Thomas Mann in Venice

 　　In the early 1960s, Erica Mann received a letter from Warsaw, the capital of Poland, while editing a collection of letters for her dead father, 1929 Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann (1875-1955). letter. The letter writer, Wladyslaw Moes (1900-1986), claimed to be the child in Thomas Mann's most famous novella "Die in Venice", saying that he had met the grandfather in Venice that year. The writer Mann was eleven years old, although the novel made the child named Tazio thirteen. When Andrzej Dolegowski, the Polish translator of "Death in Venice" heard about it, he was so excited that he asked to meet the baron immediately. Thus, according to author Richard Winston in his biographical book, Thomas Mann: the making of an artist (1875-1911), "he Met a sixty-eight-year-old man who, with photos and collectibles, undeniably proved that he was indeed the ecstatic child in the story."

　　The surname Moise is not standard Polish . pronunciation, it actually comes from Germany. This famous family originally came from Westphalia in northwestern Germany, one of the wealthiest provinces in Prussia at the time. Urakislav's great-grandfather Ernst Moise and grandfather Christian August finally settled in Poland in the 1830s and co-founded it in the northeastern province of Bialystok. Start a prosperous paper company. The province was under Russian rule, and based on their industrial success, finally, Tsar Alexander II of Russia awarded them a hereditary title of baron.

　　Urakislav Moise was born in Wierbka, Poland, the fourth of six children, with an older brother and four sisters. The superiority of the family enables the children to receive a good education, with everything they need for learning and entertainment, and each has a private tutor, as well as private tutors in French and German.

　　Urakislav was born very cute since he was a child. His body, face and fair skin are like carved ivory, and a pair of blue eyes are as crystal clear as clear sea water. Family members and acquaintances usually refer to him by his nickname "Adzio" or "Wladzio" out of liking. At the age of six, when he took up the post of garcon d'honneur at the wedding of an aunt, the Polish novelist and 1905 Nobel Prize winner for literature Henryk Sienkiewicz attended the wedding. , 1846-1916) was attracted by his beauty and liked him very much, even on the way to the church in a four-wheeled carriage, he must hold this "angel written by the great painter Giovanni Tiepolo" to his knees up until the child urinated on the knees of his morning clothes and had to put him down.

　　In 1911, at the age of eleven, Adegio traveled with his family to Venice, Italy.

　　Venice is a famous and beautiful water city and one of the most attractive tourist destinations in the world.

　　Venice is located on the northwestern tip of the Adriatic Sea, on an archipelago in a crescent-shaped lagoon running northeast-southwest. The shallow water in the lagoon is maintained by a series of sand dams. There are many small villages on the sand dams, some of which are hundreds of years old. The Lido village was built in the 19th century and was the most fashionable tourist spot at that time. . From here, looking at the sparkling water of the lagoon, the palaces, towers and domes decorated with marble and frescoes, like real cities, like romantic paintings or pictures in movies, make tourists feel like coming To another world of unparalleled atmosphere and views. Especially in the spring and autumn, the sky is high and the air is cool, the north wind blowing makes people free from the pain of mosquitoes, and relieves the discomfort caused by the humid and hot south wind, which is the best season to visit.

　　In the season of 1911, the Adagio family came to Venice and stayed at the famous Grand Hotel des Bains in Lidosaba.

　　Adegio is well aware of the privileges that his beauty can have, and has been accustomed to being the focal point of beauty since childhood. When he was in Venice, he liked to chat up the owners of flower stalls and fruit stalls and make them happy to give him fruit without taking his money. He also gets close to local fishermen after they take him to their boats. One night, after all the guests in the hotel were seated, Adegio, with his long blond curly hair fluttering, walked down the central grand staircase and entered the restaurant, attracting the crowd waiting to eat. Thomas Mann was among them at the time.

　　Afterwards, Adegio said triumphantly to his aunt: "Everyone is looking at me? Everyone is looking at me!" Man's attention.

　　Yes, Thirty-six year old Thomas Mann was on vacation in Venice with his wife Katya and his brother Heinrich Mann, and it was at the Baines that they met Adeji. Oh's. At that time, although the railway had been running for more than 50 years, they boarded the ship from Pola, Austria, arrived there on May 26, and stayed at the hotel until June 11. It was only because of the rumors among the tourists who came to Venice that the terrifying and virulent cholera was spreading in Palermo, Sicily, not far from here, and it was about to spread to this place. So everyone fled. Mann also returned to Bavaria, where he wrote the novel Dying in Venice.

　　Die neue Rundschau (Die neue Rundschau) in Germany was originally published in 1912. The novel describes the protagonist, the famous writer Gustav von Aschenbach, who was exhausted after years of hard work, hoping to "travel far away, pursue novel things, long for freedom, liberate everything and reach the state of ecstasy". He passed through Austria and boarded a boat from Pola to Venice, Italy, and stayed at the famous hotel in Sapa. Here, he met a "very handsome" Polish boy. "He was pale and laid-back, with dense curly hair, a straight nose, and a charming mouth. He had an angelic innocence and a loveliness reminiscent of sculpture in the heyday of Greek art. An unparalleled charm, Aschenbach felt that he had never seen such a delightful work of art, whether in nature or in the plastic arts." In Aschenbach's impression, the child was simply "the embodiment of spiritual beauty. ", ecstatically felt that he "saw the essence of beauty", and fell into a kind of emotion that could not extricate himself, until the cholera epidemic in the whole city, and other tourists returned home, he still did not want to leave, and finally died by the beach. , before his death, he still felt that "the pale and lovely wandering soul who dominated his spiritual world seemed to be smiling at him". (Translated by Qian Hongjia)

　　 The material for "Death in Venice" basically comes from Mann's trip to Venice. The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann, published in 2002, includes an article by Ritchie Robertson, "Classicism and Its Hidden Problems: "Dying in Venice". pitfalls: Death in Venice) paper. Thomas Mann is quoted in the text:

　　"There is nothing made up in "Death in Venice": the traveller in the northern suburbs of Munich, the black and dirty motorboat, the painted old man, the dishonest gondolier, Tazio and his family, unable to leave due to misplaced luggage, cholera, sincere travel agency managers, malicious street singers, and so on. As long as you pay attention to everything written, my work is the best. Incredible way to prove that, really, it's just a combination."

　　Katia Mann, a tolerant woman, admitted in her autobiography, Katia Mann: Unwritten Memories, that her husband was "fascinated by a ten-year-old boy." live". In the article, she also confirmed:

　　"The details of the novels beginning with the cemetery (in the northern suburbs of Munich - all the words in parentheses are added by the citation, the same below) are all from (Thomas Mann's) personal experience... On the very first day, in the dining room, we saw a Polish family exactly as my husband had described them accurately: the girls were all rather stiff and serious, and the very charming, beautiful boy was about thirteen. year old, wearing a seafarer's top with a nice trim and a stand-up collar. He immediately caught my husband's attention. The kid was so attractive that my husband kept his eyes on him and his playmates on the beach. He Didn't follow him all the way in Venice (as in the novel) - he didn't do that - but the kid really fascinated him and he thought of him a lot... I still remember my uncle Privy Counsellor Friedberg, a canon professor in Leipzig indignantly said: 'What a story! A married man and a family!'"

　　While Katya believes "the child really fascinates him," she seems to stress that Mann "didn't follow him all the way through Venice - he didn't do that", not as Adagio puts it.

　　Adegio recalled it more than sixty years later, saying that he remembered very clearly that no matter where he went, there was always a man watching him; that he remembered a time when he and the great writer were together. His intense gaze on the hotel elevator. Gilbert Adair, Adagio's biographer, was no doubt based on the recollections of his interviewees, as he affirmed: "Whatever the Moises' family wandered through the city (the 18th-century painter) Piranesi The winding streets and dark alleys and stairs described by (Piranesi) are inseparable from his (Mann's) staring eyes..."

　　Adagio and the biographer said, although slightly different from what Katja said , but it can be understood that its credibility is not important and need not be corrected. What is important is how Thomas Mann got his inspiration from his trip to Venice, through the description of the image of Gustav von Aschenbach, to create the recognized world famous book "Death in Venice".

　　When meeting with the famous Italian director Luciano Visconti (1906-1976), the "father of neorealism" in 1951, Mann had the following answer to the question posed to him :

　　"I didn't want to say anything about same-sex feelings at the beginning; it was Goethe's final love affair with a young woman in Marienbad, Ulrike von Levezov, in her seventies, a beautiful, weird one A story that stirs the soul. For this, the experience of lyrical travel is added, but the relationship of the characters in the work makes me write forbidden love, pushing the theme to the extreme. Here, the theme of love is physical and spiritual They are all adventures against middle-class women."

　　Although with the progress of the times and the new understanding due to the development of science, this "forbidden love" is no longer "forbidden" in many countries, but at that time , the writer admits that expressing the theme has always been an "adventure against middle-class women."

　　A few days before leaving for Venice, Thomas Mann learned in Austria that the great Austrian composer and conductor Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) had just died on May 18th. Mahler's ten symphonies cover almost all the themes of the entire romantic music of the 19th century: nature, folklore, human fraternity, belief in God, meditation on fate and death, as well as mysticism, sentimentality, pessimism ism; his conductors enhanced the romantic power of his music with exuberant enthusiasm, rich philosophical color and colorful orchestration and timbre. Mann was deeply moved by Mahler's music and wrote to Mahler after a reception in September 1910 after Mahler played his Symphony No. 8: Symphony of a Thousand. "I was so impressed with you on September 12th that I couldn't express it in the restaurant that night," the letter said. "At least I want to show you that it was a strong satisfaction for me"; he said that Mahler's work "It embodies the most solemn and sacred artistic will of our time..." (Translated by Senior High School)

　　But like many talented artists, Mahler often suffers from the conflict between genius and reality. Most critics and biographers believe that Thomas Mann used Gustav Mahler as the prototype of the protagonist to create "Death in Venice", and the protagonist's name also used Mahler's name Gusta husband. Of course, in the image of Gustav von Aschenbach, Mann also incorporates his own life and emotional experiences. Thomas Mann's biographer Klaus Schliert said:

　　"Thomas Mann himself said that he wrote Gustav von Aschenbach as if he were talking about 'his dead friend'. This is not a confession He breathes with that image of 'hard work to create', and it just confirms the many commonalities between the writer and his creation in this novella. This consistency is recognized by Thomas Mann. Not only All the external situations of Aschenbach, the travels, the stay in Venice, and the homosexual experience, were experienced by Thomas Mann; moreover, he used all his important features to characterize the writer's literary image. . . . ..." (translated by Yin Zhihong et al.)

　　These are completely understandable. When Lucino Visconti adapted Mann's "Death in Venice" into a film of the same name in 1971, he deliberately chose Mahler's Fifth Symphony, in which the stringed instruments and harp play a mournful and moving slow movement. , is a true portrayal of the fate of the protagonist. When people think of Aschenbach, they will naturally think of the writer Thomas Mann himself, as well as the composer Gustav Mahler.

　　To add: Originally in 1924, a relative of Urakislav Moise read "Death in Venice" and introduced him to the novel, which Urakislav said after reading that he was "not very interested". But after watching the film of the same name in Paris, he wrote to Katya the letter he mentioned at the beginning of this article, saying that he was the Adegio of the year.