Tadzio, the Polish boy from Thomas Mann's novella "Death in Venice," has many brothers in literature: In numerous novels, stories, poems, travelogues, and diaries, the "beautiful boy" captivates not only by prompting pauses and glances but can also evoke deep emotion and even shock, leading to reflections on what beauty is and from what sources it is derived. True grace emerges from the unconscious, as Heinrich von Kleist described in his famous essay "On the Puppet Theatre," and it reflects a paradisiacal state, an ideal image, "as perhaps God dreamed humanity." (Max Frisch, "The Difficult Ones") A literary quest with texts by Hans Carossa, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Theodor Fontane, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herm.