The struggle of the Intellectual

He struggled too.

In my opinion, Death In Venice was not so much about travel as it was the struggle of the intellectual. By struggle of the intellectual, I am referring to the increased sensitivity to the experiences of a person who is constantly analyzing and searching for meaning. Because the intellectual is often a type of artist, the struggle of the intellectual is often related to a restless search for beauty. Many a time, it has been said that ‘ignorance is bliss.’ In the same way, while the life of an intellectual is often rich in experience, it also tends to have more negative swings and suffering than the life of a person who is less aware of his or her surroundings. The author of Death In Venice expounds on this idea, stating that:

Art is life intensified: it delights more deeply, consumes more rapidly; it engraves the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventure on the countenance of its servant and in the long run, for all the monastic calm of his external existence, leads to self-indulgence, overrefinement, lethargy, and a restless curiosity that a lifetime of wild passions and pleasures could scarcely engender (23).

This struggle of the intellectual is explored in the novella through the experience of the protagonist, a writer by the name of Gustav von Aschenbach. Aschenbach has become bored with his monotonous life in Munich, and leaves in search of a place where he can get a break from his tedious life. When he ends up in Venice, he quickly becomes fascinated by a fourteen-year-old Polish boy “of a consummate beauty”(45). Aschenbach relates the unique charm of the boy, called Tadzio, to art, concluding that, “[his appearance] conveyed a unique personal charm such that whoever might gaze upon it would believe he had never beheld anything so accomplished, be it in nature or in art”(45).

Aschenbach’s attraction to Tadzio escalates to the point where he stalks the boy and his family. When a plague hits Venice, he fanaticizes about the things he and Tadzio could do if everyone else died. In comparison to the Aschenbach we see at the beginning of the novel (a meticulous, highly-regarded writer) and the immoral Aschenbach we see at the end, the two are hardly recognizable. At the beginning it seems that his intellectual abilities and eye for perfection are valuable assets, yet at the end both lead to his downfall. In many ways, he was destroyed by his love for beauty. The novel ends in death; Aschenbach dies in his hotel room alone. On a deeper level, Mann is showing how the isolation of the intellectual happens, and implying that though intellectual abilities can lead to success they can also lead to complete failure.