Death in Venice

Thomas Mann's *Death in Venice* (1912) follows Gustav von Aschenbach, a celebrated, disciplined writer who travels to Venice seeking renewal and becomes enthralled by the beautiful adolescent Tadzio. Against the city's decaying splendor and concealed cholera epidemic, Mann examines artistic idealism, erotic obsession, mortality, and the instability of cultivated self-control. The novella's exquisi...