Thomas Mann "Death in Venice"
"But whether the wayfaring aspect of the stranger's appearance had stirred his imagination, or whether some other physical or mental influence was at work, he was most surprisingly conscious of an odd expansion within himself, a kind of roving unrest, a youthfully ardent desire for faraway places, a feeling so intense, so new or at least unaccustomed and forgotten for so long, that he stopped short as if rooted to the spot, his hands clasped behind him and his eyes fixed on the ground, in order to examine the nature and purpose of this sensation.
It was an urge to travel, nothing more; but it presented itself in the form of a real seizure, intensified to the point of passionateness; in fact, it was like a delusion of the senses. His desire was clairvoyant; his imagination, which had not yet come to rest since his hours of work, summoned up a representative sampling of all the wonders and terrors of the variegated earth, all of which it attempted to visualize at one and the same time."
"Too occupied with the tasks set for him by his own ego and by the European spirit he represented, too burdened with the obligation to create and too undispoed to diversions to be a proper admirer of the colorful world....It was an urge to escape, he admitted it to himself, this longing for the distant and new, this desire for liberation, for unburdening and oblivion- an urge to leave behind his work and the everyday venue of a rigid, cold and passionate servitude."
It was an urge to travel, nothing more; but it presented itself in the form of a real seizure, intensified to the point of passionateness; in fact, it was like a delusion of the senses. His desire was clairvoyant; his imagination, which had not yet come to rest since his hours of work, summoned up a representative sampling of all the wonders and terrors of the variegated earth, all of which it attempted to visualize at one and the same time."
"Too occupied with the tasks set for him by his own ego and by the European spirit he represented, too burdened with the obligation to create and too undispoed to diversions to be a proper admirer of the colorful world....It was an urge to escape, he admitted it to himself, this longing for the distant and new, this desire for liberation, for unburdening and oblivion- an urge to leave behind his work and the everyday venue of a rigid, cold and passionate servitude."