SOURCE: Bergenholtz, Rita A. “Mann's Death in Venice.” Explicator 55 (spring 1997): 145-47.

In the following essay, Bergenholtz maintains that Aschenbach, the protagonist of Death in Venice, “is not a romantic artist-hero but a parody of one.”

One of the persisting critical questions regarding Gustave von Aschenbach, the protagonist of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1912), is whether or not he is a tragic character. Like numerous critics, Erich Heller argues that he is, and describes the novella as the “tragic story of Aschenbach's disillusion and downfall” (99). In sharp contrast, Martin Travers insists that “it is not on a note of exaltation that Aschenbach is granted his exit, but rather on one of banality. … It is not the noble genre of tragedy but that hybrid form of doubtful status, tragi-comedy, that provides the medium for his valediction” (57-58). I would go further and argue that Mann presents us with a parody...