SOURCE: Cohn, Dorrit. “The Second Author of Der Tod in Venedig.” In Critical Essays on Thomas Mann, edited by Inta M. Ezergailis, pp. 124-43. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988.

In the following essay, originally published in 1983, Cohn examines the relationship between the narrator and the protagonist in Death in Venice.

I

In his review of a now forgotten contemporary novel Thomas Mann draws the following distinction between the author and the narrator of a fictional work: [“Narrating is something totally different from writing, and what distinguishes them is an indirection in the former …”]. This indirectness, he goes on to explain, is most slyly effective when it veils itself in directness: when the author interpolates between himself and his reader a second voice, [“the voice of a second, interposed author,” “as when … a gentleman announces himself and makes speeches who, however, is in no way identical with the epic author...