사랑과 죽음의 도시 베네치아 －토마스 만의 『베네치아에서의 죽음』에 나타난 베네치아 이미지 연구－

Abstract

From the Western perspective, Venice is a city of water connecting East and West. This intermediary character has made Venice naturally open-minded, and the hybridity created by that open-mindedness has helped shape the city's culture and history. This hybridity was naturally understood by the writer Thomas Mann. Familiarized with diversity during his adolescent years in the port city of Lubeck, Mann took great delight in creating dualistic worlds through novels. Of course we must not forget, as many critics have indicated, that the contrasting temperaments of paternity and maternity contributed to the formation of those dualistic worlds. In this paper, the researcher analyzes the influence of space on human life and modes of existence by defining Venice as a city possessed of a fatal beauty which accompanies death. It also views the character Tadzio as the anthropomorphization of the Dionysiac city of Venice embodying a mix of absolute beauty and thanatos. Aschenbach, who has lived his entire life in Apollonian fashion,perceives that the writer's block he experiences is rooted in a suppression of his Dionysiac temperament, and he thus ventures to the Dionysiac city of Venice. He relishes the city's beauty, but the price exacted for that beauty is life. But here death cannot be viewed as simply nihilistic or terminal. Just as in Greek mythology, diversity and nothingness are bases for creativity, death can also be viewed as a search for the possibility of new life. So viewed, Aschenbach's death is the longing for a new completeness, and Venice is the stage symbolizing that longing.