Death in Venice

Gustav von Aschenbach, a celebrated novelist worn thin by lifelong discipline, takes a holiday in Venice and finds himself transfixed by Tadzio, a fourteen-year-old of seraphic beauty. As cholera spreads through the city and the authorities suppress the truth, Aschenbach refuses to leave — surrendering the iron will that built his career to a passion he cannot name. Saturated with allusions to Plato, Nietzsche, and Wagner, *Der Tod in Venedig* is Mann's most perfect compression of the artist's predicament: the long ascent into form, the secret longing for dissolution. Translated by Kenneth Burke in 1925.