EN
The article provides a comparative analysis of Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice' and Tadeusz Rózewicz's story 'Death in Old Decorations'. The author argues that Rózewicz's story is a subtle and, in a way, 'negative' response to Mann's work, although it contains no direct allusions to it. A close reading of the text allows one to appreciate Rózewicz's subtle play with his great predecessor. The author's interpretative idea is based on the use of the Eros/Thanatos construction common for both texts, though differently functionalized in modernism and in postmodernism.