Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea: Selected Essays and Addresses, 1906-1927

The Idea of Europe

89 ◆ The Idea of europe ◆ Notes for a lecture Thesearenotesforalecture1 andnotafinishedpieceofwriting,butHofmannsthal’s elegant formulations help us to see the centrality of Europe to his thinking about Austria. It is revealing to see how important this subject was for Hofmannsthal as early as 1917; the power of many of his insights and formulations justifies inclusion in this volume despite the unfinished form. He gave this lecture after the after the fall of the Czar, at the time of the Austrian peace initiative toward France. This was also around the time when he realized that Austria was likely to lose the war. The essay is a valuable overview of European history from Hofmannsthal’s point of view, including an account of money, commodities, and the power of capitalism before the war. Da poi chè sotto il cielo cosa non vidi Stabile e ferma, tutto sbigottito Mi volsi e dissi: Guarda, in che ti fidi? Petrarca2 The war as historical crisis, end of material and spiritual credit: The conventions are suddenly reduced to their real gripping power. International relations reveal themselves as a great balancing of spiritual and legal powers that has grown critical; all temporally limited ways of thinking, everything that had been fraudulently gained by way of the contrat social breaks down. Analogies: a) End of political pan-Hellenism in the Peloponnesian War b) End of republican constitutional law as religio in the Caesarian crisis c) End of the Church as a universal protector of conscience (praesidium conscientiarum) in the Lutheran crisis. 90 ◆ Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea All this, old forms of piety, which dying, reveal to humanity once again their transcendent content, as it were. Therefore their death is always a terrible event. (All forms of piety arise from revelation, all conventions from the spiritual experience of individuals.) The concept of Europe: We grew up with it. Its collapse, a shattering experience for us. Critique of the concept: its unconditionality has always been highly precarious. a) Unity of Europe not geographical (like Australia, for example) (chopping up the Eurasian-African continent into parts, an empirical expedient without much explanatory value) b) Unity also not racially ethnic. The white race of the Occident reaches out beyond Europe, the foreign reaches into it: Thus the concept can never be grounded. Its essence ideological and spiritual: transcendent, it layers itself over the realities , its incomprehensibility and invulnerability lie in this. Its character: the highest common membership as a holy good, whose definition has changed over time. Historical analogies for this: a) Common citizenship of the Greek city-states as Delphic League b) Of Rome and the Roman Empire for the common Hellenic c) Of the parts of the Imperium of Rome emancipated to nation-states, and the Papacy, which inherited and integrated into itself all the ancient centralization. Between each of these transitions, a crisis, a terrible “Die and become” phase of the concept of “Europe” that made consciences anxious. Phases of the concept of “Europe.” First phase: originally hardly conscious of itself, the folding together of the Occident in the thought- and soul-forms of the Church. (Common citizenship of the Christians against the pagans, experienced in the great sermons of the centuries of the Crusades as a missio, mission and dispatch . The participation of all who were called in a divine vocation: the spread of what was felt to be the highest moral basis for rule; as awakening. (NB. Ideology undermined by real crises of state egoism: Frederick II and the Saracens,3 the revolutionizing of Italy against internationalization by the Papacy .) Second form of the concept: that of the Renaissance. (Common citizenship of all who participate in the Latinity of the higher spiritual existence for the awakening and preservation of this fundamental inheritance. Classical literature as an immortal continued life in contrast to the mortal and newly formulated life, ideality and language common to all.) The Idea of Europe ◆ 91 The holy changed its temple from the space of faith to that of knowledge. (But knowledge still bears the emotional coloring of faith, acts like transcendence and assumes the pathos of the missio: the spread of bonae artes. The res publica litteraria is added to the civitas dei. Organ of this common citizenship: international European exchange of letters. Publicity of the connection. Third and highest form of the concept: German humanism. The common citizenship of the civilized peoples in the service of the holiness...