Death in Venice

Death in Venice is a 1912 novella written by German author Thomas Mann (original title Der Tod in Venedig). The story is about an aged author who travels to Venice and falls in love with a stunningly good-looking aristocratic fourteen-year-old boy, to whom he never speaks.

The novella is highly autobiographical: while holidaying in Venice, thirty-seven-year-old Mann, a married father, had crushed from afar on a ten-year-old Polish aristocrat, Wladyslaw Moes. Luchino Visconti adapted the novella into a film in 1971 and Benjamin Britten adapted it into an opera in 1973.

Project Gutenberg has a copy here.

Tropes used in Death in Venice include:
  • Blue Blood: A German prince nominates Gustav Aschenbach to a nobility on his fiftieth birthday.
  • Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Tadzio, which is what spurred Aschenbach's attraction to him in the first place.
  • Longing Look: Aschenbach gives many of these to Tadzio over the course of the book.
  • Lover and Beloved: The relationship between the narrator and the object of his affection. Aschenbach never so much as speaks to Tadzio (thankfully), but that doesn't stop him from stalking and gawking at the boy until his death.
  • Love At First Sight: Just seeing Tadzio is enough to completely enrapture Aschenbach.
  • Love Epiphany: According to the narrator, he has something of an artistic awakening upon seeing Tadzio and being awestruck by his youth and beauty.
  • Love Makes You Crazy: Oh yeah. Ignoring that Aschenbach is relentlessly stalking a 14 year old boy, he's willing to hang around Venice in spite of a deadly cholera outbreak because he can't bear to be apart from him. Unsurprisingly, it gets him killed.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Downplayed in the sense that the narrator never goes further than stalking the boy he's in love with, but he's still a grown man stalking a 14 year old boy.
  • Stalking Is Love: As far as the narrator is concerned, it is.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Aschenbach, who relentlessly follows Tadzio around so he can take in his beauty.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: A one-sided version with Aschenbach, who dies without having made any sort of contact with Tadzio.
  • What Beautiful Eyes!: Tadzio, whose eyes are what Aschenbach considers to be his most attractive feature.
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