![]() ![]() The autobiographical resonances of the story (Mann actually vacationed in Venice with his wife once, where he became fascinated by a young Polish boy) further blur these distinctions between art and the artist. Mann’s novella thus explores how the categories of life and art, truth and fiction, cannot be kept separate for the artist. He often blurs the distinctions between life and art, as when he imagines himself into the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus as Socrates, or when he sees Tadzio as a work of art. Unlike his readers, though, Aschenbach cannot separate his writing from his life. The public’s ignorance of the circumstances of Aschenbach’s writing, the narrator suggests, is a good thing: the inspiration of Aschenbach’s writing in his desire for Tadzio would mar the final product. The beauty of its writing is owed to his fascination with Tadzio’s physical beauty and form. Aschenbach’s readers only see his finished products, and don’t realize the links between his writing and his life, as with Aschenbach’s well-received essay that he writes while in Venice. His writing takes a real toll on his own body, as his wearied face shows. As the narrator explains, for example, the heroism of many of Aschenbach’s characters has a close connection to his own disciplined self-restraint. ![]() Death in Venice, however, shows that there is a close connection between an artist’s lived experience and work. ![]() One often thinks of a writer’s life and work as two very different, separate things. ![]()
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