I. Speaking of the figure of St.
Sebastian as a model for Aschenbach's favorite protagonist, the narrator
quotes an early critic: dass er die Konzeption einer intellektuellen und
juenglinghaften Maennlichkeit sei, die in stolzer Scham die Zaehne zusammenbeisst
und ruhig dasteht waehrend ihr die Schwerter und Speere durch den Leib
gehen. (... that it is the conception of an intellectual and youthful
manliness that clenches its teeth in proud shame and stands calmly as swords
and spears pass through its body).
Taken verbatim the text would
reveal an astonishing ignorance of iconography, for there are neither swords
nor spears in Sebastian's body. (Slides of Botticelli and others).
We see only arrows. But what about swords and spears?
(Slides of a Mater Dolorosa type called "Mary of the Seven Sorrows," Duerer,
Folk art). There are one or seven swords penetrating the body of
the Virgin Mary, a drastic echo of the words of Simeon that a sword shall
pierce through her (Mary's) soul also (Luke 2, 35). Mann uses the
Sebastian emblem to depict Haltung im Schicksal, Anmut in der Qual
(composure in adversity, grace in the midst of torment) which are certainly
attributes of many Renaissance and Baroque Sebastian representations but
of the contemporary Mater Dolorosa as well (Slides of Michelangelo's Pieta
and others). Thus alerted we take another look at the German text
and find a large number of feminine nouns and pronouns describing masculinity.
An accident of language? Maybe. But we are now wide awake and
notice the following phrase:
Er kehrte zurueck, er lief,
das widerstrebende Wasser mit den Beinen zu Schaum schlagend ... schoen
wie ein zarter Gott herkommend aus den Tiefen von Himmel und Meer, dem
Elemente entstieg und entrann: dieser Anblick gab mytische Vorstellungen
ein ... vom Ursprung der Form und von der Geburt der Goetter. (He returned,
he came running, beating the resisting water to foam with his feet, beautiful
like a young god, approaching out of the depths of the sky and the sea,
rising and escaping from the elements: this sight filled the mind with
mythical images...of the origin of form and the birth of the gods).
But who is the divinity born
of the sea and the sky? (Slides of the birth of Venus by Botticelli
and others. Aphrodite: "born of foam"; Aphrodite anadyomene: "rising
from the sea"). Quick return to the head of Botticelli's Sebastian; striking
similarity between the features of Venus (female) and Sebastian (male),
the flowing auburn hair the only difference. Again, a female icon
used to identify/describe a male. (Visconti's choice of Tadzio, incidentally,
is clearly influenced by Botticelli).
It would seem, then, that
the gender of Aschenbach's object of passion is quite accidental.
It might well have been an adolescent female. (It is a while
yet until Lolita). What, then, is the object of his passion?
It is beauty in living human form, an exquisite masterpiece by the "other"
creator. (...dass der Knabe vollkommen schoen war;... <wie> Griechische
Bildwerke aus edelster Zeit;... that the boy's beauty was without
blemish...like Greek sculpture from the noblest period).
And Aschenbach's is die geruehrte
Zuneigung dessen, der sich opfernd im Geiste das Schoene zeugt, zu dem
der die Schoenheit hat;...And nur die Schoenheit ist goettlich und sichtbar
zugleich und so ist sie denn also des Sinnlichen Weg, kleiner Phaidros;...
fortan gilt unser Trachten einzig der Schoenheit ... der zweiten
Unbefangenheit und der Form. Aber Form und Unbefangenheit, Phaidros,
fuehren zum Rausch und zur Begierde... (the tender fondness by which one
who sacrifices himself to beget beauty is drawn to one who possesses beauty...only
Beauty is at once divine and visible and therefore the sensuous lover's
path, little Phaedrus...and henceforth our pursuit is of Beauty alone...of
a second naivete and Form. But form and naivete, Phaedrus, lead to
intoxication and lust <desire>).
Begierde (desire/lust), there lies the dilemma, for it contradicts Kant's famous prescription of "disinterested contemplation" when viewing a work of art (secularized mystical concept [Gelassenheit/ equanimity/animi aequitas, repose], elaborate briefly on its history).
II. The life (and death) of Aschenbach:
descent into decadence? The lure of gravity? Another mythic
allusion provides a clue. Der strenge und reine Wille jedoch, der
... dies goettliche Bildwerk ans Licht zu treiben vermocht hatte,- war
er nicht ihm, dem Kuenstler bekannt und vertraut? Wirkte er nicht
auch in ihm, wenn er ... aus der Marmormasse der Sprache die schlanke Form
befreite, die er im Geiste geschaut ...? (The austere and pure will that
had succeeded in bringing this divine image to life, was it not well known
and familiar to the artist in him? Was it not active in him...when
he freed from the marble mass of language that slender form which he had
beheld in his mind...?)
Das Haupt des Eros...Gut, gut! dachte Aschenbach
mit jener fachmaennisch kuehlen Billigung, in welche Kuenstler zuweilen
einem Meisterwerk gegenueber ihr Entzuecken, ihre Hingerissenheit kleiden.
Aschenbach as colleague and equal (and rival?)
of the "other," divine creator? We remember that Chaucer, near the
end of his life, denounced his earlier creative ambitions as inappropriate.
And we are reminded of the drunken Marsyas' challenge addressed to Apollo
to engage in a competitive "creation" of music. Apollo (der Schoene)
wins, of course, and flays Marsyas alive for punishment. Marsyas
(braeunlich, haesslich; dark-skinned (or) sallow,ugly) belongs to
the tribe of Pan, his instrument is the flute, the predominant instrument
which Aschenbach hears as he joins the dionysiac crowd in his orgiastic
dream. Socrates too, in his fictional conversation with Phaidros,
is described as haesslich (ugly), der Alternde (aging), and clearly
is Aschenbach's alter ego who proceeds to improve cosmetically his gelbe,
sinnlich benachteiligte Haesslichkeit (sensually disadvantaged ugliness).
It has often been pointed out that Aschenbach changes his allegiance from Apollo to Dionysos. Here's the entry from the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1997) outlining the distinction between "Apollonian" and "Dionysiac":
"Contrasted forms of religion, the former being reflective and rational, the latter ecstatic and fervent. The distinction does not altogether rest in consistent distinctions in Greek religion, though they be illustrated from Greek religion. The distinction in its modern form derives from the work of Nietzsche, who, in The Birth of Tragedy, argued that the achievement of Greece did not rest on Apollonian calm alone but on its fusion with the passion of Dionysos -- a blend which Greek tragedy exhibits. Apollonian art is a quest for rationality in an irrational world; Dionysiac art tears the veil from the surface and allows a glimpse into the nihilism and destructiveness below. Tragedy is the highest art, because it unites the two. It was rapidly realized that religions exhibit these two styles, and they became a frame of reference for the analysis of religious behaviour. Thus Ruth Benedict (Patterns of Culture, 1948) applied them to indigenous American cultures of N. America, contrasting the Apollonian emphasis on moderation, sobriety and restraint which she found among the Pueblo Indians with the Dionysiac desire for exaltation in personal experience, recklessness, and states of emotional excess (sometimes assisted by drugs) which she found in most other tribes."
(Let me urge you again that, depending on your field of
inquiry, you acquire some of Oxford UP eminently useful "Oxford Dictionary
of ..." and "Oxford Companion to ..." and gradually build up a small reference
library at home.
Cambridge UP has a similar series).
Is Aschenbach's fate Apollo's revenge? (Slides of
Apollo flaying Marsyas by Reni and Ribera). Notice the imperious
gesture (arm, shoulder) reminiscent of Greek/Roman statues (slide, Apollo
of Belvedere) AND, influenced by them, Michelangelo's Christ of the Last
Judgment (slide) who, in turn, influenced the later Reni and Ribera.
Michelangelo's Christ seems
to reject/condemn everybody on his left although the group is studded with
Saints. Great commotion, even his mother, the Virgin Mary,
the Heavenly Queen, appears upset. But if you follow his gaze you
notice that he focuses on St Bartholomew , the martyr, who was also flayed
alive and who holds his emblem, the skinner's knife, in his extended right
hand as if to implore Christ to recognize him as one of his apostles, while
he holds a human skin in the other. It is NOT his skin. In
fact his body is quite intact, including his magnificent beard. We
know who he is. It is Pietro Aretino, Michelangelo's self-appointed
nemesis (slide, portrait by Titian). And the skin he holds?
(Close-up slide) It is Michelangelo's own; he painted a caricature
of his face (gelblich, haesslich benachteiligt; sallow, ugly, disadvantaged)
unto it.
Whom, then, is Christ/Apollo
rejecting? The rival artist in the creation of human form?
Or the avenger who would sacrifice the villain (skin him alive) for
having rivaled the god? We don't know, Michelangelo provides no answer,
ambivalence here too.
Final question: is there a judgment/verdict inherent
in Aschenbach's demise? Is there a cause-and-effect relationship
at work here? We don't know. All we know is that there
is a willing/conscious exchange of one life style for another. Value
ambivalence as well? Or sublime neutrality/tolerance concerning two
mutually exclusive life styles? While Aschenbach judges himself by the
standards of contemporary morality, we are not invited to join in that
judgment. We have more data to aid in our understanding than he does. (Remember
the body language early in the story: the clenched fist vs the limp hand.
Resistance vs surrender to gravity. Note the contemporary renewed scientific
interest in the phenomenon of gravitation/gravity, Einstein et al. All-pervasive
dominant physical force. Ethical implications?)
Why does Aschenbach die? God's punishment for homosexuality
(don't laugh, it's been suggested)? Contaminated strawberries? Emptied
of all vitality? Altruistic exertion of his weakened physique as he attempts
to come to Tadzio's aid (preservation of the species impulse)? Total abandonment
of self as he "set out to follow him" one more time: "Und wie so oft machte
er sich auf, ihm zu folgen"? Add your own favorite hypothesis.
I believe the answer is simple. He dies because his hour
has come, and for no other reason. Death himself announces it publicly
and in person. Among the most prominent attributes of death are the scythe
(the grim reaper), the hour glass (the time keeper), and a one-string violin
(the fiddler). Slide of Boecklin's selfportait.
That's the music that signals the end of a life. Hofmannsthal's
"The Fool and Death." Gregor Samsa's sister Grete playing the violin before
formulating her verdict: he has to go. Richard II, in the Tower, hears
music in the street below: Sweet music do I hear ... We know its significance
before they do. There is a fiddler (eine quinkelierende Geige, a squeaking
fiddle) among the group of street musicians that serenade the hotel guests,
while the odor of carbolic acid is wafting up to the balcony. The meaning
is inescapable, except of course to Aschenbach himself.
copyright
Herbert Deinert
Cornell University