Disguise in Death in Venice

In the beginning of Death in Venice, Aschenbach encounters an apparition of a foreign traveler. The traveler’s existence is ambiguous and suggests that nothing is as it seems. The might-be apparition inspires in Aschenbach “the most surprising consciousness of a widening of inward barriers, a kind of vaulting unrest, a youthfully ardent thirst for distant scenes…a longing to travel; yet coming upon him with such suddenness and passion as to resemble a seizure, almost a hallucination,” (Mann 5). This foreign traveler may be the Summoner in disguise. The image of the Summoner in disguise reappears at the end of the novel in the form of Tadzio. Aschenbach is lying on the beach when he observes Tadzio standing on a sandbar. “It seemed to him the pale and lovely Summoner out there smiled at him and beckoned,” (Mann 73).

The idea of appearance and disguise is brought up again when Aschenbach is on the boat to Venice. He sees a group of youths but “One of the party…was no youth at all. He was an old man, beyond a doubt, with wrinkles crow’s-feet round the eyes and mouth; the dull carmine of the cheeks was rouge, the brown hair a wig. His neck was shrunken and sinewy, his turned-up moustaches and small imperial were dyed, and the unbroken double row of yellow teeth he showed when he laughed were but too obviously a cheapish false set,” (Mann 17). Aschenbach is disgusted by this man thinking that “he has no right to wear the clothes they wore or pretend to be one of them,” (Mann 17). However, in the end of the story Aschenbach gets a similar makeover himself. “The presence of the youthful beauty that had bewildered him filled him with disgust of his own aging body… he made desperate efforts to recover the appearance and freshness of his youth,” (Mann 67). He has the hotel barber dye his hair, pluck his eyebrows, and put on his makeup, disguising Aschenbach from himself.

The setting of Venice itself has indications of disguise as the city tries to hide the sickness from the tourists “under a fog of lies, official silence, sweet-smelling disinfectants,” ("Death in Venice": The Disguised Self).

Aschenbach seems to be in disguise all the time as he hides his passionate side and always remains stoic and disciplined. Even in his writing he isn’t passionate but labors over it “layer after layer, in long days of work, out of hundreds and hundreds of single inspirations,” (Mann 10). However his disguise falters as he is overcome with desire for Tadzio and becomes obsessed – losing his composure and discipline.

This imagery of disguise and ambiguity goes hand in hand with the descent and disintegration of Auschenbach. Mann seems to suggest that one cannot live a diacritical existence. “Either he lives in an impossible idealistic intellectuality or he lives as the most bestial of the beasts. To live as either, and not as both, is to invite destruction,” ("Death in Venice": The Disguised Self).