How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
There he sat, the master, the eminently dignified artist, the author of "A Wretched Figure," who had rejected bohemian excess and the murky depths in a form of exemplary purity, who had renounced all sympathy for the abyss and reprehended the reprehensible, climbed the heights, and, having transcended his erudition and outgrown all irony, accepted the obligations that come with mass approbation, a man whose fame was official, whose name had been made noble, and whose style schoolboys were exhorted to emulate—there he sat, his eyes closed, with only an occasional, rapidly disappearing sidelong glance, scornful and sheepish, slipping out from under them and a few isolated words issuing from his slack, cosmetically embellished lips, the result of the curious dream logic of his half-slumbering brain. (5.50)
How's that for irony? Aschenbach, who's famous for writing a story called "A Wretched Figure," himself ends his life in a pretty wretched position. Even though he has attained literary greatness through discipline and by renouncing "sympathy for the abyss" and by having "outgrown all irony," he—ironically, of course—ends up giving it all away for Tadzio, becoming exactly the kind of character that he has struggled to portray in his own writing.