5 - Idea, reality and play-acting in Der Tor und der Tod

Summary

Our sense of language as action in Der Tor und der Tod depends for its full development on the play's quality as performable drama. In this view, Der Tor und der Tod already belongs to Hofmannsthal's exploration of the theater as an artistic vehicle, and I propose now to consider, accordingly, the symbolic significance for an audience of their actual personal and social situation during a performance.

Richard Alewyn says of the relation between Claudio and Death:

When he sees Death, who is really life, stand forth from outside him, this becomes possible only because he has placed himself outside of life. What sees Death approach is nothing but Claudio's consciousness, which has alienated itself from his life. And what enters in the mask of Death is nothing but his own banished and forgotten life. What is terrified is his consciousness, what defends itself is his consciousness, and what dies – the only thing capable of dying – is his consciousness, what Schopenhauer calls “individuation.”

Not only the specific shape in which Death appears, but the very fact that he appears is conditioned by Claudio's mental state, his overconscious alienation from his own life. Death appears to Claudio because Claudio is the sort of person who not only lives his life and dies his death, but also at the same time stands intellectually apart, in the position of a spectator.