the antique Greek drama and of early English dramatists diverted him
from the self-absorption and self-reflection of his previous work, and
may have brought home to him the necessity of finding a more fertile
source for his art than his own individual soul. The extraordinary
success of Wilde's _Salome_ opened possibilities of applying the
pathological knowledge of the present to the interpretation of the
past. He chose for this momentous departure the _Electra_ of Sophocles
(1903). Taking from the Greek poet the mere skeleton of the story, he
modified the characters according to his own vision and the
psychopathic viewpoint of the time--a liberty which some critics
justified, others branded as an unpardonable license. But the work was
a turning-point for Hofmannsthal, for he has since begun to face life
more directly and squarely and though he has not reached a wholesome
reading of it, he has at least struck new and powerful notes that
contrast strongly with the spirit of his previous works. Enforced by
the music of Richard Strauss, whose naturalism is the immediate
expression of his robust virility, Hofmannsthal's _Electra_ has made
the name of the author known throughout the world. To his association
with the sturdy Bavarian composer is also due the comedy _Der
Rosenkavalier_ (1911), which with its daring situations and touches of
drastic burlesque harks back to the spirit of the comedy of Moliere's
time, though in its way it is also a product of the reaction against
the puerile and commonplace inoffensiveness of mid-century letters
inaugurated by Young Germany. Since his association with Richard
Strauss has weaned Hofmannsthal from the somewhat effete estheticism
and pessimism of his youth, it is a matter of interesting conjecture
what further effect it may have upon his development.

It seems to follow with the inevitableness of a physical law, that the
alternate swing of the pendulum between a naturalism which set above
everything the material fact and the cry for truth, and a subtle
estheticism which set the word above the spirit, would in the end usher
in an art that had profited by and learned to avoid both extremes.
There was little surprise when the Royal Schiller prize, which had not
been awarded for some years, was in 1908 divided between Karl
Schoenherr[A] for his play _Erde_ and Ernst Hardt for _Tristram the
Jester_. For Schoenherr, the Tyrolese, had drawn his inspiration from
the source which ever Antaesu