The dramatic work of Grillparzer has proved notoriously difficult to relate to the wider development of German literature in the nineteenth century.¹ It is not that links with the main literary movements are hard to establish, but rather that those that present themselves seem so diverse and mutually incompatible. It was, for instance, as easy for the Naturalists to show that he was a significant forerunner of their own radical concerns as it was for Gundolf to contend with some conviction that he was a mere epigone of Weimar classicism.²

The difficulty which has always confronted critics seems to stem from the fact that Grillparzer's work is shaped by such diverse impulses, and embraces such seemingly discontinuous modes of awareness that its essential character is particularly hard to define. Looking back we can now see that the steady rise in Grillparzer's standing as a dramatist in the past fifty years or so coincides with the deepening critical appreciation of the power of his creative imagination to integrate divergent drives and aspirations and embody them in an original and coherent aesthetic form.³ It is also noticeable that commentators, while not denying the probing, experimental energy of his dramatic work, have tended to assume that its conception can still finally be understood in terms of the artistic and moral assumptions which he inherited from the eighteenth century. The drama as Grillparzer conceives it, they have claimed, resists the relativizing tendencies apparent in the work of contemporary and later playwrights. It still represents—and on this critics as different as Münch, von Wiese, Baumann, Kaiser, Papst, Fülleborn, and Schafroth seem to be agreed—a wholly coherent, self-sufficient, symbolic form which reflects in itself an ultimate moral universe.⁴ Though they have all recognized in their different ways Grillparzer's often radical concern to lay bare the psychological and circumstantial pressures which undermine the individual's moral freedom and distort his understanding of himself, they have none the less insisted that the controlling impetus of his imagination is to assimilate these empirical tendencies, to subdue them to a conception of destiny which claims absolute moral significance.⁵

It is within this very broad framework of agreement that commentators in recent years, however different their individual methods and preoccupations, have pursued their studies of Grillparzer's work. Although their particular conclusions have often diverged widely, many of their basic presuppositions have remained strikingly constant. In this essay I would like to look again at some of these critical assumptions by re-examining from a rather specific point of view the tension between analytical insight and moral concern which critics have generally held to be central to the conception of Grillparzer's plays. I have chosen to approach this question through a detailed discussion of Das goldene Vliess (1820) which seems to me to occupy a crucial, if by no means clear-cut, place in his work. The dramatist himself was in many respects uneasy about this trilogy and many of his critics seem to have shared his disquiet.⁶ Although they have normally accepted that it is a significant work they have tended in practice to play down its importance when attempting to arrive at a general estimate of Grillparzer's work as a whole.⁷

The dramatist's doubts about Das goldene Vliess are reflected in his apparent unease about the symbol of the Fleece and its place in the dramatic world of the trilogy. His comments on it are for the most part explanatory and defensive, as if he were intent on confining, even neutralizing, its imaginative impact. The Fleece, he insists, does not reveal the working of an impersonal fatality, it does not in itself determine the action or infringe the sovereignty of the characters as moral agents.⁸ This is all quite true, but it takes no account of the strangely disconcerting power of this symbol to evoke a sense of pervading moral impotence which is just as averse to the clear rationalizing interpretation which Grillparzer's comments seem to imply. In the course of the trilogy, the Fleece comes to enforce more and more strongly a harshly sceptical and ironic mode of perception. It seems to focus the dramatist's will to suggest the elusiveness and ambiguity of the world which the dramatic figures claim to know and interpret. For the Fleece, as he presents it, is essentially mysterious and inaccessible. Though those who desire it may claim it is theirs by right, its origins are in fact irrecoverably lost in legend (i, 848 f.); and though they consistently try to use it as a vindication of their actions, it remains opaque to moral understanding.

This remote, impenetrable character of the Fleece is apparent right at the beginning of the trilogy. Phryxus takes the fateful step of removing it from the temple in Delphi because he believes he has been instructed to do so by a god who has appeared to him in a dream. Once he has taken the Fleece, the dramatic improvement in his fortunes convinces him that he is indeed the agent of a divinely-ordained plan (i, 807 f.). The fact that he is brought against all the odds through a terrible storm to Colchis and finds there the image of the god who appeared in his dream is for him the ultimate proof that the whole inscrutable course of events is determined by the gods. In this unquestioning belief he commits himself to Aietes, the barbarian king. ‘Den Himmlischen vertrau ich mich und dir!’ (i, 809).

The dramatist ironically opposes this faith of Phryxus with the equally insistent belief of Aietes that he is called by Peronto, the tribal god of Colchis, to claim the Fleece, ‘das heilige Pfand des Gottes’, for his people (i, 810). The god demands that he punish the Greek's terrible act of desecration and forces him to override the obligation of hospitality. He treacherously murders Phryxus and seizes the Fleece in the conviction that he is fulfilling a divinely appointed duty.

It is news of this murder and seizure of the Fleece that brings Jason and the Argonauts to Colchis. The gods, they believe, oblige them to punish the breach of the sacred law of hospitality and reclaim the Fleece for the Greeks (i, 843, 849 f.). When in the end Jason has succeeded in winning back the Fleece, he is able triumphantly to confront the stricken Aietes with the higher significance of his mission: ‘Als Werkzeug einer höheren Gewalt ❙ Steh ich vor dir’ (i, 887).

In the first two parts of the trilogy, Der Gastfreund and Die Argonauten, Grillparzer sceptically questions the shared belief of the three central male figures that their actions enjoy a divine sanction by showing in each case how this belief coincides with their deepest half-hidden desires. He shows that the murderous desire of Aietes to rob the intruding Greek is there before he hears of the Fleece (i, 800 f.), and makes it clear that the conviction of Phryxus and Jason that they are chosen by the gods is bound up with a deeply resentful sense of having been cheated by life (i, 806 f., 829). The dramatist seems to be suggesting that the characters' awareness of the supernatural is psychologically conditioned, that it is part of the process through which an irrational compulsion gains control of the conscious mind and co-ordinates all the energies of the self in the pursuit of a single goal.

This subjection to the irrational is most fully explored in the presentation of Jason in Medea, the final part of the trilogy. Grillparzer shows that even after his return to Colchis when he is in the grip of real hardship Jason's awareness of the gods is still controlled by the pressure of his selfish will. Although, it is true, he regards the disgrace and homelessness of himself and Medea as a divinely imposed punishment (i, 898 f.), it soon becomes clear that this does not involve any profound, transforming awareness of failure. The dramatist shows rather that he is able to use this awareness as a means of asserting himself against the woman he now rejects (i, 906, 908). While still nominally accepting his guilt he is able, by substantially exonerating his own intentions, to see Medea more and more as the real source of his plight and thus as fully deserving divine punishment (i, 921, 937, 939 f., 945 f.). When Kreon finally decides to offer Jason hospitality on condition that he separates from her for good, this serves to confirm his largely inarticulate sense of what the gods in their justice must decree. It appears to him as a destiny which is imposed on Medea, a destiny not of his making and against which it is futile to protest. His readiness to see the king as the instrument of divine powers is rooted, the dramatist suggests, in a deep driving resentment of Medea which he cannot fully acknowledge.

This reiterated exposure of weakness and delusion in Grillparzer's portrayal of the male protagonists is, as it were, the effective frame within which he explores the experience of Medea which is at the very centre of his artistic concern. She appears throughout as a being who, in contrast to these male figures, is capable of confronting genuine moral crisis in herself and who (again unlike them) is driven more and more to acknowledge a world which contradicts her deepest spiritual intuitions.

Right at the beginning of the trilogy Medea is aware of a conflict between the god's demands, as her father interprets them, and her own sense of religious obligation (i, 809 f.). Though they worship the same deity and acknowledge the same loyalties, she rejects Aietes's claim that he is obliged to kill the Greek who is seeking asylum. When in the end she does yield to her father's demand for help, she does so reluctantly and in the knowledge that she is involved in a crime which will be punished (i, 814 f.). She is aware that this premonition is fulfilled when her father approaches her some time later and asks again for help against the invading Argonauts (i, 822 ff.). This renewed experience of crisis, however, is suddenly swallowed up in a quite new and shattering awareness of moral helplessness which is precipitated by her sexual encounter with Jason. In her involuntary attraction to the Greek, Medea is visited by a feeling of total inner impotence. She experiences love as a force which estranges her from herself, annuls her will, and drives her into a betrayal of the ties and loyalties which have sustained her from birth and shaped her sense of her identity (i, 856 f., 868 f.). This betrayal also leads to terrible consequences which she could never have conceived: the suicide of her brother, and her rejection by her father followed also by his eventual death (i, 887, 930). In the whole process of sexual submission and guilt Medea is overcome by an annihilating sense of moral victimization. She can see no real connexion between her own conscious will and the actions she performs, or between these and the catastrophes to which they lead. She sees herself as invaded by an alien force which treacherously combines with circumstances equally beyond her control to thrust upon her a guilt too awful to bear, but which she must accept as her own.

In Medea it becomes clear that the experience of moral violation has undermined her spiritual existence. But it is equally apparent that what lends this experience such destructive force is the fact that it becomes for her the vehicle of a deeper sense of metaphysical horror. In this experience of moral bondage she is aware of having been abandoned by the gods and left the prey of a senseless, chaotic world (i, 892). At the beginning of Medea, however, Grillparzer shows that she still recoils from this recognition of lostness and fights with despairing intensity to prove she can begin life anew.

The structure of Medea is thus essentially analytical. The dramatist shows how she is forced by events beyond her control to face the fate she obscurely acknowledges, but which she still despairingly resists. Both the events which precipitate her final breakdown—her rejection first by Jason, then by her children—she knows in some part of herself to be inescapable. Although she insists that she can find a new beginning through Jason's love, placing in him, as Gora sees, the kind of faith she once gave the gods (i, 892), she also realizes that he is by his very nature unable to give her the love she craves (i, 912); and despite her ferocious struggle to keep her children, in whom she places her hope of an untainted future, it is clear that she also senses at the very moment of her betrayal that she could never break its strangling hold upon her (i, 951 f.).

The effect of this twofold rejection, as the dramatist makes clear, is to expose her to an irresistible despair. It finally destroys her frenzied struggle to give meaning and purpose to her life. And it is as though all the driving energy of this struggle were transformed into a violent compulsion to destroy. Helpless in its grip it seems to her deranged mind as if she were called to take upon herself the task of retribution which indifferent gods have ignored, of righting the flagrant injustice they have left unchecked (i, 948).

In revenge Medea does not seek to lessen her own suffering, but to draw Jason into the depth of her own despair. Her aim is not to kill him, but to empty his life of hope by depriving it of a future. In murdering first Kreusa, his bride-to-be, then his children, she takes from him all possibility of finding a new meaning which could redeem the guilt and misery of the past. At the same time, as Gora foresees (i, 931), she is also celebrating her own inner death, expressing in the only way open to her the totality of her own despair.

In Das goldene Vliess the dramatist uses the imaginative possibilities inherent in the mythical setting to embody his own individual, sceptical preoccupation. Within this setting he is able to counterpose directly the belief of the dramatic figures in the power and the ubiquity of the gods with the ironic demonstration of their ultimate elusiveness. The awareness of the supernatural, as Grillparzer portrays it here, is always essentially subjective, always ambiguously bound up with the constraints of the selfish will.

In this concern to undermine the characters' sense of the divine which plays such an important part in their understanding of themselves, the dramatist is emphasizing the isolation and weakness of the moral self. Throughout the trilogy the individual appears as imprisoned in his own subjective self-awareness, unable to perceive or respond to any order of value beyond the scope of his own pressing desires. The determining motives of the characters, Grillparzer shows, lie in a sphere of irrational compulsion which is largely inaccessible to the conscious will, but which has the power so to subdue and exploit the individual's reasoning faculties, as to leave him defenceless before it.

The persistent drive to question the standing of the characters as moral agents implies, it seems to me, a basic uncertainty about the ultimate character of the dramatic world itself. This appears as a world in which the position of all moral experience is fundamentally doubtful. This uncertainty is especially evident when we attempt to interpret the fate of Medea. While the dramatist sees the male protagonists as morally disabled by passion, he seems to show the heroine's experience of meaninglessness as stemming from a genuine metaphysical contradiction, from a discrepancy between an innate longing for moral significance and a deepening awareness of contingency in her actual existence. Her breakdown seems, that is, to presuppose a primary moral aspiration which is understandable only in metaphysical terms. But even here the sceptical, discursive drive of Grillparzer's imagination suggests the possibility of another interpretation. The persistent analysis of moral helplessness throughout the trilogy forces us to ask whether Medea's spiritual breakdown may not stem from a specific psychological weakness, from an emotional inability to withstand the tension arising out of her experience of guilt, rejection, and exile. It seems possible to see it, in other words, as a particular, psychologically-conditioned process which, however the heroine may see it, lacks all wider moral-metaphysical significance.

This impression of moral ambiguity is heightened by the dramatist's failure to put forward any positive, coherent moral principle in the trilogy. He does not seem to see either in communal life or in the sphere of close personal relationships any standard of value or ethical imperative, to which we might attribute normative significance. Certainly his sceptical, ironic mode of vision does clearly entail a powerful moral awareness. But this remains implicit and does not lead, as far as I can see, to any positive and concrete ethical assertions.

This points to a deep-lying tendency in Grillparzer's work which critics have not yet, in my view, adequately assessed. Much of its tense, sceptical energy stems from the impetus of his imagination, which is never fully conscious, to probe and even to undermine his explicit moral assumptions. I can perhaps illustrate this most clearly by looking briefly at the works of his middle period, König Ottokars Glück und Ende (1823) and Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (1829), in which he is most obviously concerned to show the working of a supreme moral force in a specific dramatic situation. In both these plays, in marked contrast to Das goldene Vliess, Grillparzer is intent on presenting a dramatic figure whose attitude to life is determined by a renewing awareness of a transcendent order of value. In both works (again in contrast to Das goldene Vliess) he seems concerned to realize a dramatic world which is able to reflect and sustain this personal awareness of meaning.

In König Ottokar Grillparzer's moral purpose is quite clear and consistent. He is concerned to represent a vision of history as the vehicle of an ultimate ethical process. He shows that decisive historical developments are determined not by impersonal forces, but by the willed actions of responsible individuals. Ottokar's failures as a ruler reflect his basic weakness as a man. In divorcing his wife he is driven by an insatiable vanity which destroys his personal happiness, causes the break-up of his kingdom, and brings him into confrontation with the Empire (i, 995 f., 976, 1019 f.).

The dramatist also makes it clear that Rudolf's selfless dedication to his vision of the divinely instituted order of the Empire is a transforming political force (i, 1021, 1039 f.). It is this vision which enables him to settle long-standing disputes, bring together people and individuals who have been at odds, and inspire them with a dynamic sense of purpose (i, 1030).

This clear moral intention, however, remains at important points in conflict with the working of Grillparzer's creative imagination. I have tried to show in detail elsewhere how in realizing the dramatic action he actually sees the central developments within the context of a wider collective situation which goes far beyond the scope of the personal responsibility of the individual figures.⁹ Although he repeatedly stresses their moral independence, he actually portrays their actions as decisively modified by far-reaching historical-political processes, over which they have no control. This discrepancy is most evident in Grillparzer's presentation of Rudolf. The dramatist's concern to stress the political effectiveness of his mystical idea of the Empire is in tension with his particularizing, pragmatic view of historical causality. This seems to me symptomatic of a rift in the conception of Ottokar, with which Grillparzer himself has not come to terms. His empirical awareness always threatens to subvert his moral aim in a way which the dramatist seems unable to acknowledge.

In Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen we can see a similar conflict of impulses. Here again the dramatist seems to attribute a normative moral significance to an outlook which is governed not by self-will, but by the individual's awareness of his ultimate dependence upon a universal order of being. This is focused in the notion of ‘Sammlung’, as this is so eloquently defined by the Priest (ii, 43 ff.). This denotes an essentially visionary mode of perception, in which the human being is able to reach out beyond the limits of his own subjectivity and grasp his existence as part of a divinely ordained cosmos (see Papst, pp. 12 f.). In this state of heightened mystical responsiveness there lies, as the Priest makes clear, the possibility of an integration and fulfilment of the self which overcomes the fragmentation of ordinary, day-to-day experience and transforms every aspect of existence.

Grillparzer does not attempt, as far as I can see, to qualify critically this notion of ‘Sammlung’, and as Papst, in particular, has shown, it corresponds to beliefs to which the dramatist in his personal life was deeply committed (Papst, pp. 13 ff.). Yet despite this it is noticeable that critics disagree sharply about Grillparzer's presentation of the Priest and about his function in the development of the tragic action.¹⁰ Grillparzer's own comments leave little doubt, however, that he was concerned to show the Priest's decisive intervention as motivated by a desire to protect Hero from the danger into which her relation with Leander has brought her and to win her back to the priesthood. In destroying Leander he is convinced that he is selflessly fulfilling the obligation of his office and carrying out the will of the gods (ii, 58 f., 75 f.).

Grillparzer himself was aware that he had not fully succeeded in realizing this conception of the Priest (see Yates, pp. 174 f.). He sensed in particular that he had failed to bring to life the determining force of the Priest's commitment to a moral ideal. This is probably true, but it does not go far enough. The real problem, in my view, lies not in the dramatic presentation of the figure, but in the nature of the ideal he is supposed to represent. It is hard to see how his notion of ‘Sammlung’ could be expressed as a coherent moral attitude in the particular situation in which he is caught up. The need for quick, decisive action is necessarily in conflict with his commitment to the essentially contemplative values which represent for him man's highest spiritual achievement. It forces upon him the distorting anxieties of the committed agent which he himself knows to be hostile to his ideal aspirations (ii, 43 f.).

This reveals a discrepancy in the conception of the figure of the Priest. His dedication to the ideal of ‘Sammlung’ has no necessary connexion with his position as custodian of the temple. Although he himself is unable to see it, there is a split between his belief in the liberating possibilities of a mystical self-awareness and that moral-intellectual commitment to certain specific forms of religious practice which drives him to oppose Leander. It is important to note this discontinuity. For not only does it force us to see the behaviour of the Priest in a way which Grillparzer himself does not intend; it also drives us to question the relevance of the notion of ‘Sammlung’ to the dramatic conflict. However valid as a spiritual aim, however sincerely advocated by the Priest, are we not forced to see it in the end as an ideal relevant to the subjective aspirations of this one figure, but lacking direct influence on the actual tragic development?

I have been trying to suggest that in these two important works following Das goldene Vliess the dramatist has difficulty in realizing his essentially intellectual sense of moral purpose in terms of a concrete developing dramatic situation. In both works, although in rather different ways, the moral values, to which he seems to attribute normative significance, remain largely detached from a view of the dramatic action which is shaped by a determinist awareness of causal process. In the conception of both König Ottokar and Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen, there is a deep unresolved tension with which, as far as I can see, the dramatist has not fully come to grips.

The implications of this pervading tension in Grillparzer's work are most fully revealed in the powerful late play Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg. Here the playwright is attempting to evolve a form ‘open’ and flexible enough to embrace dramatically a basic disparity between ethical will and circumstance, tragic action and historical process. This is embedded in the opposition of two contrasting levels or kinds of dramatic development which Grillparzer ironically counterposes throughout. In the imaginative foreground there is an inter-personal sphere, in which the characters make plans, conflict with one another, and pursue their own particular objectives. But beyond this, the dramatist also evokes the shaping momentum of social-historical processes which pervade most of the European continent and which none of the dramatic figures can oversee or understand (ii, 434 ff., 443 ff.). These immense processes are seen as engulfing all their lives, sweeping them along towards a cataclysm which threatens to destroy the whole fabric of civilization. The ironic impetus of Grillparzer's vision is openly apparent in his portrayal of figures like Klesel and Ferdinand who believe they can direct and manipulate events. But he also sees the withdrawn, anguished existence of Rudolf II in a similarly ironical perspective.¹¹ For although the Emperor's unbearable responsibility and failure lead to an awareness of self-violation which seems at times genuinely tragic, this experience is diminished and called in question by the wider historical frame. The act of impetuous anger in which he sees himself betray his God-given trust and thrust his people into destruction (ii, 431 f.), appears in its historical context at the very most to hasten slightly the outbreak of this terrible war which has been coming closer and can no longer be avoided (ii, 360, 399 ff., 423). The climax in the foreground inter-personal action is eclipsed by the momentum of those historical forces, on which it has only a minimal effect.

In this essay I have been suggesting that the conception of Grillparzer's drama is governed by the working of a probing, sceptical imagination which seems to operate to an unusual extent outside the control of his conscious moral awareness. I have been keen to emphasize this, because I think it can open up a way of approach which could enable us to see more clearly the deep underground affinities which link his work with the more openly radical, experimental drama of his contemporaries Grabbe and Büchner. It might also make it possible for us to assess those profound, though often obscured, impulses in his creative imagination which reach far beyond the scope of his express aesthetic-moral intentions and, so it seems to me, anticipate powerfully the main development in the German drama towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Notes

1. For a full and perceptive critical survey of these attempts see W. N. B. Mullan, ‘Grillparzer and the Realist Tradition’, FMLS [Forum for Modern Language Studies], 13 (1977), 122-35.

2. See, for example, O. Brahm, Kritiken und Essays, edited by F. Martini (1964), pp. 250 ff. and F. Gundolf, ‘Franz Grillparzer’, Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts (1933), pp. 9-93.

3. This has been well brought out by Mullan, p. 122.

4. See, for example, J. Münch, Die Tragik in Drama und Persönlichkeit Franz Grillparzers (Berlin, 1931), pp. 43 ff.; B. von Wiese, Die deutsche Tragödie von Lessing bis Hebbel, second edition (Hamburg, 1952), pp. 385 ff.; G. Baumann, Franz Grillparzer: Sein Werk und das österreichische Wesen (Freiburg, 1954), pp. 51 ff.; J. Kaiser, Grillparzers dramatischer Stil (Munich, 1961), pp. 39 ff., 112 ff.; U. Fülleborn, Das dramatische Geschehen im Werk Franz Grillparzers (Munich, 1966), pp. 199 ff.; E. E. Papst, Grillparzer: Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (London, 1967), pp. 17 f., 56 ff.; H. H. Schafroth, Die Entscheidung bei Grillparzer, Sprache und Dichtung, 19 (Berne, 1971), pp. 51 ff. See also K. Partl, Schillers ‘Wallenstein’ und Grillparzers ‘König Ottokars Glück und Ende’ (Bonn, 1960), pp. 79 ff., 229 ff.

5. The implications of this are most fully explored by Kaiser, pp. 114 ff.

6. See Franz Grillparzer, Selbstbiographien, in Sämtliche Werke, edited by P. Frank and K. Pornbacher (Munich, 1960-65), iv, 88 f. and 111 f. All references to Grillparzer's works in the body of the text are to this edition. Das goldene Vliess and König Ottokars Glück und Ende are in Vol. i; Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen and Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg are in Vol. ii; the Selbstbiographien and Tagebücher are in Vol. iv. On the problems of Grillparzer's use of the trilogy form see U. Fülleborn, ‘Zu Grillparzers “Goldenem Vliess”: Der Sinn der Raum- und Zeitgestaltung’, in Jahrbuch der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft, 12 (1976), 39-59.

7. As far as I can see only Fricke lends this work a really crucial place in his interpretation of Grillparzer's view of tragedy. See G. Fricke, ‘Wesen und Wandel des Tragischen bei Franz Grillparzer’, in Fricke, Studien und Interpretationen (Frankfurt a.M., 1956), pp. 264-84.

8. F. Grillparzer, Tagebücher 1241, p. 380; Selbstbiographien, pp. 87 ff. On the symbol of the Fleece in the trilogy see W. E. Yates, Grillparzer. A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 87 f.

9. See E. McInnes, ‘“König Ottokar” and Grillparzer's Conception of Historical Drama’, in Essays on Grillparzer, edited by B. Thompson and M. Ward (Hull, 1978), pp. 25-36.

10. See C. Walker, ‘The Light of the Gods in “Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen”’, in Thompson and Ward, pp. 37-46.

11. I have discussed this fully in an article on ‘Grabbe and the Development of Historical Drama in the Nineteenth Century’, in German Life and Letters, 32 (1979), pp. 104-14.