Hoffmannsthal's "Elektra". A Graeco-Freudian Myth

Abstract

The story of the northern magician Faustus, conjuring up the shade of Helen from the underworld might be taken as a symbol of the relations between Modern Europe and Ancient Greece. Ever since the rediscovery of Greek art and poetry, first during the Renaissance, and then again in the eighteenth century, modern man has striven, especially perhaps in Germany, to call back into the present the remote insubstantial quality of that far gone age. Our architecture, our poetry, our modes of thought, our very speech bear eloquent testimony to the fact, that the West, gazing entranced at a wraith-like vision of Hellas, experienced those emotions which led Marlowe's Faustus to exclaim: