The world-famous masterpiece about a writer's obsessive pursuit of forbidden love by a Nobel Prize laureate. Translation by Michael Henry Heim Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustave von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom. In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."

本作は、老作家が究極の美に狂わされ、理性が崩壊する様を耽美に描いた悲劇です。疫病に沈むベネチアの情景と、芸術家の矜持が「死の甘美さ」に屈する過程が重なり、読者を破滅の陶酔へと誘います。精緻な筆致で知性の敗北を美しく結晶化させた、文芸の極北と呼ぶべき名作です。 映像版はマーラーの旋律を用い、原作の饒舌な内面描写を官能的な沈黙へと昇華させました。文字でしか触れられぬ心理の深淵と、映像が放つ視覚的な退廃美。この二つを重ねることで、人間の気高さと脆さが同居する物語の真髄に、より深く魂を震わせることになるでしょう。