LENAU, NIKOLAUS (NIKOLAUS FRANZ NIEMBSCH VON STREHLENAU). — German-Hungarian poet, born on 13 August 1802 at Csatád near Temesvár, died on 22 August 1850 in the asylum at Oberdöbling near Vienna.
His poems, written at various times throughout his life (Gedichte, 1832; Neue Gedichte, 1838 and 1844), soon became famous. He attempted the subject of Faust (1836) in a kind of dramatic rhapsody, a work of doubt and seething discontent, clearly influenced by Spinozist doctrines, but wavering between acceptance and condemnation of pantheism and concluding with the hero’s death. He then turned to the religious epic-dramatic poem and wrote Savonarola (1837) and Die Albigenser (1842), in which L. believes religious sentiment, detached from dogma, and freedom, removed from every moral and political limitation, to be possible. His last work, the verse dialogue Don Juan (1844), remained unfinished, because the outbreak of latent insanity made hospitalization necessary in 1844.
His lyric poetry possesses high artistic value and also reveals his exceptionally strong musical sensitivity. It consists chiefly of descriptions of nature—a nature seemingly animated by elemental and demonic spirits; and it is always a landscape-state of mind, reflecting inner desolation, the shadow of an I in which the light slowly fades.
L. does not belong to the Romantics but is freer and more modern, closer to Schopenhauerian and Leopardi-like pessimism. A Catholic in his youth, he later moved away from the faith and, through Christianity conceived as the religion of suffering, thought he could attain that freedom of the spirit which he identified with his god. Die Albigenser is on the Index (decree of 30 September 1845).