The novella is rife with allusions from antiquity forward, especially to Greek antiquity and to German works (literary, art-historical, musical, visual) from the 18th century.
The novella is intertextual, with the chief sources being first the connection of erotic love to philosophical wisdom traced in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, and second the Nietzschean contrast between Apollo, the god of restraint and shaping form, and Dionysus, the god of excess and passion. The trope of placing classical deities in contemporary settings was popular at the time when Mann was writing Death in Venice.
Aschenbach's name and character may be inspired by the homosexual German poet August von Platen-Hallermünde. There are allusions to his poems about Venice in the novella, and like Aschenbach, he died of cholera on an Italian island. Aschenbach's first name is almost an anagram of August, and the character's last name may be derived from Ansbach, Platen's birthplace (however, Aschenbach is a real ancient German name, for instance, the founder of the Kishkin family). However, the name has another clear significance: Aschenbach literally means "ash brook". It "suggests dead ashes (Aschen) clogging the stream (Bach) of life".[4]
The novella's physical description of Aschenbach was based on a photograph of the composer Gustav Mahler.[5] Mahler had made a strong personal impression on Mann when they met in Munich, and Mann was shocked by the news of Mahler's death in Vienna. Mann gave Mahler's first name and facial appearance to Aschenbach but did not talk about it in public.[5] The soundtrack of the 1971 film based on the novella made use of Mahler's compositions, particularly the "Adagietto" 4th movement from the Symphony No. 5, and made Aschenbach into a composer instead of a writer.
Aschenbach's name may be an allusion to Wolfram von Eschenbach, the author of the Middle High German medieval romance Parzival, whose reimagining and continuation of the Grail Quest romance of Chrétien de Troyes contained themes similar to those found in Mann's novella, such as the author's fascination with and idealization of the purity of youthful innocence and beauty, as well as the eponymous protagonist's quest to restore healing and youthfulness to Anfortas, the wounded, old Fisher King. Given Mann's obsession with the works of Richard Wagner, who famously adapted and transformed von Eschenbach's epic into his opera Parsifal, it is possible that Mann was crediting Wagner's opera by referencing the author of the work that had inspired the composer.
Modris Eksteins notes the similarities between Aschenbach and the Russian choreographer Sergei Diaghilev, writing that, although the two never met, "Diaghilev knew Mann's story well. He gave copies of it to his intimates".[6] Diaghilev often stayed at the same hotel as Aschenbach, the Grand Hotel des Bains, and took his young male lovers there. Eventually, like Aschenbach, Diaghilev died in the hotel.[7]
