Italia – Arcadia? On the connection between the autonomy of art and the death of the artist

Year 2015, Volume: 2 Issue: 34, 97 - 111, 01.10.2015

Katharina Meiser

Abstract

Both the titular figure of Hugo
von Hofmannsthal’s lyrical one-act play Der
Tod des Tizian and Thomas Mann’s neoclassical writer Gustav von Aschenbach
die just in or near Venice, which frees them from a substantial crisis of
artistic self-legitimation. The Italian scenery – filled with traditional topoi
of the utopian imagination of Arcadia – transports the normativity of a
harmonious unity of the self and the world, art and life – both texts
scrutinizen this aspect. Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann render ‚Arcadia’ as a
poetic and creative reference point to illustrate the rootlessness of the
modern artist. The non-place Arcadia – as the origin myth of art and the ideal
image of an organic and harmonious integration – serves as a basis for
nagotiating the ongoing problem of artistic self-positioning.

Keywords

Arcadia, Death oft the artist, Classical German Literature, Aestheticism, Autonomy of Art

References

• Valdez Damian (2014): German Philhellinism. The Pathos of the Historical Imagination form Winckelmann to Goethe, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.