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157 ◆ The WriTTen Word as The spiriTual space of The naTion ◆ a lecTure held in The main audiTorium of The universiTy of munich on January 10, 1927 dedicaTed To Karl vossler, recTor of The universiTy Certainly the most challenging essay1 in this volume is “The Written Word as the Spiritual Space of the Nation.” The German is extremely difficult, which compounds the real difficulty of the ideas Hofmannsthal wants to present. Even in German, Hofmannsthal sometimes finds that the words he needs are not quite available. And yet, as forbidding as this essay is, it is one of Hofmannsthal’s most important, not only for its account of German intellectual history, but also for his perceptive view of the French tradition. It is in the penultimate sentence of this long essay that Hofmannsthal uses the phrase “conservative revolution.” For Hofmannsthal, the expression seems to refer to the “seekers” he describes here, to the attempt to achieve some of the appealing qualities of the French tradition, and to the possibility of building a new Europe and a renovated tradition on some of the strengths of the early sixteenth century. We are bound together in a community not by our shared living on the soil of the homeland, not by our physical contact in trade and commerce, but above all by a spiritual connection. In this, our old European nations are different from that youthful, outwardly powerful American state, in which we cannot yet recognize a nation in this sense. We find our way to one another in a language that is something utterly different from a merely conventional means of communication; for the past speaks to us, powers influence us and work directly on us that political institutions are powerless to accommodate or limit. A characteristic connection comes alive across the generations, and we sense a power at work in it that we dare to call the spirit of the nation. Everything higher that is worthy of notice has been left behind for many centuries in writing; and so we speak of the written word [Schrifttum] and mean by that not only the mountain of books that no single person can any longer master today, but written words of all kinds as they go back and forth between human beings: the letter that was meant only for one 158 ◆ Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea or for a few, the memorandum, as well as the anecdote, the slogan, the political or spiritual confession of faith, such as the newspapers offer—all forms that can become very effective from time to time. The word “literature” [Literatur] has virtually the same meaning, to be sure, as Schrifttum, but its sound is more ambiguous to us. The unfortunate division in our people between the educated and the uneducated is evoked at once when we use this word. We are immediately in its domain—but the splendor of Goethe’s spirit, which rested on this word a hundred years ago, has faded. When we turn to our neighboring nations, however, this concept does not have the same meaning. Of the three Romance nations that have assumed cultural leadership one after another since the sixteenth century, the French are closest to us because of their borders and our shared destiny. But France possesses a literature in the true sense of the word. What has been great since the beginning of the modern era, that is, for about three hundred and fifty years, what has been produced continues to exert its influence. What is less distinguished, clearly standing at some distance from the great works, recedes into the darkness after a certain time and rises again in new and clever forms. Even what is trivial, what is meant for the day, takes part in a certain dignity while it is influential because of the care with which it strives for a pure language and wants to express ideas in a clear, well-ordered, intelligible way. Fashion revitalizes tradition, tradition ennobles fashion. In the midst of such enduring change, ambition aims not to stand out but to fulfill traditional demands. A great observer once remarked that for the French the cultivation of personal expression is placed above the lure of uniqueness, and in relation to the work of art, attention is directed not at the mystery of biography but at the law that can be derived from the completed work. The result of this tendency is the language norm that holds the nation together ; and within this...

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