| The literature of the early 20th Century consistently integrates into its corpus the myths of Classical Antiquity as the only means of addressing the cultural and psychological crisis of modernity. Thomas Mann in his novella Death in Venice and Andrey Bely in his novel Petersburg examine the fragmentation and collapse of the individual and the reality he inhabits through a mythological prism. More specifically, both artists utilize various aspects of the Dionysus myth in order to map and measure the chaos modernity inflicts on the human psyche. As the god of infinite and irreconcilable conflicts, Dionysus symbolizes such quintessentially archetypal characteristics of modern life as instability, loss of self, and irrationality, as well as the blurring of the boundaries between the real and the illusory. The heroes of Bely's and Mann's narratives both inhabit a world that is deranged and fractured, and exhibit the devastating symptoms of the Dionysian possession. Thomas Mann explores the disruptive effects of the god's presence through the character of Gustav von Aschenbach, an artist who, within a span of weeks degenerates from a paragon of morality, reason, and bourgeois propriety into a frenzied and dissolute creature. While Mann examines the assault of the irrational on the individual level, Andrey Bely paints a more panoramic tableau, involving numerous characters, whose common affliction both unites them and separates them, as the preservation of human bonds becomes impossible. The surreal cities of Venice and St.Petersburg provide the respective settings for Mann's novella and Bely's novel and emerge as the loci of the social contagion. |
