Deaths in Venice. The Cases of Gustav von Aschenbach by Philip Kitcher (review)

In times when the humanities face headwinds that help to thrust a dystopian mindset on its proponents, Philip Kitcher's study on Thomas Mann's best-known novella Der Tod in Venedig (1911) carries utopian qualities (as far as scholarship in the humanities is concerned) of which a few are worth highlighting. As a starter, the book, published first in 2013, was reissued as paperback in 2016, a feat that is in and of itself a remarkable success given the shrinking readership of books released by university presses. The need for a reissuing might be explained by the fact that Kitcher succeeds in illuminating the many facets of the novella in such a plain language that it can be understood by everyone interested in the life of Thomas Mann and Gustav Mahler, the intricacies of the novella, Nietzsche's and Schopenhauer's philosophy, or Benjamin Britten's opera and Luchino Visconti's film adaptation of Mann's tale about an artist who dies in Venice of a heart attack (!), and not of cholera (as Kitcher rightly emphasizes). For all of these subjects and more, Kitcher understands the need to weave an elegant text that does not leave the reader with an impression of an exhaustive list of topics that need to be "covered," rather he creates a natural and pleasantly winding tour into the depths of the novella and its comparative contexts that inspires the reader to discover still more connections. To put it differently, while the text breathes every inch as that of an erudite scholar, it remains lucid, almost to the point of appearing both simple and unassuming, and hence it eschews the literary analyses that get caught in self-induced theoretical labyrinths. Instead, Kitcher understands how to take the reader into the maze of correspondences, precursors, and repercussions when he tunes into Mann's various narratives (Buddenbrooks, Der Zauberberg, the Joseph tetralogy, or Tonio Kröger), only to then switch gears to have a look at cholera research (both today's and that of Thomas Mann's own times) before he moves as effortlessly into Mann's biographical life before returning, once again, to the main protagonist von Aschenbach. And it almost appears chutzpah that one does not encounter, even once, the word "interdisciplinary," even though Kitcher's study brings music history and analysis, philosophy, and history of medicine into dialogue as much as he practices hermeneutic exegesis of text and film, enhanced by biographical and literary history.

The book is divided into "Discipline," "Beauty," and "Shadows," (in addition to their varying number of subsections) and projects a clear partition and progressive linearity that the book actually and luckily defies. At the center of this exploration of Mann's novella, its various artistic renditions (Britten's underperformed opera from 1973 and Visconti's film adaptation from 1971), and its manifold aspects and differing methodological interpretations are three basic approaches that Kitcher brings to his study: (a) the unfolding of the novella's central, ethical question of how one should live (17, 30); (b) the belief that an artist like Mann, while in dialogue with philosophical questions—as in his case more with Schopenhauer than the commonly assumed Nietzsche—can provide, through their art, their own serious philosophical claims; and (c) taking Schopenhauer's philosophy to heart when stating that the deepest philosophical involvement can be found in Schubert's song cycle or Mahler symphonies (13). And it is the Moravian and Austrian conductor and composer who plays a particular role since Visconti has Mann's fictitious writer von Aschenbach metamorphose into the historical Gustav Mahler, which provides ample opportunity for Kitcher not only to compare factual and fictional claims, but also to delve into Mahler's Rückert-Lieder and Kindertotenlieder as cognates to the film's famous use of the lush Adagietto, the fourth movement from Mahler's Symphony No. 5, before Kitcher finally interprets Mahler's semi-last composition Das Lied von...