Hugo Von Hofmannsthal Quotes

Reality lies in the greatest enchantment you have ever experienced.

To be modern means to like antique furniture - and youthful neurosis.

Words performed through music can express what language alone had exhausted

the activity of modern poets stands under the decree of necessity, as though they were building a pyramid, the monstruos residence of a dead King or an unborn God.

The soul is never wholly assembled, except in delight.

So las ich falsch in deinem Aug, dem tiefen? Kein heimlich Sehnen sah ich heiß dort funkeln? Es birgt zu deiner Seele keine Pforte Dein feuchter Blick? Die Wünsche, die dort schliefen, Wie stille Rosen in der Flut, der dunkeln, Sind, wie dein Plaudern: seellos... Worte, Worte?

He seeks life where it is to be found: in all that is most delicate, in the folds of things.

I wanted to show that the fables and mythic tales which the ancients have handed down to us and in which painters and sculptors never cease to find mindless pleasure are the hieroglyphics of a secret, inexhaustible wisdom. I sometimes thought I felt its breath, as though coming from behind a veil.

wir konnen warten. wissen macht frei [we can wait. knowledge liberates]. in these confident words the stalwart Ritter von Schmerling expressed the rationalistic expectations of the political process at the beginning of the liberal era in 1861. at the end of that era, the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, scion of a cultivated middle-class family, offered a different formula for political success: politics is magic. he who knows how to summon the forces from the deep, him will they follow.

Was weiß denn ich vom Menschenleben? Bin freilich scheinbar drin gestanden, Aber ich hab es höchstens verstanden, Konnte mich nie darein verweben.

La escritura es un pequeño equívoco sin importancia, tan pequeño que nos hace casi mudos

Writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a regular at Café Central, once said, “Two attitudes seem modern in our time: analyzing life and escaping from it.” In the coffeehouse, you could do both simultaneously, and for only a few shillings. It was pure genius.

Ein sonderbar Ding ist die Zeit. Wenn man so hineinlebt, ist sie rein gar nichts. Aber dann auf einmal, dann spürt man nichts als sie.

Cada prazer da vida se funda no retorno regular das coisas externas. A alternância do dia e da noite, das estações, das flores e dos frutos, e cada coisa que nos vem ao encontro periodicamente, porque nós podemos e devemos apreciá-las, estes são os verdadeiros estímulos da vida terrena. Quanto mais abertos estamos a tais fruições, tanto mais nos sentimos felizes' Goethe

Darwin and Nietzsche were the common spiritual and intellectual source for the mean-spirited and bellicose ideological assault on progress, liberalism, and democracy that fired the late-nineteenth-century campaign to preserve or rejuvenate the traditional order. Presensitized for this retreat from modernity, prominent fin-de-siècle aesthetes, engages literati, polemical publicists, academic sociologists, and last but not least, conservative and reactionary politicians became both consumers and disseminators of the untried action-ideas. Oscar Wilde and Stefan George were perhaps most representative of the aristocratizing aesthetes whose rush into dandyism or retreat into cultural monasticism was part of the outburst against bourgeois philistinism and social levelling. Their yearning for a return to an aristocratic past and their aversion to the invasive democracy of their day were shared by Thomas Mann and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose nostalgia for the presumably superior sensibilities of a bygone cultivated society was part of their claim to privileged social space and position in the present. Although they were all of burgher or bourgeois descent, they extolled ultra-patrician values and poses, thereby reflecting and advancing the rediscovery and reaffirmation of the merits and necessities of elitism. Theirs was not simply an aesthetic and unpolitical posture precisely because they knowingly contributed to the exaltation of societal hierarchy at a time when this exaltation was being used to do battle against both liberty and equality. At any rate, they may be said to have condoned this partisan attack by not explicitly distancing themselves from it. Maurice Barrès, Paul Bourget, and Gabriele D'Annunzio were not nearly so self-effacing. They were not only conspicuous and active militants of antidemocratic elitism, but they meant their literary works to convert the reader to their strident persuasion. Their polemical statements and their novels promoted the cult of the superior self and nation, in which the Church performed the holy sacraments. Barrès, Bourget, and D'Annunzio were purposeful practitioners of the irruptive politics of nostalgia that called for the restoration of enlightened absolutism, hierarchical society. and elite culture in the energizing fires of war.

Hugo Hofmann von Hofmannsthal, tenente, prima in servizio a Pisino d’Istria, poi presso il ministero della Guerra, celebra l’Austria a Vienna, a Berlino, a Praga, nei Paesi occupati o neutrali, a Varsavia e a Bruxelles, a Zurigo, ad Oslo e a Stoccolma, dove va in missione straordinaria, ambasciatore di un’antica patria della musica e della poesia. Ma si domanda con un soprassalto, la notte, quante volte si domanda se ogni suo discorso non sia solo la commemorazione di un defunto. Poiché questa domanda lo accompagna da anni, prima ancora della guerra: «Verso quali decenni sono avviati i nostri figli, a quale avvenire, in questa Austria, figliastra della storia, così strana e diversa, così sola? La nostra vecchia Austria è assediata da torbidi presagi e ombre di morte».

Il n'y a rien de coupable. L'instant n'est pas coupable, c'est seulement de vouloir le retenir qui n'est pas permis. Seul le fait de se cramponner à ce qui ne se laisse pas retenir... (89)

Merk dies allein: nicht eine einzige Stunde kommt zweimal im Leben, Nicht ein Wort, nicht eines Blickes Ungreifbares Nichts ist je Ungeschehn zu machen, was Du getan hast, mußt du tragen, So das Lächeln wie den Mord!

A profunda ignorância é o que inspira o tom dogmático". La Bruyère

Um homem que morre aos trinta e cinco anos é em cada momento da sua vida um homem que morrerá aos trinta e cinco anos. A isso Goethe chamava 'enteléquia

As situações são simbólicas; é uma fraqueza dos homens de hoje tratá-las analiticamente e dissolver com isso sua magia

As circunstâncias têm menos poder de nos fazer felizes ou infelizes do que se acredita; mas a antecipação das circunstâncias futuras na fantasia têm um poder imenso

Quem envelhece reconhece que permanecemos constantemente em culpa, através de todas as circunstâncias e combinações da vida; mas em cada homem habita também a sua sorte de inocência; e é esta que o sustenta, sem que ele mesmo saiba como

Apenas naquilo que o homem faz, segue fazendo, naquilo em que persevera, ele mostra caráter.

É uma a faculdade que mais importa desenvolver nas crianças: a de sentir que o divino se manifesta em nossa imediata vizinhança. Porém, muitas coisas que fazemos e deixamos fazer tendem a distruir tal faculdade, endurecendo o coração

When in my hunting lodge I drank the warm foaming milk which an unkempt wench had drained into a wooden pail from the udder of a beautiful gentle~yed cow, the sen­sation was no different from that which I experienced when, seated on a bench built into the window of my study, my mind absorbed the sweet and foaming nourishment from a book.

Vergeben Sie mir diese Schilderung, aber denken Sie nicht, daß es Mitleid war, was mich erfüllte. [...] Es war viel mehr und viel weniger als Mitleid: ein ungeheures Anteilnehmen, ein Hinüberfließen in jene Geschöpfe oder ein Fühlen, daß ein Fluidum des Lebens und Todes, des Traumes und Wachens für einen Augenblick in sie hinübergeflossen ist [...].

Nothing becomes reality in the political life of a nation that was not present in its literature as spirit.

Wir können warten. Wissen macht frei.” (We can wait. Knowledge liberates.) In these confident words the stalwart Ritter von Schmerling expressed the rationalistic expectations of the political process at the beginning of the liberal era in 1861.29 At the end of that era, the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, scion of a cultivated middle-class family, offered a different formula for political success: “Politics is magic. He who knows how to summon the forces from the deep, him will they follow.

In meines Großpapa's Geburtshaus mein unteres linkes Zahnerl wurde wakelig und empfahl sich am nächsten Morgen, verdrängt vom Nachfolger. Hugo von Hofmannsthal (6) an die Eltern

Fin de siècle Vienna was a melting pot that had produced Gustav Mahler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Sigmund Freud. But when the empire’s narrower national identities—Serbs, Bulgarians, Czechs, and Austro-Germans—asserted themselves, the region descended into a paroxysm of violence and intolerance.