Death in Venice. Translated by Kenneth Burke. With an introduction by Erich Heller. Illustrated with wood-engravings by Felix Hoffman. New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1972.
One of 1,500 numbered copies signed by the illustrator. This being copy no. 1473.
Tall Octavo. [1]-[107], [1, blank], [1, signed limitation page], [1, blank] pp. With a three-color frontispiece. Publisher's quarter scarlet morocco over marbled paper boards, spine lettered and decoratively stamped in gilt, text printed on folded leaves. A fine copy with original, very slightly soiled, slipcase.
This book is about a fifty-year old author, Aschenbach, who travels to Venice after having a disturbing encounter with a young man in Germany. In Venice, he sees a Polish family in a restaurant, and with them is their preadolescent son, Tadzio. Aschenbach develops an obsession with the beautiful Tadzio, and takes to following him around, and even has his hair dyed and wears makeup in order to appear younger. Aschenbach unknowningly eats strawberries tainted with Cholera, and, feeling ill and weak, goes to his beach chair and watches Tadzio fight with another boy. When Tadzio leaves the boy after the boy beats him up, he goes to Aschenbach’s part of the beach, and looks at him. This contact elates Aschenbach, who is too weak to acknowledge it, and he dies soon therafter. Mann’s widow, Katia, said that this story is based on an actual trip she and Mann took to Venice in 1911, where he developed an infatuation with a young boy (though he didn’t pursue him). The boy turned out to be Baron Wladyslaw Moes. It wasn’t until the 1971 film version when Moes found out about this connection with Mann.
Thomas Mann (1875-1955) is one of the most prominent and respected German novelist and writers of the twentieth-century, having won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. This novel, which reflects Mann’s lifelong struggle with his own sexuality, is considered one of his best and most controversial.
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Newman & Wiche, 444.
ID:
3506
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125