Favorite "Discoveries" In The Arts (or Life) in 2022

Death in Venice (1912) by Thomas Mann - my favorite first-time read of 2022 and favorite anything really.

The death of Europe/the West may have been a too-common theme across the century - but this personal vision of Europe sinking down into its Hellenic roots is majestic and overwhelming. For the post-covid reader the pest that festers in Venice has a strange resonance - the sickness is psychological and atmospheric; its spread can't be stopped. Mann uses language like a painter-poet to suggest the pagan rabbit hole the German professor finds himself in, the appeal of his rich German sensibility and the breadth of its pretension; "God" replaced by elemental deities like the Venice Sun which is an actual force in the book - giving form to beauty, giving birth to Tadzio. Tadzio himself is idealized in German terms as a solitary young aristocratic god, worshipped and resented by his ugly beach companions. The plot is like a recipe for disaster--essentially an older male chasing a 14-year-old boy around Venice--extremely difficult material that shouldn't work at all let alone be a masterwork. (Even the great Visconti in his 71 film botched it). Days after reading it I'm still wondering if the delirium is strictly psychological/spiritual or actually bleeds out of the ruins. Whatever it is, the sense that youth cannot be possessed or regained, that a culture ages and dies the same way as an organism -- that this vision of transcendental beauty is a trap not meant for modern eyes -- is immense.