Death in Venice by Thomas Mann;Joachim Neugroschel

I knew of the plot of the book so I was ready to dive into a whirl of emotions. No – this is not how Mann writes. We follow the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a middle-aged man who is at the height of recognition as an artist and basically on the verge of going downhill. He tries to find inspiration anywhere, and this has to be Venice. From the beginning, I could not sympathise with him. Because the story is told by an unknown third person, I find there is too much distance between myself and the main character. While I can read about his struggle, it felt like reading a report on some unknown soldier in a far-away land. How much more impressive it would have been had I been reading Gustav’s own thoughts and fears and expectations! That was a point I was really astonished with and it triggered a bit of research into Mann’s point of view: It turns out that the story of this book is based on Mann’s own experience. This put everything into a new perspective: did Mann deliberately want to “tone down” the connection between Gustav and himself? Was he afraid that if he had the protagonist talk for himself, he might have revealed more than he was comfortable with? And why should he be uncomfortable?