Chandos has abandoned all future written projects, which he once proposed with exuberance, because of his inability to express himself in a meaningful fashion.
Lastly he turned to the classics, works by Cicero and Seneca, in an attempt to cure his literary ailment but could make no sense of them and his condition continued to decline.
He was a poet who had a command over language in his early poetry centered on the “inner self” [2] that had characterized his time as a member of the elite literary circle Young Vienna ("Jung-Wien").
Instead, in his writing The Lord Chandos Letter, Hofmannsthal abandons poetry and his work on aesthetics much to the disappointment of his readers.
The Lord Chandos Letter was written during the fin de siècle, a clash between the old social order and a development of new thought and means of expression.
[3] In his letter, Hofmannsthal mentions a sickness of the mind which emerged from the inability of language to sufficiently express oneself amidst social and political turmoil.
[4] The seemingly incompatible relationship between language and experience is a motif of twentieth century European works and manifested itself in art and music from Gustav Klimt and Arnold Schoenberg respectively.
Thomas Kovach argues that “so many critics viewed The Lord Chandos Letter as an autobiographical document” because of Hofmannsthal's personal literary crisis that stemmed from his own self-doubt.
Michael Morton, another critic, views the crisis reflected in The Lord Chandos Letter as a set of predicaments.