Natalija Jakubova

Senior Visiting Fellow - Cluster European Literatures and their Interrelationships

Hofmannsthal's "Idea of Europe" vs. Ideas of National Liberation in Habsburg Empire

The proposed research is part of a major project that tests the relevance of the context of the Central and Eastern European nationalisms for understanding of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's work and brings into the picture the ideas of nationalist romanticisms that had their impact into his concept of "conservative revolution" and "Austrian idea" through which he developed a model for the future Europe.

"I would like to overcome the tendency, according to which any personalities beyond the German-speaking horizon tended to be treated in the scholarship exclusively as relational to Hofmannsthal, and not on their own terms; equally, the analysis of the "Slavic influence" was often reduced to the interpretation of the characters of Slavic origin."

Due to my specialization on the cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe, I approach Hofmannsthal precisely from the standpoint that was perceived by him as foreign and exotic world, and that, in a way, began to exist for him (as well as for most of his scholars) only at the moment of his contact with this world, be it a travel, a planned collaboration for an edition, a translation or a theatrical production. Quite contrarily, for me such personalities as Jaroslav Kvapil or Stanisław Wyspiański are embedded in the complex processes of the respective romantic nationalisms, and it is already from this perspective that I am approaching the episodes connected with Hofmannsthal.

 

Natalija Jakubova is a Senior Visiting Fellow during the winter semester 2023/24 working closely with the Cluster European Literatures and their Interactions.

 

In his articles and speeches of the WWI period, Hugo von Hofmannsthal proclaimed the existence of a specific "Austian idea" and proposed Austro-Hungary to serve as a model for the future of Europe. In 1929 he wrote the libretto for the opera Arabella that can be called "a retrospective Utopia" as for its vision of a marriage between "the center" and "peripheries". The premiere of the opera written by Richard Strauss took place in 1933 in Dresden under the circumstances that questioned not only the main idea of Hofmannsthal but also his individual strategies of constructing an "Austrian cultural identity".