Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.
I finished reading Mann's Death in Venice five days ago. This is the first Mann novel I've ever read and I have mixed feelings about it. I tend to like it when authors try to write in a different style compared to most other books (Céline's style makes me soyface for how good it is, for example), but this was just not it. Mann's prose here feels a bit too heavy and convoluted for my liking, with plenty of erudite references to Greek mythology for what is essentially a story about a middle-aged man(n) who starts having an unhealthy liking for young boys. And the entire novel is probably a symbolic way of trasmitting a deeper message that, honestly, flew over my head.
What is a bit strange though is that I still kind of liked this novel, despite the flaws that I've just mentioned. The descriptions of a plague-ridden Venice are very stylistically impressive, and following the development of Aschenbach's twisted love for a fourteen-year-old is captivating in its own peculiar and warped way. Maybe the very fact that this novel can create such contrasting feelings in its readers is proof of Mann's talent as a writer.
My copy of the novel has this grotesque caricature of Mann on the cover for some reason.
