How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Hence beauty is the path the man of feeling takes to the spiritual, though merely the path, dear young Phaedrus, a means and no more…And then he made his most astute pronouncement, the crafty wooer, namely, that the lover is more divine than the beloved, because the god dwells in the former, not the latter, which is perhaps the most delicate, most derisive thought ever thought by man and the source of all the roguery and deep-seated lust in longing. (4.9)
Here is the first time Aschenbach thinks about Socrates and Phaedrus, two characters from ancient Greek philosophy that play an important role in Chapter 5. This is where the narrator introduces the topic of beauty as a "path" to spiritual knowledge, but one that also leads to lust and the "abyss" of sexual desire. What does it mean to say that the "lover is more divine than the beloved"? Does this have to do with Aschenbach's role as the artist who is inspired by Tadzio's beauty?
Quote #5
There is nothing more curious or delicate than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who encounter and observe each other daily—nay, hourly—yet are constrained by convention or personal caprice to keep up the pretense of being strangers, indifferent, avoiding a nod or word. There is a feeling of malaise and overwrought curiosity, the hysteria of an unsatisfied, unnaturally stifled need for mutual knowledge and communication, and above all a sort of strained esteem. For a man loves and respects his fellow man only insofar as he is unable to assess him, and longing is a product of insufficient knowledge. (4.16)
The narrator's not just talking about those awkward elevator moments. The narrator is talking about the relationship between Tadzio and Aschenbach as one that depends on the visual, allowing them to remain strangers and giving Aschenbach a sense of being in a secret affair. "Longing," the narrator writes, "is a product of insufficient knowledge." Does this imply that vision and the imagination can fan the "flames" of lust in part because they blind us to the true reality of other people?
Quote #6
For passion, like crime, is antithetical to the smooth operation and prosperity of day-to-day existence, and can only welcome every loosening of the fabric of society, every upheaval and disaster in the world, since it can vaguely hope to profit thereby. And so Aschenbach felt a morose satisfaction at the officially concealed goings-on in the dirty alleyways of Venice, that nasty secret which had merged with his own innermost secret and which he, too, was so intent on keeping […]. (5.5)
Talk about a romantic getaway: Death in Venice suggests that Venice, with its romantic exterior, which barely conceals its seedy characters and "dirty alleyways," is the perfect backdrop for Aschenbach's illicit passion. Venice's "nasty secret"—the cholera epidemic that everyone's trying to cover up—is aligned here with Aschenbach's own secret love for Tadzio.