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| | Hugo von Hofmannsthal - NYRB |
 | | Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874—1929), the poet, dramatist, essayist, and librettist, was raised in Vienna. |
 | | Hofmannsthal’s youth, talent, and precociousness made a splash at Café Griensteidl, the epicenter of literary Vienna; critic Hermann Bahr, in particular, was astounded that someone using the pseudonym of a “well-groomed poodle” and with the figure of a "fine, slender pageboy" could write such brilliant poetry and prose. |
 | | Around that time, however, Hofmannsthal turned away from Symbolist poetry; his aesthetic crisis is recorded, in part, in his famous work from 1902, "A Letter" (often referred to in English as "The Lord Chandos Letter"), in which a young nobleman confronts the futility of language. |
| www.nybooks.com /nyrb/authors/10780 (311 words) |
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