoken nearby. It was a group of children gathered
• 1:00:07
  around a little wicker table under the protection of a teacher or governess. Three
• 1:00:12
  young girls apparently fifteen to seventeen, and a long haired boy about fourteen years
• 1:00:19
  old. With astonishment, Aschenbach noted that the boy was absolutely beautiful, his
• 1:00:25
  face pale and reserved, framed with honey colored hair, the straight sloping nose,
• 1:00:31
  the lovely mouth, the expression of sweet and godlike seriousness recalled Greek sculpture
• 1:00:37
  of the noblest period, and the complete purity of the forms was accompanied by
• 1:00:43
  such a rare personal charm that as he watched, he felt that he had
• 1:00:47
  never met with anything equally felicitous in nature or the plastic arts. He was
• 1:00:53
  further struck by the obviously intentional contrast with the principles of upbringing which showed in
• 1:01:00
  the sister's attire and bearing. The three girls, the eldest of whom could
• 1:01:05
  be considered grown up, were dressed with a chasteness and severity boring on disfigurement.
• 1:01:10
  Uniformly cloister like costumes of medium length slate, colored sober and deliberately unbecoming,
• 1:01:19
  and cut with white, turned down collars as the only relief, suppressed
• 1:01:23
  every possible appeal of shapeliness. Their hair, brushed down flat and tied against
• 1:01:30
  the head, gave their faces, a nunlike emptiness and lack of character.
• 1:01:35
  Surely this was a mother's influence, and it had not even occurred to her
• 1:01:39
  to apply the pedagogical strictness to the boy which she seemed to find necessary for
• 1:01:45
  her girls. It was clear that in his existence the first factors were gentleness
• 1:01:51
  and tenderness. The shears had been resolutely kept from his beautiful hair, like
• 1:01:57
  a prince charming's. It fell in curls over his forehead, his ears,
• 1:02:01
  and still deeper across his neck. The English sailor suit, with its braids,
• 1:02:07
  stitchings and embroideries, its puffy sleeves, narrowing at the ends and fitting
• 1:02:13
  snugly about the fine wrists of his still childish but slender hands, gave the
• 1:02:17
  delicate figure something rich and luxurious. He was sitting half profiled to the observer,
• 1:02:24
  one foot in its black patent leather shoe placed before the other, an
• 1:02:29
  elbow resting on the arm of his wicker chair, a cheek pressed against his
• 1:02:34
  fist, in a position of negligent good manners, entirely free of the almost
• 1:02:39
  subservient stiffness to which his sisters seemed accustomed. Did he have some illness,
• 1:02:45
  for his skin stood out as white as ivory against the golden darkness of the
• 1:02:51
  surrounding curls. Or was he simply a pampered favorite child made this way by
• 1:02:57
  a doting and moody love. Ushan sach inclined to believe the latter. Almost
• 1:03:02
  every artist is born with a rich and treacherous tendency to recognize injustices which have
• 1:03:08
  created beauty, and to meet aristocratic distinction with sympathy and reverence. A waiter
• 1:03:15
  passed through and announced in English that the meal was ready. Gradually the guests
• 1:03:21
  disappeared through the glass door into the dining hall. Stragglers crossed, coming from
• 1:03:27
  the entrance or the lifts inside. They had already begun serving, But the
• 1:03:32
  young poles were still waiting around the little wicker table, and Aschenbach, comfortably
• 1:03:37
  propped in his deep chair, and with this beauty before his eyes, stayed
• 1:03:43
  with them. The governess, a small, corpulent middle class woman with a
• 1:03:47
  red face, finally gave the sign to rise. With lifted brows. She
• 1:03:52
  pushed back her chair and bowed as a large woman dressed in gray and richly
• 1:03:59
  jeweled with perl girls entered the lobby this woman was advancing with coolness and precision.
• 1:04:04
  Her lightly powdered hair and the lines of her dress were arranged with the
• 1:04:10
  simplicity which always signifies taste in those quarters where devoutness is taken as one element
• 1:04:16
  of dignity. She might have been the wife of some high German official,
• 1:04:21
  except that her jewelry added something fantastically lavish to her appearance. Indeed, it
• 1:04:28
  was almost priceless, and consisted of ear pendance and a very long triple chain
• 1:04:33
  of softly glowing pearls as large as cherries. The children had risen promptly.
• 1:04:41
  They bent over to kiss the hand of their mother, who, with a
• 1:04:44
  distant smile on her well preserved, though somewhat tired and peaked features, looked
• 1:04:49
  over their heads and directed a few words to the Governess in French. Then
• 1:04:55
  she walked to the glass door. The children followed her, the girl's the
• 1:05:00
  order of their age, after them, the Governess. The boy last.
• 1:05:03
  For some reason or other, he turned round before crossing the sill, and,
• 1:05:09
  since no one else was in the lobby, his strange, dusky eyes
• 1:05:13
  met those of Ashenbach, who his newspaper on his knees. Lost in thought,
• 1:05:17
  was gazing after the group. What he saw had not been unusual in
• 1:05:23
  the slightest detail. They had not preceded the mother to the table. They
• 1:05:28
  had waited, greeted her with respect, and observed the customary forms on entering
• 1:05:32
  the room. But it had taken place so pointedly, with such an accent
• 1:05:38
  of training, duty and self respect that Aschenbach felt peculiarly touched by it all.
• 1:05:45
  He delayed for a few moments. Then he too, crossed into the
• 1:05:47
  dining room and was assigned to his table, which, as he noted with
• 1:05:53
  a brief touch of regret, was very far removed from that of the Polish
• 1:05:57
  family. Weary and yet intellectually active, he entertained himself during the lengthy meal
• 1:06:04
  with abstract or even transcendental things. He thought over the secret union which the
• 1:06:11
  lawful must enter upon with the individual for human beauty to result. From this,
• 1:06:15
  he passed into general problems of form and art, and at the end
• 1:06:20
  he found that his thoughts and discoveries were like the seemingly felicitous promptings of a
• 1:06:26
  dream, which, when the mind is sobered, are seen to be completely
• 1:06:30
  empty and unfit. After the meal, smoking, sitting taking an occasional turn
• 1:06:35
  in the park with its smell of nightfall. He went to bed early and
• 1:06:41
  spent the night in a sleep deep and unbroken, but often enlivened with the
• 1:06:45
  apparitions of dreams. The weather did not improve any The following day, a
• 1:06:51
  land breeze was blowing under a cloudy ashen sky. The sea lay in dull
• 1:06:57
  peacefulness. It seemed shriveled up with a close, dreary horizon, and it
• 1:07:02
  had retreated from the beach, bearing the long ribs of several sand banks.
• 1:07:08
  As Aschenbach opened his window, he thought that he could detect the foul smell
• 1:07:13
  of the lagoon. He felt depressed. He thought already of leaving once years
• 1:07:18
  ago, after several weeks of spring here. This same weather had afflicted him
• 1:07:25
  and impaired his health so seriously that he had to abandon Venice like a fugitive.
• 1:07:30
  Was not this old feverish unrest again, setting in the pressure in the
• 1:07:34
  temples, the heaviness of the eyelids. It would be annoying to change his
• 1:07:40
  residence still another time, But if the wind did not turn, he could
• 1:07:45
  not stay here. To be safe, he did not unpack completely. He
• 1:07:49
  breakfasted at nine in the buffet room provided for this purpose. Between the lobby
• 1:07:55
  and the dining room. That formal silence reigned here, which is the ambition
• 1:08:00
  of large hotels. The waiters who were serving walked about on soft souls.
• 1:08:04
  Nothing was audible but the tinkling of the tea things, a word half whispered
• 1:08:11
  in one corner obliquely across from the door, and two tables removed from his
• 1:08:15
  own. Oschenbach observed the Polish girls with their governess. He wrecked and red
• 1:08:21
  eyed their ash blonde hair, freshly smoothed down, dressed in stiff blue linen,
• 1:08:28
  with little white cuffs and turned down collars. They were sitting there,
• 1:08:32
  handing around a glass of marmalade. They had almost finished their breakfast. The
• 1:08:38
  boy was missing. Oschenbach smiled, well, little Fayoshian, he thought,
• 1:08:45
  you seem to be enjoying the pleasant privilege of having your sleep out, And
• 1:08:50
  suddenly exhilarated, he recited to himself the line a frequent change of dress,
• 1:08:57
  warm baths, and rest. Breakfasted without haste from the porter, who entered
• 1:09:02
  the hall holding his braided cap in his hand, he received some forwarded mail,
• 1:09:08
  and while he smoked a cigarette, he opened a few letters. In
• 1:09:12
  this way, it happened that he was present at the entrance of the late
• 1:09:15
  sleeper, who was being waited for over yonder, he came through the glass
• 1:09:20
  door and crossed the room in silence to his sister's table. His approach,
• 1:09:27
  the way he held the upper part of his body and bent his knees.
• 1:09:30
  The movement of his white shod feet had an extraordinary charm. He walked very
• 1:09:36
  lightly, at once timid and proud, and this became still more lovely through
• 1:09:42
  the childish embarrassment with which twice as he proceeded he turned his face toward the
• 1:09:47
  center of the room, raising and lowering his eyes, smiling with something half
• 1:09:53
  muttered in his soft, vague tongue. He took his place, and now
• 1:09:58
  as he turned his foll profile to the observer, Aschenbach was again astonished,
• 1:10:03
  terrified even by the really godlike beauty of this human child. To day,
• 1:10:10
  the boy was wearing a light blouse of blue and white striped cotton goods,
• 1:10:15
  with a red silk tie in front and closed at the neck by a plain
• 1:10:18
  white eye collar. This collar lacked the distinctiveness of the blouse, but above
• 1:10:25
  it the flowering head was poised with an incomparable seductiveness, the head of an
• 1:10:30
  eras in blended yellows of Parian marble, with fine, serious brows, the
• 1:10:36
  temples and ears covered softly by the abrupt encroachment of his curls. Good God,
• 1:10:44
  Aschenbach thought, with that deliberate expert appraisal which artists sometimes employ as a
• 1:10:50
  subterfuge when they have been carried away with delight before a master work. And
• 1:10:56
  he thought further, really, if the sea and the beach weren't waiting for
• 1:11:00
  me, I should stay here as long as you staid. But he went
• 1:11:04
  then passed through the lobby, under the inspection of the servants, down the
• 1:11:10
  wide terrace, and straight across the boardwalk to the section of the beach reserved
• 1:11:15
  for the hotel guests. The barefoot old man in dungarees and straw hat,
• 1:11:19
  who was functioning here as bathing master, assigned him to the bathhouse he had
• 1:11:25
  rented. A table and a seat were placed on the sandy board platform,
• 1:11:30
  and he made himself comfortable in the lounge chair, which he had drawn closer
• 1:11:33
  to the sea, out into the waxen yellow sand more than ever before.
• 1:11:40
  He was entertained and amused by the sights on the beach, this spectacle of
• 1:11:45
  carefree, civilized people getting sensuous enjoyment at the very edge of the elements.
• 1:11:50
  The gray flat sea was already alive with waiting children, swimmers, a motley
• 1:11:57
  of figures lying on the sand banks with arms bent behind their heads. Others
• 1:12:01
  were rowing about in little red and blue striped boats without keels. They were
• 1:12:06
  continually upsetting amid laughter. Before the long stretches of bathing houses, where people
• 1:12:13
  were sitting on the platforms as though on small verandas there was a play of
• 1:12:17
  movement against the line of rest and inertness behind visits and chatter, fastidious morning
• 1:12:25
  elegance alongside the nakedness which boldly at ease, was enjoying the freedom which the
• 1:12:30
  place afforded. Further in front, on the damp, firm sand, people
• 1:12:35
  were parading about in white bathing cloaks in ample, brilliantly colored wrappers. An
• 1:12:42
  elaborate sand pile to the right, erected by children, had flags in the
• 1:12:46
  colors of all nations planted around it. Vendors of shells, cakes and fruit
• 1:12:51
  spread out their wares. Kneeling to the left, before one of the bathing
• 1:12:57
  houses, which stood at right angles to the other and to the sea.
• 1:13:01
  A Russian family was encamped, men with beards and large teeth, slow delicate
• 1:13:08
  women, a Baltic girl sitting by an easel and painting the sea amidst exclamations
• 1:13:14
  of despair. Two ugly, good natured children, an old maidservant who wore
• 1:13:19
  a kerchief on her head and had the alert, scraping manners of a slave.
• 1:13:25
  Delighted and appreciative, they were living there, patiently calling the names of
• 1:13:30
  the two rowdy, disobedient children, using their scanty Italian to joke with the
• 1:13:34
  humorous old man from whom they were buying candy, kissing one another on the
• 1:13:40
  cheek, and not in the least concerned with any one who might be observing
• 1:13:45
  their community. Yes, I shall stay. Aschenbach thought where would things be
• 1:13:50
  better? And his hands folded in his lap, he let his eyes lose
• 1:13:56
  themselves in the expanses of the sea, his gaze gliding, swimming, and
• 1:14:00
  failing in the monotone mist of the wilderness of space. He loved the ocean
• 1:14:05
  for deep seated reasons, because of that yearning for rest, when the hard
• 1:14:11
  pressed artist hungers to shut out the exacting multiplicities of experience and hide himself on
• 1:14:16
  the breast of the simple, the vast, and because of a forbidding hankering
• 1:14:23
  seductive by virtue of its being directly opposed to his obligations. After the incommunicable,
• 1:14:29
  the incommensurate, the eternal, the non existent, to be at rest
• 1:14:33
  in the face of perfection is the hunger of everyone who is aiming at excellence.
• 1:14:40
  And what is the non existent but a form of perfection. But now,
• 1:14:45
  just as his dreams were so far out in vacancy, suddenly the horizontal
• 1:14:49
  fringe of the sea was broken by a human figure. And as he brought
• 1:14:54
  his eyes back from the unbounded and focused them, it was the lovely boy
• 1:14:59
  who there, coming from the left, and passing him on the sand.
• 1:15:03
  He was barefooted, ready for waiting, his slender legs exposed above the knees.
• 1:15:10
  He walked slowly, but as lightly and proudly, as though it were
• 1:15:14
  the customary thing for him to move about without shoes. And he was looking
• 1:15:18
  around him towards the line of bathing houses opposite. But as soon as he
• 1:15:24
  had noticed the Russian family occupied with their own harmony and contentment. A cloud
• 1:15:30
  of scorn and detestation passed over his face. His brow darkened, his mouth
• 1:15:35
  was compressed. He gave his lips an embittered twist to one side, so
• 1:15:41
  that the cheek was distorted, and the forehead became so heavily furrowed that the
• 1:15:45
  eyes seemed sunken beneath its pressure. Malicious and glowering, they spoke the language
• 1:15:51
  of hate. He looked down, looked back once more threateningly, then with
• 1:15:58
  his shoulder, made an abrupt gesture of disdain and dismissal, and left the
• 1:16:02
  enemy behind him. A kind of prudency or confusion, something like respect and
• 1:16:09
  shyness, caused Oschenbach to turn away, as though he had seen nothing.
• 1:16:15
  For the earnest minded, who have been casual observers of some passion, struggle
• 1:16:19
  against making use even to themselves of what they have seen. But he was
• 1:16:25
  both cheered and unstrung, which is to say he was happy. This childish
• 1:16:30
  fanaticism directed against the most good natured possible aspect of life. It brought the
• 1:16:36
  divinely arbitrary into human relationships. It made a delightful natural picture which had appealed
• 1:16:44
  only to the eye now seemed worthy of a deeper sympathy, and it gave
• 1:16:48
  the figure of this half grown boy, who had already been important enough by
• 1:16:54
  his sheer beauty, something to offset him still further, and to make one
• 1:16:59
  take him more so seriously than his years justified. Still looking away, Oschenbach
• 1:17:04
  could hear the boy's voice, the shrill, somewhat weak voice with which,
• 1:17:10
  in the distance now he was trying to call hello to his playfellows busied around
• 1:17:15
  the sand pile. They answered him, shouting back his name or some affectionate
• 1:17:20
  nickname, and Oschenbach listened with a certain curiosity, without being able to catch
• 1:17:27
  anything more definite than the two melodic syllables like ajio or still more frequently adieu,
• 1:17:34
  with a ringing you sound prolonged at the end. He was pleased with
• 1:17:39
  the resonance of this. He found it adequate to the subject. He repeated
• 1:17:44
  it silently, and satisfied, turned to his letters and manuscripts, his small
• 1:17:50
  portable writing desk on his knees. He began writing with his fountain pen and
• 1:17:56
  answer to this or that bit of correspondence. But after the first fifteen minutes
• 1:18:00
  he found it a pity to abandon the situation the most enjoyable he could think
• 1:18:05
  of in this manner, and wasted in activities which did not interest him.
• 1:18:11
  He tossed the writing materials to one side and he faced the ocean again.
• 1:18:15
  Soon afterwards, diverted by the childish voices around the sand heap, he revolved
• 1:18:21
  his head comfortably along the back of the chair towards the right to discover where
• 1:18:27
  that excellent little aggio might be and what he was doing. He was found
• 1:18:31
  at a glance. The red tie on his breast was not to be overlooked.
• 1:18:36
  Busied with the others in laying an old plank across the damp moat of
• 1:18:41
  the sand castle, he was nodding and shouting instructions for this work. There
• 1:18:46
  were about ten companions with him, boys and girls of his age, and
• 1:18:50
  a few younger ones, who were chattering with one another in Polish, French
• 1:18:56
  and in several Balkan tongues. But it was his name which rang out most
• 1:19:00
  often. He was openly in demand, sought after, admired. One boy
• 1:19:06
  especially like him, a pole, a stocky fellow who was called something like
• 1:19:12
  Joshu, with sleek black hair and a belted linen coat, seemed to be
• 1:19:16
  his closest vassal and friend. End of Chapter three, Part two. Chapter
• 1:19:27
  three, Part three, When the work on the sands structure was finished for
• 1:19:31
  the time being, they walked arm in arm along the beach, and the
• 1:19:35
  boy, who was called Joshu, kissed the beauty. Aschenbach was half minded
• 1:19:42
  to raise a warning finger. I advise you, Christobulus, he thought,
• 1:19:46
  smiling to travel for a year, for you need that much time at least
• 1:19:53
  to get over it. And then he breakfasted on large ripe strawberries, which
• 1:19:58
  he got from a peddler. It had become very warm, although the sun
• 1:20:02
  could no longer penetrate the blanket of mist in the sky. Laziness clogged his
• 1:20:08
  brain, even while his senses delighted in the numbing, drugging distractions of the
• 1:20:14
  ocean's stillness. To guess, to puzzle out just what name it was that
• 1:20:18
  sounded something like Ajio seemed to the sober man an appropriate ambition, a thoroughly
• 1:20:26
  comprehensive pursuit, and with the aid of a few scrappy recollections of Polish,
• 1:20:31
  he decided that they must mean Tasio, the shortened form of Tadeus, and
• 1:20:38
  sounded like Tasiu, when it is called Tasio was bathing. Aschenbach, who
• 1:20:44
  had lost sight of him, spied his head and the arm with which he
• 1:20:48
  was propelling himself far out in the water, for the sea must have been
• 1:20:53
  smooth for a long distance out. But already people seemed worried about him.
• 1:20:59
  Women's voice were calling after him from the bathing houses, uttering his name again
• 1:21:03
  and again. It almost dominated the beach like a battle cry, and with
• 1:21:09
  its soft consonants, its long drawn you note at the end it had something
• 1:21:14
  at once sweet and wild about it. Toadsio tadzio. He turned back,
• 1:21:20
  beating the resistant water into a foam with his legs. He hurried his head
• 1:21:26
  bent down over the waves. And to see how this living figure, graceful
• 1:21:30
  and clean cut in its advance, with dripping curls and lovely as some frail
• 1:21:35
  god, came up out of the depths of sky and sea, rose and
• 1:21:40
  separated from the elements. This spectacle aroused a sense of myth. It was
• 1:21:45
  like some poet's recovery of time at its beginning, of the origins of forms
• 1:21:49
  and the birth of gods. Aschenbach listened with closed eyes to the song ringing
• 1:21:56
  within him, and he thought again that it was pleasant he and that he
• 1:22:00
  would like to remain. Later, Tazio was resting from his bath. He
• 1:22:05
  lay in the sand, wrapped in his white robe, which was drawn under
• 1:22:10
  the right shoulder, his head supported on his bare arm, And even when
• 1:22:14
  Aschenbach was not observing him, but was reading a few pages in his book,
• 1:22:18
  he hardly ever forgot that this boy was lying there, and that it
• 1:22:24
  would cost him only a slight turn of his head to the right to behold
• 1:22:28
  the mystery. It seemed that he was sitting here just to keep watch over
• 1:22:31
  his repose, busied with his own concerns, and yet constantly aware of this
• 1:22:36
  noble picture at his right, not far in the distance, and he was
• 1:22:42
  stirred by a paternal affection, the profound leaning which those who have devoted their
• 1:22:46
  thoughts to the creation of beauty feel towards those who possess beauty itself. A
• 1:22:53
  little past noon, he left the beach, returned to the hotel, and
• 1:22:58
  was taken up to his room. He stayed there for some time in front
• 1:23:01
  of the mirror, looking at his gray hair, his tired, sharp features.
• 1:23:06
  At this moment he thought of his reputation and of the fact that he
• 1:23:11
  was often recognized on the streets and observed with respect. Thanks to the sure
• 1:23:15
  aim and the appealing finish of his words. He called up all the exterior
• 1:23:20
  successes of his talent which he could think of, remembering also his elevation to
• 1:23:26
  the knighthood. Then he went down to the dining hall for lunch and ate
• 1:23:30
  at his little table. As he was riding up in the lift after the
• 1:23:33
  meal was ended, a group of young people just coming from breakfast pressed into
• 1:23:39
  the swaying cage after him, and Tazio entered too. He stood quite near
• 1:23:45
  to Oschenbach for the first time, so near that Rauschenbach could see him not
• 1:23:50
  with the a loftness of a picture, but in minute detail, in all
• 1:23:55
  his human particularities. The boy was addressed by some one or other, and
• 1:24:00
  as he was answering with an indescribably agreeable smile, he stepped out again on
• 1:24:04
  the second floor, walking backwards and with his eyes lowered. Beauty makes modest,
• 1:24:12
  Aschenbach thought, and he tried insistently to explain why this was so.
• 1:24:16
  But he had noticed that Tasio's teeth were not all they should be. They
• 1:24:21
  were somewhat jagged and pale. The enamel did not look healthy. It had
• 1:24:27
  a peculiar brittleness and transparency, as is often the case with anemex. He
• 1:24:31
  is very frail, he is sickly. Aschenbach thought, in all probability he
• 1:24:38
  will not grow old, and he refused to reckon with the feeling of gratification
• 1:24:44
  or reassurance which accompanied this notion. He spent two hours in his room,
• 1:24:49
  and in the afternoon he rode in the vaporetto across the foul smelling lagoon to
• 1:24:55
  Venice. He got off at San Marco, took tea on the piazza,
• 1:25:00
  and then, in accord with his schedule for the day, he went for
• 1:25:03
  a walk through the streets. Yet it was this walk which produced a complete
• 1:25:08
  reversal in his attitudes and his plans. An offensive sultriness lay over the streets.
• 1:25:15
  The air was so heavy that the smells pouring out of homes, stores
• 1:25:18
  and eating houses became mixed with oil vapors, clouds of perfume, and still
• 1:25:25
  other odors, and these would not blow away, but hung in layers.
• 1:25:30
  Cigarette smoke remained suspended, disappearing very slowly. The crush of people along the
• 1:25:36
  narrow streets irritated rather than entertained the walker. The farther he went, the
• 1:25:43
  more he was depressed by the repulsive condition resulting from the combination of sea air
• 1:25:47
  and sea racco which was at the same time both stimulating and enervating. He
• 1:25:55
  broke into an uncomfortable sweat. His eyes failed him, his chest became tight.
• 1:26:00
  He had a fever. The blood was pounding in his head. He
• 1:26:03
  fled from the crowded business streets across a bridge into the walks of the poor.
• 1:26:10
  On a quiet square, one of those forgotten and enchanted places which lie
• 1:26:15
  in the interior of Venice, he rested at the brink of a well,
• 1:26:18
  dried his forehead, and realized that he would have to leave here for the
• 1:26:24
  second and last time. It had been demonstrated that this city, in this
• 1:26:29
  kind of weather, was decidedly unhealthy for him. It seemed foolish to attempt
• 1:26:33
  a stubborn resistance. While the prospects for a change of wind were completely uncertain,
• 1:26:40
  a certain decision was called for. It was not possible to go home
• 1:26:45
  this soon. Neither summer nor winter quarters were prepared to receive him. But
• 1:26:50
  this was not the only place where there were sea and beach and elsewhere these
• 1:26:56
  could be found without the lagoon and its malarial mists. He remembered a little
• 1:27:00
  watering place not far from Trieste, which had been praised to him. Why
• 1:27:05
  not there, and without delay, so that this new change of location would
• 1:27:11
  still have time to do him some good. He pronounced this as good as
• 1:27:15
  settled, and stood up. At the next gondola station, he took a
• 1:27:19
  boat back to San Marco and was led through the dreary labyrinth of canals under
• 1:27:26
  fancy marble balconies planked with lions around the corners of smooth walls, past the
• 1:27:32
  sorrowing facades of palaces which mirrored large, dilapidated business signs in the pulsing water.
• 1:27:40
  He had trouble arriving there, for the gondolier, who was in league
• 1:27:43
  with lace makers and glass blowers, was always trying to land him for inspections
• 1:27:48
  and purchases. And just as the bizarre trip through Venice would begin to cast
• 1:27:54
  its spell, the greedy business sense of the sunken queen did all it could
• 1:27:59
  to destroy the illusion. When he had returned to the hotel, he announced
• 1:28:03
  at the office before dinner the unforeseen developments necessitated his departure. The following morning.
• 1:28:11
  He was assured of their regrets, He settled his accounts, He dined,
• 1:28:15
  and spent the warm evening reading the newspapers in a rocking chair on the
• 1:28:19
  rear terrace. Before going to bed, he got his luggage all ready for
• 1:28:25
  departure. He did not sleep so well as he might, since the impending
• 1:28:30
  break up made him restless. When he opened the window in the morning,
• 1:28:34
  the sky was as overcast as ever, but the air seemed fresher, and
• 1:28:40
  he was already beginning to repent. Hadn't his decision been somewhat hasty and uncalled
• 1:28:45
  for, the result of a passing diffidence and indisposition. If he had delayed
• 1:28:50
  a little, If instead of surrendering so easily, he had made some attempt
• 1:28:56
  to adjust himself to the air of venice, or to wait for an improvement
• 1:29:00
  in the weather, he would not be so rushed and inconvenienced, but could
• 1:29:04
  anticipate another forenoon on the beach like yesterday's. Too late. Now he would
• 1:29:11
  have to go on wanting what he had wanted yesterday. He dressed, and
• 1:29:15
  about eight o'clock rode down to the ground floor for breakfast. As he entered,
• 1:29:20
  the buffet room was still empty of guests. A few came in while
• 1:29:25
  he waited for his order. With his tea cup to his lips, he
• 1:29:29
  saw the Polish girls and the governess appear rigid with morning freshness, their eyes
• 1:29:34
  still red, they walked across to their table in the corner by the window.
• 1:29:40
  Immediately afterwards, the porter approached him, cap in hand and warned him
• 1:29:45
  that it was time to go. The automobile is ready to take him and
• 1:29:48
  the other passengers to the Hotel Excelsior, and from here the motor boat will
• 1:29:54
  bring the ladies and gentlemen to the station through the company's private canal. Time
• 1:30:00
  is pressing. Haschenbach found that he was doing nothing of the sort. It
• 1:30:05
  was still over an hour before his train left. He was irritated by this
• 1:30:10
  hotel custom of hustling departing guests out of the house, and indicated to the
• 1:30:15
  porter that he wished to finish his breakfast in peace. The man retired hesitatingly,
• 1:30:20
  to appear again five minutes later. It is impossible for the car to
• 1:30:26
  wait any longer. Then he would take a cab and carry his trunk with
• 1:30:30
  him. Haschenbach replied in anger, he would use the public steamboat at the
• 1:30:34
  proper time, and he requested that it be left to him personally to worry
• 1:30:40
  about his departure. The employee bowed himself away, pleased with the way he
• 1:30:45
  had warded off these importunate warnings. Oschenbach finished his meal at leisure. In
• 1:30:51
  fact, he even let the waiter bring him a newspaper. The time had
• 1:30:56
  become quite short when he finally arose. It was fitting that at the same
• 1:31:00
  moment Tasio should come through the glass door. On the way to his table.
• 1:31:05
  He walked in the opposite direction to Oschenbach, lowering his eyes modestly before
• 1:31:12
  the man with the gray hair and high forehead, only to raise them again
• 1:31:15
  in his delicious manner, soft and full upon him. And he had passed
• 1:31:21
  good bye, Tasio. Aschenbach thought, I did not see much of you.
• 1:31:28
  He did what was unusual with him, really formed the words on his
• 1:31:31
  lips and spoke them to himself. Then he added God bless you. After
• 1:31:38
  this he left, distributed tips, was ushered out by the small gentle manager
• 1:31:44
  in the French frock coat, and made off from the hotel on foot as
• 1:31:47
  he had come, going along the white blossoming avenue which crossed the island to
• 1:31:53
  the steamer bridge. Accompanied by the house servant carrying his hand luggage, he
• 1:31:59
  arrived, took his place, and then followed a painful journey through all the
• 1:32:03
  depths of regret. It was the familiar trip across the lagoon, past San
• 1:32:09
  Marco, up the Grand Canal. Haschenbach sat on the circular bench at the
• 1:32:15
  bow, his arms supported against the railing, shading his eyes with his hand.
• 1:32:19
  The public gardens were left behind. The piazzetta opened up once more in
• 1:32:26
  princely splendor and was gone. Then came the great flock of palaces, and
• 1:32:30
  as the channel made a turn, the magnificently slung marble arch of the Rialto
• 1:32:35
  came into view. The traveler was watching. His emotions were in conflict.
• 1:32:42
  The atmosphere of the city, the slightly foul smell of sea and swamp,
• 1:32:46
  which he had been so anxious to avoid. He breathed it now in deep,
• 1:32:50
  exquisitely painful drafts. Was it possible that he had not known, had
• 1:32:57
  not considered, just how much he was at attached to all this? What
• 1:33:01
  had been a partial misgiving this morning, A faint doubt as to the advisability
• 1:33:05
  of his move now became a distress, a positive misery, a spiritual hunger,
• 1:33:13
  and so bitter that it frequently brought tears to his eyes, while he
• 1:33:16
  told himself that he could not possibly have foreseen it. Hardest of all to
• 1:33:21
  bear at times completely insufferable was the thought that he would never see Venice again,
• 1:33:28
  That this was a leave taking forever, since he had been shown for
• 1:33:32
  the second time that the city affected his health, since he was compelled for
• 1:33:36
  the second time to get away in all haste. From now on he would
• 1:33:42
  have to consider it a place impossible and forbidden to him, the place which
• 1:33:46
  he was not equal to, and which it would be foolish for him to
• 1:33:49
  visit again. Yes, he felt that if he left now he would be
• 1:33:55
  shamefaced and defiant enough never to see again the beloved, which had twice caused
• 1:34:00
  him a physical breakdown and of a sudden This struggle between his desires and his
• 1:34:08
  physical strength seemed to the aging man so grave and important. His physical defeat
• 1:34:14
  seemed so dishonorable, so much a challenge to hold out at any cost,
• 1:34:18
  that he could not understand the ready submissiveness of the day before, when he
• 1:34:24
  had decided to give in without attempting any serious resistance. Meanwhile, the steamboat
• 1:34:30
  was nearing the station. Pain and perplexity increased. He became distracted in his
• 1:34:35
  affliction. He felt that it was impossible to leave and just as impossible to
• 1:34:42
  turn back. The conflict was intense. As he entered the station. It
• 1:34:46
  was very late. There was not a moment to lose if he was to
• 1:34:49
  catch the train. He wanted to, and he did not want to,
• 1:34:55
  but time was pressing. It drove him on. He hurried to get his
• 1:34:59
  ticket and looked about in the tumult of the hall for the officer on duty
• 1:35:03
  here from the hotel. The man appeared and announced that the large trunk had
• 1:35:08
  been transferred, transferred already, yes, thank you to como to como.
• 1:35:15
  And in the midst of hasty running back and forth, angry questions and confused
• 1:35:21
  answers, it came to light that the trunk had already been sent with other
• 1:35:26
  foreign baggage from the express office of the Hotel Excelsior, in a completely wrong
• 1:35:31
  direction. Aschenbach had difficulty in preserving the expression which was required under these circumstances.
• 1:35:40
  He was almost convulsed with an adventurous delight an unbelievable hilarity, the employee
• 1:35:46
  rushed off to see if it were still possible to stop the trunk, and,
• 1:35:50
  as was to be expected, he returned with nothing accomplished. Aschenbach declared
• 1:35:57
  that he did not want to travel without his trunk, had decided to go
• 1:36:00
  back and wait at the beach hotel for its return. Was the company's motor
• 1:36:04
  boat still at the station. The man assured him that it was lying at
• 1:36:10
  the door. With Italian volubility, he persuaded the clerk at the ticket window
• 1:36:15
  to redeem the canceled ticket. He swore that they would act speedily, that
• 1:36:19
  no time or money would be spared in recovering the trunk promptly, And so
• 1:36:25
  the strange thing happened that twenty minutes after his arrival at the station, the
• 1:36:30
  traveler found himself again on the Grand Canal, returning to the lido. Here
• 1:36:35
  was an adventure wonderful, a bashing and comically dreamlike, beyond belief, places
• 1:36:42
  which he had just bid farewell to forever in the most abject misery. Yet
• 1:36:46
  he had been turned and driven back by fate, and was seeing them again
• 1:36:51
  in the same hour, the spray from the bow, washing between gondolas and
• 1:36:57
  steamers with an absurd agility, show the speedy little craft ahead to its goal,
• 1:37:02
  while the one passenger was hiding the nervousness in a buliance of a truant
• 1:37:06
  boy under the mask of resigned anger. From time to time he shook with
• 1:37:12
  laughter at this mishap, which, as he told himself, could not have
• 1:37:16
  turned out better for a child of destiny. There were explanations to be given,
• 1:37:21
  expressions of astonishment to be faced. And then he told himself everything would
• 1:37:28
  be all right. Then a misfortune would be avoided, a grave error rectified,
• 1:37:32
  and all that he had thought he was leaving behind him would be open
• 1:37:36
  to him again there at his disposal. And to cap it all, was
• 1:37:42
  the rapidity of the ride deceiving him? Or was the wind really coming from
• 1:37:46
  the sea. The waves beat against the walls of the narrow canal which runs
• 1:37:51
  through the island to the Hotel Excelsior. An automobile omnibus was awaiting his return
• 1:37:58
  there and took him above the rippling sea straight to the beach hotel. The
• 1:38:02
  little manager with a mustache and long tailed frock coat came down the stairs to
• 1:38:08
  meet him. He ingratiatingly regretted the episode, spoke of it as highly painful
• 1:38:14
  to him and the establishment, but firmly approved of Aschenbach's decision to wait here
• 1:38:19
  for the baggage. Of course, his room had been given up, but
• 1:38:24
  there was another one just as good, which he could occupy immediately. Passee
• 1:38:29
  de chance monsieur, the Swiss elevator boy smiled as they were ascending, and
• 1:38:34
  so the Fugitive was established again in a room almost identical to the other in
• 1:38:40
  its location and furnishings. Tired out by the confusion of this strange forenoon,
• 1:38:45
  he distributed the contents of his handbag about the room and dropped into an armchair
• 1:38:50
  by the open window. The sea had become a pale green, The air
• 1:38:56
  seemed thinner and purer. The beach, with its cabins en bas, seemed
• 1:39:00
  to have color, although the sky was still gray. Aschenbach looked out,
• 1:39:05
  his hands folded in his lap. He was content to be back, but
• 1:39:11
  shook his head disapprovingly at his irresolution, his failure to know his own mind.
• 1:39:16
  He sat here for the better part of an hour, resting and dreaming
• 1:39:20
  vaguely about noon, he saw Tasio in a striped linen suit with a red
• 1:39:26
  tie, coming back from the sea across the private beach along the boardwalk to
• 1:39:30
  the hotel. Aschenbach recognized him from this altitude before he had actually set eyes
• 1:39:36
  on him. He was about to think such words as well, Tasio,
• 1:39:42
  there you are again. But at the same moment he felt this careless greeting
• 1:39:46
  go dumb before the truth. In his heart, he felt the exhilaration of
• 1:39:50
  his blood, a conflict of pain and pleasure, and he realized that it
• 1:39:56
  was Tasio who made it so difficult for him to leave. He sat very
• 1:40:01
  still, entirely unobserved from this height, and looked within himself. His features
• 1:40:08
  were alert, his eyebrows raised, and an attentive, keenly inquisitive smile distended
• 1:40:14
  his mouth. Then he raised his head, lifted both hands, which had
• 1:40:18
  hung relaxed over the arms of the chair, and in a slow twisting movement,
• 1:40:24
  turned the palms downward, as though to suggest an opening and spreading outward
• 1:40:29
  of his arms. It was a spontaneous act of welcome, of calm,
• 1:40:33
  acceptance. End of Chapter three, Chapter four, Part one Day after day
• 1:40:43
  Now the Naked God with the hot cheeks, drove his fire breathing quadriga across
• 1:40:48
  the expanses of the sky, and his yellow locks fluttered in the assault of
• 1:40:54
  the east wind. A white silk sheen stretched over the slowly simmering punch.
• 1:41:00
  The sand glowed beneath the quaking silver blue of the ether. Rust colored canvasses
• 1:41:06
  were spread in front of the beach bathing houses, and the afternoons were spent
• 1:41:12
  in the sharply demarcated spots of shade which they cast. But it was also
• 1:41:16
  delightful in the evening, when the vegetation in the park had the smell of
• 1:41:21
  balsam, and the stars were working through their courses above, and the soft,
• 1:41:27
  persistent murmur of the sea came up enchantingly through the night. Such evenings
• 1:41:32
  contained the cheering promise that more sunny days of casual idleness would follow, dotted
• 1:41:39
  with countless closely interspersed possibilities of well timed accidents. The guest, who was
• 1:41:45
  detained here by such an accommodating mishap, did not consider the return of his
• 1:41:50
  property as sufficient grounds for another departure. He suffered some inconvenience for two days
• 1:41:59
  and had to appears in the large dining room in his traveling clothes. When
• 1:42:03
  the strayed luggage was finally deposited in his room again, he unpacked completely and
• 1:42:10
  filled the closet and drawers with his belongings. He had decided to remain here
• 1:42:15
  indefinitely, content now that he could pass the hours on the beach in a
• 1:42:19
  silk suit and appear for dinner at his little table again in appropriate evening dress.
• 1:42:27
  The comfortable rhythm of his life had already cast its spell over him.
• 1:42:31
  He was soon enticed by the ease the mild splendor of his program. Indeed,
• 1:42:38
  what a place to be in when the usual allurement of living and watering
• 1:42:42
  places on southern shores was coupled with the immediate nearness of the most wonderful of
• 1:42:47
  all cities. Aschenbach was not a lover of pleasure. Whenever there was some
• 1:42:54
  call for him to take a holiday, to indulge himself to have a good
• 1:42:58
  time, and this it was especially true at an earlier age. Restlessness and
• 1:43:03
  repugnance soon drove him back to his rigorous toil, the faithful, sober efforts
• 1:43:09
  of his daily routine, except that this place was bewitching him. Relaxing his
• 1:43:15
  will, making him happy in the mornings under the shelter of his bathing house,
• 1:43:20
  letting his eyes roam dreamily in the blue of the Southern Sea war on
• 1:43:26
  a warm night, as he leaned back against the cushions of the gondola,
• 1:43:30
  carrying him under the broad, starry sky home to the Lido from the Piazza
• 1:43:34
  di San Marco, after long hours of idleness, and the brilliant lights the
• 1:43:40
  melting notes of the serenade were being left behind. He often recalled his place
• 1:43:45
  in the mountains, the scene of his battles in the summer, where the
• 1:43:49
  clouds blew low across his garden, and terrifying storms put out the lamps at
• 1:43:56
  night, and the crows which he fed were swinging in the tops of the
• 1:44:00
  pine trees. Then everything seemed just right to him, as though he were
• 1:44:04
  lifted into the Elysian fields on the borders of the earth, where man enjoys
• 1:44:10
  the easiest life, where there is no snow or winter, no storms and
• 1:44:15
  pouring rains, but where Oceanus continually sends forth gentle, cooling breezes, and
• 1:44:21
  the days pass in a blessed inactivity, without work, devoted wholly to the
• 1:44:27
  sun and to the feast days of the sun. Aschenbach saw the boy Tadzio
• 1:44:32
  frequently, almost constantly, owing to the limited range of territory and the regularity
• 1:44:40
  of their lives. The beauty was near him at short intervals throughout the day.
• 1:44:45
  He saw him, met him everywhere in the lower rooms of the hotel,
• 1:44:50
  on the cooling water trips to the city and back, in the arcades
• 1:44:55
  of the square, and at times when he was especially lucky, ran across
• 1:45:00
  him on the streets. But principally and with the most gratifying regularity, the
• 1:45:05
  forenoon on the beach allowed him to admire and study this rare spectacle at his
• 1:45:11
  leisure. Yes, it was this guarantee of happiness, this daily recurrence of
• 1:45:16
  good fortune, which made his stay here so precious and gave him such pleasure.
• 1:45:21
  In the constant procession of sunny days, he was up as early as
• 1:45:27
  he used to be when under the driving pressure of work, and was on
• 1:45:30
  the beach before most people, when the sun was still mild and the sea
• 1:45:35
  lay blinding white in the dreaminess of mourning. He spoke amiably to the guard
• 1:45:41
  of the private beach, and also spoke familiarly to the barefoot, white bearded
• 1:45:45
  old man who had prepared his place for him, stretching the brown canopy and
• 1:45:51
  bringing the furniture of the cabin out on the platform. Then he took his
• 1:45:56
  seat. There would now be three or four hours in which the sun mounted
• 1:46:00
  and gained terrific strength, the sea a deeper and deeper blue, and he
• 1:46:05
  might look at Todsio. He saw him approaching from the left along the edge
• 1:46:11
  of the sea, he saw him as he stepped out backwards from among the
• 1:46:15
  cabins, or he would suddenly find with a shock of pleasure that he had
• 1:46:20
  missed his coming, that he was already here in the blue and white bathing
• 1:46:25
  suit which was his only garment now while on the beach, that he had
• 1:46:30
  already commenced his usual activities in the sun and the sand. A pleasantly trifling,
• 1:46:35
  idle and unstable manner of living, a mixture of rest and play.
• 1:46:41
  Todsio would saunter about, weighed, dig catch things, lie down, go
• 1:46:46
  for a swim, all the while being kept under surveillance by the women on
• 1:46:50
  the platform, who made his name ring out in their falsetto voices. TODs
• 1:46:57
  you, TODs you, then he would come running to them with a look
• 1:47:00
  of eagerness, to tell them what he had seen, what he had experienced,
• 1:47:05
  or to show them what he had found or caught, muscles, sea
• 1:47:10
  horses, jellyfish, and crabs that ran sideways. Aschenbach did not understand a
• 1:47:15
  word he said, and though it might have been the most ordinary thing in
• 1:47:19
  the world, it was a vague harmony in his ear. So the forimness
• 1:47:25
  of the boy's speech turned it into music. A wanton son poured its prodigal
• 1:47:30
  splendor down over him, and his figure was always set off against the background
• 1:47:35
  of an intense blue. This piquant body was so freely exhibited that his eyes
• 1:47:42
  soon knew every line and posture. He was continually rediscovering with new pleasure all
• 1:47:48
  this familiar beauty, and his astonishment at its delicate appeal to his senses was
• 1:47:55
  unending. The boy was called to greet a guest who was paying his respects
• 1:48:00
  to the ladies at the bathing house. He came running, running wet,
• 1:48:04
  perhaps out of the water, tossed back his curls, and as he held
• 1:48:09
  out his hand, resting on one leg and raising his other foot on the
• 1:48:13
  toes, the set of his body was delightful. It had a charming expectancy
• 1:48:17
  about it, a well meaning shyness, a winsomeness which showed his aristocratic training.
• 1:48:25
  He lay stretched full length, his bath towel slung across his shoulders,
• 1:48:30
  his delicately chiseled arm supported in the sand, his chin in his palm.
• 1:48:35
  The boy called Joshu was squatting near him and making up to him, and
• 1:48:42
  nothing could be more enchanting than the smile of his eyes and lips when the
• 1:48:45
  leader glanced up at his inferior, his servant. He stood on the edge
• 1:48:50
  of the sea, alone apart from his people, quite near to Ochenbach.
• 1:48:57
  Erecked, his hands locked across the back of his neck. He swayed slowly
• 1:49:01
  on the balls of his feet, looked dreamily into the blueness of sea and
• 1:49:05
  sky, while tiny waves rolled up and bathed his feet. His honey colored
• 1:49:13
  hair clung in rings about his neck and temples. The sun made the down
• 1:49:17
  on his back glitter. The fine etching of the ribs the symmetry of the
• 1:49:23
  chest were emphasized by the tightness of the suit across the buttocks. His armpits
• 1:49:29
  were still as smooth as those of a statue. The hollows of his knees
• 1:49:32
  glistened, and their bluish veins made his body seem built of some clearer stuff.
• 1:49:40
  What rigor what precision of thought were expressed in this erect, youthfully perfect
• 1:49:45
  body. Yet the pure and strenuous will which darkly at work could bring such
• 1:49:50
  godlike sculpture to the light, was not he the artist familiar with this?
• 1:49:57
  Did it not operate in him? Too? And he, under the press
• 1:50:00
  of frugal passions, would free from the marble mass of speech some slender form
• 1:50:06
  which he had seen in the mind, and which he put before his fellows
• 1:50:11
  as a statue and a mirror of intellectual beauty. Statue and mirror. His
• 1:50:17
  eyes took in the noble form there bordered with blue, and with a rush
• 1:50:23
  of enthusiasm, he felt that in this spectacle he was catching the beautiful itself,
• 1:50:28
  form as the thought of God, the one pure perfection which lives in
• 1:50:32
  the mind, and which, in this symbol and likeness, had been placed
• 1:50:38
  here quietly and simply as an object of devotion. That was drunkenness, and
• 1:50:44
  eagerly, without thinking, the aging artist welcomed it. His mind was in
• 1:50:49
  travail. All that he had learned dropped back into flux. His understanding threw
• 1:50:55
  up age old thoughts which he had inherited with youth, though they had never
• 1:51:00
  ever before lived with their own fire. Is it not written that the sun
• 1:51:04
  diverts our attention from intellectual to sensual things. Reason and understanding, it is
• 1:51:11
  said, becomes so numbed and enchanted that the soul forgets everything out of delight
• 1:51:16
  with its immediate circumstances, and in astonishment, becomes attached to the most beautiful
• 1:51:23
  objects shined on by the sun. Indeed, only with the aid of a
• 1:51:28
  body is it capable, then, of raising itself to higher considerations. To
• 1:51:33
  be sure, Ahmor did as the instructors of mathematics who show backward children tangible
• 1:51:41
  representations of the pure forms. Similarly, the God, in order to make
• 1:51:45
  the spiritual visible for us, readily utilized the form and color of man's youth,
• 1:51:51
  And as a reminder, he adorned these with the reflected splendor of beauty,
• 1:51:57
  which, when we behold it makes us flare up in pain and hope.
• 1:52:01
  His enthusiasm suggested these things put him in the mood for them, and
• 1:52:06
  from the noise of the sea and the luster of the sun. He wove
• 1:52:12
  himself a charming picture. Here was the old plane Tree, not far from
• 1:52:16
  the walls of Athens, a holy, shadowy place, filled with the smell
• 1:52:21
  of Agnus costUS blossoms, and decorated with ornaments and images sacred to Achelus and
• 1:52:29
  the nymphs. Clear and pure. The brook at the foot of the spreading
• 1:52:32
  tree fell across the smooth pebbles. The cicadas were fiddling, but on the
• 1:52:39
  grass, which was like a pillow, gently sloping to the head, two
• 1:52:43
  people were stretched out in hiding from the heat of the day, an older
• 1:52:47
  man and a youth, one ugly and one beautiful. Wisdom next to loveliness
• 1:52:54
  and amid gallantries and skillfully engaging banter, Socrates was instruck by Adrus in matters
• 1:53:01
  of desire and virtue. He spoke to him of the hot terror which the
• 1:53:06
  initiates suffer when their eyes light on an image of the eternal beauty. Spoke
• 1:53:12
  of the greed of the impious and the wicked, who cannot think beauty when
• 1:53:15
  they see its likeness, and who are incapable of reverence. Spoke of the
• 1:53:20
  holy distress which befalls the noble minded. When a godlike countenance, a perfect
• 1:53:27
  body appears before them, they tremble and grow distracted, and hardly dare to
• 1:53:32
  raise their eyes. And they honor the man who possesses this beauty. Yes,
• 1:53:38
  if they were not afraid of being thought downright madmen, they would sacrifice
• 1:53:43
  to the beloved as to the image of a god. For beauty ma faye
• 1:53:47
  Drus. Beauty alone is both lovely and visible at once. It is,
• 1:53:54
  mark me, the only form of the spiritual which we can receive through the
• 1:53:58
  senses. Else, what would become of us if the divine, if reason
• 1:54:03
  and virtue and truth should appear to us through the senses, should we not
• 1:54:09
  perish and be consumed with love as Samily once was with Zeus. Thus beauty
• 1:54:15
  is the sensitive man's access to the spirit, but only a road a means
• 1:54:19
  simply little Phaedrus. And then this crafty suitor made the neatest remark of all.
• 1:54:27
  It was this that the lover is more divine than the beloved, since
• 1:54:31
  the God is in the one but not in the other. Perhaps the most
• 1:54:35
  delicate, the most derisive thought which has ever been framed, and the one
• 1:54:41
  from which spring all the cunning and the profoundest pleasures of desire. Writers are
• 1:54:46
  happiest with an idea which can become all emotion, and an emotion all idea.
• 1:54:54
  Just such a pulsating idea, such a precise emotion, belonged to the
• 1:54:59
  lonely man at this moment was at his call nature. It ran shivers with
• 1:55:04
  ecstasy when the spirit bows an homage before beauty. Suddenly he wanted to write
• 1:55:12
  Eros loves idleness, they say, and he is suited only to idleness.
• 1:55:17
  But at this point in the crisis, the affliction became a stimulus towards productivity.
• 1:55:23
  The incentive hardly mattered the request. An agitation for an open statement on
• 1:55:29
  a certain large burning issue of culture and taste was going about the intellectual world
• 1:55:35
  and had finally caught up with the traveler. Here he was familiar with the
• 1:55:40
  subject. It had touched his own experience, and suddenly he felt an irresistible
• 1:55:45
  desire to display it in the light of his own version. And he even
• 1:55:49
  went so far as to prefer working in Tazzio's presence, taking the scope of
• 1:55:56
  the boy as a standard for his writing, making his stony follow the lines
• 1:56:00
  of this body, which seemed godlike to him and carrying his beauty over into
• 1:56:06
  the spiritual, just as the eagle once carried the Trojan stag up into the
• 1:56:12
  ether. Never had his joy in words been more sweet. He had never
• 1:56:16
  been so aware that eros is in the word as during those perilous, precious
• 1:56:21
  hours, when at his crude table under the canopy, facing the idol and
• 1:56:28
  listening to the music of his voice. He followed Tadzio's beauty in the forming
• 1:56:33
  of his little tract a page and a half of choice prose, which was
• 1:56:38
  soon to excite the admiration of many through its clarity, its poise, and
• 1:56:44
  the vigorous curve of its emotion. Certainly, it is better for people to
• 1:56:47
  know only the beautiful product has finished, and not in its conception its conditions
• 1:56:54
  of origin. For knowledge of the sources from which the artist derives, as
• 1:56:59
  in Spira, would often confuse and alienate, and in this way detract from
• 1:57:04
  the effects of his mastery. Strange hours, strangely enervating efforts, rare creative
• 1:57:12
  intercourse between the spirit and a body. When Aschenbach put away his work and
• 1:57:17
  started back from the beach, he felt exhausted or in dispersion even and it
• 1:57:24
  was as though his conscience were complaining after some transgression end of Chapter four,
• 1:57:31
  Part one, Chapter four, Part two. The following morning, as he
• 1:57:38
  was about to leave the hotel, he looked off from the steps and noticed
• 1:57:42
  that Tazio, who was alone and was already on his way towards the sea,
• 1:57:46
  was just approaching the private beach. He was half tempted by the simple
• 1:57:51
  notion of seizing this opportunity to strike up a casual, friendly acquaintanceship with the
• 1:57:57
  boy who had been the unconscious source of so much agitation and upheaval. He
• 1:58:02
  wanted to address him and enjoy the answering look in his eyes. The boy
• 1:58:08
  was sauntering along he could be overtaken, and Aschenbach quickened his pace. He
• 1:58:14
  reached him on the board walk behind the bathing houses, was about to lay
• 1:58:17
  a hand on his head and shoulders in some word or other, an amiable
• 1:58:23
  phrase in French was on the tip of his tongue. But he felt that
• 1:58:27
  his heart, due also perhaps to his rapid stride, was beating like a
• 1:58:31
  hammer, and he was so short of breath that his voice would have been
• 1:58:35
  tight and trembling. He hesitated. He tried to get himself under control.
• 1:58:42
  Suddenly he became afraid that he had been walking too long, so close behind
• 1:58:46
  the boy. He was afraid of arousing curiosity and causing him to look back
• 1:58:53
  questioningly. He made one more spurt, failed, surrendered, and passed with
• 1:58:58
  bowed head. Too late, he thought, immediately, too late? Yet
• 1:59:03
  was it too late? This step, which he had just been on the
• 1:59:08
  verge of taking, would very possibly have put things on a sound, free
• 1:59:13
  and easy basis, and would have restored him to wholesome soberness. But the
• 1:59:17
  fact was that Aschenbach did not want soberness. His intoxication was too precious.
• 1:59:25
  Who can explain the stamp and the nature of the artist. Who can understand
• 1:59:30
  this deep instinctive welding of discipline and license for to be unable to want wholesome
• 1:59:36
  soberness his license? Aschenbach was no longer given to self criticism, his tastes,
• 1:59:44
  the mental caliber of his years, his self respect, ripeness, and
• 1:59:48
  belated simplicity made him unwilling to dismember his motives and to debate whether his impulses
• 1:59:56
  were the result of conscientiousness nor of dissolution and weakness. He was embarrassed as
• 2:00:02
  he feared that some one or other, if only the guard on the beach
• 2:00:06
  must have observed his pursuit and defeat. He was very much afraid of the
• 2:00:12
  ridiculous. Further, he joked with himself about his comically pious distress. Downed,
• 2:00:18
  he thought, downed like a rooster with his wings hanging miserably in the
• 2:00:24
  battle. It really is a god who can, at one side of his
• 2:00:28
  loveliness, break our courage this way and force down our pride. So thoroughly
• 2:00:34
  he toyed and skirmished with his emotions, and was far too haughty to be
• 2:00:39
  afraid of them. He had already ceased thinking about the time when the vacation
• 2:00:45
  period which he had fixed for himself would expire. The thought of going home
• 2:00:49
  never even suggested itself. He had sent for an ample supply of money.
• 2:00:55
  His only concern was with the possible departure of the Polish family. By a
• 2:01:00
  casual questioning of the hotel barber, he had contrived to learn that these people
• 2:01:05
  had come here only a short time before his own arrival. The sun browned
• 2:01:11
  his face and hands. The invigorating salt breezes made him feel fresher. Once
• 2:01:16
  he had been in the habit of expending on his work every bit of nourishment
• 2:01:20
  which food, sleep, or nature could provide him. And similarly, now
• 2:01:27
  he was generous and uneconomical, letting pass off as elation and emotion. All
• 2:01:32
  the daily strengthening derived from sun, idleness and sea air. His sleep was
• 2:01:39
  fitful. The preciously uniform days were separated by short nights of happy unrest.
• 2:01:45
  He did retire early, for at nine o'clock, when Tazio had disappeared from
• 2:01:50
  the scene, the day seemed over. But at the first gray of dawn
• 2:01:56
  he was awakened by a gently insistent shock. He suddenly remembered his adventure.
• 2:02:00
  He could no longer remain in bed. He arose and clad lightly against the
• 2:02:05
  chill of morning. He sat down by the open window to await the rising
• 2:02:11
  of the sun. Revived by his sleep, he watched this miraculous event with
• 2:02:15
  reverence. Sky, earth, and sea still lay in glassy, ghost like
• 2:02:21
  twilight. A dying star still floated in the emptiness of space, but a
• 2:02:27
  breeze started up, a winged message from habitations beyond reach, telling that Eros
• 2:02:33
  was rising beside her husband, and that first sweet reddening in the farthest stretches
• 2:02:39
  of sky and sea took place by which the sentiency of creation is announced.
• 2:02:45
  The goddess was approaching the seductress of youth, who stole Cleatus and Cephalus,
• 2:02:50
  and, despite the envy of all the Olympians, enjoyed the love of handsome
• 2:02:56
  Orion. A strewing of roses began there on the edge of the world,
• 2:03:00
  and unutterably pure, glowing and blooming, childish clouds lighted and shined through floated
• 2:03:08
  like busy little cupids in the rosy bluish mist. Purple fell upon the sea,
• 2:03:14
  which seemed to be simmering and washing the color towards him. Golden spears
• 2:03:19
  shot up into the sky from behind the splendor, caught fire silently and with
• 2:03:26
  godlike power. An intense flame of licking tongues broke out, and with rattling
• 2:03:31
  hoofs, the brother's sacred chargers mounted the horizon. Lighted by the God's brilliance,
• 2:03:38
  he sat there, keeping watch alone. He closed his eyes, letting
• 2:03:43
  this glory play against the lids. Past emotions, precious, early afflictions and
• 2:03:48
  yearnings, which had been stifled by his rigorous program of living, were now
• 2:03:54
  returning in such strange new forms, with an embarrassed, astonished smile, he
• 2:04:00
  recognized them. He was thinking, dreaming slowly, his lips formed a name,
• 2:04:05
  and, still smiling, with his face turned upwards, hands folded in
• 2:04:11
  his lap, he fell asleep again in his chair. But the day which
• 2:04:15
  began with such fiery solemnity, underwent a strange mythical transformation. Where did the
• 2:04:21
  breeze originate? Which suddenly began playing so gently and insinuatingly, like some whispered
• 2:04:29
  suggestion about his ears and temples? Little white, choppy clouds stood in the
• 2:04:34
  sky in scattered clumps, like the pasturing herds of the gods. A stronger
• 2:04:40
  wind arose, and the steeds of Poseidon came prancing up, and along with
• 2:04:45
  them the steers which belonged to the blue locked God, bellowing and lowering their
• 2:04:50
  horns as they ran. Yet among the detritus of the more distant beech waves
• 2:04:57
  were hopping forward like agile goats. He was caught in the enchantment of a
• 2:05:01
  sacredly distorted world full of panic life, and he dreamed delicate legends. Often,
• 2:05:09
  when the sun was sinking behind Venice, he would sit on a bench
• 2:05:13
  in the park, observing Tazio, who was dressed in a white suit with
• 2:05:17
  a colored sash, and was playing ball on the smooth gravel. And it
• 2:05:21
  was Hyacinth that he seemed to be watching, Hyacinth, who was to die
• 2:05:28
  because two gods loved him. Yes, he felt Zephyr's aching jealousy of the
• 2:05:32
  rival, who forgot the oracle, the beau, and the lyre in order
• 2:05:38
  to play forever with this beauty. He saw the discus, guided by a
• 2:05:43
  pitiless envy, strike the lovely head. He too, growing pale, caught
• 2:05:47
  the drooping body, and the flower sprung from this sweet blood bore the inscription
• 2:05:54
  of his unending grief. Nothing is more unusual and strained than the relationship between
• 2:06:00
  people who know each other only with their eyes, who meet daily, even
• 2:06:05
  hourly, and yet are compelled by force of custom or their own caprices to
• 2:06:12
  say no word or make no move of acknowledgment, but to maintain the appearance
• 2:06:16
  of an aloof unconcern. There is a restlessness and a surcharged curiosity existing between
• 2:06:24
  them, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally repressed desire for acquaintanceship and intercourse.
• 2:06:32
  And especially there's a kind of tense respect for one person loves and honors
• 2:06:39
  another so long as he cannot judge him, and desire is an evidence of
• 2:06:44
  incomplete knowledge. Some kind of familiarity had necessarily to form itself between Oschenbach and
• 2:06:50
  Jong Tazio, and it gave the elderly man keen pleasure to see that his
• 2:06:57
  sympathies and interests were not left completely unanswered. For example, when the boy
• 2:07:02
  appeared on the beach in the morning and was going towards his family's bathing house,
• 2:07:08
  what had induced him never to use the board walk on the far side
• 2:07:12
  of it any more, but to stroll along the front path through the sand,
• 2:07:16
  past Oschenbach's habitual place, and often unnecessarily close to him, almost touching
• 2:07:24
  his table or his chair. Even did the attraction, the fascination of an
• 2:07:29
  overpowering emotion have such an effect upon the frail, unthinking object of it.
• 2:07:34
  Aschenbach watched daily for Tasio to approach, and sometimes he acted as though he
• 2:07:41
  were occupied when this event was taking place, and he let the boy pass
• 2:07:45
  unobserved. But at other times he would look up and their glances met.
• 2:07:51
  They were both in deep earnest when this occurred. Nothing in the elderly man's
• 2:07:56
  cultivated and dignified expression betrayed any inner movement, but there was a searching look
• 2:08:03
  in Totsio's eyes, a thoughtful questioning. He began to falter, looked down,
• 2:08:09
  then looked up again charmingly, and when he had passed something in his
• 2:08:13
  bearing seemed to indicate that it was only his breeding which kept him from turning
• 2:08:18
  around once. However, one evening things turned out differently. The Polish children
• 2:08:24
  and their governess had been missing at dinner in the large hall. Oschenbach had
• 2:08:30
  noted this uneasily. After the meal. Disturbed by their absence, Oschenbach was
• 2:08:35
  walking an evening dress and straw hat in front of the hotel at the foot
• 2:08:39
  of the terrace when suddenly he saw the nun like sisters appear in the light
• 2:08:45
  of the arc lamp, accompanied by their governess, with Totzio a few steps
• 2:08:48
  behind. Evidently they were coming from the steamer pier after having dined for some
• 2:08:54
  reason in the city. It must have been cool on the water. Tazze
• 2:09:00
  was wearing a dark blue sailor overcoat with gold buttons, and on his head
• 2:09:05
  he had a cap to match. The sun and sea air had not browned
• 2:09:09
  him his skin still had the same yellow marble color as at first. It
• 2:09:15
  even seemed paler today than usual, whether from the coolness or from the blanching
• 2:09:20
  moonlight of the lamps. His regular eyebrows showed up more sharply, the darkness
• 2:09:26
  of his eyes were deeper. It is hard to say how beautiful he was,
• 2:09:30
  and Aschenbach was distressed, as he had often been before, by the
• 2:09:35
  thought that words can only evaluate sensuous beauty, but not regive it. He
• 2:09:41
  had not been prepared for this rich spectacle. It came unhoped for. He
• 2:09:46
  had no time to intrench himself behind an expression of repose and dignity. Pleasure,
• 2:09:52
  surprise, admiration must have shone on his face as his eyes met those
• 2:09:58
  of the boy. And at this time, this moment, it happened that
• 2:10:01
  Tasio smiled, smiled to him eloquently, familiarly, charmingly, without concealment,
• 2:10:09
  and during the smile his lips slowly opened. It was the smile of Narcissus
• 2:10:13
  bent over the reflecting water, that deep, fascinated, magnetic smile with which
• 2:10:20
  he stretches out his arms to the image of his own beauty, a smile
• 2:10:24
  distorted ever so little distorted at the hopelessness of his efforts to kiss the pure
• 2:10:31
  lips of the shadow. It was coquettish, inquisitive, and slightly tortured.
• 2:10:37
  It was infatuated and infatuating. He had received this smile, and he hurried
• 2:10:43
  away, as though he carried a fatal gift. He was so broken up
• 2:10:48
  that he was compelled to escape the light of the terrace and the front garden.
• 2:10:52
  He hastily hunted out the darkness of the park. In the rear,
• 2:10:56
  strangely indignant and tender admonitions wrung them out of him. You dare not smile
• 2:11:03
  like that. Listen. No one dares smile like that to another. He
• 2:11:07
  threw himself down on a bench in a frenzy. He breathed the night smell
• 2:11:13
  of the vegetation, and, leaning back his arms loose. Overwhelmed with frequent
• 2:11:18
  chills running through him, he whispered, the fixed formula of desire impossible in
• 2:11:24
  this case, absurd, abject, ridiculous, and yet holly even in this
• 2:11:31
  case venerable. I love you. End of chapter four, Chapter five,
• 2:11:39
  Part one. During his fourth week at the Lido, Gustav Fawaschenbach made several
• 2:11:46
  sinister observations touching on the world about him. First, it seemed to him
• 2:11:52
  that as the season progressed, the number of guests at the hotel was diminishing
• 2:11:56
  rather than increasing. German especially seemed to be dropping away, so that finally
• 2:12:03
  he heard nothing but foreign sounds at table and on the beach. Then one
• 2:12:09
  day, in conversation with the barber, whom he visited often, he caught
• 2:12:13
  a word which startled him. The man had mentioned a German family had left
• 2:12:18
  soon after their arrival. He added, glibly and flatteringly, but you are
• 2:12:22
  staying, sir, you have no fear of the plague. Oschenbach looked at
• 2:12:28
  him, the plague, he repeated. The gossiper was silent, made out
• 2:12:33
  as though busy with other things, ignored the question. When it was put
• 2:12:39
  more insistently, he declared that he knew nothing, and with embarrassing volubility,
• 2:12:45
  he tried to change the subject. That was about noon. In the afternoon
• 2:12:50
  there was a calm, and Aschenbach rode to Venice under an intense sun,
• 2:12:54
  for he was driven by a mania to follow the Polish children, whom he
• 2:13:00
  had seen with their governess taking the road to the steamer pier. He did
• 2:13:03
  not find the idol at San Marco. But while sitting over his tea at
• 2:13:09
  his little round iron table on the shady side of the square, he suddenly
• 2:13:13
  detected a peculiar odour in the air, which, it seemed to him now
• 2:13:18
  he had noticed for days without being consciously aware of it. The smell was
• 2:13:24
  sweetish and drug like, suggesting sickness and wounds, and a suspicious cleanliness.
• 2:13:31
  He tested and examined it thoughtfully, finished his luncheon, and left the square.
• 2:13:35
  On the side opposite the church, the smell was stronger where the street
• 2:13:39
  narrowed. On the corners, printed posters were hung, giving municipal warnings against
• 2:13:46
  certain diseases of the gastric system liable to occur at this season, against the
• 2:13:50
  eating of oysters and clams, and also against the water of the canals.
• 2:13:56
  The euphemistic nature of the announcement was palpable. Groups of people had collected in
• 2:14:01
  silence on the bridges and squares, and the foreigners stood among them, scenting
• 2:14:07
  and investigating. At a little shop, he inquired about the fatal smell,
• 2:14:13
  asking the proprietor, who was leaning against his door, surrounded by coral chains
• 2:14:18
  and imitation amethyst jewelry. The man measured him with heavy eyes and brightened up
• 2:14:24
  hastily. A matter of precaution, sir, he answered, with a gesture,
• 2:14:28
  a regulation of the police, which must be taken for what it is
• 2:14:33
  worth. This weather is oppressive, the siaco is not good for the health.
• 2:14:37
  In short, you understand an exaggerated prudence. Perhaps Ashenbah thanked him and
• 2:14:43
  went on also on the steamer back to the Liedo, he caught the smell
• 2:14:48
  of the disinfectant. Returning to the hotel, he went immediately to the periodical
• 2:14:54
  stand in the lobby and ran through the papers. He found nothing in the
• 2:15:00
  foreign language press. The domestic press spoke of rumors, produced hazy statistics,
• 2:15:05
  repeated official denials, and questioned their truthfulness. This explained the departure of the
• 2:15:11
  German and Austrian guests. Obviously, the subjects of the other nations knew nothing,
• 2:15:18
  suspected nothing, were not yet uneasy to keep it quiet. Aschenbach thought
• 2:15:24
  angrily as he threw the papers back on the table, to keep that quiet.
• 2:15:30
  But at the same moment he was filled with satisfaction over the adventure that
• 2:15:35
  was to befall the world about him. For passion like crime is not suited
• 2:15:39
  to the secure daily rounds of order and well being, and every slackening in
• 2:15:45
  the bourgeois structure, every disorder and affliction of the world must be held welcome,
• 2:15:50
  since they bring with them a vague promise of advantage. So Waschenbach felt
• 2:15:56
  a dark contentment with what was taking place cover of the authorities in the dirty
• 2:16:01
  alleys of Venice. This wicked secret of the city was welded with his own
• 2:16:07
  secret, and he too was involved in keeping it hidden. For in his
• 2:16:11
  infatuation he cared about nothing but the possibility of Tadzio's leaving, and he realized
• 2:16:18
  with something like terror, that he would not know how to go on living
• 2:16:22
  if this occurred. Lately, he had not been relying simply on good luck
• 2:16:26
  and the daily routine. For his chances to be near the boy and look
• 2:16:31
  at him. He pursued him, stalked him. On Sundays, for instance,
• 2:16:37
  the poles never appeared on the beach. He guessed that they must be
• 2:16:39
  attending Mass at San Marco. He hurried there, and, stepping from the
• 2:16:45
  heat of the square into the golden twilight of the church, he found the
• 2:16:48
  boy. He was hunting, bowed over a pre dieu praying. Then he
• 2:16:54
  stood in the background on the cracked mosaic floor, with people on all sides,
• 2:16:58
  kneel, murmuring and making the sign of the cross, and the compact
• 2:17:03
  grandeur of this oriental temple weighed heavily on his senses. In front, the
• 2:17:09
  richly ornamented priest was conducting the office, moving about and singing. Incense pouring
• 2:17:16
  forth, clouding the weak little flame of the candle on the altar, and
• 2:17:20
  with the sweet, stuffy sacrificial odor another seemed to commingle faintly the smell of
• 2:17:26
  the infested city. But through the smoke and the sparkle, Aschenbach saw how
• 2:17:33
  the boy there in front turned his head, hunted him out, and looked
• 2:17:37
  at him. When the crowd was streaming out through the opened portals into the
• 2:17:41
  brilliant square with its swarms of pigeons, the lover hid in the vestibule.
• 2:17:46
  He kept trader cover. He lay in wait. He saw the poles quit
• 2:17:52
  the church, saw how the children took ceremonious leave of their mother, and
• 2:17:56
  how she turned toward the piazzetta on her way home. He made sure that
• 2:18:01
  the boy the nun like sisters and the governess took the road to the right,
• 2:18:05
  through the gateway of the dock tower and into the Mercharia, and after
• 2:18:09
  giving them a slight start, he followed followed them furtively on their walk through
• 2:18:15
  Venice. He had to stand still when they stopped, had to take flight
• 2:18:20
  in shops and courts to let them pass. When they looked back, he
• 2:18:24
  lost them. Hot and exhausted, he hunted them over bridges and down dirty,
• 2:18:28
  blind alleys, and he underwent minutes of deadly agony when suddenly he saw
• 2:18:33
  them coming towards him in a narrow passage where escape was impossible. Yet it
• 2:18:39
  could not be said that he suffered. He was drunk, and his steps
• 2:18:43
  followed the promptings of the daemon, who delights in treading human reason and dignity
• 2:18:48
  under foot. In one place, Tasio and his companions took a gondola,
• 2:18:54
  and shortly after they had pushed off from the shore, Aschenbach, who had
• 2:18:58
  hidden behind them some structure a well while they were climbing in, now did
• 2:19:03
  the same. He spoke in a hurried undertone as he directed the rower with
• 2:19:09
  the promise of a generous tip to follow unnoticed and at a distance that gondola,
• 2:19:13
  which was just rounding the corner, And he thrilled when the man,
• 2:19:18
  with the roguish willingness of an accomplice assured him in the same tone, that
• 2:19:22
  his wishes would be carried out, carried out faithfully. Leaning back against the
• 2:19:28
  soft black cushions, he rocked and glided toward the other black peaked craft,
• 2:19:33
  where his passion was drawing him. At times it escaped. Then he felt
• 2:19:37
  worried and uneasy, but his pilot, as though skilled in such commissions,
• 2:19:43
  was always able, through sly maneuvers, speedy diagonals, and short cuts,
• 2:19:48
  to bring the quest into view again. The air was quiet and smelly.
• 2:19:52
  The sun burned down strong through the slate colored mist. Water slapped against the
• 2:19:58
  wood and stone. The call of the gondolier, half warning, half greeting,
• 2:20:03
  was answered with a strange obedience. Far away in the silence of the
• 2:20:07
  labyrinth, white and purple umbels with the scent of almonds, hung down from
• 2:20:13
  little elevated gardens over crumbling walls. Arabian window casings were outlined through the murkiness.
• 2:20:20
  The marble steps of a church descended into the water. A beggar squatted
• 2:20:24
  there, protesting his misery, holding out his hat and showing the whites of
• 2:20:30
  his eyes as though he were blind. An antiquarian in front of his den
• 2:20:35
  fawned on the passer by and invited him to stop, in the hopes of
• 2:20:39
  swindling him. That was Venice, the flatteringly and suspiciously beautiful, this city,
• 2:20:46
  half legend, half snare for strangers. In his foul air art once
• 2:20:50
  flourished gluttonously, and had suggested to its musicians suggestive notes which cradle and lull.
• 2:20:58
  The adventurer felt as though his eyes were taking him in this same luxury,
• 2:21:03
  as though his ears were being won by just such melodies. He recalled,
• 2:21:07
  too, that the city was diseased and was concealing through this greed,
• 2:21:13
  and he peered more eagerly after the retreating gondola. Thus, in his infatuation,
• 2:21:18
  he wanted simply to pursue uninterrupted the object that aroused him to dream of
• 2:21:24
  it when it was not there, and, after the fashion of lovers,
• 2:21:28
  to speak softly to its mere outline. Loneliness, strangeness, and the joy
• 2:21:35
  of a deep belated intoxication encouraged him and prompted him to accept even the remotest
• 2:21:41
  things without reserve or shame, with the result that as he returned late in
• 2:21:46
  the evening from Venice, he stopped on the second floor of the hotel before
• 2:21:50
  the door of the boy's room, laid his head in utter drunkenness against the
• 2:21:54
  hinge of the door, and for a long time could not drag himself away.
• 2:22:00
  Despite the danger of being caught and embarrassed in such a mad situation,
• 2:22:05
  yet there were still moments of relief when he came partly to his senses,
• 2:22:11
  where too he would think alarmed, where too, like every man whose natural
• 2:22:16
  abilities stimulate an aristocratic interest in his ancestry, he was accustomed to think of
• 2:22:22
  his forebears in connection with the accomplishments and successes of his life, to assure
• 2:22:28
  himself of their approval, their satisfaction, their undeniable respect. He thought of
• 2:22:33
  them, now, entangled as he was, in such an illicit experience,
• 2:22:39
  caught in such exotic transgressions. He thought of their characteristic rigidity of principle,
• 2:22:45
  their scrupulous masculinity, and he smiled dejectedly. What would they say? But
• 2:22:52
  then, what would they have said to his whole life, which was almost
• 2:22:56
  degenerate in its departure from theirs under the bane of art, a life against
• 2:23:01
  which he himself had once issued such youthful mockeries out of loyalty to his fathers,
• 2:23:07
  but which at bottom had been so much like theirs he too had served.
• 2:23:13
  He too had been a soldier and a warrior, like many of them.
• 2:23:16
  For art was a war, a destructive battle, and one was not
• 2:23:20
  equal to it for long these days. A life of self conquest and of
• 2:23:26
  in spite offs, a rigid, sober and unyielding life which he had formed
• 2:23:31
  into the symbol of a delicate and timely heroism. He might well call it
• 2:23:35
  masculine or brave, And it almost seemed as though the eros mastering him were
• 2:23:41
  somehow peculiarly adapted and inclined to such a life. Had not this eros stood
• 2:23:48
  in high repute among the bravest of peoples, Was it not true that precisely
• 2:23:52
  through bravery he had flourished in their cities? Numerous war heroes of antiquity had
• 2:23:58
  willingly borne his yoke, for nothing was deemed a disgrace which the God imposed,
• 2:24:05
  an act which would have been rebuked as the sign of cowardice if they
• 2:24:09
  had been done for other purposes. Prostrations, oaths, entreaties, abjectness.
• 2:24:15
  Such things did not bring shame upon the lover, but rather he reaped praise
• 2:24:18
  for them. In this way, his infatuation determined the course of his thoughts.
• 2:24:24
  In this way he tried to uphold himself to preserve his respect, but
• 2:24:30
  at the same time, selfish and calculating, he turned his attention to the
• 2:24:35
  unclean transactions here in Venice, this adventure of the outer world, which conspired
• 2:24:41
  darkly with his own, and which fed his passion with vague, lawless hopes.
• 2:24:46
  Bent on getting reliable news of the condition and progress of the pestilence,
• 2:24:52
  he ransacked the local papers in the city cafes, as they had been missing
• 2:24:56
  from the reading table of the hotel lobby for several days. Days Now,
• 2:25:01
  statements alternated with disavowals. The number of the sick and dead was supposed to
• 2:25:05
  reach twenty forty or even a hundred and more, and immediately afterwards every instance
• 2:25:13
  of the plague would be either flatly denied or attributed to completely isolated cases which
• 2:25:18
  had crept in from the outside. There were scattered admonitions, protests against the
• 2:25:24
  dangerous conduct of foreign authorities, certainty was impossible. Nevertheless, the lone man
• 2:25:31
  felt especially entitled to participate in the secret, and although he was excluded,
• 2:25:35
  he derived a grotesque satisfaction from putting embarrassing questions to those who did know,
• 2:25:43
  and as they were pledged to silence, forcing them into deliberate lies. One
• 2:25:48
  day, at breakfast in the large dining hall, he entered into a conversation
• 2:25:52
  with the manager, that softly treading little man in the French frock coat,
• 2:25:56
  who was moving amiably and solicitously about among the diners, and had stopped at
• 2:26:01
  Aschenbach's table for a few passing words. Just why, the guest asked,
• 2:26:07
  negligently and casually had disinfectants become so prevalent in venice recently? It has to
• 2:26:13
  do, was the evasive answer, with a police regulation, and is intended
• 2:26:20
  to prevent any inconveniences or disturbances to the public health which might result from the
• 2:26:24
  exceptionally warm and threatening weather. The police are to be congratulated, Aschenbach answered,
• 2:26:33
  and after the exchange of a few remarks on the weather, the manager
• 2:26:37
  left. Yet that same day, in the evening, after dinner, it
• 2:26:41
  happened that a little band of strolling singers from the city gave a performance in
• 2:26:46
  the front garden of the hotel. Two men and two women. They stood
• 2:26:50
  by the iron post of an arc lamp and turned their whitened faces up towards
• 2:26:56
  the large terrace, where the guests were enjoying this folk recital over their coffee
• 2:27:01
  and cooling drinks. The hotel personnel, bell boys, waiters and clerks from
• 2:27:07
  the office could be seen listening by the doors of the vestibule. The Russian
• 2:27:11
  family, eager and precise in their amusements, had had wicker chairs placed in
• 2:27:16
  the garden in order to be nearer the performers, and they were sitting here
• 2:27:20
  in an appreciative semicircle. Behind the ladies and gentlemen in her turban like kerchief
• 2:27:28
  stood the old slave mandolin. Guitar, harmonica and a squeaky violin were responding
• 2:27:35
  to the touch of the virtuoso beggars. Instrumental numbers alternated with songs, as
• 2:27:41
  when the younger of the women, with a sharp trembling voice, joined with
• 2:27:45
  the sweetly falsetto tenor in a languishing love duet. But the real talent and
• 2:27:50
  leader of the group was undoubtedly the other of the two men, the one
• 2:27:54
  with the guitar. He was a kind of buffo baritone with not much of
• 2:28:00
  a voice, although he did have a gift for pantomime and a remarkable comic
• 2:28:03
  energy. Often with his large instrument under his arm, he would leave the
• 2:28:09
  rest of the group, and, still acting, would intrude on the platform,
• 2:28:13
  where his antics were rewarded with encouraging laughter. Especially the Russians in their
• 2:28:18
  seats down front, seemed to be enchanted with so much Southern mobility, and
• 2:28:24
  their applause incited him to let himself out more and more boldly and assertively.
• 2:28:31
  Aschenbach set on the balustrade, cooling his lips now and then with a mixture
• 2:28:35
  of pomegranate juice and soda, which glowed ruby red in his glass in front
• 2:28:39
  of him. His nerves took in the miserable notes, the vulgar crooning melodies
• 2:28:46
  for passion blames the sense of discrimination and surrenders in all seriousness to appeals which,
• 2:28:52
  in sober moments are either humorously allowed for or rejected with annoyance At the
• 2:28:58
  clown's antik. His features bad twisted into a set painful smile. He sat
• 2:29:05
  there relaxed, although inwardly, he was intensely awake. For six paces from
• 2:29:09
  him, Tazio was leaning against the stone hand rail in the white belted coat
• 2:29:16
  which he often wore at meal times. He was standing in a position of
• 2:29:20
  spontaneous and inborn gracefulness, his left forearm on the railing feet, crossed the
• 2:29:26
  right hand on a supporting hip, and he looked down at the street singers
• 2:29:31
  with an expression which was hardly a smile, but only in a loof curiosity,
• 2:29:35
  a polite amiability. Often he would stand erect, and expanding his chest,
• 2:29:41
  would draw the white smock down under his leather belt with a beautiful gesture.
• 2:29:46
  And then too the aging man observed with a tumult of fright and triumph,
• 2:29:52
  how he would often turn his head over the left shoulder in the direction
• 2:29:56
  of his admirer, carefully and hesitatingly, or even with abruptness, as though
• 2:30:01
  to attack. By surprise, he did not meet Ashenbach's eyes, for a
• 2:30:07
  mean precaution compelled the transgressor to keep from staring at him. In the background
• 2:30:11
  of the terrace, the women who guarded Tatsio were sitting, and things had
• 2:30:16
  reached a point where the lover had to fear that he might be noticed and
• 2:30:20
  suspected. Yes, he had often observed with a kind of numbness. Now,
• 2:30:26
  when Totsio was near him on the beach in the hotel lobby in the
• 2:30:30
  Piazza San Marco, they called him back. They were set on keeping him
• 2:30:33
  at a distance, and this wounded him frightfully, causing his pride unknown tortures
• 2:30:39
  which his conscience would not permit him to evade. Meanwhile, the guitar player
• 2:30:45
  had begun a solo to his own accompaniment, a street ballad popular throughout Italy.
• 2:30:50
  It had several trophs, and the entire company joined each time in the
• 2:30:54
  refrain, all singing and playing, while he managed to give a plastic and
• 2:31:00
  dramatic twist to the performance of slight build with thin and impoverished features. He
• 2:31:05
  stood on the gravel apart from his companions, in an attitude of insolent bravado,
• 2:31:11
  his shabby felt hat on the back of his head, so that a
• 2:31:15
  bunch of his red hair jutted out from under the brim, and to the
• 2:31:20
  thrumbing of the strings, he flung his jokes up at the terrace in a
• 2:31:24
  penetrating recitative, while the veins were swelling on his forehead from the exertion of
• 2:31:28
  his performance. He did not seem a Venetian stock, but rather of the
• 2:31:33
  race of Neapolitan comedians, half pimp, half entertainer, brutal and audacious,
• 2:31:39
  dangerous and amusing. His songs were stupid enough so far as the words went,
• 2:31:46
  but in his mouth, by his gestures, the movements of his body,
• 2:31:50
  the way of blinking significantly and letting the tongue play across his lips,
• 2:31:56
  it acquired something ambiguous, something vaguely repulsive. In addition to the customary civilian
• 2:32:01
  dress, he was wearing a sports shirt, and his skinny neck protruded above
• 2:32:07
  the soft collar, bearing a noticeably large and active Adam's apple. He was
• 2:32:11
  pale and snub nosed. It was hard to fix an age to his beardless
• 2:32:16
  features, which seemed furrowed with grimaces and depravity, and the two wrinkles standing
• 2:32:22
  arrogantly, harshly, almost savagely between his reddish eyebrows were strangely suited to the
• 2:32:28
  smirk on his mobile lips. Yet what really prompted the lonely man to pay
• 2:32:33
  him keen attention was the observation that the questionable figure seemed also to provide its
• 2:32:39
  own questionable atmosphere, for each time they came to the refrain, the singer,
• 2:32:46
  amid buffoonery and familiar handshakes, began a grotesque circular march, which brought
• 2:32:50
  him immediately beneath Aschenbach's place, And each time this happened, there blew up
• 2:32:56
  to the terrace from his clothes and body a strong, long carbolic smell.
• 2:33:03
  End of Chapter five, Part one, Chapter five, Part two. After
• 2:33:09
  the song was ended, he began collecting money. He started with the Russians,
• 2:33:15
  who were evidently willing to spend, and then came up the stairs.
• 2:33:20
  Up here he showed himself just as humble as he had been bold during the
• 2:33:24
  performance. Cringing and bowing, He stole about among the tables, and a
• 2:33:30
  smile of obsequious cunning exposed his strong teeth, while the two wrinkles still stood
• 2:33:35
  ominously between his red eyebrows. This singular character collecting money to live on.
• 2:33:43
  They eyed him with a curiosity and a kind of repugnance. They tossed coins
• 2:33:48
  into his felt hat with the tips of their fingers, and were careful not
• 2:33:52
  to touch him. The elimination of the physical distance between the comedian and the
• 2:33:58
  audience, no matter how great the enjoyment may have been, always causes a
• 2:34:03
  certain uneasiness. He felt it and tried to excuse it by groveling. He
• 2:34:07
  came up to Oshenbach and along with him the smell, which no one else
• 2:34:13
  seemed concerned about. Listen, the reclose said, in an undertone, almost
• 2:34:20
  mechanically, they are disinfecting Venice. Why, the jester answered, hoarsely,
• 2:34:26
  on account of the police. That is a precaution, sir, with such
• 2:34:31
  heat and the sirocco. The sirocco is oppressive. It is not good for
• 2:34:35
  the health. He spoke, as though astonished that anyone could ask such things,
• 2:34:41
  and demonstrated with his open hand how oppressive the sirocco was. Then there
• 2:34:46
  is no plague in Venice, Oschenbach asked quietly between his teeth. The clown's
• 2:34:52
  muscular features fell into a grimace of comical embarrassment. A plague, what kind
• 2:34:58
  of plague? Perhaps our police are a plague, you like to joke,
• 2:35:03
  A plague of all things, A precautionary measure, you understand, a police
• 2:35:09
  regulation against the effects of the oppressive weather. He gesticulated very well, Maschenbach
• 2:35:16
  said several times curtly and quietly, and he quickly dropped an unduly large coin
• 2:35:22
  into the hat. Then with his eyes he signaled the man to leave.
• 2:35:28
  He obeyed, smirking and bowing. But he had not reached the stairs before
• 2:35:33
  two hotel employees threw themselves upon him, and, with their faces close to
• 2:35:37
  his, began a whispered cross examination. He shrugged his shoulders, he gave
• 2:35:43
  assurances, He swore that he had kept quiet. That was evident. He
• 2:35:48
  was released, and he returned to the garden. Then, after a short
• 2:35:52
  conference with his companions, he stepped out once more for a final song of
• 2:35:58
  thanks and leave tom. It was a rousing song which the recluse never recalled
• 2:36:03
  having heard before, a big number, an incomprehensible dialect with a laugh refrain,
• 2:36:11
  in which the troop joined regularly at the tops of their voices. At
• 2:36:15
  this point, both the words and the accompaniment of the instruments stopped, with
• 2:36:20
  nothing left but a laugh, which was somehow arranged rhythmically, although very naturally
• 2:36:24
  done, and the soloist especially showed great talent in giving it a most deceptive
• 2:36:31
  vitality. At the renewal of his professional distance from the audience, he had
• 2:36:37
  recovered all his boldness again, and the artificial laugh that he directed up towards
• 2:36:41
  the terrace was derisive. Even before the end of the articulate portion of the
• 2:36:46
  strophy, he seemed to struggle against an irresistible tickling. He gulped, his
• 2:36:52
  voice trembled, He pressed his hand over his mouth, He contorted his shoulders,
• 2:36:58
  and at the proper moment the ungovernable laugh broke out of him, burst
• 2:37:03
  into such real cackles that it was infectious and communicated itself to the audience,
• 2:37:09
  so that on the terrace also an unfounded hilarity, living off itself alone,
• 2:37:15
  started up. But this seemed to double the singer's exuberance. He bent his
• 2:37:20
  knees, he slapped his thighs, He nearly split himself. He no longer
• 2:37:24
  laughed, He shrieked. He pointed up with his finger, as though nothing
• 2:37:28
  were more comic than the laughing guests there. And finally, everyone in the
• 2:37:33
  garden and on the verandah was laughing, even to the waiters, bellboys,
• 2:37:39
  and house servants in the doorways. Aschenbach was no longer resting in his chair.
• 2:37:45
  He sat upright as if attempting to defend himself or to escape. But
• 2:37:50
  the laughter, the whiffs of the hospital smell, and the boy's nearness combined
• 2:37:56
  to put him into a trance that held his mind and his senses hopelessly captive
• 2:38:01
  in the general movement and distraction. He ventured to glance across at Tasio,
• 2:38:07
  and as he did so, he dared observe that the boy, in reply
• 2:38:11
  to his glance, was equally serious. Much as though he had muddeled his
• 2:38:16
  conduct and expression after those of one man, and the prevalent mood had no
• 2:38:22
  effect on him, since this one man was not part of it. This
• 2:38:26
  portentous, childish obedience had something so disarming and overpowering about it that the gray
• 2:38:33
  haired man could hardly restrain himself from burying his face in his hands. It
• 2:38:39
  had also seemed to him that Toadsio's occasional stretching and quick breathing indicated a complaint,
• 2:38:46
  a congestion of the lungs. He is sickly. He will probably not
• 2:38:50
  grow old, he thought repeatedly, With that positiveness which is often a peculiar
• 2:38:56
  relief to desire and passion, and along with pure solitude, he had a
• 2:39:01
  feeling of rakish gratification. Meanwhile, the Venetians had ended and were leaving.
• 2:39:07
  Applause accompanied them, and their leader did not miss the opportunity to cover his
• 2:39:13
  retreat with further jests. His bows the kisses he blew were laughed at,
• 2:39:20
  and so he doubled them. When his companions were already gone, he acted
• 2:39:24
  as though he had hurt himself by backing into a lamp post, and he
• 2:39:28
  crept through the gate seemingly crippled with pain. Then he suddenly threw off the
• 2:39:33
  mask of comic hard Luck, stood upright, hurried away, jauntily, stuck
• 2:39:39
  out his tongue insolently at the guests on the terrace, and slipped into the
• 2:39:43
  darkness. The company was breaking up. Tasio had been missing from the balustrade
• 2:39:50
  for some time, but to the displeasure of the waiters, the lonely man
• 2:39:54
  sat for a long while over the remains of his pomegranate drink. Night advanced
• 2:40:00
  time was crumbling in the house of his parents many years back, there had
• 2:40:05
  been an hour glass. Of a sudden, he saw the fragile and expressive
• 2:40:09
  instrument again, as though it were standing in front of him. Fine and
• 2:40:13
  noiseless, The rust red sand was running through the glass neck, and since
• 2:40:18
  it was getting low in the upper half, a speedy little vortex had been
• 2:40:22
  formed there. As early as the following day in the afternoon, he had
• 2:40:28
  made new progress in his obstinate baiting of the people he met, and this
• 2:40:33
  time he had all possible success. He walked from the piazza of Saint Mark's
• 2:40:39
  into the English Traveling Bureau located there, and after changing some money at the
• 2:40:43
  cash desk, he put on the expression of a distrustful foreigner and launched his
• 2:40:48
  fatal question at the attendant clerk. He was a Britisher. He wore a
• 2:40:54
  woolen suit and was still young, with close set eyes, and had that
• 2:40:58
  characteristic stolid reliability which is so peculiar and strikingly appealing in the tricky, nimble
• 2:41:05
  witted South. He began no reason for alarm, Sir, a regulation without
• 2:41:11
  any serious significance. Such measures are often taken to anticipate the unhealthy effects of
• 2:41:18
  the heat and the sirocco. But as he raised his blue eyes, he
• 2:41:22
  met the stare of the foreigner, attired and somewhat unhappy stare focused on his
• 2:41:28
  lips with a touch of scorn. Then the Englishman blushed at least, he
• 2:41:33
  continued in an emotional undertone. That is the official explanation which people are content
• 2:41:39
  to accept. I will admit there is something more behind it. And then,
• 2:41:45
  in his frank and leisurely manner, he told the truth. For several
• 2:41:50
  years now, Indian cholera had shown a heightened tendency to spread and migrate.
• 2:41:56
  Hatched in the warm swamps of the Ganges Delta, rising with the noxious breath
• 2:42:01
  of that luxuriant, unfit primitive world and island wilderness which is shunned by humans,
• 2:42:07
  and where the tiger crouches in the bamboo thickets. The plague had raged
• 2:42:11
  continuously and with unusual strength in Hindustan, had reached eastwards to China, westwards
• 2:42:18
  to Afghanistan and Persia, and following the chief caravan roots had carried its terrors
• 2:42:24
  to Astrachin and even to Moscow. But while Europe was trembling, lest the
• 2:42:31
  specter continue its advance from there across the country, it had been transported over
• 2:42:37
  the sea by Syrian merchantmen and had turned up almost simultaneously in several Mediterranean ports.
• 2:42:43
  Had raised its head in too long and Malaga had shown its mask several
• 2:42:48
  times in Palermo and Naples, and seemed permanently entrenched through Calabria and Apulia.
• 2:42:56
  The north of the peninsula had been spared. Yet in the middle of this
• 2:43:01
  May, in Venice, the frightful vibriuns were found on one and the same
• 2:43:05
  day in the blackish wasted bodies of a cabin boy and a woman who sold
• 2:43:11
  green groceries. The cases were kept secret, but within a week there were
• 2:43:16
  ten twenty thirty more and in various sections. The man from the Austrian provinces,
• 2:43:22
  who had made a pleasure trip to Venice for a few days, returned
• 2:43:26
  to his hometown and died with unmistakable symptoms, and that is how the first
• 2:43:31
  reports of the pestilence in the Lagoon city got into the German newspapers. The
• 2:43:37
  Venetian authorities answered that the city's health conditions had never been better and took the
• 2:43:43
  most necessary preventive measures, But probably the food supply had been infected, denied
• 2:43:50
  and glossed over. Death was eating its way along the narrow streets, and
• 2:43:54
  its dissemination was especially favored by the premature summer heat, which made the water
• 2:44:01
  of the Canal's lukewarm. Yes, it seemed as though the plague had got
• 2:44:05
  renewed strength, as though the tenacity and fruitfulness of its stimuli had doubled.
• 2:44:11
  Cases of recovery were rare. Out of one hundred attacks, eighty were fatal
• 2:44:16
  and in the most horrible manner. For the plague moved with utter savagery and
• 2:44:22
  often showed that most dangerous form, which is called the drying water from the
• 2:44:28
  blood vessels collected in pockets, and the blood was unable to carry this off.
• 2:44:33
  Within a few hours, the victim was parched, his blood became as
• 2:44:37
  thick as glue, and he stifled amid cramps and hoarse groans. Lucky for
• 2:44:43
  him, if, as sometimes happened, the attack took the form of a
• 2:44:48
  like discomfiture, followed by a profound coma from which he seldom or never awakened.
• 2:44:54
  At the beginning of June, the pest house of the Ausbudale Chivico had
• 2:44:58
  quietly filled. There was not much room left in the two orphan asylums,
• 2:45:03
  and a frightfully active commerce was kept up between the wharf of the Fundamenta Nuova
• 2:45:09
  and Saint Michel, the burial island but there was the fear of a general
• 2:45:15
  drop in prosperity. The recently opened art exhibit in the public gardens was to
• 2:45:20
  be considered, along with the heavy losses which, in case of panic or
• 2:45:24
  unfavorable rumors, would threaten business, the hotels, the entire elaborate system for
• 2:45:31
  exploiting foreigners. And as these considerations evidently carried more weight than love of truth
• 2:45:37
  or respect for international agreements, the city authorities upheld obstinately their policy of silence
• 2:45:45
  and denial. The chief health officer had resigned from his post and indignation,
• 2:45:50
  and been promptly replaced by a more tractable personality. The people knew this,
• 2:45:56
  and the corruption of their superiors, together with the predominating insecurity, the exceptional
• 2:46:03
  condition into which the prevalence of death had plunged the city, induced a certain
• 2:46:07
  demoralization of the lower classes, encouraging shady and antisocial impulses, which manifested themselves
• 2:46:16
  in license profligacy, and a rising crime wave. Contrary to custom, many
• 2:46:22
  drunkards were seen in the evenings. It was said that at night, nasty
• 2:46:26
  mobs made the streets unsafe. Burglaries and even murders became frequent, for it
• 2:46:31
  had already been proved on two occasions that persons who had presumably fallen victim to
• 2:46:37
  the plague had in reality been dispatched by poison by their own relatives. And
• 2:46:43
  professional debauchery assumed abnormal and obtrusive proportions such as had never been known here before,
• 2:46:50
  and to an extent which is usually found only in southern parts of the
• 2:46:54
  country and in the Orient. The Englishmen announced the final verdict on these facts.
• 2:47:03
  You would do well, he concluded, to leave to day rather than
• 2:47:05
  tomorrow. It cannot be much more than a couple of days before a quarantine
• 2:47:11
  zone is declared. Thank you, Aschenbach said, and left the office.
• 2:47:18
  The square lay sunless and stifling. Unsuspecting foreigners sat in front of the cafes,
• 2:47:24
  or stood among the pigeons in front of the church, and watched the
• 2:47:28
  swarms of birds flapping their wings, crowding one another, and pecking at grains
• 2:47:33
  of corn offered them in open palms. The recluse was feverishly excited, triumphant
• 2:47:39
  in his possession of the truth, but it had left him with a bad
• 2:47:43
  taste in his mouth and a weird horror in his heart. As he walked
• 2:47:48
  up and down the flagstones of the gorgeous court. He was weighing in action
• 2:47:52
  which would meet the situation and would absolve him. This evening, after dinner,
• 2:47:58
  he could approach the woman with the pearls and make her a speech.
• 2:48:01
  He had figured it out word for word. Permit a foreigner, madam,
• 2:48:07
  to give you some useful advice, a warning which is being withheld from you
• 2:48:11
  through self interest. Leave immediately with Tasio and your daughters. Venice is full
• 2:48:16
  of the plague. Then he could lay a farewell hand on the head of
• 2:48:22
  this tool of a mocking divinity, turn away and flee this morass. But
• 2:48:28
  he felt at the same time that he was very far from seriously desiring such
• 2:48:31
  a move. He would retract it, would disengage himself from it. But
• 2:48:37
  when we are distracted, we loathe most the thought of retracing our steps.
• 2:48:43
  He recalled a white building ornamented with inscriptions, which glistened in the evening,
• 2:48:48
  and in whose transparent mysticism his mind's eye had lost itself. And then that
• 2:48:54
  strange wanderer's form which had awakened in the aging man, the roving hanker of
• 2:49:00
  youth. After the foreign and the remote, and the thought of return,
• 2:49:05
  the thought of prudence and soberness, effort, mastery, disgusted him to such
• 2:49:09
  an extent that his face was distorted with an expression of physical nausea. It
• 2:49:16
  must be kept silent, he whispered heavily. I will keep silent. The
• 2:49:22
  consciousness of his share in the facts and the guilt intoxicated him, much as
• 2:49:26
  a little wine intoxicates a tired brain. The picture of the diseased and neglected
• 2:49:33
  city hovering desolately before him aroused vague hopes beyond the bounds of reason, but
• 2:49:39
  with an egregious sweetness. What was the scant happiness he had dreamed of a
• 2:49:45
  moment ago, compared with these expectations, What were art and virtue worth to
• 2:49:50
  him? Over against the advantages of chaos? He kept silent and remained in
• 2:49:56
  venice. This same night he had a frightful dream, if one can designate
• 2:50:01
  as a dream, a bodily and mental experience, which occurred to him in
• 2:50:07
  the deepest sleep, completely independent of him and with a physical realness, although
• 2:50:13
  he never saw himself present or moving about among the incidents, but their stage
• 2:50:18
  rather was his soul itself, and they broke in from without, trampling down
• 2:50:22
  his resistance, a profound and spiritual resistance by sheer force. And when they
• 2:50:30
  had passed through, they left his substance, the culture of his lifetime crushed
• 2:50:35
  and annihilated behind them. It began with anguish, anguish and desire, and
• 2:50:41
  a frightened curiosity as to what was coming. It was night, and his
• 2:50:46
  senses were on the watch. From far off, a grumble an uproar was
• 2:50:50
  approaching, a jumble of noises, clanking, blaring, and dull thunder,
• 2:50:56
  with shrill shouts than a definite whine in a long out yew sound. All
• 2:51:01
  this was sweetly, ominously interspersed and dominated by the deep cooing of wickedly persistent
• 2:51:09
  flutes which charmed the bowels in a shamelessly penetrative manner. But he knew one
• 2:51:15
  word. It was veiled, and yet would name what was approaching, the
• 2:51:20
  foreign god. Vaporous fire began to glow. Then he recognized mountains like those
• 2:51:26
  about his summer house, and in the scattered light from high up in the
• 2:51:31
  woods, among tree trunks and crumbling moss grown rocks, people beasts, a
• 2:51:37
  throng, a raging mob, plunged, twisting and whirling downwards, then made
• 2:51:41
  the hill swarm with bodies, flames, tumult, and a riotous round dance.
• 2:51:48
  Women tripped by overlong fur draperies which hung from their waists, were holding
• 2:51:54
  up tambourines and beating on them. Their groaning heads flung back. The others
• 2:52:00
  swung sparking firebrands and bare daggers, or wore hissing snakes about the middle of
• 2:52:05
  their bodies, or shrieking held their breasts in their two hands. Men with
• 2:52:11
  horns on their foreheads, shaggy haired girded with hides, bent back their necks
• 2:52:16
  and raised their arms and thighs, clashed brass cymbals and beat furiously at kettle
• 2:52:22
  drums, while smooth boys prodded he goats with wreathed sticks, climbing on their
• 2:52:28
  horns and falling off with shouts when they bounded. And the Baccans wailed the
• 2:52:33
  word with the soft consonants and the drawn out ue sound at once sweet and
• 2:52:39
  savage, like nothing ever heard before. In one place, it rang out
• 2:52:45
  as though piped into the air by stags, and it was echoed in another
• 2:52:50
  by many voices. In wild triumph with it. They incited one another to
• 2:52:54
  dance and to fling out their arms and legs. And it was never silent,
• 2:53:00
  but everything was pierced and dominated by the deep, coaxing flute. He
• 2:53:05
  who was fighting against this experience, did it not coax him too, with
• 2:53:09
  its shameless penetration into the feast and the excesses of the extreme sacrifice. His
• 2:53:16
  repugnance, his fear were keen. He was honorably set on defending himself to
• 2:53:22
  the very last against the barbarian, the foe to intellectual poise and dignity.
• 2:53:28
  But the noise, the howling, multiplied by the resonant walls of the hills,
• 2:53:33
  grew, took the upper hand, swelled to a fury of rapture.
• 2:53:39
  Odors oppressed the senses, the pungent smell of the bucks, the scent of
• 2:53:43
  moist bodies, and a waft of stagnant water, with another smell, something
• 2:53:48
  familiar, the smell of wounds and prevalent disease. At the beating of the
• 2:53:54
  drum, his heart fluttered, his head was spinning. He was caught in
• 2:53:58
  a frenzy, in a blinding, deafening lewdness, and he yearned to join
• 2:54:03
  the ranks of the god. The obscene symbol huge wooden was uncovered and raised
• 2:54:09
  up. Then they howled the magic word with more abandon Foaming at the mouth,
• 2:54:16
  they raged teased one another with ruddish gestures and caressing hands, laughing and
• 2:54:20
  groaning. They stuck the goats into one another's flesh and licked the blood from
• 2:54:26
  their limbs. But the dreamer now was with them, in them, and
• 2:54:31
  he belonged to the foreign God. Yes, they were he himself. As
• 2:54:35
  they hurled themselves, biting and tearing upon the animals, got entangled in steaming
• 2:54:41
  rags and fell in promiscuous unions on the torn moss and sacrifice to their god,
• 2:54:48
  and his soul tasted the unchastity and fury of decay. End of Chapter
• 2:54:54
  five, Part two, Chapter five three. When he awakened from the affliction
• 2:55:03
  of this dream, he was unnerved, shattered, and hopelessly under the power
• 2:55:07
  of the demon. He no longer avoided the inquisitive glances of other people.
• 2:55:13
  He did not care if he was exciting their suspicions. And as a matter
• 2:55:16
  of fact, they were fleeing, traveling elsewhere. Numerous bathing houses stood empty.
• 2:55:22
  The occupants of the dining hall became more and more scattered, and in
• 2:55:26
  the city now one rarely saw foreigner. The truth seemed to have leaked out.
• 2:55:33
  The panic, despite the reticence of those whose interests were involved, seemed
• 2:55:37
  no longer avoidable. But the woman with the pearls remained with her family,
• 2:55:43
  either because the rumors had not yet reached her, or because she was too
• 2:55:46
  proud and fearless to heed them. Tadzio remained, and to Oshenbach, in
• 2:55:52
  his infatuation, it seemed at times as though flight and death might remove all
• 2:55:58
  the disturbing elements of life around them. And he stayed here alone with the
• 2:56:03
  boy yes by the sea in the forenoon, when his eyes rested heavily,
• 2:56:09
  irresponsibly, unwaveringly on the thing he coveted, or when as the day was
• 2:56:15
  ending, he followed shamelessly after him through the streets where the hideous death lurked
• 2:56:20
  in secret. At such times, the atrocious seemed to him, rich in
• 2:56:24
  possibilities and laws of morality, had dropped away, like any lover he wanted
• 2:56:31
  to please, and he felt a bitter anguish lest it might not be possible.
• 2:56:35
  He added bright, youthful details to his dress. He put on jewels,
• 2:56:41
  and used perfumes. During the day, he often spent much time over
• 2:56:46
  his toilet and came to the table strikingly dressed, excited and in suspense.
• 2:56:52
  In the light of the sweet youthfulness which had done this to him, he
• 2:56:56
  detested his aging body. The sight of his gray hair, his sharp features
• 2:57:01
  plunged him into shame and hopelessness. It induced him to attempt rejuvenating his body
• 2:57:07
  and appearance. He often visited the hotel barber. Beneath the barber's apron,
• 2:57:15
  Leaning back in the chair under the gossiper's expert hands, he winced to observe
• 2:57:20
  his reflection in the mirror. Gray, he said, making a wry face.
• 2:57:26
  A little the man answered, due entirely to a slight neglect, an
• 2:57:31
  indifference to outward things, which is conceivable in people of importance. But it
• 2:57:37
  is not exactly praiseworthy, and all the less so, since such persons are
• 2:57:41
  above prejudice than matters of nature or art. If the moral objections of certain
• 2:57:48
  people to the art of cosmetics were to be logically extended to the care of
• 2:57:52
  the teeth, they would give no slight offense. And after all, we
• 2:57:56
  are just as old as we feel and unders in some circumstances, gray hair
• 2:58:01
  would actually stand for more of an untruth than the despised correction. In your
• 2:58:07
  case, sir, you are entitled to the natural color of your hair.
• 2:58:11
  Will you permit me simply to return what belongs to you? How is that?
• 2:58:16
  Aschenbach asked. Then the orator washed his client's hair with two kinds of
• 2:58:22
  water, one clear and one dark, and it was as black as in
• 2:58:28
  youth. Following this, he curled it with irons into soft waves, stepped
• 2:58:33
  back, and eyed his work. All that is left now, he said,
• 2:58:37
  would be to freshen up the skin a little. And like someone who
• 2:58:41
  cannot finish, cannot satisfy himself, he passed with quickening energy, from one
• 2:58:48
  manipulation to another. Aschenbach rested comfortably, incapable of resistance, or rather,
• 2:58:54
  his hopes aroused by what was taking place in the glass. He saw his
• 2:59:00
  brows arch more evenly and decisively. His eyes became longer, Their brilliance was
• 2:59:05
  heightened by a light touching up of the lids a little lower where the skin
• 2:59:11
  had been leatherish brown. He saw a delicate crimson tint grow beneath a deft
• 2:59:16
  application of color. His lips bloodless a little while past, became full and
• 2:59:22
  as red as raspberries. The furrows in the cheeks and about the mouth.
• 2:59:28
  The wrinkles of the eyes disappeared. Beneath lotions and cream. With a knocking
• 2:59:33
  heart, he beheld a blossoming youth. Finally, the beauty specialist declared himself
• 2:59:39
  content after the manner of such people, by obsequiously thanking the man he had
• 2:59:45
  been serving a trifling assistance, he said, as he applied one parting touch.
• 2:59:52
  Now the gentleman can fall in love. Unhesitatingly, he walked away,
• 2:59:56
  fascinated. He was happy as in a dream, Timid and bewildered. His
• 3:00:01
  necktie was red, His broad brimmed straw hat was trimmed with a variegated band.
• 3:00:09
  A tepid storm wind had risen. It was raining sparsely and at intervals,
• 3:00:13
  but the air was damp, thick, and filled with the smell of
• 3:00:16
  things rotting. All around him, he heard a fluttering, pattering, and
• 3:00:22
  swishing, and under the fever of his cosmetics, it seemed to him as
• 3:00:26
  though evil wind spirits were haunting the place, Impure sea birds which rooted and
• 3:00:33
  gnawed at the food of the condemned and befouled it with their droppings, for
• 3:00:37
  the sultiness destroyed his appetite, and the fancy suggested itself that the foods were
• 3:00:43
  poisoned with contaminating substances. Tracking the boy, one afternoon, Haschenbach had plunged
• 3:00:50
  deep into the tangled center of the diseased city. He was becoming uncertain of
• 3:00:56
  where he was, since the alleys, waterways, bridge and little squares of
• 3:01:01
  the labyrinth were all so much alike, and he was no longer even sure
• 3:01:05
  of directions. He was absorbed with the problem of keeping the pursued figure in
• 3:01:11
  sight, and driven to disgraceful subterfuges. Flattened himself against walls, hiding behind
• 3:01:18
  the backs of other people. For a long time, he did not notice
• 3:01:22
  the weariness, the exhaustion with which emotion and the continual suspense had taxed his
• 3:01:28
  mind and his body. Tazio walked behind his companions. He always allowed the
• 3:01:35
  governess and the nun like sisters to precede him in the narrow places, and
• 3:01:39
  loitering behind alone, he would turn his head occasionally to look over his shoulder
• 3:01:46
  and make sure by a glance of his peculiarly dark gray eyes that his admirer
• 3:01:50
  was following. He saw him and did not betray him. Drunk with the
• 3:01:56
  knowledge of this, lured forward by those eyes, eyes led meekly by his
• 3:02:01
  passion, the lover stole after his unseemly hope. But finally he was cheated
• 3:02:07
  and lost sight of him. The poles had crossed a short arching bridge.
• 3:02:11
  The height of the curve hid them from the pursuer, and when he himself
• 3:02:16
  had arrived there, he no longer saw them. He hunted for them vainly
• 3:02:20
  in three directions, straight ahead and to either side, along the narrow,
• 3:02:26
  dirty wharf. In the end he was so tired and unnerved that he had
• 3:02:31
  to give up the search. His head was on fire, his body was
• 3:02:35
  covered with a sticky sweat, his knees trembled. He could no longer endure
• 3:02:41
  the thirst that was torturing him, and he looked around for some immediate relief.
• 3:02:46
  From a little vegetable store, he bought some fruit strawberries, soft and
• 3:02:52
  overly ripe, and he ate them. As he walked. The very charming,
• 3:02:56
  forsaken little square opened up before him. He recognized it. Here he
• 3:03:01
  had made his frustrated plans for flight weeks ago. He let himself sink down
• 3:03:07
  on the steps of the cistern in the middle of the square and laid his
• 3:03:11
  head against the stone cylinder. It was quiet. Grass was growing up through
• 3:03:16
  the pavement. Refuse was scattered about among the weather beaten, usually tall houses
• 3:03:22
  surrounding him. There was one like a palace, with little lion covered balconies
• 3:03:28
  and gothic windows with blank emptiness behind them. On the ground floor of another
• 3:03:33
  house was a drug store. Warm gusts of wind occasionally carried the smell of
• 3:03:39
  carbolic acid. He sat there. He the master, the artist of dignity,
• 3:03:46
  the author of The Wretch, a work which had, in such accurate
• 3:03:50
  symbols renounced vagabondage and the depths of misery, had denied all sympathy with the
• 3:03:56
  engulfed, and had cast out the outcast. The man who had arrived and
• 3:04:01
  victor over his own knowledge, had outgrown all irony and acclimatized himself to the
• 3:04:07
  obligations of public confidence. Whose reputation was official, whose name had been knighted,
• 3:04:13
  and on whose style boys were urged to pattern themselves. He sat there,
• 3:04:20
  His eyelids were shut only now and then a mocking uneasy side glance slipped
• 3:04:26
  out from beneath them, and his loose lips set off by the cosmetics formed
• 3:04:31
  isolated words of the strange dream logic created by his half slumbering brain. For
• 3:04:37
  beauty, Phaedrus mark me. Beauty alone is both divine and visible at once,
• 3:04:43
  and thus it is the road of the sensuous. It is, little
• 3:04:48
  Fiadrus, the road of the artist to the spiritual. But do you now
• 3:04:52
  believe, my dear, that they can ever attain wisdom and true human dignity,
• 3:04:58
  for whom the road to the spiritual leads through the senses, Or do
• 3:05:01
  you believe? Rather, I leave the choice to you, that this is
• 3:05:05
  a pleasant but perilous road, a really wrong and sinful road which necessarily leads
• 3:05:13
  astray. For you must know that we poets cannot take the road of beauty
• 3:05:18
  without having Eros join us and set himself up as our leader. Indeed,
• 3:05:22
  we may even be heroes after our fashion, and hardened warriors, though we
• 3:05:28
  be like women, for passion is our exultation, and our desire must remain
• 3:05:33
  love. That is our pleasure and our disgrace. You now see, do
• 3:05:39
  you not that we poets cannot be wise and dignified, that we necessarily go
• 3:05:46
  astray, necessarily remain lesscivious and adventurers in emotion. The mastery of our style
• 3:05:52
  is all lies and foolishness. Our renown and honor are a farce. The
• 3:05:58
  confidence of the masses in us is highly ridiculous, and the training of the
• 3:06:03
  public and of youth through art is a precarious undertaking, which should be forbidden.
• 3:06:09
  For how indeed could he be a fit instructor who is born with a
• 3:06:13
  natural leaning towards the precipice. We might well disavow it and reach after dignity,
• 3:06:20
  But wherever we turn it attracts us. Let us say, renounce the
• 3:06:24
  dissolvent of knowledge, Since knowledge phaedrus has no dignity or strength. It is
• 3:06:31
  aware, it understands and pardons, but without reserve and form, it feels
• 3:06:37
  sympathy with the precipice. It is the precipice. This, then we abandon
• 3:06:41
  with firmness, and from now on our efforts matter only by their yield of
• 3:06:46
  beauty or in other words, simplicity, greatness and new rigor form and a
• 3:06:54
  second type of openness. But form and openness phaedrus lead to an intoxication and
• 3:07:01
  to desire lead the noble, perhaps into sinister rebels of emotion, which his
• 3:07:05
  own beautiful rigor rejects as infamous, lead to the precipice. Yes, they
• 3:07:11
  too, lead to the precipice. They lead us poets. There, I
• 3:07:16
  say, since we cannot force ourselves, since we can merely let ourselves out.
• 3:07:22
  And now I am going. Phedrius, you stay here, and when
• 3:07:26
  you no longer see me, then you go too. A few days later,
• 3:07:31
  as gustav On Oschenbach was not feeling well, he left the beach hotel
• 3:07:37
  at a later hour in the morning than usual. He had to fight against
• 3:07:41
  certain attacks of vertigo, which were only partially physical and were accompanied by a
• 3:07:46
  pronounced malaise, a feeling of bafflement and hopelessness. While he was not certain
• 3:07:52
  whether this had to do with conditions outside him or with his own nature.
• 3:07:58
  In the lobby he noticed a law larch pile of luggage ready for shipment.
• 3:08:03
  He asked the doorkeeper who it was that was leaving, and heard in answer
• 3:08:07
  the Polish title, which he had learned secretly. He accepted this without any
• 3:08:13
  alteration of his sunken features. With that Curt elevation of the head by which
• 3:08:18
  one acknowledges something he does not need to know. Then he asked. When
• 3:08:24
  the answer was after lunch. He nodded and went to the beach. It
• 3:08:31
  was not very inviting. Rippling patches of rain retreated across the wide flat water
• 3:08:37
  separating the beach from the first long sand bank. An air of autumn,
• 3:08:41
  of things past their prime, seemed to lie over the pleasure spot, which
• 3:08:46
  had once been so alive with color and was now almost abandoned. The sand
• 3:08:50
  was no longer kept clean. A camera, seemingly without an owner, stood
• 3:08:56
  on its tripod by the edge of the sea, and a black cloth thrown
• 3:09:00
  over it was flapping noisily in the wind. Tatsio, with the three or
• 3:09:05
  four companions still left, was moving about to the right in front of his
• 3:09:09
  family's cabin and midway between the sea and the row of bathing houses, lying
• 3:09:16
  back in his chair with a robe over his knees. Aschenbach looked at him
• 3:09:20
  once more. The game, which was not being supervised since the women were
• 3:09:26
  probably occupied with preparations for the journey, seemed to have no rules, and
• 3:09:31
  it was degenerating. The stocky boy with the sleek black hair, who was
• 3:09:37
  called Joshu, had been angered and blinded by sand flung in his face.
• 3:09:41
  He forced Totsio into a wrestling match, which quickly ended in the fall of
• 3:09:46
  the beauty, who was weaker. But as though in the hour of parting
• 3:09:50
  the servile feelings of the inferior had turned to merciless brutality and were trying to
• 3:09:56
  get vengeance for a long period of slavery, the victor did not let go
• 3:10:01
  of the boy beneath, but knelt on his back and pressed his face so
• 3:10:05
  persistently into the sand that Tasio, already breathless from the struggle, was in
• 3:10:11
  danger of strangling. His attempts to shake off the weight were fitful for moments,
• 3:10:16
  they stopped entirely and were resumed again as mere twitchings. Enraged Aschenbach was
• 3:10:22
  about to spring to the rescue when the torturer finally released his victim. Tasio,
• 3:10:28
  very pale, raised himself half way and sat motionless for several minutes,
• 3:10:35
  resting on one arm, with rumpled hair and glowering eyes. Then he stood
• 3:10:39
  up completely and moved slowly away. They called him cheerfully at first, then
• 3:10:46
  anxiously and imploringly. He did not listen. The swarthy boy, who seemed
• 3:10:50
  to regret his excesses immediately afterwards, caught up with him and tried to placate
• 3:10:56
  him. A movement of the shoulder put him at his distance. Tasio went
• 3:11:01
  down obliquely to the water. He was barefoot and wore his striped linen suit
• 3:11:05
  with the red bow. He lingered on the edge of the water with his
• 3:11:09
  head down, drawing figures in the wet sand with one toe. Then he
• 3:11:15
  went into the shallows, which did not cover his knees in the deepest place,
• 3:11:20
  crossed them leisurely, and arrived at the sand bank. He stood there
• 3:11:24
  a moment, his face turned to the open sea. Soon after, he
• 3:11:30
  began stepping slowly to the left along the narrow stretch of exposed ground, separated
• 3:11:35
  from the mainland by the expanse of water, separated from his companions by a
• 3:11:41
  proud moodiness. He moved along a strong, isolated and unrelated figure with fluttering
• 3:11:48
  hair placed out there in the sea, the wind against the vague mists.
• 3:11:52
  He stopped once more to look around, and suddenly, as though at some
• 3:11:58
  recollection some impulse, els with one hand on his hip, he turned the
• 3:12:03
  upper part of his body in a beautiful twist which began from the base,
• 3:12:07
  and he looked over his shoulder towards the shore. The watcher sat there as
• 3:12:11
  he had sat once before, when the first time these twilight gray eyes had
• 3:12:16
  turned at the doorway and met his own. His head against the back of
• 3:12:22
  the chair had slowly followed the movements of the boy walking yonder. Now simultaneously
• 3:12:28
  with his glance. It rose and sank on his breast, so that his
• 3:12:33
  eyes looked out from beneath, while his face took on the loose, inwardly
• 3:12:37
  relaxed expression of deep sleep. But it seemed to him as though the pale
• 3:12:43
  and lovely lure out there were smiling to him, nodding to him, as
• 3:12:48
  though, removing his hand from his hip he were signaling to come out,
• 3:12:54
  were vaguely guiding towards egregious promises, and as often before he stood up to
• 3:13:00
  follow him, some minutes passed before anyone hurried to the aid of the man,
• 3:13:05
  who had collapsed into one corner of his chair. He was brought to
• 3:13:11
  his room, and on the same day a respectfully shocked world received the news
• 3:13:16
  of his death. End of Chapter five. End of Death in Venice by Thomas Mann