The symbolist Hofmannsthal, witness to the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Vienna, late 19th century: an empire was breaking up but still had the aggregating strength of its multiethnic nature and a keen tradition for culture and art in general. Into this atmosphere, decadent but rife with stimulation, Hugo von Hofmannsthal was born in 1874. His was a composite family, different in terms of origins and religions: on his father’s side, his great-grandfather had been a Jewish silk industrialist, while his Italian grandmother, the aristocratic Petronilla da Rho, belonged to the Christian religion; the forebears of his Austro-Bohemian mother had been farmers and notaries. Hofmannsthal, an only son, was thus a steadfast member of the cultured Austrian upper middle class.
He was well educated in some of Vienna’s best schools and, being an intelligent pupil, made excellent progress and achieved important results. A student of law and the classics, he often attended the Burgtheater, a traditional Austrian theatre centre. From the Jung-Wiener, whose members were heterogeneous in terms of thought and where pre-Freudian psychologism predominated along with a muffled decandentism, the personality of young Hugo suddenly shot to the fore and, at just 17 years of age, he began making himself known as a brilliant poet. Afterwards he spent his entire life in serene and secluded calm at Rodaun, near Vienna, until his death in 1929.

The early theatrical production of this writer includes the tragedies Yesterday (1891), Hofmannsthal’s first stage work, The Death of Titian (1892) and The fool and death (1893), where the protagonist is an aesthete who, in his room packed with works of art, is reached by Death, that prompts him to think about those he met and loved during the course of his existence and towards whom he was rather emotionally detached. Now Death decides to truly make him live his end. The fool and death is a characteristic work of the Vienna decadent period. Shortly after, Hofmannsthal composed other tragic works including The adventurer and the singer, completed in just two weeks in the autumn of 1898 at Venice after reading the Memories of Casanova. Set in 18th-cent. Venice, at the height of its glory, the protagonist almost places himself under psychological investigation. Here, from one verse to another, the in fieri ethical need of Hofmannsthal is felt, still not totally expressed, but which will shortly be a crucial part of prose plays. The poet Hofmannsthal did not close himself off totally from the world at Rodaun, but kept the debate alive in his heart: his decision to abandon verse for prose was a pondered one.
During this period, the author rewrote a number of Greek tragedies in a modern key, portraying a wild, Dionysiac Greece, with dark pessimist overtones, which for some critics represented Hofmannsthal’s polemic view of antiquity.
He wrote Elektra, which was a great success with the public. The work premiered on 30 October 1903 in Berlin at Reinhardt’s “Little Theatre”. The latter had prompted Hofmannsthal to write a new script based on works of the classic period, which no longer came across well in the old translations or revisions that already existed at the time.
This was followed by Oedipus and The Sphinx (1906). Increasingly more important in Hofmannsthal’s works is the psychological component of the characters, such as in Elektra, supported and accentuated in the language by alliterations, realised in descriptions of real and imaginary sacrifices. Elektra also appeared in a musical version thanks to a period of close cooperation with Richard Strauss, that lasted for about twenty years.
Together they wrote Der Rosenkavalier (1911) and Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) in the new form of a musical tragedy.
The woman without a shadow (1913-1919) is on the other hand, a fairy-story/comedy in which the fairy becomes a woman, surrendering her own self to win humanity and maternity.
This was followed by the comedy The difficult man (1921). Set in a period contemporary with that of the playwright, during an aristocratic party in Vienna, the plot evolves in just one evening. The protagonist is Count Hans Karl Bühl, Kari for his friends, a refined, cultured and rich forty-year-old who, at the end of the First World War, marked by that experience, feels himself out of place in the aristocratic society of Vienna. He is deeply changed: during the party he tries to pacify relations between his old lover Antoniette and her husband, and speaking of the value of marriage, he attempts to convince his nephew Stani to ask for the hand of the young and beautiful Helene, snatching her from the attentions of the Prussian baron Neuhoff.
The difficult and discreet Count Kari is obviously opposed to the Prussian baron in what appears to be a struggle between opposites - the spirits of Austria and Germany. This portrait of a gentleman of great charm seems almost autobiographic; evasive and little inclined to speak or to expose himself in an excess of discretion. But Helene, loved and avoided by Kari, takes the initiative and, breaking all the rules, tells him openly that she is strongly attracted by him. In this sense female courage, moved by passion, becomes a virile desire before a man that does not dare: thus the difficult man becomes strongly bound to the heart of the enterprising woman.
Hofmannsthal, the witness to the end of a civilisation, was a symbolist who went beyond naturalism and in writing his works entrusted himself to the unspoken word, to the elegant and metaphoric image, like in the last far-reaching work, Der Turm (1924-27), inspired by Calderon de la Barca, a work extremely broad in scope, full of substance, that uses a direct and at the same time lofty language. (trad.Interpres-Giussano))