THE IMPLICIT PHILOSOPHER

Transcription

THE
IMPLICIT
PHILOSOPHER
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
in the tradition of
German Philosophy
Carl Tertio Druml
The Implicit Philosopher
Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the Tradition
of German Philosophy
June 2015
Author:
Carl Tertio Druml
10223649
Philosophy:
Thesis for the Degree of Master of Arts
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Supervisor: Dr. Elsbeth Brouwer
Second Reader: Dr. Michiel van Lambalgen
Abstract
For people familiar with the oeuvre of the Austrian writer Hugo von
Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) it may seem like a strange thesis to call him a
philosopher. He was a poet, a playwright, a librettist, and an essay writer:
but a philosopher? In this thesis, I investigate the counter-tradition of German philosophy, as brought forth by philosophers such as J.G. Herder and
F. Schlegel, and their philosophy of language. After discussing some of Hofmannsthal’s contemporary Viennese philosophers (for example, F. Mauthner) and writers (for example A. Schnitzler), I will place Hugo von Hofmannsthal in this counter tradition. Especially in his essayistic work and
diaries, we can find a plethora of evidence, that shows that Hofmannsthal
was not only mindful to problems of language, he was also - if not a first-tier
thinker - definitely in the second row of philosophy of language. As a literary
figure, his works feature an often more belletristic-aesthetic, yet his oeuvre
is definitely one of the most interesting accounts of (literary) investigation
of the boundaries of language, and can be seen as partly anticipating later
philosophers, for example Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Contents
1 Introduction
1
2 The
2.1
2.2
2.3
“Implicit Philosopher” and his Origin
Herder and Hamann - Reaction to Kant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Humboldt and Schlegel - Romantic Conception of Language . . . .
Nietzsche - Ethics and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3 Fin
3.1
3.2
3.3
de Siècle Vienna and Language
20
Mauther and Mach - Philosophy and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Bahr and Kraus - Cultural and Social Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Jung Wien and Sprachskepsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4 Hugo von Hofmannsthal
4.1 Hofmannsthal’s Philosophy of Language .
4.1.1 Ein Brief - Philosophy of Language
4.1.2 Der Schwierige - Silence and Parole
4.2 Hofmannsthal’s General Philosophy . . . .
5 Conclusive Remarks
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Acknowledgements
I am especially grateful to Dr. Elsbeth Brouwer for her supervision with my thesis,
her excellent feedback on my writing, and her suggestions for further readings. My
warmest thanks also to Prof. Dr. Michiel van Lambalgen for agreeing to be the
second reader. Additionally I would like to thank Arian Lehner for the design
of the cover. Lastly I would like to thank Mag. Michael Berthold for getting me
acquainted with the topic in the first place.
i
1
Introduction
Sprechen ist ein ungeheurer Kompromiss
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 20.20.1921
While the quote above fits the topic of this thesis perfectly: constructing the
language philosophy of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), I should start it o↵
with a contradiction: Hofmannsthal was no philosopher. He was not a philosopher,
but an artist. His body and soul strived into the artistic domain, from his first
poems in his tender teenage years, to his most mature work, the play der Turm,
nothing can be said with more certainty than this: Hofmannsthal was an artist.
One only has to consider the poetry of his youth, which was never the poetry of
a young person,1 or his oeuvre for the stage, which goes from poetic-lyrical plays
to blunt comedies and into sublime opera-librettos; one has to read his almost
mythological short stories, or the flamboyantly colored essayistic work, which has
perhaps no equal in the German language. The conclusion will always be the same:
Hofmannsthal could have never expressed anything outside the aesthetic form.
Hofmannsthal’s contemporary Otto Weininger wrote that there are no new
philosophical or artistic ideas, because both of them are timeless,2 and exactly this
is where the solution to the paradox lies: Hofmannsthal was so much an artist, that
his artistic ideas crossed back into the philosophic realm. Any aesthetic inquiry
into the soul of the world will, if it goes deep enough, necessarily be a philosophical investigation. In his gorgeous collection of aphorisms, the Buch der Freunde,
Hofmannsthal asserts that “Das Plastische entsteht nicht durch Schauen, sondern
durch Identifikation”3 which goes right into the core of the matter. According to
Hofmannsthal you could not form a three dimensional opinion about any object
by mere observation: only through identification can we achieve recognition. Hofmannsthal was therefore not a mere thinker, philosophy is not a precise term for
his inquiries; he identified with every matter always as an artist.
Yet the dusty wooden banalities of our every day can come to life in the eye
of the artist! Hofmannsthal managed to describe the lure of the cinema in the
bleakest tones, to paint the “prehistoric” mountains of Austria in the most vivid
color, and more than one of his discussions of other writers is actually more pleasurable to read than the very authors he discussed. As a writer and retired poet,
however, one of the topics of the utmost importance to him remained the question
1
“Hofmannsthal (hat) niemals, nicht einmal in den ersten Gedichten, wirkliche Jugendlyrik
geschrieben (...).” Hermann Broch, Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit (München: R. Piper & Co,
1964) p.149.
2
See chapter quote of section 2 for the full quote. Otto Weininger, “Die Kultur und ihr
Verhältnis zum Glauben”, Über die letzten Dinge (Wien, Österreich: Matthes und Seitz, 1904)
p.118.
3
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Buch der Freunde [1922]”, Reden und Aufsätze III: 1925-1929,
Aufzeichnungen, ed. Bernd Schoeller, Ingeborg Beyer-Ahlert, and Rudolf Hirsch (Frankfurt am
Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1980) p.292.
1
Hofmannsthal
the Artist
Art and
Philosophy
The
Structure of this
Work
of the possibilities and boundaries of language. Hofmannsthal proved there, with
his fondness for identification and immersion, that his thoughts surpassed mere
aesthetic consideration by far. He already asked questions in his adolescence, that
would only reach philosophical mainstream half a century later! Therefore Hermann Broch called Hofmannsthal’s essayistic work his “philosophisches Tagebuch
im Ereignis des Daseins”.4
But also the artist, and especially one as mindful to the tradition as he was must
have been influenced by other writers and philosophers! This is also where the essay
will start: there exists a German counter-tradition in philosophy, that demanded a
philosophical language which is closer to a natural or artistic way of writing - this
thesis will explain why Hofmannsthal was the epitome of such a development. At
the same time, inquiries into the nature of language have a strong tradition in the
German-speaking world: the second topic of interest is to reconstruct the material
that must have influenced Hofmannsthal’s view of language and critique thereof.
The remainder of this thesis will, therefore, be structured as follows: in section (2), I will explore the philosophical underpinnings that Hofmannsthal and
his contemporaries built upon. It will be structured in a chronological way, with
section (2.1) discussing the early language philosophy and opposition to Kant of
the philosophers J.G. Herder and J.G. Hamann. Section (2.2) will investigate the
Romantic extension to the system by W. von Humboldt and F. Schlegel. F. Nietzsche’s view on language and subjectivity will be discussed in section (2.3). In
section (3.1) we will have arrived in Hofmannsthal’s time with a discussion of his
contemporaries F. Mauthner and E. Mach and their influence. Section (3.2) will
introduce the famous cultural and social critics H. Bahr and K. Kraus and their
impact on the (literary) contemporaries, who will be discussed in section (3.3),
this section will prove to be a literary overview, and provide reasons why Hugo
von Hofmannsthal should be awarded a special place within the group of Austrian
Sprachskepsis-writers. The third part of the thesis, the actual discussion of Hofmannsthal, starts in section (4). His philosophy of language will be dissected in
section (4.1) and will receive special scrutiny through a discussion of his major
works Ein Brief (section 4.1.1) and the play Der Schwierige (section 4.1.2). Section (4.2) explicates some di↵erent, non-analytical, aspects of his philosophy. The
essay concludes in section (5).
4
Broch p.148.
2
2
The “Implicit Philosopher” and his Origin
Es gibt keine neuen philosophischen Gedanken, ebenso wie es keine
neuen künstlerischen Themen gibt. Das liegt aber daran, daß Philosoph
und Künstler als Individualitäten zeitlos sind, aus ihrer Zeit nie zu begreifen und mit ihr nie zu entschuldigen. Im Philosophen und Künstler
liegt Ewigkeit.
- Otto Weininger, Die Kultur und ihr Verhältnis zum Glauben, p.118
Just as science and philosophy were once indicated by the word philosophy
alone, as scientific texts once read just like philosophical tractates (and of course
as philosophical tractates were seen as scientific ones), there must have always
been a counter-tendency to conjoin art and philosophy, to create texts of high
philosophical - and aesthetic - value. Vienna in 1900, the city of decadence and art
pour l’art par excellence might be the epitome of such movements. The literary
Sprachskepsis movement radicalized the philosophical ideas about language that
the Romantic philosophers had advocated for, scientists wrote in aestheticizing
styles and all came together in bringing forward a notion of subjectivity heightened
to its extreme. Philosophy of language, the language of philosophers and questions
of subjectivity are the triad of questions that had been around for a long time in
the German tradition, and will also serve as the basis for the further investigation.
This tendency to conjoin art and philosophy did not originate in the Romantics,
but in the times of the German enlightenment, and as many other movements, one
might even see Kant as its initiator (even if for negative reasons).
2.1
Implicit
Philosophy
Herder and Hamann - Reaction to Kant
Die Philosophie besteht darin, daß es gar keine Philosophie geben
soll, sondern nur Aufklärung.
- Friedrich Schleiermacher,5
In the introduction to his first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes
that eventually he discarded the idea to illustrate his philosophy by using examples,
for they are “nur in populärer Absicht notwendig”.6 The real connoisseur of sciences
does not need such an aid. This is exactly what philosophers like Johann Gottfried
Herder or Johann Georg Hamann criticized: philosophy should not be a scientific
system which can only be understood by a small group, but rather a system to
educate everyone.
5
Friedrich Schleiermacher, quote retrieved through: Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der
Neuzeit [1931] , 17th ed. (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, C.H.Beck, 2011) p.684.
6
Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [1787] , ed. Wilhelm Weischedel, Werkausgab
(Suhrkamp, 1968) A XIX.
3
Reactions to
Kant
Herder’s Universal Philosophy
Interestingly, “Kant himself tended to identify with Popularphilosophie”, as
Forster points out,7 but soon relinquished easy understanding for philosophical
rigor and systematicity. Herder especially opposed the new direction of his old
mentor and established a “counter tradition in German philosophy”,8 which sought
to relinquish incomprehensible sophistic systems and make human beings the center
of philosophy.9 Herder’s falling out with methodic philosophy, however, did not
evolve in reaction to Kant itself, but is already developed in early writings such
as How Philosophy can become more Universal and Useful for the Benefit of the
People from 1765.10 In this prize essay, Herder investigates the possibilities of
using philosophy for the benefit of the people and endorses some highly modern
ideas for his time.11
At the same time, Herder criticizes the systematic philosopher with his system,
sitting in an ivory tower, detached from the world. For philosophy to be fruitful for
the masses, the philosophers should make the people the center of their investigation, not just some abstract systems.12 This can be achieved by two things: firstly,
philosophers should not remain in libraries, surrounded by books, but they should
live with farmers in the countryside and live the way of (the, then, majority) of
the population. Secondly, philosophers should abdicate from specialized language,
but use the everyday language of the people.13
Herder pursued this kind of philosophy for most his life, and he, for example,
expounded it in his fragments Über die neuere Deutsche Litteratur :
Alle Bücher, die in der Welt von Gegenständen, Verrichtungen und
Vorfällen zu Hause gehören, in welcher der gemeine Mann lebt, können
sich nicht in einer neuen Sprache brüsten, oder sie werden lächerlich,
unverständlich und unnütz.14
Literature, like philosophy, should use the language of the people it is written for,
otherwise it will not only be hard to understand, but it might even be outright
useless. Yet looking at what was written in his time, Herder endorsed a rather
bleak outlook:
7
Michael N. Forster, After Herder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) p.14.
p.12
9
Johann Gottfried Herder, “How Philosophy can become more Universal and Useful for the
Benefit of the People [1765]”, Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Michael Forster (Cambridge,
Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2004) p.21.
10
And hence published 16 years before the first edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
11
For example his view on women’s education; p.21, p.26 Herder, “How Philosophy can become
more Universal and Useful for the Benefit of the People [1765]”.
12
Herder, “How Philosophy can become more Universal and Useful for the Benefit of the People
[1765]” p.21.
13
p.19
14
My emphasis. Herder actually references to aesthetics and philosophy in this quote, rather
then simply to literature. Johann Gottfried Herder, Ueber die neuere Deutsche Litteratur. Fragmente, als Beilagen zu den Briefen, die neueste Litteratur betre↵end. Dritte Sammlung (Riga:
Hartknoch, 1767) p.55.
8
4
Nun gehe man nach diesem Gesichtspunkte die Wochenschriften, die
Erbauungsbücher, die Predigten durch, alles soll für den gemeinen Mann
sein, und wenig ist für ihn.15
Essentially, Herder was criticizing the same phenomenon that we can observe nowadays; in order to sound smarter or have a more rigid system, scholars assumed that
a systematic language is necessary, when every day language could suffice.16
But Herder not only occupied himself with an appropriate use of language in
philosophy; he also had a tremendous interest in (and influence on) philosophy of
language itself: some scholars even call him the “founder of modern philosophy
of language”.17 While contemporary philosophers, such as the British Empiricists,
considered thought and language as (in theory) separable, Herder endorsed a conflicting view: thought and language are interconnected and dependent on one
another:18 “Seele und [...] Sprache sind zwo Schwestern, in Gesellschaft erzogen,
zu einander gewöhnt, und unabtrennbar[...]”.19 Without language there can be no
thought.
While the empiricists considered language to be a spontaneous product of the
impressions we receive, for Herder it was much more of an organic product of our
nation and surroundings. We could not invent language, for this would mean that
we had to cross a “böhmischen Wald”20 of di↵erent means of communication, before
we arrived at out own language. Our own language, however, is a development over
ages, and it comes with its own worldview.21 Every language imprints in us a matter
of thinking, and this leads to a problem in hermeneutics: for us to understand a
text in a di↵erent language, according to Herder, we need to understand every
word in its original context and all the possible references of the word. In short we
can never disregard the history of the language.22
This focus on the history of language, so to say, is another point that Herder
disagreed on with his old mentor Kant. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant
tried to expound the workings of the mind on an absolute basis, by solely focusing
on our perception and the representations we receive. He did so while ignoring
the workings of language at the same time. Herder, like Hamann (see further
15
Herder, Ueber die neuere Deutsche Litteratur. Fragmente, als Beilagen zu den Briefen, die
neueste Litteratur betre↵end. Dritte Sammlung p.60.
16
This is something that even other philosophers, like Schopenhauer who was much indebted
to Kant’s theories, criticized in Kant: Kant used many stilted words for seeming rigor, even
though contemporary words would have sufficed. Schopenhauer gives an example with the terms:
“transcendentale synthetische Einheit der Apperception” and “Einheit der Synthesis”, and asserts
that they could have easily been replaced by “Vereinigung”. Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als
Wille und Vorstellung [1819] , ed. Arthur Hübscher (Köln: Anaconda, 2009) p.377.
17
Forster p.55.
18
Ibid.
19
20
p.50
21
As Foster expounds. Forster p.64↵f.
22
Forster p.65.
5
Herder’s
Philosophy
of Language
down), opposed a construction of reason which did not incorporate language and
the history of meanings. When we developed our mental capacities further, we
also developed a language for expression:
Je mehr sich die Gegenstände erweitern, die Menschlichen Geisteskräfte
sich entwickeln, desto mehr ersterben die Fähigkeiten der sinnlichen
Thierseele. Die Ausbreitung der Wißenschaften verengert die Künste,
die Ausbildung der Poetik die Poesie; endlich haben wir Regeln, statt
Poetischer Empfindungen; wir borgen Reste aus den Alten, und die
Dichtkunst ist todt!23
Thus, in order to get to know thought and our development better, it is also
important to invest oneself in linguistic history.
Since thought is dependent on (the) language (we speak), the implications for
literature are also important. A literary person should not tarnish his thoughts
and emotions with a language not befitting the task:
[S]o wird für den, der meistens aus dieser Quelle schöpfen muß, für
den, der gleichsam der Oberherr dieser Sphäre gewesen, [...] für ihn,
muß der Gedanke zum Ausdrucke sich verhalten, nicht wie der Körper
zur Haut, die ihn umziehet; sondern wie die Seele zum Körper, den sie
bewohnet: und so ists für den Dichter.24
To expound his point by paraphrasing Herder’s words: His contemporaries misunderstood language, because they treated is more as the clothing of the thought.
They assumed the thought needs beautiful garbs, while lavish clothes actually
corrupt thinking.
One reason for this is that more natural language is closer to our feelings.
Herder defines a primeval form of language; the language of emotion: “Es gibt [...]
eine Sprache der Empfindung, die unmittelbares Naturgesetzt ist”.25 As humans
evolved from animals, their language evolved necessarily with the development of
their cognitive capacities, as evidenced from the quote above. The poet can be
more truthful to thought, by keeping the development of language in mind, and,
by not trying to invent a new (system for his) language.
The last point, however, also has di↵erent implications: our primeval language,
as a language of emotions and development, is necessarily a very subjective language. Everybody can feel only their own emotions (and often not even guess the
others’ emotions), therefore a language that will stay true to one’s feelings, will be
better at conveying one’s own subjectivity than a scientific language, which is at
23
Johann Gottfried Herder, “Fragmente einer Abhandlung über die Ode [1764]”, Herders
Sämmtliche Werke 32, ed. Bernhard Suphan (Berlin: Weidemann, 1899) p.69.
24
25
This sentence is all in emphasis in the original. Johann Gottfried Herder, Abhandlung über
den Ursprung der Sprache [1772] (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1997) p.6.
6
best of “glänzende Trockenheit”.26 This means that a poet who writes in a natural
way, will also have an approach to writing that will stay more truthful to himself,
and the entire language-community that he stems from, than a scholar who tries
to achieve neutral language. When historically-mindful language is more subjective, invented, systematic language à la Kant, necessarily is its artificial analogue,
since it disregards the linguistic preferences of the subject and tries to be outside
tradition.
If Herder represents the tame bookmannish opposition to “systematic” philosophy,
then Johann Georg Hamann represents his irrational brother in arms.27 Hamann
wrote in a dark nebulous style, using a cornucopia of obscure references to contemporaries (that often do not make much sense anymore nowadays) and to ancient
literature, philosophy, and scripture. His writings made him become known as
a pioneer of a subjective sensualist irrationalism,28 and later philosophers would
have conflicting views on Hamann, such as Hegel who characterized reading him
with a “Bewußtsein der Achtung und der Ungenießbarkeit”.29
J.G. Hamann’s philosophy of language, however, is easily characterized despite
the “Ungenießbarkeit” of his writings: language and thought cannot be separated.
In 1784, for example, he wrote in a letter to Herder:
Wenn ich auch so beredt wäre wie Demosthenes, so würde ich doch nicht
mehr als ein einziges Wort dreimal wiederholen müssen: Vernunft ist
Sprache - o o&. An diesem Markknochen nage ich und werde mich zu
Tode darüber nagen.30
In the same year, he also wrote a critique of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the
Metakritik über den Purismus der Vernunft. Here he attacked Kant’s construction
of pure reason as fallacious in that it ignores the means of language that underly
actual reason:
Nicht nur das ganze Vermögen zu denken beruht auf Sprache, [...] sondern Sprache ist auch der Mittelpunct des Missverstandes der Vernunft
mit ihr selbst, theils wegen der häufigen Coincidenz des größten und
kleinsten Begri↵s, seiner Leere und Fülle in idealischen Sätzen, theils
wegen des unendlichen der Rede- vor den Schlußfiguren, und dergleichen viel mehr.31
26
As Schopenhauer calls Kant’s style of writing. In Schopenhauer p. 376.
Texts that deal with both thinkers usually put them in a relation to each other - one influencing the other - as I am not a specialist on either, I will simply present them as contemporary
thinkers with similar thoughts and di↵erent techniques.
28
Josef Simon, “Einleitung zu J.G.Hamanns Schriften zur Sprache”, Schriften zur Sprache, ed.
Hans Blumenberg et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967) p.10.
29
G.W.F. Hegel, retrieved through: Simon p.10.
30
J.G.Hamann letter to Herder, retrieved through: Fritz Mauthner, Beiträge zu einer Kritik
der Sprache [1902] , 3rd ed. (Stuttgart und Berlin: J.G. Cotta, 1921) p.178.
31
Language as the center of misunderstanding is a notion that I will discuss a bit further
27
7
Johann
Georg
Hamann
Hamann’s
Philosophy
of Language
Hamann
and
the
Language of
Philosophers
Hamann faults Kant for using language in order to create a system which should
precede language. Hamann maintained that Kant’s system, and his whole understanding of reason, derives from his language. A system of thought, according
to the critique on Kant’s critical philosophy, necessarily needs to be a system of
language.
As language and thought are the same thing for Hamann, it is absurd to create
a di↵erent scheme of language for philosophy:
[V]erarbeitet durch diesen gelehrten Unfug die Biderkeit der Sprache
in ein so sinnloses, läufiges, unstätes, unbestimmtes Etwas = x, daß
nichts als ein windiges Sausen, ein magisches Schattenspiel, höchstens
[...] der Talisman und Rosenkranz eines transcendentalen Aberglaubens
an entia rationis, ihre leere Schläuche und Losung übrig bleibt.32
Language should not be used in a specialized jargon, but the tradition has to be
embraced to generate more understanding:
An Philosophie lohnt es garnicht der Mühe zu bedenken; desto mehr
systematische Kalender! - mehr als Spinnenweben in einem verstörten
Schlosse.33
Especially the usage of general terms was an issue for Hamann:
Für Leser von orthodoxem Geschmack gehören keine gemeine Ausdrücke
noch unreine Schüsseln - - Impossibilissimum est, communia proprie
dicere - Siehe! darum geschieht es, daß ein Autor, dessen Geschmack
acht Tage alt, aber beschnitten ist, lauter weißen überzogenen Entian
- zur Ehre menschlicher Nothdurft - in die Windeln thut.34
For Hamann, general terms, the vocabulary of the philosopher, were comparable
to a dirty bowl that gets filled up with the intellectual droppings of the writers.
All these problems can easily be circumvented: The optimal usage of language
is one that stays true to the original meaning of words, and indefectible writings
are literary, for “Poesie ist die Muttersprache des menschlichen Geschlechts”.35
Therefore, Hamann usually coupled his writings on philosophy of language with
aesthetic and literary ideas.36 Simultaneously, words should be analyzed especially
in their literary (and religious) meanings, since “myth and metaphor”37 are the
true origins of meaning rather than abstract philosophical texts.
down. Johann Georg Hamann, “Metakritik über den Purismus der Vernunft [1784]”, Schriften
zur Sprache, ed. Hans Blumenberg et al., 1st ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967) p.224.
32
p.223
33
Johann Georg Hamann, “Aesthetica in Nuce [1760]”, Schriften zur Sprache, ed. Hans Blumberg et al., 1st ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967) p.115.
34
p.111
35
p.107
36
p.26 Simon ; this is also a method that we will see again in Schlegel (section 2.2) and
Hofmannsthal (section 4).
37
Jonathan Gray, “Hamann, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein on the Language of Philosophers”,
Hamann and the Tradition, ed. Lisa Marie Anderson (Northwestern University Press, 2012) p.109.
8
With his fondness for the metaphoric, it should be apparent that Hamann
also objected to rigid methods of hermeneutics: everybody should keep to their
subjective understanding. In his Aesthetica in Nuce, he writes that “die große
und kleine Masore38 der Weltweisheit hat den Text der Natur, gleich einer Sündfluth, überschwemmt”.39 Language essentially is ambiguity, which should not be
changed. Here the “center of misunderstanding” as evidenced by the quote above40
also comes back; just because systematic language is used, ambiguity cannot be
abolished, therefore, the systems are solely unnatural, or, as he puts it in his
Metakritik : the “ästhetische Lüge [transcendentaler Schriften]”.41,42
With Kant, Herder and Hamann, German philosophy had changed for ever; Kant
published his Critique of Pure Reason, the first major philosophical work in German language,43 which bred a plethora of reactions and further investigations in
systematic philosophical language. Herder and Hamann established the counter
tradition, one where literature, language and thought would be closely intertwined;
where reason would be a development, not an absolute system like in Kant. Language, as the driving factor of thought, should not be altered for more clarity, but
embraced. A constructed system could never capture our true inner thoughts nor
express them in any way. Within the next decades, philosophers would advance
the philosophy of language both in systematic ways, like Wilhelm von Humboldt,
or through aesthetic critique, like Friedrich Schlegel.
2.2
The Countertradition
Humboldt and Schlegel - Romantic Conception of Language
In die Bildung und in den Gebrauch der Sprache geht [...] die ganze
Art der subjektiven Wahrnehmung der Gegenstände über.
- Wilhelm von Humboldt, Über die Verschiedenheit [...] p.58
With the nineteenth century, there seemed to have dawned an era of language
studies for Germany; Herder had already laid foundations to fields such as analytical philosophy, hermeneutics and translation, and now the subsequent generation
expanded on these accomplishments by founding comparative language studies
38
Masore is the Rabbinical fixing of the meaning of the biblical writings. Hamann uses it here
as a symbol for positivistic systems that annihilate ambiguity of language. Simon p.238.
39
Hamann, “Aesthetica in Nuce [1760]” p.117.
40
See the quote on page 7.
41
Hamann, “Metakritik über den Purismus der Vernunft [1784]” p.218.
42
Hamann also seemed to follow a di↵erent agenda with his critique of language; often his
obscure references are directed against the (socio-political) system, Hamann apparently tried to
oppose the social leveling within the state by attacking the leveling of language through the
philosopher, for if we can change the usage of language, we can change the people within.
43
Simon p.262.
9
The Romantics and Language
through Friedrich Schlegel, Indogermanic studies through Franz Bopp and German philology through Jacob Grimm.44 While di↵erent forms of language studies
became more and more established as separate fields, philosophers also took a bigger interest in the workings of language and its interplay with thought.
Wilhelm von
Humboldt
Wilhelm von Humboldt was one of the 19th century homini universalis: He was
a diplomat, an educator, and an explorer among other professions. At the same
time, one of his main interests lay in the nature of language, as he even mentioned
in a letter:
Im Grunde ist alles, was ich treibe, Sprachstudium. Ich glaube die
Kunst entdeckt zu haben, die Sprache als ein Vehikel zu gebrauchen,
um das Höchste und Tiefste und die Mannigfaltigkeit der ganzen Welt
zu durchfahren.45
Humboldt’s
Philosophy
of Language
Humboldt was the first who postulated an interdisciplinary approach to language
studies.46 He left behind a tremendous body of work on languages, yet, for the
revolutionary system of language that he had in mind, his own mind was to unsystematic and flaky.47
Especially from his last major work, Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen
Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts,48
we can read that Humboldt actually had a system of transcendental-language philosophy in mind.49 When Kant defined space and time as the objective prerequisites
for empirical cognition, but at the same time determined by our subjective selves;
Humboldt did the same for human language: “Die Sprache ist das bildende Organ
des Gedanken”.50 This means that, according to him, we cannot separate thought
and language. At the same time, however, since the world of representations can
deceive us, and we are bound to language for our interpretation of reality, we even
have to perceive it as something which is external to us.51
In his view of language he partly anticipated Chomsky, claiming that there is a
di↵erence between (universal) Language and (ethnic, or even personal) language:
Denn so wundervoll ist in der Sprache die Individualisierung innerhalb
der allgemeinen Übereinstimung, daß man ebenso richtig sagen kann,
44
Michael Böhler, “Nachwort zu Humboldts Schriften zur Sprache”, Schriften zur Sprache, ed.
Michael Böhler (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1995) p.236.
45
1805, letter to Wolf, retrieved through: Böhler p.234.
46
Böhler p.237.
47
In the postscript to his works, it is called a tendency for the unfinished. Böhler p.229.
48
Which is the perfect example for his unsystematic way of working, his tendency for the unfinished: it is, despite being considered his major work on language, namely solely the introduction
to another work of his.
49
Jochem Hennigfeld, “Sprache als Weltansicht”, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 3.30
(1976): p.436.
50
Wilhelm von Humboldt, Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren
Einflußauf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (Berlin: Königliche Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1836) p.50.
51
Von Humboldt p.53.
10
daß das ganze Menschengeschlecht nur Eine Sprache, als daß jeder Mensch eine besondere besitzt.52
The universal qualities of language are innate, but they are activated in di↵erent ways by di↵erent languages.53 This di↵erent activation, however, is also where
Humboldt’s and Chomsky’s views part ways; Chomsky would say that all languages retain the architecture of the mind, i.e. that there is only one overarching
grammatical structure. Humboldt, on the other hand, would agree to some initial
cognitive makeup of the mind, yet this is completely molded by the language we
first acquire, and it retains the structure of our first language, even if we learn
another one.54
While some may take such a mental, a priori-ist, representation of language to
say that language is an entity with objective value, Humboldt would disagree. Of
course, as mentioned above, there is the architecture of our mind which is Language, but even within nations, there are tremendous di↵erences between speakers.
Humboldt even goes as far as asserting:
[D]ie Individualität einer Sprache [...] [ist] auch nur vergleichungsweise
eine solche [...] die wahre Individualität [liegt] nur in dem jedesmal
Sprechenden.55
Every speaker speaks a di↵erent language: “Erst im Individuum erhält die Sprache
ihre letzte Bestimmtheit.”56 This may sound like Humboldt would oppose Wittgenstein’s private language argument, claiming that there is indeed a certain subjectivity to language which can never fully be translated, but such a reading is not
correct. Humboldt asserted before:
In der Erscheinung entwickelt sich jedoch die Sprache nur gesellschaftlich,
und der Mensch versteht sich selbst nur, indem er die Verstehbarkeit
seiner Worte an Andren versuchend geprüft hat.57
Yes, every person has their own language, but they also need communication to
make their own language work. Language essentially is the interplay of subjectivity
and objectivity:
Die Sprache ist gerade insofern objectiv einwirkend und selbstständig,
als sie subjectiv gewirkt und abhängig ist.58
For Humboldt, the language is an objective vessel, that we fill our subjectivity
into. Our subjectivity comes from our personal understanding and emotions in an
objective language. Our subjectivity heightens the objectivity.
52
Von Humboldt p.47.
Von Humboldt p.56f.
54
See chapter Natur und Bescha↵enheit der Sprache überhaupt (p.48↵f) in von Humboldt.
55
Von Humboldt p.64.
56
Von Humboldt p.64.
57
Von Humboldt p.53.
58
Von Humboldt p.63.
53
11
Subjectivity
and
Objectivity
Translation
Humboldt already spoke of a distinction between the subjectivity of the private
language and its dichotomy with the shared language. This disparity essentially
expresses itself in problems of hermeneutics:
Alles Verstehen ist daher immer zugleich ein Nicht-Verstehen, alle Übereinstimmung in Gedanken und Gefühlen zugleich ein Auseinandergehen.59
Meaning that language is a duality between understanding and misunderstanding;
we will always understand each other to a certain extent, but never fully.
If we consider, not translation between people, but between languages, they
are similar enough so there will always be some general understanding, but at the
same time, they di↵er in that they express the inner character of a people:
Die Sprache ist gleichsam die äußerliche Erscheinung des Geistes der
Völker; ihre Sprache ist ihr Geist und ihr Geist die Sprache, man kann
sich beide nie identisch genug denken.60
Nation
and
Language
The pedantic soul of the pedantic German is expressed through his language, therefore, if we learned the German language, we can become more German.
Nations are similar, because their Language-facilities have been influenced by
their surroundings, and the perception of their surroundings was later reinforced by
their language.61 Humboldt asserts that our world view is completely and utterly
molded by our language, and as in the quote mentioned above, there is always
misunderstanding in language, for we can never evoke the same images with other
people.62 Language essentially is subjectivity:
In die Bildung und in den Gebrauch der Sprache geht aber nothwendig
die ganze Art der subjektiven Wahrnehmung der Gegenstände über.63
Due to the di↵erences between the world-views that are created by language,
there can never be one final philosophy, i.e. all philosophies are bound by language
and therefore a German will create di↵erent philosophical systems as a Frenchman.
The special place that language is awarded in Humboldt’s system is that it can
possibly prove philosophical ideas. His first biographer Rudolf Haym claimed that
Humboldt’s study of language was an attempt to give evidence for Kant’s critical
philosophy through the structure of language.64 If concepts such as the “pure intuitions” time and space, as Kant calls them, have a preponderance even in language,
59
Von Humboldt p.64.
My emphasis. von Humboldt p.37.
61
“Der Form steht freilich ein Sto↵ gegenüber; um aber den Sto↵ der Sprachform zu finden,
muß man über die Gränzen der Sprache hinausgehen.” von Humboldt p.45.
62
“Denn das Wort entsteht eben aus dieser Wahrnehmung, ist nicht ein Abdruck des Gegenstandes an sich, sonder des von diesem in der Seele erzeugten Bildes.” von Humboldt p.58.
63
Von Humboldt p.58.
64
Rudolf Haym, Wilhelm von Humboldt: Lebensbild und Charakteristik (Berlin: Verlag von
Rudolph Gaertner, 1856) p.446↵f.
60
12
then the study of language, and only this study, will be able to tell us something
objective about human nature.
Since literature will become an important tool for the communication of philosophical ideas for some of the figures discussed further below, it may be interesting
to also consider the tacit implications of Humboldt’s theories for literature. Language grants a strange duality between objectivity of the thing, and subjectivity of
the person.65 Nowadays, one can often read (popular) articles that claim reading
literature increases our empathy, and I believe that Humboldt is, aside Herder,
one of the first who would have made such a claim. As we read a book, we can
increase our own vantage point, by being introduced into the subjective worlds of
other people. This happens, because we delve into the world of thought of either
an individual who wrote in our language, or of the collective world of thought of a
di↵erent language.
When Humboldt was the scientist, investigating the nature of psychology and
language, Friedrich Schlegel was the aesthetician who, in the tradition of Hamann,
combined literary and language studies. According to Schlegel, in real, artistically
valuable prose everything would have to be underlined.66 This is the case, because
the ideal piece of literature is a combination of literature, science and philosophy.
In one of his Athenäum-fragments, Schlegel even writes:
Friedrich
Schlegel
Vermischte Gedanken sollten die Kartons der Philosophie sein. Man
weiß, was diese den Kennern der Malerei gelten. Wer nicht philosophische Welten mit dem Crayon skizziren, jeden Gedanken, der Physiognomie hat, mit ein paar Federstrichen charakterisieren kann, für den
wird die Philosophie nie Kunst, und also auch nie Wissenschaft werden. Denn in der Philosophie geht der Weg zur Wissenschaft nur durch
die Kunst, wie der Dichter im Gegenteil erst durch Wissenschaft ein
Künstler wird.67
Philosophy can only be attained by the artist. Everybody else is simply creating
Potemkin-like cities of thought without any content.
The artist can attain more, because the (Romantic) poetry, for example, is
“always in progress toward the unconditional highest”,68 i.e. poetry is always a
process, while systems lead to stagnation:
65
This is the case, because we subjectively use terms for the appearances in the world, rather
than having objective terms for the things-in-themselves: “Denn die Sprache stellt niemals die
Gegenstände, sondern immer die durch den Geist in der Spracherzeugung selbstthätg von ihnen
gebildeten Begri↵e dar.” in: von Humboldt p.96.
66
“In wahrer Prosa, muß alles unterstrichen sein.” Friedrich Schlegel, ”Athenäums”-Fragmente
und andere Schriften [1798] , ed. Andreas Huyssen (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2005) p.128.
67
My emphasis. I believe thatWissenschaft is, in this context, rather referring to the humanities
(history, philology and a systematized idealism) than natural sciences. Schlegel p.113.
68
Friedrich Schlegel, Über das Studium griechischer Poesie, retrieved through: H. Jackson
Forstman, “The Understanding of Language by Friedrich Schlegel and Schleiermacher”, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 51, 2.2 (1968): p.153.
13
Art and
Philosophy
Es ist gleich tödlich für den Geist, ein System zu haben, und keins zu
haben. Er wird sich also wohl entschließen müssen, beides zu verbinden.69
The problem with a system, however, is that it can never be absolute according to
Schlegel.70 The Romantic philosopher can also be like a romantic poem; one that
philosophizes as a process, rather than in a system:
Man kann nur Philosoph werden, nicht es sein. Sobald man es zu sein
glaubt, hört man auf es zu werden.71
One should not think in systems, because it kills creativity, yet a system is necessary
in order to form thought.
In the same way that the stagnation had been overcome in the political world by
the French revolution, Schlegel expected a similar aesthetic-revolution, that would
rejoin subjectivity and objectivity,72 by lifting the boundaries between philosophy,
religion, science and art.73 In this post-revolutionary world, every work of art
would be a work of philosophy, science etc..
Therefore, while Schlegel advocated for a more artistically driven philosophy,
to bring about this revolution, he also tried to establish a poetics that would
lead to a philosophication of art: “[Der romantischen Poesie] Ihre Bestimmung
ist [...] die Poesie mit der Philosophie und Rhetorik in Berührung zu setzten”.74
The optimal art, in analogy with the optimal philosophy, would be one that could
express philosophical ideas while being beautiful:
Der dichtende Philosoph, der philosophierende Dichter ist ein Prophet.
Das didaktische Gedicht sollte prophetisch sein, und hat auch Anlage,
es zu werden.75
While the beautiful is central in Schlegel’s philosophy, he seems to contest a
notion of absolute truth:
Könnte es nicht noch vor der Abfassung der logischen Konstitution eine
provisorische Philosophie geben; und ist nicht alle Philosophie provisorisch, bis die Konstitution durch die Akzeptation sanktioniert ist?76
Philosophy, and with it our view of the world, is strongly determined through social
convention. As a post-Kantian philosopher, he would have argued that truth is
unattainable, yet the necessary aim of our intellectual endeavors.77
69
Schlegel p.82.
Friedrich Schlegel, retrieved through: Forstman p.152.
71
Schlegel p.82.
72
Andreas Huyssen, “Nachwort zu Schlegels ”Athenäums”-Fragmenten”, ”Athenäums”Fragmente und andere Schriften, ed. Andreas Huyssen (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2005)
p.230.
73
Ibid.
74
Schlegel p.90.
75
Schlegel p.107.
76
Schlegel p.110.
77
Forstman p.153.
70
14
As for his view on language, Schlegel had a similar construct of language in mind
as Humboldt and Hamann: language is what separates animals from humans, and
the structure of humanity is to be found in the structure of language.78 The study
of philology is, therefore, a science of the utmost importance, for it can tell us a
myriad about thought. Philosophy can, in his opinion, only gives us answers, when
we also investigated language:
Schlegel’s
Philosophy
of Language
Die einzige Art, die Philologie auf die Philosophie oder, welches noch
weit nötiger ist, die Philologie auf die Philosophie anzuwenden, ist,
wenn man zugleich Philolog und Philosoph ist.79
Schlegel already hinted towards, what in the previous, 20th century had become
practically a mainstream position:80 the thought that a fruitful philosophy necessarily has to be a philosophy of language.
The image of directionality and motion was important in Schlegel’s general philosophy, and therefore also comes back in his philosophy of language. According
to him, humans have a dualistic nature, torn between the finite word that strives
towards the infinite, and the infinite spirit that strives towards finiteness. This also
means that language which does not embrace this directness is dead. The romantic poem is, as mentioned above, always a development, and it therefore expresses
language better, and with it human nature.
The original postulates that had been set up during the enlightenment period
by Herder and Hamann, had developed in the Romantic period. Language and
thought were not only much more strongly correlated, but language was even said
to be the determining factor of our worldview.
2.3
Outcomes
of
the
Movement
Nietzsche - Ethics and Language
[Nietzsche] war ein tellurisches Ereignis, nicht bloß sein Volk, nicht
bloß den Erdteil, sondern die Erde erschütternd und durch ein langandauerndes Beben beunruhigend.
- Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit p.1402
In the tradition which has been discussed so far, Nietzsche is, in a sense, the
odd one out. Considering the quintessential philosopher from the standpoint of
some priors, like Herder, Nietzsche did in fact write philosophy in the right way,
since he wrote it in a literary style and rather unsystematic. His philosophy is
a giant collection of aphorisms that have some common threads and are, usually,
78
Forstman p.150f.
Schlegel p.130.
80
See, for example section 3.1.
79
15
Friedrich
Nietzsche
collected in thematic ways. Nietzsche even asserts that he despises schemes of
organization:81
Ich misstraue allen Systematikern und gehe ihnen aus dem Weg. Der
Wille zum System ist ein Mangel aus Rechtscha↵enheit.82
In another spot he writes that the best way to treat a problem is quickly: “[I]ch
halte es mit tiefen Problemen, wie mit einem kalten Bade - schnell hinein, schnell
hinaus”.83 Therefore, Nietzsche is staying true to Herder’s postulates, for he dealt
with important topics in an accessible way, while additionally keeping it brief.
Yet, he was also completely unlike Herder in other ways; while the ideal of the
enlightenment philosopher Herder was to educate the masses, Nietzsche did not
want his philosophy to be understood by everyone. Education is for the few, and
he asserts that a broad enlightenment would even destroy thought:
[I]ch hasse die lesenden Müssiggänger. [...]
Dass Jedermann lesen lernen darf, verdirbt auf die Dauer nicht allein
das Schreiben, sondern auch das Denken.84
So, while his writing style fitted the ideal of his intellectual forefathers, i.e. he
wrote in the literary style that Herder, Schlegel (and especially) Hamann85 would
have encouraged, his aim was completely di↵erent, in that it was aimed at a small
circle, rather than to educate the masses.86
Herder, Hamann, Humboldt and Schlegel namely advocated for a language that
minds history, that is poetic and conveys the real subjectivity of the individual,
without trying to be outside of the tradition. Kant’s writing are bad(ly written)
for they pretend that an absolute language outside tradition is possible; however
someone like Nietzsche writes appealingly, for he minds the tradition (with literary
references or references to classics) and still writes philosophy. In their philosophy
of language, the aforementioned quartet launched a school of thought that investigated the connection between thought and language. Language was to be seen as
the external expression of thought, and thought without language is impossible.
81
Some scholars claim this to be an attack at philosophers like Kant or Hegel, and their systems
J. Gray p.110f.
82
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Götzen-Dämmerung [1888]”, Antichrist - Ecce Homo, DionysosDithyramben und Nietzsche contra Wagner, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin,
New York: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1967) §1:26.
83
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Die fröhliche Wissenschaft [1882]”, Morgenröthe, Idyllen aus Messina,
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 8th ed. (Berlin, New York:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1967) §381.
84
Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra [1883] , ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari
(München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, C.H.Beck, 2010) p.41.
85
Of course apart from his zealous atheism.
86
In his Twilight of the Idols, for example, Nietzsche advanced this thought in chapter Was
den Deutschen abgeht, paragraph 5, where he laments the “Niedergang der Deutschen Kultur”
because of mass education. Nietzsche, “Götzen-Dämmerung [1888]” p.107f.
16
While the four wrote texts aimed at the study of language, Nietzsche’s unsystematic approach makes it difficult to find one position of pronounced language
critique. Only a hand full of aphorisms concerning the use and boundaries of language are to be found in some of his texts. Yet, he already exhibits certain ideas
of language skepticism, a view which would become more widely accepted a few
decades later in Vienna:
Unsäglich mehr [...] liegt [daran], wie die Dinge heissen, als was sie
sind. Der Ruf, Name und Anschein, die Geltung, das übliche Maass
und Gewicht eines Dinges - im Ursprunge zuallermeist ein Irrthum und
eine Willkürlichkeit, den Dingen übergeworfen wie ein Kleid und seinem
Wesen und selbst der Haut ganz fremd - ist durch Glauben daran [...]
dem Dinge allmählich gleichsam an- und eingewachsen.87
For Nietzsche, language is not God-given, as for Hamann, nor the determining
aspect of the psychology, as for Humboldt. According to him, language is the
development over decades and words have received their (seemingly necessary)
meaning nowadays only because we are used to employing them in that way.
While language is determined by its incessant practice, its connections are
rather arbitrary with respect to the system used. In Jenseits von Gut und Böse,
Nietzsche gives an account of language that seems to anticipate, on one hand the
idea of the conceptual scheme, and on the other, Saussure’s dichotomy between
signifié and signifiant. Nietzsche writes:
Dass die einzelnen philosophischen Begri↵e nichts Beliebiges, nichts
Für-sich-Wachsendes sind, sondern in Beziehung und Verwandtschaft
zu einander emporwachsen, dass sie, so plötzlich und willkürlich sie
auch in der Geschichte des Denkens anscheinend heraustreten [...] verräth
sich zuletzt noch darin, wie sicher die verschiedensten Philosophen
ein gewisses Grundschema von möglichen Philosophien immer wieder
ausfüllen.88
Already Nietzsche’s vocabulary, and especially the word Grundschema, lends itself
to the the first aspect. Conceptual schemes are “ways of organizing experience;
they are systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation”.89 One might
claim that Nietzsche criticizes that di↵erent philosophies always coincide with the
same concepts. As if there were x philosophies-in-themselves possible, and our
vocabularies always coincide with the one or the other.
For the second aspect, it is necessary to stress the first half of the quote, and to
explicate the di↵erence that Saussure makes between signifié and signifiant (and
87
Nietzsche, “Die fröhliche Wissenschaft [1882]” §58.
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Jenseits von Gut und Böse [1886]”, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Zur
Genealogie der Moral, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 13th ed. (Berlin, New York:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1967) §20.
89
Donald Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, Proceedings and Addresses
of the American Philosophical Association 47 (1973): p.5.
88
17
Nietzsche’s
Philosophy
of Language
Morality and
Language
Art and
Philosophy
only calls their combination the sign). The signifié is the mental representation of
an object or concept, independent of the language. The signifiant is the word in our
language, the actual sound patterns that evoke the signifié. Saussure introduced
these terms in his courses on linguistics to stress that the sound patterns we hear
are not to be intrinsically equated to the concepts.90 At the same time, the signifiés
and signifiants work as a network of reference: if we consider the two colors blue and
white, they each have their own signifié and signifiant, however, if we would add a
word for “light blue”,91 then the network will have to change and the signifié will
split up in two distinct ones.92 Nietzsche can be read to anticipate this idea when
speaking about philosophical vocabularies; there may be philosophical concepts
that always remain more or less the same, however, any number of philosophical
systems of naming and reference may or may not be equated to them. A more
philosophical example would be the English word “love” and the two Greek words
↵ ↵⇡⌘ (agape, or compassionate love) and ✏⇢!& (eros, or erotic love). While in
English both signifiés fall underneath one signifiant, the net of reference is split up
in Greek, where you have distinct signifiés for the distinct signifiants.
If signs are arbitrary, Nietzsche asked the next question: how is (linguistic)
truth possible? For Nietzsche language use seems to have a moral dimension. Just
as not everybody is cut out to read and write (as evidenced from the quote above
p.16), our emotions and our sluggishness has led us to be “an’s Lügen gewohnt”.93
We do not even try to perceive the entirety of a tree, for example, because we
find it easier to invent (“erdichten”) the majority of our experiences.94 Adequate,
truthful language is not our aim, because, as Nietzsche claims, if it were there
would never be that many languages in existence.95 Truths are, therefore, just a
matter of social convention. In his Genealogie der Moral, Nietzsche claims that the
problem with scientists is that “sie glauben noch an die Wahrheit”,96 for anything
that wants to explain the world in absolute terms, needs to postulate a notion of
absolute truth. Yet, language could never express absolute truths, for, according
to Nietzsche, it is an entity of “Schein”.97 Communication is possible because we
all collectively succumb to the postulated truths.
One way out of this conundrum seems to be art. Art is a good remedy
against the groups that postulate truths, because in it, there exists a “Wille zur
90
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally, Albert Sechehaye,
and Albert Riedlinger, trans. Wade Baskin (New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill, 1915)
p.67.
91
As it already exists in many languages: Greek, Russian etc.
92
p.120
93
Nietzsche, “Jenseits von Gut und Böse [1886]” §192.
94
Ibid.
95
Friedrich Nietzsche, Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne (Literary Estate,
1873) p.2.
96
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Zur Genealogie der Moral [1887]”, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Zur
Genealogie der Moral, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 13th ed. (Berlin, New York:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, de Gruyter, 1967) §3:24.
97
Hennigfeld p.445.
18
Täuschung”, and the lie is hallowed.98 In his work Über Wahrrheit und Lüge im
außermoralischen Sinne, Nietzsche even suggests that the origin of language is in
poetry. Hence, if there is no truth, and education is for the few, evidence suggests
that Nietzsche sets up a hyper-subjectivist philosophy. A philosophy where every
person has to make their own truth, and which can be expressed in its most easy
(but also most easily corrupted) way through the arts.
Finally we can summarize his view on language and truth from his essay Über
Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne, which he never published:
Die Wahrheiten sind Illusionen, von denen man vergessen hat, dass sie
welche sind, Metaphern, die abgenutzt und sinnlos kraftlos geworden
sind, Münzen, die ihr Bild verloren haben und nun als Metall, nicht
mehr als Münzen, in Betracht kommen.99
Truths are illusions; language cannot convey truth: a standpoint that Fritz Mauthner picked up later and used for his own theory on language, most notably
expressed in his Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache.
98
Strangely, the word “Lügen” he uses gives this passage a rather negative connotation. Nietzsche, “Zur Genealogie der Moral [1887]” §3:25.
99
Nietzsche, Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne p.3f.
19
3
Fin de Siècle Vienna and Language
Vienna in the fin de siècle, with its acutely felt tremors of social and
political disintegration, proved one of the most fertile breeding grounds
of our [last] century’s a-historical culture. Its great intellectual innovators - in music and philosophy, economics and architecture, and, of
course, in psychoanalysis - all broke, more or less deliberately, their ties
to the historical outlook central to the nineteenth-century liberal culture
in which they had been reared.
- Carl E. Schorske, Fin-De-Siècle Vienna, p. xviii
Wien, Wien
nur
du
allein...
The
Tradition
Discussed
Aside from music and politics, Vienna had remained relatively inconspicuous
over the past centuries, but suddenly, around the turn of the century, there appeared a paradigm shift. The “acutely felt tremors of social and political disintegration” that led to a breaking of “the historical outlook central to the nineteenthcentury liberal culture”, as written by Schorske in the introduction to his book
Fin-De-Siècle Vienna,100 also led to a radicalization of a triad of concepts: language of philosophers, philosophy of language and subjectivity.
In the counter tradition discussed so far, there had been an attempt to establish
a philosopher that remains mindful to the historical development of language and
would not try to invent artificial language systems. This question of the language
of philosophers had been advanced so far in the Romantic period, that Friedrich
Schlegel demanded a new poetics that would conjoin literature, the humanities,
and philosophy. A good philosopher should be a writer with impeccable style, who
does not need to compromise on aesthetically pleasing language for more clarity.
Herder had questioned the possibility of thought independent of language with
his philosophy of language. The later-born philosophers considered the same problems and advanced them further; what is the interplay between our outlook on
life and our language? Is translation between the subjectivity of di↵erent people
possible? What is the connection between a people and their language?
This also led to the next problem closely related to language. Is there an
objectively real world, or is everybody the master of his own subjective world? How
does our use of language interplay with the problem of subjectivity? Humboldt,
for example, thought that our subjectivity feeds into the objectivity of language;
objectivity would only be heightened by subjectivity.
Considering the further development of these questions in fin de siècle Vienna,
there is no way around two major figures: the philosopher Fritz Mauthner and the
physicist Ernst Mach.
100
p.xviii
20
3.1
Mauther and Mach - Philosophy and Science
Das Ich ist unrettbar.
- Ernst Mach, Die Analyse [...] p.20
If we consider their philosophical oeuvre, Fritz Mauthner and Ernst Mach are two
figures virtually unknown outside of Austria101 (and inside as well), but two figures
that exerted a tremendous influence on the science, philosophy and literature of
their (and later) times.
Janik and Toulmin characterize Fritz Mauthner rather as a journalist than a
philosopher,102 which - in a way - is a misleading characterization since most writers in fin-de-siècle Vienna also worked as journalists.103 Mauthner begot a large
philosophical output, yet “only one of his eleven major works - a refutation of
Aristotle - has been translated to English”,104 which led to his oblivion. In recent
years, a negligible number of papers have been written about him, but to this day,
strangely, his most important work, the Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache 105
(1901-1902), has not been translated. This fact is even more so peculiar, since the
Beiträge are a work important in the history of philosophy as well as literature.
Important for the history of philosophy since Wittgenstein was acquainted with
it,106 and important for literary history since it influenced both James Joyce and
Samuel Beckett.107
Mauthner expounded his personal understanding of philosophy in his Wörterbuch der Philosophie, the second part to his magnum opus of the Beiträge:
[D]ie Philosophie ist Erkenntnistheorie, Erkenntnistheorie ist Sprachkritik; Sprachkritik aber ist die Arbeit an dem befreienden Gedanken, daß
die Menschen mit den Wörtern ihrer Sprachen und mit den Worten
ihrer Philosophien niemals über eine bildliche Darstellung der Welt
hinaus gelangen können.108
101
One notable exception is chapter 5 in Allan Janik and Stephen Edelston Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (Ivan R. Dee, 1996) p.120-167.
102
Janik and Toulmin p.121.
103
Karl Kraus (section 3.2), and Hugo von Hofmannsthal (section 4), who will appear later,
both published many essays, the former was even a publisher of his own journal. Theodor Herzl,
the father of Zionism, and Joseph Roth, the important Austro-Hungarian writer, were chief
correspondents for the Viennese Freie Presse in Paris. The list could be extended considerably.
104
My emphasis. Linda Ben-Zvi, “Samuel Beckett, Fritz Mauthner, and the Limits of Language”,
Modern Language Association 86.2 (1980): p.183.
105
Henceforth Beiträge.
106
See chapter 5, p.120-167 in Wittgenstein’s Vienna or Yuchen Xin, “Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Kafka’s Oktavhefte: A Comparative Stylistic and Philosophical
Analysis”, Diss., Univsersity of Colorado Boulder, 2014, p.8.
107
James Joyce would even ask Samuel Beckett to read to him from it when he was going blind.
Ben-Zvi Ibid.
108
Fritz Mauthner, Wörterbuch der Philosophie: Neue Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache,
1st ed. (München und Leipzig: Georg Müller, 1910) p. XI.
21
Fritz
Mauthner
All
Philosophy
is Language
Critique
Bound to language, as we are, knowledge can only be conveyed through it, therefore
any epistemology will eventually also be a philosophy of language.
Yet, as alluded to in section (2.3), Mauthner echoes Nietzsche in asserting that
meaning within language is simply a matter of convention:
Die Sprache ist nur ein Scheinwert wie eine Spielregel, die auch umso
zwingender wird, je mehr Mitspieler sich ihr unterwerfen, die aber die
Wirklichkeitswelt weder ändern noch begreifen will.109
While this talk of rules and games reminds one of the late Wittgenstein, Mauthner also had another commonality in thought with the late years of the greatest
Austrian language philosopher: he asserted that language was ultimately just a
subjective system which could dissolve:
Wo immer nun wir den Versuch machen werden, das Wesen der
Erkenntnis zu entdecken, da wird es sich so genau wie die Sprache
als eine soziale Erscheinung, vielleicht sogar als eine soziale Illusion
enthüllen. [...]
Der weitere Verlauf aller Untersuchung dieser Sprachkritik wird uns
lehren, [...] zu dem gleichen Zweifel an der Festigkeit unseres Wissensgebäudes [zu] kommen.110
Concepts
and
Reference
As the social construct which it is, language could never convey real truths, only
the truths we mutually agreed upon.
When it comes to the objects and concepts that words reference to, Mauthner
seems to clearly echo what Nietzsche asserted in Jenseits von Gut und Böse, that
the signifié and signifiant do not always coincide, yet Mauthner takes it out of the
philosophical sphere and states it more generally about language:
Sowie aber die Wirklichkeitswelt verglichen wird, dürfte es ohne
Beweis einleuchten, daß es eigentlich Allgemeinvorstellungen gar nicht
gibt, daß es in unserem Gedächtnis nur ähnliche, ineinander fließende,
verwaschene Vorstellungen gibt, die in Vorrat hinter dem Begri↵ stehen, und aus denen die Phantasie immer diejenigen hervorlangt, die sie
gerade braucht oder die ihr die unbewußte Assoziation zuführt.
Wobei nicht zu vergessen ist, daß nur wenige Menschen beim Wortgebrauch es auch für nötig halten, den einzelnen Begri↵ oder das Wort
jedesmal aus dem Vorrat der Vorstellungen zu speisen und sie so lebendig
zu machen oder zu erhalten.111
Nietzsche still asserted that di↵erent vocabularies may or may not coincide with
di↵erent philosophies; Mauthner seems to fully negate that possibility. If we read
109
Mauthner, Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache [1902] p.25.
111
110
22
his word “Allgemeinvorstellungen” as something like general Saussurian signifiants,
then Mauthner denies them. To him, language is more of a sea of subjective
signifiants that we all name in mutually agreed upon signifiés, despite not actually
knowing whether we can convey our information - the only help is to use our
non-linguistic sensory input.
If language is such a subjective unstable entity, what then is it useful for?
Mauthner sees one prime importance in language in the transmission of emotions
through (linguistically driven) art:
Hier will ich aber nur darauf hinweisen, daß auch diese wahrhaft
grauenhafte Entdeckung nur erklären hilft, warum die Sprache wohl ein
herrliches Kunstmittel, aber ein elendes Erkenntniswerkzeug ist. Denn
der Dichter will immer nur eine Stimmung mitteilen. Seine Seelensituation. Was der Stimmung zu Grunde liegt, das Wirklichkeitsbild, hält
die Poesie nur zusammen, wie der Strick einen Rosenkranz. [...]
Anders in der wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung. Hier soll nichts
Stimmung sein, hier ist nicht ein sinnfälliger Vorgang. Die Mehrdeutigkeit
jedes einzelnen Wortes wird durch kein Ganzes vorher gemildert oder
gedeutet, und so kann am Ende kein Ganzes entstehen.112
The reason for the failing of language in a scientific context is its triumph in an
artistic context: there is never an absolute truth, but always ambiguity.
We have seen above that Mauthner asserts that we are bound to language for all
of our expression and epistemology; however, what is his position on conjunction of
thought and language? Mauthner saw, as mentioned before, language ultimately
just as a system of social convention, yet he did follow Hamann in saying that
thought and language coincide:
[E]s gibt kein Denken ohne Sprechen, das heißt ohne Worte. Oder
richtiger: Es gibt gar kein Denken, es gibt nur ein Sprechen.113
Even more so, he continued speaking of thought without language, and separated
instinctive thoughts from reason114 - yet for anything transcending instinct we do
need language.
While Mauthner held views analogous to Hamann in his construction of reason
and language, he also endorsed similar views as the Romantics when it comes to
the connection of language and culture. Where Herder and Humboldt constructed
language already as the memory of a nation,115 Mauthner does exactly the same
thing.116 However, while memory had a positive (or at least neutral) connotation
with his ancestors in thought, Mauthner clearly also sees some disadvantages:
112
Mauthner, Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache [1902] p.93f.
My emphasis. Mauthner, Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache [1902] p.176.
114
p.180↵
115
See sections (2.1) and (2.2).
116
p.179
113
23
Art and
Philosophy
Es steckt also in dem Gebrauch der Muttersprache eine unverhältnismäßig große Masse von ererbtem, nicht erworbenem, nicht nachkontrolliertem Gute, das auf Treu und Glauben benutzt wird.117
Metaphysics
and Science
Mauthner criticizes the unreflected usage of words, claiming that a word which is
used without thought is not more than the instinctive thought as found in animals.
Due to everything discussed so far, Mauthner not only doubts the possibilities
of science within language, he outright called its endeavors metaphysical :
Was die Wissenschaft dazutut, ist also wieder mythologisches Beiwerk.
Sie müßthe ehrlich sagen: Hier, an der untersten wie an der obersten
Grenze des Wahrnehmbaren, versagt uns mit der Sprache das Denken.
Wir können nichts mehr beobachten, nichts mehr vorstellen, nichts
mehr wissen. Und selbst die Widersprüche, auf die wir stoßen, sind
nicht klar gewußthe Widersprüche, sie sind in Wahrheit metaphysisch,
spielerisch, witzig, also dumm.118
If all the scientific cases that cannot be perceived by the naked eye are metaphysical
because or language fails us, our entire world view will be based on metaphysics,
but not on truths.
Ernst Mach
While Mauthner doubted the possibility of truth because of the limits of language,
Ernst Mach went a di↵erent way. Influential physicist by trade,119 Mach was a
stark opponent of metaphysics and supported an extreme nominalism. Only what
we perceive with our senses can be considered true:
Meine sämtlichen physischen Befunde kann ich in derzeit nicht weiter
zerlegbare Elemente auflösen: Farben, Töne, Drücke, Wärmen, Düfte,
Räume, Zeiten u.s.w.120
HyperEmpiricist
Truth
Which, as Egon Friedell121 points out in his revealing Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit,
leads even to the rejection of the Kantian categories as the makeup of our minds122
- according to Mach, everything is an impression.
Since we perceive everything through our senses, Mach has a vastly di↵erent
approach to truth than other many others; for instance, when we put a pencil into
a tank of water, and we see it as buckled due to the modulation of light waves in
the water, how are we to decide which one is real: the buckeld pencil we perceive
117
p.180
p.262
119
A young Albert Einstein was indebted to his theories. Janik and Toulmin p.133.
120
Ernst Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum: Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung (Leipzig: Johann
Ambrosius Barth, 1906) p.8.
121
Egon Friedell was a journalist, actor, writer and cultural philosopher. His principal work is
the Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit, a 1500 page “personal” history of Western civilization from the
medieval times up until the First World War.
122
Friedell p.1386.
118
24
inside, or the straight pencil we perceive outside of the water?123,124 This approach
even holds for dreams:
Auch der wüsteste Traum ist eine Tatsache, so gut als jede andere.
Wären unsere Träume regelmäßiger, zusammenhängender, stabiler, so
wären sie für uns auch praktisch wichtiger.125
Dreams are generally not considered as depicting part of the “real world”, because
they do not have continuity (“beständigkeit”), the same goes for the aforementioned pencil; Mach asserts that for us to ascribe importance to an appearance, it
needs to have at least some continuity.
However, continuity constructed in this way is an incredibly subjective thing.
For a short gedankenexperiment we could imagine a person whose dreams are
always in perfect continuum with one another. When he falls asleep, his dream
picks up exactly where his last dream ended. We all would readily allow for such
a person to attribute greater importance to his dreams. Yet, Mach would say that
his dream world - despite being clearly a dream-world - would be as real, and as
true, as the world he perceives when he is awake.
But Mach’s writings did not only shake the belief in an objective truth in the
sciences, it also shook much older ideals. Schopenhauer called Descartes’ Cogito
ergo sum the “wahre Stützpunkt aller Philosophie”.126 Yet Mach opposed even a
rigid view of identity. While there certainly is a limited amount of continuity in
the self,127 the “I” is subject to tremendous change:
Wenn ich mich heute meiner frühen Jugend erinnere, so müßte ich
den Knaben [...] für einen Andern halten, wenn nicht die Kette der
Erinnerung vorläge.128
Yet, if we continue this train of thought, we arrive at a di↵erent extreme, the notion
that the “I” cannot be saved:
123
Ernst Mach, Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhältnis des Physischen zum Psychischen [1886] , 9th ed. (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1922) p.8.
124
At this point one observation should be made; according to Janik and Toulmin, Mach constantly asserted that he was no philosopher (p.134), yet, he not only echoes some of Schopenhauer’s theories (i.e. that what we perceive is the truth: “Die angeschaute Welt in Raum und
Zeit (...) (ist) vollkommen real (...)”) but he even uses some of the same images, like the buckled
pencil: “der ins Wasser getauchte Stab”. And even dedicates an entire chapter to “der Wille”.
In Schopenhauer p.35,43; the chapter on “der Wille” is in Mach: Erkenntnis und Irrtum, chapter
VIII..
125
Mach, Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhältnis des Physischen zum Psychischen
[1886] p.9.
126
p.470; he also defends this vantage point beautifully: “Zwar widerstrebt das Bewußtseyn
eines Jeden, welches sich schon gegen das Erklären der anderen Objekte für bloße Vorstellungen
auflehnte, noch mehr wenn der eigene Leib bloß eine Vorstellung seyn soll; welches daher kommt,
daß Jedem das Ding an sich, sofern es als sein eigener Leib erscheint, unmittelbar, sofern es in
den anderen Gegenständen der Anschauung sich objektivirt, ihm nur mittelbar bekannt ist.” in:
Schopenhauer p.39.
127
[1886] p.2↵.
128
p.3
25
Unsalvagability
of the I
Nicht das Ich ist das Primäre, sondern die Elemente (Empfindungen).
[...] Die Elemente bilden das Ich. Das Ich ist keine unveränderliche,
bestimmte, scharf begrenzte Einheit. [...] Das Ich ist unrettbar. [...]
Man wird auf das Ich, welches schon während des individuellen Lebens
vielfach variiert, ja im Schlaf und bei Versunkenheit in eine Anschauung, in einen Gedanken, gerade in den glücklichsten Augenblicken, teilweise oder ganz fehlen kann, nicht mehr den hohen Wert legen.129
Mach’s
Philosophy
of Language
Mach’s aim was to destroy the worship of the “I”, seeing as it is of no real continuity,
and we die every day a bit,130 it should only be logical to give up our illusions and
embrace the unsalvagability of the I.
While Mach’s general view on metaphysics was very popular, in his hyperempiricist philosophy, he held views on language that his contemporaries opposed.
Basically, for him, language was simply the development of sounds we made as we
encountered objects:
So wenig spezialisiert die Lautäußerungen der Tiere auch sein mögen,
so ist die Menschensprache doch nur eine weitere Entwicklung der Tiersprache. Sie entsteht, indem bei größerer Mannigfaltigkeit der Erlebnisse die Laute sich weiter modifizieren und spezialisieren, durch
Nachahmung sich in dieser Spezialisierung verbreiten und durch Tradition sich erhalten.131
This tradition that Mach writes about, basically the history of a language, hardened the “Merkzeichen”132 which are our terms. The only part of language that
is not a random genesis of our perceptive faculties is specialized jargon of science,
which is formed with the help of our cognitive faculties.133
Mach
and
Mauthner’s
impact
on
Culture
In todays world, where the sciences are strongly separated (from one another and
from the humanities), it may be hard to imagine that a scientist like Mach was an
institution that no artist could circumvent. Egon Friedell134 deemed Mach so important, that he dedicated a section of his history of western civilization to him!135
Both Mauthner and Mach had radicalized thoughts that had been developed in
the romantic (and early modern) periods, the former had shaken the foundations
of language, and the latter wrecked the traditional view on objectivity. Time was
129
p.19f
p.4
131
p.81 Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum: Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung For more on
Mach’s theory on the origin of language, consider p.79-83.
132
[1886] p.266.
133
Ibid.
134
See footnote 121.
135
Pages 1385-1388; Interestingly he did not even mention Fritz Mauthner. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who will take a very prominent part later in this thesis, is mentioned twice, not as a
person, but because of his accurate characterizations of historical figures.
130
26
not only ripe for a radical literary extension of the Romantic view on language,
Vienna’s streets were already fermenting a new type of language skepticism.
3.2
Bahr and Kraus - Cultural and Social Critique
Wir haben kein anderes Gesetz als die Wahrheit, wie jeder sie empfindet.
- Hermann Bahr, Die Moderne p.14
The figure of Ernst Mach had exerted a tremendous influence on many writers,136
but of course also on the cultural critics. Hermann Bahr, for example, the cultural
philosopher, who is considered the prophet of modernism137 and organizer of Austrian literature,138 is one of those figures that Mach influenced tremendously. By
profession a journalist, he worked as a playwright, was known as an astute cultural
critic, and formed a circle of young writers with their headquarter in the famous
Café Griensteidl.139 In his collection of essays Die Überwindung des Naturalismus
Bahr claims that Austrian literature has overcome the naturalism movement and
defines the aim of the Austrian movement, by clearly referring to Ernst Mach:
Wir haben kein anderes Gesetz als die Wahrheit, wie jeder sie
empfindet. Der dienen wir. Wir können nichts dafür, wenn sie rauh
und gewaltthätig ist und oft höhnisch und grausam. Wir sind ihr nur
gehorsam, was sie verlange. Manchmal aber verwundert es uns selbst
und erschreckt uns, wir können uns aber nicht helfen.
Dieses wird die neue Kunst sein, welches wir so scha↵en. Und es
wird die neue Religion sein. Denn Kunst, Wissenschaft und Religion
sind dasselbe.140
The central statement is truth, but not an objective truth. Recall Mach’s magnum opus Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhältnis des Physischen zum
Psychischen (in section 3.1), and its advocated subjectivity of being. At this time,
subjectivity was even more of a religion than just a Weltanschauung. Mach had
claimed that only our impressions could be considered real, and that even our
dreams may be considered like that as long as they are continuous with one another. If a renowned scientist, such as Mach, claims that everyone experiences a
di↵erent world, that only our subjective perception of it is real, then there can only
be one major conclusion: the writer, and not the naturalist, but the impressionist
136
See, for example, the discussion of Schnitzler in section (3.3), and Hofmannsthal section (4).
As the the publication of his diaries is called.
138
Gotthart Wunberger, Die Wiener Moderne: Literatur, Kunst und Musik zwischen 1890 und
1910 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981) p.42.
139
One of the cafés that helped to establish Vienna’s reputation of a city of cafés. Location
where many writers and artists would meet. It still can be found in the center of Vienna on
Michaelaplatz 2.
140
in Die Moderne Hermann Bahr, Kritische Schriften II - Die Überwindung des Naturalismus
[1891] , ed. Claus Pias (VDG Weimar, 2004) p.14.
137
27
Hermann
Bahr
Jung-Wien
is closer to the truth than anybody else, seeing as he really seeks to express the
impressions and emotions he receives, and since he does not search for objective
truth like the naturalists.
This hyper-impressionist/subjectivist stance of Hermann Bahr can be almost
seen as the manifesto of the group of writers that have meanwhile become renowned
for being language skeptics: the Jung Wien writers. In the literature, the aim
of Jung-Wien was defined as challenging “the moralistic stance of the nineteenthcentury literature in favor of sociological truth and psychological [...] openness”.141
Yet, Hermann Bahr, who was himself also a Jung-Wien author once wrote more
truthfully:
[E]ine Gruppe, vielleicht eine Schule von jungen, meist Wiener Litteraten [...], die durch au↵ällige Werke, einige auch schon durch schöne
Versprechungen in der Gesellschaft bekannt, ja sie selber meinen wohl
sogar: berühmt wurden.142
What
is
Sprachskepsis?
An assertion which is the most honest characterization of the movement, in that
it says that every writer was part of Jung-Wien.
Papers often equate a certain kind of literary language skepticism with the
Jung-Wien group,143 which I find problematic. While there have been certain
thoughts on language, which were strongly established in the Viennese literary
scene (see the discussion of Schnitzler below or the chapter on Hofmannsthal144 ),
others which must be seen as being in the same circles were definitely not poets of
Jung-Wien (such as Rainer Maria Rilke) or not even usually considered as writers
(such as Alfred Kubin, see both below145 ), and still endorsed very similar views.146
Furthermore, was there one common strand of language skepticism? The answer seems to be no. The question of how philosophers should write, had received
a more general treatment by polemic Karl Kraus, who criticized the way his contemporaries (mis)used language. At the same time philosophy of language, and
especially questions which may be best summarized by quoting Wittgenstein: “Die
Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt”147 had received more
main-stream literary attention. There seems to be a clear distinction between figures that investigated the former, language of philosophers, (for example Kraus)
and the latter, philosophy of language, (writers as discussed in section 3.3).
Scholar Richard T. Gray introduces Saussurian terminology to illuminate these
di↵erences between di↵erent actors’ critique of language. He makes a clear distinc141
Carl Emil Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (New York, N.Y.: Vintage, 1980) p.212.
Hermann Bahr, Kritische Schriften IV - Studien zur Kritik der Moderne [1894] , ed. Claus
Pias, 2nd ed. (Weimar, 2011) p.58.
143
For example: Alice Leal, “Linguistic Scepticism and the Jung-Wien Towards a New Perspective in Translation Studies”, trans-kom 7.1 (2014): 99–114.
144
Sections (3.3) and (4) respectively.
145
Both in section (3.3).
146
A more detailed account will, sadly, be outside the scope of this thesis.
147
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1922] , 2nd (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2003) 5.6.
142
28
tion between (a) langage, “the fundamental capacity of language in general”, and
(b) parole, the “specific utterances of individual speakers”148 According to him, this
distinction is interesting insofar, as it immediately di↵erentiates between particular writers of that time: the poets Hofmannsthal and Arthur Schnitzler could be,
according to Gray, grouped as langage skeptics (a), while the polemic Karl Krauss
and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein would rather be criticizing parole (b).149
However this distinction that Gray introduces150 may be a bit confusing when we
closely look at the terminology. Saussure defines langage as general human speech,
of which all languages are subsets;151 meanwhile parole is “the executive side” of
language, i.e. speaking.152 Yet, Saussure rather speaks of both as idealized forms;
langage is a general concept, all languages fall within it; the same goes for parole,
which is a more general term describing the utterances of a person, yet without
any valuation. Langage nor parole, can be “wrong” since they are more fundamental capacities. A critique of these concepts, if we take them in their Saussurian
meaning, is thus non-sensical. We may therefore conclude that what Gray means
is, if we stated it in the same terms that we used throughout the thesis, that one
can separate the writers that (a) criticized language in general (a question of philosophy of language), and (b) the writers that criticized the (mis)use of language
(the language of philosophers so to say).
Journalist and polemic Karl Kraus, as alluded to above, was never troubled by
problems of philosophy of language, rather, convinced by “his own ability to wield
this power [of language]”,153 he critiqued the aestheticizing and psychologizing misuse as it was utilized by his contemporaries. While his contemporaries might have
claimed, just like Hofmannsthal did, that there is a troubling disparity between
the word and reality, we have to express the truth as we experience it, Kraus would
have argued something else: that we have to stop lying and find the truth as it is.
He seems to even have endorsed a hyper-realist view on language, as apparent from some of his aphorisms: “Wer nichts der Sprache vergibt, vergibt nichts
der Sache.”154 His trouble was solely the corruption of language and how writers
catered to the tastes of their audiences. One aphorism of his satirical journal Die
Fackel exhibits this nicely: “Keinen Gedanken haben und ihn ausdrücken können:
Das macht den Journalisten.”155 Kraus’ attacks were often directed at the jour148
He also gives a third category langue, “the body of utterances possible within a given language” which is not interesting for this present paper. In: Richard T Gray, “Aphorism and
Sprachkrise in Turn-of-the-Century Austria”, Orbis Litterarum 41.4 (1986): p.346.
149
I disagree with a clearcut distinction like that, as I will demonstrate further down.
150
Notabene on grounds of some other research research.
151
De Saussure p.9.
152
p.13
153
R. T. Gray p.345.
154
Karl Kraus, Über die Sprache, ed. Heinrich Fischer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977)
p.7.
155
Karl Kraus, AAC-Fackel: ”Die Fackel. Herausgeber: Karl Kraus, Wien 1899-1936”, ed.
Karl Kraus (Vienna: AAC - Austrian Academy Corpus, 2007) F281/282,29 (...)
29
Karl Kraus
nalist (and especially his most detested form of the feuilleton156 ), but they never
left the realm of faith in language. Language may be used as shallow and (to
him) abhorrently as possible, yet he would have never renounced its possibility for
achieving truth.
Thus Karl Kraus was not even as radical as Hamann; as discussed before (section 2.1), Hamann also criticized the misuse of language by his contemporaries.
The great di↵erence, however, was that Kraus would not have investigated the
interplay between language and cognition.
Many of Kraus’ contemporaries however would have disagreed with him on the
issue; if we think of Viennese language-skepticism nowadays, we usually think of
Hofmannsthal’s Chandos-letter 157 and skepticism concerning the possibilities of
language; i.e. literary treatment of questions of philosophy of language.
3.3
Jung Wien and Sprachskepsis
Die Phantasie auch des nüchternsten und beschränktesten Menschen ist nämlich immer noch hundertmal packender und pittoresker
als alle gesprochenen Worte der Welt; die schönsten und tiefsten Verse
können nicht annähernd ausdrücken, was der einfachste Galeriebesucher
unartikuliert empfindet.
- Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit, p.1512
Poetry
One of Hofmannsthal’s colleagues (and acquaintances) who also was mindful to
questions of philosophy of language is Rainer Maria Rilke. Despite having been
of Old-Austrian origin,158 he was never considered a part of Jung-Wien. His only
novel Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge is a prime example for his issue
with language, and so is his poem Ich fürchte mich so vor der Menschen Wort:
Ich fürchte mich so vor der Menschen Wort.
Sie sprechen alles so deutlich aus:
Und dieses heißt Hund und jenes heißt Haus,
und hier ist Beginn und das Ende ist dort.
Mich bangt auch ihr Sinn, ihr Spiel mit dem Spott,
sie wissen alles, was wird und war;
kein Berg ist ihnen mehr wunderbar;
ihr Garten und Gut grenzt grade an Gott.
156
The Feuilleton was and still is the arts section of Austrian newspapers, then notorious for
being an artistic outlet for many writers.
157
See section 4 for a discussion of his views and especially subsection 4.1.1 for the famous letter.
158
The Altösterreicher are the German speaking persons from all parts of Austria-Hungary that
are not Austria nowadays; i.e. Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Ruthenium etc.
30
Ich will immer warnen und wehren: Bleibt fern.
Die Dinge singen hör ich so gern.
Ihr rührt sie an: sie sind starr und stumm.
Ihr bringt mir alle die Dinge um159 .
Here, Rilke is polemically playing with the same themes that I brought up in
Nietzsche’s Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne (section 2.3);
the problem of the arbitrariness of names, the lack of actual meaning behind the
references and the dichotomy between signifié and signifiant. Why is one thing
called Hund and the next Haus? During the poem, the lyrical I is getting more
and more anxious, after he just wondered about the meaning of a given word in
the first stanza, he almost starts indicting a more sensible use of words, and in the
third stanza invokes a better use of words.
While poets like Rilke were plagued by questions of reference, other artists had
di↵erent issues with the usage of language. Die anders Seite is the only novel by
the painter Alfred Kubin, and widely unknown. While he was definitively not a
proponent of Jung-Wien,160 his novel is clearly influenced by their topics: dreams
and sexuality, and their thoughts on language. The narrator moves to the so called
Traumreich to work; first an inspiration for his work, it starts changing more and
more into a quixotic nightmare until he flees. After finishing his path of su↵ering,
he is admitted to a mental institution in the epilogue.
Kubin was interested in the borderline cases of language, namely:
Wie es möglich ist, innere Bilder sowie den Inhalt von Träumen und
des Unterbewussten zu kommunizieren und die paradoxe Problematik,
etwas ausdrücken zu wollen, über das eigentlich nicht mehr gesprochen
werden kann. [...] Auch für Kubin, wie für die Literatur der Sprachkrise,
wird so der Zusammenhang zwischen Epiphanie, Unaussprechlichkeitstopos und der Darstellung des Schweigens relevant.161
He, however, expresses his form of language skepticism through his treatment of
storyline, rather than through direct reference to the problems of language. One
instance is the narrator’s disbelief in the first report he hears about the Traumreich.162
The same problem, how to express the unsayable, was also urgent for Kafka.
While not a Viennese author, Kafka can be seen in the same tradition of typical
159
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Ich fürchte mich so vor der Menschen Wort”, Die frühen Gedichte
(Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1909) 91.
160
Alfred Kubin was never famous as a writer, Die andere Seite (1909) is his only novel. He is,
however, known as a painter, and there for his dark, sinister dreamlike style. While mostly in
black and white, he became associated with Der blaue Reiter around Kandinsky
161
Magdalena Haglmüller, “Zeichen der Sprachkrise in Alfred Kubins ”Die andere Seite””, Diss.,
Universität Wien, 2011, p.71.
162
Alfred Kubin, Die andere Seite [1908] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009) p.13.
31
Dreams
Words
and
Austrian phantasmic realism 163 as Kubin, yet he investigated the problems of language more directly. When Kafka was a✏icted by tuberculosis in 1917, he started
writing a collection of aphorisms known as the Die Zürauer Aphorismen, in which
he dealt with philosophical questions that troubled him; he also made references
to the problems of language:
Die Sprache kann für alles außerhalb der sinnlichen Welt nur andeutungsweise, aber niemals auch nur annähernd vergleichsweise gebraucht
werden, da sie entsprechend der sinnlichen Welt nur vom Besitz und
seinen Beziehungen handelt.164
Arthur
Schnitzler
Kafka encountered the same problem as his Viennese contemporaries, foremostly
Mauthner165 and Hofmannsthal. How can something like language work, and how
could we criticize its use if our only way to express this is through language, the
medium we try to criticize?
A similar problem is encountered by Arthur Schnitzler’s hero Mr. Huber, from
his story Ich. As the tie-vendor walks down the street and encounters a park, which
has a sign saying “Park”, he starts doubting the meaning of words. Why would
such a specification be necessary? Everyone knows that there is a park there, the
Viennese Schwarzenbergpark to be more precise. The more he thinks about it,
however, the more he starts doubting the possibilities of expression; it is not that
easy after all:
Ganz klug, daß dort an einem Baum die Tafel ,,Park” hing. Nicht alle
Menschen waren so geistesgegenwärtig und scharfsinnig wie er, daß sie
ohne weiteres wußten, dies ist ein Park, und dies ist eine Halsbinde.166
His doubt seems to manifest itself especially when it comes to the written word,
leading him to question the connection between a news paper clipping of an earthquake and the real earthquake.167
Over time, however, he concludes that a sign specifying the object is something
useful, and starts attaching little notes to everything. The story concludes with his
wife having brought a doctor who finds Mr. Huber at home with a sign attached
to him saying “Ich” (“I”); the return of Mach’s unsalvagability of the I.168 How
can we justify the word “I”? Mach claimed that there is no self, just continuity; is
the continuity of the word “I” enough to justify our existence? Unlike Rilke, for
example, Schnitzler also clearly takes a side on language skepticism; while a grain
of it may be healthy and natural for educated people (of his time), the doubt can
163
Haglmüller p.64.
Franz Kafka, Die Acht Oktavhefte [1918] (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1987).
165
Who had also been born in Prague like Kafka.
166
Arthur Schnitzler, “Ich”, Traumnovelle und andere Erzählungen (Fischer Taschenbuch,
2008).
167
Schnitzler, “Ich”.
168
Das Ich ist unrettbar. See section (3.1).
164
32
quickly go into the ridiculous. Mr. Huber thinks words will dissolve reality or, even
worse, lose their meaning, therefore he has to attach them to everything, and even
himself.
However, while the problems stated above were clearly questions into the possibilities of language in general, of the philosophy of language, Schnitzler was not
oblivious to problems of usage of language. In a note on his unpublished tragicomedy Das Wort 169 he expresses:
Unsere gesamte Moral besteht vielleicht nur darin, aus diesem unpräzisen
Material, das uns das Lügen so leicht, so verantwortungslos, so entschuldbar macht, aus der Sprache etwas besseres zu machen. Mit Worten so
wenig zu lügen als möglich ist.170
This quote as well as the later discussion of Hofmannsthal (consider section 4
below) shows that Gray’s analysis of the language skepticism of the time only
scratches the surface; there is not always a clear demarcation to be made between
questions of (a), of the philosophy of language, and (b), of the language of philosophers, as evidenced by Arthur Schnitzler, or more prominently so by Hugo von
Hofmannsthal.
It becomes apparent that the movement of Sprachskepsis is nothing but a slightly
unprecise general term for all the writers which exhibit language-theoretical considerations in the fin-de-siècle. It simply was part of the zeitgeist then, to put a
stronger emphasis on the theory of language as well. Literature and other forms
of art just had overcome naturalism, the maxim to depict everything as naturally
as possible. Movements like impressionism, expressionism and others had been
formed in opposition to naturalism, and it is one of the necessary reactions against
a naturalistic linguistic expression to doubt the possibility for any naturalism in
language, since language and impression do not coincide.
However, if a zeitgeist has identified some leitmotifs for a certain era, it will
not only spark the artist’s imagination, as it did with the literary Sprachskepsis
movement, it will also spur the minds of the great thinkers and lead to a true
philosophical investigation of a topic. In fin-de-siècle Vienna, the people involved
were not only the usual suspects Fritz Mauthner, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the
Vienna circle, it was also one young aesthete named Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
169
The comedy should have been a critique of exactly that; tragicomical events happening
because of how the characters (mis-)use language.
170
My emphasis Arthur Schnitzler, Das Wort, Tragikomödie in fünf Akten. Fragment, ed. Kurt
Bergel (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1966) p.27.
33
Sprachskepsis
Revisited
4
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Was [Hofmannsthal] berührt, wird Anmuth, Lust und Schönheit.
- Hermann Bahr, Studien zur Kritik der Moderne p.103
Who is
Hofmannsthal?
Hofmannsthal was no philosopher in the classical sense. The most insightful characterization comes from Hermann Bahr: “Loris, der Hugo von Hofmannsthal heisst,
schreibt Prosa und Verse, Kritisches und Lyrisches. An der Prosa merkt man den
Lyriker gleich”.171 He was through and through an artistic writer, anybody who
knows even his non-fiction would make a similar statement as Bahr. Hofmannsthal
never communicated his thoughts in a strictly analytical way; his thoughts had to
be conveyed through aesthetic form. However, Bahr continues:
Aber an den Versen wieder merkt man den kritischen Philosophen:
sie sind mit quälenden Gedanken, moralischen Fragen und athemlosen
Zweifeln der Bildung ängstlich beladen, dass man ihnen lieber die freiere
Gelassenheit ungebundener Aphorismen wünschen möchte172 .
Hofmannsthal
in the
Tradition
Large parts of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s work are essentially a philosophical work.
Hermann Bahr noticed it already in 1894(!), when Hofmannsthal was only twenty
years old writing mostly poetry under the pen-name Loris. Well-nigh a decade
before Ein Brief and more than a quarter of a century before Der Schwierige, the
philosophical mind of young Loris was already clear to Hermann Bahr. And the
distinction between philosopher, scientist and poet was, in the Vienna of that time
rather arbitrary, as Janik and Toulon point out in their work Wittgenstein’s Vienna.173 Then, art was an important vehicle for the bourgeoisie in the “instruction
in metaphysical and moral truth”.174 No wonder that writers would see it as a
mission to be philosophers, ethicist and aesthetician - in short, to be an implicit
philosopher in the tradition of Herder, Hamann and Schlegel.
Schlegel had demanded an aesthetic revolution, where philosophy, humanities
and literature would be conjoined in a philosophical “gesamtkunstwerk”;175 language, as the ultimate expression of humanity and the spirit, would necessarily be
in the center of such an endeavor. In the enlightenment and romantic eras, the
study of language had been placed in the center of the study of cognition; Nietzsche
smashed the idols by dissecting the word and its reference, and lifting the word to
the center of our moral misunderstanding.
Young Loris had an exceptional education; he had an almost encyclopedic
knowledge of the tradition and placed himself in it, historically as well as ex171
Bahr, Kritische Schriften IV - Studien zur Kritik der Moderne [1894] p.68.
Ibid. My emphasis.
173
“As it is, we overlook the interdependence of the di↵erent Viennese arts and sciences.” (p.18);
page 92 for some examples. In Janik and Toulmin.
174
p. 45
175
If I may misappropriate the term from music.
172
34
plicitly.176 He did not only echo Schlegel in his view of aesthetics and philosophy,
but endorsed it with body and soul.177 As a poetic wunderkind,178 questions of
language had reached his attention very early in life and never left his focus. A
general philosophy of his can also be distilled from his works, yet his philosophy
of language is of bigger relevance for the present objective.
For the purpose of a comprehensive study of his philosophy, I will use a number
of his works which range over his whole life-time. His early period is featured in one
of his poems and the most famous of his lyrical plays. The middle period is featured
with the formative work Ein Brief, and another one of his letter-novellas. His late
period is featured with a play and his collection of aphorisms. The sca↵olding that
is provided with these snapshots in Hofmannsthal’s prolific life is tied together
with the rough threads that are his sporadic diary entries, and the fine silk that is
his essayistic work - his “philosophical diary”179 - which are taken from his early
days until the year of his death.
4.1
Material
Used
Hofmannsthal’s Philosophy of Language
Die Worte an sich sind nichts: wie wir sie brauchen, um das Unsägliche
zu verschleiern, darin liegt alles.
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Diary 1896
As a poet, Hofmannsthal was interested his entire life in the topic of metaphors.
In 1897, Hofmannsthal wrote a short essay (or perhaps rather a long aphorism)
on “the metaphor”. In it he criticizes a comment on poems that states that they
have been adorned with metaphors. As if a poem could exist without metaphors,
Hofmannsthal maintains: the metaphor is the true language of the poem. Yet, he
goes further in asserting that the only people who actually understand language are
poets for they are the ones “die sich des Gleichnishaften der Sprache unaufhörlich
176
An example would be his work on the German enlightenment writer Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing. A hundred years earlier, Schlegel had written a famous treatise on the very same writer
as well, and Hofmannsthal deals with the topic in his own way, but also through the example of
his intellectual forefather. For the present purpose, however, both texts are not as important,
since they are not so much philosophical works, as much as philological.
177
“Und doch gibt es keinen schönen und auch keinen bedeutenden Gehalt ohne eine wahrhaft
schöne Darstellung, und der Gehalt kommt erst durch die Darstellung zur Welt (...)” in “Schöne
Sprache” Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Drei kleine Betrachtungen [1921]”, Der Brief des Lord Chandons: Schriften zur Literatur, Kultur und Geschichte, ed. Matthias Mayer (Stuttgart: Reclam,
2000) p.192.
178
Hermann Bahr beautifully illustrates their first encounter and how shocked he was to learn
that “Loris” was still a teenager. In his study Loris in Bahr, Kritische Schriften IV - Studien
zur Kritik der Moderne [1894] p.101.
179
As Hermann Broch called it: “(Seine E)ssayistische Produktion; sie begleitet Hofmannsthal
auf seinem ganzen, mit dem siebzehnten Jahr anhebenden schriftstellerischen Weg, war stete
Selbstbesinnung und Selbsterklärung, sein philosophisches Tagebuch im Ereignis des Daseins.”
in Broch p.148.
35
The
Metaphor
bewusst bleiben”,180 for language essentially is metaphor. At the same time he
breaks with the notion that objective meaning in poems is possible:
Die Leute suchen gern hinter einem Gedicht, was sie den ,,eigentlichen
Sinn” nennen. Sie sind wie A↵en, die auch immer mit den Händen
hinter einen Spiegel fahren, als müsse dort ein Körper zu fassen sein.181
He clearly echoes Bahr’s maxim of the truth as everyone experiences it; every
person experiences a metaphor di↵erently, and it is a strange concept to look for
objective truths when everybody can experience their own truth.
Hofmannsthal was reproached182 for turning Mauthner’s works into artistic
works; Mauthner’s Beiträge, for example, say something very similar about the
metaphor (as above):
Dabei stimmt es gut zu meiner Lehre, daß nämlich die Sprache durch
Metaphern entstanden ist und durch Metaphern wächst, wenn dichterische Phantasie die Worte immer wieder ergänzen und beleben muß.183
Cognition
and
Language
However, as evidenced from above (and from many of his diary entries), Hofmannsthal was expressing his thoughts about the metaphor earlier than Mauthner.184
The metaphor already occupied a special position in Hofmannsthal’s view on
language long before Mauthner’s magnum opus had been published. In the aforementioned essay Bildlicher Ausdruck, he mentions that the only way to express the
world in a sensible way, is through the metaphor.185 The first thoughts dealing with
the metaphor, however, must have originated already years earlier, as evidenced
from a diary entry from 1893. There he linked the genesis of metaphors to our
cognition:
Das Entstehen des metaphorischen Ausdrucks ist ein geheimnisvolles
Ding: der Anschauung eines Vorgangs substituiert sich plötzlich unwillkürlich die Anschauung eines anderen nur in der Idee verwandten
Bildlicheren, Körperlicheren. [...] Einfluß der Sprache auf das Denken.
- Sprache ist überhaupt nur Bild. Manche erstarrt wie Hieroglyphen,
haben nur Münzwert, manche lebendig, wirken direkt auf die Nerven.186
180
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Bildlicher Ausdruck [1897]”, Der Brief des Lord Chandons:
Schriften zur Literatur, Kultur und Geschichte, ed. Matthias Mayer (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam
jun., 2000) p.45.
181
Ibid.
182
R. T. Gray p.335.
183
184
In his letter to Mauthner from November 3rd 1902, Hofmannsthal even writes: “Meine
Gedanken sind früher ähnliche Wege gegangen, vom Metaphorischen der Sprache manchmal
mehr entzückt, manchmal mehr beängstigt.” - retrieved through: R. T. Gray p.335.
185
Von Hofmannsthal, “Bildlicher Ausdruck [1897]” p.45.
186
May 1893 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Aufzeichnungen”, Reden und Aufsätze III: 1925-1929,
Aufzeichnungen, ed. Bernd Schoeller, Ingeborg Beyer-Ahlert, and Rudolf Hirsch (Frankfurt am
Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1980) p.360.
36
The metaphor is interesting insofar as it gives us an image that our cognition links
to another image. However, is the connection of a linguistic, or of a cognitive
nature? Is our thought influenced by the metaphor or is it the other way around?
Hofmannsthal, like Hamann, saw great importance in the ambiguity of language
and understanding; yet how did he link language and thought? Was he more
influenced by thinkers like Hamann, saying that thought and language coincide?
Or was he more influenced by someone like Mach who saw language and cognition
as two distinctly separate entities?
One of his later diary entries on the metaphor helps us in constructing his view
of that topic. In 1925 he wrote in his diary:
Im Gleichnis kommt das ,,Glied” des Denkens zum Eigenleben, und es
wird ein Teil von dem Raub, den das Sprache gewordene Denken am
Leben begeht, diesem rückerstattet.187
The allegory defies the influence of language and gives us back some freedom from
language, by expressing our thoughts through experience that has turned into
words.
Therefore, I think it is fair to claim that Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s theory of
language states that language influences thought, yet there is an aspect to cognition
independent of thought (and thus independent of language as well), but we have
forgotten that fact. In his diary he noted in 1894 or 1895:
Worte sind versiegelte Gefängnisse des göttlichen ⇡⌫✏ µ↵188 der
Wahrheit.
Götzendienst, Anbetung eines ✏◆ o o⌫, Sinnbildes, das einmal für
den Menschen lebendig war, Mirakel gewirkt hat, durchflammende Offenbarung des göttlichen Geheimnisses der Welt gewesen ist; solche
✏◆ o ↵ sind die Begri↵e der Sprache. Sie sind für gewöhnlich nicht
heiliger als Götzenbilder, nicht wahrhaftiger ,,reich” als eine vergrabene
Urne, nicht wahrhaftiger ,,stark” als ein vergrabenes Schwert.189
Recall that Nietzsche had pointed out the dichotomy between signifié and signifiant
half a century earlier; Nietzsche had hinted towards what Saussure started writing
about during Hofmannsthal’s life time: that words and concepts only have arbitrary connections.190 Hofmannsthal was sensitive to the very same issues - what is
the real meaning behind words? While Nietzsche claims that every word can only
be seen in connection to every other word, and while Mauthner claims that we use
a myriad of words in an unreflected way, Hofmannsthal asserts that we could not
187
November 1925 von Hofmannsthal, “Aufzeichnungen” p.582.
⇡⌫✏ µ↵ - is either the breath of life or divine inspiration.
189
Undated 1894 or 1895 von Hofmannsthal, “Aufzeichnungen” p.390.
190
See section (2.3) for a more detailed discussion.
188
37
Ambiguity
and
Language
even “control the original meanings”,191 for we have forgotten the original meanings of words and therefore they are locked in sealed prisons. Language as with
Nietzsche and Mauthner, is an entity of “Schein”.
Language is creating the illusion of completeness, of a world that makes sense.
Yet Hofmannsthal claims that language essentially is ambiguity:
Die Sprache
Sie ist das große Werkzeug der Erkenntnis, sie ist das große Werkzeug
der Verkennung. In ihren schwebenden Bildern verbirgt der Geist sich
vor sich selber. Sie scheint uns alle zu verbinden, und doch reden wir
jeder eine andere.
[...]
Sie scheint mitten ins Denken hineinzuführen und führt in Wahrheit
hinaus: Sie umstellt das Denken mit unsichtbaren Netzen, und kein
Geist kann sich ihr je entschwingen.
Redend genießen wir uns selbst, redend entfremden wir uns selbst.
Wenn sie wie ebbendes Meer zurücktritt, das nackte Gerüste Leben
entblößt - solche Augenblicke ertragen wir kaum.
Wer ihre Macht um sich einschränkt, der wird sie in sich anschwellen
fühlen, vor ihr ist kein Entrinnen; sie ist das Gedächtnis selbst, um sie
nicht zu sehen, muß man den Kopf in die Falten ihres eigenen Mantels
drücken. Sie redet aus jedem Mund anders und verrät unerbitterlich
die Seele.192
When Hofmannsthal asserts: “redend genießen wir uns selbst, redend entfremden
wir uns selbst”, it sounds very much like when Nietzsche said that we lie to ourselves
in language. We do understand but we can never fully understand, for our language
seems to postulate truths, however they are always subjective truths.
In the section on Humboldt (2.2), we saw that the great German homo universalis held the view that all understanding is always also a misunderstanding.
Hofmannsthal held similar opinions as Humboldt, in that language always means
misunderstanding and we can never fully grasp the meaning of what others say;
but at the same time we need each other to create language (and language to
understand each other):
Was wir machen ist gleich. Wir lügen nicht. Wir fühlen den Sturz des
Daseins. Wir setzten nichts voraus. Wir spinnen aus uns selber den
Faden, der uns über den Abgrund trägt, und zuweilen sind wir selig
191
To use the - more clear - way that Mauthner put it: “Es steckt also in dem gebrauch
der Muttersprache eine unverhältnismäßig große Masse von ererbtem, nicht erworbenem, nicht
nachkontrolliertem Gute, das auf Treu und Glauben benutzt wird.” in Mauthner, Beiträge zu
einer Kritik der Sprache [1902] p.180.
192
Undated 1896 von Hofmannsthal, “Aufzeichnungen” p.413.
38
wie Wölkchen am Abendhimmel. Wir scha↵en uns einer am anderen
unsere Sprache, beleben einer den anderen.193
Language, for Hofmannsthal as for Humboldt, is a paradoxical entity, for we cannot
truly understand each other, yet we do need one another to create language.
Whereas Mach says that the individual, the “I” is an artificial entity which can
be led back to continuity, Hofmannsthal seems to give this Machian unsalvagability
of the I his own spin:
Das Individuum ist unaussprechlich. Was sich ausspricht, geht schon
ins Allgemeine über, ist nicht mehr im strengen Sinne individuell. Sprache
und Individuum heben sich gegenseitig auf.194
The “I” cannot be expressed and therefore not saved, however, many “I”s can
create a community.
Language is a social phenomenon, therefore, according to Hofmannsthal, it is
also a construct of morality:
Die Sprache (sowohl die gesprochene als die gedachte, denn wir denken
heute schon fast mehr in Worten und algebraischen Formeln als in
Bildern und Empfindungen) lehrt uns, aus der Allgemeinheit der Erscheinungen einzelnes herauszuheben, zu sondern; durch diese willkürliche
Trennungen entsteht in uns der Begri↵ wirklicher Verschiedenheit und
es kostet uns Mühe, zur Verwischung dieser Klassifikationen zurückzufinden und uns zu erinnern, daß gut und böse, Licht und Dunkel, Tier
und Pflanze nichts von der Natur Gegebenes, sondern etwas willkürlich
Herausgeschiedenes sind.195
There is no good and bad, there is no light or dark; all our concepts are just social
constructs that do not coincide with reality. Our reality is ordered by the terms
we use. Again, one is reminded of Nietzsche and the moral dimension of language.
Nietzsche negates the possibility for objective truth because of the boundaries of
language. It is a social construct and an entity that we use to lie to ourselves. In a
way, Hofmannsthal also asserts that we use it to lie to ourselves196 and expresses a
surprisingly strong moral relativist stance: there are no natural (moral) categories,
only the ones in our language.
In an almost too polemical style for the otherwise aloof, impersonal writer,197
Hofmannsthal investigates the moral ambiguity of language in his short observation198 Ironie der Dinge further. The essay is based on the quote:
193
August 1921 von Hofmannsthal, “Aufzeichnungen” p.560.
195
21.03.1891 von Hofmannsthal, “Aufzeichnungen” p.324.
196
See, for example the long quote on page 38.
197
His aloofness is, according to Hermann Broch, an attempt of the denial of the “I” which can
be seen throughout his work. Broch.
198
It is one of three short essays published under the title Drei kleine Betrachtungen.
194
39
Morality and
Language
Nach einem unglücklichen Krieg müssen Komödien geschrieben werden.199
Language
and Society
This almost aphoristic sentence leads Hofmannsthal to philosophize on the irony of
life and the problems of his country after a war, where an intellectual, a man of the
word so to say, earns less money than a worker.200 The word has value only when
a country is not lying in shambles; otherwise, the commodity is always mightier
than the pen.
There is, however, a major problem with a societal communion through language even when the country is not lying in shambles. In his second small observation, Der Ersatz für die Träume, a sad piece on how city life cripples the ability
to dream, Hofmannsthal condemns language as the tool of society:
Und im Tiefsten, ohne es zu wissen, fürchten diese Leute [die Proletarier] die Sprache; sie fürchten in der Sprache das Werkzeug der
Gesellschaft. [...] Über dem Vortragssaal steht mit goldenen Buchstaben: ,,Wissen ist Macht”, aber das Kino ruft stärker: es ruft mit
Bildern. Die Macht die ihnen durch das Wissen vermittelt wird, irgendetwas ist ihnen unvertraut an dieser Macht, nicht ganz überzeugend; beinahe verdächtig. Sie fühlen, das führt nur tiefer hinein in
die Maschinerie und immer weiter vom eigentlichen Leben weg, von
dem wovon ihre Sinne und ein tieferes Geheimnis, das unter den Sinnen schwingt, ihnen sagt, daß es das eigentliche Leben ist. [...] Diese
Sprache der Gebildeten und Halbgebildeten, ob gesprochen oder geschrieben,
sie ist etwas Fremdes. [...] All dies läßt eher eine Verzagtheit zurück,
und wieder das Gefühl, der ohnmächtige Teil einer Maschine zu sein,
und sie kennen alle eine andere Macht, eine wirkliche, die einzig wirkliche: die der Träume [...] Ja dieser dunkle Wurzelgrund des Lebens,
er, die Region wo das Individuum aufhört Individuum zu sein, er, den
so selten ein Wort erreicht, kaum das Wort des Gebetes oder das Gestammel der Liebe, er bebt mit. [...] Vor diesem dunklen Blick aus der
Tiefe des Wesens entsteht blitzartig das Symbol: das sinnliche Bild für
geistige Wahrheit, die der ratio unerreichbar ist.201
The bleak quote is again reminiscent of Humboldt. Language is a tool of society,
we cannot really evade its reach. In his diary Hofmannsthal puts the thought more
poignantly:
Das Wort ist mächtiger als der es spricht.202
199
Hofmannsthal apparently found it in the fragments of the German poet Novalis. von Hofmannsthal, “Drei kleine Betrachtungen [1921]” p.183.
200
p.185
201
Der Ersatz für die Träume in von Hofmannsthal, “Drei kleine Betrachtungen [1921]” p.188f.
202
40
Especially the lesser educated masses are thrown back and forth from the word. It
is a tool that oppresses them (but not only them) and it is something that needs
to be evaded somehow. Our dreams can help us, yet in city life, which is based on
the word, we have forgot how to dream. The word is mightier than the individual,
for it can void it.
The connection between language and society, however, is not a purely negative one for Hofmannsthal. Just like Herder, Humboldt and Schlegel, he asserted
that our national language influences how we think, i.e. that the German is more
pedantic and the Frenchman more romantic because of their respective tongues.
According to Hofmannsthal, you cannot separate the two concepts of language and
the nation, in a diary note on his Buch der Freunde, he therefore wrote them down
in one breath:
Buch der Freunde. Disposition
Geist
Von der Sprache / Nationen /
Von den Menschen [...]203
A nation simply could not be disconnected from their language.
Yet a language is not only the expression of the nation’s spirit; Hofmannsthal
also endorses a view were language and nation are interplaying in the way that the
linguistic prerequisites mold our experience of the world:
Das wir Deutschen das uns Umgebende als ein Wirkendes - die “Wirklichkeit” bezeichnen, die lateinischen Europäer als die “Dinglichkeit”,
zeigt die fundamentale Verschiedenheit des Geistes, und daß jene und
wir in ganz verschiedener Weise auf dieser Welt zu Hause sind.204
He even goes as far as saying that we live in di↵erent worlds because of the di↵erent
languages we speak.
Hofmannsthal, however, was a literary figure and not a psychologist. Therefore
it should be of no surprise that usually, when he wrote on the nation and its
language, it was a literary investigation. In his speech/essay Das Schrifttum als
geistiger Raum der Nation, Hofmannsthal claims that a language could never be
mere method of communication:
In einer Sprache finden wir uns zueinander, die völlig etwas anderes
ist, als das bloße natürliche Verständigungsmittel; denn in ihr redet
Vergangenes zu uns.205
203
Von Hofmannsthal, “Buch der Freunde [1922]” p.294.
205
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation [1927]”, Der
Brief des Lord Chandons: Schriften zur Literatur, Kultur und Geschichte, ed. Mathias Mayer
(Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2000) p.226.
204
41
Nation
and
Language
Language is unsuitable for communication, because it is heavy with meaning from
bygone generations.
Hofmannsthal really speaks of language in the same way as the philosophers of
the tradition discussed, he calls language the memory of a people, yet he gives it
a very Hofmannsthalesque spin:
Sprache. Volksgeselligkeit in sich. [...] Ein Volk wird durch Gedächtnis seiner selbst mächtig. Die Sprache ist das Traumgedächtnis des
Volkes.206,207
Language is not only a memory, but it is a dream-memory. This ties in with
Hofmannsthal’s general philosophy which will be discussed further down.208 In his
Buch der Freunde he asserts:
Indem man von der Wirklichkeit irgend etwas Zusammenfassendes aussagt, nähert man sie schon dem Traum, vielmehr der Poesie.
Anything coherent about reality leads us to dreams or poetry - we are back with
language and ambiguity for nothing is more subjective than a dream or poetry.
Solutions
and Escapes
Up until now, it has become apparent how Hofmannsthal fits in the tradition
discussed in the previous sections, however, a great philosopher is not only a person that spins further the thoughts discussed by his priors, but one who can also
provide possible solutions to the problems at which he pointed. What is the way
out of the problems of language that Hofmannsthal proposes?
Young Loris had no scruples or problems when using language at age 20, yet
he already started hinting at possible solutions. During his transition from poetry
to other forms, and especially to drama (a transition which culminated in the
fictitious letter: Ein Brief section 4.1.1), Hofmannsthal wrote a few plays in verse,
such as the piece Der Tor und der Tod. The young nobleman Claudio, with a
beautiful diction, is visited by Death who shows him how he never connected to
anyone around him and was not very good at actively doing things. Death takes
him away. After Claudio sighs out his soul, The Grim Reaper walks o↵stage with
the words:
Wie wundervoll sind diese Wesen,
Die, was nicht deutbar, dennoch deuten,
206
This image of language as a dream is something that was apparently very present in the
zeitgeist then. Mauthner writes: “Die Sprache (ist) der ewige Traum der Menschheit.” in
Mauthner p.499, and Wittgenstein writes: “Aber ist es nicht unser meinen, das dem Satz Sinn
gibt? (...) Und das Meinen ist etwas im seelischen Bereich. Aber es ist auch etwas Privates! Es
ist das ungreifbare Etwas; vergleichbar nur dem Bewußtsein selbst.
Wie könnte man das lächerlich finden! es ist ja, gleichsam, ein Traum unserer Sprache. Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen [1953] , ed. P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte,
trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte, 4th (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2009) §358.
208
See section (4.2).
207
42
Was nie geschrieben wurde, lesen,
Verworrenes beherrschend binden
Und Wege noch im Ewig-Dunkeln finden.209
Even though the nobleman would seem more like the autobiographical character of
the play, Hofmannsthal’s language skepticism becomes apparent in the last lines of
Death. He anticipated here already questions that would trouble him a decade later
with Ein Brief, and follow him throughout his work. While it is not a pronounced
language skepticism as later, he lets Death raise questions of hermeneutics. Why
do people interpret things that should not be interpreted in radical ways? The
only relief we can catch - in the bleak motif of his early work - is death.210 Only
later211 Hofmannsthal would realize a di↵erent way out of language issues, a way
that anticipates Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen to some extent.
Where in the play Der Tor und der Tod Hofmannsthal saw the only escape of
the problems of language in death, over the course of his time, he realized that
language is not all there is to life. As mentioned before, Hofmannsthal did think
that there was something behind language, i.e. a thought hidden behind language,
and the way to reach it was through experience, however, not life-experience, but
experience in a more philosophical way: the empirical intuition. The Chandos
letter212 may be the best example of this idea, but also in other works, such as Das
Buch der Freunde, Hofmannsthal hints towards this possibility of escaping:
Geistreicher und schöner als Sprachkritik wäre ein Versuch, sich der
Sprache auf magische Weise zu entwinden, wie es in der Liebe der Fall
ist.213
Love, as the ultimate human experience, is one way of escaping the unavoidable
claws of our language. This is due to the fact that only love is able to disentangle
the problems that are generated by language - a notion that may be seen as one of
the bases of Hofmannsthal’s play Der Schwierige which will be discussed further
down.
This dichotomy between word and action, also came to influence Hofmannsthal’s
literary aesthetics. Hofmannsthal gave a fictitious account of a conversation with
the composer Richard Strauss, under the name: Die ägyptische Helena.214 In this
essay, Hofmannsthal shocks the composer when he claims that:
209
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Der Tor und der Tod [1893]”, Die Wiener Moderne: Literatur,
Kunst und Musik zwischen 1890 und 1910, ed. Gotthard Wunberger (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981)
p.464.
210
Hermann Broch called the main topics in Hofmannsthal’s oeuvre the triad: Life, Dream and,
Death. Broch p.115.
211
See section 4.1.2 for a detailed discussion.
212
Section 4.1.1.
213
214
In which he writes about the creation of the libretto of the same name.
43
Ich mißtraue dem zweckvollen Gespräch als einem Vehikel des Dramatischen. Ich scheue Worte; sie bringen uns um das Beste[.]215
Richard Strauss is confused by the poets account; how could a play work without
words? Hofmannsthal mentions a series of “Kunstmittel” that are more important
than words on stage, namely:
Wie ich die Handlung führe, die Motive verstricke, das Verborgene
anklingen lasse, das Angeklungene wieder verschwinden - durch Ähnlichkeit der Gestalten, durch Analogie der Situation - durch den Tonfall,
der oft mehr sagt als die Worte. [...] die Kunstmittel des Musikers.216
This essay may be the text where Hofmannsthal gives the most pronounced account
of his own dramatic language-aesthetics. His language-skepticism led him so far
as to characterize the driving factor of a play not as the words as uttered by the
characters, but in the actions they take. The defining thing in a play (and for
Hofmannsthal also in life) is to use actions: “um das Gemenge ahnen [zu] lassen,
das durch die Maske des Ichs zur Person wird. Darum nannten die Alten ja Maske
und Person mit dem gleichen Wort”.217 Only through their actions, not through
their language, can a person be more then a masque.
The notion of evading the claws of language by experience returns in several of
Hofmannsthal’s writings. In 1907, he published his fictitious collection of letters:
Die Briefe des Zurückgekehrten, by an Austrian/German who had returned to
Germany after years abroad. In the first letter already, the protagonist complains
that getting used again to the “Gebrauch einer Kunstsprache”218 is difficult. The
difficulty for the fictitious author, however, does not stem from language itself, but
seems, over the course of his letters, to be a more general uneasiness with the use
of language. This uneasiness, is not only a problem in use; the narrator laments
that how his contemporaries use language has something unsettling:
Wie sie guten Tag sagen und wie sie dich zur Tür begleiten, wie sie
eine Tischrede halten und wie sie von Geschäften reden, wie sie in ihren
Zeitungen schreiben und wie sie ihre neuen Stadtteile bauen - das ist
alles aus einem Guß. Ich meine, das paßt eins zum anderen: denn in
sich ist nichts, was sie tun und treiben, aus einem Guß: ihre linke Hand
weiß wahrhaftig nicht, was ihre rechte tut [...] Darum sag ich dir ja, daß
215
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “”Die ägyptische Helena” [1927]”, Ausgewählte Werke in zwei
Bänden II: Erzählungen und Aufsätze, ed. R. Hirsch (Stuttgart, Zürch, Salzburg: Europäischer
Buchklub - Fischer Verlag, 1957) p.768.
216
The last sentence is actually exclaimed by Strauss in disbelief, however, since the conversation
is a fictitious account of Hofmannsthal, to express his own dramatic aesthetic, we can interpret
it as his own words. von Hofmannsthal, “”Die ägyptische Helena” [1927]” p.769.
217
Ibid.
218
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Die Briefe des Zurückgekehrten [1907]”, Ausgewählte Werke in
zwei Bänden II: Erzählungen und Aufsätze, ed. Rudolf Hirsch (Stuttgart, Zürch, Salzburg: Europäischer Buchklub - Fischer Verlag, 1957) p.477.
44
ich sie [die Deutschen] nirgends finden kann, nicht in ihren Gesichtern,
nicht in ihren Gebärden, nicht in den Reden ihres Mundes.219
Hofmannsthal states in this letter that language is too much of an absolute system,
in a world that has ceased to make systematic sense, an absolute language cannot
exist. This thought is, in a way, the radicalization of Schlegel’s views on the
system.220 Not only is a system bad for the spirit, it is also outright wrong in
todays world.221 The Briefe des Zurückgekehrten culminate in the account of the
protagonist of having seen an exhibition of Van Gogh paintings. The sublime
intensity of the colors of the paintings redeem him for the world. As in other
writings of Hofmannsthal, the turning point occurs not through linguistic dalliance,
but through silent experience. Only after experience, the actors can find their way
out of skepticism, and into action - this is what happened to the returner above,
and to Lord Chandos below.
4.1.1
Ein Brief - Philosophy of Language
Wahre Sprachliebe ist nicht möglich ohne Sprachverleugnung.
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Buch der Freunde, p.290
Hofmannsthal liked the form of the fictitious letter as a vehicle for story-line and
to convey his (language-)philosophical ideas. Yet, it is not the Briefe des Zurückgekehrten that engaged the posteriority, but his famous letter Ein Brief, which
is “commonly regarded as the central literary document reflecting the crisis of
language”.222
In this fictitious (and rather autobiographic) letter from 1902, Hugo von Hofmannsthal writes from the perspective of Philipp Lord Chandos to his friend Francis Bacon. Once a promising young author, Chandos has not written anything in
the past years since he has lost the ability to think or speak about anything in a
coherent way:
[E]s ist mir völlig die Fähigkeit abhanden gekommen, über irgend etwas
zusammenhängend zu denken oder zu sprechen.223
219
Von Hofmannsthal, “Die Briefe des Zurückgekehrten [1907]” p.484.
See section (2.2) for Schlegel’s views.
221
This thought is something very similar to what Adorno claims in his Philosophy of New
Music, about why modern music does not work with tonality anymore. Modern society does
not have clearcut structures, therefore, since music is reflective of culture, it cannot work with
bygone systems. Hofmannsthal, one might argue, does the same for language: if modern society
does not have a clearcut structure, we should not pretend language to be absolute. But more on
that in section (4.2). On Adorno’s thoughts consider the introduction to Theodor W Adorno,
Philosophie der neuen Musik [1949] (Stuttgart: Suhrkamp, 1995).
222
R. T. Gray p.337.
223
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Ein Brief [1902]”, Der Brief des Lord Chandons: Schriften zur
Literatur, Kultur und Geschichte, ed. Matthias Mayer (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2000)
p.50.
220
45
Lord
Chandos
Letter
Therefore the fictitious narrator has withdrawn completely from any literary production.
His problems with language, however, exceeds simple lack of production. Now,
even when approached with texts he had produced himself, it takes time to recognize their titles:
[D]aß mich in Ihrem Brief, der vor mir liegt, der Titel jenes kleinen
Traktates fremd und kalt anstarrt, ja daß ich ihn nicht als ein geläufiges
Bild zusammengefasster Worte sogleich au↵assen, sondern nur Wort für
Wort verstehen konnte, als träten mir diese [...] Wörter [...] zum ersten
Mal vors Auge.224
Philosophical
Considerations
Chandos entire character changed when he started doubting language. Where
he once used to think that the mental and physical worlds were no opposites,225 he
has completely altered his mind and considers language now to be an overestimated
instrument of power (“überschätztes Machtmittel”).226 He does not even know how
to consider lies at this stage, since he did not find words to punish his little daughter
for telling falsehoods.227 These are questions that Hofmannsthal has dealt with all
his life, as mentioned above, for if truth and morality is relative (as apparent in the
aforementioned essay Ironie der Dinge, p.40), where does this leave the lie? Isn’t
the lie just the ordinary medium of expression if there are no objective truths?
Why should someone be punished then for lying?
Now, while this essay is a fictitious account, Hofmannsthal poses questions that
must have concerned him in real life. Can we live in a civilized manner without
language? “Seither führe ich ein Dasein, das Sie, fürchte ich, kaum begreifen
können, so geistlos, so gedankenlos fließt es dahin.228 A man without language
cannot lead a proactive life.
Hofmannsthal suggests two ways out of this conundrum: Chandos mentions
one, and another one is hidden implicitly in the text: Chandos speaks of the
pragmatic use of language (1) (the “romantic” way) and (2) the way through
action (the “Hofmannsthal” way), is hidden in the text.
The pragmatic way (1) is the one where Chandos mentions that if he stripped
his language of the “aufgeschwollene Anmaßung”,229 that is the developed language
of the poet and the educated masses, he could be free of his doubts. Grenier
suggests that Hofmannsthal lets Chandos strive for the natural language of the
lower classes - what the Romantics would have called “unverbildet” - as opposed
to the “genus sublime” of the educated spirit.230 This, according to Greiner, is the
224
p.47
p.49
226
p.47
227
p.51
228
p.53
229
p.50
230
Bernhard Greiner, “Die Rede des Unbewußten als Komodie: Hofmannsthals Lustspiel ”Der
Schwierige””, The German Quarterly 59.2 (1986): p.241.
225
46
same thought that Wittgenstein developed in his Tractatus.
While Greiner makes an interesting point, I do not fully agree with it. The
way through action, and especially (which is still a Romantic ideal) the hallowing
of the mundane, are what Hofmannsthal sees as the escape from language:
Eine Gießkanne, eine auf dem Feld verlassene Egge, ein Hund in der
Sonne, ein ärmlicher Kirchhof, ein Krüppel, ein kleines Bauernhaus, all
dies kann das Gefäß meiner O↵enbarung werden.231
It is more the sublime beauty of the simple experience - and definitely of a nonlinguistic experience - which is the only bliss for the poet who has lost the faculty
of language.
There, however, is also where Hofmannsthal and Wittgenstein conjoin again
(but for di↵erent reasons than Greiner mentioned). In his Tractatus, Wittgenstein
writes:
Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische.232
Chandos found the mystical to be the sublime inexpressible experiences of every
day (country)life. Therefore Hofmannsthal calls this letter:
Chandos-brief. Die Situation des Mystikers ohne Mystik.233
Hofmannsthal characterized his thoughts in a letter to his friend, the poet and
playwright Anton Wildgans:
Es ist das Problem das mich oft gequält u. beängstigt hat (schon im
,,Tor und Tod”, am stärksten in dem ,,Brief” des Lord Chandos, [...])
- wie kommt das einsame Individuum dazu, sich durch die Sprache
mit der Gesellschaft zu verknüpfen, ja durch sie, ob es will oder nicht,
rettungslos mit ihr verknüpft zu sein? - und weiterhin: wie kann der
Sprechende noch handeln - da ja ein Sprechen schon Erkenntnis, also
Aufhebung des Handelns ist - mein persönlicher mich nicht loslassender
Aspekt der ewigen Antinomie von Sprechen und Tun, Erkennen u.
Leben.234
While writing this letter, Hofmannsthal was in the process of writing his play Der
Schwierige, which would once again deal with questions of language and would find
a solution which was rather Wittgensteinian.
231
Von Hofmannsthal, “Ein Brief [1902]” p.53.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1922] §6.522.
233
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Ad me Ipsum”, Reden und Aufsätze III: 1925-1929, Aufzeichnungen, ed. Bernd Schoeller, Ingeborg Beyer-Ahlert, and Rudolf Hirsch (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer
Taschenbuch, 1980) p.601.
234
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, letter to Anton Wildgans, February 14, 1921 retrieved through:
Ursula Renner, “Nachwort zu der Schwierige”, Der Schwierige, ed. Ursula Renner (Stuttgart:
Philipp Reclam jun., 2000) p.179.
232
47
4.1.2
Der Schwierige - Silence and Parole
Das Wort ist mächtiger als der es spricht.
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Diary 13.07.1919
Theatre and
Philosophy
As mentioned above, art was seen as the prime tool in the aesthetic and moral
education of the cultural elites, at the same time, the theatre has always been a
central place in Austrian culture. Unsurprisingly, Hofmannsthal loved the play as
form, and even wrote in his adolescence:
Das Drama ist die vornehmste Kunstform, weil darin am meisten verschwiegen wird.235
This “Verschweigen” became the center of Hofmannsthal’s play Der Schwierige.236
By 1909, Hofmannsthal had already asked a lot of questions about language,
in his early play Der Tor und der Tod, in his Ein Brief, and in a plethora of other
works. In October of the same year, Hofmannsthal wrote in his diary:
Dachte über das nach, was mir vorgestern abends Stau↵enberg über die
Fürstin Lichnowsky gesagt hat: Daß Sprache überhaupt eine ihr nicht
gemäße (wenngleich die einzige ihr zur Verfügung stehende) Form, sich
zu äußern. Kann ich verstehen. Es führt mich weiter: Sprechen ist ein
ungeheurer Kompromiß, für jedermann - nur dies wird selten bewußt,
weil es das allgemeine Verständigungsmittel darstellt.237
Der
Schwierige
The seed for his comedy Der Schwierige lies within this sentence: “Sprechen ist
ein ungeheurer Kompromiß” - how can we ever speak with one another. How is
not only conversation possible, but any action within the framework of language?
The way of looking into these issues lies, for Hofmannsthal, in creating a play
about a person with a difficult relation “zur Rede und zur Tat”.238 The protagonist,
Hans Karl, is a man without intentions239 who deeply mistrusts language, but
always agrees to do what the other characters ask from him. His nephew asks him
his help to court Helene, the woman that Hans Karl (or Kari as he is called) himself
loves, his former lover wants to rekindle their relationship, while her husband asks
Kari for help with his marital problems; the examples could be multiplied, but it
should already be apparent where the comic issues in the plot will surface.
Already from the very first scene, it is clear that the play is a comprehensive
critique on the boundaries of language: when the old servant and the newly-hired
235
Undated 1893 or 1894 von Hofmannsthal, “Aufzeichnungen” p.372.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Schwierige [1921] , ed. Ursula Renner (Stuttgart: Philipp
Reclam jun., 2000).
237
238
Hugo von Hofmannsthal in a letter to Raoul Auernheimer on the 20.20.1921, retrieved
through: Renner p.173.
239
Hofmannsthal even thought about calling the play Der Mann ohne Absicht. Renner p.180.
236
48
one speak. Both talk at cross purposes, and, while the younger one only looks out
for his own benefit, the older one explains that the best way of understanding their
master, Graf Hans Karl Bühl, is by reading his body language.240 The three acts of
the play continue in a similar fashion: allegorical figures241 in allegorical situations
that do not really reach one another because of the problems of language, and
their “difficult” (schwieriger ) protagonist. It culminates in Kari getting engaged
to Helene without them even touching once in the play, nor actually expressing
their engagement in a socially required way.
What was the aim of writing the play for Hofmannsthal? The protagonist
Kari is a figure that can neither speak nor act. Renner therefore expounds that
Hofmannsthal asks: (1) how can speakers still act? and (2), does the individual
not have to sacrifice their own subjectivity to break into the social?242 At the
same time, I believe that the questions of the language skeptics, questions of (3),
philosophy of language more in general as discussed in section (3.2), the general
questions concerning the boundaries and possibilities of language, are still acute
in the play.
Question (1) has gained more impetus after the second World War when philosophers such as Searle243 and Austin244 defined all utterances as actions (i.e. speech
acts). Hofmannsthal tried a di↵erent approach. As he wanted to call the play
first “The Man without Intention” (Der Mann ohne Absicht), he thought to put
the intention in the center of our linguistic utterance. Any speech act with no
(own) intentionality will be riddled with parapraxis and paradox.245 Hofmannsthal
expounds this thought in his diary:
Das einzelne Wort, die einzelne Gebärde ist nichts wert. Wir ertragen
keine minder komplizierte Botschaft mehr als die eines ganzen Wesens.
Dies auch auf geistigem Gebiet: Beethoven, Nietzsche. Die ganzen
Hieroglyphen wollen wir lesen.246
Words without intention cannot be understood, we always need to understand the
whole “hieroglyph” that is the person (with all their intentions and flaws). This
explains that, when Hans Karl approaches Helene on behalf of his nephew, his
240
The old servant says: “Wenn er anfängt, alle Laden aufzusperren oder einen verlegten
Schlüssel zu suchen, dann ist er in sehr schlechter Laune.” about his master Hans Karl in
von Hofmannsthal, Der Schwierige [1921] Act I, Scene1, p.8.
241
For Hofmannsthal, anything in society can be seen as allegorical: “Das Gesellschaftliche
kann und darf man nur allegorisch nehmen.” in von Hofmannsthal, “Buch der Freunde [1922]”
Der Schwierige makes its metaphoric quality apparent from the beginning on: the setting is a
pre-WWI Viennese society clearly set after the war.
242
Renner p.179.
243
For example: John R. Searle, “What is a Speech Act?”, Philosophy in America, ed. Max
Black (Cornell University Press, 1965) 39–48.
244
For example: John Langshaw Austin, “Performative Utterances”, Philosophical Papers (Oxford University Press, 1979) 233–252.
245
Renner p.181.
246
49
Philosophical
Considerations
intentionless intention of helping the relative is not only foiled by the conversation,
but Kari achieves not yet his own proposal but the opposite of what he wanted (or
actually didn’t want) for his nephew: nothing at all.247
This conversation may not be the climax of the plot, but it definitely is one of
the climaxes of language skepticism in the play. The second thing that Hans Karl
says to Helene in their conversation is:
Es kommt vor, daß es einem zugemutet wird [zu reden]. Durchs Reden kommt ja alles auf der Welt zustande. Allerdings, es ist ein bißl
lächerlich, wenn man sich einbildet, durch wohlgesetzte Wörter eine
weiß Gott wie große Wirkung auszuüben, in einem Leben, wo doch
schließlich alles auf das Letzte, Unaussprechliche ankommt. Das Reden basiert auf einer indezenten Selbstüberschätzung.248
This is the scene where some scholars have established a connection between Hofmannsthal and Wittgenstein:
Der Ansatz der Sprachskepsis ist im “Tractatus” und im “Schwierigen”
vergleichbar. Es ist die Frage, wie Aussagen über den Sinn oder Wert
der Wirklichkeit in dieser möglich sind bzw. - in Hofmannsthals Akzentuierung - wie eine Position des Dauernden, der “höheren Notwendigkeit”
in der Welt einander nivellierender Berechnungen erreicht werden kann.249
One di↵erence, obviously, is that the playwright Hofmannsthal asks such a question
in the framework of a comic unraveling of plot, while the philosopher Wittgenstein
dedicates a tractate to the question.
More importantly, however, is the di↵erence between the standpoint of the
philosopher and the one of the poet contrasted by their di↵erence in emphasis:
Wittgenstein, after all, is a language philosopher and logician, and puts his focus on truth and meaning. For Hofmannsthal, the problem has much more of a
psychological dimension: all speech is a self-overestimation. This leads us also to,
what I labeled above as question (2), the sacrifice of subjectivity in the sociality
of conversation. Graf Altenwyl, Helene’s father, expresses this problem as a crisis
of his generation:
In meinen Augen ist Konversation das, was jetzt kein Mensch mehr
kennt: nicht selbst perorieren, wie ein Wasserfall, sondern dem anderen
das Stichwort bringen. Zu meiner Zeit hat man gesagt: wer zu mir
kommt, mit dem muß ich Konversation so führen, daß er, wenn er die
Türschnallen in der Hand hat, sich gescheit vorkommt, dann wird er auf
der Stiege mich gescheit finden. - Heutzutage hat aber keiner, pardon
247
Von Hofmannsthal, Der Schwierige [1921] Act II, Scene 14, p.106↵f.
p.107
249
Greiner p.239↵.
248
50
für die Grobheit, den Verstand zum Konversationmachen und keiner
den Verstand seinen Mund zu halten [...]250
Conversation should not be self-presentation and ostentation, but a mutual process. The Selbstüberschätzung that Kari laments later, is not an overdose in self
confidence, but rather a belief that what one says is important (in any way) and
understandable. Wittgenstein’s private language argument seems to be anticipated
here - one person can never be enough in a conversation, it always takes a group
to lift utterances to language. This can only be done by sacrificing one’s own subjectivity to break into the social. However, Hofmannsthal gives a slightly di↵erent
spin than the famous Austrian language philosopher does; for Wittgenstein it is a
language specific argument. Hofmannsthal investigates this sacrifice as something
more: we want to read the whole “hieroglyph” that is one person, with all their
linguistic and non-linguistic acts.251
4.2
Hofmannsthal’s General Philosophy
Gut und Böse hat keine Gewalt: ich glaube sie nicht, weil ich sie
nicht vom vitalen Urgrund des Erlebnisses her empfangen habe.
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Ad Me Ipsum p.624
Hofmannsthal did not choose the genre of the play only to convey his philosophical
ideas. In his Philosophie des Metaphorischen, he asserts that the form of the
Platonic dialogue should be revived, in more timely, modern garbs:
Man müßte eine anspruchslose und wenig pedantische Form wählen.
Etwa den platonischen Dialog, [...] Zwei oder drei recht moderne junge
Menschen, unruhig, mit vielerlei Sehnsucht und viel Altklugheit; und
auf den Boden der großen Stadt müßte man sie stellen, der aufregend
bebt und tönt wie Geigenholz.252
The Platonic dialogue is a form befitting philosophy since it always presupposes
an antagonist. In his third observation Schöne Sprache, Hofmannsthal defines the
ideal language as one that always stays in contrast with another individual:
Auf Kontakt mit einem idealen Zuhörer läuft es [...] hinaus. Dieser
Zuhörer ist so zu sprechen der Vertreter der Menschheit und ihn mitzuschaffen und das Gefühl seiner Gegenwart lebendig zu erhalten, ist vielleicht
250
Von Hofmannsthal, Der Schwierige [1921] Act II, Scene 1, p.70.
It should be noted, however, that Wittgenstein does not disregard the non-linguistic side
of the “hieroglyph”, he just adds it to the argument, while Hofmannsthal distinctly separates
the two. Additionally it should be noted that Hofmannsthal sees language as something very
negative when compared to Wittgenstein.
252
Hugo von Hofmannsthal Philosophie des Metaphorischen, retrieved through: Magdolna
Orosz, “’Aber was sind Farben wofern nicht das innerste leben der Gegenstände in ihnen hervorbricht!’ Hugo von Hofmannsthals ’Farbenlehre’” (2006): footnote 5.
251
51
How to
philosophize?
das Feinste und Stärkste, was die schöpferische Kraft des Prosaikers zu
leisten hat.253
General
Philosophy
A definition which explains why Hofmannsthal has been interested in the play, the
dialogue254 and other forms that require an ideal adversary.255
Considering Hofmannsthal’s view on language, there is one important observation to be made: the problem of language is always connected to the problem of
the human being in this world.256 In Ad me Ipsum, Hofmannsthal tried to motivate
his own literary output on a autobiographical and philosophical level. In an entry
on his play/libretto Elektra, Hofmannsthal gives, what some scholars have claim
to be the main motivation of Hofmannsthal:257
Gehalt: Übergang von der Prae-existenz zur Existenz: dies ist in jedem
Übergang jedem Tun. Das Tun setzt den Übergang aus dem Bewußten
zum Unbewußten voraus.258
Pre-existence
For Hofmannsthal, everything we do in life is only an attempt to break out of or
initial state, of pre-existence, and to get into existence.
He defines pre-existence as a “glorreicher, aber gefährlicher Zustand”259 which
can be seen as the unreflected, conscious initial state260 of the human. In this
state, we still have a belief in the wholeness of the world surrounding us. In a
sense, Hofmannsthal is echoing Schlegel here, when Schlegel said:
Es ist gleich tödlich für den Geist, ein System zu haben, und keins
zu haben. Er wird sich also wohl entschließen müseen, beides zu
verbinden.261
Hofmannsthal would have developed the very same thought as follows: we have
a system which we need, and which is “glorious” for being whole. Yet as we
(intellectually) mature, we start to understand that the world is not a simple,
whole entity, and we lose this unabated belief in the entirety and notice that we
cannot support artificial systems in the random world of nowadays.
Hofmannsthal expresses262 this problem with the escape from pre-existence and
an old world that is whole in works like the Briefe des Zurückgekehrten; he did
not choose the protagonist accidentally to be a traveler that only returns after
253
“Schöne Sprache” in von Hofmannsthal, “Drei kleine Betrachtungen [1921]” p.194.
Of which he wrote many on literary theory, for example.
255
This may also be the reason why Hofmannsthal never wrote longer narrative fiction and
could never finish the fragment of his novel Andreas.
256
Richard Brinkmann, “Hofmannsthal und die Sprache”, Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift 3
(1961): p.71.
257
In Greiner, p.228; or Brinkmann p.72f.
258
Von Hofmannsthal, “Ad me Ipsum” p.611.
259
260
As opposed to the reflected, unconscious state.
261
For more on Schlegel consider section (2.2), this quote in: Schlegel p.82.
262
As hinted towards in section (4.1).
254
52
decades abroad to the realms of his youth. The returned protagonist was a child in
pre-existence then, believing in a pastoral Germany from the sketches of Albrecht
Dürer, he realizes upon his return, that, while how they speak “paßt eins zum
anderen”, i.e. everything seems like to be a system which fits, in reality their left
hand does not know what the right hand does.263 Hofmannsthal seems to even
lament an entire people to be stuck in the phase of pre-existence. The problem
is that while they speak, they seem to assume a “fitting” world, yet our world is
random.
If pre-existence is so glorious and dangerous, how should we understand existence? We should see Hofmannsthal’s notion of existence a bit like the Socratic
“I know that I know nothing”264 - Brinkmann explains that for Hofmannsthal:
“[muß] das höhere Wissen [...] gewonnen werden zunächst um den Preis der Aufgabe sicheren Wissens”.265 In this light, a di↵erent vantage point is added to Hofmannsthal’s language skepticism: the unbroken faith in language is a symptom of
pre-existence, by noticing its boundaries, by understanding the faults of language,
we can surpass this initial state of being. Thus Hofmannsthal writes at one point:
Existence
Exzessive Skepsis hat auch etwas Dummes. Man wird immer im Netz
gefangen - außer wo man handelt - da wird man erlöst [...].266
Which leads us back to the escape from the claws of language through the realm
of action.
Hofmannsthal’s philosophy of language has already been discussed at length in
section (4.1), it may therefore be interesting to also look into some di↵erent aspects of his general philosophy and how they tie in with the philosophy of language.
In his essay on the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, Hofmannsthal defines the
symptom of his generation as “Wir schauen dem Leben zu”.267 A generation of
spectators and (self-)psychologists has been raised, according to Hofmannsthal,
that preferred “die Analyse des Lebens und die Flucht aus dem Leben”,268 but
could not act itself. While this reservedness of the people hindered them from
escaping the state of pre-existence, it is also an interesting problem in light of
Hofmannsthal’s Machian ontology.
263
Von Hofmannsthal, “Die Briefe des Zurückgekehrten [1907]” p.484.
As known in popular culture, the original meaning is slightly di↵erent. For example in: Plato,
“Apology”, Euthyphrio - Apology - Crito - Phaedo - Phaedrus, ed. and trans. Harold North Fowler
(Harvard: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1914) 21d.
265
Brinkmann p.74.
266
267
He continues with a beautiful metaphor: “Wir leeren den Pokal vorzeitig und bleiben doch
unendlich durstig: denn (...) der Becher, den uns das Leben hinhält, hat einen Sprung, und
während uns der volle Trunk vielleicht berauscht hätte, muß ewig fehlen, was während des
Trinkens unten rieselnd verlorengeht; so empfinden wir im Besitz den Verlust, im Erleben stets
das Versäumen.” in Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Gabriele d’Annunzio [1893]”, Der Brief des
Lord Chandons: Schriften zur Literatur, Kultur und Geschichte, ed. Matthias Mayer (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 2000) p.24.
268
p.25
264
53
Mach and
Hofmannsthal
The influence of physicist Ernst Mach on Hofmannsthal has already been alluded to in section (3.1). Mach said that only what we perceive is the reality, there
is a subjective component to this world, and even a dream could be considered as
real as our left hand, if it were continuous. Hofmannsthal attended Mach’s lectures,269 and must have clearly been impressed with this view on the world. If the
impressionist can express a real world, and even dreams are real, then a languorous
poet such as himself is as powerful as a god!
His tragedy Der Turm, for example, is a piece where this love for the dream
and implication for life becomes apparent. The protagonist Sigismund, a figure
reminiscent of Hamlet, was raised in prison, and his captor would only let him out
at night to marvel at the stars. He was led to believe that life is a dream and
dreams are life. Later, when it comes to acting, this becomes his Achilles heel:
when asked to actively do things he refuses since:
Wir wissen von keinem Ding, wie es ist, und nichts ist, von dem wir
sagen könnten, daß es anderer Natur sei als unsere Träume.270
Sigismunds life-skepsis goes so far that he is unable to act - he was, to use Hofmannsthal’s image, caught in a net and found no salvation through action.
Der Turm, however, was Hofmannsthal’s last great work, a work perhaps where
he tried to overcome Machian philosophy. In his aforementioned collection of aphorisms, the Buch der Freunde, Hofmannsthal clearly still was under the influence of
Mach:
Indem man von der Wirklichkeit irgend etwas Zusammenfassendes aussagt, nähert man sie schon dem Traum, vielmehr der Poesie.271
Mach’s concept of continuity in Hofmannsthal
This is also where his philosophy ties in with Mach. A dream would not di↵er from
the real world in any way, if neither the world nor our dreams have any continuity
anyways. It does not make a di↵erence whether we speak coherently about the
world or about a dream. At another point in the same book, Hofmannsthal asserted
that “alles geglaubte besteht, und nur dieses”.272 If the impression is our real world,
there must be many “real” worlds, so to say, and they will often not coincide.
The last aspect of Hofmannsthal’s philosophy interesting in light of the tradition
discussed is the problem of continuity. Mach taught that every dream is only not
considered more important in our daily lives, because it is not continuous with
our other dreams; in perfect continuity, we would consider them as real as the
world around us.273 Already in Hofmannsthal’s early work, for example his poem
Terzinen, he plays with the problem of continuity:
269
Janik and Toulmin p.133.
Act 5, Scene 1 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Der Turm [1927]”, Ausgewählte Werke in zwei
Bänden I: Gedichte und Dramen, ed. Rudolf Hirsch (Stuttgart, Zürch, Salzburg: Europäischer
Buchklub - Fischer Verlag, 1957) p.302.
271
272
273
[1886] p.9.
270
54
Dies ist ein Ding, das keiner voll aussinnt,
Und viel zu grauenvoll, als daß man klage:
Daß alles gleitet und vorrüberrinnt
Und daß mein eignes Ich, durch nichts gehemmt,
Herüberglitt aus einem kleinen Kind.274
Or in his diary around the same time:
Wir sind unsrem Ich von Vor-zehn-Jahren nicht näher, unmittelbarer
eins als mit dem Leib unserer Mutter. Ewige physische Kontinuität.275
Continuity plays a big part in the ontology of Hofmannsthal, yet it is not - as his
questions about existence and pre-existence - a question that immediately interconnects with his philosophy of language.
As a poet, however, it should be of no surprise that most of his general-philosophical
questions are questions that interconnect with language. The entire problem of
reaching existence from pre-existence is, albeit also a more general problem, something that can easily be reduced to its linguistic manifestation. As long as we still
believe in the wholeness of life, in the realistic expressiveness of language, we are
still trapped in pre-existence. On one hand a good state because it is easy - ignorance is bliss - on the other hand, however, it is a dangerous state because it keeps
us trapped in ignorance. Existence similarly is good and bad: it is bad for it takes
away all our security in life. Existence is the problem of Lord Chandos:276 As soon
as we realize that language has no meaning, words will decay in our mouths like
moldy mushrooms. And this hyper-skeptic approach is also the danger. “Exzessive
Skepsis hat auch etwas Dummes”277 - this is also where existence is a good state:
The world is like a dream; we do not question our surroundings, we believe that
everything makes sense, yet as soon as we realize that it is a dream, all walls will
start to look like the theatre-sca↵oldings that they are. The di↵erence is, in preexistence we believe that the dream determines us; in existence we can determine
the dream.
274
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Terzinen über Vergänglichkeit [1894]”, Gedichte, ed. Mathias
Mayer (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2009) p.21.
275
276
As discussed in section (4.1.1).
277
55
5
Conclusive Remarks
Den Philosophen kümmert, was die Menchen dachten, den Physiologen warum und den Dichter wie (freilich jeden jedes, aber das eine
eben zumeist).
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Diary 30.01.1891
Further
Questions?
Vienna and
Philosophy
Hofmannsthal
in the
Tradition
One question that may remain after the last section is, whether Hofmannsthal was
alone in being a writer who exerted such e↵orts in hiding a philosophy of language
in his texts. In section (3.3), a few important literary figures were discussed, and it
was hinted towards commonalities in their thought with Hofmannsthal. While it is
true that the Viennese soil begot a generation of exceptional writers, I think they all
were interested in di↵erent topics, and therefore they should not be lifted onto the
same ground as Hofmannsthal. Arthur Schnitzler, for example, who was mindful to
the questions of language as well, must be considered more of a psychologist, than
a language-philosopher. He hid many references to psychoanalysis and Freud’s
theories in his works.278 In my studies I have, however, not encountered one writer
who wrote as adamantly on language as Hugo von Hofmannsthal within the literary
group at the turn of the century.279
Yet, more philosophical research remains to be done in the literature of that
period in Vienna. The transformative names: Ludwig Wittgenstein in philosophy,
Sigmund Freud in psychoanalysis, Arnold Schönberg in music, to name a few,
are almost exclusively known, while others, such as philosopher Fritz Mauthner
(discussed in section 3.1) and Hermann Bahr (discussed in section 3.2), fall through
the cracks. An additional aim of this thesis was, therefore, to also promote the
lesser known thinkers who deserve to be better known, and to demonstrate that
a figure like Ernst Mach, who is still known as an important physicist, also had a
tremendously important impact on the humanities at that time.
The main point, however, was to clearly establish a tradition and environment
in which to place the writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. From the time of the German enlightenment, through the Romantics, up until Nietzsche and his tremendous
influence on Vienna, language had been a main point of focus for many philosophers. Herder, Hamann and Humboldt (discussed in section 2) launched a view
on language, making it a much more prominent topic in the study of human cognition and thought: language influences the way we think, the way we perceive
our surroundings, in short our entire vantage point. Nietzsche radicalized the view
on language by being one of the first to show that language is just an arbitrary
system.
278
His famous Traumnovelle, that Stanley Kubrick turned into the movie Eyes wide Shut, is
only one of many examples.
279
The exception is perhaps Karl Kraus, who was discussed in section (3.2), albeit the aim of
his language critique was di↵erent.
56
While Immanuel Kant was the prime philosopher reprimanded for not considering our language in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, his writing style was also in
the cross-fire for being too artificial and too much divorced from reality. Herder
demanded a writing style that would be closest to how people spoke, closest to
our natural language. Friedrich Schlegel advanced on that thought by demanding
a (re)joining of philosophy and literature. An aesthetic revolution should come
about in which the sciences would be included in the written arts.
The aesthetic revolution never came, but Hofmannsthal might have been a
conservative revolutionary. Noltenius calls Hofmannsthal’s aphoristic work the
“Konservative Revolution”,280 a word which he misappropriated from one of Hofmannsthal’s essays.281,282 In his essay, Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation, Hofmannsthal speaks of this kind of revolution - in the tradition of Romantic
philosophy - in order to create a new national feeling through works of literature.
However, I would argue that Hofmannsthal was a conservative revolutionary, but
more in the Schlegelian than in Noltenius’ (or his own) sense.283
Die
konservative
Revolution
Hofmannsthal really took Schlegel’s demands to heart and conjoined literary
genres with the expression of deep philosophical thoughts. The best example is
surely the play Der Schwierige 284 where he went into problems of speech and
language. Examples have been discussed at length above.
Yet, while he was a tacit fighter for the Romantic aesthetic revolution, and
while he certainly radicalized their thoughts on language and poetry, he clearly
also was a conservative, but rather in a literal, than negative sense. One only
has to consider the conservative settings and forms he used: for example in the
libretto for Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier which is set almost 200 years before
Hofmannsthal was born285 or his love for the letter-novel, a form that was most
popular around the release of Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774).
As for Hofmannsthal’s view on language; he radicalized a lot of ideas that
had been around earlier. From his early years on, when he was still writing as
Loris, until the year of his death he questioned the place of the individual between
language and the world. How can we express ourselves? How can we understand
each other? What is language good for?
280
Rainer Noltenius, Hofmannsthal, Schröder, Schnitzler. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Modernen Aphorismus (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1969) p.9.
281
Von Hofmannsthal, “Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation [1927]” p.245.
282
Apparently it was first used by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx: “Sprechen wir es o↵en aus:
der Aufstand von 1830 war weder eine nationale Revolution (er schloß drei Viertel Polens aus),
noch eine soziale oder politische Revolution; er änderte nichts an der inneren Lage des Volkes;
das war eine konservative Revolution.” about the Polish revolution in 1830. Friedrich Engels and
Karl Marx, “Reden auf der Gedenkfeier in Brüssel [1848]”, (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1972) p.523.
283
Well, since he instituted the Salzburger Festspiele, the epitome of Austrian high-culture, and
is still regularly played on stages, even his kind of revolution could be argued for.
284
As discussed in section (4.1.2).
285
The designated time is: “In Wien, in den ersten Jahren der Regierung Maria Theresias.”
Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Rosenkavalier [1911] (Stuttgart: Philipp
Reclam jun., 2008) p.5.
57
Hofmannsthal
and
Language
Language is an obstruction in our endeavor of breaking out of our initial state
of pre-existence, the view of a world that is systematic and makes sense, into the
more reflected, almost Socratic, denial of knowledge and systematicity in existence.
Im Gleichnis kommt das ,,Glied” des Denkens zum Eigenleben, und es
wird ein Teil von dem Raub, den das Sprache gewordene Denken am
Leben begeht, diesem rückerstattet.286
The Austrian
Schlegel
This diary entry may be seen as the defining aphorism for Hofmannsthal’s view on
language. There is a world, which is more or less real and perceivable, but there
is also language, “das große Werkzeug der Erkenntnis” and “das große Werkzeug
der Verkennung”.287 Language constantly stands in the way of cognition, but it is
also the only tool we have to reach enlightenment.
Hofmannsthal knew Nietzsche well,288 and this is probably also where he was
introduced into a more moral stance of language critique. Good and bad are
concepts of language; mere observation does not give evidence for anything of that
sort.289 There are impressions, and then there is language - which is necessary for
expression - but language can also stand in our way of any kind of philosophical
development.290 This is perhaps even the real motivation for writing the famous
Chandos-letter Ein Brief - the world of language does not make sense; let us return
to a world of simple sensory input and countryside life.291
Hofmannsthal was a revolutionary as a literary figure in his view on language
and how he lifted its treatment out of - for whats expected of a literary figure
- a mere aesthetic level. Similarly he was a revolutionary in that, despite his
present reputation for the easy, enjoyable, character of his operas, he would not
have written for the audience alone, but only if it would not be inconsistent with
his own artistic vision. In Ad me Ipsum, he writes: “Ich verließ jede Form bevor
sie erstarrte”,292 where the erstarren is referring rather to the abilities to convey
information. Therefore he stopped writing poetry in his adolescence, because he
had overcome the genre, overcome the form. At one point he even said that had
he died after his last play in verses, he would have had a complete biography,293
286
November 1925 von Hofmannsthal, “Aufzeichnungen” p.582.
288
He even translated some of his work into French. Mathias Mayer, “Nachwort zu Hofmannsthal’s Schriften zur Literatur, Kultur und Geschichte”, Der Brief des Lord Chandons:
Schriften zur Literatur, Kultur und Geschichte, ed. Mathias Mayer (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam
jun., 2000) p.259.
289
290
The quote I am referring to, as found on page 39, is also were Hofmannsthal explicitly
holds a view similar to the Wittgenstein of the Philosophische Untersuchungen. Hofmannsthal
calls our linguistic classifications arbitrary; Wittgenstein calls this the “grammatische Fiktion”.
Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen [1953] §307.
291
The countryside is also a very important image for Hofmannsthal, since unlike in the city,
people on the countryside can still dream, and “Träume sind Taten”. von Hofmannsthal, “Drei
kleine Betrachtungen [1921]” p.187.
292
293
Mathias Mayer, “Nachwort zu Hofmannsthal’s Gedichten”, Gedichte, ed. Mathias Mayer
(Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2000) p.103.
287
58
for he would have achieved everything of one genre. Over the next 30 years, he
distinguished himself as a playwright, an essayist, and even released a collection
of aphorisms for his friends. If he had not been taken away in his 55th year by
a sudden death, who is to say whether he would have grown bored of the play
and tried out the philosophical tractate? However, one thing is clear: Hugo von
Hofmannsthal was the Austrian equivalent of Friedrich Schlegel,294 and he might
have been the greatest implicit philosopher Austria ever had.
294
The stress on one of the many intellectual godfathers of Hofmannsthal may seem strange at
this point, yet I do believe that there may be good reasons to actually dedicate a further study to
the comparison of the two. Both were literary figures that wrote essays concerning culture and
aesthetics, concerning old masters and contemporary writers. They both liked similar forms - one
only has to think of the similar nature of the Athenaeum and the Buch der Freunde - however,
the connection is rather a literary than a philosophical one, therefore it was not so interesting
for the present purpose.
59
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