Hofmannsthals Der Schwierige und seine Interpreten by Michael Woll

Reviewed by: Hofmannsthals Der Schwierige und seine Interpreten by Michael Woll Vincent Kling Michael Woll, Hofmannsthals Der Schwierige und seine Interpreten. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2019. 436 pp. Readers looking for an introduction to Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Der Schwierige will not find it in Michael Woll's volume. Woll's book presupposes familiarity, and though its title seems to restrict focus to a single play, its range [End Page 96] of issues presents a comprehensive analysis of Hofmannsthal's work against the complete history of his critical reception. To verify Woll's range, specialists are invited to think of any topic in Hofmannsthal scholarship, and it will be covered here—the author's purported modernism versus his traditionalism (343–44), his aesthetic philosophy (345), his political views (throughout), the supposed naiveté of his "Ganzheitsvorstellungen" versus his acceptance of the "Ideal des Scheiterns" (32); his modes of adaptation and intertextuality (39–44); and so on. Conceding that there can never be scientific objectivity in literary criticism, Woll functions as a mediator, reporting with balance instead of taking sides. On the topic of so-called "Artistenphilologie," for example (381–84), Woll notes that Hofmannsthal was one of those writers who was also a noted literary critic (like W. H. Auden or T. S. Eliot) and that this rather patrician attainment has opened him, like the others, to accusations of elitism or "Esoterik," whereas Hofmannsthal in fact placed his work in the service of a "Gemeinde." If Woll leans in any direction here, it is to bear out the thesis that Hofmannsthal repudiated hermeticism early on. Woll allows the evidence to speak for itself. The book is clearly organized but demands attention. It is in exactly the density that the value of Woll's contribution emerges. He achieves nothing less than an all-encompassing approach that places in context the complete history of Hofmannsthal criticism. He examines four levels of comment and reflection: First, the "allegmeine Geschichte, die sich häufig als politische Geschichte zeigt" (12) (essential in pondering Hofmannsthal's political and social conservatism); the next, deeper level of "Disziplingeschichte, die die Entwicklung von Germanistik und Literaturwissenschaft betrifft" (12); then "Autorenforschung," based not "auf der Konstruktion der Autorenidentität," but rather „ „"auf der Beschreibung ihrer Eigenschaften" (12); finally, "die Interpretationsgeschichte eines einzelnen Werkes" (13). Respecting these layers eliminates the arbitrariness of unchecked individual interpretation. Woll's requisition of them all yields a discussion that for once can really be called Wissenschaft. If commentators balance their own readings against these levels, he argues, then they can "im Dialog mit der Wisseschaftsgeschichte und mit Hilfe der wiederholten Kritik der eigenen Position [ . . . ] der Hybris entgehen, die darin läge, mit der eigenen Interpretation ungebrochen als einzig richtige Stimme für 'das Werk' sprechen zu wollen" (15–16). Not that Woll is presenting anything so neutral as a routine [End Page 97] Forschungsbericht with no insight of his own. He furnishes a full account of the scholarship but also advances a thesis of his own, testing it against the full range of previous discussion. In sum, Wolf proposes that every work contains a voice articulating Hofmannsthal's own standpoint (in Der Schwierige, Hans Karl Bühl but not Helene Altenwyl) while avoiding the apodictic by negotiating polarities that force examination of any view in light of its opposite—the resolution of Helene as against Kari's vacillations or the insufferable cocksureness of Neuhoff contrasted with the title character's excessive lability. Compassing polarities can only yield irony, the stance that best expresses at least two things at once. Woll lucidly articulates the nature of Hofmannsthal's universal irony here; think only of the way in which Lord Chandos decries the insufficiency of language in some of the most splendidly rhetorical and emotionally immediate prose in German. Woll does his thesis justice by including a chapter (Chapter 3) that could seem like a departure but that advances his effort to link individual reading to the critical history. After delineating his approach in Chapter 1 (11–29), he presents his own interpretation of Der Schwierige in Chapter 2 (31–76), testing its postulates against the comprehensive "Geschichte der Interpretation" in Chapter 4 (157–373). Chapter 3 ("Gattungsreflexion in

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