Death in Venice (1912) - Thomas Mann Audiobook

Written by Thomas Mann
Read by Simon Callow
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: June 22, 2004
Duration: 03:09:27

The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann is here in a translation by Michael Henry Heim.
Published on the eve of World War I, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.
In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. “It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom,” Mann wrote. “But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist’s dignity.”

A modern critic wrote - Brilliant prose, expertly crafted, a masterful blending of mythology, allusion and symbolism. In many ways, it is a work of considerable genius. But overall it left me unmoved.

Despite being written by a German author about a Prussian author, and set in 20th century Italy, this story has Greek tragedy written all over it. Mann’s story is steeped in allusions to mythology, and is strongly influenced by Plato’s The Symposium and Phaedrus, carrying forward their central arguments regarding the man’s struggle between passion and wisdom.

Along the same line - I would spot an allusion that Mann was incorporating and think how impressive it was…but it never translated into an emotional connection to the story. Thus, I was kept at a distance from the story, and this left me feeling less enamored with the work as a whole, than its prodigious technical achievements might otherwise merit.

Form your own opinion.