Scan barcode
A review by garbo2garbo
Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories by H.T. Lowe-Porter, Thomas Mann
4.0
Ahhh short stories.. novellas.. not my favourite type of read - I hate the emotional cut-off between each story! However, this was a book that I've had on my shelf for many years now and have kept meaning to read. I bought the book because I wanted to read Death In Venice - probably Mann's most famous novella. However, since this edition had the other novellas included I also read those. Below are my thoughts on each story..
Little Herr Friedman - A story of deformity, love, and suicide. Some parts are inferred rather than explicitly told, but still enjoyable.
The Joker - a story about wanting to live free from the constraints of society - to shun societal companionship - and yet realize that it denies you love and contentment.
The Road to the Churchyard - the shortest story in this collection, and yet still rather poignant. It is about a man who has lost his wife and 3 children - one was born dead, one died of illness, and the other malnutrition. Subsequently, he drinks. On his way to the Churchyard, he becomes angered with a boy who is riding his bicycle on the wrong part of the road. He becomes angered, and chases the boy down.
The boy gets away, and a crowd gathers around the man as he rages once more, and then collapses, seemingly dying. I think it's not insignificant that the boy on the bike was called Life. The man chases after Life, and yet life runs away from him. Very simple symbolism, yet very effective.
Gladius Dei - a short story about a cloaked man called Jerome who becomes enraged about a lustful painting of the Madonna on display in a popular art shop in the heart of Munich. A devout religious man, he confronts the shop owner with religious zeal, and demands the picture be burned, as it is a sinful, lustful painting in the cult of beauty. He gets thrown out, and sees before him all the sinful works of art that belong in the cult of beauty, and a righteous sword of God hanging above him in the sky. He shouts, "The sword of God over the Earth, swiftly and speedily."
Tristan - Progressing though the book, it is clear that Mann's style is advancing. I enjoyed this tale of patients in a sanatorium, and their friendship that hints at romantic intrigue, and certainly jealousy from Herr Spinell. Fundamental to this story is that Spinell only wishes to see the beauty in everything, to the point that in his written confrontation to Herr Kloterjahn he invents a beauty vision of Gabrielle
Tonio Kroger - one of the longer stories, it conveys, yet again the feelings of an outsider, literary genius, and stuck between the two cultures of his parents. Tonio is forever the outside - the richest kid in class, no social qualities, unconventional looking, always in a one-sided love, troubled by matters that appear largely due to his intellectual capabilities and over-thinking, outsider at the holiday ball.. forever ignored and feeling like he doesn't fit in. An extension of the author's own internal struggles?
Death In Venice - yet again centered around an intellectual, and famous writer, who is stuck in this ugly routine and order, and so decides to holiday in Venice. One thing I noticed was that everything was ugly and vulgar in this story, apart from Tadzio - a Greek-like image of beauty, of poise and upper class behaviour, of youth and innocence. Aschenbach has an awful journey to Venice (the weather, the criminal gondolier), he is described as being old with a leather face, the heat is disagreeable to him and makes him ill, the sickness of cholera spreading (with the details of the symptoms expressed for effect).. so much vulgarity, and yet he becomes entranced with Tadzio, who shines bright against the vulgarity and infatuates Aschenbach. Aschenbach holds the boy on another level - he is god-like and nothing he does is unfavourable. It comes to the point where Aschenbach stalks the child and feels he should die if he fails to see him - in fact he stays on in Venice despite knowing of the sickness because he cannot bare to part with the child, and in so suffers illness, and as Tadzio and his family leave, Aschenbach dies from sickness.. but also seemingly from the inability to part with the child he has become so entranced by.
I'm glad that I chose to read all of this collection because it certainly shows Mann's growth as a writer, but also chronicles how he revisits concepts and improves on them each time, or approaches the subject in an entirely different way. Nearly all stories included an intellectual, often a writer, and his struggles with the feeling of being an outsider, and yet each story was fresh and new and took on a different approach - many times showing the growth in Mann's maturity as a person and a writer.
The introduction is well worth a read, though I would recommend reading it after you have read the novellas. It gives a great background to Germany and the literary scene at the time of these novellas, as well as Mann's life and how this influenced his work, particularly referencing his inspiration from Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wagner, and his interest in nihilism and naturalism. I will say, however, that if you haven't read Buddenbrooks then elements are revealed in the introduction which may spoil it for you..
I would definitely recommend this! Very interesting and thought-provoking. I found the Germanic literary style difficult at times - the vocabulary! Amazing! But, nevertheless, this was brilliant,and it is understandable that Mann's literary talents were recognized with a Nobel Prize.
I will definitely be picking up another Thomas Mann book in the future..
Little Herr Friedman - A story of deformity, love, and suicide. Some parts are inferred rather than explicitly told, but still enjoyable.
The Joker - a story about wanting to live free from the constraints of society - to shun societal companionship - and yet realize that it denies you love and contentment.
The Road to the Churchyard - the shortest story in this collection, and yet still rather poignant. It is about a man who has lost his wife and 3 children - one was born dead, one died of illness, and the other malnutrition. Subsequently, he drinks. On his way to the Churchyard, he becomes angered with a boy who is riding his bicycle on the wrong part of the road. He becomes angered, and chases the boy down.
The boy gets away, and a crowd gathers around the man as he rages once more, and then collapses, seemingly dying. I think it's not insignificant that the boy on the bike was called Life. The man chases after Life, and yet life runs away from him. Very simple symbolism, yet very effective.
Gladius Dei - a short story about a cloaked man called Jerome who becomes enraged about a lustful painting of the Madonna on display in a popular art shop in the heart of Munich. A devout religious man, he confronts the shop owner with religious zeal, and demands the picture be burned, as it is a sinful, lustful painting in the cult of beauty. He gets thrown out, and sees before him all the sinful works of art that belong in the cult of beauty, and a righteous sword of God hanging above him in the sky. He shouts, "The sword of God over the Earth, swiftly and speedily."
Tristan - Progressing though the book, it is clear that Mann's style is advancing. I enjoyed this tale of patients in a sanatorium, and their friendship that hints at romantic intrigue, and certainly jealousy from Herr Spinell. Fundamental to this story is that Spinell only wishes to see the beauty in everything, to the point that in his written confrontation to Herr Kloterjahn he invents a beauty vision of Gabrielle
Tonio Kroger - one of the longer stories, it conveys, yet again the feelings of an outsider, literary genius, and stuck between the two cultures of his parents. Tonio is forever the outside - the richest kid in class, no social qualities, unconventional looking, always in a one-sided love, troubled by matters that appear largely due to his intellectual capabilities and over-thinking, outsider at the holiday ball.. forever ignored and feeling like he doesn't fit in. An extension of the author's own internal struggles?
Death In Venice - yet again centered around an intellectual, and famous writer, who is stuck in this ugly routine and order, and so decides to holiday in Venice. One thing I noticed was that everything was ugly and vulgar in this story, apart from Tadzio - a Greek-like image of beauty, of poise and upper class behaviour, of youth and innocence. Aschenbach has an awful journey to Venice (the weather, the criminal gondolier), he is described as being old with a leather face, the heat is disagreeable to him and makes him ill, the sickness of cholera spreading (with the details of the symptoms expressed for effect).. so much vulgarity, and yet he becomes entranced with Tadzio, who shines bright against the vulgarity and infatuates Aschenbach. Aschenbach holds the boy on another level - he is god-like and nothing he does is unfavourable. It comes to the point where Aschenbach stalks the child and feels he should die if he fails to see him - in fact he stays on in Venice despite knowing of the sickness because he cannot bare to part with the child, and in so suffers illness, and as Tadzio and his family leave, Aschenbach dies from sickness.. but also seemingly from the inability to part with the child he has become so entranced by.
I'm glad that I chose to read all of this collection because it certainly shows Mann's growth as a writer, but also chronicles how he revisits concepts and improves on them each time, or approaches the subject in an entirely different way. Nearly all stories included an intellectual, often a writer, and his struggles with the feeling of being an outsider, and yet each story was fresh and new and took on a different approach - many times showing the growth in Mann's maturity as a person and a writer.
The introduction is well worth a read, though I would recommend reading it after you have read the novellas. It gives a great background to Germany and the literary scene at the time of these novellas, as well as Mann's life and how this influenced his work, particularly referencing his inspiration from Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wagner, and his interest in nihilism and naturalism. I will say, however, that if you haven't read Buddenbrooks then elements are revealed in the introduction which may spoil it for you..
I would definitely recommend this! Very interesting and thought-provoking. I found the Germanic literary style difficult at times - the vocabulary! Amazing! But, nevertheless, this was brilliant,and it is understandable that Mann's literary talents were recognized with a Nobel Prize.
I will definitely be picking up another Thomas Mann book in the future..