Death in Venice

the onlooker thought he felt the tepid and mephitic odor of that unrestrained and unfit wasteland, which seemed to hover in a limbo between creation and decay, between the knotty trunks of a bamboo thicket he for a moment believed to perceive the phosphorescent eyes of the tiger and felt his heart beating with horror and mysterious yearning

he suddenly noticed a strange aroma in the air, which it seemed he had registered subconsciously for a few days already a sickly sweet smell reminiscent of distress and wounds and suspicious cleanliness.

After all we are only as old as our heart and mind feel and gray hair might be a greater falsehood than a little correction.

That was Venice, alluring and dubiously entrancing this city, part fairy tale, part tourist trap, in the putrid atmosphere of which art used to blossom luxuriously and which had inspired musicians with lulling melodies.

Nothing is more curious and awkward than the relationship of two people who only know each other with their eyes who meet and observe each other daily, even hourly and who keep up the impression of disinterest either because of morals or because of a mental abnormality.

As of late it was not enough for him to leave proximity

Because only beauty, he added, is lovely and visible at the same time: it is, nota bene, the only way in which we can receive and bear the intellect.

Was it not written that the Sun shifted our attention from the intellectual to the corporeal? It confused and enchanted, it was said, the mind and the memory, so that the soul forgot its own disposition out of sheer joy and with stunned admiration attached itself to the most appealing of the lit objects: that it was then only able to reach higher spheres while beholding a body

The pleasant regularity of this life had cast its spell on him, the soft and glowing mildness of this conduct had filled him with amazement.

Who would not have had to fight a slight unease, a secret resentment and trepidation when one, for the first or after a long time, had to get into a Venetian gondola? That strange vehicle, which seems unchanged from more fanciful times and which is so strangely black like normally only coffins are, reminds one of silent and criminal adventures in the lapping night, furthermore it is reminiscent of death itself, the bier, the drab funeral and the final, wordless ride.

He thought of that melancholy-enthusiastic poet who had met the cupolas and bell towers of his dreams in this place, he quietly recalled some of the products of that awe-stricken, happy, and sad mood and moved by that ready-made emotion he wondered whether he, although more somber and tired than then, would meet that state of rapture and confusion a second time.

and all of a sudden, at the same time surprising and expected, his destination became clear to him. When one wanted to see something without equal, the romantically different, where would one go?

Too much occupied with the duties imposed by his ego and the European soul, too overburdened with the duty of production, too little interested in distracting himself to be a faithful lover of that gay outside world, he had contended himself wholly with that knowledge of the Earthfs surface that can be gained by anyone without ever having to abandon his circle and was never even tempted to leave Europe.

He had, as far as he had possessed the means to enjoy the benefits of sojourn to far-off countries, regarded travel as a hygienic necessity, which had to be observed against will and inclination

Example and mirror!

Wondrously improbable, embarrassing, comically dreamlike experience: To see those places again within the hour from which one had tearfully departed forever, thanks to twists of fate!

The observations and encounters of the solitary and mute one are at the same time more blurry and more distinctive than those of the more sociable person, his thoughts more substantial, stranger, and never without a trace of sadness. Images and perceptions that would be easy to dismiss with a laugh, a short exchange of words, occupy him excessively and grow deeper and more important in silence, become experience, adventure, emotion.

he feared the familiar sight of the mountains and steep cliffs that would surround his listless dullness