32
PARTISAN REVIEW
identity. And, finally, there is the analogical meaning of the tale.
Like Tadzio, "tracing figures in the wet {and with one toe," Aschen–
bach must transcend his experience in a period of renewed artistic
creativeness: "It seemed to him the pale and lovely Summoner out
there smiled at him and beckoned; as though, with the hand he lifted
from
his
hip, he pointed outward as he hovered on before into an
immensity of richest expectation."
Such a reading of this story is not unlike the procedure adopted
by those students of the Grail legends who are forced to penetrate
beneath the layers of social presuppositions implicit in their tone and
narrative method to the underlying pattern described by the symbols.
It enables us to realize to what an extent Mann identified the artist
with the hero even in his earliest work, to what extent he made the
problem of the artist the problem of society, and how this problem
was to be solved only by a clear-minded approach to the myth.
Aschenbach suffers in private all the agony involved in performing
the role of scapegoat for a schizophrenic society; his initiation has
come too late for his own regeneration; but his creator is to take us
well into that distance indicated by "the pale and lovely Summoner."*
*
(The concluding part of Mr. Troy's essay
will
appear in the July number.)
