151. Ria Classen on “Symbolism in Lyric and Drama and Hugo von Hofmannsthal”

Lectures such as the one given on November 26, 1898 at the "Verein zur Förderung der Kunst" are among the rarities in the field of oratory. What we so often miss in lectures, that a personality stands before us, into whose spell we gladly fall for an hour, was present here in full measure. Mrs. Ria Claassen spoke about "Symbolism in Poetry and Drama and Hugo von Hofmannsthal". What she said could also be said in an essay. But such an essay would only offer me, for example, a quarter of what the speaker gave me that evening. I so often have the feeling at lectures that it is not a person who is speaking here, but an observation. The speaker could also be represented by someone else who has this view. With Ria Claassen, I had the impression that only she personally could tell me what she was saying. Ria Claassen has absorbed the international culture of Europe and processed it within herself in such a way that everything she says from the standpoint of the most advanced contemporary education appears like the direct, naive expression of her personality. Every expression of the physiognomy capable of modulation, every movement of the hands says something in the performer. I have not often seen hands come to the aid of words as in this case.

The lecturer spoke about Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the blossoming of the new art, which was particularly cultivated by this Viennese poet: symbolism. The fact that this artistic genre is now, after the era of modern naturalism, appearing on the horizon of intellectual life and having no small impact is highly characteristic of the contemporary soul. And the expression that Ria Claassen finds to interpret this symbolism is no less characteristic.

A longing for the paradise of the spirit is what lives in Ria Claassen. She has a need for something rare and special that cannot be found in the abundance of everyday life. And these needs work in her with the strength of a religious feeling. Naturalism cannot satisfy this longing. For it seeks to faithfully reproduce the very life from which Ria Claassen longs to escape. It regards it as the triumph of art when it can say: this drama works from the stage in such a way that we do not believe we have art before us, but that we believe we have real, everyday life before us. For Ria Claassen, a work of art will stand all the higher the more it makes us forget this real, everyday life and places before us the higher powers that rule in the depths of existence. It is not life, but the "mysteries of life" that should be the subject of art.

Ria Claassen sees her longing for art realized in the drama of Richard Wagner. In a work such as "Tristan und Isolde", the means of art are not used to depict reality, but rather the deeper forces of existence. Wagner believes that only in music can he find a means for this higher mission of art. Maeterlinck's and Hofmannsthal's creations show that symbolic art is also possible without the aid of the world of sound. These poets place a number of sentences before us in such a way that we perceive from them the revelations of a higher life. In Ria Claassen's opinion, Hofmannsthal's poetry is the pinnacle of this artistic movement. It is an art of words, such words that we hear divine voices when we listen to them.

How closely Ria Claassen has grown with this art she characterizes has been demonstrated by her performance of several Hofmannsthal poems. I would describe the nature of her performance itself as symbolist rhetoric. I thought I could hear something of what she was looking for in symbolist art in her fine, elegant voice. Hofmannsthal could hardly have wished for a better reciter.