One of the subtopics of my research is titled like “Searching for Innocence in the Midst of (Immoral) Masquerade”. Originally it had to deal only with the characters of „innocent girls”. This kind of character is for example Sophie in „Der Rosenkavalier”: in order to save her from the arranged marriage (which would be a masquerade by itself) Octavian stages even a greater masquerade… Then, it is surely Arabella in the eponymous opera. A great deal of the plot is dedicated to the misunderstandings around the issue of her chastity; but in order to prove her “innocence”, one has to expose the masquerade her whole milieu is engaged in (the bankrupt family had to bluff in order to marry her off and for the sake of this purpose her younger sister was dressed as a boy because this was less expensive…)

Initially, „The Legend of Joseph” was not included in this context. But it turned out that precisely in this work Hofmannsthal went to the utmost extremities in his elaboration of the „discourse of purity”. This ballet libretto, however, is a sort of changeling of his other works which feature „an image of innocence” (or vice versa?). Unlike in other relevant cases, in “The Legend of Joseph” a similar image is not associated with a girl who is distanced from any impure games, any impure bargains (which she might be anyway involved into as a commodity, as it is the case both in „Der Rosenkavalier” and „Arabella”).