Eric Schwartz

I always enjoyed Greek myths. From the wise Athena, adulterous Zeus, and cunning
Hermes, the characters have been immortalized through and through. Two particularly unique
gods, however, play an important role in the understanding of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice:
Apollo and Dionysus. The former is the sun-god, ruler over plague, archery, and rigid art such as
statue-making and pottery. The latter is a chaotic deity of wine, revelry, and unstructured art
forms like dance and theater. While Hutchison ties Alfred, the Death in Venice (1971) character
to a Faustian symbol of the Devil, Aschenbach’s friend is similarly related to symbol of
Dionysian art for many of the same reasons.
When Hutchison makes the connection between Alfred, Gustave’s noncanonical
colleague, and Mephostophiles, the demon with whom Faust makes a deal, he rightfully
highlights an important scene from the film. He discusses the last flashback before Aschenbach’s
death at the hands of asiatic cholera, during which Gustave conducts his own musical
composition’s debut before a seemingly wealthy crowd. After multiple encores, Aschenbach is
tired and collapses on a couch within his backstage room, accompanied by Alfred and his wife,
and followed by a humiliating crowd. His wife tries to back them away, but Alfred laughs at
Aschenbach and invites the unruly visitors in, betraying his friend. This scene does absolutely
give credit to Hutchison’s case of Alfred as a devilish traitor. The man acted cruelly in a time of
vulnerability, which is essentially the demonic version of a calling card.
However, to refer to Alfred just as a Faustian devil is unfair to a second, simultaneous,
equally important link. In earlier scenes, the man acts less as a deceitful force to Aschenbach, but
rather a Dionysian foil to his Apollonian demeanor. Hutchison misses this interpretation in his
analysis, “[a]s Alfred in the first discussion on beauty says, ‘That's how beauty is born - like that
- spontaneously - in utter disregard for your labor or mine ... It pre-exists our presumption as
artists’” (Hutchison 36). This ideology, while certainly not of any angelic descent, acts more as a
backbone to unstructured, Dionysian art, in which structure is generally shirked for
expressionism and ensemble-based, unformed emotion. In referring to art as spontaneous, it is
undeniable that Alfred is an opponent of sorts to Aschenbach Apollonian musical ways.
Ultimately, Alfred’s relation to both Dionysus and the devil are equally important. In
short, Hutchison’s connection from Alfred to Mephostophiles is only half of the picture. Rather,
by Alfred’s equal characterizations as a Dionysian artist and an ultimately traitorous entity,
Visconti’s Death in Venice makes the argument that such unstructured art is a part of the evil
which ultimately leads Aschenbach, the Apollonian, once-fulfilled soul, to his eventual,
inevitable, and titular demise. By succumbing to the ways of Dionysus via the revelry of Venice,
the musician turns demonic; he rejects the rigid, angelic life he once had by loving Tadzio.
Overall, Alfred is a character who equally represents demonic ambition and Dionysian art,
making him a complex addition to one of Mann’s most revered stories.