With the advent of film and the ability to produce visual representation of fictional (or non-fictional) characters, situations, and settings, one of the natural courses has been to adapt literary works to the new medium. Throughout time we have seen this occur endlessly, with subjectively varying results. Literature has been adapted to forms such as staged plays, live readings, as well as other visual forms, such as painting, sculpture, or photography, and in each adaption to a new medium, aspects of the tangible essence of the fiction are translated to fit its new form of expression. In Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, the struggle of the novels protagonist Gustave Aschenbach reaches back to Greek Mythology via contemplations of emotion versus reason. In the novel, this is done using internal dialogues to vividly express the conflict that resides in humanity between instinctual and conditioned thought regarding beauty in the world, in Aschenbach’s own internal debates. However, in the translation to film, many of the internal dialogues must be represented visually, with different forms of symbolism that, while easily conveyed in text, are more difficult to embody in such an external and demonstrative medium. In this paper, I look to explore the references Thomas Mann made to Greek Mythology and their meanings, and how both are interpreted and in some cases changed in the translation to film.
To begin, we first must start with one of the concepts that often frame Death in Venice, the conflict between reason and emotion expressed in terms of two Greek gods, Apollo and Dionysus. In the novel, these gods are referenced symbolically throughout via the use of first person description, through subtle leads alluding to the mythology of ...
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...ed into returning by eating food within Hades. In Aschenbach’s case, after he had made up his mind to leave earlier, he ran into Tadzio after breakfast (54), causing him to second guess his decision and returning. His drinking of the pomegranate juice later on in the book, after his failed “escape” seems to signify that he is partaking in the food of his own “Hades”, headed to death, tricked by the rules just as Persephone.
Works Cited
Mann, Thomas. Death In Venice. Ed. Naomi Ritter. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. Print.
Neginsky, Rosina. “Lecture: Thomas Mann”. European Cinema.UIS, N.d. Web. 11 November 2011.
Neginsky, Rosina. “The Origin of Dionysus”. European Cinema.UIS, N.d. Web. 11 November 2011.
Smith, Herbert O. “Prologue to the Great War: Encounters with Apollo and Dionysus in Death in Venice”. Robertgraves.org. Robert Graves, N.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2011.
The film adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone portrays the text substantially well in several ways. The filmmaker’s interpretation encourages the audience to be discerning as their perception of the Greek tragedy is enhanced. The play becomes profound and reverberant because of the many interesting elements of production. These include musical score, set design, and the strategic costuming – all of which advocates an improved comprehension of Antigone.
Grant, M. (1962). Myths of the Greeks and Romans (1st ed.). Cleveland: World Pub. Co.
Ingri and Edgar Parin D’alaure’s. Book of Greek Myths. New York: Bantam Dowbleday Dell Publishing Group, 1962.
Schein, Seth L. The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer's Iliad. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
When a play is presented on film, the director takes the script, and with poetic license, interprets it. A film not only contains the actual words of the author (in this case Shakespeare), but it includes action, acting, and cinematographic techniques; the three are used to better portray the author’s story. Using these elements, the director’s interpretation of the plot is reinforced. The film provides symbolic images and a visual interpretation, hence Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” is better understood by the viewers.
The Trojan War veterans of The Odyssey succeeded in defeating their enemies on the battlefield. The end of combat did not mean relief from burdens for them. War is cruel, but in it these men see a glory they cannot find outside. Achilleus’ death in war is treated with ceremony and respect. Agamemnon, having survived that same war, dies a pitiful death and Klytaimestra “was so hard that her hands would not/ press shut [his] eyes and mouth though [he] was going to Hades” (XI, 425-426). Dying at home meant being denied even simple acts of dignity. Reflecting back on it Hades, Agamemnon characterizes the veteran’s struggles when he asks, “What pleasure was there for me when I had wound up the fighting?” (XXIV, 95).
The Ancient Greeks sought to define how humans should view their lives and how to create an existence dedicated to the basis of the “ideal” nature. This existence would be lived so as to create an “honorable” death upon their life’s end. Within their plays, both dramas and comedies, they sought to show the most extreme characteristics of human nature, those of the wise and worthy of Greek kleos along with the weak and greedy of mind, and how they were each entitled to a death but of varying significance. The Odyssey, their greatest surviving drama, stands as the epitome of defining both the flawed and ideal human and how each individual should approach death and its rewards and cautions through their journeys. Death is shown to be the consequence
Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" is a very complex novella. To put it on screen, a director has to pick the most important (or easiest to portray) elements from the mythological, psychological and philosophical lines of the story. The plot would remain largely intact. I am most interested in the story of Aschenbach's homosexuality, so I would be concerned with the strange-looking men, Aschenbach's dreams, and the parallel between the denial of the sickness in Venice and his own denials about Tadzio.
Of Shakespeare’s five greatest tragedies, Othello is by far the most passionate and gripping. It is a tale of love, deception, evil, honesty, and virtue. Othello himself is set apart from other Shakespearean tragic heroes by the absolute feeling of affection the audience feels for him even unto the very end of the play. Any discerning reader painfully recognizes the virtue and goodness of Othello throughout the entire play, in contrast to the general degeneration of character so typical of a tragic hero. It is this complete pity that makes the death of Othello so tragic as the audience lends their full support to the inevitable and unavoidable fall.
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, is a story that deals with mortality on many different levels. There is the obvious physical death by cholera, and the cyclical death in nature: in the beginning it is spring and in the end, autumn. We see a kind of death of the ego in Gustav Aschenbach's dreams. Venice itself is a personification of death, and death is seen as the leitmotif in musical terms. It is also reflected in the idea of the traveler coming to the end of a long fatiguing journey.
The purpose of this essay is to examine the conflict between rationality and irrationality in Death in Venice and to assess how this conflict is developed and possibly resolved. This conflict is fought and described throughout the short story with reference to ancient Greek gods, predominately Apollo and Dionysus and through the philosopher and philosophy of Plato. Through contemporary influences such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Mann further reflects on these ancient sources through a modern prism and this he does in this tale of life and death of the protagonist Aschenbach.
Life for humans is dictated by the yearning for more through our experiences. We strive for more knowledge, more wealth, and more happiness, but it all is endless like an abyss. Beauty, however, is pure and can be found in the simplest matters in life. Throughout the novel Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann, Aschenbach works his whole life rigorously day by day searching for more and more until his introduction to Tadzio in Venice. Upon Aschenbach’s first site of Tadzio he falls in love with the perfect beauty of the child. For the first time in his life he sees the simplicity of beauty and how perfect it is, however, he is consumed by it. Aschenbach’s introduction to beauty consumes his mind from the rest of the world. Aschenbach searches for beauty in life, but is trapped and consumed by it and is pulled away from the rest of the world.
The proscription from any domain of memorable works may be due to a major problem both in the novel and film: the ambiguous point of view adopted. The novel is geared for a transposition to the screen. It is no coincidence that the film was scripted by Niccolò Ammaniti, who adapted ...
Thus through such passages in Othello it is possible to see that 'animality and darkness are in opposition to beauty and light', in many different ways, dramatic, linguistic, thematic and conceptual and it is a conflict which it can be claimed is never resolved. Othello's suicide ends the personal conflict but the decision for the audience lies in their response to what is dark or beautiful. It is possible to see the 'tragic loading of the bed', either as the triumph of animality or the return of Venice as the good and the light.
The play is so well written and the unknown author is given a unique name to its main lead Everyman to symbolize the simple human being. In this play the death is personified in a way which grabs the attention of the audiences and it attracts them to think it’s real instead of being fiction and the superb writing of the unknown author. The author talks about God’s (Jesus) death and g...