Chapter Title: INTRODUCTION

Book Title: Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 'An Impossible Man'

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 INTRODUCTION

Depth must be concealed. Where?

On the surface. (Hofmannsthal)

I
George Meredith, in his masterly, wide-ranging Essay on Comedy (1877), offers us a
definition of social comedy which is particularly apposite to Hofmannsthal’s
achievement as comic playwright:
The laughter of Comedy is impersonal and of unrivalled politeness, nearer a smile;
often no more than a smile. It laughs through the mind, for the mind directs it;
and it might be called the humour of the mind.

Hofmannsthal himself, widely versed as he was in the European literary tradition,

greatly valued Meredith’s essay and would certainly have concurred with its
conclusion that ‘the test of true Comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter.’
For the comedies he left to posterity, from the early Casanova studies (The Adventurer
and the Singer, Christina’s Homeward Journey) through the Rosenkavalier down to
the late comedies with their contemporary settings (An Impossible Man, The
Incorruptible Servant), are all distinguished by a high degree of verbal sophistication.
The broader effects of buffoonery and caricature, comic distortion or drastic
emphasis, were neither to his taste nor did they come naturally to his subtler talent,
as his contentious correspondence with the far robuster Richard Strauss clearly bears
out. The comic libretti he wrote for the composer, so celebrated today, in fact
constitute a hard-gained compromise: the successful result of a difficult collaboration
between two disparate artistic temperaments whose notions of comedy often stood
far apart. Unlike Strauss, Hofmannsthal was not attracted to burlesque or tomfoolery
on the stage; his view of comedy is essentially rooted in the refinements of irony. The
finer points of ambiguity, antithetical relations, subtle juxtaposition and contrast, are
valued by him far beyond the brasher effects of farce. He chooses wit rather than
waggishness, pregnant silences rather than startling stunts. Being above all a poet
with a fine ear for verbal nuance, Hofmannsthal developed his comic dialogue as a
high literary art, having learnt his lesson from major models like Molière, Goldoni,
Shakespeare or Lessing, but also from past masters within the tradition of Viennese
popular comedy. A vast collection of occasional jottings, notes and observations bear
witness to this tireless study of classics in the genre. The uses of Hofmannsthal’s
comedic language are, as will be seen, refined and complex. He worked at the the text
over more than ten years, revising and condensing his material in order to achieve
the desired formal balance and clarity. As for the human image projected by his comic
theatre, this is consistently and eminently paradoxical. Mankind is seen as an endless

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2 Introduction

mass of comic contradiction. Of course, there is nothing strikingly new about that:
all important writers of comedy since Aristophanes have worked in similar vein to
expose to ridicule the unresolved, contrary human enigma. Yet there is something
quite distinctive (and one is inclined to say, peculiarly Austrian) in the way
Hofmannsthal naturally combines the established features and formulas of tradition
with the vernacular accents of a familiar world, received and mediated by a modern
sensibility. Being a native of Vienna and heir to its richly cosmopolitan heritage, he
was acutely sensitive to the coexistence, within its culture, of disparate elements; a
compound of past and present, a contrast of ties and breaks in tradition. As he once
expressed it in a late public speech entitled ‘The Legacy of Antiquity’ (1926): ‘The Old
and the New is present side by side, it is truly somewhat more present for us than it
is elsewhere.’ The fact that he chose to represent this wealth of contrast and
contradiction by symbolic means, above all through the medium of pervasive irony,
and not in the style of the Naturalists, lent his contributions to the comic genre their
distinctive polish and poise.

II
Few European writers of the fin de siècle could claim to rival in breadth and diversity
of talent the Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929). Born in Vienna,
and only son to Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal, and his
wife Anna (nee Fohleutner), he enjoyed most of the benefits and privileges of the
well-to-do middle classes, attending the ‘Akademisches Gymnasium’ and receiving
thorough grounding in both classical and modern languages. A prodigious reader
from an early age, he began publishing lyric poetry from his sixteenth year under the
pseudonym of ‘Loris’ and rose to immediate fame and acceptance among the literati
of Young Vienna ( which included Hermann Bahr, Arthur Schnitzler, Felix Salten,
Richard Beer-Hofmann, PeterAltenberg) before he had even left school. Steeped as
he was in the European literary tradition, he diversified his protean gifts into many
forms as he matured, moving away from the early poetry and lyrical drama, to the
libretto, short story, novel and essay, whilst broadening his range to anthologist,
reviver of the medieval mystery play, tragedian and comic playwright. His
collaboration with Richard Strauss in the years which began with Elektra (1906) and
lasted to the year of his death in 1929 made him into a household name on the opera
stage. Similarly, his enduring friendship with Max Reinhardt proved most fruitful
for the theatre, not least in bringing into being the Salzburg Festival (1911).
Hofmannsthal was intuitively conscious of an organic process, within himself, of
growth and development, which he attempted to trace out in later life in schematic
annotations entitled ad me ipsum. This cryptic self-appraisal was to serve the
enquiring reader as a basic guide to the progressive stages of the playwright’s
development. Hofmannsthal early felt a particular affinity with the Goethean idea of
a secret unity underlying most natural and human phenomena, which he expressed
in the following terms:

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 Introduction 3

As a young man I perceived the unity of the world, the religious idea, in its beauty;
the manifold beauty of all beings moved me, the contrasts, and the fact that all of
them actually related to one another. Later it was the separate entity and the forces
at work behind this lovely unity which I felt impelled to represent; yet I never
abandoned that sense of unity. (March 1922)
A significant part of this notion of a fundamental coherence in his maturation as
playwright also relates to his approach to comic theatre. He increasingly came to see
the comedy as the fullest possible embodiment of the social idea. Indeed, he explicitly
called his concept of comedy ‘the achieved idea of the social’. His earliest playlets of
the eighteen-nineties were lyrical in style and filled with that alluring symbolism
which was prevalent in the age of aestheticism, though tempered by a distinctive
ethical accentuation that set them apart. Hofmannsthal’s first full-scale comedy,
Christina’s Homeward Journey (1909), like his Rosenkalier (1910), is given a fanciful
Rococo setting, being transported, as it were, into an impressionistic, rarified
substitute reality at some remove from the harsher world of common experience. It
took Hofmannsthal several determined steps to reach a premise which embraced the
contemporary world, to create more sharply defined figures belonging to that world,
and an appropriate vernacular language imbued with critical edge.
The influences upon the playwright in attaining to his rather abstract notion of
social comedy are varied and complex. Within the German context, it was Lessing’s
Minna von Barnhelm (1767) which offered him the most enduring model. This too
was a comedy set in the immediate aftermath of war; it was no less concerned with a
love intrigue involving a diffident, vacillating hero and a spirited young heroine, very
much his equal, who could manipulate her lover. It was based on clearly defined social
stratification, rich in ironic inconsistensies, finely tuned in the dialogue registers to
produce contrastive effects. Above all it was a lucid construct of classical elegance, in
which the shifting configuration of characters was handled with admirable precision.
Hofmannsthal was inherently attracted to the well-made play. He once wrote that in
comedy ‘Lessing is a master of the indirect’. And it was this essential trait which he
also identified in Molière: ‘In the Misanthrope the entire dialogue is criticism from
beginning to end’; to which he adds in elaboration: ‘criticism is only one form of the
indirect.’ Hofmannsthal studied Molière closely from his earliest preoccupation with
the comedy and the benefits he derived from such critical scrutiny can hardly be over-
estimated. The art of creating dramatic constellations, grouping figures to produce
tense confrontations, the difficult art of keeping scenes ‘pure’ or uncluttered, the
subtle interplay between high and low modes of language, the art of sustaining the
energy of comedic dialogue, are some of the important insights he gained through
his perusal of the grand master. It can hardly be overlooked that Alceste shares a
certain family likeness with Hans Karl, even if the latter is more distrustful of the uses
of language than of humankind.
Another important point of reference is the tradition of light Viennese social
comedy (Konversationsstück) and its chief exponent Eduard von Bauernfeld
(1802–1890). This popular playwright — who, incidentally, belonged to Schubert’s

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4 Introduction

circle of friends — was the most successful exponent of this type of social comedy:
contemporary in setting, with largely conventional plots involving deftly drawn
characters from the nobility and bourgeoisie, distinguished by its easy conversational
style and fluency of dialogue. Bauernfeld’s plays were a mainstay of the repertoire of
Vienna’s Burgtheater up to the early part of the twentieth century. The character study
Crises (1852) has especially been singled out as one which served Hofmannsthal for
creative stimulus and as a dramatic counterpart for his work on An Impossible Man.
Even the opening stage directions, the palatial setting, the references to the card game
and dance music drifting in from the adjoining ballroom, are close in spirit to the
setting in Acts II and III of the later comedy. But Hofmannsthal has only drawn upon
a number of externals from this popular genre: a precisely observed social framework
and the manners and idiom appropriate to it; i.e. polished, polite social banter. What
is lacking in Bauernfeld is any critical awareness of the conventional: there is no
trace of parody in his language of the salon. The dimension of acute language-
consciousness, that is, dialogue replete with critical irony, belongs to Hofmannsthal
alone. Baron Hohenberg in Crises is, like Hans Karl Bühl (these names, meaning ‘high
mountain’ and ‘hillock’ respectively, are linked by ironic allusion) are on the brink
of forty, consequently at a ‘critical’ stage in life. There are also striking similarities in
the confidential manners of the manservants in the two plays, and that semblance of
desultoriness in the handling of dialogue which imperceptibly moves the action
forward but conveys a static impression.
A less obvious, yet significant connection is to be traced to Granville-Barker’s play
Waste (1906/7), to which Hofmannsthal’s attention was drawn by a review he read
in Die Schaubühne in January 1908. This topical social drama, dealing with
Disestablishment of the Church and rather loosely entitled a ‘Tragedy’, is concerned
with the unfortunate consequences of a casual liaison between a member of
parliament with brilliant career prospects and an unhappily married woman. Henry
Trebell is described as: ‘hard-bitten, brainy, forty-five and very sure of himself. He
has a cold keen eye, which rather belies a sensitive mouth: hands which grip, and a
figure that is austere.’ These characteristics are, on the face of it, quite inapplicable to
Hofmannsthal’s comic hero, who is irresolute, difficile and lacking any firmness of
hand. Common to both, however, is a problematical relationship to the opposite sex,
indecision at crucial moments, inhibited self-expression, an incapacity for self-
surrender, but a deep sense of the importance of the child. Trebell at times uses words
which might have been uttered by Hans Karl: ‘A prolonged fit of idleness might make
me marry … a clever woman.’ ‘You know I never make promises … it’s taking oneself
too seriously.’ ‘There are three facts in life that call up emotion … Birth, Death, and
the Desire for Children’. Unlike Hans Karl he is a self-confessed misogynist, but like
him, he maintains excellent relations with an elder sister who lives with him under
the same roof. Though Hofmannsthal develops his characters with varying degrees
of irony, there is also a sufficient element of the ironical in Granville-Barker’s subtle
scripting of dialogue to stimulate the comic playwright. Absolute purity of genre, as
between comedy and tragedy, is something modern social drama has dispensed with,

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 Introduction 5

at least since Anton Chehov’s tragi-comedies conquered the stage. There is, indeed,
a strong affinity between the virtually plotless, static Chehovian dramatic construct
and that adopted by Hofmannsthal. There are equally many points of similarity
between the lethargic, philandering Platonov and the passive heart-breaker Hans
Karl. The point of focus is an individualized human portrait, not a comic type, even
though Hofmannsthal’s title (Der Schwierige) would seem to validate a universal
condition. However, Hans Karl is hardly conceived in typological terms: the quality
of being ‘difficile’ is not a generic trait like avarice, hypocrisy, misanthropy or
hypochondria. Hofmannsthal’s play may allude by its title to the classical tradition
of high comedy, but its treatment of the irreducible complexity of the individual
psyche is specific and essentially modernist. One of his aphorisms in the collection
Buch der Freunde (Book of Friends) pointedly states: ‘The Individual is inexpressible’.
In view of this, the choice of an indefinite article in the newly rendered title here
adopted, appears to my mind justified. Everything points to Hans Karl being a
singular case.

III
Hofmannsthal’s struggle with the form of his most widely acclaimed comedy over
rather more than a decade was anything but smooth progress. The precise date of its
inception cannot exactly be pin-pointed, though the year 1907 has been widely
acknowledged as marking the poet’s resolute turn to prose comedy. There were three
phases during which he worked on the text, whilst at the same time being engaged
on other projects: (a) December 1909 to autumn 1911; (b) the latter half of 1917,
when the greater part of the text took shape; (c) September 1919 to August 1920 when
Act III was re-written and the manuscript prepared for publication. The play was first
printed in successive issues of the journal Neue Freie Presse (Vienna, 1920). This was
destined not to be the final version, however, for the tireless author undertook some
further revisions for the publication in book form by Samuel Fischer (Berlin, 1921).
The latter has become the standard text, now generally established as authoritative.
Though many of the early draft manuscripts, including the first type-script, have been
lost, a considerable body of material has survived and has been published in volume
12 of the collected critical edition, S. Fischer (Frankfurt a. M., 1993). To delve into
this mass of trial formulations, variants, deletions and revisions, is to observe the
perfectionist craftsman in his workshop, honing down his material, discarding what
is felt to be inapt, superfluous, too bluntly expressed, wanting in finesse of tone or
somehow out of character. Above all, Hofmannsthal was intent on strict economy of
verbal means and on maintaining the appropriate tone. There are also numerous
annotations designed to serve as signals or reminders as to mode and style, e.g.: ‘One
writes comedies not with wit but with sympathy.’ ‘Criticism as motor of the action.’
‘Analogies: that someone barrs himself from his own happiness out of delicacy: Minna
von Barnhelm. That all the figures consist of criticism: Misanthrope.’ ‘The
conversation to be kept completely on the surface, Molière-like. Nothing of the

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6 Introduction

subliminal emerges.’ ‘In Molière the essence lies not in the figures but in the
relationships.’ Such notes serve us as illuminating comments on the comedy as a
whole and remind us of the fine tuning which has gone into its texture.
The prolonged genesis of this comedy reveals a changing focus in the conception
of the central figures and their roles. Initially, Hofmannsthal had thought of calling
the play ‘Die Schwierigen’ (The Difficult Couple) since not only Hans Karl but Helen
too was to appear full of inhibiting complexities that stood in the way of any match
between them. Another title considered by the author was ‘Der Mann ohne Absicht’
(The Man without Design) since this narrowed attention to that negative capability
in the hero’s constitution which might serve to illumine his dilemma. The shift of
emphasis to a central figure of apparent inscrutabilty about whom all the other
characters are grouped in speculative curiosity, gave the comedy greater strictness of
design and focus without forfeiting the significance of the other protagonist, Helen.
What Hofmannsthal was successful in achieving by this shift, was to accentuate the
elements of confusion and misunderstanding, which became his principal motor in
the mechanism of the comedy, not to mention their prominent motivic function. It
is typical of Hofmannsthal’s creative method that he should begin with a vivid idea
of a character’s personality and produce from this nucleus of essential human traits
the appropriate speech, accents, atmospheric touches, which ultimately grew into the
finished dialogue. Some of those who knew Hofmannsthal personally were quick to
seize on the similarity between the author and the figure of Hans Karl. Paul Geraldy
remarked: ‘That is Hofmannsthal, shy, anxious, unable to act because he is too
intelligent.’ Such a view is, inevitably, over-simplified. A late annotation by
Hofmannsthal (dated 5 November 1926) in retrospect affords truer insight as to his
own detached view of his hero’s representative status and significance: ‘Attitude:
social — Austrian (the “refined clever Viennese”). Connection to a tradition. Intended
mediation. (Attitude of the “Difficult Man” in a world lacking nuance.)’

IV
The precise date at which the action of the comedy is set may be gleaned from a few
scenes in the first Act (2, 3 and 8). It is ostensibly the twelfth of September 1917, about
a year before the cessation of hostilities in World War I and at an historical juncture,
since by then the Austro-Hungarian empire was rapidly falling apart. At that stage
of the war the uneasy alliance between Prussia and Austria was further strained when
Austro-Hungary undertook secret negotiations with the Entente powers to sue for
peace. Hofmannsthal’s schematic polemic entitled ‘Prussian and Austrian’ published
in that critical year of 1917, is a revealing document not just in historical terms, but
from the perspective of the comedy also. It crystallizes in controversial terms the
deep-reaching social, cultural, historical and psychological differences which divided
the brothers-in-arms. When fleshed out in terms of stage characters, we may
recognize quite a number of these diametrically opposed or sharply contrasted traits
in Neuhoff and Hans Karl. As with all abstract generalizations concerning national

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 Introduction 7

character and typologies, a reductive tendency to over-simplification and bias is

inherent in the attempt. Consequently it is difficult to overlook the satirical brush
with which Neuhoff the Prussian is tarred.
This comedy is concerned with the complications of human relations, not with the
complexities of history. Allusions to the war regularly punctuate the text yet remain
resolutely unobtrusive, being thrust into a background of more or less casual
reference. It is not so much the recollection of a soldier dying of his wounds in
hospital which receives accentuation, as the transparent contrivance by a Neuhoff to
exploit the episode for his own conceited purposes. For in flattering Hans Karl and
singing the praises of Helen’s personality, he is clearly revelling in his own mental
powers of perceptiveness and surmise as a reader of character. Equally, the incident
of being buried alive in the trenches, related by Hans Karl to Helen, serves a higher
revelatory function within their relationship rather than to introduce any authentic
historical note. It is also apropos of Hans Karl’s affair with Antoinette that some
precise calendar dates are mentioned. These appear to anchor the play in an exact
and purposeful time-scheme, yet actually serve a purely comic purpose when the
over-scrupulous private secretary Neugebauer rattles them off from memory. The
Emperor Franz Joseph I had been dead since 12 November 1916, and though the
monarchy survived for the duration of the war, it was clearly as moribund as its
personified symbol. The fact that Hans Karl should be pestered about a maiden speech
to the Upper House in Parliament (which actually had ceased to be) is yet another of
those anachronisms in the comedy which serve an ironic function. The entire social
atmosphere, the insouciant demeanour of the characters pursuing their wonted
pleasures and pastimes, all suggest that the war is a thing of the past while nothing in
the fabric of society appears to have changed.
All of this accords with the author’s purpose in representing society not
analytically, but in suggestive or symbolic terms. In one of his aphorisms he posits
this as a generally valid premise: ‘Whoever sees the social whole other than
symbolically goes astray.’ A letter to his friend Arthur Schnitzler (2 November 1919)
puts the case in more explicit terms:
Perhaps I might never have been able to depict the society it [the comedy]
represents, namely Austrian aristocratic society, with such love, in all its charm
and distinction, than at that historical moment when all that had but recently been
a given certainty, indeed a power, quietly and eerily dissolves into nothingness,
just like a little lingering cloud of morning mist.

The playwright’s approach is not designed to achieve social-historical authenticity,

however finely attuned he might be to the symptoms and nuances of his transient
epoch. His preferred method is to capture the spirit of the times through the various
facets of character and language. A revealing passage from a letter to his friend Raoul
Auernheimer (20 August 1921) sounds out an important distinction in their
respective understanding of the role of the central figure in the play as representative
of something more complex:

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8 Introduction

We do indeed look for the groundwork on which the character of a ‘Difficult Man’
rests in quite different spheres: you, within the social, which seems to me of
secondary importance, I, within one that is deeper: in the difficult relationship to
speech and action, those twin magical forces which form links between human
beings. Herein also lies the justification for that comico-antithetical relationship
fundamental to this comedy, and to his counterpart Stani to whom speech and
action come so easily.

Faced with a play that contains so many layers of possible meaning, closer scrutiny
of Hofmannsthal’s central figure and his relationship to language would seem to be
called for.

V
The so-called ‘language crisis’ that beset the young Hofmannsthal, exactly coincided
with the turn of the century and found expression in his famous ‘Chandos Letter’ (‘Ein
Brief’, 1902), as it came to be called. This fictive letter is addressed to the creator of
the essay, Sir Francis Bacon, by a young contemporary who finds himself in an acute
dilemma: though a practised, accomplished writer, Chandos has lost faith in the
efficacy of words, since for him the very medium of language has become meaningless
and stale. He analyzes his condition with profound introspection, paradoxically
employing the most eloquent terms in offering a diagnosis of his paralyzing condition:
My case is, briefly, this: I have totally lost the capacity either to think or to speak
coherently about anything whatsoever.
At first it gradually became impossible for me to discuss a more demanding or
general topic and thereby to have recourse to such words as are commonly and
casually employed by everyone. I felt an inexplicable malaise in merely uttering
the words ‘mind’, ‘soul’ or ‘body’. I found it inwardly impossible to pronounce
any judgement on the affairs at court, the events at parliament or whatever. And
this was not because of any form of scruples, for you know my all but frivolous
courage and frankness: but rather those abstract words which our tongue must of
necessity employ to voice any sort of judgement, fell apart in my mouth like putrid
mushrooms.

This essay by Hofmannsthal touched a nerve among his contemporaries and he was
quickly recognized as the spokesman of a generation of writers who felt a radical
break with the literature of the past. The problematical nature of language never
ceased to be an issue for Hofmannsthal or the writers of Young Vienna. He noted on
5 October 1909: ‘Speech is a tremendous compromise for everybody — only this
seldom becomes conscious, because it constitutes the universal means of making
oneself understood.’ This observation leads one straight to an important theme of the
comedy. Language, as the chief medium of communication and the indispensable
vehicle of social intercourse, itself becomes the focus of attention in An Impossible
Man. Hans Karl’s exasperated words in the penultimate scene may be recalled here:
‘But everything one utters is indecent. The simple fact that one utters something is

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 Introduction 9

indecent.’ His suspicion of the word is one of his principal characteristics and is
chiefly expressed through his frequent lapses into silence, his inability to commit
himself, his recourse to evasive gesture and, most tellingly, his delight in Furlani’s
delicate act of mimicry. The dumbshow by this entertainer (whose act is merely
described in Act II) is to be seen as a meaningful correlative to the social role played
by his admirer Hans Karl, who finds in Furlani ‘more intellect than for most
conversations’. Helen too is severely censorious of all conversation in so-called polite
society: ‘words which reduce to banality everything that is real and make a sedative
out of small-talk.’ It is a significant feature of this sophisticated text that key terms
resonate in motivic manner and thereby produce a subtle network of associations.
Most prominent among such words are: ‘Absicht’ (intention, design), ‘Nuance’,
‘Mißverständnis’ (misunderstanding), ‘Konfusion’, ‘Komplikation’, ‘Notwendigkeit’
(necessity). The translator of this comedy is therefore challenged throughout to
maintain consistency within a variety of contexts which subtly ring changes on stress
and meaning.
A key to Hofmannsthal’s sensitive treatment of the theme of human communica-
tion may be found in nuce by looking at an early poem entitled ‘Die Beiden’. The
poem was obviously recalled to mind when he wrote the final scene in Act II, since
the stage direction referring to the lovers’ hands which fail to meet is virtual self-
quotation. The poem’s symbolic encounter involves only dumb gesture, movement,
and the all-expressive human hand to convey notions of self-control, deep, unsettling
emotion, and the failure to communicate something precious, symbolized in the cup
filled with wine. Not a word is spoken, yet the subtle, complex import of a momentous
encounter between the sexes is nonetheless vividly made present. Such is the quality
of Hofmannsthal’s reticent art, that sign and symbol evoke a profuser intensity of
meaning than any denotative terms or direct speech. The dialogue which
Hofmannsthal developed for his comedy frequently gives way to the suggestive force
of gesture and silence. The discreet manservant Luke can read his master’s mind and
mood by observing tell-tale signs of his agitation, like the unnecessary opening of a
drawer or the straightening of a picture. At a higher level of sophistication, Helen has
learnt to read Hans Karl’s hidden biography by closely observing his inconsequential
affairs with a succession of women. The comic corollary of such insight is Stani’s
misplaced conviction that he can understand every nuance of his uncle, or Neuhoff’s
haughty verdict on Hans Karl as a ‘nonentity’, and not least, the generally wrong-
headed interpretation of his ‘intentions’ by most of the characters who surround him.
As a figure, Hans Karl stands at the centre of endless, futile speculation. He is besieged
by characters who look for hidden meanings in his conduct where none exists. The
irony of this situation is exploited to the full in a comedy which has for its focus an
eligible bachelor who cannot make up his mind about anything, least of all about
women. Language figures in all of this as the flawed medium of communication,
brimming with ambiguities, misused and misinterpreted by all, yet for all its fallibility,
still the indispensable vehicle of social interaction. Hans Karl and Helen, in two
crucial scenes together that are vital to their mutual understanding (Act II, Sc. 14 and

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10 Introduction

Act III, Sc. 8), come to reveal their true selves just because there is no trace of make-
believe in their ‘authentic’ use of language, so different from the smooth
dissimulations of a Neuhoff or the pompous verbosity of the Famous Man.
Each character in the comedy is defined by distinctive verbal registers and
individual mannerisms of speech, which includes even the minor figures. The servants
Luke and Vincent are sharply contrasted by their respective manner and tone; the
former is dignified and discreet in an old-fashioned way, the latter an uncouth, rough-
spoken representative of the brash new age that is about to break in. Neugebauer uses
the obsequious, over-solicitous terms of a resentful and avid, upwardly mobile petit-
bourgeoisie: a voice rather reminiscent of a Uriah Heep. The Famous Man is academic
vanity personified, expressing himself with bloated pretentiousness. Edine, foremost
of the blue-stockings, is all foolish frills, with comic lapses into malapropism and the
vulgar vernacular. Agatha is a scaled-down image of her mistress Antoinette, and
even less successful in preventing her voluble tongue from uttering indiscretions.
Hechingen’s usual tone is anxious, fussy and tedious, but when he alters it towards
his wife to heightened ardour and flamboyance, the unwonted romantic note becomes
irritating to her. Neuhoff, the Prussian, uses speech most artificially, either as a
flattering tool to ingratiate himself, or as a wooer’s weapon to beguile and conquer,
or as the badge of intellectual superiority in a society he secretly despises. The flighty
Antoinette is perfectly captured in the nervous, coquettish idiom of her feminine role,
displaying the native charm of Viennese at its most appealing. Crescence and
Altenwyl belong to the well-groomed nobility and do it full justice by their easy
eloquence, enlivened by that subtle admixture of colloquial Viennese which binds
the upper with the lower social orders and which translation can only hint at. Stani’s
speech with its clipped conciseness and somewhat juvenile self-certainty betrays his
weakness for over-hasty simplification, snap judgements and ineptitude as the fond
imitator of his uncle Kari. By this finely tuned polyphonous treatment of the voices
of the play, Hofmannsthal unfolds the full register of implict ironies with great
virtuosity.
In that concisest of aphorisms, already quoted, Hofmannsthal draws attention to
the incommensurable nature of human personality: ‘The individual is inexpressible.’
Language must, in such a view, fall short of expressing the entire truth about anyone;
yet this comedy is expressly designed to delve into so complex a character as Hans
Karl. Hofmannsthal’s hero is both egotistical and enigmatic; one who rather relishes
the fact that nobody, not even his closest relatives, can sound out his whims and
fancies, much less fathom his deeper designs (in so far as he harbours any). He applies
the indeterminate adjective ‘impossible’ to himself on three occasions within two
lengthy dialogues with Helen. Whether prompted by sheer frustration (‘My God, I’m
just impossible’), by insecurity or more artful self-reproach, the word resonates with
shifting accentuation and meaning. If it is also used in sweeping condemnation of
Neuhoff and Vinzenz this reveals its multi-faceted function within the finely-woven
texture of Hofmannsthal’s language. Significantly Helen says of him: ‘it’s impossible
to know his final word on anything’. He once says to Helen in his own defence: ‘I

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 Introduction 11

have an impossible character’, yet to Crescence he protests: ‘I’m the least complicated
person in the world.’ There is a considerable portion of truth in both assertions. Helen,
with her profound feminine intuition, is able to see into the heart of the man she has
always loved. She commands more searching means of understanding Hans Karl than
mere words can provide, for she judges him by his actions and demeanour, as when
he involuntarily returns to her house having said goodbye, or by meanings that lie
beyond the reach of words as attested by the no less involuntary proposal scene (Act
III, Sc. 8). He has every right to be amazed at her ability to interpret his every word
and action. She has had access to that deeper will within the unconscious self which
Hans Karl is afraid to address, until she breaks the spell by her insistent probing.
What sublime irony ultimately lies in this effortless apprehension of an impossibly
difficult man.

* * *
Note: The first stage performance of Der Schwierige took place, without the author
being present, on 8 November 1921 in the ‘Residenztheater’ Munich, directed by Kurt
Stieler. The first staging in Vienna was on 6 April 1924 in the ‘Theater in der
Josephstadt’, directed by Max Reinhardt. This was attended by Hugo von
Hofmannsthal.

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