weiße Fächer, Der, a one-act play written in part prose, part verse by H. von Hofmannsthal in 1897, and published in Kleine Dramen (1906). Having lost his wife, the 24-year-old Fortunio is resolved to spend the remainder of his life mourning at her grave. His grandmother remonstrates with him in vain. Miranda comes to the cemetery to mourn her recently dead husband. Fortunio's and Miranda's eyes meet, and it becomes apparent that the vows of eternal mourning will soon be forgotten. Yet the epilogue resumes the play's melancholy mode:
Doch was Euch Glück erscheint, indes Ihrs lebt,
Ist solch ein buntes Nichts, vom Traum gewebt.
Hofmannsthal's source was an old Chinese story (reminiscent of the tale of the widow of Ephesus by Petronius), to which R. Beer-Hofmann had drawn his attention in 1894.
