Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Æsthetics: A Survey Based on the Prose Works

Abstract

Hofmannsthal's Ad Me Ipsum, which appeared posthumously in 1930, was an attempt on the part of the author to reduce his major work to a compact, often gnomic, schema of his creative intentions. Long before the appearance of this confession, which is a compendium of literary interpretation rather than æsthetic evaluation, it was obvious that the premature criticism of the nineties had wrongly classified the poet in the art-for-art's-sake school. Not only were his early plays and lyrics highly colored by an exacting ethos (though its clear formulation came slowly and subsequently), but the various prose-pieces (Gespräche, Reden, Aufsätze, etc.) published at intervals from the early pseudo-authorship of Loris until the close of the poet's life testify to an æsthetic theory in which ethical considerations play an important, if not dominant, rôle.