u/Queasy_Answer_2266

(The images are from Volume 13, Volume 15, and Volume 17, respectively.) What all three scenes have in common is that Gilbert is abandoning all of the comforts he previously enjoyed to join Serge in an uncertain future. First Gilbert runs away from Auguste's mansion in Marseille, then from Lacombrade academy where his uncle had intervened to try and force him and Serge apart, and then from Bonnard's house where he and Serge had briefly stayed during their time in Paris. It goes to show the power of Gilbert's love for Serge, because even though he does not have any practical skills and cannot live independently, he still follows Serge wherever he goes and refuses to turn away from him. Gilbert may have been infamous for his cruelty and heartlessness towards his paramours, but when truly loves someone, as is the case here, there is no limit to his devotion.

Gilbert is the kind of person who does not think much about the future, but he knows how to live in the present and extract the most possible joy from every moment. And what is more, he wants his loved ones to also be able to experience the same joy at all times, which unfortunately creates conflicts between him and Serge, who feels compelled to live frugally and plan for the future. But at the same time, exactly this quality of Gilbert may have been what caused Serge to fall in love with him in the first place, because Serge himself always had to be more mature than his age, growing up as he did without any real parental figures, and he was attracted to Gilbert's innocence and abandon. This same thing contributed to Serge's friendship with Angeline, though he was not attracted to her for obvious reasons.

>!If one wants to identify a particular moment in the manga as the decisive point leading to the tragedy at the end, it is tempting to choose Serge and Gilbert's decision, after they have escaped Lacombrade Academy, to go to Paris rather than Tyrol, as Serge had originally planned. There is some truth in this idea. In Tyrol, there was no Darnini, no criminal underworld, no opium, none of the factors that led to all the misery Serge and Gilbert experienced in Volumes 16 and 17 culminating in Gilbert's death. Tyrol was where Serge's parents, who parallel him and Gilbert in so many ways, had a happy ending together, even if it only lasted for a few years. But there are deeper reasons for the final tragedy of which the decision to go to Paris was a symptom rather than a cause, and these are what I will analyze here.!<

>!The question that we have to ask is why Gilbert wanted to go to Paris, because it was only because of his suggestion that Serge changed his mind and told the carriage driver to go to Saint-Gilles station rather than Arles station. The answer, of course, is that Gilbert had spent several years in Paris previously, and had some fond memories of the city (as well as other less fond memories), so he wanted to go back. He tells Serge "Paris is a beautiful and very kind city," because the last time he was there, he was the ward of an extremely wealthy, sophisticated, and popular man, and this privilege—combined with his own personal beauty and charm—meant that the entire city practically worshipped the ground at his feet.!<

>!But of course that is not going to happen when Serge and Gilbert arrive as penniless paupers, not to mention lovers (which would not be accepted by many people, this being the nineteenth century). Gilbert is old enough to realize that this would be the case. But he does not, and that is exactly the problem. When they first arrive in Paris, Gilbert is furious when Serge says that they have to move out of the hotel into the lower quarter. He throws a tantrum about the accommodations in their new room. He demands that they go to a restaurant that night. Later on, he constantly complains about Serge having to work all day to support them. He expects everything to be like it was when he was eleven and whenever that does not happen (which is always), he has a tendency to lose his temper.!<

>!The heart of the issue is that Gilbert cannot imagine the future, but can only look towards the past. When Serge asks him what he wants to be in the future, Gilbert just says that he wants to remain with Auguste for the rest of his life, and when Auguste dies, he plans to die also. He lives only in the present, in a world of pure sensation and emotion, and never has any of his own thoughts about what he wants to do later in life. So when it comes to the decision about where he and Serge should go, Gilbert does not think about what the best place would be for them to build a future. Instead, he just tries to go back to the past. Serge, on the other hand, is always thinking about the future, always full of dreams and plans, and the very different ways in which he and Gilbert approach life are a major source of conflict between them.!<

>>!You can forget everything, being like this.!<

>>!...Forget about working, and eating? I can't do that, Gilbert. I'm not a person that can live like you do. [Vol. 17, p. 20]!<

>!If we want to think about why Serge can think about the future while Gilbert cannot, we should look to their very different upbringings. Serge had parents who loved him very much and wanted him to grow up and become his own person, just as they had defied all social expectations in marrying. His father was especially important in the development of Serge's personality since he bequeathed his diary to Serge, in the hopes that he would learn life lessons from it and be able to understand what is truly valuable. Meanwhile, Gilbert was raised by Auguste, who only saw him as a "pet" and made him completely dependent on himself. Because Gilbert had no one to learn from about how to live his life, he never gave any thought to the question, and just relied on Auguste, and subsequently on Serge. And tragically, his inability to foresee any future for himself foreshadowed the fact that he would in fact have no future; his life would be cut short at fifteen, before he had the chance to truly mature, and the blame for that lies primarily at the feet of the man who never gave him a real chance to be his own person, with his own dreams and hopes and his own life.!<

This time I am again going to be discussing the influence of a western film on Kaze to Ki no Uta, specifically Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice (1971), based on Thomas Mann's 1912 novella of the same name. (There will be spoilers for the plot). The story centers on a middle-aged man named Gustav von Aschenbach, who is either an author or a composer depending on the adaptation. He is respectable and completely lacking in vices, almost to the point of asceticism. He travels to Venice on vacation, where he sees a very handsome young Polish aristocrat named Tadzio, and soon becomes infatuated with the boy. He starts following him all over Venice and has a makeup job to look like a younger man in the hopes of being more appealing to him, despite looking down on a man who had a similar makeup job earlier in the story. He stays in Venice to follow Tadzio even though a cholera epidemic breaks out, and eventually he catches the disease and dies.

In the film adaptation, Tadzio was played by the late Swedish actor Björn Andrésen. After the film was released, Andrésen became a worldwide sensation due to his strikingly good looks, and was dubbed "the most beautiful boy in the world." He was especially popular in Japan, which he toured in 1971 to promote the film; the crowds that received him were compared to those accompanying the landing of the Beatles in the United States. Takemiya's depiction of Gilbert was strongly influenced in its aesthetics by Andrésen's appearance, as the comparison above clearly illustrates. Comparing him to his spiritual predecessor, Étoile Raël of Sunroom Nite (which was published before Death in Venice came out) shows how many of Gilbert's characteristic features such as his head of golden curls were inspired by Andrésen.

But it may be that more than just Tadzio's appearance went into Gilbert. The title of the film, at the simplest level, refers to the fact that Aschenbach dies of cholera in Venice, but his true death comes when he abandons himself to his passion for Tadzio and loses sight of all his previous ideals and scruples. (One wonders to what extent this reflects Mann's struggle with his own repressed homosexuality). Likewise, Gilbert is perceived as a corrupter of public morals at Lacombrade, who constantly tempts other students to sin and spiritual death. In some cases, Gilbert's seductive qualities even cause the actual deaths of some students, such as Ernest Briller, and possibly Elliot, Neslie, and Fabian also. Or so we are led to believe at least, by the teachers and the students body and even Gilbert himself.

But is that really so? Tadzio is obviously not at all at fault for what happened to Aschenbach, and the same may well be true of Gilbert. It is the upperclassmen's choice whether to sleep with Gilbert or not; they could very easily have refused him if they wanted. The other students mock Gilbert and put all the blame on him because it is easier to bully a single physically weak student than to call out the upperclassmen for their behavior, but that does not mean that we should side with them. The case of Ernest is also ambiguous. Gilbert says that he intentionally seduced Ernest, yes—but he says the same thing about Serge, and we know that that is not true. In fact, Gilbert's reaction to the mention of Ernest, and his strange behavior around the swamp at night, suggest that he was just as troubled by whatever happened between the two as Ernest was, which contradicts the picture of the evil seducer that all the other characters give us.

It is also interesting to compare the struggles faced by Gilbert to those faced by Andrésen. The publicity created by his starring role and the sexualization that he experienced at the hands of so many people were extremely difficult for Andrésen to endure. At various points he sank into depression and alcoholism, and though he would act in a few subsequent films, he tried his best to remain out of the public eye from then on. In the end, even though his beauty was what made him so famous, it turned out to be a curse rather than a blessing. Gilbert of course has the same problem. His beauty means that he is constantly sexualized and often sexually abused by older men, most notably his own uncle. Even when he and Serge run away to Paris, he cannot escape people who see him as an object and want to use him for their own purposes. I doubt that Takemiya knew many details of Andrésen's personal life, but she was intelligent enough to understand that such otherworldly beauty comes at a high cost, so it is no surprise that Gilbert's story shares some similarities to his real-life inspiration.