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Hoffmannthal
In The Letter of Lord Chandos by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the nature of Lord Chandos,
the main characters problem can be somewhat deceptive. The letter put great emphasis on the
unknown sickness that might seem to cause Lord Chandos to abandon his literary activity.
However, any significant effort focusing on analyzing Chandoss alleged mental or physical
illness would be profoundly misguided. Not unlike Kafkas metaphorical hunger artists lack of
appetite, Lord Chandoss state of sickness and mental stagnation should not be interpreted
literally. Instead, from close reading of the text, it would be more sensible for one to focus on
the core of things which is Chandoss transitioning thoughts and the resulting distaste towards
and eventual abandonment of words and languages as a way to articulate his feelings.
Hofmannsthal has dedicated much of the texts first half to build up the impression of a
sickness that can be seen as the cause of Chandoss two years of silence (Hofmannsthal 1).
Using Hippocrates aphorism, Hofmannsthal depicts Chandoss condition as a malady and
mental condition that is in need of medicine (Hofmannsthal 1). Such sickness deprives Chandos
of the ability to think or speak coherently and evidently prevents him from functioning
properly in life as well social events. This inability has been demonstrated in his examples: he
has lost the ability to express himself soundly in court and parliament; meanwhile, the sickness
also prevents him from engaging in mundane conversations. From his encountering with his
daughter, one can even find signs of physical disease such as paleness and violent pressure on
forehead (Hofmannsthal 3). To further reinforce this impression of his sickness, Chandos points
out the contrast between his current state and his former state of continuous intoxication
alongside each reference of his past works. In fact, the alleged sickness has caused so much
changes in Chandos that he repeatedly questions his identity (Hofmannsthal 1).

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However, to believe that some form of mental or physical sickness causes Chandoss
problem would be to mistake the metaphor for the core intention the metaphor serves to imply. In
the letter, Hofmannsthal uses the alleged sickness as a metaphor for a difficult yet fundamental
transition in Chandoss way of thinking and the resulting shift of his attitude toward words and
languages as a way to articulate his transforming thoughts. Chandoss transition can be
characterized as a gradual defamiliarization (Rosenwasser, Stephen 31) of lesser, mundane
subjects which are often omitted by the simplifying eyes of habit (Hofmannsthal 3). Prior to
the sickness Chandos has his eyes fixated on ambitious projects such as describing the reign of
Henry VIII and writing a Caesar-styled Apophthegmata. All of the projects tend to focus on
subjects that are grand and magnificent. During the sickness, as Chandos become more
inspired and intrigued by the smaller things such as rodents dying from poison and beetle
drowning in a pitcher, his thoughts shift from the grand and magnificent things to objects that
others deem mundane. In this process, Chandos has replaced the simplifying eyes of habit with
enchanted eyes that finds nothing in sight void of life (Hofmannsthal 4). To further clarify
and demonstrate this change, Chandos reaffirms on page 5 that things insignificant to normal
eyes such as lonely shepherds fire and chirping of a dying cricket have become more stimulating
to him than widely praised beauty of a starry sky and the majestic sound of an organ. In the
immediately following paragraph, Hofmannsthal cements Chandoss transition by having
Chandos to admit that he consider himself similar to Crassus, the person who shed tears over the
death of his fish.
As a direct result of Chandoss transition, the way he thinks and the subject he thinks about has
inevitably changed. In the later parts of the text, descriptions of Chandoss blissful feelings are
always accompanied by notions of speechlessness as well as the resentfulness in using words

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(Hofmannsthal 4-5). It has later been made clear that spoken or written words are simply
insufficient to express his new thoughts after the transition. Of his transcending sense of
harmony he could present in sensible words as little as [he] could say anything precise about the
inner movement of [his] intestines. In addition, Chandos abandons the use of words also
because, as demonstrated in the Crassus example, words would only turn his blissful thoughts
into foolish jests (Hofmannsthal 5).
As a conclusion, in The Letter of Lord Chandos, the notion of sickness, despite taking
much volume of the text, serve merely as a metaphor for the transition of Chandoss thoughts. As
a result of this transition, like Chandos personally affirmed in the letters ending statement, his
thoughts simply cannot be sufficiently described with words or commonly used languages
(Hofmannsthal 6). This then leads to Chandoss complete abandonment of literary activity.