SOURCE: Bryson, Cynthia B. “The Imperative Daily Nap; or, Aschenbach's Dream in Death in Venice.” Studies in Short Fiction 29, no. 2 (spring 1992): 181-93.

In the following essay, Bryson contends that Aschenbach enters an extended dream-state in Death in Venice and touches on Mann's interest in Freudian dream theory.

Most critics look specifically at Aschenbach's ecstatic, Dionysian dream in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice as the primary dream-state, but I would like to make the unusual supposition that Aschenbach's actual dream-state—from which he will awaken only once before succumbing to death (3 and 73)—begins during his “daily nap” after he abandons his departure from Venice and returns to the hotel. Aschenbach is losing his creative edge, “that motus animi continuus” (3), and he can no longer sustain his concentration, conscientiousness, and tact. He needs to rest, and he needs to go to sleep to find Mann's “theatre of the soul,” or...