SOURCE: Frank, Bernhard. “Mann's Death in Venice.” Explicator 45, no. 1 (fall 1986): 31-2.

In the following essay, Frank elucidates Mann's reference to the mythological figure Phaeax in Death in Venice.

Tracing a brief quotation in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice to the dialogues of Xenophone, Lorraine Gustafson had demonstrated how the ostensibly insignificant allusion led the informed reader first to the dialogue in its entirety, then back to Mann's novella with a play by play thematic parallel.¹ Similarly, the identification of Aschenbach's beloved, Tadzio, with various mythological figures first woos us back to the respective myths, then returns us to Mann's story to find it both deepened and expanded.

The symbolic transformations of Tadzio have been analyzed at great lengths.² He is described as having the head of Eros; he is seen as beauty in love with itself, i.e., Narcissus; in the scene in which he wrestles with Jaschu...