Near the end of Death in Venice, the narrative takes a sharp turn and veers from a close third-person point of view into straight-up exposition, as if to circumvent our hero’s blinkered consciousness and deliver the bad news that he has so far refused to acknowledge: Venice is overrun by cholera. To remain in the city would be fatal, as it turns out to be for Gustav von Aschenbach, immobilized and doomed by his obsession with a beautiful Polish boy.
Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella was a favorite among my high school friends, teenagers attracted to the swoony gothic miasma of disease-ridden Venice, to the idea that a rogue, unrequited love might prove stronger than the fear of death, and to the romance of a plague stalking its victims through the dark alleys and along the fetid canals. Only now, reading this issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, I’m struck by a passage that I must have overlooked, then and in subsequent readings:
At the beginning of June, the pesthouse of the Ospedale Civico had quietly filled…and a frightfully active commerce was kept up between the wharf of the Fondamenta Nuove and San Michele, the burial island. But there was the fear of a general drop in prosperity. The recently opened art exhibit in the public gardens was to be considered, along with the heavy losses that in case of panic or unfavorable rumors would threaten business, the hotels, the entire elaborate system for exploiting foreigners—and as these considerations evidently carried more weight than love of truth or respect for international agreements, the city authorities upheld obstinately their policy of silence and denial. The chief health officer had resigned from his post in indignation and been promptly replaced by a more tractable personality.
If this passage seems remarkable now, it’s not only because I’m no longer tempted to romanticize death or because I’m more aware of how often the powerful prioritize profit over human life—but because I am reading it in 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. I’ve been observing what Mann so succinctly describes: the criminal relationship between public health, capitalism, greed, and unconscionable lying. Concerns about Covid-19’s impact on tourism and the travel industry have been wafting through our newly poisonous atmosphere. Fears about the economic fallout have accelerated the disease’s transmission, as we have repeatedly watched the truthful and conscientious silenced and replaced by the dishonest, cowardly, and compliant.
So much of what we read—of how we read—is affected by our circumstances, by where and when we are reading. What’s so startling about the texts and images in this issue is that they seem less like glimpses through the lens of ancient history, less like gazing at distant worlds through a window fogged by time, than like catching a clear, unnerving glimpse of our world, right here, right now. Reading these passages feels a little like turning a corner and—suddenly, shockingly—seeing our face, reflected in a mirror.