Hugo von Hofmannsthal
The Lord Chandos Letter.
Marlboro, Vermont: The Marlboro Press, 1986. First of this English translation. Translation by Russell Stockman. 0910395187 61 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 5.25" x 8.25", shows very light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Pages are clean and bright. Bilingual in English and German.
"The small work presented here in the original German with a new English translation was written in August 1902. It first appeared in two installments, under the simple title of "Ein Brief" ("A Letter"), on October 18 and 19 of that year in the literary pages of the Berlin daily "Der Tag." Hofmannsthal was then twenty-eight years old, almost precisely at the midpoint of his brief life of fifty-five years. He could already look back on a decade of distinguished writing, for at seventeen he had begun the steady outpouring of poems, verse dramas, and cosmopolitan literary essays that caused him to be known as one of the cultural wonders of German-speaking Europe in the fin de siècle. Ahead lay the collaboration with Richard Strauss that would result in "Elektra," "Der Rosenkavalier," "Ariadne auf Naxos," and "Die Frau ohne Schatten" -- to name only the best-loved of the operas that brought the Austrian librettist's name to the attention of the world.
In his "Lord Chandos Letter," an imaginary document purportedly dating from the Elizabethan period in England -- another fin de siècle -- Hofmannsthal gave vent to his long-held doubts about the legitimacy of poetry in general  as well as his own particular gift. Yet with it he produced not only luminous proof of his continuing powers, but a small masterpiece that has come to be thought of as a turning-point in modern literature."