„Es ist für Augenblicke, als würde die Schale der Erde unter einem zu Kristall...“ – ‚Plötzlichkeit‘ als Konturierung des Augenblicks in Hugo von Hofmannsthals Aufzeichnungen und Tagebüchern

Abstract

The diaries and notes kept by Hugo von Hofmannsthal illustrate the writer’s preoccupation with the problem of the aesthetics of the moment. The shapelessness and fluidity of the moment is perceived as a problem of its literary forgeability. The writer puts forward his own, more palpable conception of the moment, reflecting on inevitably disrupted moments in which experience or vision is concentrated or crystallized. His reflections on this issue in the diaries and notes correspond to the term of ‚epiphany‘ developed in his fictional works such as The Letter of Lord Chandos or Conversation on Poetry. In the notes and diaries the moment is the topic of concise statements which can be characterized as aphorisms. However, there are some notes in which such ‚epiphanies‘ are related as taken from the personal experience of the writer. In these episodes the particular moment is the initial element of the narrative structure. Hofmannsthal thus probes the problem of the continuity of the self and the fluidity of sense experience. His obsession with the fortuitousness and discontinuity of the self can be ascribed to his reading of Nietzsche, due to whom the self must regain its identity by destroying the ‚principle of individuation‘. His attempts to shape the fluid moments in one’s life must thus be considered as a reforgeing of identity in terms of modernity. Taking into consideration the obvious influence by Nietzsche’s philosophy, it seems valid to make use of the terminology developed by Karl Heinz Bohrer, analyzing Hofmannsthal’s diaries and notes. The pure experience of frightening ‚suddenness‘ appears to be of a particular importance for Hofmannsthal’s writing. Putting forward the example of Hofmannsthal’s stories, Bohrer shows how the ‚suddenness‘ of the moment challenges literary forms and genres. Also, in the lyrical texts the ‚shock‘ caused by the experience of discontinuity of life occurs in disruptiveness from any past nor any future. The moment – hardly expressable by means of language – as the gruesome experience of pain caused by the consciousness of being apart from life can be regarded as a key modality of aesthetic experience in Hofmannsthal’s notes and diaries.