LENAU, Ifi'nou. NIKOLAUS (1s02-.50). A name assumed by Nikolaus Niembseli von Streh lenau. an Austrian lyric and elegiac poet. He was horn at Csathd. Hungary. studied law and then medicine at Vienna. hut he never practiced either profession. His genius first found expres sion in Gediehte (1S311. lull of sadness and ex quisitely melodious. He then went to Stuttgart and associated with poets of the Swabian school. especially Kerner. Schwab. and Karl Mayer. Growing restless there, he went to America in 1832. traveled on horseback in what was then the West, and returned. disillusioned by experi ence, in 1833. to find himself already poetically famous as the lyric representative of an emo tional period of political transition. The next ten years passed at Vienna and in Swabia. Faust (15:35) showed even more than the poems of 1831 a nature at strife with itself, with the world and God. and a genius careless of conven tional form. It is a fragmentary poem. waver ing between epic and dramatic. but abounding
in brilliant scenes. In the same year he pub lished Nencr( Gedichte (2d enlarged edition 1840). ...4fronaroia (1537: 5th ed. 1856) and the tibigenser ( 1842; 4th ed. 1873)are to be regarded rather as fragments than as literary entities. Don Juan (1551). a sort of drama. was left un finished at his death. Lenau's finest poems are descriptive of Hungarian life and scenery. Soon after 1544 he became insane. The rest of his life was passed in the asylum at Oberdi:bling. near Vienna. He died August 22. 1850. His Sibillni liehe Werke were edited by Anastasius Griin f in 4 vols.. Stuttgart. 1855; 2 vols.. 1881). There is a later edition with life and notes (Leipzig. 2 vols., 15521. and another (2 vols.. Berlin. 18831. Consult : Schurz. Lenaus Leben (2 vols.. Stuttgart. 1`55) : Frankl. Zn Lenaus Biographir (2d ed.. Vienna. Iss5I. and his edition of Loma told sophie PI thal. Taaebuch mind Bricfe des Diehters ( Stuttgart. 1592 1.