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A review by msand3
The Lord Chandos Letter: And Other Writings by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
5.0
Discovering Hugo von Hofmannstahl's short fiction has been a revelation, as if I were seeing the germination of modernist literature -- the crux of 20th century thought. Here we have it all: the paralysis; the alienation; the fractured psyche; the inability of language to communicate subconscious desire; the rejection of formal structures and philosophies that provide whole, structured, and harmonious order; the epiphanies found in the ordinary; the exploration of the dream-worlds that shape our outer realities; the shadow aspect of the unconscious; the psycho-sexual repression that fosters social impotence, political upheaval, violence, and death; and the formal experimentation that tries to express these emerging modernist perspectives. To think that Hofmannstahl wrote these stories in his early-20s in the 1890s is nothing short of astonishing.
There are are several stories here that are justly famous: "Cavalry Story," in which a solider has an uncanny encounter with his doppelganger at a moment when his repressed sexual desires lead to a deadly challenge to authority; "Tale of the 672nd Night," in which the subconscious desire of the son of a rich merchant to reject his wealth and privilege leads to his downfall, and the title story, in which a man expresses anxiety over his inability to communicate the inexorable void of his inner existence in a world where meaning has become lost.
But perhaps my favorite story was a lesser-celebrated unfinished fragment, "The Golden Apple." A rug dealer lives a life of repressed delusions and false fantasies that are symbolized in a golden apple he keeps in a cabinet. His wife knows of its existence, but largely keeps it out of her mind (and sight). One day their seven-year-old daughter discovers the apple, which leads to an encounter with a shadowy man (paging Dr. Jung!). It is a harrowing tale of the way in which parental issues are passed onto children, who bear the burden of carrying (and working out) their parents' complexes by taking up their parents' un-lived lives. Hofmannstahl presents the narrative from the different perspective of each character -- father first, then the child, and finally the wife. He wrote the story in 1897...when he was 23.
After my joy in discovering this this book, I can't wait to dive into Hofmannstahl's poetry, dramas, essays, and lesser-known fiction.
There are are several stories here that are justly famous: "Cavalry Story," in which a solider has an uncanny encounter with his doppelganger at a moment when his repressed sexual desires lead to a deadly challenge to authority; "Tale of the 672nd Night," in which the subconscious desire of the son of a rich merchant to reject his wealth and privilege leads to his downfall, and the title story, in which a man expresses anxiety over his inability to communicate the inexorable void of his inner existence in a world where meaning has become lost.
But perhaps my favorite story was a lesser-celebrated unfinished fragment, "The Golden Apple." A rug dealer lives a life of repressed delusions and false fantasies that are symbolized in a golden apple he keeps in a cabinet. His wife knows of its existence, but largely keeps it out of her mind (and sight). One day their seven-year-old daughter discovers the apple, which leads to an encounter with a shadowy man (paging Dr. Jung!). It is a harrowing tale of the way in which parental issues are passed onto children, who bear the burden of carrying (and working out) their parents' complexes by taking up their parents' un-lived lives. Hofmannstahl presents the narrative from the different perspective of each character -- father first, then the child, and finally the wife. He wrote the story in 1897...when he was 23.
After my joy in discovering this this book, I can't wait to dive into Hofmannstahl's poetry, dramas, essays, and lesser-known fiction.