The Real Tadzio

The Real Tadzio est un livre atypique, signé par Gilbert Adair et publié en 2001. Son sous-titre, Thomas Mann's ‘Death in Venice' and the boy who inspired it, explique parfaitement le propos : dans cet essai d'une centaine de pages, Gilbert Adair nous parle du garçon qu'a réellement rencontré l'écrivain allemand Thomas Mann à Venise en 1911 et qui lui a inspiré sa célèbre nouvelle Death in Venice (La Mort à Venise en français) publiée en 1912 et qui est peut-être aujourd'hui son oeuvre la plus connue.

In the summer of 1911, the German writer Thomas Mann visited Venice in the company of his wife Katia. There, in the Grand Hotel des Bains, as he waited for the dinner-gong to ring, the author's roving eye was drawn to a nearby Polish family, the Moeses, consisting of a mother, three daughters, and a young sailor-suited son who, to Mann, exuded an almost supernatural beauty and grace. Inspired by this glancing encounter with the luminous child, Mann wrote Death in Venice, and the infatuated writer made of that boy, Wladyslaw Moes, one of the twentieth century's most potent and enduring icons.But precisely who was the boy? And what was his reaction to the publication of Death in Venice in 1912 and, later, the release of Luchino Visconti's film adaptation in 1971? In this revealing portrait, including telling photographs, Gilbert Adair brilliantly juxtaposes the life of Wladyslaw Moes with that of his mythic twin, Tadzio.