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

by David S. Luft

Overview

The Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) was one of the great modernists in the German language, but his importance as a major intellectual of the early twentieth century has not received adequate attention in the English-speaking world. One distinguished literary scholar of his generation called Hofmannsthal a "spiritual-moral authority" of a kind German culture had only rarely produced. This volume provides translations of essays that deal with the Austrian idea and with the distinctive position of German-speaking Austrians between German nationalism and peoples to the East, whether in the Habsburg Monarchy or beyond it, as well as essays that locate Hofmannsthal's thinking about Austria in relation to the broader situation of German and European culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557535900
Publisher:	Purdue University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2011
Series:	Central European Studies
Pages:	201
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

David Luft received his BA in comparative literature from Wesleyan (Connecticut) in 1966 and his PhD in modern European history from Harvard in 1972. He taught for thirty-six years at the University of California, San Diego. He joined the Department of History at Oregon State University in the fall of 2008 as Thomas Hart and Mary Jones Horning Professor in the Humanities.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Preface xi

Introduction 1

1 The Poet and Our Time (1906) 33

2 Boycott of Foreign Languages? (1914) 53

3 The Affirmation of Austria (1914) 57

4 Our Foreign Words (1914) 61

5 We Austrians and Germany (1915) 67

6 Grillparzer's Political Legacy (1915) 73

7 Austria in the Mirror of Its Literature (1916) 79

8 The Idea of Europe (1916) 89

9 The Austrian Idea (1917) 99

10 The Prussian and the Austrian (1917) 103

11 Adam Müller's Twelve Lectures on Eloquence (1920) 107

12 Three Small Observations (1921) 111

13 K. E. Neumann's Translation of the Holy Writings of the Buddhists (1921) 121

14 View of the Spiritual Condition of Europe (1922) 127

15 New German Contributions (1921) 131

16 Czech and Slovak Folk Songs (1922) 135

17 Address on Grillparzer (1922) 139

18 Stifter's Indian Summer (1924) 151

19 The Written Word as the Spiritual Space of the Nation (1927) 157

20 The Value and Dignity of the German Language (1927) 171

Bibliography 177

Index 181

Editorial Reviews

"It is the true accomplishment of this translation that Hofmannsthal's language, recreated in a clear and elegant English, regains its melody of an earlier time. If there ever was a captivating documentation of the European potential of Austria beyond the stereotypes of "Vienna at 1900," it has been brought together in this volume of essays that responded to the tragic challenges of World War I in a constructive way." —Frank Trommler, University of Pennsylvania

From the Publisher