How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
What one saw when one looked into the world as narrated by Aschenbach was elegant self-possession concealing inner dissolution and biological decay from the eyes of the world until the eleventh hour; a sallow, sensually destitute ugliness capable of fanning its smoldering lust into a pure flame, indeed, of rising to sovereignty in the realm of beauty; pallid impotence probing the incandescent depths of the mind for the strength to cast an entire supercilious people at the foot of the Cross, at their feet; an obliging manner in the empty, punctilious service of form; the life, false and dangerous, and the swiftly enervating desires and art of the born deceiver. Observing all this and much more of a like nature, one might well wonder whether the only possible heroism was the heroism of the weak. Yet what heroism was more at one with the times? (2.7)
The narrator takes us into the fictional world created by Aschenbach in order to make a comment on Aschenbach's own fate. How's that for a clever trick? The image of "elegant self-possession concealing inner dissolution and biological decay" sounds like a fitting summary of Aschenbach in Death and Venice, suggesting that writers often write themselves in their own characters.
Quote #5
"I shall stay, then," Aschenbach thought. "What better place could there be?" And folding his hands in his lap, he let his eyes run over the sea's great expanse and set his gaze adrift till it blurred and broke in the monotonous mist of barren space. He loved the sea and for deep-seated reasons: the hardworking artist's need for repose, the desire to take shelter from the demanding diversity of phenomena in the bosom of boundless simplicity, a propensity—proscribed and diametrically opposed to his mission in life and for that very reason seductive—a propensity for the unarticulated, the immoderate, the eternal, for nothingness. To repose in perfection is the desire of all those who strive for excellence, and is not nothingness a form of perfection? (3.54)
Here's a classic turning point: When Aschenbach decides to stay in Venice, after an attempt to leave, we see him being pulled in by the "seductive" possibility of "the unarticulated, the immoderate, the eternal, […] nothingness," a.k.a. the opposite of everything he cares about: writing (articulation) and disciplined work to produce something.
Quote #6
What discipline, what precision of thought was conveyed by that tall, youthfully perfect physique! Yet the austere and pure will laboring in obscurity to bring the godlike statue to light—was it not known to him, familiar to him as an artist? Was it not at work in him when, chiseling with sober passion at the marble block of language, he released the slender form he had beheld in his mind and world present to the world as an effigy and mirror of spiritual beauty? (4.7)
Sounds like someone has God issues… What Aschenbach first admires in Tadzio is not so much a human being, but rather the "precision of thought" he sees revealed in the boy's "perfect physique." He admires and identifies with the "austere and pure will" that has produced Tadzio. Not surprisingly, Aschenbach will not long after this imagine Socrates telling Phaedrus that "the lover is more divine than the beloved"—the lover, in this case, Aschenbach, loves and sees himself in the divine force that has created the beloved (4.9). Maybe that's why he calls Tadzio a "mirror."