perfection in narrative

None of that can begin to express the multiple layers of Mann's narrative. Here, for instance, is one of the central passages in the progress of Aschenbach's obsession (and one of the best examples of the loveliness of Heim's translation). He is watching Tadzio on the beach, while still trying to convince himself that his interest is solely aesthetic or platonic. Mann moves almost effortlessly from a total identification with Aschenbach, while he contemplates the boy's beauty, to a position of sardonic distance from Aschenbach's increasingly inane self-justifications. It's as if Mann empathizes -- indeed identifies -- with his passion, but can't bring himself to condone it:

"[Tadzio] would stand at the edge of the sea, alone, removed from his family, quite near Aschenbach, erect, his hands clasped behind his neck, slowly rocking on the balls of his feet, staring out into the blue in reverie, while little waves rolled up and bathed his toes. The honey-colored hair fell gracefully in ringlets at the temples and the back of the neck, the sun glimmered in the down of the upper spine, the fine delineation of the ribs and symmetry of the chest stood out through the torso's scanty cover, the armpits were still as smooth as a statue's, the hollows of the knees glistened, and their bluish veins made the body look translucent. What discipline, what precision of thought, was conveyed by that tall, youthfully perfect physique! Yet the austere and pure will laboring in obscurity to bring the godlike statue to light -- was it not known to him, familiar to him as an artist? Was it not at work in him when, chiseling with sober passion at the marble block of language, he released the slender form he had beheld in his mind and would present to the world as an effigy and mirror of spiritual beauty?"

Pen

An object is a catalyst for the mind. It can either be an indicator of the future potential. For example, the pen with which I write these words, were previously just a pen, and now the pen can speak. It can also be an indication of the past. Words this pen has previously written, times it was held in the arms of another. It can become past and future simultaneously. The pen too holds an unknown past, no one will remember the pen or its exact history, among the sea of other pens from which it arose.

Good bye, For I go overland

Within the fever of restlessness
The world begins to lose its human shape
I no longer find God in each cadence
Sitting alone in a field of blossoms
I always take much less than the others

Looking up at the light I catch a glisten of a body
I have seen it in many lives, with many faces, in many stories
who come to me and whisper sensations of regret
But always you remain with me
As I reflect on who I am to become

With you I discovered original sin
So seal the lips of the muses
And let their devastation warn the ancestors
Allow obscenity to create the perfection of entanglement
Dance me to the edges of oblivion
Solely with your hands

I only crave the colour
And I know I must not walk this labyrinth alone
For you have gone ahead of me