Ödipus und die Sphinx di Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Una rilettura: con documenti inediti

The myth of Oedipus, king of Thebes, who killed his father and married his mother, has always fascinated readers and authors, artists and men of letters. Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s verse drama Ödipus und die Sphinx (1906) puts on stage a modern Oedipus and furnishes him with oneiric, Freudian concerns. But the fatal oracle of Delphi delivered by the Pythia, and appearing here as a psychoanalytical interpretation of Oedipus’ deepest dreams rather than as a prophecy of future disasters, becomes unwittingly in the mouth of the main character a metaphor, albeit paradoxical, of the human condition and its unceasing search for a superior necessity which saves man from random chance and from the apparent relativism of everyday life. It is precisely this motif that gives unity and consistency to a drama characterized by a disarmingly great variety of ancient and modern literary echoes, from Calderón to d’Annunzio, through Péladan. At the same time it provides a foretaste of the future theatrical works of the Austrian poet such as Ariadne auf Naxos (1912/16) and Der Schwierige (1919/20). The volume includes an appendix with documents, which are published here for the first time, and an index of names.