The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and VUB's Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings are very delighted to welcome Anca Parvulescu as the 2024-25 Lorand Chair Intermediality. We warmly invite you to her inaugural lecture, 'Aschenbach’s Makeover: Physiognomic Faces in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice'.
At the center of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice is a charged play of glances. The observer is Gustav Aschenbach, a German writer described as representative of “the European spirit.” For the duration of the short text, Aschenbach watches a young Polish boy named Tadzio. In particular, the boy’s face, a neoclassical form derived from Greek sculpture, captures Aschenbach’s attention.
Mann’s novella refines its use of ekphrasis to produce a neoclassical modernist theory of the face, anchored in formal symmetry, with Tadzio’s face as a model of form. The text frames a complex dynamic of European insiders and outsiders, belonging and unbelonging, defined along lines of the face. At the climax of the narrative, however, Aschenbach undergoes a makeover.
The scene, which can be read as a version of what the modernist poet, designer and artist Mina Loy described as “auto-facial-construction,” effectively turns Aschenbach, up to this point a masterful observer of faces, into a visual object himself. It redirects narrative authority away from Aschenbach’s physiognomic reading practices and towards creative strategies of facialization, makeup and cosmetic surgery.
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This event is an initiative of VUB's Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (CLIC). It's part of VUB's public programme: a programme for everyone who believes that scientific knowledge sharing, critical thinking and dialogue are an important first step to create impact in the world. Curious about which activities are coming up soon? Head over to www.vub.be/public-programme
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