spectacled birthday
Gustav is a man who fell in love. Let's leave aside all philosophical discussions. He physically desires but also loves him romantically (remember when he whispers behind his back: "...Tadzio, God bless you"). Death in Venice is a story that certainly lends itself to a sequel (in the film the man is carried away like a heavy sack, all those present become agitated as if to say that he is dead... In fact, in the novel Mann writes it explicitly, but Visconti?... Who knows, what if the film had an open ending?). "Aschenbach" literally means "Ash Flow", so there is Rebirth after Death (reference to the Holy Arabian Phoenix). A fifty-year-old who dies and is then reborn to find himself, in a second life, curiously in love with a pale and fragile "atypical" youth.
