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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
this guy is gross ewww he likes kids everyone point and laugh at the kid liker ewww ewww shame on you
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Pedophilia
challenging
dark
funny
tense
I always wonder, when reading books in translation, if it does justice to the original. This translation got across the main character's angst and frenzied obsession, but the language felt stilted to me. Made me want to improve my German so I could read the original.
A obra foi interessante. Eu diria que me lembrou um pouco de Lolita em sua metade final, e achei que até foi desenvolvida para chegar ali.
Além disso, um dos fatores que gostei foi como a obra retrata a solidão em uma idade mais avançada - tanto relacionada com a amizade, mas principalmente a relacionamentos amorosos (não que isso justifique a paixão que o protagonista sente pelo menino/rapaz jovem/na tradução variava em relação a isso).
De qualquer forma, deixarei 3 estrelas.
Além disso, um dos fatores que gostei foi como a obra retrata a solidão em uma idade mais avançada - tanto relacionada com a amizade, mas principalmente a relacionamentos amorosos (não que isso justifique a paixão que o protagonista sente pelo menino/rapaz jovem/na tradução variava em relação a isso).
De qualquer forma, deixarei 3 estrelas.
Oh, the lies we will tell ourselves to avoid confronting the actual nature of our desires! And the extent we'll go to maintain our most cherished delusions.
Aschenbach has fastidiously, rather prissily, spent his life carefully suppressing the messier aspects of living—& his sexuality as well, it seems—until chaos inevitably reasserts itself. Mann's depiction of the tangled web of aesthetic appreciation & sexual attraction is fascinating & I can think of few better depictions of the experience of being completely unraveled by desire; that the catalyst is a beautiful underrage boy remains both incredibly uncomfortable & queasily provocative.
I struggled a bit with my first reading of this years ago, & was advised to revisit with a different translation. Indeed: it made all the difference. Tried the new one by Damion Searls but stylistically it's too contemporary for my tastes—for an author like Mann I want a sense of the antiquated patina to be retained. Heim's elegant rendering is stunning & delivered exactly that.
"He was more beautiful than words can convey, and Aschenbach felt acutely, as he had often felt before, that language can only praise physical beauty, not reproduce it."
Aschenbach has fastidiously, rather prissily, spent his life carefully suppressing the messier aspects of living—& his sexuality as well, it seems—until chaos inevitably reasserts itself. Mann's depiction of the tangled web of aesthetic appreciation & sexual attraction is fascinating & I can think of few better depictions of the experience of being completely unraveled by desire; that the catalyst is a beautiful underrage boy remains both incredibly uncomfortable & queasily provocative.
I struggled a bit with my first reading of this years ago, & was advised to revisit with a different translation. Indeed: it made all the difference. Tried the new one by Damion Searls but stylistically it's too contemporary for my tastes—for an author like Mann I want a sense of the antiquated patina to be retained. Heim's elegant rendering is stunning & delivered exactly that.
"He was more beautiful than words can convey, and Aschenbach felt acutely, as he had often felt before, that language can only praise physical beauty, not reproduce it."
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
For some reason I can’t get enough of Mann’s world building - it’s always so elegant, elusive, yet so palpable. It’s like I myself went to Venice sat on that beach, smelled the rancid waters, and gazed gazed gazed
I hate it and I love it
I hate it and I love it
Death In Venice started slow for me, with Mann's writing style difficult to penetrate in the first chapter. I may have given up but for my love of Colm Tóibín’s novel about Thomas Mann, my curiosity about Mann's work, and that my friend Briana enjoyed the book so much!
My interest picked up as the story turns towards its central themes of longing, despair, and repression; the long, languid sentences, the decorative language steeped in symbolism, the self-involved rumination all come together to form a distinctive emotional world of the narrator. Death in Venice has been a good introduction to these qualities in Mann's writing.
There are glimpses of humor (see excerpt below) and I've heard Mann can be quite funny and ironic but often the prose seems to take itself - and its subject - so seriously. Even though there is a lot of universal emotion in this story, it was hard for me to root for or to feel tenderness for the protagonist Aschenbach because he comes across (despite the themes of self-loathing and discomfort) as rather satisfied with himself and the culture or manners of his world.
The following is from my favorite paragraph (page 36 in the edition I read); it captures much of what I enjoyed about Mann's approach, including the boisterous rush that can result from experiencing a 'crush' (as I'll call it):
Icon and mirror! [...] his cultural baggage was all shelter skelter [...] Did not books state that the sun redirects our attention from intellectual to sensory things? It was said to numb and bewitch the understanding and the memory in such a way that, from sheer pleasure, the soul totally forgets its true condition and attaches itself with awestruck admiration to the most beautiful of the objects that the sun shines on; yes, only with the aid of a physical body can it then raise itself to the contemplation of higher things. Truly, Amor behaved like mathematicians, who show tangible images of ideal forms to children who are still incapable of abstract thinking.
My interest picked up as the story turns towards its central themes of longing, despair, and repression; the long, languid sentences, the decorative language steeped in symbolism, the self-involved rumination all come together to form a distinctive emotional world of the narrator. Death in Venice has been a good introduction to these qualities in Mann's writing.
There are glimpses of humor (see excerpt below) and I've heard Mann can be quite funny and ironic but often the prose seems to take itself - and its subject - so seriously. Even though there is a lot of universal emotion in this story, it was hard for me to root for or to feel tenderness for the protagonist Aschenbach because he comes across (despite the themes of self-loathing and discomfort) as rather satisfied with himself and the culture or manners of his world.
The following is from my favorite paragraph (page 36 in the edition I read); it captures much of what I enjoyed about Mann's approach, including the boisterous rush that can result from experiencing a 'crush' (as I'll call it):
Icon and mirror! [...] his cultural baggage was all shelter skelter [...] Did not books state that the sun redirects our attention from intellectual to sensory things? It was said to numb and bewitch the understanding and the memory in such a way that, from sheer pleasure, the soul totally forgets its true condition and attaches itself with awestruck admiration to the most beautiful of the objects that the sun shines on; yes, only with the aid of a physical body can it then raise itself to the contemplation of higher things. Truly, Amor behaved like mathematicians, who show tangible images of ideal forms to children who are still incapable of abstract thinking.