Hofmannsthal’s Resolution of Art and Life Tension

The tension between art and life is a common theme that has been covered by many
novelists, poets, playwrights, and other artists. The question they have covered us whether artists
should isolate themselves or fully participate in other activities of life. For instance Goethe felt
that creativity and art are children of solitude. In Death and the Fools and Poetry and Life, Hugo
von Hofmannsthal takes a different view. He believes that artists should not isolate themselves.
Instead, they should be people of the world, actively involved in various spheres of life as
politicians, soldiers, and government officials. This belief closely mirrors von Hofmannsthal’s
own life. Apart from being a literary man, he was also a government official in the Austrian
government during the First World War.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s view on the relationship between art and life is best
exemplified by the play Death and the Fool. Hugo considered human existence to be on three
planes. Pre-existence is the first of this plane (Bennet 68). A person on this plane has insight and
visionary knowledge of actions as well as events that have yet to occur. Even if they have
occurred they do not to have actively participated in them to have this insight and visionary
knowledge (Bennet 68). The fact that people in this state often have extraordinary insights into
events and actions that they don not actually participate in means that they are comfortable not

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participating in them (Bennet 68). Thus, often they end having never really had any worthwhile
human experiences because they are isolated from the rest of the society for most of their life.
An example of a person who has lived most of his life in this pre-existence state is
Claudio, the main character in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Death and the Fool. In the play’s
opening, Claudio cuts a pathetic figure. He is seated near his house’s window looking outside in
the setting sun. In his monologue there is deep regret at the life he has lived. The people he sees
while looking out have experienced full range of human emotions through their active life (von
Hofmannsthal 27). These emotions include joy as well as sorrows, happiness, pain, heartbreak,
fears, and ecstasy. He envies such people because he personally has not experienced such
emotions as a result of a life lived largely in isolation (von Hofmannsthal 30). As a person
whose life has been constantly in a state of pre-existence, he has been able to gain insight into all
the emotions and actions that the people he was observing had been through. However, he has
never personally experienced such emotions himself. Neither has he participated in any actions
that would elicit such emotions. It is for this reason that Claudio decides to start living.
Unfortunately for him, just when he decides to start living a fuller life than one he had
lived before Death approaches him playing solo violin. Knowing what that meant, he protests
that he is not ready to die, that he wants to start living. He promises to live the kind of life that he
had not lived before – a life of activity rather than one of isolation. He wants to show love to
people who had loved him but who He never loved them back. He wants to show love to his
love, mother, and friends. He wants to be a man of action not just a thinker. He curses his gift for
foresight and insight into actions because he believes it has been responsible for his loneliness.
Despite his protests, Death takes him. Thus, having dedicated himself to aestheticism all his life,
he ends up cursing that same life.

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In the story of Claudio, Hugo von Hofmannsthal makes it clear his views on the
relationship between art and life. There is no tension between the two. It is, therefore, not
necessary that an artist isolates himself from life in order to become a great artist. The two can
co-exist. In fact, they should co-exist. An artist should also be an active participant of actions and
events that make life. He should personally experience the emotions he observes and has insight
into. He should experience happiness, anger, sadness, joy, love, disappointment, and all emotions
that normal human beings experience. An artist who merely observes and analyses human
emotions and actions rather than feeling them is bound to regret the manner in which he has
lived his life the way Claudio regretted. Spending one’s life gathering knowledge and living a life
dedicated to aestheticism lives the artist feeling hollow because of their extremely naive
relationship with the society in which they live and the wider world.
This belief was developed when he lived in ‘artist’s temple’ in Vienna. There, he and other
artists lived in a state of isolation where their only work was to produce works of art (Bennet 70).
The artists in the ‘temple’ were completely dedicated to art. Apart from writing and discussing
literary works, there is little else that they did (Bennet 70). This experience left him feeling
disgusted with the view that a man of art is an isolated and lonely man. Apart from Death of a
Fool, he also advanced this view in multiple poems, notably ‘Poetry and Life’. His admiration for
man of action who was also an artist explains why he loved English men of letters who had been
both soldiers or politicians while continuing to produce works of art such as Admiral Nelson
(Bennet 70). It also explains why he served the Austrian government during the First World War.
When the war broke out he, as a government official, was active in calling for support for the
war and support for the Austrian government (Bennet 70). Thus, for Hofmannsthal, an artist
should live not in pre-existence state but in existence state. Existence state is the second plane of

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life. Existence state is where the artist lives an active life. Instead of isolating themselves, they
should endeavor to live as normal as possible. Such normalcy includes marrying, having
children, participating in public life as government officials and politicians, and being soldiers
among other responsibilities.
The resolution, therefore, between art and life that Hugo von Hofmannsthal envisions is
one in which the artist is not an isolated being but a person of life. The artist should try as much
as possible to lead a life that is led by others in the society. Such a life affords them opportunities
to experience all aspects first hand. In a word, an artist should live life and not just analyze it.

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Works Cited

Bennett, Benjamin. “Death and the Fools.” German Life and Letters 30.1 (1976): 65-72.
von Hofmannsthal, Hugo. Poems and verse plays. Vol. 2. Pantheon Books for Bollingen
Foundation, 1961.