by Thomas Mann
His head bowed, he lingered at the edge of the sea, drawing figures in the wet sand with the tip of one foot, then entered the shallow water, which even at its deepest did not reach his knees, and waded through it at a leisurely pace until gaining the sandbar. There he stood a moment, gazing out into the distance, then turned to the left and began moving slowly along the long, narrow strip of exposed land. Separated from the shore by a broad stretch of water and from his companions by a proud frame of mind, he walked on, a highly aloof and isolated figure, his hair streaming, in the sea, in the wind, before the misty infinitude. Again he paused to gaze into the distance. And all at once, as if driven by a memory, an impulse, he twisted his body at the waist, hand on hip, into a graceful turn and glanced over his shoulder towards the shore. There sat the observer as he had sat before, when those twilight-gray eyes had first glanced back from the threshold and met his. His head, reclining on the back of the chair, had slowly followed the figure moving there in the distance; now it rose as if to meet the eyes again and sank down on his chest, so that the eyes stared up from below while the face displayed the slack, self-absorbed expression of deep slumber. But to him it seemed as if the pale and charming psychagogue out there were smiling at him, beckoning to him, as if, releasing his hand from his hip, he were pointing outward, floating onward into the promising immensity of it all. And, as so often, he set out to follow him.
Minutes passed before people rushed to the aid of the man, who had slumped sideways in his chair. He was carried to his room. And that very day a respectfully stunned world received word of his death.
About the Author and the Translator
German essayist, cultural critic, and novelist, Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. Among his most famous works are Buddenbrooks, published when he was just twenty-six, The Magic Mountain, and Doctor Faustus.
Translator Michael Heim is professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at UCLA. A graduate of Columbia College and Harvard University, his many translations include Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” “Uncle Vanya,” “Three Sisters,” and “The Cherry Orchard,” as well as Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
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Copyright
DEATH IN VENICE.. Translation copyright © 2004 by Michael Henry Heim; introduction copyright © 2004 by Michael Cunningham. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MAY 2004 ISBN: 9780061828171
FIRST EDITION
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*Likewise, Jasiu is the direct-address form of the name of Tadzio’s friend Jás, which is the pet name for Jan. (Translator’s note)
*Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers (New York: Grove Press, 1976), 193.