84. “Madonna Dianora”

A scene by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Performance by the Freie Bühne, Berlin

The wise Pythagoras believed that the planets in celestial space produce a wonderful harmony through their movements, which one does not hear because one is accustomed to it. Imagine the ear suddenly opened to this music! How different the world would seem to us! What would happen in our soul if the sound of the planets had an effect on it! Such thoughts come to mind when confronted with Hugo von Hofmannsthal's art. He allows harmonies to emerge from things that surprise us, as if the planets were suddenly sounding together. He seems to me to be gifted with an infinitely delicate soul, with finely organized senses; and what he tells us about the world mostly escapes us because habit prevents us from hearing it. Hofmannsthal pays no attention to the coarser aspects of the world; the finer things are therefore revealed to his mind. He allows the prominent features in the phenomena that occupy people in ordinary life to recede; but he brings out the secret beauty that otherwise recedes. There is an infinitely endearing arbitrariness in his view of the world. In the "scene" referred to here, there is little of the rough, sharp lines with which playwrights usually depict life. Madonna Dianora awaits her lover; the man kills her because of her infidelity. This plot is poor and pale. But beneath the surface, as it were, it harbors a wealth of beauty. Hofmannsthal cuts away the surface and reveals the finest branches of inner beauty. His way of looking at things is like listening to a speaker and not listening to the meaning of the speech, not listening to the content of the words, but only to the sound of the voice and the music that lies in his language. It is understandable that this kind of performance cannot be perfectly realized with the means of our stagecraft. Despite the effort Louise Dumont put into the role of the Madonna Dianora, the Freie Bühne performance was therefore not very satisfying.