The latter considerations are explicated somewhat as Aschenbach is seen to compare himself, inwardly, with Cicero, the great Roman orator of antiquity, when Aschenbach discovers he is “powerless to check the onward sweep of the productive mechanism within him, that motus animi continuus in which, according to Cicero, eloquence resides” (Mann 3). The connection between the opening passage of the novel and considerations of time is precisely that which reveals Aschenbach to be a man “out of time” both literally and figuratively - as relates to his anachronistic vision of art, aesthetics, and personal morality. Emotionally, Aschenbach is described as being “overwrought by a morning of hard, nerve-taxing work, work which had not ceased to exact his uttermost in the way of sustained concentration, conscientiousness” (Mann 3), which the reader only gradually realizes to be an ironic form of self-reflection and self-aggrandizement on behalf of Aschenbach, which ultimately results in his “tragic” downfall and death while vacationing at a resort in Venice. For example, the opening line of the novella: It was a spring afternoon in that year of grace 19–, when Europe sat upon the anxious seat beneath a menace that hung over its head for months” (Mann 3) places the issue of time right up front so that the reader’s original orientation to the events which will take place during the story is set firmly within the historical context of the story.This is important because Mann’s intention to create an ultimately ironic character through the figure of Aschenbach is deeply dependent on his ability to demonstrate that Aschenbach is a figure who stands both trapped by and woefully out of step with his own contemporary time. The attentive reader notices, from the very opening of the novella, that ideas about time, rather than ideas about specific events which take place in time, forms the central point of tension in the developing narrative. In fact, consideration of time - as both a linear and non-linear phenomenon - are so closely aligned with the various thematic textures of the novella that it wold not be unreasonable to designate time, itself, as the theme of “Death in Venice,” with aspects of individual “midlife crisis,” sexual desire, and professional vanity growing out of the the root-themes of time and mortality. Time as Theme in Death in Venice The aspects of time which permeate Thomas Mann’s celebrated novella “Death in Venice” (1912) are as necessary and as aesthetically expressive in the context of the novella as the more obvious, perhaps more forthright, thematic ideas which concern creativity, sexuality, and mortality.
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