How reliable is a first impression? What does our appearance—our face—reveal about who we really are? It might seem like a question for the Instagram generation, but more than a century ago, modernist writers were exploring these very themes. On 13 March, literature professor Anca Parvulescu, who is invited as the Lorand Chair in Intermediality Studies, will reflect on the representation of faces in Death in Venice by Thomas Mann in a special lecture. The chair is an initiative of the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at VUB.
More information about the event.
Even if you haven’t read the 1912 novella, you may be familiar with its 1971 film adaptation by Luchino Visconti. The story follows the successful writer Gustav von Aschenbach (who is portrayed as a composer in Visconti’s film) as he travels to Venice. There, he becomes mesmerised by Tadzio, a Polish boy whose features remind him of the ideal beauty of Greek sculptures. What unfolds is a charged dynamic of stolen glances, set against a backdrop of impending doom. A cholera epidemic spreads through the city, ultimately claiming the writer’s life.
In her book Face and Form: Physiognomy in Literary Modernism, Anca Parvulescu, professor of comparative literature and English at Washington University in St. Louis, examines modernist writers’ captivation with the human face.
In your book, you discuss the influence of physiognomy—the belief that a person’s facial features can reveal their personality and moral character.
Anca Parvulescu: “That idea dates back to classical antiquity and has resurfaced throughout history. There was a form of physiognomy in medieval European culture. During the Enlightenment, the theories of Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater gained traction around 1775. Lavater associated harmonious facial features and certain proportions with intelligence and other positive traits.”
By the modernist period, wasn’t physiognomy already dismissed as pseudoscience?
“A number of physiognomic ideas were indeed abandoned by modernist artists, but some were repurposed into what we might call a modernist physiognomy.”
“You could certainly interpret his death as a narrative punishment for a moral failure"
Why were they drawn to these ideas?
“This was part of a broader societal debate about modern life. People were fascinated by new phenomena like urban crowds—often described as ‘faceless’—and the experience of travelling by train or metro, where you were constantly surrounded by strangers. The rise of photography and advertising also played a role. You could say these were early developments in the modern visual culture of the face—the first signs of today’s selfie culture.”
City life must have been quite a shock for someone used to the countryside…
“Absolutely. Someone from a small village would have been accustomed to seeing only familiar faces. In contrast, the city was full of strangers—faces you didn’t recognise, leaving you to wonder what you could deduce from them. Many modernist writers were trying to process this urban anxiety.”
On his journey to Venice and within the city itself, Gustav von Aschenbach describes the faces of the people he encounters. He seems unsettled by ‘exotic’ faces.
“The text presents a complex dynamic of European insiders and outsiders—who belongs and who doesn’t—based on facial features. Aschenbach is portrayed as a representative of the European intellectual spirit. He places Tadzio on a pedestal, projecting his ideal of classical beauty onto the boy’s perfectly symmetrical face. Surrounding them are secondary characters whom Aschenbach reduces to types, based on their appearance: an Eastern-looking traveller, a grim-faced gondolier, a street vendor selling exotic souvenirs. These figures evoke a sense of threat and alienation in him.”
Anca Parvulescu
And this is a well-travelled, intellectual man.
“The novella implies Aschenbach is not himself. The journey and the people he encounters unsettle him. It’s a technique used in other modernist works as well—writers remove their characters from Europe and place them in Africa or the Caribbean to create a of disorientation. In Mann’s story, Venice serves that role.”
Aschenbach spends most of the story as the observer, but suddenly, the roles are reversed. You refer to this as a ‘makeover’ scene.
“A local barber cuts and dyes his hair and applies makeup to make him look younger. It’s an early version of today’s makeover culture, whereby people transform their appearance in an attempt to reinvent themselves. This artificial rejuvenation completely shifts the narrative—suddenly, Aschenbach is no longer the one in control, observing and analysing others. Instead, he becomes the spectacle, the object of others’ gaze. This reversal marks the end of both the story and Aschenbach himself. Mann describes him as a clenched fist; in the final scene, that fist relaxes—and he dies.”
He knew cholera was spreading but chose not to warn Tadzio’s family—afraid he might never see the boy again.
“You could certainly interpret his death as a narrative punishment for a moral failure—not warning Tadzio’s family.”
Not so refined, this ‘European spirit’?
“Exactly!” (laughs)
Was Aschenbach’s fear of the non-European also a fear of the chaos within himself—a fear of losing control?
“Absolutely. Aschenbach inherits from the Enlightenment the idea that we must always be in control. He, for instance, is constantly structuring his time—every action is perfectly timed. But cracks begin to appear in this carefully maintained order. You can’t suppress your desire indefinitely. Death in Venice is one of the great literary works that beautifully illustrates what happens when the pursuit of discipline is taken too far.”
What can a modern reader take away from this book?
“We tend to think of physiognomy as a bizarre historical curiosity, a mistake that science has long since discarded. But these ideas keep resurfacing, even today. I am particularly worried about physiognomy’s resurgence in facial recognition technologies.”*
*This is a machine translation. We apologise for any inaccuracies.
Bio Anca Parvulescu
Anca Parvulescu is the Liselotte Dieckmann Professor in Comparative Literature and professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Laughter: Notes on a Passion (2010); The Traffic in Women’s Work: East European Migration and the Making of Europe (2014); with Manuela Boatcă, Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania across Empires (2022). Her current book project is Face and Form: Physiognomy in Literary Modernism (forthcoming in 2025 from Cambridge UP).
