Blue Library
9824 La morte del cigno
Klaus Mann
1973 / 96 PAGES.
Language: Italian
The book is a faithful recounting of the death of Ludwig II of Bavaria, ill-fated yet great in his order (that of illusion and of the night). A bleak, often dazzling and always dramatic narrative and lyrical apotheosis.
A narrative that sets out to be a faithful reconstruction of the death of Ludwig II of Bavaria: a beloved – and particularly whimsical and eccentric – ruler whose legacy intertwines with the history of art and architecture. The story begins in June of the year 188, when the king – declared of unsound mind by the psychiatrist Von Gudden – was confined to Berg Castle. The day after his arrest, he expressed the desire to stroll with the doctor along the shores of Lake Starnberg. Neither the ruler nor his jailor-physician ever returned; they were both found dead in mysterious circumstances just as the ruler – who, in his unprecedented dissipation and tragic epilogue, embodied the romantic ideal of the inimitable exception – would have wished.