Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Poetry of Crisis

Introduction: Hofmannsthal, the enfant terrible of Vienna

Hugo von Hofmannsthal is perhaps the greatest claimant to the title of the German enfant terrible, placing him alongside Mikhail Lermontov in Russia and, most famously of all, Arthur Rimbaud in France in the German canon. Like those two poets Hofmannsthal displayed precocious talents at a young age – in his case he frequented a literary salon from the age of about fifteen with his father accompanying him since he was too young to go alone. And like Rimbaud, Hofmannsthal also ceased writing poetry suddenly to concentrate on other parts of his life. The reason usually identified by the critics is that he lost his belief in language as a tool to convey thought and the reality he saw around him. This crisis is memorably expressed in his fictional “Lord Chandos Letter” to Francis Bacon, in which the former man (a surrogate for Hofmannsthal) explains how language has failed him.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal shown in a photograph
Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929). Don’t let his dates fool you – he wrote almost all of his poetry before the turn of the century, before settling down into gloom and reactionary politics.

I am no Hofmannsthal expert, but I have read through his small poetic corpus a few times and want to share two aspects of his poetry that make him an interesting poet to me. Though the crisis that ultimately turns him away from poetry appears to be a linguistic one, I think there are more tensions lying under the surface of his perfectly tuned poesy than just ones of language. As ever, unmarked translations are mine.

Language Dies with a Whimper

By the time Hofmannsthal in 1902 actually penned his imaginary letter complaining of his inability to write it was long since he had written anything substantial. In my copy of his poems there are collected those poems he did not see worth publishing in his 1922 Gedichte. Some of these aren’t very good, but interestingly enough as 1895/6 – the apogee of his talents – passed he began to write several little couplets, which are scarcely poems at all. Instead, they seem a halfway point between the faith in language expressed poems like “A Dream of Great Magic” and the collapse of that faith expressed in the “Lord Chandos Letter”. At only two lines long, they seem positively Beckettian in attitude – the attempt to salvage some kind of meaning from the gigantic void that language’s failure has left. Some of them are, though bitter, thought-provoking and beautiful. Hopefully my translations are too!

Names

“Visp’s the name of a frothing brook; another name is Goethe. 
There came the name from the thing; but here the bearer created its clang.”

This poem is written by a poet who is very aware of words and their effects; but not only that these effects exist but how they have the capacity to be created and remade by a sufficiently talented person, like a Goethe.

Words

“There are some words that hit like hammers. But others
You swallow like hooks and swim on and do not yet know it.”

I love this one. It captures one of those inarticulable feelings you get when you read something truly superb. You know that the best works and their words will stay with you, but Hofmannsthal puts his finger on an image for how they do it. “Words”, here, is more specifically phrases, but I think that’s clear enough from the context and of little importance anyway. That title sounds better to my ear than “phrases” would.

The Art of the Storyteller

“Do you wish to depict the murder? Well show me the hound in the yard: /
Now show me at the same time in the eye of the dog the shadows of the killing.”

I think in this one the scepticism about language’s ability to reflect reality is clearly manifest. It was even clearer when I accidentally misread “murder” for “world” in the German because I wasn’t being careful. Nonetheless, Hofmannsthal is challenging our ability to depict the world in any meaningful way. Meaning here is removed by the successive impulse to get into smaller and smaller parts of reality – first the dog, then his eye, and then the shadows of the killing itself. It becomes too much, too detailed. We’re overloaded with information we cannot possibly manage to represent, and so representation itself becomes suspect. While the modernist fiction writers tried to go further and further into the subconscious, Hofmannsthal is expressing a feeling of futility in such an idea. It will never not fail at showing everything we are. This is the poem of one who will shortly give up on poetry.

Hofmannsthal’s Poetical (and Political) Guilt and Doubt

Late in life Hofmannsthal, the Austrian aristocrat, became a great reactionary. The loss the empire over which he and his fellow Viennese had ruled through military failure in the First World War was too much to bear for a soul like his, one already inclined by birth towards that which is conservative and noble in temperament. But we ought to give him his due – he was young once. And in his poems, there is more a tension between an artistic temperament that seeks to live creating art-for-art’s-sake, channelling a certain strand of Nietzsche, and an awareness of the responsibilities that he has for his people as a result of his position in society. A sense of his duty as a human being fighting against his sense of his duty as an artist. I think it is this tension that produces one of his most well-known poems, “Manche Freilich…”/”Some, of course…”:

Some, of course…

Some, of course, will have to die below,
Where the heavy rudders of the ship are striving;
Others live at the helm above,
And know the birds’ flights and the stars’ lands.

Some have to lie down with heavy limbs
Among the roots of tortured lives;
Others find they've seats arranged
Up by the Sibyls and the queens,
And there they sit as if at home,
With easy bodies and easy hands.


But a shadow falls up from that life
Into the other life above,
And the easy are bound to the heavy
Just as they’re bound to earth and air:

I can’t remove forgotten tragedies
That plagued past peoples from my eyes;
Nor keep my frightened soul safe from
The silent fall of far-off stars.

Many fates are woven beside my own
And through them all a presence plays;
And my part is more than just this life’s
Slightest flame or slender lyre. 

A German version of the poem can be found here

Analysis: a political poem?

I’m not entirely sure what this poem means, but I’ve learned it and had it going around in my head for a few months, so I’ve at the very least been thinking about it. The sticking point, critically speaking, is in the first line: “Some, of course, will have to die below”/”Manche freilich müssen drunten sterben”. It’s hard to know what tone this is written in. It seems at first to indicate a resigned attitude towards equality and social progress and, if not an endorsement of existing hierarchies, then at the very least a suggestion that the hierarchies ought not to be tampered with. But it could be read as anything from complete support to a more insidious, ironic tone. I, at least, can’t read it without hearing irony. The description of the ship is designed to show inequality, without being so political as to start demanding solutions.

A picture of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein was born at almost the same time as Hofmannsthal, and into even more luxury. But unlike Hofmannsthal, whose “Some, of course” shows hesitation before action, Wittgenstein’s life contains many heroic attempts to connect with his fellow men and women.

Instead, the focus seems to be on the existence of inequality and the need, not for solutions so much as for understanding and a sense of personal responsibility. Hofmannsthal here is trying to feel what anybody in his position as an aristocrat, and indeed anybody in a position of relative wealth, can easily forget to feel – a sense of awareness of, and compassion and responsibility towards those who luck and other circumstances have not left as well-off as they have themselves. It is easy enough, I know from experience, to ignore the plight of others as being almost unreal, to dismiss the homeless as somehow deserving of their fate, and criminals as being exclusively bad people. Of course, there are bad people among the criminals, just as there are dangerous people among the homeless, but that cannot be justification to look away and hide from the obligation to pay attention.

Interconnectedness as solution

Hofmannsthal is keenly aware that he does not need to take any part in society whatsoever, except, if he wants, as an artist. A life of aesthetic and creative pleasure lies open to him in a way that it is for almost nobody else. He can, in the language of the poem, look at the birds and the stars, and sit and feast well into the early morning. But this life becomes, in contemplation of the reality facing him as a conscientious human being, inadequate – “my part is more than just this life’s slightest flame or slender lyre” – the lines reject making that life of luxuriant aestheticism the entirety of his world. Not only do the fruits of that life seem to be unworthy, Hofmannsthal also appears to feel a kind of guilt from it, suggested by “I can’t remove forgotten tragedies / That plagued past peoples from my eyes”.

He begins to see being fully aware of “the presence” / “Dasein” that runs through all things as the goal of his life. With that there comes a view of the world that sees all life as valuable for being a reflection of this central idea of its very existence. It’s not a religious idea per se, so much as the idea of our interconnectedness made clearer. Instead of seeing himself as isolated from other people because of his social status, Hofmannsthal here reworks his understanding of his position to allow himself the ability to feel keenly the value of other people, even as he doesn’t let it become a political statement. He disestablishes the hierarchies of his mind, instead of concerning himself with destroying the hierarchies of the world. In essence, he adds compassion to his conservatism. It is, I think, a somewhat heroic gesture.

Conclusion – Reasons to read Hofmannsthal

Hofmannsthal is a pretty cool poet. What I like the most about his poetry is how little there is of it, and how good what there is is. No matter how productively-minded you may be, there’s enough time to go back and reread things, and think about what they have to say. The German is attractive to the ear, and the topics that he deals with are usually interesting enough. That sounds like a lukewarm recommendation, and perhaps it is, but I think it’s difficult to capture a sense of beauty when you recommend something anyway. His poetry is beautiful and filled with pleasant turns and wondrous images. He is neither a great thinker nor a great soul in his poetry, but for a young man who stopped writing his poems only a year or two older than I am now, it’s amazing what he did achieve. Check him out.

For more German poetry, I’ve translated some pieces by Theodor Storm here.

Before the Law by Franz Kafka – Translation and (brief) Analysis

This is my translation of Franz Kafka’s story “Vor dem Gesetz”, which also appears towards the end of The Trial. After the text there are some casual comments on the meaning and on reading Kafka generally.

Before the Law

Before the Law there stands a gatekeeper. And to this gatekeeper comes a man from the country and asks for entry into the Law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry. The man thinks for a moment and then asks whether he will be able to enter later on. “This much is possible,” says the gatekeeper. “But not now.” Since the door onto the Law stands open as ever and the gatekeeper stands to one side of it, the man bends forward so as to see through it into what lies within. When the gatekeeper notices it, he laughs, saying: “If you’re so allured by what’s inside, why not try going through in spite of my forbidding it? Be warned, though: I am mighty. And I am but the lowest of the gatekeepers. From each hall to the next there are gatekeepers, each one mightier than before. By the third one I cannot even bear his sight.” Such difficulties the man from the country has not counted on. Surely the Law, he thinks, ought to be accessible to all people and at all times. But as he looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, with his sharp nose and long thin black beard like a Tartar’s, he then decides he had better wait until he received permission to enter. The gatekeeper gives him a little stool and lets him set himself down on the side by the door. He sits there for days and then years. He makes many efforts to be let in and tires the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper every-so-often engages to give him little interrogations, where he asks the man about his homeland and about plenty of other things. But they are lifeless questions, however, of the sort that great men ask, and in the end he tells him once more that he still cannot let him in. The man, who had prepared a great deal for his journey, uses everything he has, whether valuable or not, in order to bribe the gatekeeper. The other man takes everything from him, but says as he does so: “I am only taking these from you so that you don’t think you haven’t tried everything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost without a moment’s pause. He forgets about the other gatekeepers, so that this one seems to him the only obstacle preventing him from entering the Law. He curses his misfortune, at first heedlessly and loudly; then, as he grows older, he just mutters to himself. He grows childish and, since from his years of study of the gatekeeper he has come to recognise the fleas in his felt collar, he asks the fleas to aid him in changing the gatekeeper’s mind too. At last his sight grows weak and he is unable to tell whether it is really getting darker, or if it is just his eyes deceiving him. He does recognise well, however, a radiance shining forth in the dark, one that escapes inextinguishably from the door into the Law. Now he has little time left to live. Before his death all the experiences of the whole time gather themselves inside his head into a single question, which he had hitherto not asked the gatekeeper. He beckons to him, for now he can no longer hold his head up straight. The gatekeeper has to bend himself deeply to lower himself down to him, since the height difference between them has greatly changed to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know?” Asks the gatekeeper, “You are insatiable.” “Look, if every man strives after the Law,” says the man. “How does it happen that in all these years nobody but myself has demanded entry?” The gatekeeper recognises that the man has already reached his end and, so as to reach him through his failing hearing, he shouts to him: “Nobody else could obtain permission here. This entrance was destined only for you. And now I am going to shut it.”

Comments

I’ve never been much of a fan of German, either as a language or as a literature, in comparison with others. I guess I’ve struggled to see the beauty in the words, and for a long time it seemed that German literature was a lesser copy of the Russian version, but without the redemptive hope of national faith. That is, simply a little grim and depressing. But Kafka has always been an favourite exception, in part because he has never fit snugly into the classification of “German literature”, being a Jew in what is now the Czech Republic, which even in the early 20th century was not exactly the centre of German culture. Yet Bohemia produced, in some way or other, Kafka, as it did Rilke. No matter my misgivings about the wider literature, misgivings which truth be told time and experience are quickly changing anyway, it’s hard not to feel grateful for those two.

Picture of Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is perhaps the most widely read German language author outside of the German-speaking lands, and just as ambiguous a fellow as is his work.

Even so, “getting” Kafka took a long time. I’ve read The Metamorphoses two or three times now, in both the original and in translation, and have struggled to enjoy it. Only recently, under the full weight of various critics’ opinions, did the work begin to open up to me. But in spite of that misfire, other parts of Kafka’s oeuvre have more easily reached and crashed against the inner shore of my soul: “In the Penal Colony”, “A Hunger Artist”, and both The Trial and The Castle are among them.

It is perhaps foolish to have people in schools read Kafka because often they haven’t themselves lived in any serious way. It was certainly my problem when I started out. Without experience, it’s hard to appreciate the absurdity, because the stories seem simply absurd, as opposed to that Kafkaesque standard – absurd yet constantly revealed in our own lives to be entirely real. Within school and even, to be fair, university, usually we can only look at them clinically, rather than personally – that is, we can only appreciate, rather than truly enjoy them.

Kafka’s Train Ticket

My first experience of Kafka’s world being transported into my own came with receiving a penalty fare while trying to take the train home after having had dinner with a friend. I had bought a return ticket at the same station a few hours earlier, but unfortunately after going through the turnstiles I had thrown away the return ticket rather than the outbound one. When I arrived that evening the ticket office had closed, so there were only machines for buying tickets still operating. But I didn’t have a card on me, so I couldn’t buy a new ticket. I waited on the platform for the train to arrive, hoping to buy a ticket on board. Instead, what happened was that one of the railway workers came up and asked to see my ticket beforehand.

I explained what had happened and why I was unable to buy a replacement ticket, then asked to buy one as I saw that the worker had a ticket dispensing machine on her. I said that I had more than enough money in cash to buy the ticket. She told me to be quiet and asked for my ID. She then began writing me a penalty fare for trying to travel without a ticket. I tried once more to explain, and indeed I asked the worker to go and speak with her co-worker – the exact person I had bought both tickets from only a few hours previously – who I could see a few meters away.

Yet again, though, and against all that could be called reasonable – given that I had plenty of money and my receipts and an eyewitness in addition to everything else – I was told to stop being rude and to write down all of my details. I was then told that I had a month to pay the inflated price of the ticket she was giving me, or else I would be forced to go to court. Unexpected and in part inexplicable exercises of power and an illogical and cruel bureaucracy are all mainstays of Kafka’s world, but here they had been transported into my own. In a particularly sour mood, I eventually got my train back home. The penalty fare had cost about £5. The damage to my pride and dignity had cost considerably more.

There was a silver lining to this tale, though: it was the key to understanding Kafka. This, of course, turned out to be a great overestimation on my part, for as with the many doors of “Before the Law”, there are many different Kafka stories and each of them is be opened up by a different experience or several. But this was the first of many, and over time I’ve begun to enjoy Kafka more and more. What at first was simply a cold academic understanding of possible meanings is now a personal understanding of a few meanings.

Before the Law

“Before the Law” is probably my favourite of Kafka’s parable-like shorter stories. In part this is because it is simple linguistically and, like anyone who reads in a foreign language they are not yet the master of, I much prefer those works I feel I fully understand, even if the works themselves are perhaps on some other scale less great or complex. But the fact that it’s easy to read is not the reason it’s my favourite. No, I love it because it uses its simplicity not to leave its meaning concealed, like some abstract postmodern text, but rather to multiply its potential meanings, so that each new reading and each time it reappears in one’s mind is accompanied by a new thought, a new guess at one of its many possible truths.

Some Interpretations

I mean, in a sense you can list the things it might be about. It may well be about Gnosticism. It may also be about trying to reach God through a faith that never seems sufficient. Here in Cambridge it seems to me to be at least partially about the struggles of learning, how in spite of our best efforts we can waste away on a goal of knowledge that turns out to be entirely illusory, or at best the first door when there are many others left to come. Or maybe it is more broadly about any of those goals or ideals that become so great that we fail to live as a result of our quest to grasp them and even give away all that actually can give our life happiness and meaning instead – the equipment the man from the country has with him.

I mean those are just some ideas. As part of the translation process I had to make decisions that undoubtedly also contribute to the meanings you can locate in the text. Capitalising “Law” is a little controversial because it undoubtedly makes it harder to imagine that the story as simply being about trying to reach a lawyer for some advice. That said, I think by capitalising it I make it more clear that the Law is itself a symbol, and worth substituting if you feel like it. Another thing is the translation of “bestimmt” as “destined” when talking about the door itself. This reinforces the suggestion that perhaps the story as a whole is a way of looking at our relationship to fate. We need to accept it as personal and at the same time immutable. The man is a fool for wanting to change it by entering.

We do talk about the “laws of fate”, after all.

Conclusion

But there are so many meanings that going on would be foolish. What is true without a shadow of a doubt is that this is a wonderful story in the way that Walter Benjamin conceived of the term. I narrated it to a friend as we both went out for a burger and with my own retelling it took on newer meanings while still retaining the heart of Kafka’s work. “Before the Law” is special precisely because its size and interpretative potential mean that wherever it goes it can have its impact, and that repeating it is like simply adding a new flavouring to a dish. That’s the best argument for reading it and retelling it, again and again and again.

What do you think the story is about? Let me know in the comments

Photograph of Franz Kafka taken by Sigismund Jacobi is in the public domain.