Abstract
ABSTRACT When Hugo von Hofmannsthal published his aphoristic collection, Buch der Freunde (1922), he borrowed the title from Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan. A mix of original maxims and excerpted quotations, it departs from his famous poems, plays and essays. Reading it alongside Hofmannsthal’s Divan essay, I analyse it as a response to a creative crisis that re-enacts world literature in the spirit of the Divan poet. The lesser-known book intimately unveils Hofmannsthal’s process of regenerative compilation. Yet in paying tribute to late Goethean poetics, Buch der Freunde paradoxically retreats into the modernist private collection and the world-literary past.
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