Abstract

The constitution of the crystal image corresponds to the most fundamental operation of time. In order to do so, it is necessary for time to separate, arise or happen, in two decimetric spurts, of which one of them makes pass the whole present and the other conserves all the past. Time consists precisely in this split, it is the one we see in a crystal. Crystal is the perpetual foundation of time. According to the perspective of the French thinker Gilles Deleuze, in Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti gives us to see the crystalline images according to their own decomposition. This is present throughout his work. In this film, we can see this decomposition, for example, through the plague that devastates Venice or even through the revelation that something arrived too late. When the character of the musician sees the young Tadzio, he has the vision of what lacked in his work: sensual beauty. The too late conditions the work of art and conditions its success, for the sensuous and sensual unity of nature with man is the essence of art par excellence, inasmuch as it is of its nature to occur too late!