Crime and Punishment The most important things to read on this are ...

You could try a comparison between the issues of <strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw <strong>and</strong> what Emily
Dickinson writes about: this would be very interesting. Other comparisons <strong>to</strong> be made would
be with Raskolnikov's state of mind; <strong>and</strong> you could think about the text as modernist, in that
it refuses <strong>to</strong> be interpreted: it is not clear what has happened in the text, <strong>and</strong> any attempt <strong>to</strong>
pin it down turns out <strong>to</strong> be impossible. In what ways is <strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw a modernist
work? Or a feminist text? Or a text simply trying <strong>to</strong> cause a thrill? Or a text about the
corruption of children?
Death in Venice
We will look at this text via the film made by Luchino Visconti in 1971, starring Dirk
Bogarde, <strong>and</strong> with music from his 3rd <strong>and</strong> 5th Symphonies by Gustav Mahler. I recommend
that you also try <strong>to</strong> <strong>read</strong> the novella by Thomas Mann (1875-1955).
<strong>The</strong> difference in the film is that Aschenbach is made not a writer, as he is in the novella, but
a musician &emdash;specifically the Jewish composer of symphonies, who lived in Vienna,
Mahler (1860-1911). Much of the extra dialogue that the film puts in comes from Thomas
Mann's later novel, Doc<strong>to</strong>r Faustus, which is about an imaginary musician, partly based on
Nietzsche, <strong>and</strong> partly on Arnold Schoenberg, the Modernist composer. Schoenberg believed
that music should be a <strong>to</strong>tally intellectual structure, <strong>and</strong> devised a highly objective system of
writing, called the twelve <strong>to</strong>ne method, in order <strong>to</strong> present it. <strong>The</strong> film shows arguments
between Aschenbach <strong>and</strong> another musician who is supposed <strong>to</strong> be Schoenberg, but the
arguments are very difficult <strong>to</strong> follow. Basically, in this film, A., who goes <strong>to</strong> Venice <strong>to</strong>
recuperate from a nervous breakdown, <strong>and</strong> there falls in love with the Polish boy Tadzio, has
tried <strong>to</strong> write music that denies the emotions, <strong>and</strong> that is anti-sensual, because music
&emdash; such is the power of the devil in it; leads you back <strong>to</strong> sexuality, <strong>to</strong> the body, not
<strong>to</strong>wards some kind of higher sphere. A. is shocked <strong>to</strong> discover that when he is in Venice, his
emotions are released, <strong>and</strong> that they turn out <strong>to</strong> be homosexual in character.
<strong>The</strong> difference from the novella is great, however, for A in that is not a talented artist, though
this point is not easy <strong>to</strong> grasp, because the ironic structure of the writing conceals it, <strong>and</strong>
many <strong>read</strong>ers <strong>and</strong> critics of Mann take A. <strong>to</strong> be wholly genuine. I see him as bourgeois,
writing work that will flatter the bourgeoisie, <strong>and</strong> actually pro<strong>to</strong>-fascist &emdash; as
Germany was pro<strong>to</strong>fascist, before the take-over of power by the Nazi party in 1933. (See my
Opera <strong>and</strong> the Culture of Fascism (1996), which has some discussion of this <strong>and</strong> of the
novella.) <strong>The</strong> fascist writer makes some disturbing discoveries about himself in Venice, once
he lets go …
<strong>The</strong> novella may be regarded as a critique of both Germany <strong>and</strong> of Pla<strong>to</strong>nism, the idea that
there can be a sublimation (ie. diversion) away from sexuality. It may be a confessional text
(Mann may have something of Aschenbach in him). It may be also that the novella should be
regarded as the ultimate in modernism, like <strong>The</strong> Turn of the Screw &emdash; a parable
without a meaning, a s<strong>to</strong>ry which refuses <strong>to</strong> be interpreted. It has aroused continuous
interpretation, however, since it first appeared (1913); e.g. by D. H. Lawrence, who wrote an
early review, (<strong>and</strong> it was the first essay I wrote for publication, in New Universities
Quarterly, around 1981).
<strong>The</strong> film also includes aspects of Nietzsche. It keeps in the s<strong>to</strong>ry, derived from "Doc<strong>to</strong>r
Faustus" that N. deliberately infected himself with syphilis by visiting a brothel; it also plays
on the idea, which is also Nietzschean, that life has <strong>to</strong> be accepted in its <strong>to</strong>tality. It is therefore
anti the ascetic ideal. One poem that Nietzsche wrote, in Thus Spake Zarathustra appears in