Death in Venice: (Annotated Edition)
- ISBN-10
- ISBN-13
- 9798539462352
- Series
- Death in Venice
- Pages
- 54
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-07-20
- Author
- Thomas Thomas Mann
Description
Although Mann is considered to be a deeply German writer, at the time that he began writing, Germany itself was fairly new to the world. When Death in Venice was published in 1912, a unified Germany had existed for a mere 41 years. Although Mann moved to Munich after high school, he was always aware of being North German and felt his more somber and serious artistic sense put him at odds with other artists in Munich. The connection between Germany and Italy in his work has clear political relevance, as the two countries unified their fragmented areas to become nations at similar points of time in history (King Victor Emmanuel began to rule over a unified Italy in 1861). Mann wrote in the context of a number of literary styles. At the turn of the century, Naturalism reigned, and Mann sought to differentiate himself from writers such as Zola and Ibsen who faithfully transcribed even the most minute concrete details of daily life. In contrast to naturalist writers, Mann's precision is psychological, rather than physical. Specifically, Mann was influenced by other European masters including Tolstoy, whose epic sweep he admired, and Flaubert, whose labor over each and every sentence he emulated. Mann was also deeply indebted to the philosophy of Nietzsche, whose skeptical mode of analysis he adopted. Nietzsche claimed to be a great authority on the subject of decadence, and Mann's works focus almost exclusively on this topic, along with degeneracy and the decline of greatness.
