He begins to watch him often and is soon completely absorbed with the child. He is extremely beautiful and Gustav is strangely and puzzlingly (to himself) drawn to the young boy. Almost immediately he notices a Polish family and especially the young boy, Tadzio, who is with them. Instead of living in Venice itself, he chooses a hotel at Lido, a fairly elegant place and settles into the hotel routine. He trusts his intuitive insight into his needs. Lots is going on inside him he isn’t too sure why he has left his home and work to follow this strange inner desire, but determined to follow his impulses. he reflected that to arrive by land, at the Venice railroad station, was like entering a palace through a back door, and that the only proper way to approach that most improbable of cities was that by which he had now come, by ship, across the open sea.” I especially loved his description of how to arrive in Venice He isn’t too sure where he wants to go and sets out for an island near Pola, Slovenia (today’s Pula), but it isn’t what he wants, so he decides to go to Venice, which he approaches from the sea. While trying to work on his next piece, but gets this strange feeling that he must get away and travel. He is a well known somewhat elderly writer, home educated and solitary. Gustav von Aschenbach is living alone in Munich in 1911. Translated from the German by Stanley Applebaum Book review - DEATH IN VENICE By Thomas Mann DEATH IN VENICE By Thomas Manm
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