Palace of Flies
In this melancholy, atmospheric novella, Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), the former darling of fin de siècle Vienna, returns to a spa near Salzburg to revive his flagging genius. But Bad Fusch is no longer the place to inspire his talents as a poet, essayist, and librettist. The First World War and the ensuing crisis have transformed the setting’s splendor and beauty into decay and seediness. When H. (as he is called in the story) faints, he is tended by a young physician who reminds H. of himself as a young man. But instead of serving as his inspiration, the doctor is duty-bound to lavish his attention on a demanding baroness. Forced to rely on his own company and besieged by a growing cacophony of buzzing and humming flies, H. thinks back on his career and contemplates his impending death and the degeneration of his once shining reputation.
Evoking Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Palace of Flies seems to belong to a different era. A revered artist, whose existence has been both fascinating and privileged, and whose output was in the past steady and prodigious, finds himself reduced to inactivity in his later years. At a site that saw him creating great works, he wastes his time observing ‘regular’ lives and fates, from which he remains disconnected. Since the novella is replete with references to Hofmannsthal’s works and biography, lovers of his operatic collaboration with Richard Strauss will find much to interest them in this ‘portrait of the artist as an older man.’ Hofmannsthal’s love of the humanities and his ambition to promote the arts as a panacea against political violence are bound to speak eloquently to modern readers.
