Nikolaus Lenau
born Aug. 13, 1802, Csatád, Hung.
died Aug. 22, 1850, Oberdöbling, near
Vienna, Austria
Austrian poet known for melancholy
lyrical verse that mirrors the pessimism
of his time as well as his personal
despair.
Severe depression and dissatisfaction
characterized Lenau’s life. He began,
but never completed, studies in law,
medicine, and philosophy. A legacy in
1830 enabled him to devote himself to
writing. Frequent moves, a number of
unhappy love affairs, and a disastrous
year-long emigration to the United
States in 1832–33 further exemplified
the general disappointment he felt at
the failure of his life and
acquaintances to measure up to his
artistic ideals. He recognized that his
inability to keep separate the spheres
of poetic expression and real life was
both the source of his depression and
the root of his art.
Lenau’s fame rests predominantly on
his shorter lyrical poems. These early
poems, which were published in Gedichte
(1832; “Poems”) and Neuere Gedichte
(1838; “Newer Poems”), demonstrate close
ties to the Weltschmerz (“World Pain”)
mood of the Romantic period and reveal a
personal, almost religious relationship
to nature. His later poems, Gesammelte
Gedichte, 2 vol. (1844), and the
religious epics Savonarola (1837) and
Die Albigenser (1842; “The
Albigensians”), deal with his relentless
and unsuccessful search for order and
constancy in love, nature, and faith.
Following J.W. von Goethe’s death in
1832, the appearance in 1833 of the
second part of his Faust inspired many
renditions of the legend. Lenau’s Faust:
Ein Gedicht (published 1836, revised
1840) is noticeably derivative of
Goethe’s, but Lenau’s version has Faust
confronting an absurd life that is
devoid of any absolute values, the same
position in which Lenau felt himself to
be. Lenau’s lifelong mental illness
resulted in a complete breakdown in 1844
and later to near-total paralysis from
which he never recovered. His epic Don
Juan (1851) appeared posthumously. His
letters to Baroness Sophie von
Löwenthal, with whom he was in love from
1834 to his death, were published in
1968.
