Tadzio, golden-haired boy in Thomas Mann's novella
DEATH IN VENICE, personifies transcendental
Beauty as deified in the ancient Greek philosophy of Plato. Tadzio is also
the unattainable love of the dying protagonist, Aschenbach a middle-aged
writer whose anguish symbolizes the devastating failure of European civilization
to properly situate homosexuality at the core of its Greco-Roman heritage.
The story, first published in 1912, as "Der Tod in Venedig" in
the magazine Neue Rundschau, remains one the great classics of modern
German literature.
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