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The Real Tadzio: Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and the Boy Who Inspired It
In the summer of 1911, the German writer Thomas Mann visited Venice in the company of his wife Katia. There, in the Grand Hotel des Bains, as he waited for the dinner-gong to ring, the author’s roving eye was drawn to a nearby Polish family, the Moeses, consisting of a mother, three daughters, and a young sailor-suited son who, to Mann, exuded an almost supernatural beauty and grace. Inspired by this glancing encounter with the luminous child, Mann wrote Death in Venice, and the infatuated writer made of that boy, Wladyslaw Moes, one of the twentieth century’s most potent and enduring icons. According to Gilbert Adair in his sparkling evocation of that idyll on the Adriatic, Mann wrote his novella, “as though taking dictation from God.” But precisely who was the boy? And what was his reaction to the publication of Death in Venice in 1912 and, later, the release of Luchino Visconti’s film adaptation in 1971? In this revealing portrait, including telling photographs, Gilbert Adair brilliantly juxtaposes the life of Wladyslaw Moes with that of his mythic twin, Tadzio. It is a fascinating account of a man who was immortalized by a genius, yet forgotten by history.
- GenresBiographyNonfictionGay
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
Gilbert Adair
51 books157 followersGilbert Adair was a Scottish novelist, poet, film critic and journalist. Born in Edinburgh, he lived in Paris from 1968 through 1980. He is most famous for such novels as Love and Death on Long Island (1997) and The Dreamers (2003), both of which were made into films, although he is also noted as the translator of Georges Perec's postmodern novel A Void, in which the letter e is not used. Adair won the 1995 Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for this work.
In 1998 and 1999 Adair was the chief film critic for The Independent on Sunday, where in 1999 he also wrote a year-long column called "The Guillotine." In addition to the films made from his own works, Adair worked on the screenplays for a number of Raúl Ruiz films. Although he rarely spoke of his sexual orientation in public, not wishing to be labelled, he acknowledge in an interview that there were many gay themes in his work. He died from a brain hemorrhage in 2011.
(source: Wikipedia)
In 1998 and 1999 Adair was the chief film critic for The Independent on Sunday, where in 1999 he also wrote a year-long column called "The Guillotine." In addition to the films made from his own works, Adair worked on the screenplays for a number of Raúl Ruiz films. Although he rarely spoke of his sexual orientation in public, not wishing to be labelled, he acknowledge in an interview that there were many gay themes in his work. He died from a brain hemorrhage in 2011.
(source: Wikipedia)
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April 26, 2020
This short book gives something of the life of Wladyslaw Moes, the model for Thomas Mann's Tadzio in his classic novella: "Death in Venice". It also tells of his friend Jaschiu Fudakowski who is also described in the famous work. The sources seem to be Wladyslaw's daughter and Fudakowski's son.
The two friends were more or less stumbled upon by a novelist on his holiday in Venice. In this randomness they can be said to stand as proxy for their fellow aristocrats. Mann's novel draws a portrait of upper class European life at the dawn to the twentieth century. This book shows how they fared in the forces of history.
Tadzio's generation would be the last to inherit life as is depicted in Mann's novel. Both the real Tadzio and his friend were soon to lose their lives of privilege, and eventually, everything. Their summer on the beach, beautifully described by Mann was not to be bestowed on their children as it was on them.
This book discusses the two friends, how they were portrayed in the film version of the novel and how so soon after this summer they both went to war. In the next war, both became POWs. Both eventually lost lands, businesses and status. Later in life, both saw themselves and their carefree youth depicted in the Viscounti film of Mann's novel of their summer in Venice.
There is an update on Bjorn Anderson who played Tadzio in the Viscounti film. Young Anderson's career peaked with the film.
The book is short. Perhaps this is all readers of the novel may want to know. For historians, these families are would make excellent case studies and are worthy of a more in depth work.
The two friends were more or less stumbled upon by a novelist on his holiday in Venice. In this randomness they can be said to stand as proxy for their fellow aristocrats. Mann's novel draws a portrait of upper class European life at the dawn to the twentieth century. This book shows how they fared in the forces of history.
Tadzio's generation would be the last to inherit life as is depicted in Mann's novel. Both the real Tadzio and his friend were soon to lose their lives of privilege, and eventually, everything. Their summer on the beach, beautifully described by Mann was not to be bestowed on their children as it was on them.
This book discusses the two friends, how they were portrayed in the film version of the novel and how so soon after this summer they both went to war. In the next war, both became POWs. Both eventually lost lands, businesses and status. Later in life, both saw themselves and their carefree youth depicted in the Viscounti film of Mann's novel of their summer in Venice.
There is an update on Bjorn Anderson who played Tadzio in the Viscounti film. Young Anderson's career peaked with the film.
The book is short. Perhaps this is all readers of the novel may want to know. For historians, these families are would make excellent case studies and are worthy of a more in depth work.
December 13, 2022
Who was really Mann's boy?
Until Thomas Mann's diaries were posthumously published, it was not well known that he was a pederast, a lover of adolescent boys, or that his most famous work, Death in Venice, was almost autobiographical; in his own words, "nothing was invented." So who was the boy "Tadzio" with whom he fell in love in Venice in the summer of 1911?
In 1964, an elderly Pole named Wladyslaw Moes came forward to the Polish translator of the novella and said "I am that boy!" So far as I can gather, no one ever sought to question this sensational revelation, though no one made much of it either until Gilbert Adair had the brilliant idea of writing this book.
Adair was a gifted writer; his book is witty and very readable, though regrettably peppered with unfair waspish comments, of which two will suffice as examples here. For noting that his sister used a massive amount of cyanide to kill herself, Mann is said to have shown " an unnerving absence of sibling warmth." How so? Luchino Visconti, the other giant in the story thanks to his famous film of the novella, is put down for his "evident, malicious pleasure in showing himself in the process of inspecting bevies of schoolboys" auditioning for Tadzio's part. I should think Visconti probably did feel pleasure, but it is not at all evident to me there was anything malicious about it. To remarks like this, I am tempted to reply with the royal motto "Honi soit qui mal y pense."
More seriously for a book that claims to be a real work of research, I suspect Adair rolled it off in a week or so. There is no bibliography or footnotes. No sources are referred to except Moes's daughter and his friend's son, and it appears that interviewing these two was the total sum of his research. Such information as they could give ninety years after the event and when the protagonists were all long dead falls largely under the euphemism of "family tradition." Anyone who has done serious genealogical research inspired by one can attest this is usually distorted and often no more than self-glorifying fantasy. Adair admits this, but it doesn't stop him reproducing an entirely gushing account of the noble Moes family, beginning with Wladyslaw's "extremely enlightened" grandfather and continuing through his "compassionately liberal" father to the man himself, "evidently capable of charming the birds off trees" (another "evidently" for which no evidence is presented).
My gravest criticism goes however to the heart of the book: I have serious doubts Moes was Tadzio at all. The nearest Adair gets to any criticism of Moes is in his daughter's description of his great vanity, presented as an endearing foible. I see no reason to doubt he visited Venice in childhood, very likely staying in the cosmopolitan Hotel des Bains. But if this happened when he was ten, as would have to be the case if he were Tadzio, what details would he remember in old age sufficient to identify himself as such? The month, for example? I doubt that very much, and since the Moes family were only allowed to retrieve one suitcase of personal possessions from communist confiscation, it would be astonishing if he had documents to support the claim. Surely it would not be hard for any vain and pampered Pole who remembered visiting Venice in roughly the same era to suspect and then convince himself he was the one soon after described in Visconti's advertising as "the most beautiful boy in the world."
Let us now turn to some of the known discrepancies, bearing in mind we are strictly limited here to such as chance to emerge from Adair's uncritical account. Given how serious these are, we may expect that far more would have emerged from a cross-examination in the '60s. Bear in mind also that we have the words of both Mann and his widow Katia that, having already decided to write a story about a great writer who succumbs to passion for a youngster and to base the writer physically on the recently deceased composer Mahler, the rest of the story fell into place in detail. There is therefore no reason to expect discrepancies at all, one reason why Adair's attempted explanations of them come across to me as special pleading.
The most serious discrepancy is that Tadzio was a youth of "about fourteen" in the novella, or "about thirteen" according to Katia, who was there, and later spoke frankly of her husband's pederasty, whereas Moes was a child of ten and six months (Adair first calls him "not quite eleven" and thereafter conveniently drops the "not quite"). The difference between ten and thirteen or fourteen is enormously important. Mann's diaries abound in evidence of his attraction to pubescent boys, but there is not a shred of evidence to link him to true paedophilia or attraction to pre-pubescent children. The older age is also that towards which pederasts have typically been attracted since antiquity and the novella is rich in Greek pederastic imagery; the whole canon of Greek literature and art contains not a single reference to erotic attraction to the truly pre-pubescent.
Secondly, Mann is at his most eloquent describing the perfect "godlike beauty" of Tadzio, also described by Katia as a "very charming, beautiful boy." As Adair admits, pudgy-faced Moes looked like a "lump." To explain this discrepancy, he points out our ideas of beauty are subject to fashion and suggests "that everyone appears to get sexier in proportion as we draw closer to our own era." It is a fascinating observation and undoubtedly true up to a point, but we are dealing here with extremes which well exceed that point. The numerous busts of the most celebrated loved boy in history, the Emperor Hadrian's deified Antinous, continue to seduce after nineteen centuries, as do the Davids of Michelangelo and Donatello after five.
These were not the only physical differences between the two boys. Tadzio had "twilit grey eyes" and "lovely hair that curled ... about his brows, above his ears, longer still in the neck"; Moes had water-blue eyes and his hair was straight above his brow, covered his ears with a hideous pronged fringe and was not longer in the neck.
Turning to the boys' respective families, Tadzio was the youngest of three children, Moes the fourth of six. Adair admits on photographic evidence that the actress who played Tadzio's mother in the film "bore no resemblance" to Moes's mother, "but was the very image of Mann's description of her fictional equivalent."
Moes recalled being stalked by an "old man", but Katia was emphatic later (but too late for Moes to correct his memories) that it wasn't true her 36-year-old husband followed him around the city: "He didn't pursue him through all of Venice -- that he didn't do". Isn't this then a typical example of the kind of false memory, created out of what its victim is expected to recollect, often ready to ensnare biographers.
Finally, there is the question of the boy's name, which Mann concluded after hearing called repeatedly was "Tadzio a shortened form of Thaddeus", but is convolutedly explained by Adair as a mishearing of Adzio, said to be short via Wladzio for Wladyslaw. It's possible, but I would opt first for the most simple solution, that Mann got it right.
If I had tried to find the real Tadzio, I would have looked for a Thaddeus who was a beautiful fourteen in 1911. It signifies little that such a claimant hasn't presented himself. Even if Mann's prognosis that "he is sickly, he will never live to grow up" had turned out to be pessimistic, when Armageddon erupted three summers later he would have been about seventeen and getting ready to join the carnage. As young officer material, the odds for his survival will sadly not have been high.
Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a story of similar but requited love, https://www.amazon.com/dp/191457107X.
Until Thomas Mann's diaries were posthumously published, it was not well known that he was a pederast, a lover of adolescent boys, or that his most famous work, Death in Venice, was almost autobiographical; in his own words, "nothing was invented." So who was the boy "Tadzio" with whom he fell in love in Venice in the summer of 1911?
In 1964, an elderly Pole named Wladyslaw Moes came forward to the Polish translator of the novella and said "I am that boy!" So far as I can gather, no one ever sought to question this sensational revelation, though no one made much of it either until Gilbert Adair had the brilliant idea of writing this book.
Adair was a gifted writer; his book is witty and very readable, though regrettably peppered with unfair waspish comments, of which two will suffice as examples here. For noting that his sister used a massive amount of cyanide to kill herself, Mann is said to have shown " an unnerving absence of sibling warmth." How so? Luchino Visconti, the other giant in the story thanks to his famous film of the novella, is put down for his "evident, malicious pleasure in showing himself in the process of inspecting bevies of schoolboys" auditioning for Tadzio's part. I should think Visconti probably did feel pleasure, but it is not at all evident to me there was anything malicious about it. To remarks like this, I am tempted to reply with the royal motto "Honi soit qui mal y pense."
More seriously for a book that claims to be a real work of research, I suspect Adair rolled it off in a week or so. There is no bibliography or footnotes. No sources are referred to except Moes's daughter and his friend's son, and it appears that interviewing these two was the total sum of his research. Such information as they could give ninety years after the event and when the protagonists were all long dead falls largely under the euphemism of "family tradition." Anyone who has done serious genealogical research inspired by one can attest this is usually distorted and often no more than self-glorifying fantasy. Adair admits this, but it doesn't stop him reproducing an entirely gushing account of the noble Moes family, beginning with Wladyslaw's "extremely enlightened" grandfather and continuing through his "compassionately liberal" father to the man himself, "evidently capable of charming the birds off trees" (another "evidently" for which no evidence is presented).
My gravest criticism goes however to the heart of the book: I have serious doubts Moes was Tadzio at all. The nearest Adair gets to any criticism of Moes is in his daughter's description of his great vanity, presented as an endearing foible. I see no reason to doubt he visited Venice in childhood, very likely staying in the cosmopolitan Hotel des Bains. But if this happened when he was ten, as would have to be the case if he were Tadzio, what details would he remember in old age sufficient to identify himself as such? The month, for example? I doubt that very much, and since the Moes family were only allowed to retrieve one suitcase of personal possessions from communist confiscation, it would be astonishing if he had documents to support the claim. Surely it would not be hard for any vain and pampered Pole who remembered visiting Venice in roughly the same era to suspect and then convince himself he was the one soon after described in Visconti's advertising as "the most beautiful boy in the world."
Let us now turn to some of the known discrepancies, bearing in mind we are strictly limited here to such as chance to emerge from Adair's uncritical account. Given how serious these are, we may expect that far more would have emerged from a cross-examination in the '60s. Bear in mind also that we have the words of both Mann and his widow Katia that, having already decided to write a story about a great writer who succumbs to passion for a youngster and to base the writer physically on the recently deceased composer Mahler, the rest of the story fell into place in detail. There is therefore no reason to expect discrepancies at all, one reason why Adair's attempted explanations of them come across to me as special pleading.
The most serious discrepancy is that Tadzio was a youth of "about fourteen" in the novella, or "about thirteen" according to Katia, who was there, and later spoke frankly of her husband's pederasty, whereas Moes was a child of ten and six months (Adair first calls him "not quite eleven" and thereafter conveniently drops the "not quite"). The difference between ten and thirteen or fourteen is enormously important. Mann's diaries abound in evidence of his attraction to pubescent boys, but there is not a shred of evidence to link him to true paedophilia or attraction to pre-pubescent children. The older age is also that towards which pederasts have typically been attracted since antiquity and the novella is rich in Greek pederastic imagery; the whole canon of Greek literature and art contains not a single reference to erotic attraction to the truly pre-pubescent.
Secondly, Mann is at his most eloquent describing the perfect "godlike beauty" of Tadzio, also described by Katia as a "very charming, beautiful boy." As Adair admits, pudgy-faced Moes looked like a "lump." To explain this discrepancy, he points out our ideas of beauty are subject to fashion and suggests "that everyone appears to get sexier in proportion as we draw closer to our own era." It is a fascinating observation and undoubtedly true up to a point, but we are dealing here with extremes which well exceed that point. The numerous busts of the most celebrated loved boy in history, the Emperor Hadrian's deified Antinous, continue to seduce after nineteen centuries, as do the Davids of Michelangelo and Donatello after five.
These were not the only physical differences between the two boys. Tadzio had "twilit grey eyes" and "lovely hair that curled ... about his brows, above his ears, longer still in the neck"; Moes had water-blue eyes and his hair was straight above his brow, covered his ears with a hideous pronged fringe and was not longer in the neck.
Turning to the boys' respective families, Tadzio was the youngest of three children, Moes the fourth of six. Adair admits on photographic evidence that the actress who played Tadzio's mother in the film "bore no resemblance" to Moes's mother, "but was the very image of Mann's description of her fictional equivalent."
Moes recalled being stalked by an "old man", but Katia was emphatic later (but too late for Moes to correct his memories) that it wasn't true her 36-year-old husband followed him around the city: "He didn't pursue him through all of Venice -- that he didn't do". Isn't this then a typical example of the kind of false memory, created out of what its victim is expected to recollect, often ready to ensnare biographers.
Finally, there is the question of the boy's name, which Mann concluded after hearing called repeatedly was "Tadzio a shortened form of Thaddeus", but is convolutedly explained by Adair as a mishearing of Adzio, said to be short via Wladzio for Wladyslaw. It's possible, but I would opt first for the most simple solution, that Mann got it right.
If I had tried to find the real Tadzio, I would have looked for a Thaddeus who was a beautiful fourteen in 1911. It signifies little that such a claimant hasn't presented himself. Even if Mann's prognosis that "he is sickly, he will never live to grow up" had turned out to be pessimistic, when Armageddon erupted three summers later he would have been about seventeen and getting ready to join the carnage. As young officer material, the odds for his survival will sadly not have been high.
Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a story of similar but requited love, https://www.amazon.com/dp/191457107X.
April 25, 2020
just a quick sideways meander while i chew over my post-visconti adaptation watch thoughts.
May 12, 2024
I read this book over twenty years ago and wanted to reread it again before writing this review but as I could not get a library copy and had no intention of buying a copy I am writing this review based on memory, specifically the reservations I had at the time and ones that have occured to me subsequently, particularly because so many commentators have taken it as proven fact that Wladyslaw Moes was the inspiration for Tadzio in Death in Venice. I don't believe it. Mr. Moes friend Jan Fudakowski is the one who appears to have made the connection between their childhood visit to Venice and the Mann novella. He gave an interview at the time the Visconti film was being made but the story never really caught on until Mr. Adair took it up and wrote this book which is less an investigation of the story then thinly disguised attack on Mann and Visconti (I will have more to say about Bjorn Andersen the actor who played Tadzio in the film a bit later).
I am willing to accept that Messrs Moes and Fudakowski honestly believed the story they told but there are good reasons to doubt it. Katie Mann, Thomas Mann's wife said:
"All the details of the story... are taken from experience ... In the dining-room, on the very first day, we saw the Polish family, which looked exactly the way my husband described them: the girls were dressed rather stiffly and severely, and the very charming, beautiful boy of about 13 was wearing a sailor suit with an open collar and very pretty lacings. He caught my husband's attention immediately. This boy was tremendously attractive, and my husband was always watching him with his companions on the beach. He didn't pursue him through all of Venice—that he didn't do—but the boy did fascinate him, and he thought of him often..."
Mann often drew directly on real events and people for his fiction so what Katie Mann says makes a great deal of sense but to use it in support the Moes story breaks down because he was only ten in 1911 and looks nothing like Mann's description of Tadzio and Moes's mother is nothing like the one the beautiful woman Mann described in Death in Venice. More importantly there is plenty of evidence that Mann was already planning the niovella that became Death in Venice long before his 1911 holiday so there is no evidence that Moes and his family inspired Death in Venice. Even his suggestion that Tadzio is diminutive for his name Wladyslaw seems pretty thin (but not impossible).
That the Moes identification of himself as the model Tadzio was based on very thin retrospective constructions can be seen in his 'memories' of an 'old man' continually staring at him during the Venetian visit (as far as I can recall neither the author nor anyone has actually attempted to contact the Hotel de Bains and see if there are any records to show that the Mann and Moes families visits coincided). But in 1911 Mann wasn't an old man, he was thirty five with three very young children. Mann was considerably younger than Moes father.
There are also problems with other aspects of the identification of Moes as an inspiration for Mann. Although Moes was born in 'Congress Poland' (that part of Poland that was part of the Russian empire before WWI) his family lived in and he grew up in Galicia which was a separate kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. While Poles from 'Congress Poland' were often referred to as Poles even though they were citizens of the Tsar how a German like Mann would have thought of and referred to people from the kingdom of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian empire is open to question. The point is Gilbert Adair knew nothing of these distinctions when he wrote this book. Nor did he find it odd that Moes at 39 was called up and served in the Polish army in September 1939, though not a regular soldier, nor is his POW status in WWII sufficiently investigated.
So much of the motivation of this book seems to be based on an open but undefined animus that Adair has against Mann and Visconti. It in many ways amounts to the idea that Mann was a pervert who licked teenage boys so why wouldn't he fancy a ten year old boy. That certainly is the underlying assumption of most of those who accept the premise of this very unsatisfactory book (I should stress that I am referring to English language commentators. I have no idea if the book's premise has attracted the same acceptance in Germany).
I want to touch briefly on the question of Bjorn Andressen, the actor who played 'Tadzio, in the film and his relationship with Visconti. This is the part of the book I have the haziest recollection of and I can not separate what was said or implied by Adair's book and what Bjorn Andressen said in the 2021 documentary made about him 'The Most Beautiful Boy in the World'. Andressen is very bitter about how he feels he was used and exploited by Visconti. There is no question that Visconti was at times a monster, you only have to read the recollections of those like Helmut Berger who worked with him regularly. But his use of Andressen was not so much monstrous as typical of the time - very little consideration was given to the psychological effects of being thrust into the limelight in this way. I remember reading the comments of some of the adults who as boys appeared in Peter Brooks 1963 'Lord of the Flies' of how disorientating it was to be thrust from the intensity of film making back into ordinary life (I might stress that none of them had any harsh words for Peter Brook). Andressen emerged from this documentary as tortured unhappy man but he seems to have fixated on Visconti as the cause of his unhappiness when there were others, such as his grandmother (who raised him) who appears to have been a real stage parent. But the documentary, like Adair's book, avoids depth for superficiality, not investigating or asking hard questions and setting up Mann and Visconti as easy targets for superficial demonisation.
This is not a good book, it is polemical and character assassination disguised as literary investigation. The roots of Mann's Death in Venice are fascinating but this superficial and glibb book does a disservice to both Mann and the possibly delusional Wladyslav Moes.
I am willing to accept that Messrs Moes and Fudakowski honestly believed the story they told but there are good reasons to doubt it. Katie Mann, Thomas Mann's wife said:
"All the details of the story... are taken from experience ... In the dining-room, on the very first day, we saw the Polish family, which looked exactly the way my husband described them: the girls were dressed rather stiffly and severely, and the very charming, beautiful boy of about 13 was wearing a sailor suit with an open collar and very pretty lacings. He caught my husband's attention immediately. This boy was tremendously attractive, and my husband was always watching him with his companions on the beach. He didn't pursue him through all of Venice—that he didn't do—but the boy did fascinate him, and he thought of him often..."
Mann often drew directly on real events and people for his fiction so what Katie Mann says makes a great deal of sense but to use it in support the Moes story breaks down because he was only ten in 1911 and looks nothing like Mann's description of Tadzio and Moes's mother is nothing like the one the beautiful woman Mann described in Death in Venice. More importantly there is plenty of evidence that Mann was already planning the niovella that became Death in Venice long before his 1911 holiday so there is no evidence that Moes and his family inspired Death in Venice. Even his suggestion that Tadzio is diminutive for his name Wladyslaw seems pretty thin (but not impossible).
That the Moes identification of himself as the model Tadzio was based on very thin retrospective constructions can be seen in his 'memories' of an 'old man' continually staring at him during the Venetian visit (as far as I can recall neither the author nor anyone has actually attempted to contact the Hotel de Bains and see if there are any records to show that the Mann and Moes families visits coincided). But in 1911 Mann wasn't an old man, he was thirty five with three very young children. Mann was considerably younger than Moes father.
There are also problems with other aspects of the identification of Moes as an inspiration for Mann. Although Moes was born in 'Congress Poland' (that part of Poland that was part of the Russian empire before WWI) his family lived in and he grew up in Galicia which was a separate kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. While Poles from 'Congress Poland' were often referred to as Poles even though they were citizens of the Tsar how a German like Mann would have thought of and referred to people from the kingdom of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian empire is open to question. The point is Gilbert Adair knew nothing of these distinctions when he wrote this book. Nor did he find it odd that Moes at 39 was called up and served in the Polish army in September 1939, though not a regular soldier, nor is his POW status in WWII sufficiently investigated.
So much of the motivation of this book seems to be based on an open but undefined animus that Adair has against Mann and Visconti. It in many ways amounts to the idea that Mann was a pervert who licked teenage boys so why wouldn't he fancy a ten year old boy. That certainly is the underlying assumption of most of those who accept the premise of this very unsatisfactory book (I should stress that I am referring to English language commentators. I have no idea if the book's premise has attracted the same acceptance in Germany).
I want to touch briefly on the question of Bjorn Andressen, the actor who played 'Tadzio, in the film and his relationship with Visconti. This is the part of the book I have the haziest recollection of and I can not separate what was said or implied by Adair's book and what Bjorn Andressen said in the 2021 documentary made about him 'The Most Beautiful Boy in the World'. Andressen is very bitter about how he feels he was used and exploited by Visconti. There is no question that Visconti was at times a monster, you only have to read the recollections of those like Helmut Berger who worked with him regularly. But his use of Andressen was not so much monstrous as typical of the time - very little consideration was given to the psychological effects of being thrust into the limelight in this way. I remember reading the comments of some of the adults who as boys appeared in Peter Brooks 1963 'Lord of the Flies' of how disorientating it was to be thrust from the intensity of film making back into ordinary life (I might stress that none of them had any harsh words for Peter Brook). Andressen emerged from this documentary as tortured unhappy man but he seems to have fixated on Visconti as the cause of his unhappiness when there were others, such as his grandmother (who raised him) who appears to have been a real stage parent. But the documentary, like Adair's book, avoids depth for superficiality, not investigating or asking hard questions and setting up Mann and Visconti as easy targets for superficial demonisation.
This is not a good book, it is polemical and character assassination disguised as literary investigation. The roots of Mann's Death in Venice are fascinating but this superficial and glibb book does a disservice to both Mann and the possibly delusional Wladyslav Moes.
October 23, 2016
This short novel by Thomas Mann has become a classic on its own merit first and then because he has been adapted to the cinema and the stage quite many times. The best known adaptations are Visconti’s film in 1971 and the opera by Benjamin Britten in 1973.
This book was also written at the end of Thomas Mann’s life and though it cannot really be said to be autobiographical, which anyway has no value to discuss and appreciate it, it is obvious that Thomas Mann has had that kind of experience first hand: becoming old, feeling death crawling and creeping behind the wings closer and closer, and attaching his dream of a second youth to the first youth one meets and sublimates into a fancy of beauty as an aesthetic dimension to cover up the deep psychological need to find a recipient for the mission of continuing the exploration of the world, mental and physical, intellectual and material, that one has done all along their life.
This need, this desire, this quest is universal among all artists and intellectuals, maybe among all human beings as the survival instinct of the mind. It cannot be fulfilled genetically. It does not lead to anything hormonal which could be seen as unethical, and would have been seen as unethical in Thomas Mann’s time: it would have been pedophilic love, since Tadzio is hardly 15, probably less. It is symbolical, spiritual, mental maybe psychical.
Apart from and beyond this personal existential remark, the book has tremendous qualities.
The first one is its shortness. The subject – in a way it is an artistic testament – is treated in very few pages with very little action but always precisely stated and clearly described. No useless embellishment on the action itself. That enables the author to concentrate on the sole mind of the main character who is a successful German author who has preached all his life the separation of arts from life, from passion, from sentiments, from feelings. Arts are supposed to cultivate beauty in themselves and to look for beauty in the world.
Gustav von Aschenbach is trapped by his own aesthetic ambition and practice when in his old age he meets with his eyes, and that will never be a meeting on any other level, and when his mind relays that vision into a deep reflection on what life is, what beauty is, what purity is. His eyes meet a young Polish youth that can be deemed to be 15 or less years old.
The main character is attracted to this “Knabe” as he calls him in German, “boy” as is translated in English, visually, hence by the only vision of the boy’s body since he cannot understand Polish and that foreign language becomes some kind of music. The shape of the body, the proportions, the flexibility and articulations of that body that is fit without being athletic, still young and not wrapped up in too much muscle and fat.
He is attracted by the face and the hair of this young teenager and at this level no one can describe the “beauty” of a face. Words can eventually describe the face but they cannot capture the beauty itself which is a very complex conglomerate of elements. The last attractive element is the light, very light indeed before the First World War, “nudity” of the young teenager since he is mostly on a beach in some bathing suit, which is a suit really. It only liberates or “undress” the arms and the legs from the knees down, maybe half thigh down. Visconti makes the boy bathe in the sea is some kind of swimming trunks that denude his body from the waist up. I am not sure at all that was standard in 1911.
This first quality of the book is amplified tremendously by the Greek mythical references all along the pages. I am not going to list them all but systematically they refer to love (probably identified as identical to intercourse) that leads to death in a way or another. Some of these gods or semi-gods are messengers of death or have the power of saving someone who is close to death or dying, like Zeus taking Dionysus in his thigh, or Zeus against and others turning some victims of jealousy into stars and constellations. These references establish a full parallel between the main character and these victims of love and jealousy.
But he goes one step further by referring to Socrates and Phaedo, particularly the death scene in Plato’s text, The Death Scene from the Phaedo, http://homepages.gac.edu/~arosenth/26.... The death of Socrates drinking his hemlock to which he had been sentenced is to be set in parallel with the death of Gustav von Aschenbach in the story. Note here how the name of the character is conveying the idea of death: a river of ashes. A close study of these references and their mapping in the story would show how symbolical they are.
But let me give you one example of how the main character’s wording of his approach of beauty is also symbolical and of what. The original for “The happiness of writers is the thought that can be entirely emotion and the emotion that can be entirely thought,” is “Glûck des Schriftstellers, der ganz Gedanke, der ganz Gefühl, das ganz Gedanke zu werden vermag.“ Apart from the fact that I find the translation less concise, less poetic and more abstract in its use of the generic plural “writers” or the generic philosophical definite article in “the thought” or “the emotion” and even “the happiness” where Thomas Mann had used the adjective “ganz” to particularize what thought or emotion he was speaking of, the thought and the emotion that the author was constructing or experiencing right now, hence the necessary singular of “Schriftsteller”
But the translation misses something more important: the symbolic music of the sentence. The first alliteration in /g/ seven times and the closing semi-alliteration in /w-v/ at the end bringing that seven to nine and the first alliteration in fact is one /g/ plus then alternating /ganz/ - /Gedanke/ - /ganz/ - /Gefühl/ - /ganz/ - /Gedanke/ which is a perfect David’s Star or number of Solomon, three adjectives-three nouns all carrying the same alliteration and alternating. It is obvious that the very deep and ancient wisdom of Solomon expanded into the seven days of the week of creation (6 days of work and one day of rest) or the seven days of the Holy Passion ending with the death and resurrection of Jesus in the last three days are turned into a diabolical reference to the Apocalypse, the Beast, the end of this world and life, and maybe salvation at Doomsday. The English translation is far from carrying that kind of symbolism.
This novella should be analyzed from that original German version to understand how Thomas Mann is a symbolical mind that sees beauty in those patterns, “Gestalten” would be the German plural word, that are both the symbols and the expression of the mind and the conception of beauty it develops or constructs. If we take this novella as being in the tradition of symbolism in German arts we find out that the death of Venice is also the death of Gustav von Aschenbach, and this latter death does not enable him to actually transmit the mission of continuing his work to Tadzio. The transmission is expressed at the end in the last look but in the reverse order: it is Tadzio who becomes Hermes and by looking back at Gustav from the sea and locking his eyes onto Gustav’s eyes takes him into the infinity of death and Gustav dies in his chair on the beach. Tadzio becomes the psychopomp of Gustav von Aschenbach into the immensity of space and death.
That is a phenomenal vision of mental and sqpiritual survival and the failure that Thomas Mann wants to express as for Gustav von Aschenbach who just did not have the courage to confront and brave social conventions and norms and establish contact and communication with Tadzio. This contact, this communication with a younger character who becomes the surrogate of his own youth and the continuation of his own life after his own death was close at hand but he did not choose it, he did not have the courage of surviving intellectually, spiritually by committing his remaining years of life to a pure and spiritual friendship that is love without the hormonal side of things. But this reveals an important element in Thomas Mann German psyche: he cannot imagine any friendship of this type in his society because he would be convicted (in a court of justice if necessary) of improper behavior. Just think of Oscar Wilde.
That sure is a masterpiece but its magnitude can only be captured in German. Just try to get it there: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12108, many standards available.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
This book was also written at the end of Thomas Mann’s life and though it cannot really be said to be autobiographical, which anyway has no value to discuss and appreciate it, it is obvious that Thomas Mann has had that kind of experience first hand: becoming old, feeling death crawling and creeping behind the wings closer and closer, and attaching his dream of a second youth to the first youth one meets and sublimates into a fancy of beauty as an aesthetic dimension to cover up the deep psychological need to find a recipient for the mission of continuing the exploration of the world, mental and physical, intellectual and material, that one has done all along their life.
This need, this desire, this quest is universal among all artists and intellectuals, maybe among all human beings as the survival instinct of the mind. It cannot be fulfilled genetically. It does not lead to anything hormonal which could be seen as unethical, and would have been seen as unethical in Thomas Mann’s time: it would have been pedophilic love, since Tadzio is hardly 15, probably less. It is symbolical, spiritual, mental maybe psychical.
Apart from and beyond this personal existential remark, the book has tremendous qualities.
The first one is its shortness. The subject – in a way it is an artistic testament – is treated in very few pages with very little action but always precisely stated and clearly described. No useless embellishment on the action itself. That enables the author to concentrate on the sole mind of the main character who is a successful German author who has preached all his life the separation of arts from life, from passion, from sentiments, from feelings. Arts are supposed to cultivate beauty in themselves and to look for beauty in the world.
Gustav von Aschenbach is trapped by his own aesthetic ambition and practice when in his old age he meets with his eyes, and that will never be a meeting on any other level, and when his mind relays that vision into a deep reflection on what life is, what beauty is, what purity is. His eyes meet a young Polish youth that can be deemed to be 15 or less years old.
The main character is attracted to this “Knabe” as he calls him in German, “boy” as is translated in English, visually, hence by the only vision of the boy’s body since he cannot understand Polish and that foreign language becomes some kind of music. The shape of the body, the proportions, the flexibility and articulations of that body that is fit without being athletic, still young and not wrapped up in too much muscle and fat.
He is attracted by the face and the hair of this young teenager and at this level no one can describe the “beauty” of a face. Words can eventually describe the face but they cannot capture the beauty itself which is a very complex conglomerate of elements. The last attractive element is the light, very light indeed before the First World War, “nudity” of the young teenager since he is mostly on a beach in some bathing suit, which is a suit really. It only liberates or “undress” the arms and the legs from the knees down, maybe half thigh down. Visconti makes the boy bathe in the sea is some kind of swimming trunks that denude his body from the waist up. I am not sure at all that was standard in 1911.
This first quality of the book is amplified tremendously by the Greek mythical references all along the pages. I am not going to list them all but systematically they refer to love (probably identified as identical to intercourse) that leads to death in a way or another. Some of these gods or semi-gods are messengers of death or have the power of saving someone who is close to death or dying, like Zeus taking Dionysus in his thigh, or Zeus against and others turning some victims of jealousy into stars and constellations. These references establish a full parallel between the main character and these victims of love and jealousy.
But he goes one step further by referring to Socrates and Phaedo, particularly the death scene in Plato’s text, The Death Scene from the Phaedo, http://homepages.gac.edu/~arosenth/26.... The death of Socrates drinking his hemlock to which he had been sentenced is to be set in parallel with the death of Gustav von Aschenbach in the story. Note here how the name of the character is conveying the idea of death: a river of ashes. A close study of these references and their mapping in the story would show how symbolical they are.
But let me give you one example of how the main character’s wording of his approach of beauty is also symbolical and of what. The original for “The happiness of writers is the thought that can be entirely emotion and the emotion that can be entirely thought,” is “Glûck des Schriftstellers, der ganz Gedanke, der ganz Gefühl, das ganz Gedanke zu werden vermag.“ Apart from the fact that I find the translation less concise, less poetic and more abstract in its use of the generic plural “writers” or the generic philosophical definite article in “the thought” or “the emotion” and even “the happiness” where Thomas Mann had used the adjective “ganz” to particularize what thought or emotion he was speaking of, the thought and the emotion that the author was constructing or experiencing right now, hence the necessary singular of “Schriftsteller”
But the translation misses something more important: the symbolic music of the sentence. The first alliteration in /g/ seven times and the closing semi-alliteration in /w-v/ at the end bringing that seven to nine and the first alliteration in fact is one /g/ plus then alternating /ganz/ - /Gedanke/ - /ganz/ - /Gefühl/ - /ganz/ - /Gedanke/ which is a perfect David’s Star or number of Solomon, three adjectives-three nouns all carrying the same alliteration and alternating. It is obvious that the very deep and ancient wisdom of Solomon expanded into the seven days of the week of creation (6 days of work and one day of rest) or the seven days of the Holy Passion ending with the death and resurrection of Jesus in the last three days are turned into a diabolical reference to the Apocalypse, the Beast, the end of this world and life, and maybe salvation at Doomsday. The English translation is far from carrying that kind of symbolism.
This novella should be analyzed from that original German version to understand how Thomas Mann is a symbolical mind that sees beauty in those patterns, “Gestalten” would be the German plural word, that are both the symbols and the expression of the mind and the conception of beauty it develops or constructs. If we take this novella as being in the tradition of symbolism in German arts we find out that the death of Venice is also the death of Gustav von Aschenbach, and this latter death does not enable him to actually transmit the mission of continuing his work to Tadzio. The transmission is expressed at the end in the last look but in the reverse order: it is Tadzio who becomes Hermes and by looking back at Gustav from the sea and locking his eyes onto Gustav’s eyes takes him into the infinity of death and Gustav dies in his chair on the beach. Tadzio becomes the psychopomp of Gustav von Aschenbach into the immensity of space and death.
That is a phenomenal vision of mental and sqpiritual survival and the failure that Thomas Mann wants to express as for Gustav von Aschenbach who just did not have the courage to confront and brave social conventions and norms and establish contact and communication with Tadzio. This contact, this communication with a younger character who becomes the surrogate of his own youth and the continuation of his own life after his own death was close at hand but he did not choose it, he did not have the courage of surviving intellectually, spiritually by committing his remaining years of life to a pure and spiritual friendship that is love without the hormonal side of things. But this reveals an important element in Thomas Mann German psyche: he cannot imagine any friendship of this type in his society because he would be convicted (in a court of justice if necessary) of improper behavior. Just think of Oscar Wilde.
That sure is a masterpiece but its magnitude can only be captured in German. Just try to get it there: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12108, many standards available.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
November 1, 2016
It’s remarkable for any author to so successfully map out that always-elusive intersection of great art and the very creepy love of an old man for a young boy. That Thomas Mann accomplished this feat way back in 1912 with Death in Venice, that he required a mere 79 pages to do it, and that he managed to wrap the whole thing up with the gorgeous image of said young boy on a beach, peering back toward the shore, toward said old man, who is reclining on his chair, who is slowly dying, who is floating “into a richly promising immensity” -- well, it helped win him the Nobel Prize for starters.
Now Gilbert Adair is here to tell us that, to boot, the story’s all true, except for the dying part, of course.
In The Real Tadzio, an erudite, compact and witty performance of cultural and literary criticism, Adair reminds us of Mann’s much-overlooked confession: “Nothing is invented in Death in Venice.” Thus armed, Adair goes after one Wladylsaw Moes -- although not quite in the same way that Mann did -- uncovering the story of how this privileged Polish boy, known to family and friends as Adzio, became, without realizing it, a character in an international best-seller. In fact, it wasn’t until 1924 that a relative of his put two and two together.
“Taken aback by the story’s references to an aristocratic Polish family staying at the Hotel des Bains, to the amusingly vulgar musicians who had been hired to entertain the resident clientele and the insidious rumors of cholera which had started to circulate through the city, taken most aback by the narrative premise of an elderly voyeur entranced by the spectacle, on the beach of the Lido, of two extremely personable young boys at play, boys whose nicknames, moreover, Tadzio and Jaschiu, were disturbingly reminiscent of Adzio and Jas, she naturally showed the book to her nephew. Adzio was amused, perhaps flattered, but, for the moment, a handsome young man leading an easy, affluent life, he was not terribly interested. In any case, he never chose to identify himself to Thomas Mann.”
It goes without saying that were such a scene repeated in the present day, Adzio would immediately identify himself to a lawyer, if not to level charges of stalking, then to grab some easy money and TV time. Surely, Dateline NBC would have a Friday night available. One can only imagine Stone Phillips telling us all about a “dirty old Mann and the boy who never knew he was loved . . . until now.”
In that respect, when Adair declines to label his essay a biography, instead viewing it “as an extended, belated specimen of the biography’s less garrulous cousin, the obituary,” he’s right. It’s an obituary for a man whose 1986 death went unacknowledged in English-language newspapers, despite the fact that readers had known him intimately for most of a century. But it’s also, without trying to be, an obituary of an era thankfully innocent of, among many other things, the extreme narcissism of “reality” programming.
Read my full review here: http://bit.ly/2fss2p2
Now Gilbert Adair is here to tell us that, to boot, the story’s all true, except for the dying part, of course.
In The Real Tadzio, an erudite, compact and witty performance of cultural and literary criticism, Adair reminds us of Mann’s much-overlooked confession: “Nothing is invented in Death in Venice.” Thus armed, Adair goes after one Wladylsaw Moes -- although not quite in the same way that Mann did -- uncovering the story of how this privileged Polish boy, known to family and friends as Adzio, became, without realizing it, a character in an international best-seller. In fact, it wasn’t until 1924 that a relative of his put two and two together.
“Taken aback by the story’s references to an aristocratic Polish family staying at the Hotel des Bains, to the amusingly vulgar musicians who had been hired to entertain the resident clientele and the insidious rumors of cholera which had started to circulate through the city, taken most aback by the narrative premise of an elderly voyeur entranced by the spectacle, on the beach of the Lido, of two extremely personable young boys at play, boys whose nicknames, moreover, Tadzio and Jaschiu, were disturbingly reminiscent of Adzio and Jas, she naturally showed the book to her nephew. Adzio was amused, perhaps flattered, but, for the moment, a handsome young man leading an easy, affluent life, he was not terribly interested. In any case, he never chose to identify himself to Thomas Mann.”
It goes without saying that were such a scene repeated in the present day, Adzio would immediately identify himself to a lawyer, if not to level charges of stalking, then to grab some easy money and TV time. Surely, Dateline NBC would have a Friday night available. One can only imagine Stone Phillips telling us all about a “dirty old Mann and the boy who never knew he was loved . . . until now.”
In that respect, when Adair declines to label his essay a biography, instead viewing it “as an extended, belated specimen of the biography’s less garrulous cousin, the obituary,” he’s right. It’s an obituary for a man whose 1986 death went unacknowledged in English-language newspapers, despite the fact that readers had known him intimately for most of a century. But it’s also, without trying to be, an obituary of an era thankfully innocent of, among many other things, the extreme narcissism of “reality” programming.
Read my full review here: http://bit.ly/2fss2p2
March 29, 2019
The Real Tadzio est un livre atypique, signé par Gilbert Adair et publié en 2001. Son sous-titre, Thomas Mann’s ‘Death in Venice’ and the boy who inspired it, explique parfaitement le propos : dans cet essai d’une centaine de pages, Gilbert Adair nous parle du garçon qu’a réellement rencontré l’écrivain allemand Thomas Mann à Venise en 1911 et qui lui a inspiré sa célèbre nouvelle Death in Venice (La Mort à Venise en français) publiée en 1912 et qui est peut-être aujourd’hui son oeuvre la plus connue.
La Mort à Venise est une nouvelle que j’avais beaucoup aimé quand je l’avais lue pour la première fois. J’ai également été marqué par l’adaptation cinématographique de 1971 par Luchino Visconti, que je n’ai vu que très récemment. Tout ceci me poussait donc à lire cet essai signé Gilbert Adair.
Je n’ai pas été déçu et j’ai été captivé par ce texte. Si le récit de la vie du « vrai » Tadzio n’est pas forcément passionnante, elle est tout de même un récit qui m’a semblé représentatif de la destinée de l’aristocratie polonaise et de la Pologne en général au XX° siècle, prisonnière tour à tour de la Russie tsariste, de l’Allemagne nazie puis de l’Union Soviétique.
Plus encore, cet essai est un vibrant hommage à la fois à la nouvelle de Thomas Mann et à son adaptation au cinéma par Visconti. J’ai bien aimé également que l’auteur nous parle brièvement du destin de Björn Andresen, le jeune acteur suédois qui a immortalisé Tadzio sur grand écran.
L’auteur cite quelques oeuvres qui se sont inspirées ou en rendu hommage à La Mort à Venise, avant enfin de disserter sur la littérature homosexuelle en général pour conclure que Thomas Mann, avec sa nouvelle emblématique, en reste à ses yeux le maître incontesté.
Il faut sans doute être un amateur de l’oeuvre de Thomas Mann pour apprécier totalement ce livre de Gilbert Adair, mais j’en fais clairement partie et je suis content d’avoir eu l’occasion de le lire. Je vais le garder bien au chaud dans ma bibliothèque, car il n’est pas impossible que l’envie de le relire me prenne un de ces jours.
In the summer of 1911, the German writer Thomas Mann visited Venice in the company of his wife Katia. There, in the Grand Hotel des Bains, as he waited for the dinner-gong to ring, the author’s roving eye was drawn to a nearby Polish family, the Moeses, consisting of a mother, three daughters, and a young sailor-suited son who, to Mann, exuded an almost supernatural beauty and grace. Inspired by this glancing encounter with the luminous child, Mann wrote Death in Venice, and the infatuated writer made of that boy, Wladyslaw Moes, one of the twentieth century’s most potent and enduring icons.
But precisely who was the boy? And what was his reaction to the publication of Death in Venice in 1912 and, later, the release of Luchino Visconti’s film adaptation in 1971? In this revealing portrait, including telling photographs, Gilbert Adair brilliantly juxtaposes the life of Wladyslaw Moes with that of his mythic twin, Tadzio.
La Mort à Venise est une nouvelle que j’avais beaucoup aimé quand je l’avais lue pour la première fois. J’ai également été marqué par l’adaptation cinématographique de 1971 par Luchino Visconti, que je n’ai vu que très récemment. Tout ceci me poussait donc à lire cet essai signé Gilbert Adair.
Je n’ai pas été déçu et j’ai été captivé par ce texte. Si le récit de la vie du « vrai » Tadzio n’est pas forcément passionnante, elle est tout de même un récit qui m’a semblé représentatif de la destinée de l’aristocratie polonaise et de la Pologne en général au XX° siècle, prisonnière tour à tour de la Russie tsariste, de l’Allemagne nazie puis de l’Union Soviétique.
Plus encore, cet essai est un vibrant hommage à la fois à la nouvelle de Thomas Mann et à son adaptation au cinéma par Visconti. J’ai bien aimé également que l’auteur nous parle brièvement du destin de Björn Andresen, le jeune acteur suédois qui a immortalisé Tadzio sur grand écran.
L’auteur cite quelques oeuvres qui se sont inspirées ou en rendu hommage à La Mort à Venise, avant enfin de disserter sur la littérature homosexuelle en général pour conclure que Thomas Mann, avec sa nouvelle emblématique, en reste à ses yeux le maître incontesté.
Il faut sans doute être un amateur de l’oeuvre de Thomas Mann pour apprécier totalement ce livre de Gilbert Adair, mais j’en fais clairement partie et je suis content d’avoir eu l’occasion de le lire. Je vais le garder bien au chaud dans ma bibliothèque, car il n’est pas impossible que l’envie de le relire me prenne un de ces jours.
August 14, 2023
If you like Russian, Polish, WWI and WWII stories, then this fits your bill. I am afraid that kind of historical bios are not for me.
Although the real Tadzio from Death in Venice is not Bjorn Andresen, he is quite good looking at the age the novelette was born. It really adds nothing to the movie which is most likely the reason a person would be reading this.
The rest of the book is about homosexual movies and books. All the writers and musicians who were gay and how they hid it in plain site. To be honest, neither the book or movie, Death in Venice, are homosexual. However, they have developed a cult following of gay people who would like it to be. That is alright but don't read the book, watch the movie, watch the documentary on Bjorn or read this book if that is what you are looking for.
And I must add that Adair spends a lot of the book aggrandizing himself and his works and his beliefs. Once again, poor Tadzio is used for others' fantasies and never saw a cent for it.
I passed Death in Venice and this book on together.
Although the real Tadzio from Death in Venice is not Bjorn Andresen, he is quite good looking at the age the novelette was born. It really adds nothing to the movie which is most likely the reason a person would be reading this.
The rest of the book is about homosexual movies and books. All the writers and musicians who were gay and how they hid it in plain site. To be honest, neither the book or movie, Death in Venice, are homosexual. However, they have developed a cult following of gay people who would like it to be. That is alright but don't read the book, watch the movie, watch the documentary on Bjorn or read this book if that is what you are looking for.
And I must add that Adair spends a lot of the book aggrandizing himself and his works and his beliefs. Once again, poor Tadzio is used for others' fantasies and never saw a cent for it.
I passed Death in Venice and this book on together.
December 21, 2023
Being the first to tell the story of Wladimir Moes, the man who said he was the boy Tadzio in Thomas Mann's famous novella, Death in Venice, was a clever idea, and Adair tells it well. The book has clearly been a great success in that it is now widely presented as fact that Moes was Tadzio. But is it true? I don't think so. There's nothing approaching real research in the book and no one else seems to have looked into the facts. So I'm sorry to say I think this is a bit of a fraud.
September 27, 2019
A short, illuminating read. It's good to meet Wladyslaw Moes, the progenitor of the most persistent icon of male beauty, the fourteen-year-old Tadzio.
March 10, 2011
worth reading. Beyond disturbing to know that Mann was lusting after a 10yr old. Don't want to go there in my mind. Prefer to see it as his appreciation of unspoiled purity but...does one let that affect one's opinion of an artist? Or do you just experience and evaluate the work of art? Compelling arugument for New School criticism.
Staggering to think how people had everything taken from them that they had earned themselves. His family had moved from Westphalia to Poland only to have the communists take it all away.
Staggering to think how people had everything taken from them that they had earned themselves. His family had moved from Westphalia to Poland only to have the communists take it all away.
May 15, 2022
Great little biography with a nice analysis of the book vs movie dynamic.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews