Thomas Mann · 1912 · mediterranean

Thomas Mann's 1912 novella. Gustav von Aschenbach has written himself to a standstill, and a stranger glimpsed by a Munich cemetery gives him a sudden craving for the south. He goes to the Lido, sees a Polish boy on the beach, never speaks a word to him, and stays on while cholera works quietly through the city.

1. 1
   Munich

   Aschenbach, disciplined to the point of self-erasure, walks past the North Cemetery and sees a stranger with a rucksack and bared teeth. He is seized by a desire to travel that he cannot account for, and within days he has gone.

2. 2
   Pola

   He tries an island resort on the Adriatic first and is bored inside a fortnight - wrong weather, wrong company, wrong everything - and books passage for the one place he had not let himself consider.

3. 3
   The Lido

   At the Hotel des Bains he sees a Polish family, and among them a boy of fourteen so beautiful that he cannot look away. He never speaks to Tadzio. He watches him on the sand, stops working, and stays.

4. 4
   Venice

   He reaches the station meaning to leave, finds his trunk has gone to Como, and returns almost glad. Later he trails Tadzio through the alleys and eats the over-ripe strawberries the city is disinfecting itself against.

5. 5
   The Lido

   Dyed and rouged by the hotel barber into the very thing that disgusted him on the boat, he sits in a deck chair watching Tadzio wade out. The boy turns and seems to beckon. Aschenbach half rises, and does not get up again.