Da Alcesti a Elena. Hugo von Hofmannsthal e il mito greco come luogo utopico

The essay analyses the following plays by Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Alkestis,, Ariadne auf Naxos, Elektra and Die Ägypthische Helena by highlighting the differences between Hofmannsthal’s dramas and the original Greek dramas of Sophocles and Euripides, thus outlining Hofmannsthal’s poetics and its development in relation to the classical myth. Hofmannsthal’s approach to the Greek models can’t be considered, even after the Great War, a cultural closure and even less a withdrawal from the horror of history. Both Helena in Egypt and the other Greek dramas do not represent the extreme attempt to answer both to the personal history and to the horrors and violence of the ‘Great History’. Therefore,, the myth becomes a utopian narrative space, in which it is still possible to find universal answers to ancient questions.