“Tadziu! Tadziu!” He turned back; beating the resistent water into a foam with his legs, he hurried, his head bent down over the waves. And to see how this vital figure, virginally graceful and unripe, with dripping curls, and lovely as some slender god, came up out of the depths of sky and sea, rose and separated from the elements — this spectacle aroused a sense of myth, it was like some poet’s recovery of time at its beginning, of the origin of forms and the birth of gods. Aschenbach listened with closed eyes to this song ringing within him, and he thought again that it was pleasant here, and that he would like to remain.