‘Der Gestalt soll überall für mich [...] actuell sein’: the relevance of Hofmannsthal’s Sprachskepsis to his Choice of Genre

Of the variety of genres that Hofmannsthal(1875–1929) used throughout his literary career, three, lyric verse, the fictive letter and comedy, are associated with particular periods. The first is a product of what Hofmannsthal termed his Jugendzeit, the period which ended around the turn of the century. The fictive letter is a genre used by Hofmannsthal mainly, although not exclusively, during his late-twenties to mid-thirties, a transitional period during which Hofmannsthal was most troubled by Sprachskepsis, or doubt in the efficacy of language to express thought and abstract concepts, and doubted his own artistic ability. Hofmannsthal used comedy increasingly as he matured artistically, once he had come through this dark period. The article examines the relevance, during Hofmannsthal’s transitional and mature periods, of his Sprachskepsis to his use of genres that seem to be quite disparate by considering three works, Ein Brief and Die Briefe des Zurückgekehrten, both fictive letters dating from the first decade of the twentieth century, and Der Schwierige, a late comedy from the final decade of his life.The article first considers the relevance of Sprachskepsis, a phenomenon associated with not just Hofmannsthal but others among his intellectual contemporaries in fin-de-siècle Austria, to Hofmannsthal’s personal philosophy and demonstrates that he regarded an inability to communicate as an issue that concerned not just the artist but any individual, since it impinged upon the ability of the individual to mature into a socially engaged adult or, in Hofmannsthal’s terminology, achieve Existenz. Using examples from the three different works, the article argues that Hofmannsthal uses the onset of Sprachskepsis as the indication that the protagonist in question is beginning to experience the transition from the solipsistic world of his youth and early adulthood, or Praeexistenz, to Existenz.Comparing and contrasting the two genres, the article argues that they share a common characteristic, which may not be immediately apparent; they are both forms of conversation. This makes both genres particularly apt for a depiction of Sprachskepsis, since conversation is predicated on an ability to communicate, a skill which Sprachskepsis effectively impairs.1Hofmannsthal’s choice of comedy during his later years is readily explained. Hofmannsthal himself endorsed comedy as an effective medium in which to depict how the individual can become socially engaged, not least because the convention, at least in classical comedy, that it concludes by uniting a pair of lovers