Death in Venice: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

The narrator describes the weather at Venice in lyrical language, describing the rising of the sun in mythological terms as a god driving his blazing chariot across the sky and noting how plants in the park at evening “emitted a balmy fragrance.” Aschenbach decided to stay in Venice even after his luggage was returned to him. He had been “bewitched” by the leisurely lifestyle of this vacation.

Aschenbach had never been able to stay away from work for very long and never indulged in much pleasure, but now he found himself relaxing all day. He felt like he had gone to “the ends of the earth, where the easiest possible life is the lot of mankind.” He often saw Tadzio around the hotel and watched him with “adoration and study.”

Every morning, Aschenbach got up early and was the first person on the beach, where he sat as the sun rose and the day got hotter and hotter, and from where he could watch Tadzio most days. He watched Tadzio play and overheard him talking with his family. Since Aschenbach did not understand Tadzio’s language, the boy's speech was like music to him.

Aschenbach admired everything about Tadzio’s behavior and appearance, including his “honey-colored hair.” He thought of the boy, “What breeding, what precision of thought were expressed in this outstretched body, perfect in its youthfulness!” Tadzio’s beauty reminded Aschenbach of what it was like for him to produce beauty through writing, like a sculpture from the “marble block of language.”

Aschenbach felt that gazing at Tadzio was like looking at beauty itself. Thinking of Plato’s Phaedrus (a work that discusses the nature of desire), Aschenbach remembered Plato’s idea that beauty directs the soul toward heaven, thus justifying his obsession with Tadzio.

Aschenbach felt intoxicated by the sun and ocean and had a delirious vision. In the vision, he was in an idyllic scene under a tree outside of Athens (the setting of Plato’s Phaedrus). Aschenbach’s vision recreated Plato’s dialogue, with the old, ugly Socrates teaching the young, attractive Phaedrus. Aschenbach imagined Socrates, lusting after Phaedrus, saying, “beauty is the path taken by the man of feeling to attain the intellectual—only the path, only a means, young Phaedrus.”

Aschenbach felt a sudden urge to write, and felt compelled to write about “a certain important, burning issue of culture and taste.” He wrote in the presence of Tadzio, so that he could model his own writing on the beautiful form of Tadzio’s body. The narrator reflects on how good it is that people only see finished works of art, as the sources of their inspiration and the circumstances of their making are often less admirable than the artworks themselves.

Aschenbach saw Tadzio the next morning and decided to say hello and introduce himself in a friendly manner. But just as he was about to say something, he felt his heart pounding and walked past Tadzio. The narrator says that talking to Tadzio may have sobered Aschenbach, but that he was now attached to his own intoxication. He joked with himself about how he had lost his courage in approaching Tadzio.

Aschenbach planned to stay in Venice indefinitely, and put all the energy and focus he used to devote to writing into watching Tadzio. He got up every morning to watch the sunrise, which he saw in mythological terms as the arrival of Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn. “Emotions from the past,” that Aschenbach had neglected in his discipline began to resurface as he watched the “lovely shining and blossoming” of the sun in the sky.

The days were “mythically transformed” for Aschenbach, who saw the waves crashing on the beach as Poseidon’s “steeds dash[ing] forward.” He compared Tadzio to Hyacinthus, a young man in Greek mythology who was loved by both Zephyrus (a wind god) and Apollo (the sun god), and who tragically died.

Tadzio would occasionally walk to his family by a route that meant he passed right by Aschenbach, and Aschenbach took this as a sign that “his friendly feelings and attention were not altogether unreciprocated.” Their gazes met occasionally, and Aschenbach thought he saw “an inquiry, a pensive question” in the boy’s eyes.

One evening, Aschenbach saw Tadzio and his family returning from dinner in the city, and marveled at how Tadzio was more beautiful than words could describe. Aschenbach could not contain his joy at seeing the boy, and Tadzio smiled back at him, looking like Narcissus. Aschenbach was shocked and ran to the garden. He scolded himself for smiling in such a way, but then inhaled the fragrance of the plants and said out loud, “I love you.”