Deaths in Venice

by Kitcher, Philip;

  213. Perhaps that is why Mann preferred the material of Death in Venice: recall his determination to prove himself serious after Königliche Hoheit (see chapter 1 n. 93 and text thereto).

  214. Zur Genealogie der Moral 1 §13; NW 5:279.

  215. I draw the metaphor from Emily Fox Gordon’s novel It Will Come to Me, in which the wife of a professor writes a draft novel with the title Whole Lives Devoured, about the sacrifices demanded in the name of academic culture.

  216. TB (1949–1950) 67 (June 12, 1949).

  3. SHADOWS

  1. THBW 160; the letter is dated April 27.

  2. The surviving diaries make it plain how frustrating he found it to go back and make substantial changes to what had already been written. The entry for June 10, 1919, expresses his annoyance at having to reorganize the early chapters of Zauberberg (TB [1918–1921] 262). Almost three decades later, his difficulties in finding the right beginning for Der Erwählte lead him to consider abandoning the project, although perseverance finally overcomes the obstacles (see, for example, TB [1946–1948] 227, 232, 236, 240, 241, 246, 249).

  3. THBW 159, letter of April 2, 1912. Mann expresses his hope that the novella will be finished before he goes to Davos (at the beginning of May).

  4. See section 7.

  5. GKFA 8.1:523–524; LP 21, L 212, K 17–18, H 36–37.

  6. Britten gives prominence to the eating of the strawberry by reintroducing a minor character, the strawberry seller, who originally appeared on the beach in act 1, scene 5, and who recurs in “The last visit to Venice” (act 2, scene 16), singing the same simple lyrical theme. The opera thus suggests the popular view that Aschenbach dies of cholera as the result of eating infected fruit.

  7. The assumption that Aschenbach dies of cholera is so widespread among writers who discuss Mann’s story that it is almost unfair to single out a particular discussion. Yet precisely because of the exceptional depth of T. J. Reed’s treatment of the novella—and his emphasis on its ambivalence—he can serve as an exemplar of the standard diagnosis. It is made en passant: “… the cholera epidemic, which in Naturalistic terms is what kills Aschenbach, …” (Reed 172). As Reed explicitly notes, cholera was “an ideal accomplice in the creation of a symbolic pattern.” The neatness of the thematic connections thus pushes toward indictment, and Reed, characteristically a subtle explorer of Mann’s ambiguities, needs no further evidence.

  8. GKFA 8.1:590; LP 73, L 261–262, K 61, H 138.

  9. GKFA 8.1:541–542; LP 35, L 225, K 29, H 63.

  10. GKFA 8.1:509; LP 9, L 201, K 8, H 14.

  11. No reader of Buddenbrooks should expect its author to slight the medical details, for the account of the typhus infection that brings Hanno’s death corresponds to turn-of-the-century orthodoxy. Similarly, in Doktor Faustus, Mann does his homework on the meningitis that causes the death of Nepomuk (“Echo”).

  12. GKFA 8.2:486–492; translated by Koelb (K 83–87).

  13. If Aschenbach were suffering from dry cholera transmitted via the strawberry, the interval between initial infection and death would be quite short. “A few days later” (“Einige Tage später”) would thus be misleading.

  14. GKFA 8.2:488; K 84.

  15. Mann’s source for the transmission of cholera emphasized the role infected sellers of fresh produce might play. Aschenbach buys the strawberry from a small greengrocer’s shop (einem kleinen Gemüseladen; GKFA 8.1:587); the notes refer to “an infected greengrocer” (“Gemüsehändler”) as a potential spreader of disease. The vocabulary is simply taken over, even though what Aschenbach buys is fruit (easily obtainable from a street-seller—Britten’s reintroduction of the seller who originally appeared at the lido is thus a minor deviation).

  16. Contrast the essays by Patrick Carnegy and Philip Reed in Donald Mitchell, ed., Benjamin Britten: Death in Venice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Mitchell himself criticizes Visconti’s use of Mahler in the film (in MC 308–313, esp. 310). Since the music of the film will be central to discussions in later sections, we shall return to Mitchell’s characteristically penetrating concerns.

  17. There are, of course, many appreciative studies of Visconti’s film in its own right, studies that praise its cinematic technique and its evocation of pre–World War I European society. In her Luchino Viscontis Tod in Venedig—Übersetzung oder Neuschöpfung? (Aachen: Shaker, 1994), Béatrice Delassalle attempts a more sympathetic appreciation of the relationship between Visconti’s film and Mann’s novella.

  18. It is a tribute to the impact of Visconti’s film that insightful writers on Mahler can attribute the identification Visconti makes to the original novella. Thus Stuart Feder writes: “Mann transformed what he perceived in Mahler into the fictional composer [sic] Gustav Aschenbach the following year, when he wrote Death in Venice” (FGM 249).

  19. As recent biographies of Mahler have emphasized, he was not, in fact, frail. A lifelong devotee of exercise in the open air—especially swimming and mountain climbing—he was devastated by the medical advice he received in 1907 to abandon these activities. See HLM 3:693–695; FGM 137–139; Jonathan Carr, Mahler (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook, 1999), 152–154.

  20. See section 6 of chapter 2.

  21. One relatively weak ground for identifying Alfred with Schoenberg is the obvious prominence of Schoenberg as the young Viennese rebel of the generation immediately succeeding Mahler. Stronger, and more interesting, is Visconti’s interest in connecting Death in Venice with Mann’s later masterpiece Doctor Faustus, in which the central figure is the composer Adrian Leverkühn. As already noted in chapter 2, Leverkühn’s musical innovations are closely modeled on Schoenberg’s development of the tone row. I suspect that Visconti could not resist the gesture of pitting a Schoenberg figure against the Mahler-Mann figure, thereby recapitulating the conflict that arose between Mann and Schoenberg in the wake of the publication of Doktor Faustus: Schoenberg was irate that his principal compositional-theoretic ideas had been attributed to a fictional character, and Mann eventually responded by adding an explanatory note as a pendant to subsequent editions. For Mann’s reactions to Schoenberg’s protests, see TB (1946–1948) 225–229, and for the eventual “resolution,” 314, 316.

  22. See HLM 3:710–711; AMML 64.

  23. These characterizations are offered by Mahler’s authoritative biographer, Henry Louis de La Grange; see HLM 4:453.

  24. For outstanding examples, see Donald Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and Gustav Mahler: Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2005); the analytic appendices to HLM vols. 2, 3, and 4; Constantin Floros, Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies (Pompton Plains, N.J.: Amadeus); and the contributions to MC.

  25. She is named after a species of butterfly shown to the young Adrian by his father, an amateur naturalist and collector: Hetaera esmeralda is distinguished by her clever camouflage, her “transparent nakedness” (durchsichtige Nacktheit); DF 21. I owe to Bence Nanay the insightful suggestion that a more sympathetic treatment of the relations between Mann and Visconti might be forthcoming if the film were viewed not as a setting of the novella but as an attempt at a synthetic treatment of Death in Venice and Doctor Faustus.

  26. DF 187–194. Leverkühn, realizing that he has entered a brothel, sees the piano, goes to it, and plays three chords (from the prayer in the Finale of Weber’s Freischütz); as he stands at the piano, “Esmeralda” brushes his cheek with her arm; his response is to stumble out. Only later does he seek her out. Because of her infection she has left the brothel, and, knowing of her syphilitic state, Leverkühn overrides her concerned warnings and has intercourse with her (DF 205–208).

  27. The story about Nietzsche descends from his friend Paul Deussen. Deussen reports that Nietzsche told him that in 1865, on his arrival in Cologne, he was shown around the city by the driver of a carriage, who eventually left him at a brothel. On discovering the character of the establishment, Nietzsche is al
so supposed to have gone to the brothel piano and played chords on it. Like Leverkühn, he is not supposed to have had any sexual contact on that occasion, but, two years later, he consulted doctors, apparently for syphilitic infection. Doktor Faustus thus follows the lines of the story about Nietzsche quite closely. In the late essay on Nietzsche, Mann recounts the essentials of the anecdote and cites Deussen as the source; GKFA 19.1:189–190; Essays 6:59–61.

  28. See the last paragraph of the “Biography” chapter: GKFA 8.1:515–516; LP 14–15, L 206; K 12, H 22–23.

  29. GKFA 8.2:490; interestingly, the photograph lies within the summary description of cholera.

  30. KMM 80–81.

  31. For a detailed account of Mahler’s last days, see HLM 4:1226–1277.

  32. For a concise but informative account of Mahler’s family and his early life, see FGM, chap. 2. More detail can be found in HLM 1, chaps. 1–3.

  33. Particularly to the elder, Maria (“Putzi”): see HLM 3:690.

  34. GKFA 8.1:509; LP 9–10, L 201, K 8, H 14.

  35. WWV 1 §56; 2:388. Britten’s motif, “My mind beats on,” brilliantly captures the anguish of Aschenbach’s striving.

  36. Milton, sonnet VII (“How soon hath Time, the subtle Thief of Youth”)—see also “On his Blindness”; Keats “When I have fears that I may cease to be.” For Milton, the problem is posed not in terms of his own individual strivings but in relation to the task assigned him by the Creator, in whose providence he can ultimately trust. Keats is closer to Aschenbach, in yearning to express the contents of his “teeming brain,” but the poignancy of his sonnet derives from the thought that, given a normal lifespan, he might be able to do that (and our knowledge of his early death).

  37. As already argued in chapter 2. It is worth noting that Mann’s Aschenbach follows an approach Schopenhauer recognizes as the closest we can come to overcoming the problem of our finitude (the artistic apprehension of the Ideas)—WWV 3. Approximations, however, are not solutions. In the end, the only satisfactory (Schopenhauerian) response is the abnegation of the will.

  38. See FGM 14–15. The association between Isidor and Gustav may explain the parental reaction to Mahler’s practice of climbing out on the roof to read (he was beaten, and the garret window walled up). Feder supposes that the deaths of his siblings had profound effects on Mahler (see 60–61). See also Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Early Years, 10–13.

  39. See FGM 33, 65–66; HLM 2:334–335; La Grange is more skeptical about the enduring effects of Mahler’s fears.

  40. AMML 110.

  41. Both Feder and La Grange are very clear on this point: FGM 271–273, HLM 3:692–696. Feder, however, inclines to a psychosomatic explanation of Mahler’s ultimate death, a diagnosis I view as unnecessarily speculative.

  42. Feder suggests that she might have heard the murmur when lying by her husband’s side; FGM 138.

  43. La Grange (HLM 4:217) recognizes the symphonic character of what began as a cycle of songs with orchestra; he also gives a clear account of Mahler’s decision to use a different name (HLM 4:219–220).

  44. HLM 4:836–852; FGM 179–187.

  45. The long letter of December 1901, in which Mahler formulates the terms of their union, is printed in full in HLM 2:448–452; see also FGM 103–106.

  46. The affinity underscores the possibility, raised in n. 25, that the novella can be fruitfully considered in relation to Doktor Faustus—and thus that Visconti’s film might be viewed as a synthetic treatment freed from obligations of fidelity to either work.

  47. DF 600. Although this is not a connection Visconti explicitly makes among Aschenbach, Mahler, and Leverkühn, it can vindicate, from a different angle, his allusions to Mann’s late novel.

  48. Mitchell’s title for his third volume on Mahler, which I borrow here, is profoundly insightful.

  49. Thus Natalie Bauer-Lechner reported Mahler’s “explanation” of his second symphony, which included the remark “The Scherzo ends with the appalling shriek of this tortured soul.” (From Bauer-Lechner’s Recollections; quoted in Edward Reilly “Todtenfeier and the Second Symphony,” appendix 2, in MC 123.)

  50. An idea that surfaces in a much quoted letter to Max Marschalk of March 26, 1896 (GMB 171–173), where Mahler begins by rejecting the idea of “program music” only to acknowledge later that “at the early stages” of a work’s reception, listeners should have some pointers about how to approach it.

  51. For insightful discussions of Mahler’s “programs” and his attitudes toward them, see Reilly “Todtenfeier and the Second Symphony,” 92–95; Mitchell, “Mahler’s Fifth Symphony” (MC 236–325, esp. 282–285); Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years, 187–194; Hermann Danuser, Gustav Mahler und seine Zeit (Laaber-Verlag, 1996), 134–146; Floros, Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies, 83ff.; and HLM 2:757–758. I hasten to note that this is a very small sample of the large number of pages devoted to the issue of Mahler’s “programs.”

  52. Although I shall offer a relatively abstract philosophical reading of Das Lied von der Erde; see section 6.

  53. Letter to Marschalk, GMB 172–173.

  54. In the case of the Sixth, that affirmation never comes.

  55. Possibly considerably longer: see Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years, 161–163.

  56. Mitchell, Wunderhorn Years, 165–169; Floros, Symphonies, 52–53; Carr, Mahler, 64–67.

  57. The service was for the conductor and composer Hans von Bülow, and there are two sources for the impact of the setting of Klopstock’s ode (from Messias): Mahler’s friend, J. B. Foerster, to whom he had confided his problems about the finale of the symphony, also attended the funeral and visited Mahler afterward, as the composer was drafting his first thoughts and sketches; Mahler also wrote about the role of the service in his composition (GMB 223). See Mitchell, Wunderhorn Years, 168–169, 172–173.

  58. Deryck Cooke, Gustav Mahler: An Introduction to His Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 57.

  59. Mahler’s father was active in the Jewish community in Iglau, playing a role in the construction of the synagogue; see FGM 21–22.

  60. During his time as director of the Budapest Opera, he was often viewed as an outsider, a “German Jew,” and anti-Semitism may have played a role in the critical reception of his First Symphony (FGM 35, 38; Carr, Mahler, 55–56).

  61. See Carr, Mahler, 81, 83–85. Carr bluntly describes the claim of an earlier conversion as “a lie” (83).

  62. See FGM 64; Norman Lebrecht, Why Mahler? (New York: Pantheon, 2010), 84.

  63. For a brilliant analysis of the cycle which emphasizes the “frame,” see Mitchell, “Mahler’s ‘Kammermusikton’” (MC 217–235, esp. 218–221); and Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death, 75–108.

  64. Here I diverge from Mitchell, in hearing the opening song as bleak throughout and the close, hailing the “light of joy of the world” (Freudenlicht der Welt), as bitter, ironic protest. That the real light of joy has been quenched is evident from the huge cry of anguish in the closing phrase of both strophes of the third song—the second of which closes on “erlosch’ner Freudenschein.”

  65. See Mitchell, Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death, 122.

  66. I write as a singer who has studied these songs extensively and performed them in vocal classes (although never in a public concert): I have found it impossible to conclude the first song by sincerely hailing the sun.

  67. In philosophical terms, this might be understood as the vindication of “healthy-mindedness” (to use William James’s terminology—see section 4 of chapter 1). La Grange supposes that the symphony “breathes happiness, joie de vivre, and serenity”—but notes that it aroused criticism because hearers sensed a lack of authenticity (HLM 2:755). Floros (Symphonies, 115) quotes a comment of Bruno Walter’s, which he relates to Schopenhauer’s dictum that the achievement of overcoming the will produces a condition of complete cheerfulness. In my own view, the symphony should be heard as iron
ic commentary on the problem Schopenhauer posed, commentary that can produce an attitude akin to the resignation recommended in the fourth book of WWV. The early hearers mentioned by La Grange recognized that the joie de vivre cannot be taken straight but failed to relate the new work to Mahler’s previous struggles—with the consequence that they missed the ironic dissolution of his central problem.

  68. Except, perhaps, the Sixth Symphony—although here one might take resolution to consist in clear-eyed and courageous recognition that the problem posed is insoluble.

  69. Many discussions of the Adagietto lament what they view as its overpopularity, alleging that Visconti’s use of it has distorted the role this short movement plays in the Fifth Symphony—it is properly seen as linked to the Finale, given the attacca marking in the score after the chord for violin, cello, and double bass dies away—and the film has encouraged slow, and sentimental, performances. See, for example, HLM 3:817–819 and Mitchell, “Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (MC 308–319, esp. 310). It seems to me to be possible to recognize Visconti’s brilliance in choosing and using this music while also recognizing the need to hear the Adagietto in its context and to free it from the oozing sentimentality of some performances and recordings.

  70. The orchestration for considerably reduced orchestral forces—strings and harp—also makes the movement appropriate for the atmosphere Visconti creates around his central protagonist. As Mitchell notes, the movement is a “song without words” (MC 312).

  71. Quoted in Floros, Symphonies, 154. Mengelberg wrote this in annotating his copy of the score and even added a short love poem. La Grange (HLM 2:816–817) and Mitchell (MC 315–317) both express doubts about this story, based on musicological considerations (affinities between the Adagietto and other of Mahler’s works—akin to those shortly to be discussed in the text), although Mitchell finds “it difficult to believe that Mengelberg made the whole thing up.” Mitchell attributes the poem to Mengelberg, describing it as a “horrible, mawkish fabrication,” casting doubt on the conductor’s taste but not necessarily on his reliability.