Hugo von Hofmannsthal – författare

När Hugo von Hofmannsthal debuterade som poet var han bara sexton år gammal. Hans texter förbluffade författarna som umgicks på Café Griensteidl, och snart stod han i centrum för den grupp som kom att kallas ”Det unga Wien”. För Hofmannsthal var poesin en tyngdlös väv av ord som frammanade drömlika själstillstånd, lika tydliga som flyktiga. Med virtuos formsäkerhet band han samman impulser från lyrisk romantik och fransk symbolism till dikter av en egen, sällsam skönhet. Deras tonfall är lågmält, men under det melankoliska, lätt distanserade lugnet vibrerar modernitetens jordskalv: jaget och språket står i begrepp att falla sönder. Det är med ett avförtrollat universum omkring sig som poesin riktar blicken ner i världshemlighetens djupa brunn.

I denna volym presenteras poeten Hofmannsthal i helfigur. Det är den första svenska utgåvan av hans poesi: här återfinns alla dikter som han själv valde att samla i bokform under sin livstid, i både original och översättning. Dikterna åtföljs också av kommentarer och ett efterord som berättar om Hofmannsthals samtid, liv och syn på poesin.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal is one of the modern era's most important writers, but his fame as Richard Strauss's pioneering collaborator on such operas as Der Rosenkavalier and Die Frau ohne Schatten has obscured his other remarkable writings: his precocious lyric poetry, inventive short fiction, keen essays, and visionary plays. The Whole Difference, which includes new translations as well as classic ones long out of print, is a fresh introduction to the enormous range of this extraordinary artist, and the most comprehensive collection of Hofmannsthal's writings in English. Selected and edited by the poet and librettist J. D. McClatchy, this collection includes early lyric poems; short prose works, including "The Tale of Night Six Hundred and Seventy-Two," "A Tale of the Cavalry," and the famous "Letter of Lord Chandos"; two full-length plays, The Difficult Man and The Tower; as well as the first act of The Cavalier of the Rose. From the glittering salons of imperial Vienna to the bloodied ruins of Europe after the Great War, the landscape of Hofmannsthal's world stretches across the extremes of experience.This collection reflects those extremes, including both the sparkling social comedy of "the difficult man" Hans Karl, so sensitive that he cannot choose between the two women he loves, and the haunting fictional letter to Francis Bacon in which Lord Chandos explains why he can no longer write. Complete with an introduction by McClatchy, this collection reveals an artist whose unusual subtlety and depth will enthrall readers.

Since World War II Hugo von Hofmannsthal has regained his place as a classic of modern European literature. The translations collected here - Death and the Fool, Electra, and The Tower represent different periods and interests in his career as a dramatist. Yet, as the critical introduction on Hofmannsthal's tragic theater indicates, all three plays, written in different theatrical idioms, reveal a unified and developing conception of man's estate in the modern world.Hofmannsthal rejected the current fashions of the modern stage but was nonetheless a keen observer of his time. His deliberate indebtedness to the great theaters of the past allowed him to enlarge the scope of his own dramaturgy and to use a more articulate language than that afforded by the conventions of the modern realistic theater.This book includes the 1927 theater version of Hofmannsthal's last great work, The Tower, available for the first time in English translation.