Speaker 1: Chapter one of Death in Venice by Thomas Mahnn. On
Speaker 1: a spring afternoon of the year nineteen blank, when our
Speaker 1: continent lay under such threatening weather for whole months, Gustav
Speaker 1: Oschenbach or Fawn Oschenbach, as his name read officially, after
Speaker 1: his fiftieth birthday, had left his apartment on the Prince
Speaker 1: Regentinstrasse in Munich and had gone for a long walk
Speaker 1: Overwrought by the trying and precarious work of the forenoon,
Speaker 1: which had demanded a maximum wariness, prudence, penetration, and rigor
Speaker 1: of the will, the writer had not been able, even
Speaker 1: after the noon meal, to break the impetus of the
Speaker 1: productive mechanism within him, that motus animi continuous, which constitutes,
Speaker 1: according to Cicero, the foundation of eloquence. And he had
Speaker 1: not attained the healing sleep, which, what with the increasing
Speaker 1: exhaustion of his strength, he kneaded in the middle of
Speaker 1: each day. So he had gone outdoors soon after tea,
Speaker 1: in the hopes that air and movement would restore him
Speaker 1: and prepare him for a profitable evening. It was the
Speaker 1: beginning of May, and after cold, damp weeks, the false
Speaker 1: Midsummer had set in the English gardens, although the foliage
Speaker 1: was still fresh and sparse, were as pungent as in August,
Speaker 1: and in the parts nearer the city had been full
Speaker 1: of conveyances and promenaders. At the Almeister, which he had
Speaker 1: reached by quieter and quieter paths, Achenbach had surveyed for
Speaker 1: a short time the Verstgarden, with its lively crowds and
Speaker 1: its border of cabs and carriages. From here, as the
Speaker 1: sun was sinking, he had started home outside the park
Speaker 1: across the open fields, and since he felt tired and
Speaker 1: a storm was threatening from the direction of feeling, he
Speaker 1: waited at the North Cemetery for the tram which would
Speaker 1: take him directly back to the city. It happened that
Speaker 1: he found no one in the station or its vicinity.
Speaker 1: There was not a vehicle to be seen, either on
Speaker 1: the paved ungr Strasse with its solitary glistening rails stretching
Speaker 1: out towards Schwabing, or on the fillinger Shau Sea. Behind
Speaker 1: the fences of the Stonemason's establishments, where the crosses, memorial
Speaker 1: tablets and monuments standing for sale formed a second uninhabited
Speaker 1: burial ground. There was no sign of life and opposite him,
Speaker 1: the Byzantine structure of the funeral hall lay silent in
Speaker 1: the reflection of the departing day, its facade ornamented in
Speaker 1: luminous colors with Greek crosses and hieratic paintings, above which
Speaker 1: were displayed inscriptions symmetrically arranged in gold letters and texts
Speaker 1: chosen to bear on the life beyond, such as they
Speaker 1: enter into the dwelling of the Lord, or the light
Speaker 1: of eternity shall shine upon them. And for some time
Speaker 1: as he stood waiting, he found a grave diversion in
Speaker 1: spelling out the formulas and letting his mind's eye lose
Speaker 1: itself in the transparent mysticism. When returning from his reveries,
Speaker 1: he noticed in the portico above the two apocalyptic animals
Speaker 1: guarding the steps the man, whose somewhat unusual appearance gave
Speaker 1: his thoughts an entirely new direction. Whether he had just
Speaker 1: now come out from the inside through the bronze door,
Speaker 1: or had approached and mounted from the outside unobserved, remained uncertain. Aschenbach,
Speaker 1: without applying himself especially to the matter, was inclined to
Speaker 1: believe the former of medium height, thin, smooth shaven, and
Speaker 1: noticeably pug nosed, the man belonged to the red haired
Speaker 1: type and possessed the appropriate fresh milky complexion. Obviously, he
Speaker 1: was not of Bavarian extraction, since at least the white
Speaker 1: and straight brimmed straw hat that covered his head gave
Speaker 1: his appearance the stamp of a foreigner, of someone who
Speaker 1: had come from a long distance. To be sure, he
Speaker 1: was wearing the customary knapsack strapped across his shoulders and
Speaker 1: a belted suit of rough yellow wool. His left arm
Speaker 1: was resting on his thigh, and his gray storm cape
Speaker 1: was thrown across it. In his right hand, he held
Speaker 1: a cane with an iron ferule, which he had struck
Speaker 1: diagonally into the ground, and with his feet crossed, was
Speaker 1: leaning his hip against the crook. His head was raised
Speaker 1: so that the Adam's apple protruded hard and bare on
Speaker 1: a scrawny neck emerging from a loose sport shirt, and
Speaker 1: he was staring sharply off into the distance with colorless,
Speaker 1: red lidded eyes, between which stood two strong vertical wrinkles
Speaker 1: peculiarly suited to his short, turned up nose. Thus, and
Speaker 1: perhaps his elevated position helped to give the impression. His
Speaker 1: bearing had something majestic and commanding about it, something bold
Speaker 1: or even savage. For whether he was grimacing because he
Speaker 1: was blinded by the setting sun, or whether it was
Speaker 1: a case of a permanent distortion of the physiognomy, his
Speaker 1: lips seemed too short. They were so completely pulled back
Speaker 1: from his teeth that these were exposed even to the gums,
Speaker 1: and stood out white and long. It is quite possible
Speaker 1: that Aushenbach, in his half distracted, half inquisitive examination of
Speaker 1: the stranger, had been somewhat inconsiderate, For he suddenly became
Speaker 1: aware that his look was being answered, and indeed so militantly,
Speaker 1: so straight in the eye, so plainly, with the intention
Speaker 1: of driving the thing through to the very end, and
Speaker 1: compelling him to capitulate that he turned away uncomfortably and
Speaker 1: began walking along by the fences, deciding casually that he
Speaker 1: would pay no further attention to the man. The next minute,
Speaker 1: he had forgotten him. But perhaps the exotic element in
Speaker 1: the stranger's appearance had worked on his imagination, or a
Speaker 1: new physical or spiritual influence of some sort had come
Speaker 1: into play. He was quite astonished to note the peculiar
Speaker 1: inner expansion, a kind of roving unrest, a youthful longing
Speaker 1: after far off places, a feeling so vivid, so new,
Speaker 1: or so long dormant and neglected that with his hands
Speaker 1: behind his back and his eyes on the ground, he
Speaker 1: came to a sudden stop and examined into the nature
Speaker 1: and purport of this emotion. It was the desire for travel,
Speaker 1: nothing more, although to be sure, it had attacked him
Speaker 1: violently and was heightened to a passion, even to the
Speaker 1: point of an hallucination. His yearnings crystallized. His imagination, still
Speaker 1: in ferment from his hours of work, actually pictured all
Speaker 1: the marbles and terrors of a manifold world which it
Speaker 1: was suddenly struggling to conceive. He saw a landscape, a
Speaker 1: tropical swamp land under a heavy, murky sky, damp, luxuriant
Speaker 1: and enormous, a kind of prehistoric wilderness of islands, bogs,
Speaker 1: and arms of water sluggish with mud. He saw near
Speaker 1: him and in the distance, the hairy shafts of palms
Speaker 1: rising out of a rank, lecherous thicket, out of places
Speaker 1: where the plant life was fat, swollen, and blossoming exorbitantly.
Speaker 1: He saw strangely misshapen trees, sending their roots into the
Speaker 1: ground into stagnant pools with greenish reflections. And here between
Speaker 1: floating flowers which were milk white and large as dishes,
Speaker 1: birds of a strange nature, high shouldered with crooked bills,
Speaker 1: were standing in the muck and looking motionless to one side.
Speaker 1: Between dense knotted stalks of bamboo, he saw the glint
Speaker 1: from the eyes of a crouching tiger, and he felt
Speaker 1: his heart knocking with fear and with puzzling desires. Then
Speaker 1: the image disappeared, and with a shake of his head,
Speaker 1: Aschenbach resumed his walk along past the fences of the
Speaker 1: Stonemason's establishments. Since the time, at least when he could
Speaker 1: command the means to enjoy the advantages of moving about
Speaker 1: the world as he pleased, he had considered traveling simply
Speaker 1: as an hygienic precaution which must be complied with now
Speaker 1: and then, despite one's feeling and one's preferences. Too busy
Speaker 1: with the tasks arranged for him by his interest, in
Speaker 1: his own ego and in the problems of Europe, too
Speaker 1: burdened with the onus of production, too little, prone to diversion,
Speaker 1: and in no sense an amateur of the varied amusements
Speaker 1: of the great world. He had been thoroughly satisfied with
Speaker 1: such knowledge of the Earth's surface as any one can
Speaker 1: get without moving far out of his own circle, and
Speaker 1: he had never even been tempted to leave Europe, especially
Speaker 1: now that his life was slowly on the decline, and
Speaker 1: that the artist's fear of not having finished this uneasiness
Speaker 1: lest the clock run down before he had done his
Speaker 1: part and given himself completely, could no longer be waived.
Speaker 1: Aside as mere whim. He had confined his outer existence
Speaker 1: almost exclusively to the beautiful city which had become his home,
Speaker 1: and to the rough country house which he had built
Speaker 1: in the mountains, and where he spent the rainy summers. Further,
Speaker 1: this thing, which had laid hold of him so belatedly
Speaker 1: but with such suddenness, was very readily moderated and adjusted
Speaker 1: by the force of his reason and of a discipline
Speaker 1: which he had practiced since youth. He had intended carrying
Speaker 1: his life work forward to a certain point before he
Speaker 1: moving to the country, and the thought of knocking about
Speaker 1: the world for months and neglecting his work during this
Speaker 1: time seemed much too lax and contrary to his plans.
Speaker 1: It really could not be considered seriously. Yet he knew
Speaker 1: only too well what the reasons were for this unexpected temptation.
Speaker 1: It was the urge to escape, he admitted to himself,
Speaker 1: this yearning for the new and the remote, this appetite
Speaker 1: for freedom, for unburdening, for forgetfulness. It was a pressure
Speaker 1: away from his work, from the steady drudgery of a
Speaker 1: coldly passionate service. To be sure, he loved this work,
Speaker 1: and almost loved the innovating battle that was fought daily
Speaker 1: between a proud, tenacious will, so often tested, and this
Speaker 1: growing weariness, which no one was to suspect, and which
Speaker 1: must not betray itself in his productions by any sign
Speaker 1: of weakness or negligence. But it seemed wise not to
Speaker 1: draw the bow overtightly, and not to strangle by sheer
Speaker 1: obstinacy so strongly persistent an appetite. He thought of his work,
Speaker 1: thought of the place at which, yesterday and now again
Speaker 1: to day he had been forced to leave off, and
Speaker 1: which it seemed would yield neither to patience and coaxing,
Speaker 1: nor to a definite attack. He examined it again, trying
Speaker 1: to break through or to circumvent the dedlock, but he
Speaker 1: gave up with a shudder of repugnance. There was no
Speaker 1: unusual difficulty here. What balked him were the scruples of
Speaker 1: aversion which took the form of a fastidious insatiability. Even
Speaker 1: as a young man, this insatiability had meant to him
Speaker 1: the very nature, the fullest essence of talent, and for
Speaker 1: that reason he had restrained and chilled his emotions, since
Speaker 1: he was aware that they inclined to content themselves with
Speaker 1: a happy approximation, a state of semi completion. Were these
Speaker 1: enslaved emotions now taking their vengeance on him by leaving
Speaker 1: him in the lurch, by refusing to forward and lubricate
Speaker 1: his art, And were they bearing off with them every enjoyment,
Speaker 1: every live interest in form and expression. Not that he
Speaker 1: was producing anything bad. His years gave him at least
Speaker 1: this advantage that he felt himself at all times in
Speaker 1: full and easy possession of his craftsmanship. But while the
Speaker 1: nation honored him for this, he himself was not content,
Speaker 1: and it seemed to him that his work lacked the
Speaker 1: marks of that fiery and fluctuating emotionalism which is an
Speaker 1: enormous thing in one's favor, and which, while it argues
Speaker 1: an enjoyment on the part of the author, also constitutes
Speaker 1: more than any depth of content, the enjoyment of the amateur.
Speaker 1: He feared the summer in the country, alone in the
Speaker 1: little house, with the maid who prepared his meals and
Speaker 1: the servant who brought them to him. He feared the
Speaker 1: familiar view of the mountain peak and the slopes which
Speaker 1: would stand about him, and his boredom and his discontent. Consequently,
Speaker 1: there was need of a break in some new direction.
Speaker 1: If the summer was to be endurable and productive, he
Speaker 1: must attempt something out of his usual orbit. He must relax,
Speaker 1: get a change of air, bring an element of freshness
Speaker 1: into the blood to travel. Then that much was settled.
Speaker 1: Not far, not all the way to the tigers, but
Speaker 1: one night on the sleeper and a rest of three
Speaker 1: or four weeks at some pleasant resort in the south.
Speaker 1: He thought this out while the noise of the electric
Speaker 1: tram came nearer along the Ungler Strasse, and as he
Speaker 1: boarded it he decided to devote the evening to the
Speaker 1: study of maps and timetables. On the platform, it occurred
Speaker 1: to him to look around for the man in the
Speaker 1: straw hat his companion during that most significant time spent
Speaker 1: waiting at the station, but his whereabouts remas uncertain, as
Speaker 1: he was not to be seen either at the place
Speaker 1: where he was formerly standing, or anywhere else in the
Speaker 1: vicinity of the station, or on the car itself. End
Speaker 1: of chapter one, Chapter two, the author of that lucid
Speaker 1: and powerful prose epic built around the life of Frederick
Speaker 1: of Prussia, the tenacious artist, who, after long application, wove
Speaker 1: rich varied strands of human destiny together under one single
Speaker 1: predominating theme in the fictional tapestry known as Maya, the
Speaker 1: creator of that stark tale which is called the Wretch,
Speaker 1: and which pointed out for an entire oncoming generation the
Speaker 1: possibility of some moral certainty beyond pure knowledge. Finally the writer,
Speaker 1: and this sums up briefly the works of his mature
Speaker 1: period of the impassioned Treatise on Art and the Spirit,
Speaker 1: whose capacity for mustering facts and further whose fluency in
Speaker 1: their presentation led cautious judges to place this treatise alongside
Speaker 1: Schiller's conclusions on naive and sentimental poetry. Gustav Aschenbach, then
Speaker 1: was the son of a higher law official and was
Speaker 1: born in El, a leading city in the province of Silesia.
Speaker 1: His forebears had been officers, magistrates, government functionaries, men who
Speaker 1: had led severe, steady lives, serving their king, their state.
Speaker 1: A deeper strain of spirituality had been manifest in them
Speaker 1: once in the person of a preacher. The preceding generation
Speaker 1: had brought a brisker, more sensuous blood into the family
Speaker 1: through the author's mother, daughter of a bohemian bandmaster. The
Speaker 1: traces of foreigness in his features came from her. A
Speaker 1: marriage of sober, painstaking conscientiousness with impulses of a darker,
Speaker 1: more fiery nature had an artist as its result, and
Speaker 1: this particular artist, since his whole nature was centered around
Speaker 1: acquiring a reputation, he showed himself, if not exactly precocious,
Speaker 1: at least thanks to the firmness and pithiness of his personality.
Speaker 1: His accent ripened and adjusted to the public at an
Speaker 1: early age, almost as a schoolboy, he had made a
Speaker 1: name for himself. Within ten years he had learned to
Speaker 1: face the world through the medium of his writing table
Speaker 1: to discharge the obligations of his fame in a correspondence which,
Speaker 1: since many claims are pressed on the successful, the trustworthy
Speaker 1: had to be brief as well as pleasant, and to
Speaker 1: the point at forty wearied by the vicissitudes and the
Speaker 1: exertion of his own work, he had to manage a
Speaker 1: daily mail which bore the postmarks of countries in all
Speaker 1: parts of the world, equally removed from the banal and
Speaker 1: the eccentric. His talents were so constituted as to gain
Speaker 1: both the confidence of the general public and the stable
Speaker 1: admiration and sympathy of the critical. Thus, even as a
Speaker 1: young man continually devoted to the pursuit of craftsmanship and
Speaker 1: that of no ordinary kind, he had never known the
Speaker 1: careless freedom of youth. When around thirty five years of
Speaker 1: age he had been taken ill in Vienna, one sharp
Speaker 1: observer said of him in company, you see Aschenbach has
Speaker 1: always lived like this. And the speaker contracted the fingers
Speaker 1: of his left hand into a fist, never like this,
Speaker 1: and he let his open hand droop comfortably from the
Speaker 1: arm of his chair. That hit the mark and the heroic.
Speaker 1: The ethical about it all was that he was not
Speaker 1: of a strong constitution, and though he was pledged by
Speaker 1: his nature to these steady efforts, he was not really
Speaker 1: born to them. Considerations of ill health had kept him
Speaker 1: from attending school as a boy, and had compelled him
Speaker 1: to receive instruction at home. He had grown up alone,
Speaker 1: without comrades, and he was forced to realize soon enough
Speaker 1: that he belonged to a race which often lacked not talent,
Speaker 1: but that physical substructure which talent relies on for its
Speaker 1: fullest fruition. A race accustomed to giving its best early
Speaker 1: and seldom extending its faculties over the years. But his
Speaker 1: favorite phrase was carrying through. In his novel On Frederick,
Speaker 1: he saw the pure apotheosis of this command, which struck
Speaker 1: him as the essential concept of the virtuous inaction and passion. Also,
Speaker 1: he wished earnestly to grow old, since he had always
Speaker 1: maintained that the only artistry which can be called truly great, comprehensive,
Speaker 1: yes even truly admirable, is that which is permitted to
Speaker 1: bear fruits characteristic of each stage in human development. Since
Speaker 1: he must carry the responsibilities of his talent on frail
Speaker 1: shoulders and wanted to go a long way, the primary
Speaker 1: requirement was discipline, and fortunately, discipline was his direct inheritance
Speaker 1: from his father's side. By forty fifty, or at an
Speaker 1: earlier age, when others are still slashing about with enthusiasm
Speaker 1: and are contentedly putting off to some later date the
Speaker 1: execution of plans on a large scale. He would start
Speaker 1: the day early, dashing cold water over his chest and back,
Speaker 1: and then with a couple of tall wax candles in
Speaker 1: silver candlesticks at the head of his manuscript, he would
Speaker 1: pay out to his art in two or three eager,
Speaker 1: scrupulous morning hours, the strength which he had accumulated in sleep.
Speaker 1: It was pardonable. Indeed, it was a direct tribute to
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of his moral scheme that the uninitiated took
Speaker 1: his Maya world and the massive epic machinery upon which
Speaker 1: the life of the hero Frederick was unrolled as evidence
Speaker 1: of long breath and sustaining power, while actually they had
Speaker 1: been built up layer by layer in small daily allotments,
Speaker 1: through hundreds and hundreds of single inspirations, and if they
Speaker 1: were so excellent in both composition and texture, it was
Speaker 1: solely because their creator had held out for years under
Speaker 1: the strain of one single work, with a steadiness of
Speaker 1: will and a tenacity comparable to that which conquered his
Speaker 1: native province. And because finally he had turned over his
Speaker 1: most vital and valuable hours to the problem of minute revision.
Speaker 1: In order that a significant work of the mind may
Speaker 1: exert immediately some broad and deep effect, a secret relationship
Speaker 1: or even conformity must exist between the personal destiny of
Speaker 1: the author and the common destiny of his contemporaries. People
Speaker 1: do not know why they raise a work of art
Speaker 1: to fame. Far from being connoisseurs. They believe that they
Speaker 1: see in it hundreds of virtues which justify so much interest.
Speaker 1: But the true interest for their applause is an unconscious sympathy.
Speaker 1: Aschenbach had once stated, quite plainly in some remote place,
Speaker 1: that nearly everything great which comes into being does so
Speaker 1: in spite of something, in spite of sorrow or suffering, poverty, destitution,
Speaker 1: physical weakness, depravity, passion, or a thousand other handicaps. But
Speaker 1: that was not merely an observation. It was a discovery,
Speaker 1: the formula of his life and reputation, the key to
Speaker 1: his work. And what wonder then, that it was also
Speaker 1: the distinguishing moral trait, the dominating gesture of his most
Speaker 1: characteristic figures. Years before, one shrewd analyst had written of
Speaker 1: the new hero type to which this author gave preference,
Speaker 1: and which kept turning up variations of one sort or another.
Speaker 1: He called it the conception of an intellectual and youthful masculinity,
Speaker 1: which stands motionless, haughty, ashamed, with jaw set, while swords
Speaker 1: and spear points beset the body. That was beautiful and ingenious,
Speaker 1: and it was exact, although it may have seemed to
Speaker 1: suggest too much passivity for to be poised against fatality.
Speaker 1: To meet adverse conditions gracefully is more than simple endurance.
Speaker 1: It is an act of aggression, a positive triumph. And
Speaker 1: the figure of Sebastian is the most beautiful figure, if
Speaker 1: not of art as a whole, at least of the
Speaker 1: art of literature. Looking into this fictional world, one saw
Speaker 1: a delicate self mastery by which any inner deterioration, any
Speaker 1: biological decay, was kept concealed from the eyes of the world.
Speaker 1: A crude, vicious sensuality capable of fanning its rising passions
Speaker 1: into pure flame, yes, even of mounting to dominance in
Speaker 1: the realm of beauty. A pallid weakness which draws from
Speaker 1: the glowing depths of the soul the strength to bow
Speaker 1: whole arrogant peoples before the foot of the cross, or
Speaker 1: before the feet of weakness itself, a charming manner maintained
Speaker 1: in his cold, strict service to form a false, precarious
Speaker 1: mode of living, and the keenly enervating, melancholy and artifice
Speaker 1: of the born deceiver to observe such trials as this
Speaker 1: was enough to make one question whether there really was
Speaker 1: any heroism other than weakness, And in any case, what
Speaker 1: heroism could be more in keeping with the times. Gustav
Speaker 1: Aschenbach was the one poet among the many workers on
Speaker 1: the verge of exhaustion, all those overburdened, used up, tenacious
Speaker 1: moralists of production, who delicately built and destitute of means,
Speaker 1: can rely for a time at least on wilp power
Speaker 1: and the shrewd husbandry of the resources to secure the
Speaker 1: effects of greatness. There are many such, There are the
Speaker 1: heroes of the period, and they all found themselves in
Speaker 1: his works. Here they were indeed upheld, intensified, applauded. They
Speaker 1: were grateful to him, they acclaimed him. In his time,
Speaker 1: he had been young and raw, and misled by his age.
Speaker 1: He had blundered in public, he had stumbled, had exposed himself.
Speaker 1: Both in writing and in talk. He had offended against
Speaker 1: caution and tact, but he had acquired the dignity, which,
Speaker 1: as he insisted, is the innate, good and craving of
Speaker 1: every great talent. In fact, it could be said that
Speaker 1: his entire development had been a conscious, undeviating progression away
Speaker 1: from the embarrassments of skepticism and irony, and towards dignity.
Speaker 1: The general masses are satisfied by vigor and tangibility of treatment,
Speaker 1: rather than by any close intellectual processes. But youth, with
Speaker 1: its passion for absolute, can be arrested only by the problematical.
Speaker 1: And Aschenbach had been absolute problematical as only a youth
Speaker 1: could be. He had been a slave to the intellect,
Speaker 1: had played havoc with knowledge, had ground up his seed crops,
Speaker 1: had divulged secrets, had discredited talent, had betrayed art. Yes,
Speaker 1: while his modelings were entertaining the faithful votaries, filling them
Speaker 1: with enthusiasm, making their lives more keen. This youthful artist
Speaker 1: was taking the breath away from the generation than in
Speaker 1: its twenties by his cynicisms on the questionable nature of art,
Speaker 1: of artistry, itself. But it seems that nothing blunts the
Speaker 1: edge of a noble, robust mind more quickly and more
Speaker 1: thoroughly than the sharp and bitter corrosion of knowledge, And certainly,
Speaker 1: the moody radicalism of the youth, no matter how conscious anxious,
Speaker 1: was shallow in comparison with his firm determination as an
Speaker 1: older man and a master, to deny knowledge, to reject it,
Speaker 1: to pass it with raised head, in so far as
Speaker 1: it is capable of crippling, discouraging, or degrading to the
Speaker 1: slightest degree our will, acts, feelings, or even passions. How
Speaker 1: else could the famous story of the Wretch be understood
Speaker 1: than as an outburst of repugnance against the disreputable psychologism
Speaker 1: of the times, embodied in the figure of that soft
Speaker 1: and stupid half clown who pilfers a destiny for himself
Speaker 1: by guiding his wife from powerlessness, from lusciviousness, from ethical
Speaker 1: frailty into the arms of an adolescent, and believes that
Speaker 1: he may, through profundity commit vileness. The verbal pressure with
Speaker 1: which he here cast out the outcast announced the return
Speaker 1: from every moral skepticism, from all fellow feelings. With the
Speaker 1: engulfed it was the counter move to the laxity of
Speaker 1: the sympathetic principle that to understand all is to forgive all.
Speaker 1: And the thing that was here well begun even nearly completed.
Speaker 1: Was that miracle of reborn ingenuousness, which was taken up
Speaker 1: a little later in one of the author's dialogues expressly
Speaker 1: and not without a certain discrete emphasis strange coincidences. Was
Speaker 1: it as a result of this rebirth, this new dignity
Speaker 1: and sternness, that his feeling for beauty, a discriminating purity,
Speaker 1: simplicity and evenness of attack, which henceforth gave his productions
Speaker 1: such an obvious, even such a deliberate stamp of mastery
Speaker 1: and classicism showed an almost excessive strengthening about this time.
Speaker 1: But ethical resoluteness in the exclusion of science, of emancipatory
Speaker 1: and restrictive knowledge. Does this not in turn signify simplification,
Speaker 1: the reduction morally of the world to two limited terms,
Speaker 1: and thus also a strengthened capacity for the forbidden, the evil,
Speaker 1: the morally impossible, And does not form have two aspects?
Speaker 1: Is it not moral and unmoral at once? Moral in
Speaker 1: that it is the result and expression of discipline but unmoral,
Speaker 1: and even immoral, in that, by nature it contains an
Speaker 1: indifference to morality, is calculated in fact, to make morality
Speaker 1: bend beneath its proud and unencumbered scepter. Be that as
Speaker 1: it may, an evolution is a destiny, And why should
Speaker 1: his evolution, which has been upheld by the general confidence
Speaker 1: of a vast public, not run through a different course
Speaker 1: from one accomplished outside the luster and the entanglements of fame.
Speaker 1: Only chronic vagabondage will find it tedious and be inclined
Speaker 1: to scoff. When a great talent outgrows the libertine chrysalis stage,
Speaker 1: learn to seize upon and express the dignity of the mind,
Speaker 1: and superimposes the formal etiquette upon a solitude which had
Speaker 1: been filled with unchastened and rigidly isolated sufferings and struggles,
Speaker 1: and had brought all this to a point of power
Speaker 1: and honor among men. Further, how much sport, defiance, indulgence
Speaker 1: there is in the self formation of a talent. Gradually,
Speaker 1: something official didactic crept into Gustav Boschenbach's productions. His style
Speaker 1: in later life fought shy of any abruptness and boldness
Speaker 1: any subtle and unexpected contrasts. He inclined towards the fixed
Speaker 1: and standardized, the conventionally elegant, the conservative, the formal, the formulated. Nearly, and,
Speaker 1: as is traditionally said of Lewis fourteen, with the advancing years,
Speaker 1: he came to omit every common word from his vocabulary.
Speaker 1: And about this time it happened that the educationtional authorities
Speaker 1: included selected pages by him in their prescribed school readers.
Speaker 1: This was deeply sympathetic to his nature, and he did
Speaker 1: not decline when a German prince, who had just mounted
Speaker 1: to the throne raised the author of the Frederick to
Speaker 1: nobility on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. After a
Speaker 1: few years of unrest a few tentative stopping places here
Speaker 1: and there, he soon chose Munich as his permanent home,
Speaker 1: and lived there in a state of middle class respectability,
Speaker 1: such as fits in with the life of the mind
Speaker 1: in certain individual instances. The marriage, which when still young
Speaker 1: he had contracted with a girl of an educated family,
Speaker 1: came to an end with her death. After a short
Speaker 1: period of happiness, he was left with a daughter, now married.
Speaker 1: He had never had a son, Gustav Vawn Ochenbach was
Speaker 1: somewhat below average height, dark and smooth shaven. His head
Speaker 1: seemed to be too large in comparison with his almost
Speaker 1: dapper figure. His hair was brushed straight back, thinning out
Speaker 1: towards the crown, but very full about the temples and
Speaker 1: strongly marked with gray. It framed a high, ridged forehead.
Speaker 1: Gold spectacles with rimless lenses cut into the bridge of
Speaker 1: his bold, heavy nose. The mouth was big, sometimes drooping,
Speaker 1: sometimes suddenly pinched and firm. His cheeks were thin and wrinkled.
Speaker 1: His well formed chin had a slight cleft. This head,
Speaker 1: usually bent patiently to one side, seemed to have gone
Speaker 1: through momentous experiences, and yet it was his art which
Speaker 1: had produced those effects in his face, effects which are
Speaker 1: elsewhere the result of hard and agitated living. Behind this brow,
Speaker 1: the brilliant repartee of the dialog on war between Voltaire
Speaker 1: and the King had been born. These eyes, peering steadily
Speaker 1: and wearily from behind their glasses, had seen the bloody
Speaker 1: inferno of the lazarette in the Seven Years War. Even
Speaker 1: as it applies to the individual, art is a heightened
Speaker 1: mode of existence. It gives deeper pleasures, It consumes more
Speaker 1: quickly it carves into its servants faces the marks of
Speaker 1: imaginary and spiritual adventures, and though their external activities may
Speaker 1: be as quiet as a cloister, it produces the lasting
Speaker 1: voluptuousness over refinement, fatigue, and curiosity of the nerves, such
Speaker 1: as can barely result from a life filled with illicit
Speaker 1: passions and enjoyments. End of Chapter two, Chapter three, Part one.
Speaker 1: Various matters of a literary and social nature delayed his
Speaker 1: departure until about two weeks after that walk in Munich. Finally,
Speaker 1: he gave orders to have his country house ready for
Speaker 1: occupancy within a month and one day. Between the middle
Speaker 1: and the end of May, he took the night train
Speaker 1: for Trieste, where he made a stop over of only
Speaker 1: twenty four hours, and embarked the following morning for Pola.
Speaker 1: What he was hunting was something foreigned and unrelated to himself,
Speaker 1: which would at the same time be quickly within reach,
Speaker 1: and so he stopped at an island in the Adriatic
Speaker 1: which had become well known in recent years. It lay
Speaker 1: not far off the Eastrian coast, with beautifully rugged cliffs
Speaker 1: fronting the open sea, and natives who dressed invariegated tatters
Speaker 1: and made strange sounds when they spoke. But rain and
Speaker 1: a heavy atmosphere, a provincial and exclusively Austrian patronage at
Speaker 1: the hotel, and the lack of that restfully intimate association
Speaker 1: with the sea which can be gotten only by a
Speaker 1: soft sandy beach irritated him and prevented him from feeling
Speaker 1: that he had found the place he was looking for.
Speaker 1: Something within him was disturbing him and drawing him. He
Speaker 1: was not sure where he studied sailing dates. He looked
Speaker 1: about him questioningly, and of a sudden as a thing
Speaker 1: both astounding and self evident. His goal was before him.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to reach overnight, the unique, the fabulously different,
Speaker 1: where did you go? But that was plain? What was
Speaker 1: he doing here? He had lost the trail he had
Speaker 1: wanted to go there. He did not delay in giving
Speaker 1: notice of his mistake in stopping here. In the early
Speaker 1: morning mist a week and a half after his arrival
Speaker 1: on the island, a fast motor boat was carrying him
Speaker 1: and his luggage back over the water to the naval port,
Speaker 1: and he landed there just long enough to cross the
Speaker 1: gangplank to the damp deck of a ship which was
Speaker 1: lying under steam ready for the voyage to Venice. It
Speaker 1: was an old hulk flying the Italian flag, decrepit, sooty
Speaker 1: and mournful in a cave like artificially lighted inside cabin
Speaker 1: where Aschenbach immediately upon boarding the ship was conducted by
Speaker 1: a dirty, punchbacked sailor who smirked politely. There was sitting
Speaker 1: behind a table, his hat cocked over his forehead and
Speaker 1: a cigarette stump in the corner of his mouth, a
Speaker 1: man with a goatee and with the face of an
Speaker 1: old style circus director, who was taking down the particulars
Speaker 1: of the passengers with professional grimaces and distributing the tickets
Speaker 1: to Venice. He repeated Aschenbach's request as he extended his arm,
Speaker 1: then plunged his pen into the pasty dregs of a
Speaker 1: precariously tilted ink. Well to Venice, first class, at your service, sir,
Speaker 1: And he wrote a generous scrawl, sprinkled it with blue
Speaker 1: sand out of a box, let the sand run off
Speaker 1: into a clay bowl, folded the paper with sallow, bony fingers,
Speaker 1: and began writing again A happily chosen destination. He chatted
Speaker 1: on ah Venice, a splendid city, a city of irresistible
Speaker 1: attractiveness for the educated, on account of its history as
Speaker 1: well as its present day charms. The smooth rapidity of
Speaker 1: his movements and the empty words accompanying them had something
Speaker 1: anesthetic and reassuring about them, much as though he feared
Speaker 1: lest the traveler might still be vacillating in his decision
Speaker 1: to go to Venice. He handled the cash briskly and
Speaker 1: let the change fall on the spotted table cover with
Speaker 1: the skill of a croupier. A pleasant journey, sir, he said,
Speaker 1: with a theatrical bow. Gentlemen, I have the honor of
Speaker 1: serving you, he called out immediately after, with his arm upraised,
Speaker 1: and he acted as if business were in full swing,
Speaker 1: although no one else was there to require his attention.
Speaker 1: Haschenbach returned to the deck with one arm on the railing.
Speaker 1: He watched the passengers on board and the idlers who
Speaker 1: loitered about the dock waiting for the ship to sail.
Speaker 1: The second class passengers, men and women, were huddled together
Speaker 1: on the fore deck, using boxes and bundles as seats.
Speaker 1: A group of young people made up the travelers on
Speaker 1: the first deck, clerks from Pola, it seemed, who had
Speaker 1: gathered in the greatest excitement for an excursion to Italy.
Speaker 1: They made a considerable fuss about themselves and their enterprise, chattered, laughed,
Speaker 1: enjoyed their own antics self contentedly, and leaning over the
Speaker 1: hand rails, shouted flippantly and mockingly at their comrades, who,
Speaker 1: with portfolios under their arms, were going up and down
Speaker 1: the water front on business and kept threatening the picnickers
Speaker 1: with their canes. One in a bright yellow summer suit
Speaker 1: of ultra fashionable cut, with a red necktie and a
Speaker 1: rakishly tilted panama, surpassed all the others in his crowing
Speaker 1: good humor. But as soon as Aschenbach looked at him
Speaker 1: a bit more carefully, he discovered with a kind of
Speaker 1: horror that the youth was a cheat. He was old,
Speaker 1: that was unquestionable. There were wrinkles around his eyes and mouth.
Speaker 1: The faint crimson of the cheeks was paint. The hair
Speaker 1: under his brilliantly decorated straw hat was a wig. His
Speaker 1: neck was hollow and stringy, His turned up mustache and
Speaker 1: the imperial on his chin were dyed. The full set
Speaker 1: of yellow teeth, which he displayed when he laughed a
Speaker 1: cheap artificial plate, and his hands, with signet rings on
Speaker 1: both index fingers, were those of an old man. Fascinated
Speaker 1: with loathing. Aschenbach watched him in his intercourse with his friends.
Speaker 1: Did they not know, did they not observe that he
Speaker 1: was old, that he was not entitled to wear their bright,
Speaker 1: foppish clothing, that he was not entitled to play it
Speaker 1: being one of them? Unquestioningly and as quite the usual thing,
Speaker 1: it seemed they allowed him among them, treating him as
Speaker 1: one of their own kind, and returning his jovial nudges
Speaker 1: in the ribs without repugnance. How could that be? Haschenbach
Speaker 1: laid his hand on his forehead and closed his eyes.
Speaker 1: They were hot since he had had too little sleep.
Speaker 1: He felt as though everything were not quite the same
Speaker 1: as usual, as though some dreamlike estrangement, some peculiar distortion
Speaker 1: of the world were beginning to take possession of him,
Speaker 1: and perhaps this could be stopped if he hid his
Speaker 1: face for a time and then looked around him again.
Speaker 1: Yet at this moment he felt as though he were swimming,
Speaker 1: and looking up with an unreasoned fear, he discovered that
Speaker 1: the heavy, lugubrious body of the ship was separating slowly
Speaker 1: from the walled bank. Inch by with the driving and
Speaker 1: reversing of the engine, the strip of dirty, glistening water
Speaker 1: widened between the dock and the side of the ship,
Speaker 1: and after cumbersome maneuvering, the steamer finally turned its nose
Speaker 1: towards the open sea. Aschenbach crossed to the starboard side,
Speaker 1: where the hunchback had set up a deck chair for
Speaker 1: him and a steward and a spotted dress coat, asked
Speaker 1: after his wants. The sky was gray, the wind damp,
Speaker 1: harbor and islands had been left behind, and soon all
Speaker 1: land was lost in the haze. Flakes of coal dust
Speaker 1: bloated with moisture, fell over the washed deck, which would
Speaker 1: not dry. After the first hour. An awning was spread
Speaker 1: since it had begun to rain. Bundled up in his
Speaker 1: coat a book in his lap, the traveler rested and
Speaker 1: the hours passed unnoticed. It stopped raining, the canvas awning
Speaker 1: was removed, The horizon was unbroken, the sea empty, like
Speaker 1: an enormous disk lay stretched under the curve of the sky,
Speaker 1: but in empty inarticulate space. Our senses lose also the
Speaker 1: dimensions of time, and we slip into the incommensurate as
Speaker 1: he rested, Strange shadowy figures, the old dandy, the goateee
Speaker 1: from the inside cabin passed through his mind with vague gestures,
Speaker 1: muddled dream words, and he was asleep. About noon he
Speaker 1: was called to a meal down in the corridor like
Speaker 1: dining hall into which the doors opened from the sleeping cabins.
Speaker 1: He ate near the head of a long table at
Speaker 1: the other end of which the clerks, including the old man,
Speaker 1: had been drinking with the boisterous captain since ten o'clock.
Speaker 1: The food was poor, and he finished rapidly. He felt
Speaker 1: driven outside to look at the sky to see if
Speaker 1: it showed signs of being brighter above Venice. He he
Speaker 1: kept thinking that this had to occur, since the city
Speaker 1: had always received him in full blaze. But sky and
Speaker 1: sea remained dreary and leaden. At times, a misty rain fell,
Speaker 1: and here he was reaching by water, a different Venice
Speaker 1: than he had ever found when approaching on land. He
Speaker 1: stood by the force days, looking in the distance, waiting
Speaker 1: for land. He thought of the heavy hearted, enthusiastic poet,
Speaker 1: for whom the domes and bell towers of his dreams
Speaker 1: had once risen out of these waters he relived in silence,
Speaker 1: some of that reverence, happiness, and sorrow, which had been
Speaker 1: turned then into cautious song, and easily susceptible to sensations
Speaker 1: already molded. He asked himself, wearily and earnestly, whether some
Speaker 1: new enchantment and distraction, some belated adventure of the emotions,
Speaker 1: might still be held in store for this idle traveler.
Speaker 1: Then the flat coast merged on the right. The sea
Speaker 1: was alive with fishing smacks. The bather's island appeared. It
Speaker 1: dropped behind. To the left, the steamer slowly entered the
Speaker 1: narrow port, which is named after it, and on the lagoon,
Speaker 1: facing gay ramshackled houses, it stopped completely, since it had
Speaker 1: to wait for the bark of the health department. An
Speaker 1: hour passed before it appeared he had arrived, and yet
Speaker 1: he had not. No one was in any hurry, no
Speaker 1: one was driven by impatience. The young men from Pola,
Speaker 1: patriotically attracted by the military bugle calls which rang over
Speaker 1: the water from the vicinity of the public gardens, had
Speaker 1: come on deck, and warmed by their asti they burst
Speaker 1: out with cheers for the drilling Burslieri. But it was
Speaker 1: repulsive to see what a state the primped up old
Speaker 1: man had been brought to by his comradeship with youth.
Speaker 1: His old head was not able to resist its wine.
Speaker 1: Like the young and robust. He was painfully drunk, with
Speaker 1: glazed eyes, a cigarette between his trembling fingers. He stood
Speaker 1: in one place, swaying backwards and forwards from giddiness and
Speaker 1: balancing himself laboriously, since he would have fallen at the
Speaker 1: first step. He did not trust himself from the spot,
Speaker 1: yet he showed a deplorable insolence, buttonholed. Everyone who came
Speaker 1: near him, stammered, winked, and tittered, lifted his wrinkled, ornamented
Speaker 1: index finger in a stupid attempt at bantering, while he
Speaker 1: licked the corners of his mouth with his tongue in
Speaker 1: the most abominably suggestive manner. Aschenbach observed him darkly, and
Speaker 1: a feeling of numbness came over him again, as though
Speaker 1: the world were displaying a faint but irresistible tendency to
Speaker 1: distort itself into the peculiar and the grotesque, a feeling
Speaker 1: which circumstances prevented him from surrendering himself to completely, for
Speaker 1: just then the pounding activity of the engines commenced again,
Speaker 1: and the ship, resuming a voyage which had been interrupted
Speaker 1: so near its completion, passed through the San Marco Canal.
Speaker 1: So he saw it again the most remarkable of landing places,
Speaker 1: that blinding composition of fantastic buildings which the Republic lays
Speaker 1: out before the eyes of approaching seafarers. The soft splendor
Speaker 1: of the palace, the bridge of size on the bank
Speaker 1: of the columns with Lyon and Saint, the advancing, showy
Speaker 1: flank of the enchanted temple, the glimpse through to the archway,
Speaker 1: and the huge giant clock. And as he looked on,
Speaker 1: he thought that to reach Venice by land on the
Speaker 1: railroad was like entering a palace from the rear, and
Speaker 1: that the most unreal of cities should not be approached,
Speaker 1: except as he was now doing by ship over the
Speaker 1: high seas. Engines stopped, gondolas pressed in the gangway was
Speaker 1: let down. Customs officials climbed on board and discharged their
Speaker 1: duties perfunctorily. The disembarking could begin. Aschenbach made it understood
Speaker 1: that he wanted a gondola to take him and his
Speaker 1: luggage to the dock of those little steamers which ply
Speaker 1: between the city and the lido. Since he intended to
Speaker 1: locate near the sea, his plans were complied with. His
Speaker 1: wants were shouted down to the water, where the gondoliers
Speaker 1: were wrangling with one another in dialect. He was still
Speaker 1: hindered from descending. He was hindered by his trunk, which
Speaker 1: was being pulled and dragged with difficulty down the ladder
Speaker 1: like steps, so that for some minutes he was not
Speaker 1: able to avoid the importunities of the atrocious old man,
Speaker 1: whose drunkenness gave him a sinister desire to do the
Speaker 1: foreigner parting honors. We wish you a very agreeable visit,
Speaker 1: he bleeded, as he made an awkward bow. We leave
Speaker 1: with pleasant recollections, a revois excuse, and bonjour, your excellency.
Speaker 1: His mouth watered, he pressed his eyes shut, He licked
Speaker 1: the corners of his mouth, and the dyed imperial turned
Speaker 1: up about his senile lips. Our compliments, he mumbled, with
Speaker 1: two finger tips on his mouth, Our compliments to our sweetheart,
Speaker 1: the dearest, prettiest sweetheart, And suddenly his false upper teeth
Speaker 1: fell down on his lower lip. Haschenbach was able to
Speaker 1: escape to our sweetheart, Our handsome sweetheart. He heard the cooing, hollow,
Speaker 1: stuttering voice behind him. While supporting himself against the handrail,
Speaker 1: he went down the gangway. Who would not have to
Speaker 1: suppress a fleeting shudder, a vague timidity and uneasiness if
Speaker 1: it were a matter of boarding of Venetian gondola for
Speaker 1: the first time or after several years. The strange craft
Speaker 1: an entirely unaltered survival from the times of Baladry. With
Speaker 1: that peculiar blackness which is found elsewhere only in coffins.
Speaker 1: It suggests silent criminal adventures in the rippling night. It
Speaker 1: suggests even more strongly death itself, the bier and the
Speaker 1: mournful funeral and the last silent journey. And has it
Speaker 1: been observed that the seat of such a bark, this
Speaker 1: armchair of coffin black veneer and dull black upholstery, is
Speaker 1: the softest, most luxuriant, most lulling seat in the world.
Speaker 1: Oschenbach noted this when he had relaxed at the feet
Speaker 1: of the gondolier opposite his luggage, which lay neatly assembled
Speaker 1: on the prow. The rowers were still wrangling, harshly, incomprehensibly,
Speaker 1: with threatening gestures, but the strange silence of this canal
Speaker 1: city seemed to soften their voice, to disembody them and
Speaker 1: dissipate them. Over the water, it was warm here in
Speaker 1: the harbor, touched faintly by the warm breeze of the
Speaker 1: si racco. Leaning back against the limber portions of the cushions,
Speaker 1: the traveler closed his eyes in the enjoyment of a
Speaker 1: lassitude which was as unusual with him as it was sweet.
Speaker 1: The trip would be short, he thought, if only it
Speaker 1: went on forever. He felt himself glide with a gentle motion,
Speaker 1: away from the crowd and the confusion of voices. It
Speaker 1: became quieter and quieter around him. There was nothing to
Speaker 1: be heard but the splashing of the oar, the hollow
Speaker 1: slapping of the waves against the prow of the boat
Speaker 1: as it stood above the water, black and bold and
Speaker 1: armed with its halberd like tip. And a third sound
Speaker 1: of speaking, of whispering, the whispering of the gondolier, who
Speaker 1: was talking to himself between his teeth, fitfully in words
Speaker 1: that were pressed out by the exertion of his arms.
Speaker 1: Hachenbach looked up and was slightly astonished to discover that
Speaker 1: the lagoon was widening and he was headed for the
Speaker 1: open sea. This seemed to indicate that he ought not
Speaker 1: to rest too much, but should see to it that
Speaker 1: his wishes were carried out to the steamer dock. He repeated,
Speaker 1: turning around completely and looking into the face of the gondolier,
Speaker 1: who stood behind on a raised platform and towered up
Speaker 1: between him and the dun colored sky. He was a
Speaker 1: man of unpleasant, even brutal appearance, dressed in sailor blue
Speaker 1: with a yellow sash. A formless straw hat, its weave
Speaker 1: partially unraveled, was tilted insolently on his head. The set
Speaker 1: of his face, the blonde, curly mustache beneath a curtly
Speaker 1: turned up nose undoubtedly meant that he was not Italian,
Speaker 1: although of somewhat frail build so that one would not
Speaker 1: have thought him especially well suited to his trade. He
Speaker 1: handled the oar with great energy, throwing his entire body
Speaker 1: into each stroke. Occasionally he drew back his lips from
Speaker 1: the exertion and disclosed his white teeth, Wrinkling his reddish brows.
Speaker 1: He gazed on past his passenger, as he answered deliberately,
Speaker 1: almost gruffly, You are going to the Lido, Haschenbach replied,
Speaker 1: of course, but I have just taken the gondola to
Speaker 1: get me across to San Marco. I want to use
Speaker 1: the vaporeto. You cannot use the vaparareto, sir? And why not?
Speaker 1: Because the vaporetto will not aul luggage. That was so,
Speaker 1: Haschenbach remembered. He was silent put the fellow's harsh, presumptuous manner,
Speaker 1: so unusual towards a foreigner here, seemed unbearable. He said,
Speaker 1: that is my affair. Perhaps I want to put my
Speaker 1: things in storage. You will turn back. There was silence.
Speaker 1: The oar splashed, the water thudded against the bow, and
Speaker 1: the talking and whispering began again. The gondolier was talking
Speaker 1: to himself between his teeth. What was to be done?
Speaker 1: This man was strangely insolent and had an uncanny decisiveness.
Speaker 1: The traveler, alone with him on the water, saw no
Speaker 1: way of getting what he wanted. And besides, how softly
Speaker 1: he could rest if only he did not become excited.
Speaker 1: Hadn't he wanted the trip to go on? And on forever.
Speaker 1: It was wisest to let things take their course, and
Speaker 1: the main thing was that he was comfortable. The poison
Speaker 1: of inertia seemed to be issuing from the seat from
Speaker 1: this low, black upholstered armchair, so gently cradled by the
Speaker 1: oar strokes of this imperious gondolier behind him. The notion
Speaker 1: that he had fallen into the hands of a criminal
Speaker 1: passed dreamily across Oschenbach's mind, without the ability to summon
Speaker 1: his thoughts to an active defense. The possibility that it
Speaker 1: was all simply a plan for cheating him seemed more abhorrent.
Speaker 1: A feeling of duty or pride, a kind of recollection
Speaker 1: that one should prevent such things, gave him the strength
Speaker 1: to arouse himself once more. He asked, what are you
Speaker 1: asking for the trip? Looking down upon him, the gondolier answered,
Speaker 1: you will pay. It was plain how this should be answered.
Speaker 1: Haschenbach said, mechanically, I shall pay nothing, absolutely nothing, if
Speaker 1: you don't take me where I want to go. You
Speaker 1: want to go to the Lido, but not with you.
Speaker 1: I am rowing you well. That is so, he thought,
Speaker 1: and relaxed, That is so. You are rowing me well.
Speaker 1: Even if you do have designs on my cash and
Speaker 1: send me down to Pluto with a blow of your
Speaker 1: oar from behind, you have rowed me well. But nothing
Speaker 1: like that happened. They were even joined by others, a
Speaker 1: boatload of musical brigands, men and women who sang to
Speaker 1: guitar and mandolin, riding persistently side by side with the
Speaker 1: gondola and filling the silence over the water with their
Speaker 1: covetous foreign poetry. A hat was held out and Ashenbach
Speaker 1: threw in money. Then they stopped singing and rode away.
Speaker 1: And again the muttering of the gondolier could be heard
Speaker 1: as he talked fitfully and jerkily to himself. So they
Speaker 1: arrived tossed in the wake of a steamer plying towards
Speaker 1: the city. Two municipal officers, their hands behind their backs,
Speaker 1: their faces turned in the direction of the lagoon, were
Speaker 1: walking back and forth on the bank. Aschenbach left the
Speaker 1: gondola at the dock, supported by that old man who
Speaker 1: was stationed with his grappling hook at each one of
Speaker 1: venice landing places. And since he had no small money,
Speaker 1: he crossed over to the hotel by the steamer wharf
Speaker 1: to get change and pay the rower what was due him.
Speaker 1: He got what he wanted in the lobby. He returned
Speaker 1: and found his traveling bags in a cart on the dock,
Speaker 1: and gondola and gondolier had vanished. He got out in
Speaker 1: a hurry, said the old man with a grappling hook.
Speaker 1: A bad man, a man without a license. Sir, he
Speaker 1: is the only gondolier who doesn't have a license. The
Speaker 1: others telephoned here. Haschenbach shrugged his shoulders. The gentleman rode
Speaker 1: for nothing, the old man said, and held out his hat.
Speaker 1: Aschenbach tossed in a coin. He gave instructions to have
Speaker 1: his luggage taken to the Beach Hotel, and followed the
Speaker 1: cart through the avenue, the white blossomed avenue, which lined
Speaker 1: on both sides with taverns, shops and boarding houses. Rode
Speaker 1: runs across the island to the shore. End of chapter three,
Speaker 1: Part one. Chapter three, part two. He entered the spacious
Speaker 1: hotel from the rear by the terraced garden and passed
Speaker 1: through the vestibule and the lobby until he reached the desk.
Speaker 1: Since he had been announced, he was received with obliging promptness.
Speaker 1: A manager, a small, frail, flatteringly polite man with a
Speaker 1: black mustache and a French style frock coat, accompanied him
Speaker 1: to the third floor in the lift and showed him
Speaker 1: his room. An agreeable place, furnished in cherrywood, it was
Speaker 1: decorated with strong smelling flowers, and its high windows afforded
Speaker 1: a view out across the open sea. He stepped up
Speaker 1: to one of them after the employee had left, and
Speaker 1: while his luggage was being brought up and placed in
Speaker 1: the room behind him. He looked down on the beach,
Speaker 1: it was comparatively deserted in the afternoon, and on the
Speaker 1: sunless ocean, which was at flood tide and was sending long,
Speaker 1: low waves against the bank in a calm, regular rhythm.
Speaker 1: The experiences of a man who lives alone and in
Speaker 1: silence are both vaguer and more penetrating than those of
Speaker 1: people in society. His thoughts are heavier, more odd, and
Speaker 1: touched always with melancholy images and observations, which could easily
Speaker 1: be disposed of by a glance. A smile and exchange
Speaker 1: of opinion will occupy him unbearably, sink deep into the silence,
Speaker 1: become full of meaning become life adventure emotion. Loneliness ripens
Speaker 1: the eccentric, the daring, and estrangingly beautiful, the poetic. But
Speaker 1: loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and
Speaker 1: the illicit. So the things he had met with on
Speaker 1: the trip, the ugly old f with his twaddle about sweethearts,
Speaker 1: the law breaking gondolier who was cheated of his pay,
Speaker 1: still left the traveler uneasy, without really providing any resistance
Speaker 1: to the mind, without offering any solid stuff to think over.
Speaker 1: They were nevertheless profoundly strange, as it seemed to him,
Speaker 1: and disturbing, precisely because of this contradiction. In the meanwhile,
Speaker 1: he greeted the sea with his eyes and felt pleasure
Speaker 1: at the knowledge that Venice was so conveniently near. Finally,
Speaker 1: he turned away, bathed his face, left orders to the
Speaker 1: chambermaid for a few things he still needed done to
Speaker 1: make his comfort complete, and let himself be taken to
Speaker 1: the ground floor by the green uniformed Swiss who operated
Speaker 1: the lift. He took his tea on the terrace facing
Speaker 1: the ocean, then descended and followed the boardwalk for quite
Speaker 1: a way. In the direction of the hotel Exalsior. When
Speaker 1: he returned, it seemed time to dress for dinner. He
Speaker 1: did this with his usual care and slowness, since he
Speaker 1: was accustomed to working over his toilette. And yet he
Speaker 1: came down a little early to the lobby, where he
Speaker 1: found a great many of the hotel guests assembled, mixing
Speaker 1: distantly and with a show of mutual indifference to one another,
Speaker 1: but all waiting for meal time. He took a paper
Speaker 1: from the table, dropped into a leather chair, and observed
Speaker 1: the company. They differed agreeably from the guests where he
Speaker 1: had first stopped. A wide and tolerantly inclusive horizon was
Speaker 1: spread out before him. Sounds of all the principal languages
Speaker 1: formed a subdued murmur. The accepted evening dress, the uniform
Speaker 1: of good manners brought all human varieties into a fitting unity.
Speaker 1: There were Americans with their long, wry features, large Russian families,
Speaker 1: English ladies, German children with French nurses. The lavic element
Speaker 1: seemed to predominate. Polish was being spoken nearby. It was
Speaker 1: a group of children gathered around a little wicker table
Speaker 1: under the protection of a teacher or governess. Three young
Speaker 1: girls apparently fifteen to seventeen, and a long haired boy
Speaker 1: about fourteen years old. With astonishment, Aschenbach noted that the
Speaker 1: boy was absolutely beautiful, his face pale and reserved, framed
Speaker 1: with honey colored hair, the straight sloping nose, the lovely mouth,
Speaker 1: the expression of sweet and godlike seriousness recalled Greek sculpture
Speaker 1: of the noblest period, and the complete purity of the
Speaker 1: forms was accompanied by such a rare personal charm that
Speaker 1: as he watched, he felt that he had never met
Speaker 1: with anything equally felicitous in nature or the plastic arts.
Speaker 1: He was further struck by the obviously intentional contrast with
Speaker 1: the principles of upbringing which showed in the sister's attire
Speaker 1: and bearing. The three girls, the eldest of whom could
Speaker 1: be considered grown up, were dressed with a chasteness and
Speaker 1: severity boring on disfigurement. Uniformly cloister like costumes of medium
Speaker 1: length slate, colored sober and deliberately unbecoming, and cut with white,
Speaker 1: turned down collars as the only relief, suppressed every possible
Speaker 1: appeal of shapeliness. Their hair, brushed down flat and tied
Speaker 1: against the head, gave their faces, a nunlike emptiness and
Speaker 1: lack of character. Surely this was a mother's influence, and
Speaker 1: it had not even occurred to her to apply the
Speaker 1: pedagogical strictness to the boy which she seemed to find
Speaker 1: necessary for her girls. It was clear that in his
Speaker 1: existence the first factors were gentleness and tenderness. The shears
Speaker 1: had been resolutely kept from his beautiful hair, like a
Speaker 1: prince charming's. It fell in curls over his forehead, his ears,
Speaker 1: and still deeper across his neck. The English sailor suit,
Speaker 1: with its braids, stitchings and embroideries, its puffy sleeves, narrowing
Speaker 1: at the ends and fitting snugly about the fine wrists
Speaker 1: of his still childish but slender hands, gave the delicate
Speaker 1: figure something rich and luxurious. He was sitting half profiled
Speaker 1: to the observer, one foot in its black patent leather
Speaker 1: shoe placed before the other, an elbow resting on the
Speaker 1: arm of his wicker chair, a cheek pressed against his fist,
Speaker 1: in a position of negligent good manners, entirely free of
Speaker 1: the almost subservient stiffness to which his sisters seemed accustomed.
Speaker 1: Did he have some illness, for his skin stood out
Speaker 1: as white as ivory against the golden darkness of the
Speaker 1: surrounding curls. Or was he simply a pampered favorite child
Speaker 1: made this way by a doting and moody love. Ushan
Speaker 1: sach inclined to believe the latter. Almost every artist is
Speaker 1: born with a rich and treacherous tendency to recognize injustices
Speaker 1: which have created beauty, and to meet aristocratic distinction with
Speaker 1: sympathy and reverence. A waiter passed through and announced in
Speaker 1: English that the meal was ready. Gradually the guests disappeared
Speaker 1: through the glass door into the dining hall. Stragglers crossed,
Speaker 1: coming from the entrance or the lifts inside. They had
Speaker 1: already begun serving, But the young poles were still waiting
Speaker 1: around the little wicker table, and Aschenbach, comfortably propped in
Speaker 1: his deep chair, and with this beauty before his eyes,
Speaker 1: stayed with them. The governess, a small, corpulent middle class
Speaker 1: woman with a red face, finally gave the sign to rise.
Speaker 1: With lifted brows. She pushed back her chair and bowed
Speaker 1: as a large woman dressed in gray and richly jeweled
Speaker 1: with perl girls entered the lobby this woman was advancing
Speaker 1: with coolness and precision. Her lightly powdered hair and the
Speaker 1: lines of her dress were arranged with the simplicity which
Speaker 1: always signifies taste in those quarters where devoutness is taken
Speaker 1: as one element of dignity. She might have been the
Speaker 1: wife of some high German official, except that her jewelry
Speaker 1: added something fantastically lavish to her appearance. Indeed, it was
Speaker 1: almost priceless, and consisted of ear pendance and a very
Speaker 1: long triple chain of softly glowing pearls as large as cherries.
Speaker 1: The children had risen promptly. They bent over to kiss
Speaker 1: the hand of their mother, who, with a distant smile
Speaker 1: on her well preserved, though somewhat tired and peaked features,
Speaker 1: looked over their heads and directed a few words to
Speaker 1: the Governess in French. Then she walked to the glass door.
Speaker 1: The children followed her, the girl's the order of their age,
Speaker 1: after them, the Governess. The boy last. For some reason
Speaker 1: or other, he turned round before crossing the sill, and,
Speaker 1: since no one else was in the lobby, his strange,
Speaker 1: dusky eyes met those of Ashenbach, who his newspaper on
Speaker 1: his knees. Lost in thought, was gazing after the group.
Speaker 1: What he saw had not been unusual in the slightest detail.
Speaker 1: They had not preceded the mother to the table. They
Speaker 1: had waited, greeted her with respect, and observed the customary
Speaker 1: forms on entering the room. But it had taken place
Speaker 1: so pointedly, with such an accent of training, duty and
Speaker 1: self respect that Aschenbach felt peculiarly touched by it all.
Speaker 1: He delayed for a few moments. Then he too, crossed
Speaker 1: into the dining room and was assigned to his table, which,
Speaker 1: as he noted with a brief touch of regret, was
Speaker 1: very far removed from that of the Polish family. Weary
Speaker 1: and yet intellectually active, he entertained himself during the lengthy
Speaker 1: meal with abstract or even transcendental things. He thought over
Speaker 1: the secret union which the lawful must enter upon with
Speaker 1: the individual for human beauty to result. From this, he
Speaker 1: passed into general problems of form and art, and at
Speaker 1: the end he found that his thoughts and discoveries were
Speaker 1: like the seemingly felicitous promptings of a dream, which, when
Speaker 1: the mind is sobered, are seen to be completely empty
Speaker 1: and unfit. After the meal, smoking, sitting taking an occasional
Speaker 1: turn in the park with its smell of nightfall. He
Speaker 1: went to bed early and spent the night in a
Speaker 1: sleep deep and unbroken, but often enlivened with the apparitions
Speaker 1: of dreams. The weather did not improve any The following day,
Speaker 1: a land breeze was blowing under a cloudy ashen sky.
Speaker 1: The sea lay in dull peacefulness. It seemed shriveled up
Speaker 1: with a close, dreary horizon, and it had retreated from
Speaker 1: the beach, bearing the long ribs of several sand banks.
Speaker 1: As Aschenbach opened his window, he thought that he could
Speaker 1: detect the foul smell of the lagoon. He felt depressed.
Speaker 1: He thought already of leaving once years ago, after several
Speaker 1: weeks of spring here. This same weather had afflicted him
Speaker 1: and impaired his health so seriously that he had to
Speaker 1: abandon Venice like a fugitive. Was not this old feverish
Speaker 1: unrest again, setting in the pressure in the temples, the
Speaker 1: heaviness of the eyelids. It would be annoying to change
Speaker 1: his residence still another time, But if the wind did
Speaker 1: not turn, he could not stay here. To be safe,
Speaker 1: he did not unpack completely. He breakfasted at nine in
Speaker 1: the buffet room provided for this purpose. Between the lobby
Speaker 1: and the dining room. That formal silence reigned here, which
Speaker 1: is the ambition of large hotels. The waiters who were
Speaker 1: serving walked about on soft souls. Nothing was audible but
Speaker 1: the tinkling of the tea things, a word half whispered
Speaker 1: in one corner obliquely across from the door, and two
Speaker 1: tables removed from his own. Oschenbach observed the Polish girls
Speaker 1: with their governess. He wrecked and red eyed their ash
Speaker 1: blonde hair, freshly smoothed down, dressed in stiff blue linen,
Speaker 1: with little white cuffs and turned down collars. They were
Speaker 1: sitting there, handing around a glass of marmalade. They had
Speaker 1: almost finished their breakfast. The boy was missing. Oschenbach smiled, well,
Speaker 1: little Fayoshian, he thought, you seem to be enjoying the
Speaker 1: pleasant privilege of having your sleep out, And suddenly exhilarated,
Speaker 1: he recited to himself the line a frequent change of dress,
Speaker 1: warm baths, and rest. Breakfasted without haste from the porter,
Speaker 1: who entered the hall holding his braided cap in his hand,
Speaker 1: he received some forwarded mail, and while he smoked a cigarette,
Speaker 1: he opened a few letters. In this way, it happened
Speaker 1: that he was present at the entrance of the late sleeper,
Speaker 1: who was being waited for over yonder, he came through
Speaker 1: the glass door and crossed the room in silence to
Speaker 1: his sister's table. His approach, the way he held the
Speaker 1: upper part of his body and bent his knees. The
Speaker 1: movement of his white shod feet had an extraordinary charm.
Speaker 1: He walked very lightly, at once timid and proud, and
Speaker 1: this became still more lovely through the childish embarrassment with
Speaker 1: which twice as he proceeded he turned his face toward
Speaker 1: the center of the room, raising and lowering his eyes,
Speaker 1: smiling with something half muttered in his soft, vague tongue.
Speaker 1: He took his place, and now as he turned his
Speaker 1: foll profile to the observer, Aschenbach was again astonished, terrified
Speaker 1: even by the really godlike beauty of this human child.
Speaker 1: To day, the boy was wearing a light blouse of
Speaker 1: blue and white striped cotton goods, with a red silk
Speaker 1: tie in front and closed at the neck by a
Speaker 1: plain white eye collar. This collar lacked the distinctiveness of
Speaker 1: the blouse, but above it the flowering head was poised
Speaker 1: with an incomparable seductiveness, the head of an eras in
Speaker 1: blended yellows of Parian marble, with fine, serious brows, the
Speaker 1: temples and ears covered softly by the abrupt encroachment of
Speaker 1: his curls. Good God, Aschenbach thought, with that deliberate expert
Speaker 1: appraisal which artists sometimes employ as a subterfuge when they
Speaker 1: have been carried away with delight before a master work.
Speaker 1: And he thought further, really, if the sea and the
Speaker 1: beach weren't waiting for me, I should stay here as
Speaker 1: long as you staid. But he went then passed through
Speaker 1: the lobby, under the inspection of the servants, down the
Speaker 1: wide terrace, and straight across the boardwalk to the section
Speaker 1: of the beach reserved for the hotel guests. The barefoot
Speaker 1: old man in dungarees and straw hat, who was functioning
Speaker 1: here as bathing master, assigned him to the bathhouse he
Speaker 1: had rented. A table and a seat were placed on
Speaker 1: the sandy board platform, and he made himself comfortable in
Speaker 1: the lounge chair, which he had drawn closer to the sea,
Speaker 1: out into the waxen yellow sand more than ever before.
Speaker 1: He was entertained and amused by the sights on the beach,
Speaker 1: this spectacle of carefree, civilized people getting sensuous enjoyment at
Speaker 1: the very edge of the elements. The gray flat sea
Speaker 1: was already alive with waiting children, swimmers, a motley of
Speaker 1: figures lying on the sand banks with arms bent behind
Speaker 1: their heads. Others were rowing about in little red and
Speaker 1: blue striped boats without keels. They were continually upsetting amid laughter.
Speaker 1: Before the long stretches of bathing houses, where people were
Speaker 1: sitting on the platforms as though on small verandas there
Speaker 1: was a play of movement against the line of rest
Speaker 1: and inertness behind visits and chatter, fastidious morning elegance alongside
Speaker 1: the nakedness which boldly at ease, was enjoying the freedom
Speaker 1: which the place afforded. Further in front, on the damp,
Speaker 1: firm sand, people were parading about in white bathing cloaks
Speaker 1: in ample, brilliantly colored wrappers. An elaborate sand pile to
Speaker 1: the right, erected by children, had flags in the colors
Speaker 1: of all nations planted around it. Vendors of shells, cakes
Speaker 1: and fruit spread out their wares. Kneeling to the left,
Speaker 1: before one of the bathing houses, which stood at right
Speaker 1: angles to the other and to the sea. A Russian
Speaker 1: family was encamped, men with beards and large teeth, slow
Speaker 1: delicate women, a Baltic girl sitting by an easel and
Speaker 1: painting the sea amidst exclamations of despair. Two ugly, good
Speaker 1: natured children, an old maidservant who wore a kerchief on
Speaker 1: her head and had the alert, scraping manners of a slave.
Speaker 1: Delighted and appreciative, they were living there, patiently calling the
Speaker 1: names of the two rowdy, disobedient children, using their scanty
Speaker 1: Italian to joke with the humorous old man from whom
Speaker 1: they were buying candy, kissing one another on the cheek,
Speaker 1: and not in the least concerned with any one who
Speaker 1: might be observing their community. Yes, I shall stay. Aschenbach
Speaker 1: thought where would things be better? And his hands folded
Speaker 1: in his lap, he let his eyes lose themselves in
Speaker 1: the expanses of the sea, his gaze gliding, swimming, and
Speaker 1: failing in the monotone mist of the wilderness of space.
Speaker 1: He loved the ocean for deep seated reasons, because of
Speaker 1: that yearning for rest, when the hard pressed artist hungers
Speaker 1: to shut out the exacting multiplicities of experience and hide
Speaker 1: himself on the breast of the simple, the vast, and
Speaker 1: because of a forbidding hankering seductive by virtue of its
Speaker 1: being directly opposed to his obligations. After the incommunicable, the incommensurate,
Speaker 1: the eternal, the non existent, to be at rest in
Speaker 1: the face of perfection is the hunger of everyone who
Speaker 1: is aiming at excellence. And what is the non existent
Speaker 1: but a form of perfection. But now, just as his
Speaker 1: dreams were so far out in vacancy, suddenly the horizontal
Speaker 1: fringe of the sea was broken by a human figure.
Speaker 1: And as he brought his eyes back from the unbounded
Speaker 1: and focused them, it was the lovely boy who there,
Speaker 1: coming from the left, and passing him on the sand.
Speaker 1: He was barefooted, ready for waiting, his slender legs exposed
Speaker 1: above the knees. He walked slowly, but as lightly and proudly,
Speaker 1: as though it were the customary thing for him to
Speaker 1: move about without shoes. And he was looking around him
Speaker 1: towards the line of bathing houses opposite. But as soon
Speaker 1: as he had noticed the Russian family occupied with their
Speaker 1: own harmony and contentment. A cloud of scorn and detestation
Speaker 1: passed over his face. His brow darkened, his mouth was compressed.
Speaker 1: He gave his lips an embittered twist to one side,
Speaker 1: so that the cheek was distorted, and the forehead became
Speaker 1: so heavily furrowed that the eyes seemed sunken beneath its pressure.
Speaker 1: Malicious and glowering, they spoke the language of hate. He
Speaker 1: looked down, looked back once more threateningly, then with his shoulder,
Speaker 1: made an abrupt gesture of disdain and dismissal, and left
Speaker 1: the enemy behind him. A kind of prudency or confusion,
Speaker 1: something like respect and shyness, caused Oschenbach to turn away,
Speaker 1: as though he had seen nothing. For the earnest minded,
Speaker 1: who have been casual observers of some passion, struggle against
Speaker 1: making use even to themselves of what they have seen.
Speaker 1: But he was both cheered and unstrung, which is to
Speaker 1: say he was happy. This childish fanaticism directed against the
Speaker 1: most good natured possible aspect of life. It brought the
Speaker 1: divinely arbitrary into human relationships. It made a delightful natural
Speaker 1: picture which had appealed only to the eye now seemed
Speaker 1: worthy of a deeper sympathy, and it gave the figure
Speaker 1: of this half grown boy, who had already been important
Speaker 1: enough by his sheer beauty, something to offset him still further,
Speaker 1: and to make one take him more so seriously than
Speaker 1: his years justified. Still looking away, Oschenbach could hear the
Speaker 1: boy's voice, the shrill, somewhat weak voice with which, in
Speaker 1: the distance now he was trying to call hello to
Speaker 1: his playfellows busied around the sand pile. They answered him,
Speaker 1: shouting back his name or some affectionate nickname, and Oschenbach
Speaker 1: listened with a certain curiosity, without being able to catch
Speaker 1: anything more definite than the two melodic syllables like ajio
Speaker 1: or still more frequently adieu, with a ringing you sound
Speaker 1: prolonged at the end. He was pleased with the resonance
Speaker 1: of this. He found it adequate to the subject. He
Speaker 1: repeated it silently, and satisfied, turned to his letters and manuscripts,
Speaker 1: his small portable writing desk on his knees. He began
Speaker 1: writing with his fountain pen and answer to this or
Speaker 1: that bit of correspondence. But after the first fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: he found it a pity to abandon the situation the
Speaker 1: most enjoyable he could think of in this manner, and
Speaker 1: wasted in activities which did not interest him. He tossed
Speaker 1: the writing materials to one side and he faced the
Speaker 1: ocean again. Soon afterwards, diverted by the childish voices around
Speaker 1: the sand heap, he revolved his head comfortably along the
Speaker 1: back of the chair towards the right to discover where
Speaker 1: that excellent little aggio might be and what he was doing.
Speaker 1: He was found at a glance. The red tie on
Speaker 1: his breast was not to be overlooked. Busied with the
Speaker 1: others in laying an old plank across the damp moat
Speaker 1: of the sand castle, he was nodding and shouting instructions
Speaker 1: for this work. There were about ten companions with him,
Speaker 1: boys and girls of his age, and a few younger ones,
Speaker 1: who were chattering with one another in Polish, French and
Speaker 1: in several Balkan tongues. But it was his name which
Speaker 1: rang out most often. He was openly in demand, sought after, admired.
Speaker 1: One boy especially like him, a pole, a stocky fellow
Speaker 1: who was called something like Joshu, with sleek black hair
Speaker 1: and a belted linen coat, seemed to be his closest
Speaker 1: vassal and friend. End of Chapter three, Part two. Chapter three,
Speaker 1: Part three, When the work on the sands structure was
Speaker 1: finished for the time being, they walked arm in arm
Speaker 1: along the beach, and the boy, who was called Joshu,
Speaker 1: kissed the beauty. Aschenbach was half minded to raise a
Speaker 1: warning finger. I advise you, Christobulus, he thought, smiling to
Speaker 1: travel for a year, for you need that much time
Speaker 1: at least to get over it. And then he breakfasted
Speaker 1: on large ripe strawberries, which he got from a peddler.
Speaker 1: It had become very warm, although the sun could no
Speaker 1: longer penetrate the blanket of mist in the sky. Laziness
Speaker 1: clogged his brain, even while his senses delighted in the numbing,
Speaker 1: drugging distractions of the ocean's stillness. To guess, to puzzle
Speaker 1: out just what name it was that sounded something like
Speaker 1: Ajio seemed to the sober man an appropriate ambition, a
Speaker 1: thoroughly comprehensive pursuit, and with the aid of a few
Speaker 1: scrappy recollections of Polish, he decided that they must mean Tasio,
Speaker 1: the shortened form of Tadeus, and sounded like Tasiu, when
Speaker 1: it is called Tasio was bathing. Aschenbach, who had lost
Speaker 1: sight of him, spied his head and the arm with
Speaker 1: which he was propelling himself far out in the water,
Speaker 1: for the sea must have been smooth for a long
Speaker 1: distance out. But already people seemed worried about him. Women's
Speaker 1: voice were calling after him from the bathing houses, uttering
Speaker 1: his name again and again. It almost dominated the beach
Speaker 1: like a battle cry, and with its soft consonants, its
Speaker 1: long drawn you note at the end it had something
Speaker 1: at once sweet and wild about it. Toadsio tadzio. He
Speaker 1: turned back, beating the resistant water into a foam with
Speaker 1: his legs. He hurried his head bent down over the waves.
Speaker 1: And to see how this living figure, graceful and clean
Speaker 1: cut in its advance, with dripping curls and lovely as
Speaker 1: some frail god, came up out of the depths of
Speaker 1: sky and sea, rose and separated from the elements. This
Speaker 1: spectacle aroused a sense of myth. It was like some
Speaker 1: poet's recovery of time at its beginning, of the origins
Speaker 1: of forms and the birth of gods. Aschenbach listened with
Speaker 1: closed eyes to the song ringing within him, and he
Speaker 1: thought again that it was pleasant he and that he
Speaker 1: would like to remain. Later, Tazio was resting from his bath.
Speaker 1: He lay in the sand, wrapped in his white robe,
Speaker 1: which was drawn under the right shoulder, his head supported
Speaker 1: on his bare arm, And even when Aschenbach was not
Speaker 1: observing him, but was reading a few pages in his book,
Speaker 1: he hardly ever forgot that this boy was lying there,
Speaker 1: and that it would cost him only a slight turn
Speaker 1: of his head to the right to behold the mystery.
Speaker 1: It seemed that he was sitting here just to keep
Speaker 1: watch over his repose, busied with his own concerns, and
Speaker 1: yet constantly aware of this noble picture at his right,
Speaker 1: not far in the distance, and he was stirred by
Speaker 1: a paternal affection, the profound leaning which those who have
Speaker 1: devoted their thoughts to the creation of beauty feel towards
Speaker 1: those who possess beauty itself. A little past noon, he
Speaker 1: left the beach, returned to the hotel, and was taken
Speaker 1: up to his room. He stayed there for some time
Speaker 1: in front of the mirror, looking at his gray hair,
Speaker 1: his tired, sharp features. At this moment he thought of
Speaker 1: his reputation and of the fact that he was often
Speaker 1: recognized on the streets and observed with respect. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the sure aim and the appealing finish of his words.
Speaker 1: He called up all the exterior successes of his talent
Speaker 1: which he could think of, remembering also his elevation to
Speaker 1: the knighthood. Then he went down to the dining hall
Speaker 1: for lunch and ate at his little table. As he
Speaker 1: was riding up in the lift after the meal was ended,
Speaker 1: a group of young people just coming from breakfast pressed
Speaker 1: into the swaying cage after him, and Tazio entered too.
Speaker 1: He stood quite near to Oschenbach for the first time,
Speaker 1: so near that Rauschenbach could see him not with the
Speaker 1: a loftness of a picture, but in minute detail, in
Speaker 1: all his human particularities. The boy was addressed by some
Speaker 1: one or other, and as he was answering with an
Speaker 1: indescribably agreeable smile, he stepped out again on the second floor,
Speaker 1: walking backwards and with his eyes lowered. Beauty makes modest,
Speaker 1: Aschenbach thought, and he tried insistently to explain why this
Speaker 1: was so. But he had noticed that Tasio's teeth were
Speaker 1: not all they should be. They were somewhat jagged and pale.
Speaker 1: The enamel did not look healthy. It had a peculiar
Speaker 1: brittleness and transparency, as is often the case with anemex.
Speaker 1: He is very frail, he is sickly. Aschenbach thought, in
Speaker 1: all probability he will not grow old, and he refused
Speaker 1: to reckon with the feeling of gratification or reassurance which
Speaker 1: accompanied this notion. He spent two hours in his room,
Speaker 1: and in the afternoon he rode in the vaporetto across
Speaker 1: the foul smelling lagoon to Venice. He got off at
Speaker 1: San Marco, took tea on the piazza, and then, in
Speaker 1: accord with his schedule for the day, he went for
Speaker 1: a walk through the streets. Yet it was this walk
Speaker 1: which produced a complete reversal in his attitudes and his plans.
Speaker 1: An offensive sultriness lay over the streets. The air was
Speaker 1: so heavy that the smells pouring out of homes, stores
Speaker 1: and eating houses became mixed with oil vapors, clouds of perfume,
Speaker 1: and still other odors, and these would not blow away,
Speaker 1: but hung in layers. Cigarette smoke remained suspended, disappearing very slowly.
Speaker 1: The crush of people along the narrow streets irritated rather
Speaker 1: than entertained the walker. The farther he went, the more
Speaker 1: he was depressed by the repulsive condition resulting from the
Speaker 1: combination of sea air and sea racco which was at
Speaker 1: the same time both stimulating and enervating. He broke into
Speaker 1: an uncomfortable sweat. His eyes failed him, his chest became tight.
Speaker 1: He had a fever. The blood was pounding in his head.
Speaker 1: He fled from the crowded business streets across a bridge
Speaker 1: into the walks of the poor. On a quiet square,
Speaker 1: one of those forgotten and enchanted places which lie in
Speaker 1: the interior of Venice, he rested at the brink of
Speaker 1: a well, dried his forehead, and realized that he would
Speaker 1: have to leave here for the second and last time.
Speaker 1: It had been demonstrated that this city, in this kind
Speaker 1: of weather, was decidedly unhealthy for him. It seemed foolish
Speaker 1: to attempt a stubborn resistance. While the prospects for a
Speaker 1: change of wind were completely uncertain, a certain decision was
Speaker 1: called for. It was not possible to go home this soon.
Speaker 1: Neither summer nor winter quarters were prepared to receive him.
Speaker 1: But this was not the only place where there were
Speaker 1: sea and beach and elsewhere these could be found without
Speaker 1: the lagoon and its malarial mists. He remembered a little
Speaker 1: watering place not far from Trieste, which had been praised
Speaker 1: to him. Why not there, and without delay, so that
Speaker 1: this new change of location would still have time to
Speaker 1: do him some good. He pronounced this as good as settled,
Speaker 1: and stood up. At the next gondola station, he took
Speaker 1: a boat back to San Marco and was led through
Speaker 1: the dreary labyrinth of canals under fancy marble balconies planked
Speaker 1: with lions around the corners of smooth walls, past the
Speaker 1: sorrowing facades of palaces which mirrored large, dilapidated business signs
Speaker 1: in the pulsing water. He had trouble arriving there, for
Speaker 1: the gondolier, who was in league with lace makers and
Speaker 1: glass blowers, was always trying to land him for inspections
Speaker 1: and purchases. And just as the bizarre trip through Venice
Speaker 1: would begin to cast its spell, the greedy business sense
Speaker 1: of the sunken queen did all it could to destroy
Speaker 1: the illusion. When he had returned to the hotel, he
Speaker 1: announced at the office before dinner the unforeseen developments necessitated
Speaker 1: his departure. The following morning. He was assured of their regrets,
Speaker 1: He settled his accounts, He dined, and spent the warm
Speaker 1: evening reading the newspapers in a rocking chair on the
Speaker 1: rear terrace. Before going to bed, he got his luggage
Speaker 1: all ready for departure. He did not sleep so well
Speaker 1: as he might, since the impending break up made him restless.
Speaker 1: When he opened the window in the morning, the sky
Speaker 1: was as overcast as ever, but the air seemed fresher,
Speaker 1: and he was already beginning to repent. Hadn't his decision
Speaker 1: been somewhat hasty and uncalled for, the result of a
Speaker 1: passing diffidence and indisposition. If he had delayed a little,
Speaker 1: If instead of surrendering so easily, he had made some
Speaker 1: attempt to adjust himself to the air of venice, or
Speaker 1: to wait for an improvement in the weather, he would
Speaker 1: not be so rushed and inconvenienced, but could anticipate another
Speaker 1: forenoon on the beach like yesterday's. Too late. Now he
Speaker 1: would have to go on wanting what he had wanted yesterday.
Speaker 1: He dressed, and about eight o'clock rode down to the
Speaker 1: ground floor for breakfast. As he entered, the buffet room
Speaker 1: was still empty of guests. A few came in while
Speaker 1: he waited for his order. With his tea cup to
Speaker 1: his lips, he saw the Polish girls and the governess
Speaker 1: appear rigid with morning freshness, their eyes still red, they
Speaker 1: walked across to their table in the corner by the window.
Speaker 1: Immediately afterwards, the porter approached him, cap in hand and
Speaker 1: warned him that it was time to go. The automobile
Speaker 1: is ready to take him and the other passengers to
Speaker 1: the Hotel Excelsior, and from here the motor boat will
Speaker 1: bring the ladies and gentlemen to the station through the
Speaker 1: company's private canal. Time is pressing. Haschenbach found that he
Speaker 1: was doing nothing of the sort. It was still over
Speaker 1: an hour before his train left. He was irritated by
Speaker 1: this hotel custom of hustling departing guests out of the house,
Speaker 1: and indicated to the porter that he wished to finish
Speaker 1: his breakfast in peace. The man retired hesitatingly, to appear
Speaker 1: again five minutes later. It is impossible for the car
Speaker 1: to wait any longer. Then he would take a cab
Speaker 1: and carry his trunk with him. Haschenbach replied in anger,
Speaker 1: he would use the public steamboat at the proper time,
Speaker 1: and he requested that it be left to him personally
Speaker 1: to worry about his departure. The employee bowed himself away,
Speaker 1: pleased with the way he had warded off these importunate warnings.
Speaker 1: Oschenbach finished his meal at leisure. In fact, he even
Speaker 1: let the waiter bring him a newspaper. The time had
Speaker 1: become quite short when he finally arose. It was fitting
Speaker 1: that at the same moment Tasio should come through the
Speaker 1: glass door. On the way to his table. He walked
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction to Oschenbach, lowering his eyes modestly
Speaker 1: before the man with the gray hair and high forehead,
Speaker 1: only to raise them again in his delicious manner, soft
Speaker 1: and full upon him. And he had passed good bye, Tasio.
Speaker 1: Aschenbach thought, I did not see much of you. He
Speaker 1: did what was unusual with him, really formed the words
Speaker 1: on his lips and spoke them to himself. Then he
Speaker 1: added God bless you. After this he left, distributed tips,
Speaker 1: was ushered out by the small gentle manager in the
Speaker 1: French frock coat, and made off from the hotel on
Speaker 1: foot as he had come, going along the white blossoming
Speaker 1: avenue which crossed the island to the steamer bridge. Accompanied
Speaker 1: by the house servant carrying his hand luggage, he arrived,
Speaker 1: took his place, and then followed a painful journey through
Speaker 1: all the depths of regret. It was the familiar trip
Speaker 1: across the lagoon, past San Marco, up the Grand Canal.
Speaker 1: Haschenbach sat on the circular bench at the bow, his
Speaker 1: arms supported against the railing, shading his eyes with his hand.
Speaker 1: The public gardens were left behind. The piazzetta opened up
Speaker 1: once more in princely splendor and was gone. Then came
Speaker 1: the great flock of palaces, and as the channel made
Speaker 1: a turn, the magnificently slung marble arch of the Rialto
Speaker 1: came into view. The traveler was watching. His emotions were
Speaker 1: in conflict. The atmosphere of the city, the slightly foul
Speaker 1: smell of sea and swamp, which he had been so
Speaker 1: anxious to avoid. He breathed it now in deep, exquisitely
Speaker 1: painful drafts. Was it possible that he had not known,
Speaker 1: had not considered, just how much he was at attached
Speaker 1: to all this? What had been a partial misgiving this morning,
Speaker 1: A faint doubt as to the advisability of his move
Speaker 1: now became a distress, a positive misery, a spiritual hunger,
Speaker 1: and so bitter that it frequently brought tears to his eyes,
Speaker 1: while he told himself that he could not possibly have
Speaker 1: foreseen it. Hardest of all to bear at times completely
Speaker 1: insufferable was the thought that he would never see Venice again,
Speaker 1: That this was a leave taking forever, since he had
Speaker 1: been shown for the second time that the city affected
Speaker 1: his health, since he was compelled for the second time
Speaker 1: to get away in all haste. From now on he
Speaker 1: would have to consider it a place impossible and forbidden
Speaker 1: to him, the place which he was not equal to,
Speaker 1: and which it would be foolish for him to visit again. Yes,
Speaker 1: he felt that if he left now he would be
Speaker 1: shamefaced and defiant enough never to see again the beloved,
Speaker 1: which had twice caused him a physical breakdown and of
Speaker 1: a sudden This struggle between his desires and his physical
Speaker 1: strength seemed to the aging man so grave and important.
Speaker 1: His physical defeat seemed so dishonorable, so much a challenge
Speaker 1: to hold out at any cost, that he could not
Speaker 1: understand the ready submissiveness of the day before, when he
Speaker 1: had decided to give in without attempting any serious resistance. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the steamboat was nearing the station. Pain and perplexity increased.
Speaker 1: He became distracted in his affliction. He felt that it
Speaker 1: was impossible to leave and just as impossible to turn back.
Speaker 1: The conflict was intense. As he entered the station. It
Speaker 1: was very late. There was not a moment to lose
Speaker 1: if he was to catch the train. He wanted to,
Speaker 1: and he did not want to, but time was pressing.
Speaker 1: It drove him on. He hurried to get his ticket
Speaker 1: and looked about in the tumult of the hall for
Speaker 1: the officer on duty here from the hotel. The man
Speaker 1: appeared and announced that the large trunk had been transferred,
Speaker 1: transferred already, yes, thank you to como to como. And
Speaker 1: in the midst of hasty running back and forth, angry
Speaker 1: questions and confused answers, it came to light that the
Speaker 1: trunk had already been sent with other foreign baggage from
Speaker 1: the express office of the Hotel Excelsior, in a completely
Speaker 1: wrong direction. Aschenbach had difficulty in preserving the expression which
Speaker 1: was required under these circumstances. He was almost convulsed with
Speaker 1: an adventurous delight an unbelievable hilarity, the employee rushed off
Speaker 1: to see if it were still possible to stop the trunk, and,
Speaker 1: as was to be expected, he returned with nothing accomplished.
Speaker 1: Aschenbach declared that he did not want to travel without
Speaker 1: his trunk, had decided to go back and wait at
Speaker 1: the beach hotel for its return. Was the company's motor
Speaker 1: boat still at the station. The man assured him that
Speaker 1: it was lying at the door. With Italian volubility, he
Speaker 1: persuaded the clerk at the ticket window to redeem the
Speaker 1: canceled ticket. He swore that they would act speedily, that
Speaker 1: no time or money would be spared in recovering the
Speaker 1: trunk promptly, And so the strange thing happened that twenty
Speaker 1: minutes after his arrival at the station, the traveler found
Speaker 1: himself again on the Grand Canal, returning to the lido.
Speaker 1: Here was an adventure wonderful, a bashing and comically dreamlike,
Speaker 1: beyond belief, places which he had just bid farewell to
Speaker 1: forever in the most abject misery. Yet he had been
Speaker 1: turned and driven back by fate, and was seeing them
Speaker 1: again in the same hour, the spray from the bow,
Speaker 1: washing between gondolas and steamers with an absurd agility, show
Speaker 1: the speedy little craft ahead to its goal, while the
Speaker 1: one passenger was hiding the nervousness in a buliance of
Speaker 1: a truant boy under the mask of resigned anger. From
Speaker 1: time to time he shook with laughter at this mishap, which,
Speaker 1: as he told himself, could not have turned out better
Speaker 1: for a child of destiny. There were explanations to be given,
Speaker 1: expressions of astonishment to be faced. And then he told
Speaker 1: himself everything would be all right. Then a misfortune would
Speaker 1: be avoided, a grave error rectified, and all that he
Speaker 1: had thought he was leaving behind him would be open
Speaker 1: to him again there at his disposal. And to cap
Speaker 1: it all, was the rapidity of the ride deceiving him?
Speaker 1: Or was the wind really coming from the sea. The
Speaker 1: waves beat against the walls of the narrow canal which
Speaker 1: runs through the island to the Hotel Excelsior. An automobile
Speaker 1: omnibus was awaiting his return there and took him above
Speaker 1: the rippling sea straight to the beach hotel. The little
Speaker 1: manager with a mustache and long tailed frock coat came
Speaker 1: down the stairs to meet him. He ingratiatingly regretted the episode,
Speaker 1: spoke of it as highly painful to him and the establishment,
Speaker 1: but firmly approved of Aschenbach's decision to wait here for
Speaker 1: the baggage. Of course, his room had been given up,
Speaker 1: but there was another one just as good, which he
Speaker 1: could occupy immediately. Passee de chance monsieur, the Swiss elevator
Speaker 1: boy smiled as they were ascending, and so the Fugitive
Speaker 1: was established again in a room almost identical to the
Speaker 1: other in its location and furnishings. Tired out by the
Speaker 1: confusion of this strange forenoon, he distributed the contents of
Speaker 1: his handbag about the room and dropped into an armchair
Speaker 1: by the open window. The sea had become a pale green,
Speaker 1: The air seemed thinner and purer. The beach, with its
Speaker 1: cabins en bas, seemed to have color, although the sky
Speaker 1: was still gray. Aschenbach looked out, his hands folded in
Speaker 1: his lap. He was content to be back, but shook
Speaker 1: his head disapprovingly at his irresolution, his failure to know
Speaker 1: his own mind. He sat here for the better part
Speaker 1: of an hour, resting and dreaming vaguely about noon, he
Speaker 1: saw Tasio in a striped linen suit with a red tie,
Speaker 1: coming back from the sea across the private beach along
Speaker 1: the boardwalk to the hotel. Aschenbach recognized him from this
Speaker 1: altitude before he had actually set eyes on him. He
Speaker 1: was about to think such words as well, Tasio, there
Speaker 1: you are again. But at the same moment he felt
Speaker 1: this careless greeting go dumb before the truth. In his heart,
Speaker 1: he felt the exhilaration of his blood, a conflict of
Speaker 1: pain and pleasure, and he realized that it was Tasio
Speaker 1: who made it so difficult for him to leave. He
Speaker 1: sat very still, entirely unobserved from this height, and looked
Speaker 1: within himself. His features were alert, his eyebrows raised, and
Speaker 1: an attentive, keenly inquisitive smile distended his mouth. Then he
Speaker 1: raised his head, lifted both hands, which had hung relaxed
Speaker 1: over the arms of the chair, and in a slow
Speaker 1: twisting movement, turned the palms downward, as though to suggest
Speaker 1: an opening and spreading outward of his arms. It was
Speaker 1: a spontaneous act of welcome, of calm, acceptance. End of
Speaker 1: Chapter three, Chapter four, Part one Day after day Now
Speaker 1: the Naked God with the hot cheeks, drove his fire
Speaker 1: breathing quadriga across the expanses of the sky, and his
Speaker 1: yellow locks fluttered in the assault of the east wind.
Speaker 1: A white silk sheen stretched over the slowly simmering punch.
Speaker 1: The sand glowed beneath the quaking silver blue of the ether.
Speaker 1: Rust colored canvasses were spread in front of the beach
Speaker 1: bathing houses, and the afternoons were spent in the sharply
Speaker 1: demarcated spots of shade which they cast. But it was
Speaker 1: also delightful in the evening, when the vegetation in the
Speaker 1: park had the smell of balsam, and the stars were
Speaker 1: working through their courses above, and the soft, persistent murmur
Speaker 1: of the sea came up enchantingly through the night. Such
Speaker 1: evenings contained the cheering promise that more sunny days of
Speaker 1: casual idleness would follow, dotted with countless closely interspersed possibilities
Speaker 1: of well timed accidents. The guest, who was detained here
Speaker 1: by such an accommodating mishap, did not consider the return
Speaker 1: of his property as sufficient grounds for another departure. He
Speaker 1: suffered some inconvenience for two days and had to appears
Speaker 1: in the large dining room in his traveling clothes. When
Speaker 1: the strayed luggage was finally deposited in his room again,
Speaker 1: he unpacked completely and filled the closet and drawers with
Speaker 1: his belongings. He had decided to remain here indefinitely, content
Speaker 1: now that he could pass the hours on the beach
Speaker 1: in a silk suit and appear for dinner at his
Speaker 1: little table again in appropriate evening dress. The comfortable rhythm
Speaker 1: of his life had already cast its spell over him.
Speaker 1: He was soon enticed by the ease the mild splendor
Speaker 1: of his program. Indeed, what a place to be in
Speaker 1: when the usual allurement of living and watering places on
Speaker 1: southern shores was coupled with the immediate nearness of the
Speaker 1: most wonderful of all cities. Aschenbach was not a lover
Speaker 1: of pleasure. Whenever there was some call for him to
Speaker 1: take a holiday, to indulge himself to have a good time,
Speaker 1: and this it was especially true at an earlier age.
Speaker 1: Restlessness and repugnance soon drove him back to his rigorous toil,
Speaker 1: the faithful, sober efforts of his daily routine, except that
Speaker 1: this place was bewitching him. Relaxing his will, making him
Speaker 1: happy in the mornings under the shelter of his bathing house,
Speaker 1: letting his eyes roam dreamily in the blue of the
Speaker 1: Southern Sea war on a warm night, as he leaned
Speaker 1: back against the cushions of the gondola, carrying him under
Speaker 1: the broad, starry sky home to the Lido from the
Speaker 1: Piazza di San Marco, after long hours of idleness, and
Speaker 1: the brilliant lights the melting notes of the serenade were
Speaker 1: being left behind. He often recalled his place in the mountains,
Speaker 1: the scene of his battles in the summer, where the
Speaker 1: clouds blew low across his garden, and terrifying storms put
Speaker 1: out the lamps at night, and the crows which he
Speaker 1: fed were swinging in the tops of the pine trees.
Speaker 1: Then everything seemed just right to him, as though he
Speaker 1: were lifted into the Elysian fields on the borders of
Speaker 1: the earth, where man enjoys the easiest life, where there
Speaker 1: is no snow or winter, no storms and pouring rains,
Speaker 1: but where Oceanus continually sends forth gentle, cooling breezes, and
Speaker 1: the days pass in a blessed inactivity, without work, devoted
Speaker 1: wholly to the sun and to the feast days of
Speaker 1: the sun. Aschenbach saw the boy Tadzio frequently, almost constantly,
Speaker 1: owing to the limited range of territory and the regularity
Speaker 1: of their lives. The beauty was near him at short
Speaker 1: intervals throughout the day. He saw him, met him everywhere
Speaker 1: in the lower rooms of the hotel, on the cooling
Speaker 1: water trips to the city and back, in the arcades
Speaker 1: of the square, and at times when he was especially lucky,
Speaker 1: ran across him on the streets. But principally and with
Speaker 1: the most gratifying regularity, the forenoon on the beach allowed
Speaker 1: him to admire and study this rare spectacle at his leisure. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was this guarantee of happiness, this daily recurrence of
Speaker 1: good fortune, which made his stay here so precious and
Speaker 1: gave him such pleasure. In the constant procession of sunny days,
Speaker 1: he was up as early as he used to be
Speaker 1: when under the driving pressure of work, and was on
Speaker 1: the beach before most people, when the sun was still
Speaker 1: mild and the sea lay blinding white in the dreaminess
Speaker 1: of mourning. He spoke amiably to the guard of the
Speaker 1: private beach, and also spoke familiarly to the barefoot, white
Speaker 1: bearded old man who had prepared his place for him,
Speaker 1: stretching the brown canopy and bringing the furniture of the
Speaker 1: cabin out on the platform. Then he took his seat.
Speaker 1: There would now be three or four hours in which
Speaker 1: the sun mounted and gained terrific strength, the sea a
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper blue, and he might look at Todsio.
Speaker 1: He saw him approaching from the left along the edge
Speaker 1: of the sea, he saw him as he stepped out
Speaker 1: backwards from among the cabins, or he would suddenly find
Speaker 1: with a shock of pleasure that he had missed his coming,
Speaker 1: that he was already here in the blue and white
Speaker 1: bathing suit which was his only garment now while on
Speaker 1: the beach, that he had already commenced his usual activities
Speaker 1: in the sun and the sand. A pleasantly trifling, idle
Speaker 1: and unstable manner of living, a mixture of rest and play.
Speaker 1: Todsio would saunter about, weighed, dig catch things, lie down,
Speaker 1: go for a swim, all the while being kept under
Speaker 1: surveillance by the women on the platform, who made his
Speaker 1: name ring out in their falsetto voices. TODs you, TODs you,
Speaker 1: then he would come running to them with a look
Speaker 1: of eagerness, to tell them what he had seen, what
Speaker 1: he had experienced, or to show them what he had
Speaker 1: found or caught, muscles, sea horses, jellyfish, and crabs that
Speaker 1: ran sideways. Aschenbach did not understand a word he said,
Speaker 1: and though it might have been the most ordinary thing
Speaker 1: in the world, it was a vague harmony in his ear.
Speaker 1: So the forimness of the boy's speech turned it into music.
Speaker 1: A wanton son poured its prodigal splendor down over him,
Speaker 1: and his figure was always set off against the background
Speaker 1: of an intense blue. This piquant body was so freely
Speaker 1: exhibited that his eyes soon knew every line and posture.
Speaker 1: He was continually rediscovering with new pleasure all this familiar beauty,
Speaker 1: and his astonishment at its delicate appeal to his senses
Speaker 1: was unending. The boy was called to greet a guest
Speaker 1: who was paying his respects to the ladies at the
Speaker 1: bathing house. He came running, running wet, perhaps out of
Speaker 1: the water, tossed back his curls, and as he held
Speaker 1: out his hand, resting on one leg and raising his
Speaker 1: other foot on the toes, the set of his body
Speaker 1: was delightful. It had a charming expectancy about it, a
Speaker 1: well meaning shyness, a winsomeness which showed his aristocratic training.
Speaker 1: He lay stretched full length, his bath towel slung across
Speaker 1: his shoulders, his delicately chiseled arm supported in the sand,
Speaker 1: his chin in his palm. The boy called Joshu was
Speaker 1: squatting near him and making up to him, and nothing
Speaker 1: could be more enchanting than the smile of his eyes
Speaker 1: and lips when the leader glanced up at his inferior,
Speaker 1: his servant. He stood on the edge of the sea,
Speaker 1: alone apart from his people, quite near to Ochenbach. Erecked,
Speaker 1: his hands locked across the back of his neck. He
Speaker 1: swayed slowly on the balls of his feet, looked dreamily
Speaker 1: into the blueness of sea and sky, while tiny waves
Speaker 1: rolled up and bathed his feet. His honey colored hair
Speaker 1: clung in rings about his neck and temples. The sun
Speaker 1: made the down on his back glitter. The fine etching
Speaker 1: of the ribs the symmetry of the chest were emphasized
Speaker 1: by the tightness of the suit across the buttocks. His
Speaker 1: armpits were still as smooth as those of a statue.
Speaker 1: The hollows of his knees glistened, and their bluish veins
Speaker 1: made his body seem built of some clearer stuff. What
Speaker 1: rigor what precision of thought were expressed in this erect,
Speaker 1: youthfully perfect body. Yet the pure and strenuous will which
Speaker 1: darkly at work could bring such godlike sculpture to the light,
Speaker 1: was not he the artist familiar with this? Did it
Speaker 1: not operate in him? Too? And he, under the press
Speaker 1: of frugal passions, would free from the marble mass of
Speaker 1: speech some slender form which he had seen in the mind,
Speaker 1: and which he put before his fellows as a statue
Speaker 1: and a mirror of intellectual beauty. Statue and mirror. His
Speaker 1: eyes took in the noble form there bordered with blue,
Speaker 1: and with a rush of enthusiasm, he felt that in
Speaker 1: this spectacle he was catching the beautiful itself, form as
Speaker 1: the thought of God, the one pure perfection which lives
Speaker 1: in the mind, and which, in this symbol and likeness,
Speaker 1: had been placed here quietly and simply as an object
Speaker 1: of devotion. That was drunkenness, and eagerly, without thinking, the
Speaker 1: aging artist welcomed it. His mind was in travail. All
Speaker 1: that he had learned dropped back into flux. His understanding
Speaker 1: threw up age old thoughts which he had inherited with youth,
Speaker 1: though they had never ever before lived with their own fire.
Speaker 1: Is it not written that the sun diverts our attention
Speaker 1: from intellectual to sensual things. Reason and understanding, it is said,
Speaker 1: becomes so numbed and enchanted that the soul forgets everything
Speaker 1: out of delight with its immediate circumstances, and in astonishment,
Speaker 1: becomes attached to the most beautiful objects shined on by
Speaker 1: the sun. Indeed, only with the aid of a body
Speaker 1: is it capable, then, of raising itself to higher considerations.
Speaker 1: To be sure, Ahmor did as the instructors of mathematics
Speaker 1: who show backward children tangible representations of the pure forms. Similarly,
Speaker 1: the God, in order to make the spiritual visible for us,
Speaker 1: readily utilized the form and color of man's youth, And
Speaker 1: as a reminder, he adorned these with the reflected splendor
Speaker 1: of beauty, which, when we behold it makes us flare
Speaker 1: up in pain and hope. His enthusiasm suggested these things
Speaker 1: put him in the mood for them, and from the
Speaker 1: noise of the sea and the luster of the sun.
Speaker 1: He wove himself a charming picture. Here was the old
Speaker 1: plane Tree, not far from the walls of Athens, a holy,
Speaker 1: shadowy place, filled with the smell of Agnus costUS blossoms,
Speaker 1: and decorated with ornaments and images sacred to Achelus and
Speaker 1: the nymphs. Clear and pure. The brook at the foot
Speaker 1: of the spreading tree fell across the smooth pebbles. The
Speaker 1: cicadas were fiddling, but on the grass, which was like
Speaker 1: a pillow, gently sloping to the head, two people were
Speaker 1: stretched out in hiding from the heat of the day,
Speaker 1: an older man and a youth, one ugly and one beautiful.
Speaker 1: Wisdom next to loveliness and amid gallantries and skillfully engaging banter,
Speaker 1: Socrates was instruck by Adrus in matters of desire and virtue.
Speaker 1: He spoke to him of the hot terror which the
Speaker 1: initiates suffer when their eyes light on an image of
Speaker 1: the eternal beauty. Spoke of the greed of the impious
Speaker 1: and the wicked, who cannot think beauty when they see
Speaker 1: its likeness, and who are incapable of reverence. Spoke of
Speaker 1: the holy distress which befalls the noble minded. When a
Speaker 1: godlike countenance, a perfect body appears before them, they tremble
Speaker 1: and grow distracted, and hardly dare to raise their eyes.
Speaker 1: And they honor the man who possesses this beauty. Yes,
Speaker 1: if they were not afraid of being thought downright madmen,
Speaker 1: they would sacrifice to the beloved as to the image
Speaker 1: of a god. For beauty ma faye Drus. Beauty alone
Speaker 1: is both lovely and visible at once. It is, mark me,
Speaker 1: the only form of the spiritual which we can receive
Speaker 1: through the senses. Else, what would become of us if
Speaker 1: the divine, if reason and virtue and truth should appear
Speaker 1: to us through the senses, should we not perish and
Speaker 1: be consumed with love as Samily once was with Zeus.
Speaker 1: Thus beauty is the sensitive man's access to the spirit,
Speaker 1: but only a road a means simply little Phaedrus. And
Speaker 1: then this crafty suitor made the neatest remark of all.
Speaker 1: It was this that the lover is more divine than
Speaker 1: the beloved, since the God is in the one but
Speaker 1: not in the other. Perhaps the most delicate, the most
Speaker 1: derisive thought which has ever been framed, and the one
Speaker 1: from which spring all the cunning and the profoundest pleasures
Speaker 1: of desire. Writers are happiest with an idea which can
Speaker 1: become all emotion, and an emotion all idea. Just such
Speaker 1: a pulsating idea, such a precise emotion, belonged to the
Speaker 1: lonely man at this moment was at his call nature.
Speaker 1: It ran shivers with ecstasy when the spirit bows an
Speaker 1: homage before beauty. Suddenly he wanted to write Eros loves idleness,
Speaker 1: they say, and he is suited only to idleness. But
Speaker 1: at this point in the crisis, the affliction became a
Speaker 1: stimulus towards productivity. The incentive hardly mattered the request. An
Speaker 1: agitation for an open statement on a certain large burning
Speaker 1: issue of culture and taste was going about the intellectual
Speaker 1: world and had finally caught up with the traveler. Here
Speaker 1: he was familiar with the subject. It had touched his
Speaker 1: own experience, and suddenly he felt an irresistible desire to
Speaker 1: display it in the light of his own version. And
Speaker 1: he even went so far as to prefer working in
Speaker 1: Tazzio's presence, taking the scope of the boy as a
Speaker 1: standard for his writing, making his stony follow the lines
Speaker 1: of this body, which seemed godlike to him and carrying
Speaker 1: his beauty over into the spiritual, just as the eagle
Speaker 1: once carried the Trojan stag up into the ether. Never
Speaker 1: had his joy in words been more sweet. He had
Speaker 1: never been so aware that eros is in the word
Speaker 1: as during those perilous, precious hours, when at his crude
Speaker 1: table under the canopy, facing the idol and listening to
Speaker 1: the music of his voice. He followed Tadzio's beauty in
Speaker 1: the forming of his little tract a page and a
Speaker 1: half of choice prose, which was soon to excite the
Speaker 1: admiration of many through its clarity, its poise, and the
Speaker 1: vigorous curve of its emotion. Certainly, it is better for
Speaker 1: people to know only the beautiful product has finished, and
Speaker 1: not in its conception its conditions of origin. For knowledge
Speaker 1: of the sources from which the artist derives, as in Spira,
Speaker 1: would often confuse and alienate, and in this way detract
Speaker 1: from the effects of his mastery. Strange hours, strangely enervating efforts,
Speaker 1: rare creative intercourse between the spirit and a body. When
Speaker 1: Aschenbach put away his work and started back from the beach,
Speaker 1: he felt exhausted or in dispersion even and it was
Speaker 1: as though his conscience were complaining after some transgression end
Speaker 1: of Chapter four, Part one, Chapter four, Part two. The
Speaker 1: following morning, as he was about to leave the hotel,
Speaker 1: he looked off from the steps and noticed that Tazio,
Speaker 1: who was alone and was already on his way towards
Speaker 1: the sea, was just approaching the private beach. He was
Speaker 1: half tempted by the simple notion of seizing this opportunity
Speaker 1: to strike up a casual, friendly acquaintanceship with the boy
Speaker 1: who had been the unconscious source of so much agitation
Speaker 1: and upheaval. He wanted to address him and enjoy the
Speaker 1: answering look in his eyes. The boy was sauntering along
Speaker 1: he could be overtaken, and Aschenbach quickened his pace. He
Speaker 1: reached him on the board walk behind the bathing houses,
Speaker 1: was about to lay a hand on his head and
Speaker 1: shoulders in some word or other, an amiable phrase in
Speaker 1: French was on the tip of his tongue. But he
Speaker 1: felt that his heart, due also perhaps to his rapid stride,
Speaker 1: was beating like a hammer, and he was so short
Speaker 1: of breath that his voice would have been tight and trembling.
Speaker 1: He hesitated. He tried to get himself under control. Suddenly
Speaker 1: he became afraid that he had been walking too long,
Speaker 1: so close behind the boy. He was afraid of arousing
Speaker 1: curiosity and causing him to look back questioningly. He made
Speaker 1: one more spurt, failed, surrendered, and passed with bowed head.
Speaker 1: Too late, he thought, immediately, too late? Yet was it
Speaker 1: too late? This step, which he had just been on
Speaker 1: the verge of taking, would very possibly have put things
Speaker 1: on a sound, free and easy basis, and would have
Speaker 1: restored him to wholesome soberness. But the fact was that
Speaker 1: Aschenbach did not want soberness. His intoxication was too precious.
Speaker 1: Who can explain the stamp and the nature of the artist.
Speaker 1: Who can understand this deep instinctive welding of discipline and
Speaker 1: license for to be unable to want wholesome soberness his license?
Speaker 1: Aschenbach was no longer given to self criticism, his tastes,
Speaker 1: the mental caliber of his years, his self respect, ripeness,
Speaker 1: and belated simplicity made him unwilling to dismember his motives
Speaker 1: and to debate whether his impulses were the result of
Speaker 1: conscientiousness nor of dissolution and weakness. He was embarrassed as
Speaker 1: he feared that some one or other, if only the
Speaker 1: guard on the beach must have observed his pursuit and defeat.
Speaker 1: He was very much afraid of the ridiculous. Further, he
Speaker 1: joked with himself about his comically pious distress. Downed, he thought,
Speaker 1: downed like a rooster with his wings hanging miserably in
Speaker 1: the battle. It really is a god who can, at
Speaker 1: one side of his loveliness, break our courage this way
Speaker 1: and force down our pride. So thoroughly he toyed and
Speaker 1: skirmished with his emotions, and was far too haughty to
Speaker 1: be afraid of them. He had already ceased thinking about
Speaker 1: the time when the vacation period which he had fixed
Speaker 1: for himself would expire. The thought of going home never
Speaker 1: even suggested itself. He had sent for an ample supply
Speaker 1: of money. His only concern was with the possible departure
Speaker 1: of the Polish family. By a casual questioning of the
Speaker 1: hotel barber, he had contrived to learn that these people
Speaker 1: had come here only a short time before his own arrival.
Speaker 1: The sun browned his face and hands. The invigorating salt
Speaker 1: breezes made him feel fresher. Once he had been in
Speaker 1: the habit of expending on his work every bit of
Speaker 1: nourishment which food, sleep, or nature could provide him. And similarly,
Speaker 1: now he was generous and uneconomical, letting pass off as
Speaker 1: elation and emotion. All the daily strengthening derived from sun,
Speaker 1: idleness and sea air. His sleep was fitful. The preciously
Speaker 1: uniform days were separated by short nights of happy unrest.
Speaker 1: He did retire early, for at nine o'clock, when Tazio
Speaker 1: had disappeared from the scene, the day seemed over. But
Speaker 1: at the first gray of dawn he was awakened by
Speaker 1: a gently insistent shock. He suddenly remembered his adventure. He
Speaker 1: could no longer remain in bed. He arose and clad
Speaker 1: lightly against the chill of morning. He sat down by
Speaker 1: the open window to await the rising of the sun.
Speaker 1: Revived by his sleep, he watched this miraculous event with reverence. Sky, earth,
Speaker 1: and sea still lay in glassy, ghost like twilight. A
Speaker 1: dying star still floated in the emptiness of space, but
Speaker 1: a breeze started up, a winged message from habitations beyond reach,
Speaker 1: telling that Eros was rising beside her husband, and that
Speaker 1: first sweet reddening in the farthest stretches of sky and
Speaker 1: sea took place by which the sentiency of creation is announced.
Speaker 1: The goddess was approaching the seductress of youth, who stole
Speaker 1: Cleatus and Cephalus, and, despite the envy of all the Olympians,
Speaker 1: enjoyed the love of handsome Orion. A strewing of roses
Speaker 1: began there on the edge of the world, and unutterably pure,
Speaker 1: glowing and blooming, childish clouds lighted and shined through floated
Speaker 1: like busy little cupids in the rosy bluish mist. Purple
Speaker 1: fell upon the sea, which seemed to be simmering and
Speaker 1: washing the color towards him. Golden spears shot up into
Speaker 1: the sky from behind the splendor, caught fire silently and
Speaker 1: with godlike power. An intense flame of licking tongues broke out,
Speaker 1: and with rattling hoofs, the brother's sacred chargers mounted the horizon.
Speaker 1: Lighted by the God's brilliance, he sat there, keeping watch alone.
Speaker 1: He closed his eyes, letting this glory play against the lids.
Speaker 1: Past emotions, precious, early afflictions and yearnings, which had been
Speaker 1: stifled by his rigorous program of living, were now returning
Speaker 1: in such strange new forms, with an embarrassed, astonished smile,
Speaker 1: he recognized them. He was thinking, dreaming slowly, his lips
Speaker 1: formed a name, and, still smiling, with his face turned upwards,
Speaker 1: hands folded in his lap, he fell asleep again in
Speaker 1: his chair. But the day which began with such fiery solemnity,
Speaker 1: underwent a strange mythical transformation. Where did the breeze originate?
Speaker 1: Which suddenly began playing so gently and insinuatingly, like some
Speaker 1: whispered suggestion about his ears and temples? Little white, choppy
Speaker 1: clouds stood in the sky in scattered clumps, like the
Speaker 1: pasturing herds of the gods. A stronger wind arose, and
Speaker 1: the steeds of Poseidon came prancing up, and along with
Speaker 1: them the steers which belonged to the blue locked God,
Speaker 1: bellowing and lowering their horns as they ran. Yet among
Speaker 1: the detritus of the more distant beech waves were hopping
Speaker 1: forward like agile goats. He was caught in the enchantment
Speaker 1: of a sacredly distorted world full of panic life, and
Speaker 1: he dreamed delicate legends. Often, when the sun was sinking
Speaker 1: behind Venice, he would sit on a bench in the park,
Speaker 1: observing Tazio, who was dressed in a white suit with
Speaker 1: a colored sash, and was playing ball on the smooth gravel.
Speaker 1: And it was Hyacinth that he seemed to be watching, Hyacinth,
Speaker 1: who was to die because two gods loved him. Yes,
Speaker 1: he felt Zephyr's aching jealousy of the rival, who forgot
Speaker 1: the oracle, the beau, and the lyre in order to
Speaker 1: play forever with this beauty. He saw the discus, guided
Speaker 1: by a pitiless envy, strike the lovely head. He too,
Speaker 1: growing pale, caught the drooping body, and the flower sprung
Speaker 1: from this sweet blood bore the inscription of his unending grief.
Speaker 1: Nothing is more unusual and strained than the relationship between
Speaker 1: people who know each other only with their eyes, who
Speaker 1: meet daily, even hourly, and yet are compelled by force
Speaker 1: of custom or their own caprices to say no word
Speaker 1: or make no move of acknowledgment, but to maintain the
Speaker 1: appearance of an aloof unconcern. There is a restlessness and
Speaker 1: a surcharged curiosity existing between them, the hysteria of an unsatisfied,
Speaker 1: unnaturally repressed desire for acquaintanceship and intercourse. And especially there's
Speaker 1: a kind of tense respect for one person loves and
Speaker 1: honors another so long as he cannot judge him, and
Speaker 1: desire is an evidence of incomplete knowledge. Some kind of
Speaker 1: familiarity had necessarily to form itself between Oschenbach and Jong Tazio,
Speaker 1: and it gave the elderly man keen pleasure to see
Speaker 1: that his sympathies and interests were not left completely unanswered.
Speaker 1: For example, when the boy appeared on the beach in
Speaker 1: the morning and was going towards his family's bathing house,
Speaker 1: what had induced him never to use the board walk
Speaker 1: on the far side of it any more, but to
Speaker 1: stroll along the front path through the sand, past Oschenbach's
Speaker 1: habitual place, and often unnecessarily close to him, almost touching
Speaker 1: his table or his chair. Even did the attraction, the
Speaker 1: fascination of an overpowering emotion have such an effect upon
Speaker 1: the frail, unthinking object of it. Aschenbach watched daily for
Speaker 1: Tasio to approach, and sometimes he acted as though he
Speaker 1: were occupied when this event was taking place, and he
Speaker 1: let the boy pass unobserved. But at other times he
Speaker 1: would look up and their glances met. They were both
Speaker 1: in deep earnest when this occurred. Nothing in the elderly
Speaker 1: man's cultivated and dignified expression betrayed any inner movement, but
Speaker 1: there was a searching look in Totsio's eyes, a thoughtful questioning.
Speaker 1: He began to falter, looked down, then looked up again charmingly,
Speaker 1: and when he had passed something in his bearing seemed
Speaker 1: to indicate that it was only his breeding which kept
Speaker 1: him from turning around once. However, one evening things turned
Speaker 1: out differently. The Polish children and their governess had been
Speaker 1: missing at dinner in the large hall. Oschenbach had noted
Speaker 1: this uneasily. After the meal. Disturbed by their absence, Oschenbach
Speaker 1: was walking an evening dress and straw hat in front
Speaker 1: of the hotel at the foot of the terrace when
Speaker 1: suddenly he saw the nun like sisters appear in the
Speaker 1: light of the arc lamp, accompanied by their governess, with
Speaker 1: Totzio a few steps behind. Evidently they were coming from
Speaker 1: the steamer pier after having dined for some reason in
Speaker 1: the city. It must have been cool on the water.
Speaker 1: Tazze was wearing a dark blue sailor overcoat with gold buttons,
Speaker 1: and on his head he had a cap to match.
Speaker 1: The sun and sea air had not browned him his
Speaker 1: skin still had the same yellow marble color as at first.
Speaker 1: It even seemed paler today than usual, whether from the
Speaker 1: coolness or from the blanching moonlight of the lamps. His
Speaker 1: regular eyebrows showed up more sharply, the darkness of his
Speaker 1: eyes were deeper. It is hard to say how beautiful
Speaker 1: he was, and Aschenbach was distressed, as he had often
Speaker 1: been before, by the thought that words can only evaluate
Speaker 1: sensuous beauty, but not regive it. He had not been
Speaker 1: prepared for this rich spectacle. It came unhoped for. He
Speaker 1: had no time to intrench himself behind an expression of
Speaker 1: repose and dignity. Pleasure, surprise, admiration must have shone on
Speaker 1: his face as his eyes met those of the boy.
Speaker 1: And at this time, this moment, it happened that Tasio smiled,
Speaker 1: smiled to him eloquently, familiarly, charmingly, without concealment, and during
Speaker 1: the smile his lips slowly opened. It was the smile
Speaker 1: of Narcissus bent over the reflecting water, that deep, fascinated,
Speaker 1: magnetic smile with which he stretches out his arms to
Speaker 1: the image of his own beauty, a smile distorted ever
Speaker 1: so little distorted at the hopelessness of his efforts to
Speaker 1: kiss the pure lips of the shadow. It was coquettish, inquisitive,
Speaker 1: and slightly tortured. It was infatuated and infatuating. He had
Speaker 1: received this smile, and he hurried away, as though he
Speaker 1: carried a fatal gift. He was so broken up that
Speaker 1: he was compelled to escape the light of the terrace
Speaker 1: and the front garden. He hastily hunted out the darkness
Speaker 1: of the park. In the rear, strangely indignant and tender
Speaker 1: admonitions wrung them out of him. You dare not smile
Speaker 1: like that. Listen. No one dares smile like that to another.
Speaker 1: He threw himself down on a bench in a frenzy.
Speaker 1: He breathed the night smell of the vegetation, and, leaning
Speaker 1: back his arms loose. Overwhelmed with frequent chills running through him,
Speaker 1: he whispered, the fixed formula of desire impossible in this case, absurd, abject, ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and yet holly even in this case venerable. I love you.
Speaker 1: End of chapter four, Chapter five, Part one. During his
Speaker 1: fourth week at the Lido, Gustav Fawaschenbach made several sinister
Speaker 1: observations touching on the world about him. First, it seemed
Speaker 1: to him that as the season progressed, the number of
Speaker 1: guests at the hotel was diminishing rather than increasing. German
Speaker 1: especially seemed to be dropping away, so that finally he
Speaker 1: heard nothing but foreign sounds at table and on the beach.
Speaker 1: Then one day, in conversation with the barber, whom he
Speaker 1: visited often, he caught a word which startled him. The
Speaker 1: man had mentioned a German family had left soon after
Speaker 1: their arrival. He added, glibly and flatteringly, but you are staying, sir,
Speaker 1: you have no fear of the plague. Oschenbach looked at him,
Speaker 1: the plague, he repeated. The gossiper was silent, made out
Speaker 1: as though busy with other things, ignored the question. When
Speaker 1: it was put more insistently, he declared that he knew nothing,
Speaker 1: and with embarrassing volubility, he tried to change the subject.
Speaker 1: That was about noon. In the afternoon there was a calm,
Speaker 1: and Aschenbach rode to Venice under an intense sun, for
Speaker 1: he was driven by a mania to follow the Polish children,
Speaker 1: whom he had seen with their governess taking the road
Speaker 1: to the steamer pier. He did not find the idol
Speaker 1: at San Marco. But while sitting over his tea at
Speaker 1: his little round iron table on the shady side of
Speaker 1: the square, he suddenly detected a peculiar odour in the air, which,
Speaker 1: it seemed to him now he had noticed for days
Speaker 1: without being consciously aware of it. The smell was sweetish
Speaker 1: and drug like, suggesting sickness and wounds, and a suspicious cleanliness.
Speaker 1: He tested and examined it thoughtfully, finished his luncheon, and
Speaker 1: left the square. On the side opposite the church, the
Speaker 1: smell was stronger where the street narrowed. On the corners,
Speaker 1: printed posters were hung, giving municipal warnings against certain diseases
Speaker 1: of the gastric system liable to occur at this season,
Speaker 1: against the eating of oysters and clams, and also against
Speaker 1: the water of the canals. The euphemistic nature of the
Speaker 1: announcement was palpable. Groups of people had collected in silence
Speaker 1: on the bridges and squares, and the foreigners stood among them,
Speaker 1: scenting and investigating. At a little shop, he inquired about
Speaker 1: the fatal smell, asking the proprietor, who was leaning against
Speaker 1: his door, surrounded by coral chains and imitation amethyst jewelry.
Speaker 1: The man measured him with heavy eyes and brightened up hastily.
Speaker 1: A matter of precaution, sir, he answered, with a gesture,
Speaker 1: a regulation of the police, which must be taken for
Speaker 1: what it is worth. This weather is oppressive, the siaco
Speaker 1: is not good for the health. In short, you understand
Speaker 1: an exaggerated prudence. Perhaps Ashenbah thanked him and went on
Speaker 1: also on the steamer back to the Liedo, he caught
Speaker 1: the smell of the disinfectant. Returning to the hotel, he
Speaker 1: went immediately to the periodical stand in the lobby and
Speaker 1: ran through the papers. He found nothing in the foreign
Speaker 1: language press. The domestic press spoke of rumors, produced hazy statistics,
Speaker 1: repeated official denials, and questioned their truthfulness. This explained the
Speaker 1: departure of the German and Austrian guests. Obviously, the subjects
Speaker 1: of the other nations knew nothing, suspected nothing, were not
Speaker 1: yet uneasy to keep it quiet. Aschenbach thought angrily as
Speaker 1: he threw the papers back on the table, to keep
Speaker 1: that quiet. But at the same moment he was filled
Speaker 1: with satisfaction over the adventure that was to befall the
Speaker 1: world about him. For passion like crime is not suited
Speaker 1: to the secure daily rounds of order and well being,
Speaker 1: and every slackening in the bourgeois structure, every disorder and
Speaker 1: affliction of the world must be held welcome, since they
Speaker 1: bring with them a vague promise of advantage. So Waschenbach
Speaker 1: felt a dark contentment with what was taking place cover
Speaker 1: of the authorities in the dirty alleys of Venice. This
Speaker 1: wicked secret of the city was welded with his own secret,
Speaker 1: and he too was involved in keeping it hidden. For
Speaker 1: in his infatuation he cared about nothing but the possibility
Speaker 1: of Tadzio's leaving, and he realized with something like terror,
Speaker 1: that he would not know how to go on living
Speaker 1: if this occurred. Lately, he had not been relying simply
Speaker 1: on good luck and the daily routine. For his chances
Speaker 1: to be near the boy and look at him. He
Speaker 1: pursued him, stalked him. On Sundays, for instance, the poles
Speaker 1: never appeared on the beach. He guessed that they must
Speaker 1: be attending Mass at San Marco. He hurried there, and,
Speaker 1: stepping from the heat of the square into the golden
Speaker 1: twilight of the church, he found the boy. He was hunting,
Speaker 1: bowed over a pre dieu praying. Then he stood in
Speaker 1: the background on the cracked mosaic floor, with people on
Speaker 1: all sides, kneel, murmuring and making the sign of the cross,
Speaker 1: and the compact grandeur of this oriental temple weighed heavily
Speaker 1: on his senses. In front, the richly ornamented priest was
Speaker 1: conducting the office, moving about and singing. Incense pouring forth,
Speaker 1: clouding the weak little flame of the candle on the altar,
Speaker 1: and with the sweet, stuffy sacrificial odor another seemed to
Speaker 1: commingle faintly the smell of the infested city. But through
Speaker 1: the smoke and the sparkle, Aschenbach saw how the boy
Speaker 1: there in front turned his head, hunted him out, and
Speaker 1: looked at him. When the crowd was streaming out through
Speaker 1: the opened portals into the brilliant square with its swarms
Speaker 1: of pigeons, the lover hid in the vestibule. He kept
Speaker 1: trader cover. He lay in wait. He saw the poles
Speaker 1: quit the church, saw how the children took ceremonious leave
Speaker 1: of their mother, and how she turned toward the piazzetta
Speaker 1: on her way home. He made sure that the boy
Speaker 1: the nun like sisters and the governess took the road
Speaker 1: to the right, through the gateway of the dock tower
Speaker 1: and into the Mercharia, and after giving them a slight start,
Speaker 1: he followed followed them furtively on their walk through Venice.
Speaker 1: He had to stand still when they stopped, had to
Speaker 1: take flight in shops and courts to let them pass.
Speaker 1: When they looked back, he lost them. Hot and exhausted,
Speaker 1: he hunted them over bridges and down dirty, blind alleys,
Speaker 1: and he underwent minutes of deadly agony when suddenly he
Speaker 1: saw them coming towards him in a narrow passage where
Speaker 1: escape was impossible. Yet it could not be said that
Speaker 1: he suffered. He was drunk, and his steps followed the
Speaker 1: promptings of the daemon, who delights in treading human reason
Speaker 1: and dignity under foot. In one place, Tasio and his
Speaker 1: companions took a gondola, and shortly after they had pushed
Speaker 1: off from the shore, Aschenbach, who had hidden behind them
Speaker 1: some structure a well while they were climbing in, now
Speaker 1: did the same. He spoke in a hurried undertone as
Speaker 1: he directed the rower with the promise of a generous
Speaker 1: tip to follow unnoticed and at a distance that gondola,
Speaker 1: which was just rounding the corner, And he thrilled when
Speaker 1: the man, with the roguish willingness of an accomplice assured
Speaker 1: him in the same tone, that his wishes would be
Speaker 1: carried out, carried out faithfully. Leaning back against the soft
Speaker 1: black cushions, he rocked and glided toward the other black
Speaker 1: peaked craft, where his passion was drawing him. At times
Speaker 1: it escaped. Then he felt worried and uneasy, but his pilot,
Speaker 1: as though skilled in such commissions, was always able, through
Speaker 1: sly maneuvers, speedy diagonals, and short cuts, to bring the
Speaker 1: quest into view again. The air was quiet and smelly.
Speaker 1: The sun burned down strong through the slate colored mist.
Speaker 1: Water slapped against the wood and stone. The call of
Speaker 1: the gondolier, half warning, half greeting, was answered with a
Speaker 1: strange obedience. Far away in the silence of the labyrinth,
Speaker 1: white and purple umbels with the scent of almonds, hung
Speaker 1: down from little elevated gardens over crumbling walls. Arabian window
Speaker 1: casings were outlined through the murkiness. The marble steps of
Speaker 1: a church descended into the water. A beggar squatted there,
Speaker 1: protesting his misery, holding out his hat and showing the
Speaker 1: whites of his eyes as though he were blind. An
Speaker 1: antiquarian in front of his den fawned on the passer
Speaker 1: by and invited him to stop, in the hopes of
Speaker 1: swindling him. That was Venice, the flatteringly and suspiciously beautiful,
Speaker 1: this city, half legend, half snare for strangers. In his
Speaker 1: foul air art once flourished gluttonously, and had suggested to
Speaker 1: its musicians suggestive notes which cradle and lull. The adventurer
Speaker 1: felt as though his eyes were taking him in this
Speaker 1: same luxury, as though his ears were being won by
Speaker 1: just such melodies. He recalled, too, that the city was
Speaker 1: diseased and was concealing through this greed, and he peered
Speaker 1: more eagerly after the retreating gondola. Thus, in his infatuation,
Speaker 1: he wanted simply to pursue uninterrupted the object that aroused
Speaker 1: him to dream of it when it was not there, and,
Speaker 1: after the fashion of lovers, to speak softly to its
Speaker 1: mere outline. Loneliness, strangeness, and the joy of a deep
Speaker 1: belated intoxication encouraged him and prompted him to accept even
Speaker 1: the remotest things without reserve or shame, with the result
Speaker 1: that as he returned late in the evening from Venice,
Speaker 1: he stopped on the second floor of the hotel before
Speaker 1: the door of the boy's room, laid his head in
Speaker 1: utter drunkenness against the hinge of the door, and for
Speaker 1: a long time could not drag himself away. Despite the
Speaker 1: danger of being caught and embarrassed in such a mad situation,
Speaker 1: yet there were still moments of relief when he came
Speaker 1: partly to his senses, where too he would think alarmed,
Speaker 1: where too, like every man whose natural abilities stimulate an
Speaker 1: aristocratic interest in his ancestry, he was accustomed to think
Speaker 1: of his forebears in connection with the accomplishments and successes
Speaker 1: of his life, to assure himself of their approval, their satisfaction,
Speaker 1: their undeniable respect. He thought of them, now, entangled as
Speaker 1: he was, in such an illicit experience, caught in such
Speaker 1: exotic transgressions. He thought of their characteristic rigidity of principle,
Speaker 1: their scrupulous masculinity, and he smiled dejectedly. What would they say?
Speaker 1: But then, what would they have said to his whole life,
Speaker 1: which was almost degenerate in its departure from theirs under
Speaker 1: the bane of art, a life against which he himself
Speaker 1: had once issued such youthful mockeries out of loyalty to
Speaker 1: his fathers, but which at bottom had been so much
Speaker 1: like theirs he too had served. He too had been
Speaker 1: a soldier and a warrior, like many of them. For
Speaker 1: art was a war, a destructive battle, and one was
Speaker 1: not equal to it for long these days. A life
Speaker 1: of self conquest and of in spite offs, a rigid,
Speaker 1: sober and unyielding life which he had formed into the
Speaker 1: symbol of a delicate and timely heroism. He might well
Speaker 1: call it masculine or brave, And it almost seemed as
Speaker 1: though the eros mastering him were somehow peculiarly adapted and
Speaker 1: inclined to such a life. Had not this eros stood
Speaker 1: in high repute among the bravest of peoples, Was it
Speaker 1: not true that precisely through bravery he had flourished in
Speaker 1: their cities? Numerous war heroes of antiquity had willingly borne
Speaker 1: his yoke, for nothing was deemed a disgrace which the
Speaker 1: God imposed, an act which would have been rebuked as
Speaker 1: the sign of cowardice if they had been done for
Speaker 1: other purposes. Prostrations, oaths, entreaties, abjectness. Such things did not
Speaker 1: bring shame upon the lover, but rather he reaped praise
Speaker 1: for them. In this way, his infatuation determined the course
Speaker 1: of his thoughts. In this way he tried to uphold
Speaker 1: himself to preserve his respect, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: selfish and calculating, he turned his attention to the unclean
Speaker 1: transactions here in Venice, this adventure of the outer world,
Speaker 1: which conspired darkly with his own, and which fed his
Speaker 1: passion with vague, lawless hopes. Bent on getting reliable news
Speaker 1: of the condition and progress of the pestilence, he ransacked
Speaker 1: the local papers in the city cafes, as they had
Speaker 1: been missing from the reading table of the hotel lobby
Speaker 1: for several days. Days Now, statements alternated with disavowals. The
Speaker 1: number of the sick and dead was supposed to reach
Speaker 1: twenty forty or even a hundred and more, and immediately
Speaker 1: afterwards every instance of the plague would be either flatly
Speaker 1: denied or attributed to completely isolated cases which had crept
Speaker 1: in from the outside. There were scattered admonitions, protests against
Speaker 1: the dangerous conduct of foreign authorities, certainty was impossible. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: the lone man felt especially entitled to participate in the secret,
Speaker 1: and although he was excluded, he derived a grotesque satisfaction
Speaker 1: from putting embarrassing questions to those who did know, and
Speaker 1: as they were pledged to silence, forcing them into deliberate lies.
Speaker 1: One day, at breakfast in the large dining hall, he
Speaker 1: entered into a conversation with the manager, that softly treading
Speaker 1: little man in the French frock coat, who was moving
Speaker 1: amiably and solicitously about among the diners, and had stopped
Speaker 1: at Aschenbach's table for a few passing words. Just why,
Speaker 1: the guest asked, negligently and casually had disinfectants become so
Speaker 1: prevalent in venice recently? It has to do, was the
Speaker 1: evasive answer, with a police regulation, and is intended to
Speaker 1: prevent any inconveniences or disturbances to the public health which
Speaker 1: might result from the exceptionally warm and threatening weather. The
Speaker 1: police are to be congratulated, Aschenbach answered, and after the
Speaker 1: exchange of a few remarks on the weather, the manager left.
Speaker 1: Yet that same day, in the evening, after dinner, it
Speaker 1: happened that a little band of strolling singers from the
Speaker 1: city gave a performance in the front garden of the hotel.
Speaker 1: Two men and two women. They stood by the iron
Speaker 1: post of an arc lamp and turned their whitened faces
Speaker 1: up towards the large terrace, where the guests were enjoying
Speaker 1: this folk recital over their coffee and cooling drinks. The
Speaker 1: hotel personnel, bell boys, waiters and clerks from the office
Speaker 1: could be seen listening by the doors of the vestibule.
Speaker 1: The Russian family, eager and precise in their amusements, had
Speaker 1: had wicker chairs placed in the garden in order to
Speaker 1: be nearer the performers, and they were sitting here in
Speaker 1: an appreciative semicircle. Behind the ladies and gentlemen in her
Speaker 1: turban like kerchief stood the old slave mandolin. Guitar, harmonica
Speaker 1: and a squeaky violin were responding to the touch of
Speaker 1: the virtuoso beggars. Instrumental numbers alternated with songs, as when
Speaker 1: the younger of the women, with a sharp trembling voice,
Speaker 1: joined with the sweetly falsetto tenor in a languishing love duet.
Speaker 1: But the real talent and leader of the group was
Speaker 1: undoubtedly the other of the two men, the one with
Speaker 1: the guitar. He was a kind of buffo baritone with
Speaker 1: not much of a voice, although he did have a
Speaker 1: gift for pantomime and a remarkable comic energy. Often with
Speaker 1: his large instrument under his arm, he would leave the
Speaker 1: rest of the group, and, still acting, would intrude on
Speaker 1: the platform, where his antics were rewarded with encouraging laughter.
Speaker 1: Especially the Russians in their seats down front, seemed to
Speaker 1: be enchanted with so much Southern mobility, and their applause
Speaker 1: incited him to let himself out more and more boldly
Speaker 1: and assertively. Aschenbach set on the balustrade, cooling his lips
Speaker 1: now and then with a mixture of pomegranate juice and soda,
Speaker 1: which glowed ruby red in his glass in front of him.
Speaker 1: His nerves took in the miserable notes, the vulgar crooning
Speaker 1: melodies for passion blames the sense of discrimination and surrenders
Speaker 1: in all seriousness to appeals which, in sober moments are
Speaker 1: either humorously allowed for or rejected with annoyance At the
Speaker 1: clown's antik. His features bad twisted into a set painful smile.
Speaker 1: He sat there relaxed, although inwardly, he was intensely awake.
Speaker 1: For six paces from him, Tazio was leaning against the
Speaker 1: stone hand rail in the white belted coat which he
Speaker 1: often wore at meal times. He was standing in a
Speaker 1: position of spontaneous and inborn gracefulness, his left forearm on
Speaker 1: the railing feet, crossed the right hand on a supporting hip,
Speaker 1: and he looked down at the street singers with an
Speaker 1: expression which was hardly a smile, but only in a
Speaker 1: loof curiosity, a polite amiability. Often he would stand erect,
Speaker 1: and expanding his chest, would draw the white smock down
Speaker 1: under his leather belt with a beautiful gesture. And then
Speaker 1: too the aging man observed with a tumult of fright
Speaker 1: and triumph, how he would often turn his head over
Speaker 1: the left shoulder in the direction of his admirer, carefully
Speaker 1: and hesitatingly, or even with abruptness, as though to attack.
Speaker 1: By surprise, he did not meet Ashenbach's eyes, for a
Speaker 1: mean precaution compelled the transgressor to keep from staring at him.
Speaker 1: In the background of the terrace, the women who guarded
Speaker 1: Tatsio were sitting, and things had reached a point where
Speaker 1: the lover had to fear that he might be noticed
Speaker 1: and suspected. Yes, he had often observed with a kind
Speaker 1: of numbness. Now, when Totsio was near him on the
Speaker 1: beach in the hotel lobby in the Piazza San Marco,
Speaker 1: they called him back. They were set on keeping him
Speaker 1: at a distance, and this wounded him frightfully, causing his
Speaker 1: pride unknown tortures which his conscience would not permit him
Speaker 1: to evade. Meanwhile, the guitar player had begun a solo
Speaker 1: to his own accompaniment, a street ballad popular throughout Italy.
Speaker 1: It had several trophs, and the entire company joined each
Speaker 1: time in the refrain, all singing and playing, while he
Speaker 1: managed to give a plastic and dramatic twist to the
Speaker 1: performance of slight build with thin and impoverished features. He
Speaker 1: stood on the gravel apart from his companions, in an
Speaker 1: attitude of insolent bravado, his shabby felt hat on the
Speaker 1: back of his head, so that a bunch of his
Speaker 1: red hair jutted out from under the brim, and to
Speaker 1: the thrumbing of the strings, he flung his jokes up
Speaker 1: at the terrace in a penetrating recitative, while the veins
Speaker 1: were swelling on his forehead from the exertion of his performance.
Speaker 1: He did not seem a Venetian stock, but rather of
Speaker 1: the race of Neapolitan comedians, half pimp, half entertainer, brutal
Speaker 1: and audacious, dangerous and amusing. His songs were stupid enough
Speaker 1: so far as the words went, but in his mouth,
Speaker 1: by his gestures, the movements of his body, the way
Speaker 1: of blinking significantly and letting the tongue play across his lips,
Speaker 1: it acquired something ambiguous, something vaguely repulsive. In addition to
Speaker 1: the customary civilian dress, he was wearing a sports shirt,
Speaker 1: and his skinny neck protruded above the soft collar, bearing
Speaker 1: a noticeably large and active Adam's apple. He was pale
Speaker 1: and snub nosed. It was hard to fix an age
Speaker 1: to his beardless features, which seemed furrowed with grimaces and depravity,
Speaker 1: and the two wrinkles standing arrogantly, harshly, almost savagely between
Speaker 1: his reddish eyebrows were strangely suited to the smirk on
Speaker 1: his mobile lips. Yet what really prompted the lonely man
Speaker 1: to pay him keen attention was the observation that the
Speaker 1: questionable figure seemed also to provide its own questionable atmosphere,
Speaker 1: for each time they came to the refrain, the singer,
Speaker 1: amid buffoonery and familiar handshakes, began a grotesque circular march,
Speaker 1: which brought him immediately beneath Aschenbach's place, And each time
Speaker 1: this happened, there blew up to the terrace from his
Speaker 1: clothes and body a strong, long carbolic smell. End of
Speaker 1: Chapter five, Part one, Chapter five, Part two. After the
Speaker 1: song was ended, he began collecting money. He started with
Speaker 1: the Russians, who were evidently willing to spend, and then
Speaker 1: came up the stairs. Up here he showed himself just
Speaker 1: as humble as he had been bold during the performance.
Speaker 1: Cringing and bowing, He stole about among the tables, and
Speaker 1: a smile of obsequious cunning exposed his strong teeth, while
Speaker 1: the two wrinkles still stood ominously between his red eyebrows.
Speaker 1: This singular character collecting money to live on. They eyed
Speaker 1: him with a curiosity and a kind of repugnance. They
Speaker 1: tossed coins into his felt hat with the tips of
Speaker 1: their fingers, and were careful not to touch him. The
Speaker 1: elimination of the physical distance between the comedian and the audience,
Speaker 1: no matter how great the enjoyment may have been, always
Speaker 1: causes a certain uneasiness. He felt it and tried to
Speaker 1: excuse it by groveling. He came up to Oshenbach and
Speaker 1: along with him the smell, which no one else seemed
Speaker 1: concerned about. Listen, the reclose said, in an undertone, almost mechanically,
Speaker 1: they are disinfecting Venice. Why, the jester answered, hoarsely, on
Speaker 1: account of the police. That is a precaution, sir, with
Speaker 1: such heat and the sirocco. The sirocco is oppressive. It
Speaker 1: is not good for the health. He spoke, as though
Speaker 1: astonished that anyone could ask such things, and demonstrated with
Speaker 1: his open hand how oppressive the sirocco was. Then there
Speaker 1: is no plague in Venice, Oschenbach asked quietly between his teeth.
Speaker 1: The clown's muscular features fell into a grimace of comical embarrassment.
Speaker 1: A plague, what kind of plague? Perhaps our police are
Speaker 1: a plague, you like to joke, A plague of all things,
Speaker 1: A precautionary measure, you understand, a police regulation against the
Speaker 1: effects of the oppressive weather. He gesticulated very well, Maschenbach
Speaker 1: said several times curtly and quietly, and he quickly dropped
Speaker 1: an unduly large coin into the hat. Then with his
Speaker 1: eyes he signaled the man to leave. He obeyed, smirking
Speaker 1: and bowing. But he had not reached the stairs before
Speaker 1: two hotel employees threw themselves upon him, and, with their
Speaker 1: faces close to his, began a whispered cross examination. He
Speaker 1: shrugged his shoulders, he gave assurances, He swore that he
Speaker 1: had kept quiet. That was evident. He was released, and
Speaker 1: he returned to the garden. Then, after a short conference
Speaker 1: with his companions, he stepped out once more for a
Speaker 1: final song of thanks and leave tom. It was a
Speaker 1: rousing song which the recluse never recalled having heard before,
Speaker 1: a big number, an incomprehensible dialect with a laugh refrain,
Speaker 1: in which the troop joined regularly at the tops of
Speaker 1: their voices. At this point, both the words and the
Speaker 1: accompaniment of the instruments stopped, with nothing left but a laugh,
Speaker 1: which was somehow arranged rhythmically, although very naturally done, and
Speaker 1: the soloist especially showed great talent in giving it a
Speaker 1: most deceptive vitality. At the renewal of his professional distance
Speaker 1: from the audience, he had recovered all his boldness again,
Speaker 1: and the artificial laugh that he directed up towards the
Speaker 1: terrace was derisive. Even before the end of the articulate
Speaker 1: portion of the strophy, he seemed to struggle against an
Speaker 1: irresistible tickling. He gulped, his voice trembled, He pressed his
Speaker 1: hand over his mouth, He contorted his shoulders, and at
Speaker 1: the proper moment the ungovernable laugh broke out of him,
Speaker 1: burst into such real cackles that it was infectious and
Speaker 1: communicated itself to the audience, so that on the terrace
Speaker 1: also an unfounded hilarity, living off itself alone, started up.
Speaker 1: But this seemed to double the singer's exuberance. He bent
Speaker 1: his knees, he slapped his thighs, He nearly split himself.
Speaker 1: He no longer laughed, He shrieked. He pointed up with
Speaker 1: his finger, as though nothing were more comic than the
Speaker 1: laughing guests there. And finally, everyone in the garden and
Speaker 1: on the verandah was laughing, even to the waiters, bellboys,
Speaker 1: and house servants in the doorways. Aschenbach was no longer
Speaker 1: resting in his chair. He sat upright as if attempting
Speaker 1: to defend himself or to escape. But the laughter, the
Speaker 1: whiffs of the hospital smell, and the boy's nearness combined
Speaker 1: to put him into a trance that held his mind
Speaker 1: and his senses hopelessly captive in the general movement and distraction.
Speaker 1: He ventured to glance across at Tasio, and as he
Speaker 1: did so, he dared observe that the boy, in reply
Speaker 1: to his glance, was equally serious. Much as though he
Speaker 1: had muddeled his conduct and expression after those of one man,
Speaker 1: and the prevalent mood had no effect on him, since
Speaker 1: this one man was not part of it. This portentous,
Speaker 1: childish obedience had something so disarming and overpowering about it
Speaker 1: that the gray haired man could hardly restrain himself from
Speaker 1: burying his face in his hands. It had also seemed
Speaker 1: to him that Toadsio's occasional stretching and quick breathing indicated
Speaker 1: a complaint, a congestion of the lungs. He is sickly.
Speaker 1: He will probably not grow old, he thought repeatedly, With
Speaker 1: that positiveness which is often a peculiar relief to desire
Speaker 1: and passion, and along with pure solitude, he had a
Speaker 1: feeling of rakish gratification. Meanwhile, the Venetians had ended and
Speaker 1: were leaving. Applause accompanied them, and their leader did not
Speaker 1: miss the opportunity to cover his retreat with further jests.
Speaker 1: His bows the kisses he blew were laughed at, and
Speaker 1: so he doubled them. When his companions were already gone,
Speaker 1: he acted as though he had hurt himself by backing
Speaker 1: into a lamp post, and he crept through the gate
Speaker 1: seemingly crippled with pain. Then he suddenly threw off the
Speaker 1: mask of comic hard Luck, stood upright, hurried away, jauntily,
Speaker 1: stuck out his tongue insolently at the guests on the terrace,
Speaker 1: and slipped into the darkness. The company was breaking up.
Speaker 1: Tasio had been missing from the balustrade for some time,
Speaker 1: but to the displeasure of the waiters, the lonely man
Speaker 1: sat for a long while over the remains of his
Speaker 1: pomegranate drink. Night advanced time was crumbling in the house
Speaker 1: of his parents many years back, there had been an
Speaker 1: hour glass. Of a sudden, he saw the fragile and
Speaker 1: expressive instrument again, as though it were standing in front
Speaker 1: of him. Fine and noiseless, The rust red sand was
Speaker 1: running through the glass neck, and since it was getting
Speaker 1: low in the upper half, a speedy little vortex had
Speaker 1: been formed there. As early as the following day in
Speaker 1: the afternoon, he had made new progress in his obstinate
Speaker 1: baiting of the people he met, and this time he
Speaker 1: had all possible success. He walked from the piazza of
Speaker 1: Saint Mark's into the English Traveling Bureau located there, and
Speaker 1: after changing some money at the cash desk, he put
Speaker 1: on the expression of a distrustful foreigner and launched his
Speaker 1: fatal question at the attendant clerk. He was a Britisher.
Speaker 1: He wore a woolen suit and was still young, with
Speaker 1: close set eyes, and had that characteristic stolid reliability which
Speaker 1: is so peculiar and strikingly appealing in the tricky, nimble
Speaker 1: witted South. He began no reason for alarm, Sir, a
Speaker 1: regulation without any serious significance. Such measures are often taken
Speaker 1: to anticipate the unhealthy effects of the heat and the sirocco.
Speaker 1: But as he raised his blue eyes, he met the
Speaker 1: stare of the foreigner, attired and somewhat unhappy stare focused
Speaker 1: on his lips with a touch of scorn. Then the
Speaker 1: Englishman blushed at least, he continued in an emotional undertone.
Speaker 1: That is the official explanation which people are content to accept.
Speaker 1: I will admit there is something more behind it. And then,
Speaker 1: in his frank and leisurely manner, he told the truth.
Speaker 1: For several years now, Indian cholera had shown a heightened
Speaker 1: tendency to spread and migrate. Hatched in the warm swamps
Speaker 1: of the Ganges Delta, rising with the noxious breath of
Speaker 1: that luxuriant, unfit primitive world and island wilderness which is
Speaker 1: shunned by humans, and where the tiger crouches in the
Speaker 1: bamboo thickets. The plague had raged continuously and with unusual
Speaker 1: strength in Hindustan, had reached eastwards to China, westwards to
Speaker 1: Afghanistan and Persia, and following the chief caravan roots had
Speaker 1: carried its terrors to Astrachin and even to Moscow. But
Speaker 1: while Europe was trembling, lest the specter continue its advance
Speaker 1: from there across the country, it had been transported over
Speaker 1: the sea by Syrian merchantmen and had turned up almost
Speaker 1: simultaneously in several Mediterranean ports. Had raised its head in
Speaker 1: too long and Malaga had shown its mask several times
Speaker 1: in Palermo and Naples, and seemed permanently entrenched through Calabria
Speaker 1: and Apulia. The north of the peninsula had been spared.
Speaker 1: Yet in the middle of this May, in Venice, the
Speaker 1: frightful vibriuns were found on one and the same day
Speaker 1: in the blackish wasted bodies of a cabin boy and
Speaker 1: a woman who sold green groceries. The cases were kept secret,
Speaker 1: but within a week there were ten twenty thirty more
Speaker 1: and in various sections. The man from the Austrian provinces,
Speaker 1: who had made a pleasure trip to Venice for a
Speaker 1: few days, returned to his hometown and died with unmistakable symptoms,
Speaker 1: and that is how the first reports of the pestilence
Speaker 1: in the Lagoon city got into the German newspapers. The
Speaker 1: Venetian authorities answered that the city's health conditions had never
Speaker 1: been better and took the most necessary preventive measures, But
Speaker 1: probably the food supply had been infected, denied and glossed over.
Speaker 1: Death was eating its way along the narrow streets, and
Speaker 1: its dissemination was especially favored by the premature summer heat,
Speaker 1: which made the water of the Canal's lukewarm. Yes, it
Speaker 1: seemed as though the plague had got renewed strength, as
Speaker 1: though the tenacity and fruitfulness of its stimuli had doubled.
Speaker 1: Cases of recovery were rare. Out of one hundred attacks,
Speaker 1: eighty were fatal and in the most horrible manner. For
Speaker 1: the plague moved with utter savagery and often showed that
Speaker 1: most dangerous form, which is called the drying water from
Speaker 1: the blood vessels collected in pockets, and the blood was
Speaker 1: unable to carry this off. Within a few hours, the
Speaker 1: victim was parched, his blood became as thick as glue,
Speaker 1: and he stifled amid cramps and hoarse groans. Lucky for him, if,
Speaker 1: as sometimes happened, the attack took the form of a
Speaker 1: like discomfiture, followed by a profound coma from which he
Speaker 1: seldom or never awakened. At the beginning of June, the
Speaker 1: pest house of the Ausbudale Chivico had quietly filled. There
Speaker 1: was not much room left in the two orphan asylums,
Speaker 1: and a frightfully active commerce was kept up between the
Speaker 1: wharf of the Fundamenta Nuova and Saint Michel, the burial
Speaker 1: island but there was the fear of a general drop
Speaker 1: in prosperity. The recently opened art exhibit in the public
Speaker 1: gardens was to be considered, along with the heavy losses which,
Speaker 1: in case of panic or unfavorable rumors, would threaten business,
Speaker 1: the hotels, the entire elaborate system for exploiting foreigners. And
Speaker 1: as these considerations evidently carried more weight than love of
Speaker 1: truth or respect for international agreements, the city authorities upheld
Speaker 1: obstinately their policy of silence and denial. The chief health
Speaker 1: officer had resigned from his post and indignation, and been
Speaker 1: promptly replaced by a more tractable personality. The people knew this,
Speaker 1: and the corruption of their superiors, together with the predominating insecurity,
Speaker 1: the exceptional condition into which the prevalence of death had
Speaker 1: plunged the city, induced a certain demoralization of the lower classes,
Speaker 1: encouraging shady and antisocial impulses, which manifested themselves in license profligacy,
Speaker 1: and a rising crime wave. Contrary to custom, many drunkards
Speaker 1: were seen in the evenings. It was said that at night,
Speaker 1: nasty mobs made the streets unsafe. Burglaries and even murders
Speaker 1: became frequent, for it had already been proved on two
Speaker 1: occasions that persons who had presumably fallen victim to the
Speaker 1: plague had in reality been dispatched by poison by their
Speaker 1: own relatives. And professional debauchery assumed abnormal and obtrusive proportions
Speaker 1: such as had never been known here before, and to
Speaker 1: an extent which is usually found only in southern parts
Speaker 1: of the country and in the Orient. The Englishmen announced
Speaker 1: the final verdict on these facts. You would do well,
Speaker 1: he concluded, to leave to day rather than tomorrow. It
Speaker 1: cannot be much more than a couple of days before
Speaker 1: a quarantine zone is declared. Thank you, Aschenbach said, and
Speaker 1: left the office. The square lay sunless and stifling. Unsuspecting
Speaker 1: foreigners sat in front of the cafes, or stood among
Speaker 1: the pigeons in front of the church, and watched the
Speaker 1: swarms of birds flapping their wings, crowding one another, and
Speaker 1: pecking at grains of corn offered them in open palms.
Speaker 1: The recluse was feverishly excited, triumphant in his possession of
Speaker 1: the truth, but it had left him with a bad
Speaker 1: taste in his mouth and a weird horror in his heart.
Speaker 1: As he walked up and down the flagstones of the
Speaker 1: gorgeous court. He was weighing in action which would meet
Speaker 1: the situation and would absolve him. This evening, after dinner,
Speaker 1: he could approach the woman with the pearls and make
Speaker 1: her a speech. He had figured it out word for word.
Speaker 1: Permit a foreigner, madam, to give you some useful advice,
Speaker 1: a warning which is being withheld from you through self interest.
Speaker 1: Leave immediately with Tasio and your daughters. Venice is full
Speaker 1: of the plague. Then he could lay a farewell hand
Speaker 1: on the head of this tool of a mocking divinity,
Speaker 1: turn away and flee this morass. But he felt at
Speaker 1: the same time that he was very far from seriously
Speaker 1: desiring such a move. He would retract it, would disengage
Speaker 1: himself from it. But when we are distracted, we loathe
Speaker 1: most the thought of retracing our steps. He recalled a
Speaker 1: white building ornamented with inscriptions, which glistened in the evening,
Speaker 1: and in whose transparent mysticism his mind's eye had lost itself.
Speaker 1: And then that strange wanderer's form which had awakened in
Speaker 1: the aging man, the roving hanker of youth. After the
Speaker 1: foreign and the remote, and the thought of return, the
Speaker 1: thought of prudence and soberness, effort, mastery, disgusted him to
Speaker 1: such an extent that his face was distorted with an
Speaker 1: expression of physical nausea. It must be kept silent, he
Speaker 1: whispered heavily. I will keep silent. The consciousness of his
Speaker 1: share in the facts and the guilt intoxicated him, much
Speaker 1: as a little wine intoxicates a tired brain. The picture
Speaker 1: of the diseased and neglected city hovering desolately before him
Speaker 1: aroused vague hopes beyond the bounds of reason, but with
Speaker 1: an egregious sweetness. What was the scant happiness he had
Speaker 1: dreamed of a moment ago, compared with these expectations, What
Speaker 1: were art and virtue worth to him? Over against the
Speaker 1: advantages of chaos? He kept silent and remained in venice.
Speaker 1: This same night he had a frightful dream, if one
Speaker 1: can designate as a dream, a bodily and mental experience,
Speaker 1: which occurred to him in the deepest sleep, completely independent
Speaker 1: of him and with a physical realness, although he never
Speaker 1: saw himself present or moving about among the incidents, but
Speaker 1: their stage rather was his soul itself, and they broke
Speaker 1: in from without, trampling down his resistance, a profound and
Speaker 1: spiritual resistance by sheer force. And when they had passed through,
Speaker 1: they left his substance, the culture of his lifetime crushed
Speaker 1: and annihilated behind them. It began with anguish, anguish and desire,
Speaker 1: and a frightened curiosity as to what was coming. It
Speaker 1: was night, and his senses were on the watch. From
Speaker 1: far off, a grumble an uproar was approaching, a jumble
Speaker 1: of noises, clanking, blaring, and dull thunder, with shrill shouts
Speaker 1: than a definite whine in a long out yew sound.
Speaker 1: All this was sweetly, ominously interspersed and dominated by the
Speaker 1: deep cooing of wickedly persistent flutes which charmed the bowels
Speaker 1: in a shamelessly penetrative manner. But he knew one word.
Speaker 1: It was veiled, and yet would name what was approaching,
Speaker 1: the foreign god. Vaporous fire began to glow. Then he
Speaker 1: recognized mountains like those about his summer house, and in
Speaker 1: the scattered light from high up in the woods, among
Speaker 1: tree trunks and crumbling moss grown rocks, people beasts, a throng,
Speaker 1: a raging mob, plunged, twisting and whirling downwards, then made
Speaker 1: the hill swarm with bodies, flames, tumult, and a riotous
Speaker 1: round dance. Women tripped by overlong fur draperies which hung
Speaker 1: from their waists, were holding up tambourines and beating on them.
Speaker 1: Their groaning heads flung back. The others swung sparking firebrands
Speaker 1: and bare daggers, or wore hissing snakes about the middle
Speaker 1: of their bodies, or shrieking held their breasts in their
Speaker 1: two hands. Men with horns on their foreheads, shaggy haired
Speaker 1: girded with hides, bent back their necks and raised their
Speaker 1: arms and thighs, clashed brass cymbals and beat furiously at
Speaker 1: kettle drums, while smooth boys prodded he goats with wreathed sticks,
Speaker 1: climbing on their horns and falling off with shouts when
Speaker 1: they bounded. And the Baccans wailed the word with the
Speaker 1: soft consonants and the drawn out ue sound at once
Speaker 1: sweet and savage, like nothing ever heard before. In one place,
Speaker 1: it rang out as though piped into the air by stags,
Speaker 1: and it was echoed in another by many voices. In
Speaker 1: wild triumph with it. They incited one another to dance
Speaker 1: and to fling out their arms and legs. And it
Speaker 1: was never silent, but everything was pierced and dominated by
Speaker 1: the deep, coaxing flute. He who was fighting against this experience,
Speaker 1: did it not coax him too, with its shameless penetration
Speaker 1: into the feast and the excesses of the extreme sacrifice.
Speaker 1: His repugnance, his fear were keen. He was honorably set
Speaker 1: on defending himself to the very last against the barbarian,
Speaker 1: the foe to intellectual poise and dignity. But the noise,
Speaker 1: the howling, multiplied by the resonant walls of the hills, grew,
Speaker 1: took the upper hand, swelled to a fury of rapture.
Speaker 1: Odors oppressed the senses, the pungent smell of the bucks,
Speaker 1: the scent of moist bodies, and a waft of stagnant water,
Speaker 1: with another smell, something familiar, the smell of wounds and
Speaker 1: prevalent disease. At the beating of the drum, his heart fluttered,
Speaker 1: his head was spinning. He was caught in a frenzy,
Speaker 1: in a blinding, deafening lewdness, and he yearned to join
Speaker 1: the ranks of the god. The obscene symbol huge wooden
Speaker 1: was uncovered and raised up. Then they howled the magic
Speaker 1: word with more abandon Foaming at the mouth, they raged
Speaker 1: teased one another with ruddish gestures and caressing hands, laughing
Speaker 1: and groaning. They stuck the goats into one another's flesh
Speaker 1: and licked the blood from their limbs. But the dreamer
Speaker 1: now was with them, in them, and he belonged to
Speaker 1: the foreign God. Yes, they were he himself. As they
Speaker 1: hurled themselves, biting and tearing upon the animals, got entangled
Speaker 1: in steaming rags and fell in promiscuous unions on the
Speaker 1: torn moss and sacrifice to their god, and his soul
Speaker 1: tasted the unchastity and fury of decay. End of Chapter five,
Speaker 1: Part two, Chapter five three. When he awakened from the
Speaker 1: affliction of this dream, he was unnerved, shattered, and hopelessly
Speaker 1: under the power of the demon. He no longer avoided
Speaker 1: the inquisitive glances of other people. He did not care
Speaker 1: if he was exciting their suspicions. And as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, they were fleeing, traveling elsewhere. Numerous bathing houses
Speaker 1: stood empty. The occupants of the dining hall became more
Speaker 1: and more scattered, and in the city now one rarely
Speaker 1: saw foreigner. The truth seemed to have leaked out. The panic,
Speaker 1: despite the reticence of those whose interests were involved, seemed
Speaker 1: no longer avoidable. But the woman with the pearls remained
Speaker 1: with her family, either because the rumors had not yet
Speaker 1: reached her, or because she was too proud and fearless
Speaker 1: to heed them. Tadzio remained, and to Oshenbach, in his infatuation,
Speaker 1: it seemed at times as though flight and death might
Speaker 1: remove all the disturbing elements of life around them. And
Speaker 1: he stayed here alone with the boy yes by the
Speaker 1: sea in the forenoon, when his eyes rested heavily, irresponsibly,
Speaker 1: unwaveringly on the thing he coveted, or when as the
Speaker 1: day was ending, he followed shamelessly after him through the
Speaker 1: streets where the hideous death lurked in secret. At such times,
Speaker 1: the atrocious seemed to him, rich in possibilities and laws
Speaker 1: of morality, had dropped away, like any lover he wanted
Speaker 1: to please, and he felt a bitter anguish lest it
Speaker 1: might not be possible. He added bright, youthful details to
Speaker 1: his dress. He put on jewels, and used perfumes. During
Speaker 1: the day, he often spent much time over his toilet
Speaker 1: and came to the table strikingly dressed, excited and in suspense.
Speaker 1: In the light of the sweet youthfulness which had done
Speaker 1: this to him, he detested his aging body. The sight
Speaker 1: of his gray hair, his sharp features plunged him into
Speaker 1: shame and hopelessness. It induced him to attempt rejuvenating his
Speaker 1: body and appearance. He often visited the hotel barber. Beneath
Speaker 1: the barber's apron, Leaning back in the chair under the
Speaker 1: gossiper's expert hands, he winced to observe his reflection in
Speaker 1: the mirror. Gray, he said, making a wry face. A
Speaker 1: little the man answered, due entirely to a slight neglect,
Speaker 1: an indifference to outward things, which is conceivable in people
Speaker 1: of importance. But it is not exactly praiseworthy, and all
Speaker 1: the less so, since such persons are above prejudice than
Speaker 1: matters of nature or art. If the moral objections of
Speaker 1: certain people to the art of cosmetics were to be
Speaker 1: logically extended to the care of the teeth, they would
Speaker 1: give no slight offense. And after all, we are just
Speaker 1: as old as we feel and unders in some circumstances,
Speaker 1: gray hair would actually stand for more of an untruth
Speaker 1: than the despised correction. In your case, sir, you are
Speaker 1: entitled to the natural color of your hair. Will you
Speaker 1: permit me simply to return what belongs to you? How
Speaker 1: is that? Aschenbach asked. Then the orator washed his client's
Speaker 1: hair with two kinds of water, one clear and one dark,
Speaker 1: and it was as black as in youth. Following this,
Speaker 1: he curled it with irons into soft waves, stepped back,
Speaker 1: and eyed his work. All that is left now, he said,
Speaker 1: would be to freshen up the skin a little. And
Speaker 1: like someone who cannot finish, cannot satisfy himself, he passed
Speaker 1: with quickening energy, from one manipulation to another. Aschenbach rested comfortably,
Speaker 1: incapable of resistance, or rather, his hopes aroused by what
Speaker 1: was taking place in the glass. He saw his brows
Speaker 1: arch more evenly and decisively. His eyes became longer, Their
Speaker 1: brilliance was heightened by a light touching up of the
Speaker 1: lids a little lower where the skin had been leatherish brown.
Speaker 1: He saw a delicate crimson tint grow beneath a deft
Speaker 1: application of color. His lips bloodless a little while past,
Speaker 1: became full and as red as raspberries. The furrows in
Speaker 1: the cheeks and about the mouth. The wrinkles of the
Speaker 1: eyes disappeared. Beneath lotions and cream. With a knocking heart,
Speaker 1: he beheld a blossoming youth. Finally, the beauty specialist declared
Speaker 1: himself content after the manner of such people, by obsequiously
Speaker 1: thanking the man he had been serving a trifling assistance,
Speaker 1: he said, as he applied one parting touch. Now the
Speaker 1: gentleman can fall in love. Unhesitatingly, he walked away, fascinated.
Speaker 1: He was happy as in a dream, Timid and bewildered.
Speaker 1: His necktie was red, His broad brimmed straw hat was
Speaker 1: trimmed with a variegated band. A tepid storm wind had risen.
Speaker 1: It was raining sparsely and at intervals, but the air
Speaker 1: was damp, thick, and filled with the smell of things rotting.
Speaker 1: All around him, he heard a fluttering, pattering, and swishing,
Speaker 1: and under the fever of his cosmetics, it seemed to
Speaker 1: him as though evil wind spirits were haunting the place,
Speaker 1: Impure sea birds which rooted and gnawed at the food
Speaker 1: of the condemned and befouled it with their droppings, for
Speaker 1: the sultiness destroyed his appetite, and the fancy suggested itself
Speaker 1: that the foods were poisoned with contaminating substances. Tracking the boy,
Speaker 1: one afternoon, Haschenbach had plunged deep into the tangled center
Speaker 1: of the diseased city. He was becoming uncertain of where
Speaker 1: he was, since the alleys, waterways, bridge and little squares
Speaker 1: of the labyrinth were all so much alike, and he
Speaker 1: was no longer even sure of directions. He was absorbed
Speaker 1: with the problem of keeping the pursued figure in sight,
Speaker 1: and driven to disgraceful subterfuges. Flattened himself against walls, hiding
Speaker 1: behind the backs of other people. For a long time,
Speaker 1: he did not notice the weariness, the exhaustion with which
Speaker 1: emotion and the continual suspense had taxed his mind and
Speaker 1: his body. Tazio walked behind his companions. He always allowed
Speaker 1: the governess and the nun like sisters to precede him
Speaker 1: in the narrow places, and loitering behind alone, he would
Speaker 1: turn his head occasionally to look over his shoulder and
Speaker 1: make sure by a glance of his peculiarly dark gray
Speaker 1: eyes that his admirer was following. He saw him and
Speaker 1: did not betray him. Drunk with the knowledge of this,
Speaker 1: lured forward by those eyes, eyes led meekly by his passion,
Speaker 1: the lover stole after his unseemly hope. But finally he
Speaker 1: was cheated and lost sight of him. The poles had
Speaker 1: crossed a short arching bridge. The height of the curve
Speaker 1: hid them from the pursuer, and when he himself had
Speaker 1: arrived there, he no longer saw them. He hunted for
Speaker 1: them vainly in three directions, straight ahead and to either side,
Speaker 1: along the narrow, dirty wharf. In the end he was
Speaker 1: so tired and unnerved that he had to give up
Speaker 1: the search. His head was on fire, his body was
Speaker 1: covered with a sticky sweat, his knees trembled. He could
Speaker 1: no longer endure the thirst that was torturing him, and
Speaker 1: he looked around for some immediate relief. From a little
Speaker 1: vegetable store, he bought some fruit strawberries, soft and overly ripe,
Speaker 1: and he ate them. As he walked. The very charming,
Speaker 1: forsaken little square opened up before him. He recognized it.
Speaker 1: Here he had made his frustrated plans for flight weeks ago.
Speaker 1: He let himself sink down on the steps of the
Speaker 1: cistern in the middle of the square and laid his
Speaker 1: head against the stone cylinder. It was quiet. Grass was
Speaker 1: growing up through the pavement. Refuse was scattered about among
Speaker 1: the weather beaten, usually tall houses surrounding him. There was
Speaker 1: one like a palace, with little lion covered balconies and
Speaker 1: gothic windows with blank emptiness behind them. On the ground
Speaker 1: floor of another house was a drug store. Warm gusts
Speaker 1: of wind occasionally carried the smell of carbolic acid. He
Speaker 1: sat there. He the master, the artist of dignity, the
Speaker 1: author of The Wretch, a work which had, in such
Speaker 1: accurate symbols renounced vagabondage and the depths of misery, had
Speaker 1: denied all sympathy with the engulfed, and had cast out
Speaker 1: the outcast. The man who had arrived and victor over
Speaker 1: his own knowledge, had outgrown all irony and acclimatized himself
Speaker 1: to the obligations of public confidence. Whose reputation was official,
Speaker 1: whose name had been knighted, and on whose style boys
Speaker 1: were urged to pattern themselves. He sat there, His eyelids
Speaker 1: were shut only now and then a mocking uneasy side
Speaker 1: glance slipped out from beneath them, and his loose lips
Speaker 1: set off by the cosmetics formed isolated words of the
Speaker 1: strange dream logic created by his half slumbering brain. For beauty,
Speaker 1: Phaedrus mark me. Beauty alone is both divine and visible
Speaker 1: at once, and thus it is the road of the sensuous.
Speaker 1: It is, little Fiadrus, the road of the artist to
Speaker 1: the spiritual. But do you now believe, my dear, that
Speaker 1: they can ever attain wisdom and true human dignity, for
Speaker 1: whom the road to the spiritual leads through the senses,
Speaker 1: Or do you believe? Rather, I leave the choice to you,
Speaker 1: that this is a pleasant but perilous road, a really
Speaker 1: wrong and sinful road which necessarily leads astray. For you
Speaker 1: must know that we poets cannot take the road of
Speaker 1: beauty without having Eros join us and set himself up
Speaker 1: as our leader. Indeed, we may even be heroes after
Speaker 1: our fashion, and hardened warriors, though we be like women,
Speaker 1: for passion is our exultation, and our desire must remain love.
Speaker 1: That is our pleasure and our disgrace. You now see,
Speaker 1: do you not that we poets cannot be wise and dignified,
Speaker 1: that we necessarily go astray, necessarily remain lesscivious and adventurers
Speaker 1: in emotion. The mastery of our style is all lies
Speaker 1: and foolishness. Our renown and honor are a farce. The
Speaker 1: confidence of the masses in us is highly ridiculous, and
Speaker 1: the training of the public and of youth through art
Speaker 1: is a precarious undertaking, which should be forbidden. For how
Speaker 1: indeed could he be a fit instructor who is born
Speaker 1: with a natural leaning towards the precipice. We might well
Speaker 1: disavow it and reach after dignity, But wherever we turn
Speaker 1: it attracts us. Let us say, renounce the dissolvent of knowledge,
Speaker 1: Since knowledge phaedrus has no dignity or strength. It is aware,
Speaker 1: it understands and pardons, but without reserve and form, it
Speaker 1: feels sympathy with the precipice. It is the precipice. This,
Speaker 1: then we abandon with firmness, and from now on our
Speaker 1: efforts matter only by their yield of beauty or in
Speaker 1: other words, simplicity, greatness and new rigor form and a
Speaker 1: second type of openness. But form and openness phaedrus lead
Speaker 1: to an intoxication and to desire lead the noble, perhaps
Speaker 1: into sinister rebels of emotion, which his own beautiful rigor
Speaker 1: rejects as infamous, lead to the precipice. Yes, they too,
Speaker 1: lead to the precipice. They lead us poets. There, I say,
Speaker 1: since we cannot force ourselves, since we can merely let
Speaker 1: ourselves out. And now I am going. Phedrius, you stay here,
Speaker 1: and when you no longer see me, then you go too.
Speaker 1: A few days later, as gustav On Oschenbach was not
Speaker 1: feeling well, he left the beach hotel at a later
Speaker 1: hour in the morning than usual. He had to fight
Speaker 1: against certain attacks of vertigo, which were only partially physical
Speaker 1: and were accompanied by a pronounced malaise, a feeling of
Speaker 1: bafflement and hopelessness. While he was not certain whether this
Speaker 1: had to do with conditions outside him or with his
Speaker 1: own nature. In the lobby he noticed a law larch
Speaker 1: pile of luggage ready for shipment. He asked the doorkeeper
Speaker 1: who it was that was leaving, and heard in answer
Speaker 1: the Polish title, which he had learned secretly. He accepted
Speaker 1: this without any alteration of his sunken features. With that
Speaker 1: Curt elevation of the head by which one acknowledges something
Speaker 1: he does not need to know. Then he asked. When
Speaker 1: the answer was after lunch. He nodded and went to
Speaker 1: the beach. It was not very inviting. Rippling patches of
Speaker 1: rain retreated across the wide flat water separating the beach
Speaker 1: from the first long sand bank. An air of autumn,
Speaker 1: of things past their prime, seemed to lie over the
Speaker 1: pleasure spot, which had once been so alive with color
Speaker 1: and was now almost abandoned. The sand was no longer
Speaker 1: kept clean. A camera, seemingly without an owner, stood on
Speaker 1: its tripod by the edge of the sea, and a
Speaker 1: black cloth thrown over it was flapping noisily in the wind. Tatsio,
Speaker 1: with the three or four companions still left, was moving
Speaker 1: about to the right in front of his family's cabin
Speaker 1: and midway between the sea and the row of bathing houses,
Speaker 1: lying back in his chair with a robe over his knees.
Speaker 1: Aschenbach looked at him once more. The game, which was
Speaker 1: not being supervised since the women were probably occupied with
Speaker 1: preparations for the journey, seemed to have no rules, and
Speaker 1: it was degenerating. The stocky boy with the sleek black hair,
Speaker 1: who was called Joshu, had been angered and blinded by
Speaker 1: sand flung in his face. He forced Totsio into a
Speaker 1: wrestling match, which quickly ended in the fall of the beauty,
Speaker 1: who was weaker. But as though in the hour of
Speaker 1: parting the servile feelings of the inferior had turned to
Speaker 1: merciless brutality and were trying to get vengeance for a
Speaker 1: long period of slavery, the victor did not let go
Speaker 1: of the boy beneath, but knelt on his back and
Speaker 1: pressed his face so persistently into the sand that Tasio,
Speaker 1: already breathless from the struggle, was in danger of strangling.
Speaker 1: His attempts to shake off the weight were fitful for moments,
Speaker 1: they stopped entirely and were resumed again as mere twitchings.
Speaker 1: Enraged Aschenbach was about to spring to the rescue when
Speaker 1: the torturer finally released his victim. Tasio, very pale, raised
Speaker 1: himself half way and sat motionless for several minutes, resting
Speaker 1: on one arm, with rumpled hair and glowering eyes. Then
Speaker 1: he stood up completely and moved slowly away. They called
Speaker 1: him cheerfully at first, then anxiously and imploringly. He did
Speaker 1: not listen. The swarthy boy, who seemed to regret his
Speaker 1: excesses immediately afterwards, caught up with him and tried to
Speaker 1: placate him. A movement of the shoulder put him at
Speaker 1: his distance. Tasio went down obliquely to the water. He
Speaker 1: was barefoot and wore his striped linen suit with the
Speaker 1: red bow. He lingered on the edge of the water
Speaker 1: with his head down, drawing figures in the wet sand
Speaker 1: with one toe. Then he went into the shallows, which
Speaker 1: did not cover his knees in the deepest place, crossed
Speaker 1: them leisurely, and arrived at the sand bank. He stood
Speaker 1: there a moment, his face turned to the open sea.
Speaker 1: Soon after, he began stepping slowly to the left along
Speaker 1: the narrow stretch of exposed ground, separated from the mainland
Speaker 1: by the expanse of water, separated from his companions by
Speaker 1: a proud moodiness. He moved along a strong, isolated and
Speaker 1: unrelated figure with fluttering hair placed out there in the sea,
Speaker 1: the wind against the vague mists. He stopped once more
Speaker 1: to look around, and suddenly, as though at some recollection
Speaker 1: some impulse, els with one hand on his hip, he
Speaker 1: turned the upper part of his body in a beautiful
Speaker 1: twist which began from the base, and he looked over
Speaker 1: his shoulder towards the shore. The watcher sat there as
Speaker 1: he had sat once before, when the first time these
Speaker 1: twilight gray eyes had turned at the doorway and met
Speaker 1: his own. His head against the back of the chair
Speaker 1: had slowly followed the movements of the boy walking yonder.
Speaker 1: Now simultaneously with his glance. It rose and sank on
Speaker 1: his breast, so that his eyes looked out from beneath,
Speaker 1: while his face took on the loose, inwardly relaxed expression
Speaker 1: of deep sleep. But it seemed to him as though
Speaker 1: the pale and lovely lure out there were smiling to him,
Speaker 1: nodding to him, as though, removing his hand from his
Speaker 1: hip he were signaling to come out, were vaguely guiding
Speaker 1: towards egregious promises, and as often before he stood up
Speaker 1: to follow him, some minutes passed before anyone hurried to
Speaker 1: the aid of the man, who had collapsed into one
Speaker 1: corner of his chair. He was brought to his room,
Speaker 1: and on the same day a respectfully shocked world received
Speaker 1: the news of his death. End of Chapter five. End
Speaker 1: of Death in Venice by Thomas Mann