Hugo von Hofmannsthal – Biography of Hugo von Hofmannsthal

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Hugo von Hofmannsthal He was born on February 1, 1874, in Vienna, Austria; only child of a bank manager, Hofmannsthal studied law in Vienna.

At the age of 16 he published his first poems, under the pseudonym of Loris, which caused a stir in Vienna and Germany for their lyrical beauty, magical evocations of language and dreamlike quality. His anticipation of mature experience and formal virtuosity seemed incredible in someone so young. After a year of compulsory military service, he studied romantic philology with a view to an academic career, but in 1901 he married and became a freelance writer.

Between 1891 and 1899, Hofmannsthal he wrote several short works in verse, influenced by the static dramas of the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck, the dramatic monologues of the English romantic poet Robert Browning, and the dramatic proverbs of the French poet Alfred de Musset. These works include Gestern (1891; “Yesterday”), Der Tod des Tizian (1892; The death of Titian, 1913), Der Tor und der Tod (1893; Death and the Fool, 1913), Das kleine Welttheater (1897; The Little Theater of the World “), Der Weisse Fächer (1898, partially translated as The White Fan, 1909), Die Frau im Fenster (1898; Madonna Dianora, 1916), Der Abenteurer und die Sängerin (1899; The Adventurer and the Singer, 1917-18), and Die Hochzeit der Sobeide (1899; The Marriage of Sobeide, 1961).

Of the same exquisite beauty as the poems, these essays are lyrical reflections on appearance and reality, transience and timelessness, and continuity and change within the human personality, themes that are constantly repeated in his later works.

After the turn of the century, however, Hofmannsthal he renounced purely lyrical forms in his essay “Ein Brief“(also called” Chandos Brief “, 1902). This essay was more than the revelation of a personal situation, it came to be recognized as a symptom of the crisis that undermined the aesthetic Symbolist movement of the turn of the century.

During a period of reorientation and transition, Hofmannsthal experimented with Elizabethan and classical tragic forms, adapting Venice Preserv’d (1682) by Thomas Otway as Das gerettete Venedig (1904) and writing Elektra (1903), later set to music by Richard Strauss. At the same time, his novel began, Andreas (1932, The United, 1936), which he never completed. The theater increasingly became his medium. At the end of his life he collaborated with Strauss, writing the librettos for the operas Der Rosenkavalier (performed in 1911, “The Knight of the Rose”), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919; “The woman without a Shadow”), Die Ägyptische Helena (1928; Helena in Egypt, 1963) and Arabella (made in 1933).

After the First World War, with the theatrical producer and designer Max Reinhardt, he founded the Salzburg Festival, in which performances by his Jedermann (1911; “Everyman”) and Das Salzburger grosse Welttheater (1922; The Great Salzburg Theater of the World, 1963). His comedies, Cristinas Heimreise (1910; Christina’s Journey Home, 1916), Der schwierige (1921; The Difficult Man, 1963), and Der unbestechliche (performed in 1923, published in 1956; “The Incorruptible”), are written in the Viennese dialect and set in contemporary Austrian society concerned with moral issues; These works combine realism with occult symbolism.

Reflections of Hofmannsthal on the crisis and disintegration of European civilization after the First World War found expression in his political drama Der turm (1925, The Tower, 1963) and in various essays that were prophetic of the future of Western culture. He responded to the collapse of the Habsburg empire by increasing awareness of his Austrian heritage, while also committing himself to the European tradition. His art continued to develop, always maintaining the delicate grace and sense of transcendent beauty typical of his early works, but he was unable to adapt to the 20th century.