Soteriologische Travestie. Eine Lektüre der Grenzen propositionalen Denkens anhand Hofmannsthals "Der Schwierige"

Feliciano, Hector Joniel

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-ynbf-rn62

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Soteriologische Travestie. Eine Lektüre der Grenzen propositionalen Denkens anhand Hofmannsthals "Der Schwierige"

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This thesis investigates Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s undermining of soteriological poetics in his comedy Der Schwierige (“The Difficult Man”), with a focus on the complex interplay between meta-language (e.g., stage directions) and dramatic dialogue, normative and contingent speech (i.e., ‘ironic speech’). By challenging what I term the “soteriological agenda” of comedy which necessitates the so-called “Happy-end” (Kraft 2012), the study explores the concurrent conse-quences of this subversion on other interrelated concepts and aspects within the broader come-dic framework. This study challenges the canonical scholarship traditions that view Hofmanns-thal’s text as a conservative reproduction of a mere traditional “comic play” (“Lustspiel”) and do not consider the possibility that an engagement between the two so-called protagonists of the drama, Hans Karl and Helene, never occurred (see Ch. 3.1 and Ch. 5.1). It also contests the per-spectives that attempt to interpret the dramatic play solely through the lens of the topos of “un-sayability” and “language skepticism.” By offering an alternative framework centered around the concept of “chatter” or “idle talk” (Fenves 1993), this study enables a more nuanced reading of Hofmannsthal’s approach to arresting teleological, propositional language and dialectical thinking.At the heart of this investigation is the chasm that persists between the meta-language within the stage directions of the drama and the dramatic speech. The incompatibility of these two levels of speech will elucidate the significant observations that shall support the thesis of the demise of soteriology within this comedy. In other words, Hofmannsthal seems to envision a poetical project where he forefronts “Asthenie,” “Untätigkeit,” i.e., weakness or active-passivity as a poetical principle that transcends any notion or stipulation of delimitational and definition-al power that conveys exclusion and elimination through any “grounding operation of the ground.” The thesis emphasizes Hofmannsthal’s skepticism towards dialectical sublation and his portray-al of weakness or passivity as a counter-poetical principle, which will have direct implications for the understanding of law or normativity, politics, and tradition. This examination ultimately challenges, thus, traditional conceptions of comedy and the eschatological machinery that Hof-mannsthal seeks to arrest, offering a fresh perspective on the complexities of his approach to language. In its main outline, I primarily focus on a dramatic and relatively underdeveloped element in philology (not theater studies), namely that of stage directions, i.e., the role and its relationship to the genre of drama, and the genre of comedy. Furthermore, the necessary connection between stage directions and the content of the drama and its characters will be of particular importance. Steiner (1969), for instance, initially provided a convincing argument as to why stage directions were so important for Hofmannsthal, as they contain epic elements (evaluations, comments, authorial internal views) beyond the possibility of their theatrical representability (which Emil Staiger also noticed in his interpretation of the comedy Der Schwierige from 1941) (see Ch. 3.3). A precise reflection on the nature of stage directions as a norm or prescription of action will be necessary to work out the specificity of their role in the drama mentioned. Although the epic elements contained in the stage directions certainly may play a general role in questioning the perception, essence, and definition of the so-called classical drama, this observation takes on special significance in relation to the theme of this comedy, which has now been canonically interpreted in the tradition of language skepticism and the unspeakable (see Woll 2019). A drama in which the hero’s complications of mastering a satisfactory communicative language are depicted – shouldn’t it be precisely the (meta) language of the stage directions that is in-tended to serve as ‘assistance’ in countering the lack of meaning conveyed by the action for the reader and circumscribing the staged incomprehensibility and language skepticism within the bounds of pre- and descriptive meta-language, namely with what could be called epic authorial interventions? (see Ch. 3.4). This leads to the first consequence, namely that a play that eludes language should also elude visibility and representability, since the stage directions play such an important role in the dra-ma transposing the action to the meta level of language. (Hofmannsthal researchers will certain-ly think of the letter by Hofmannsthal to Anton Wildgans and the almost omnipresent quote about the antinomy between “word” (“Wort”) and “deed” (“Tat”) (SW. XII, p. 504), wanting to discover an elaborate aporia in this observation where there seem to be an incommunicability between stage directions and stage). Whether this observation holds true or not, it will neces-sarily have implications for the compositional logic of the drama (Ch. 3.2), which seemingly has an inconsistent (because disharmonious), but intricate gap between form and content. Re-gardless of the reasons for the gap between content and form announced here, one can point to the first indications of irony aimed at disruption and alterity. Irony as an anti-tragic thought figure of comedy was rehabilitated by Romanticism (especially Schlegel, but also Tieck and Novalis) with Aristophanes and his concept of “parekbasis”, but also by Hofmannsthal in his first of three considerations “Die Ironie der Dinge” (“The Irony of Things”) (see Ch. 2.2). In other words, the (epic-like) stage directions under consideration here aim at communication that cannot be perceived by the audience on the level of the theatrical, and yet this meta-communication based on the stage directions stands in diametrical opposition to the actual lan-guage-skeptical content of the drama. One might describe this as a “meta-comedy” (in a similar sense to Menke’s (2005) concept, but without his fatalistic stance on the catastrophe of “play” (“Spiel”), see Ch. 2), which eludes the comprehension of both the real audience and the charac-ters within the play. I am alluding to the famous ‘play within a play’ scene, wherein the characters are surprised and confused due to their lack of knowledge about what Crescence is attempting to communicate. She tries, unsuccessfully, to give the pseudo engagement between Hans Karl Bühl and Helene Altenwyl an official seal and blessing through the ritualized gesture of an ‘embrace’ between the families. This confusion mirrors the real audience’s own lack of awareness about the meta-language of the stage directions. (If “parekbasis” was once considered the address and turning to the audience, here the term “parecbatic silence” initially receives a trivial but evident defini-tion, namely as a turning to the audience and beyond the audience, to something that necessari-ly has to elude the audience but should be intended for them – reticence and parekbasis). Simultaneously, observations about the stage directions prompt the ongoing debate about the play’s modernity within Hofmannsthal’s scholarship (see Heinz 2009, Woll 2019; Ch. 1). At the same time, the observations regarding the stage directions suggest the question of the play’s modernity, which is still being discussed with great enthusiasm in Hofmannsthal’s scholarship (see Heinz 2009, Woll 2019; Ch. 1), leading again to the question of the genre and to revisit the accusation against Hofmannsthal for the obvious yet not obvious ‘rehabilitation’ of a traditional comedy structure that culminates in a wedding (in this case, an engagement) (see Pourciau 2016, Ch. 3.1 and 5.1). Thus, the question of the nature and function of the stage directions reserved for the reader meets the question of the convention and tradition of the genre, its realizability, conservation, and transcendence – questions that may appear very general and somewhat programmatic but are of particular importance in Hofmannsthal’s work overall (e.g. Gespräch über Gedichte, Das Salzburger große Welttheater, Der Turm, Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation, also conveyed in his language style laden of oxymora and antinomies that for Hofmannsthal are nei-ther aporetic nor dialectically resolvable; see Heinz 2009). The relationship between stage directions and plot undergoes an aporetic-looking intensification that has not been worked out by research so far when one looks at the modes of absence of speech, which were noted by Steiner but only if at all superficially problematized. Steiner (1969, p. 239): “So there is no lack of stage directions that emphasize speechlessness: “A little pause,” “is reticent,” [i.e. “schweigt,” H.F.] “says nothing,” “gives no answer,” “after a short silence,” and so on. The problem seems to be evident because whether these directions are un-derstood indicatively or imperatively (which is not insignificant), the reader, let alone the view-er, cannot directly or at all recognize the difference between Figure X “says nothing,” Figure Y “does not answer,” Figure Z “is reticent,” or Figure A “says nothing.” Subsuming these different modes under the label of speechlessness or the unspeakable would be an indication of the lazy, unreflective categorization of difference under identity, i.e. identification. Whether to assume that these examples of the absence of speech are meaningless arbitrary pe-culiarities of rhetorical style on the author’s part or not is not only a vulgar hermeneutical ques-tion that looks at the author’s intention, but more importantly, an (auto-)poietic question, as this question aims at the contingency or necessity of their semantic and semiotic difference in com-edy, at the contingency or necessity of their prescription by the stage directions (see Ch. 3.4 and Ch. 5.1). The issue of contingency and necessity, however, is also negotiated in the play itself and concerns not only the metaphysical compositional arrangement of events and their valoriza-tion or hierarchization but permeates the hermeneutic realm of meaning and understanding; namely to what extent a necessity of alterity and meaning is generated from the contingency of synonymy or equivalence (identity)? This would result in the allegorization of silence as ‘dif-ferent’ speech and obviate the problems of reading a play that attempts to questions the allego-ries of its own play and its own reading (see Ch. 1). Does it depend on the “last nuances,” as the main character Hans Karl notes in the play, or are such nuances contingencies of the free creative spirit or figments of the imagination? The inter-play between contingency and necessity in relation to sense and meaning brings forth questions about tradition (pseudo/universalism), revolution (historical contingency/play), tragic and co-medic guilt, and ultimately, the significance of the engagement from an eschatological-soteriological standpoint. It hints at the possibility of a dialectical synthesis, from which mean-ing and univocity might emerge, but ultimately resists this emergence (Ch. 5.2 and 5.3). (In other words, the contingency necessarily found in the diversity (alterity-drivenness) of meaning threatens to be transformed into the necessity of unambiguity or univocity.) Whether the stage directions regarding the absence of speech are to be considered synonymous or not, the fact remains that at first ‘glance’, the viewer will not be able to discern the various modalities from one another. Thus, we are dealing with a figure of thought of indiscernibility or, as Derrida (1972b and 1991) would put it, “undecidability”, which is evoked by the afore-mentioned stage directions and where the actual impossible object of my philological investiga-tion begins (see Ch. 1). With the notion of undecidability, it appears that we return to the realm of autopoiesis and me-ta-language, suggesting that the theme of language skepticism also manifests itself through the concept of undecidability at the root of the prescription by the stage directions, thus, this notion permeates not only the content of the drama but also its formal structure. Undecidability, also understood as indecision (“Unentschlossenheit”), is represented by the protagonist Hans Karl, who not only becomes entangled in the most ‘hopeless’ confusions but is also unable to make any ‘final’ decisions. The Difficult Man, Hans Karl, is not only aimless (“absichtslos”), as the originally intended title suggested (“Der Mann ohne Absicht”, see Stern 1957/58), but precisely because of that he is ‘indecisive’ or ‘irresolute’. And here the paradox is heightened: He is in–different or in–decisive because he cares about the smallest nuances, i.e., distinctions or differ-ences. For him, meaning is indefinable and undecidable. The indecision arises presumably due to the excessive hermeneutical divisions that lead to differences that Hans Karl carries out. So, whether the stage directions, which denote the absence of speech, deal with difference or identi-ty – this question arises as a consequence and reflects the abyss of understanding that occurs when language, with the help of language, turns against itself. One may be tempted to hermeneutically reconstruct the modalities of the absence of speech in a coherent form, against which there would be no objection. However, one should not lose sight of the significance that the figure of the abyss and undecidability already holds for the reading of the play from the stage direction’s perspective. The irony manifesting here permeates the realm of the phenomenal (irony “of things”, see Ch. 2.2) up to the realm of the aphänomenal through the absence of speech (see Ch. 5.1), where the saying of prescriptive speech can only manifest itself aphenomenally not even via the stage direction, and where its possible meaning is constituted in the difference of a certain ‘nothingness’, in the significations of nothing(ness), in the negation of “e/vidence”. The formulation of the question about the meaning of the nothingness of ‘saying’ forces an indi-rect approach to language and its thinking. Is the engagement of Hans Karl and Helene a happy sign of the synthesis of ‘meaning’ and the overcoming of irony (i.e. happy-end as the sublation of contingency into necessity), does it take place at all or is the victory of irony (abolition of a conclusion, a failure of the drama in its composition to accommodate this comedy into its tradi-tional conclusion) apparent here, or is their peculiar engagement, in turn, a “tant bien que mal,” i.e., an event that can be understood neither as separation nor union, convention nor invention? What I aim to demonstrate is that the dialectical synthesis or teleological orientation of literary thinking in this play lacks legitimacy (see Pourciau 2016). Hence the conservative proposal to seek an interpretive guideline via the clownish character of Furlani, which is inspired by the Commedia dell’arte (Ch. 2.1), and its double unintentional intention (see Ch. 2.3), which manifests itself in the dual modality of ‘as-if’ (as if his actions were purposeful and as if his incompetence or inability were actually real – i.e. the dichotomy between mask and actor). If Furlani neither “caricatures” (“karikiert”) nor “exaggerates” (“out-riert”), if his actions thus elude the intentional irony from the subjective position, it is necessary to ask what the irony would consist of, if at all. This question will be addressed by reflecting on the concept of “chatter”. I argue that Hofmannsthal does not aim to depict irony, as the canoni-cal scholarship has suggested (see Ch. 2.2), but rather, irony is the starting point of his poetolog-ical reflection (see Ch. 1 and Ch. 2.) portrayed in the “Difficult Man”. Ultimately, if my reading is correct, he intends to transcend irony by arresting it and confining it to virtual “idleness”. It is my contention that chatter, or “idle talk” exposes the chasm between apodictic language (nor-mativity) and contingent language (i.e. ironic language). Here lies a dual ontology between to-have-to-be (“Sein-Sollen”) and to-will-to-be (“Sein-Wollen”), which resemble the portrayal of the clown Furlani on the one hand and the fascistic figure Baron Neuhoff on the other (see Ch. 4). Both ontologies can never coincide unless a vio-lent power apodictically erases the liminal space between the to-have-to-be and the to-will-to-be, thereby implementing a quasi-totalitarian order. The imperative mood is shown to be just as chatty as the indicative mood. In this boundless idleness without delimitation, the eschatologi-cal agenda represented by Neuhoff and the soteriological agenda of the comedic tradition are both arrested, opening up a threshold from which a new political order without order may arise without exclusion nor abandonment. In conclusion, the stage directions in this play, which concern the absence of speech and the various modalities it embodies, highlight the intricacies of discerning meaning, identity, and difference in this literary work. This observation supports the concept of “chatter” as the non-coincidence between norm and execution, meta-language and language, the imperative and the indicative moods. The themes of undecidability, contingency, and necessity permeate the text, prompting questions about the validity of dialectical synthesis or teleological orientation not only in the literary interpretation of this comedy. The play challenges the reader to confront the abyss of understanding and engage with the limits of language, emphasizing its potential for liberating meaning from the constraints of tradition and determinacy. One notable connection is the exploration of the protagonist Hans Karl, which seems to provide a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding the character’s resistance to identifica-tion. This exploration is linked to Hofmannsthal’s portrayal of weakness as a poetical principle, as both contribute to a richer understanding of the intricacies surrounding the character’s strug-gle with normativity and its resulting dehumanization. This analysis illuminates the ways in which Hofmannsthal employs comedy as a means to halt the eschatological progression towards a happy conclusion, ultimately challenging traditional conceptions of comedy, and contributing to the sublation of comedy into a “meta-comedy”.

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