ABSTRACT
Born in Vienna of part Austrian-Jewish, part Italian extraction, Hofmannsthal astonished his contemporaries at an early age by his precocity and his remarkably mature awareness of the European cultural tradition. As a schoolboy he published verses of flawless perfection (under various pseudonyms); at university he started by studying law, then changed to Romance philology and gained his doctorate with a thesis on the Pléïade (another was written on Victor Hugo). The titles of his first lyrical dramas (Gestern (1891); Der Tod des Tizian (1892); Der Tor und der Tod (1893)) betray an obsession with beauty, death and transience; heir to French symbolism and Viennese neoromanticism, Hofmannsthal, in his early writing, cultivated an exquisite sensibility and dwelt on the mysterious beauty inherent in existence. Other lyrical plays include Der weiβe Fächer and Die Frau im Fenster (1897), Die Hochzeit der Sobeide (1899) and Der Kaiser und die Hexe (1900): the influence of Maeterlinck is apparent. Hofmannsthal was an habitué of the Café Griensteidl together with Schnitzler and Beer-Hofmann; he was approached there towards the end of 1891 by Stefan George, who admired his poetry and invited him to contribute to the forthcoming Blätter für die Kunst. Hofmannsthal, in the poem ‘Der Prophet’, expresses the dangerous nature of George’s emphasis on aestheticism, and also its sterility. The short story Das Märchen der 672. Nacht (1894) likewise stresses the emptiness of a life devoted to aesthetic sensations; the squalid death of the ‘Kaufmannssohn’ seems a fitting punishment. Hofmannsthal’s Ausgewählte Gedichte appeared in 1903; a year before he published the essay Ein Brief, written in the form of a letter purporting to be from Philipp, Lord Chandos, to Francis Bacon. Using a historical mask, Hofmannsthal explains that he felt separated from his earlier works, which had been written so effortlessly and had been highly praised; he had lost the sense of magic harmony (called elsewhere ‘Präexistenz’) and also his trust in the power of language, feeling unable to communicate with others. The poet who had hitherto used language with grace and ease now expresses his reservations and inhibitions; the Brief is an important document in any discussion of the ‘Sprachkrise’ which affected many writers, particularly Austrian, at the beginning of the century.
