Hofmannsthal: Der Dichter und die Dinge by Claudia Bamberg (review)

Bamberg’s book is her 2009 doctoral dissertation for the University of Frankfurt am Main. The layered depth of its original interpretations of Hofmannsthal’s “Dingverständnis,” particularly the role of “things” in his poetry, aesthetic essays, verse dramas, shorter imaginative prose pieces, and travel articles—mostly from the 1890s through 1920—merit the tome’s inclusion in this prestigious series.

In her introduction Bamberg immediately comes to the point by stating: “Die Dinge zählen von Beginn an zu Hofmannsthals Musen” (15). She includes excerpts from Hofmannsthal’s letters to his friends and acquaintances and his other nonfiction alongside his imaginative writing. She persuasively argues that it is the curio cabinet (referred to repeatedly as “die Kunst- und Wunderkammer”)—from flea markets, museums, the subjects of his journalistic pieces, and his own rooms—that consistently captured Hofmannsthal’s imagination. The silent power of these inanimate objects, “die Magie der Dinge” (23), held a persistent fascination for Hofmannsthal.

The unique contribution of the first half of the first long chapter is Bamberg’s convincing treatment of Hofmannsthal’s productive reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1844 essay “The Poet” for his two essays “Der Dichter und diese Zeit” (1906/1907) and “Gärten” (1906). The first essay is unique for Hofmannsthal in that the reader hears the Austrian poet himself lecturing—without the use of a fictive narrator. In this self-empowering piece, the poet as omnipotent observer is likened to a person without eyelids. Hofmannsthal’s copious annotations in his personal edition of Emerson underscore the poet’s affinity with Emerson as a “lover” of inanimate objects. Emerson’s “condition of true naming” in “The Poet” inspired Hofmannsthal in his writing of “Gärten,” which took as its subject the garden landscapes surrounding Vienna (61). Hofmannsthal’s concretized naming of things here allowed him to depart from his earlier artificial listing of Baroque theatrical sets in the Prologue to Anatol (1891), enabling his embrace of a “feinsinnige Gartenästhetik” (110). Emerson’s definition of “Imagination,” as coming “by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path of circuit of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others” clearly took hold of Hofmannsthal (111).

The second half of this chapter deals with Hofmannsthal’s conscious balancing—after giving up the writing of verse—of “inner” and “outer” elements, not to mention the subjective/objective split and the theme of spirit and nature. The chapter concludes with a pellucid reading of Hofmannsthal’s fictive 1903 dialogue “Das Gespräch über Gedichte.” In her discussion of Gabriel’s role, Bamberg sheds light on the increasing weight Hofmannsthal was placing on “Dinge”: For Gabriel these “things” are not substitutes for what is absent, for they have become central in their own existence. Hofmannsthal’s indebtedness to Goethe in creating Gabriel is convincingly discussed.

The first half of the third chapter deals with the pivotal role of “things” in three poems. The absence of a lyrical “I” subject in “Vorfrühling” (1892) lends weight to the positive power of the wind; Bamberg likens Hofmannsthal’s potent use of the wind to an analogous passage in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which Hofmannsthal had underlined in his personal edition and to Gabriel’s views of the wind. Bamberg’s emphasis on the breaking up of order in the “Ballade des äußeren Lebens” (1894) is convincing. Bamberg’s discussion of “Reiselied” (1897/98) contrasts Goethe’s emphasis on development with Hofmannsthal’s timeless celebration of a newly created “Ordnung der Dinge” (206).

The second half of the chapter starts with a probing discussion of Hofmannsthal’s very early (and often neglected) travel piece “Südfranzösische Eindrücke” (1892), in which Bamberg finds thematic and stylistic links to Der Tor und der Tod (1893) and Das Märchen der 672. Nacht (1895). She contrasts Claudio’s stifling fascination with the things in his curio cabinet to the “Welt der Bez...