Presenting Aschenbach as a composer - based on Mahler - leads to some dreadful scenes (especially those in which Aschenbach is berated by his student), and it surely distorts the character Mann created. Yet, we know that Mann's novella was based on a holiday in Venice he took with his wife and brother, and that while he was there he followed the reports in the German newspapers, describing the dying Mahler's progress as he returned from New York to Vienna.
Both Proust and Joyce record the ways in which human perspectives can be transformed. In Portrait, Stephen Dedalus is constantly undergoing epiphanies, but their effects are transitory: the new synthetic complex quickly falls apart. Proust's characters, by contrast, often achieve lasting changes of perspective.
The "little theme" from Vinteuil, heard by Swann as emblematic of his love for Odette, remains a point of reference for him, as the character of that love changes and as the love eventually fades.
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