What's going on, Mann?

Well, curiosity did not kill me. It perplexed me. It brought me to a state of exasperation, annoyance, even a little sadness. Here's how it happened--

About a dozen years ago or more, I started work on a novel that I called "Yours, Loco," in which a bisexual man with manic depression (Theo) writes letters within his journal to a younger male co-worker (Zack). He never sends these letters--which he signs "Yours, Loco"--and which are partly journal entries and partly declarations of love for this (slightly) younger man. Upon reading some of "Yours, Loco," my sister Eliza said that it reminded her of Death in Venice. I had run across a copy of Death in Venice in my parents' house, and I could not imagine what "Yours, Loco" could have in common with Thomas Mann's masterpiece. So, I consigned Death in Venice to the Recycle Bin of my brain.

A year ago, I joined a meetup called Classic Books, where one of the organizers talked a little about Thomas Mann, enough to revive my curiosity about his writing. Then, a few weeks ago, a member of Classic Books recommended that we read The Magic Mountain (by Thomas Mann). Although I was daunted by the length of The Magic Mountain, my interest in Thomas Mann was now thoroughly piqued, and so I went out and bought Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories. (At 75 pages, Death in Venice could be called a really long short story, or a novella.)

Like Professor Stepanovich in Anton Chekhov's "A Boring Story," Gustave Aschenbach in Death in Venice is distinguished but distressed. At the start, Aschenbach "undertook a walk in the hope that air and exercise might send him back refreshed to a good evening's work" (3), but instead the walk sends him to a "mortuary chapel...silent in the gleam of the ebbing day." (4) The day is not the only thing that is ebbing. Despite a heroic self-discipline that has produced a long and magnificent literary career, Aschenbach now yearns only for "new and distant scenes...flight from the spot which was the daily theatre of a rigid, cold...service." (6-7) And this is really the least of a profound ennui: "...he got no joy of [his work]--not though a nation paid it homage...his work had ceased to be marked by that fiery play of fancy which is the product of joy...." (7) Even Aschenbach's journey to Venice is joyless. He fixates with (un-provoked) disgust on a fellow passenger, he barely reconciles himself to the leaden, misty weather, and he dwells with disquiet on the un-licensed gondolier--despite getting a free gondola ride to his hotel. It seems that Aschenbach has become inclined to accentuate the negative, anywhere.

The first evening at the hotel in Venice, just before dinner, Aschenbach notices a Polish teenage boy with his slightly older sisters and their governess:

Aschenbach noticed with astonishment the lad's perfect beauty. His face recalled the noblest moment of Greek sculpture...the observer thought he had never seen, either in nature or art, anything so utterly happy and consummate. (25-26; italics mine)

From that time to the moment of his death, Aschenbach is only an observer of this Polish boy. He never speaks to the boy; he never interacts with the boy, called, he thinks, Tadzio. He witnesses Tadzio's appearance "with extraordinary grace" at breakfast the next morning (29). He contemplates the activities of Tadzio and his companions on a nearby beach, reserved for hotel guests. He especially notices one of these companions--

One lad in particular, a Pole like himself, with a name that sounded something like Jaschiu, a sturdy lad with brilliantined black hair..., was his particular liege-man and friend. Operations at the sand-pile being ended for the time, the two walked away along the beach, with their arms around each other's waists.... (32)

At a later time, Aschenbach has the opportunity to speak to Tadzio but hesitates and then passes him by without speaking (47). In the very last scene, Aschenbach observes a fight between Tadzio and Jaschiu, then watches Tadzio walk away to a sand-bar, far from Jaschiu--and Aschenbach, who collapses and dies. (74-75)

To borrow the concept of "observer/participant" from anthropology--Aschenbach becomes more of a participant in regard to reports of sickness sweeping Venice. He speaks to a shopkeeper, the hotel manager, and a performer at the hotel, about this threat of death hanging over Venice. No sickness, they all say, just the sirocco. Finally, a clerk in the English travel bureau in the Piazza tells Aschenbach the truth: cholera has spread from China through Afghanistan and Syria to Southern Italy, and to Venice, where "there was a hideously brisk traffic between the Nuovo Fundamento and the island of San Michele, where the cemetery was." (64-65) At this critical point, Aschenbach's "participant" behavior stops; he says nothing to Tadzio's mother, so he can continue being an "observer" of Tadzio.

There is much more to be said about Death in Venice. For instance, why the recurring references to Classical mythology? They may illuminate Aschenbach's condition to the reader, but they do not seem to illuminate Aschenbach's condition to himself...unless he does not want to save himself? Possible--and one of various puzzles to ponder in Thomas Mann's novella.

What's going on here, Ivan?

Not all of Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev, features fathers and sons. Certainly the sparks of intergenerational conflict fly but less so between a father and son than between a university graduate's aristocratic uncle (Pavel Petrovich) and his friend from university (Bazarov). Meanwhile, from the start, there is tension between the two university friends, Arkady and Bazarov, who are presumably of the same generation. Paralleling this tension are two markedly different romances, between Arkady and Katia (relatively light), and between Bazarov and Mme. Odintsov (not remotely light).

At first, it seems that a rift has occurred between Nikolai Petrovich and his son Arkady, who has just graduated from the University of St. Petersburg. On the one hand, Arkady says, "...it's not for a son to sit in judgment on his father..." (Turgenev 91), but, on the other, he feels he is "being magnanimous" toward his father (91) who really has the less "emancipated outlook." (82) Undoubtedly there has been a shift but, it soon turns out, not a shift that creates a damaging rift between father and son.

The intergenerational conflict happens between Arkady's friend, Bazarov, and Arkady's uncle, Pavel Petrovich. After Arkady informs his uncle Pavel that Bazarov is a Nihilist, "a person who does not take any principles for granted, however much that principle may be revered," Pavel has this to say: "We of the older generation think that without principles...taken as you say on trust one cannot move an inch or draw a single breath." (94) These are fighting words (of a polite sort), and this is only the beginning of a fight between Pavel and Bazarov, which ends in a duel without any specific cause and with only one (reluctant) witness. Long before this duel, Bazarov tells Arkady that his father, Nikolai, is "a good man...but he's old-fashioned, he's had his day" (118), a comment that Arkady does not refute--but does not endorse, either. Bazarov, not Arkady, is the rebellious, potentially parricidal "son" here. Meantime, Nikolai, saying to Pavel that Bazarov may be right, is hardly "Cronos" defending his realm against the "Zeus" Bazarov. Pavel takes on that role, of the powerful, wrathful father, upon declaring to his brother, "Well, I shall not give up so quickly.... I have got a skirmish with that [Bazarov]...I feel sure of that." (121) In the end, neither "father" nor "son" wins.

A primary conflict in Fathers and Sons takes place not between father and son but between friend and friend, i.e., Arkady and Bazarov. Tension between the friends emerges slightly on the matter of Arkady's father's estate--

The friends walked on a few steps in silence.
"I've been all round your father's establishment," Bazarov began again. "The cattle are inferior, the horses mere hacks. The buildings aren't up to much and the labourers look like a set of inveterate loafers...."
"You are pretty censorious today, Yevgeny Vassilyich." (115-116)

Tension between the two simmers until (the Nihilist) Bazarov declares that Arkady is talking like his aristocratic uncle (211), a retort that nearly escalates into a wrestling match. Finally, upon leaving Mme. Odintsov, Bazarov also tells Arkady in an unmistakably friendship-severing diatribe:

"There's no audacity in you, no venom: you've the fire and energy of youth but that's not enough for our business. Your sort, the gentry, can never go farther than well-bred resignation or well-bred indignation, and that's futile. The likes of you, for instance, won't stand up and fight...."
(271)

And so on and so forth. Meantime, just as Arkady is a relatively light-hearted man, so is Arkady's courtship of Katia--during which he praises the Russian name for the ash-tree--relatively light-hearted. A short while afterward, Arkady's proposal to Katia initially veers between eloquence and nervousness but then gets to the point with a final emphatic "I love you...do believe me!" that is met with "Yes." from Katia. (268) And so, Arkady's romance with Katia ends in an engagement. On the other hand, just as Bazarov is a relatively heavy-hearted man, so Bazarov's romance with Mme. Odintsov becomes fraught with "unceasing awareness of unceasing danger." (264) It ends in separation.

Fathers and Sons also features a difficult relationship between Bazarov and his father, Vassily Ivanych, who, at one point, compares himself to the Ancient Roman hero Cincinnatus, as well as a lengthy characterization of Bazarov's mother, Arina Vlassyevna, "who ought to have lived a couple centuries earlier, in the days of Muscovy." (202) But what makes Fathers and Sons of especial interest is Turgenev's ability to capture the many kinds of relationships people may engage in with each other, of which father and son is only one.