the beauty which spelled doom for Aschenbach. To the contrary, Tonio is as drawn to that beauty as is Aschenbach, but he is able to step back from his quest and to see the destructiveness of it. Tonio recognizes that he will be destroying both himself and whatever beauty he is able to possess in that mad pursuit.
Tonio says, " . . . You ought to realize that there is a way of being an artist that goes so deep and is so much a matter of origins and destinies that no longing seems to it sweeter and more worth knowing than longing after the bliss of the commonplace. I admire those proud, cold beings [such as Aschenbach] who adventure upon the paths of great and daemonic beauty and despise 'mankind'; but I do not envy them" (Mann 133).
Indeed, despite the depth of the tragedy which Aschenbach experiences, it is a tragedy which he brings upon himself, and a tragedy which draws from the reader more a sense of morbid fascination than true sympathy. Aschenbach se
...