13 - Art by accident

Summary

Up to now we have concentrated on a single clear line in Hofmannsthal's development, from Der Tor und der Tod through the Chandos crisis to Der Schwierige, and on the development of an idea of ironic or social language (language used by us so as to reveal its use of us) that incorporates the metaphysical theory of lyric into a theoretically complete drama. But the argument has loose ends, corresponding to unfinished business in Hofmannsthal's thinking, and these loose ends will occupy us from here on. First I will go back to the collaboration with Strauss, especially in its implications for the theory of theater as a cultural institution. Then I will discuss Hofmannsthal's attempt to see Andreas, Ariadne, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Der Schwierige as aspects of a single large vision, via the idea of the “allomatic.” And in the final four chapters, mainly on the Groβes Welttheater and Der Turm, I will treat the uncomfortable relation of this vision to the actual situation of poetry in culture as Hofmannsthal experienced it.

In both the “Ungeschriebenes Nachwort zum ‘Rosenkavalier’” of 1911 and the later essay “‘Der Rosenkavalier’: Zum Geleit,” Hofmannsthal stresses the indispensability of performance. “This work is made for the stage, not for the book” (W23 547; P3 43). And sixteen years after its composition, he asserts that the work now belongs neither to him nor to the composer, nor for that matter to literature (which is not even mentioned); rather, “it belongs to that hovering, curiously illuminated world: the theater, in which it has already stayed alive for a while, and will perhaps live a while longer” (W23 548; P4 426).