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THE IMAGE OF VENICE AS A SPACE OF LOVE AND DEATH (BASED ON THE WORKS OF E. T. A. HOFFMANN AND T. MANN) // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2018. Issue 6 (195). P. 158-164

The article considers novellas “The Doge and the Dogaressa” by E. T. A. Hoffman and “Death in Venice” by T. Mann as significant works of Venetian context. Motifs that are forming the image of Venice and included in the structure of Venetian myth are represented there. It is demonstrated that German writers in the beginning of XIXth and XXth centuries used motifs that defined the dual nature of image of Venice as the city of love and death: longing, mysteries, affinity of souls, masks, holiday / carnival and others; symbols: water, gondola / gondolier, flowers / trees, their smell and others. Hoffman’s and Mann’s Venice is pictured as an enchanting space. Both novellas begin and finish with the description of death, and love theme is connected there with sickness: love-sickness of Marino Falieri to the beautiful Annunciata and love-sickness of Aschenbach to Tadzio. In the novellas the images of mystery, mask, holiday / carnival and others, symbols of water, gondola / gondolier, flowers / trees, their smell and others are connected with the image of Venice. The image of Venice as a destructive space includes the episodes of an earthquake, plague, cholera. The negative connotation in the description of a sick city on water in T. Mann’s novella is the leading one, unlike in Hofmann’s where greatness and destruction are connected. Within the context of Venice as a decaying city love and death are inseparable, and one of the leading motifs is the motif of impossibility to leave it. The theme of art runs through the narration as a leit-motif in the novellas of German writers: the framing of Hofmann’s novella – a painting by Kolbe – suggests an idea of an amazing mystery of art creation, enabling the artist to penetrate into the essence of what is being depicted; a thought of a great role of the antique art for European culture of the beginning of the XXth century is introduced in T. Mann’s novella. Traditional for German literature motif of longing unites the two novellas as well. This approach makes it possible to imagine literary and art images, specifying peculiar features of Venetian myth’s formation and its connections to the space of Germany within the historical perspective.

Keywords: image, space, motif, myth, city, novella, theme, leitmotif, art, character