Death in Venice: Dover Thrift Editions 9780486287140, 0486287149

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First Chapter GUSTAV ASCHENBACH (or von Aschenbach, as his name read officially since his fiftieth birthday), on a spring afternoon of that year 19- which for months posed such a threat to our continent, had left his apartment in the Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich and had gone for a rather long walk all alone. Overstrained by the difficult and dangerous labor of the morning hours, which precisely at this moment called for extreme circumspection, discretion, forcefulness and exactitude of the will, even after the noon meal the writer had been unable to restrain the continued operation of the productive machinery within him - that motus animi continuus in which, according to Cicero, the nature of eloquence consists - and had not found the relieving slumber that, with the increasing tendency of his strength to wear out, was so necessary to him once in the course of the day. And so, soon after tea, he had sought the outdoors, in hopes that the fresh air and activity would restore him and help him have a profitable evening. It was the beginning of May and, after weeks of cold and damp, a spurious midsummer had set in. The English Garden, although its trees still bore only a few leaves, had been as muggy as in August, and in the vicinity of the city it had been full of carriages and strolling people. At the Aumeister, to which increasingly quiet paths had led him, Aschenbach had for a short while glanced at the crowd in that popular outdoor restaurant, alongside which several fiacres and private carriages were stationed; from there, as the sun was setting, he had taken a homeward route outside the park across the open meadow; and now, since he felt tired and a storm was threatening over Fohring, he was waiting at the Northern Cemetery for the streetcar that would bring him directly back to the city. By chance he found the stop and its surroundings free of people. Neither on the paved Ungererstrasse, whose tracks stretched lonely and