Hofmannsthal’s Chandos story embodies the existential collapse of everyday Being-in-the-world

Evidence

Everyday items suddenly look to Chandos like things seen too closely through a magnifying glass, impossible to identify. He hears people gossiping about local characters and friends, but can make no coherent narrative out of what they are saying. Unable to work or look after his estate, Chandos finds himself staring for hours at a moss-covered stone, or a dog lying in the sun, or a harrow left abandoned in a field. The connections have gone. No wonder we call an experience like this a breakdown. It may sound familiar to anyone who has suffered depression, and it can also occur in various neurological disorders. For Heidegger, it would be an extreme case of the collapse of everyday Being-in-the-world, a collapse that makes everything obtrusive, disarticulated, and impossible to negotiate with our usual blithe disregard. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 238

Categorization

• XREF: The Chandos collapse of meaning maps onto Heidegger’s Being-in-the-world breakdown, and parallels the reader’s notes on silence and the collapse of meaning in ‘The Soundscape’.