Reading Representation in Franz Grillparzer's Der arme Spielmann
Es geht eben mit der Betrachtung von Kunstwerken wie mit der Beschauung von Naturgegenständen. Während der stumpfe Sinn des gewöhnlichen Hinschlenderers beim Anblick eines Baumes eben nichts bemerkt, als daß er grün ist, sieht das scharfe, wohl gar kunstgeübte Auge eine solche Welt von Abstufungen der Farbe und des Lichts, daß er stundenlang stehen und immer wieder den Baum betrachten kann, ja, wenn er Mahler ist und eine Nachbildung versuchen will, gerät er in Verzweiflung, auf der Palette jene Farbe zu finden, die der andere mit der allgemeinen Bezeichnung ‘grün’ so schnell abgefertigt hat.
Franz Grillparzer, Tagebücher, ed. August Sauer,
Nr. 3979
Un kilo de vert n'est pas plus vert qu'un demi kilo.
In desperate need of interpretation, the line of Franz Grillparzer's Der arme Spielmann least remembered in the critical literature is also one which appears most to establish the blind fallibility of memory. For the statement re-collected, itself containing a near self-contradiction, stands, on one reading at least, in flat contradiction to the events of the novella it claims to recall. The words are those of the Narrator, who concludes his introductory paragraph in this way:
Da ist keine Möglichkeit der Absonderung; wenigstens vor einigen Jahren noch war keine.1
As anyone familiar with the story, or with the critical literature, will recognize, “Absonderung” in Der arme Spielmann is not the exception, the way the Narrator here seems to recall it, but the rule. It applies not only to the two major characters who first leap to mind, the Narrator and the Spielmann (“ … befand sich ein dichter Menschenwall zwischen mir und ihm.” [p. 9]), but to every object of representation in the work. So all-pervading in the novella is “Absonderung,” so deeply imprinted in the nature of representation itself, we can say this “rule of exceptions” colors and permeates the very textual fabric of Der arme Spielmann. What is more, it is the foundation of a philosophical posture that never attains full articulation in the work, but which, nonetheless, has rightly been identified with a dominant historical insight of Grillparzer's age.2
With this last observation we are a step closer to a neglected and potentially troubling consequence of one of the traditional interpretations of the novella: if “Absonderung” is the rule, it is the rule based on an exception, namely the subjective optic of the Narrator which distorts both his own and the reader's perception of the events. This line of interpretation stops short, however, of explaining us out of the paradox of a Narrator who states a false-hood while asserting its truth, when the conditions of truth and falsity are controlled exclusively by the Narrator himself. How, under these conditions, can we call the Narrator's statement false? How can we avoid making the identification, Narrator=text? The contradiction pointed out above demands an answer to these questions.3
One key lies in the near self-contradictory nature of the Narrator's statement. The Narrator asserts: (1) there is no possibility of “Absonderung”; (2) at least, a few years ago there was none; which implies that (3) there is or may well be, in fact, now the possibility of “Absonderung.” The concession in (2) is thus a retraction, an admission of a weakness in the foregoing clause (1). The weakness can be pinpointed further: it is in the verb “is,” the assertion of a (narrative) present, the making-present of an absence that underlies any mimetic enterprise (representation). The Narrator's equivocation, in other words, evokes in particular the self-contradiction of narrative fiction. This is one way the paradox dissolves into a thinkable form—a Narrator who “states a falsehood while asserting its truth” is the paradox of literary fiction, and rests on a two-edged convention: the convention of narrative fictitiousness (what is said in a text is not “really”) and the convention of narrative fallibility (what is said in a text, even within the bounds of its own fiction, may not be “really”). We can thus deny outright that the Narrator controls the conditions of truth, “wie man denn nicht überall seine Augen haben kann” (p. 54; see footnote 3). Rather, it is the text and its conventions that condition truth and falsity, what we might call “literal” truth conditions.
Whether “Absonderung” numbers among the literal truth conditions of Der arme Spielmann or not, that is, whether “Absonderung” is an objective circumstance in the novella and not simply a fabrication of the Narrator, will have to be determined by a “literal” reading of the text, in which statements by characters other than the Narrator are also given at least prima facie validity. And since the fact of “Absonderung” is already an accepted, “natural” reading of the text (since we intuitively allow the text to assert the truth of its own fiction), it will not require lengthy proofs, but only relevant elaboration.
On the other hand, a differing line of interpretation is also possible, one which sees in the above-given words of the Narrator a faithful representation of the state of affairs in the novella. This interpretation will initially require a still more deliberate literalism, and consequently a radically different figural reading not only of the quoted sentence, but of the entire text. The matter turns on how we interpret the “identity” of characters. For, while by the first reading, “Absonderung” (the necessity of exclusive identities for characters, where one character is identified as distinct from another) is not the exception but the rule, by the second reading, “Absonderung” is an impossibility (“da ist keine Möglichkeit der Absonderung”), and contact among characters (the equivalence and inclusiveness of their identities, where each character is virtually identical with another) is literally an exceptionless rule. Any differences construed or asserted by the Narrator are, on this reading, fantastic constructions of his imagination, transparent self-fictions: this does not mean that the “reality” behind these appearances belongs also to the Narrator's own invention, but merely that the reality is constituted by equivalences, and not by the differences attributed to it by the Narrator. The nature of this (figural) reality is determined entirely by the nature of literary language: not even the Narrator can escape the rule of his own fiction. This second, ruling out of exceptions is moreover the basis of a philosophical ideal and counterparts the historical insight into estrangement mentioned above—here expressed, it must be imagined, with all the earnestness of a wished-for ideal, but one that lies beyond the Narrator's means to secure it, beyond literal fact, but not beyond figural wishfulfilment.
But how, then, does this second (figural) reading correspond to the literal “facts” of the novella? By operating at a blind, counter-intuitive level in the text, against the text, challenging and obliterating the memory of expected differences, mimicking them, and the process of mimesis itself, with a literal reading of the factorial redundancy involved in re-presentation. Its source too is the original equivocation of the Narrator (“it is and is not”), the equivocal identity of fiction, that makes possible a radical assertion of identity (“this is that”), the total satis-faction of the mimetic ideal, total self-reference: in this way, the text asserts the fiction of its own truth.
Given these two, fundamentally opposed readings, I will try to show that they are necessarily conjoined by the text; that any choice made between them cannot help but be inadequate; that neither reading is self-sufficient or complete, since the independence of one is precisely the fallacy displaced and denied by the other. It is by locating such destabilizing incompatibilities that we gain access to the open structure of the text and its shifting, “empty” center, to the infinity of polyvalent meanings and intentions, structured about a difference, an ambivalence, and not a univocal truth. When choice is no longer in question, there is only the reflection of the problem of choice, which signifies the impossibility of choice (“da ist keine Möglichkeit der Absonderung”) and of not choosing (since not to choose is not to read). The only exit from this double-bind is to make multiple re-readings, perpetual revisions, as we stand about the periphery of the text, at the turn of language, speaking in turns, in tropes, about a center that is itself a periphrasis.
What follows divides into three parts or readings, each part examining the novella in the light of a literary problem that occurs in Der arme Spielmann as a destabilizing factor in the text. The first two readings elaborate the two contradictory lines of interpretation drawn a moment ago, without attempting to smooth out the difference; no such reconciliation would be either desirable or necessary. Instead, we might look upon the first two readings as symptoms of a deeper problem, dealt with in the third reading, which poses the question: Can B be made in the image of A? (the problem of representation in a mimetic genre). The first two readings answer either affirmatively or negatively, but in such a way that the relevance of the originative question is cast into doubt: Yes, but the language of the text is so predominately self-referential (recursive) that we are hard-pressed to distinguish between original and copy; there are only multiple versions of the original (“da gibt es keine Möglichkeit der Absonderung”). No, because representation is conditioned by perspective, and so single commanding viewpoint is possible, nor could we, from our perspective, vouch for the accuracy of the representation even if there were; in any case, the differential structure of language closes this possibility: representation is a metalinguistic event (“Absonderung” affirmed).
This is, in sum, the way in which the argument of the paper is arranged. In a sense, the exposition of the readings is backward: the answers are considered before the question they pre-suppose (their pre-text) has been fully articulated. If so, this apparently non-aporetic method has been imposed by respect to the fundamentally paradoxical nature of a text which writes itself backwards, so to speak: a text which constantly generates more pretext, if only to make its self-explanation more available and more acceptable to the reader. I say “apparently” non-aporetic, because in fact textual presuppositions will be found called into question at every turn simply by virtue of the critical environment that harbors any text—selects, orders, and consequently represents the text, that is, while at the same time dissecting, disordering, and dis-representing the text; the critical environment is thus, ipso facto inimical to guised and inherently questionable textual pre-suppositions. And finally I draw attention to the organization of the paper to clarify a further potential misunderstanding. Because the readings themselves have been drawn from the same “filing cabinet of prefabricated representations”4 we share as readers, it is essential to avoid an act of criticism that is itself a pre-defined reflex that never asks a question it thinks it does not already know the answer to. Such critical pre-suppositions are every bit as questionable as textual pre-texts. So, with this configuration in mind, we are ready to begin the first of the de-fined readings.
I. SIMILAR DIFFERENCES
“Similar Differences”: the self-referentiality of a literary language. In as much as language is constitutive of literary characters, we might expect that characterizations exhibit the condition and structure of language, in other words, recursiveness and difference. What we find in Der arme Spielmann, however, is a figural representation of the mechanism of self-reference in narrative fiction. This representation is constructed in such a way that character identity, which is normally a differentiating identity, erodes before a literal reading of “identity,” whereby characters loose their title to characterhood: they can be shown to be, in fact, identical. The claim to referentiality, to unique and extraneous reference, is thus called into question, shown inadequate, and compensated, in this uni-verse of the self, with an all-embracing self-referentiality: any singular reference in Der arme Spielmann looses its singularity to the plurality of applicable referents that weave into the tight fabric of the text, and that constitute its “innertextuality.” The process that reveals such “similar differences” is not a total substitute for reference; it is, though, a particularly destructive force in the text, due to the stringent referential claims made by the Narrator on his language. For the inconsistencies that arise from the confusion of reference with self-reference rebound upon their source. The result is a self-effacement of language, achieved through the obliteration of meaningful differences by their sheer repetition. Self-affirmation, in Der arme Spielmann, entails self-negation: “Ich war wie vernichtet, … wieder zu mir selbst gebracht” (p. 32).
At stake in this dis-position of character is another aspect of literary language with special implications for the realist mode of literature: the speech-writing controversy. The text presents us with a dialogue, between a speaker-narrator (the Spielmann) and a writer-narrator (the Narrator), or more accurately, a discourse that is neither entirely commited to speech or to writing. For the speaker's narration is actually simulated writing. The placement of his recital and its dimensions alone insure its comparison with the foregoing narration; its continuity and general lack of intrusions by the Narrator add to the semblance. The writer's narration, on the other hand, is actually dis-simulated writing, as the realist convention dictates (and as the inclusions of “erlebte Rede,” among other signs, indicates); not to mention the Narrator's efforts to submerge (or forge) himself in his own narrative, by citing his own words and finally by submitting to the narration of another character. The equivocation of the literal character is most penetrating: the character of the word is fully indeterminate; it (he) is neither spoken nor written, but is in fact that unstable combination of the audible and the mute—the read (the word as empty sign).5
(i) Both the Narrator and the Spielmann are lost in their own created fantasy worlds. It is this characteristic of self-absorption the Narrator singles out when he levels his criticism against the Spielmann (p. 15), without noting the self-reflection. The Narrator's obliviousness to the objects of his narration is simply the epistemological (or when the objects are persons, psychological) correlate of the oblivion that grounds fictional art, viz. the illusion of a Center. This claim is basic, and requires thorough elaboration. For now, though, we can illustrate the Narrator's blindness by his performance as narrator.
Originally aimed at establishing a rapport with the readership and replete with eager, confidential disclosures spliced with gnomic insertions, the narrative discourse grows increasingly self-centered (“Das ganze Wesen des alten Mannes war eigentlich wie gemacht, um meinen anthropologischen Heißhunger aufs äußerste zu reizen.” [p. 8]), obsessively possessive (“mein Original” [p. 14]; “meines Lieblings” [p. 17]), and restrictive with regard to reader contact (“Wie soll ich mir das erklären?” [p. 10]). Ultimately, the Narrator will materialize himself before the reader's eyes as an element of his own narrative. Curiously, however, the centripetal movement “inward” runs contrary to the current that draws the Narrator from his lofty observation post into the text as a character, for the Narrator's disclosure of his many self-obsessions actually involves his self-effacement as a narrator-figure. After the early pages, the narration becomes noticeably less conspicuous, less self-designating, less disrupted by insertions and rhetorical figures which call attention to the narrative discourse or which retard or suspend it. The restrictions in the poetic function of the discourse are aimed at imposing a kind of economy on the narration so as to bring the reader all the more directly to the Spielmann's story.6 But the dis-figuration of the narrative discourse also has the complementary effect of literalizing the narration. The narration, in other words, moves toward “transparent” mimesis, or rather, the narration is being exchanged for mimesis. The exchange, of course,7 is never completed within the narrative, which is instead propelled by the centripetal movement to an appropriate culmination—a literal self-designation which is also a figure for the narrative proper: “und bald herrschte eine durch nichts unterbrochene Totenstille um mich her” (p. 15). Overruled by silence, by the impossibility of objective narration, the Narrator finds partial solace (“den Heimweg”) in solipsism: “Ich trat, mühsam in den mir unbekannten Gassen mich zurechtfindend, den Heimweg an, wobei ich auch phantasierte, aber, niemand störend, für mich, im Kopfe” (p. 15).
That the Spielmann is absorbed by esoteric fantasies needs little discussion, except to point out that his oblivion (“Abwesenheit” [pp. 8, 17]) stems from, and culminates in, a performance no less impervious and alienating than that of the Narrator: “… und spielte fort und fort, ohne sich weiter um mich zu kümmern.” (Cp. “Davon wird niemand etwas wissen bis auf wenige” [p. 25].)
(ii) Thus preoccupied with fantasies that are beyond the reach of their immediate environments, the Narrator and the Spielmann share a displacement that is both psychological and linguistic. The Narrator shows this in insisting on lifting ordinary details to the height of literary constellations (“bis zum Zwist der Göttersöhne” [p. 6]), sometimes through heavy borrowings in Fremdwörter and through allusions to the classics (“status quo,” “Plutarch,” “die Methode in der Tollheit”), but always in a tone that is tinged with disdainful irony. The pillars of the Narrator's allusions are not unshakeably grounded, though. In fact, it is just when the Narrator stands securely “bereits auf klassischem Boden” (p. 7), and when his discourse takes a singularly acrid twist toward condecension, that he encounters for the first time the Spielmann who can duplicate and thus put an end to, by jarring into perspective, his own literary pretensions: “Sunt certi denique fines” (p. 8). The Spielmann does not allow himself to be woven into a mythological framework as do the “Karrenschieber” and “die junge Magd” (p. 6). It is this same displacement in the Spielmann (“Exercitium” [p. 13]; “Ich will kein Bettler sein … Ich weiß wohl, daß die übrigen öffentlichen Musikleute sich damit begnügen … ” [p. 12]) that lures the Narrator to seek out and confront his own likeness.
Consistent with this downward-looking perspective is a reverence for things of greater stature. The Narrator and the Spielmann stand in the shadow of “famous” persons, thus testifying to the definitive innertextuality of the text: “… und wahrlich! man kann die Berühmten nicht verstehen, wenn man die Obskuren nicht durchgefühlt hat” (p. 6); “… dann sah ich auch, daß berübmte Virtuosen, welche erreicht zu haben ich mir nicht schmeicheln konnte …” (p. 51).
(iii) If the elusiveness of their fantasies does not prevent the Narrator or the Spielmann from trying to realize them, it is less the passion of their desires than the self-ishness of their common need that determines what we might call the “economics” of their behavior. Both Narrator and Spielmann fall prey to possession-obsessions (“Ich zittere vor Begierde nach dem Zusammenhange” [p. 9]; “Da ich nun vor Begierde, das Lied zu haben … ” [p. 30]). The motivation, given the two modes of their artistry, is identical. In the case of the Narrator, it is “um das Original ungestört zu betrachten” (p. 8), and ultimately to commit his quarry to writing. The Spielmann too is driven to obtain a written copy (“Abschrift”) of the original “Lied,” in order to reproduce it for himself (“nachzuspielen” [p. 29]). The difficulties of pure mimesis (“ich habe deshalb, teils weil mein Gedächtnis überhaupt nicht das beste ist … diese Hefte mir selbst ins reine geschrieben.” [p. 12] prove to be major debilities for both the Narrator and the Spielmann: “Im Zweifel, ob ich mich genau ans Original halten oder aus eigenem beisetzen sollte, verging die Zeit angstvoll, und ich kam in den Ruf, nachlässig zu sein, indes ich mich im Dienst abquälte wie keiner” (p. 23). The words of the Spielmann speak for the Narrator as well; and the impurities (viz. the tortured, blackened script) of the Spielmann's “Hefte” (p. 12) implicate the Narrator's “Abschrift” by homology.8
(iv) Neither the Narrator nor the Spielmann is beyond exploiting a contact in order to obtain satisfaction for his needs: “Endlich hatte ich's satt … ” (p. 52); “… ch gedachte aus dieser Bekanntschaft sogleich Nutzen für meinen Wunsch zu ziehen” (p. 27). Moreover, both are keenly aware of the positional advantages of others involved in some kind of economic exploitation, whether street-musicians (p. 7) or “die Gewerbsleute” (p. 26). It is significant, however, that the Narrator and the Spielmann are blind to exploitations of their own persons. The Spielmann's financial collapse (his total investment in a “Kopieranstalt”) is a case in point; his compliance with the Narrator's obsession is another. As for the Narrator, the loss he suffers in the exchange of narration for (apparent) mimesis, which in the long-run costs him not only the right to narration (this he yields to the Spielmann) but also the privilege of an authoritative point of view (this is put into question by the structure of the text he narrates), is an example of the extremest self-exploitation.
(v) Both Narrator and Spielmann are self-appointedly religious, or indicate religious tendencies, though each in his own manner (“besonders wenn sie in Massen für einige Zeit der einzelnen Zwecke vergessen und sich als Teile des Ganzen fühlen, in dem denn doch zuletzt das Göttliche liegt …” [p. 5]; “Das Gebet gehört ins Kämmerlein” [p. 11]). The Narrator's impulses are questionable, as his words (“als ein Liebhaber der Menschen, sage ich, besonders …”) betray. But there are certain indications that we cannot take the Spielmann's religious sentiments at face value either.
For one, the Spielmann equates religious devotion with (nocturnal) music (“aber der Abend gehört mir und meiner armen Kunst” [p. 10]; “und der Abend mir und dem lieben Gott” [p. 13]), a narrow and rather questionable reduction, in light of certain other indications as well. The word he uses to describe this exchange with divinity is infelicitous: “Phantasieren” (p. 11). A further reduction: this “ganzes Himmelsgebäude” (p. 25), fantastic construction of his imagination (“Einbildung” p. 11), is not roomy enough for more than one mind. At the height of his euphoria, the Spielmann has left humanity behind in its traces (“Vielmehr stören sie dieses Ein- und Ausatmen der Seelen durch Hinzufügung allenfalls auch zu sprechender Worte …” [p. 25]). Sheltered and isolated, the Spielmann is like a lonely divinity (“den lieben Gott spielt”).
That the Narrator seeks the divine presence in the fleeting outbursts of the masses (p. 5), which presence the Spielmann finds in private, nocturnal performances, is only an apparent difference. The obsessively self-centered aspect of the Spielmann's worship is too familiar to escape correlation with the Narrator's configurations: the Spielmann protects himself by converting felt pains into religious visions (“Ich stand wie von Donner getroffen. Die Lichter tanzten mir vor den Augen.—Aber es waren Himmelslichter.… Ich hatte Erscheinungen, ich war verzückt” [p. 42]). (That the Spielmann struggles “durch die dem Feste zuströmende Menge in entgegengesetzter Richtung” (p. 8) is a likewise misleading opposition: both Spielmann and “Volk” practice a different version of a religiosity left open to interpretation by its extremity alone. The Spielmann's ear is “durstig” and “zerlechzend” (p. 25), while the “Menge” is in its own euphoria “genußlechzend” (p. 7).)
(vi) Both the Narrator and the Spielmann readily take on the posture of narrator, or rather the Spielmann overtakes the Narrator's position: “‘Möchte ich mir's doch selbst einmal wieder erzählen.’ … und er nahm überhaupt die Lage eines mit Bequemlichkeit Erzählenden an” (p. 19). Their narrative techniques are closely similar: both display on the one hand a tentativeness rooted in the desire to be credible (“von mir aber sei fern zu betrügen” [p. 12]) which manifests itself in cautious qualifications, most often in concessive clauses subordinate to Truth, such as: “wenn ich mich recht erinnere” (p. 20); “wenigstens vor einigen Jahren noch war keine” (p. 1); compare the sentence, “Fast hätte ich gesagt: der einzige, was aber nicht wahr wäre, denn …” (p. 42). On the other hand, both Narrator and Spielmann exhibit an at times uncontrollable penchant for brash hyperbole and euphoric extravagance—fantasy, in other words. It is this curious admixture (or incompatibility) of reportage and lived event which is central to the novella as a theme, and which allows the Spielmann to say, without a sense of contradiction, “er verhielt sich aber wirklich so und ging ins Riesenbafte” (p. 42), just as the Narrator can rework events into subjective (mythic or figural) fabrications without suggesting he might have betrayed the “facts.”
(vii) So close are their narrative techniques and standards of verity that their styles of narration are for all intents and purposes identical: the phrase “(bis) endlich” serves the Narrator as a way of controlling narrative rhythm, of clinching suspenseful expectations; “wie gesagt” (p. 13) is a rarer interjection used to organize material. The Spielmann employs freely both expressions as, for instance, in: “Endlich aber—wie gesagt— …” (p. 31). Another example of their monologic style: “Hart an dem Gleicher [Äquator, J.P.] hatte der alte Mann … ” (p. 17); “hart vor dem Ladentische am Lichte sitzen …” (p. 32). Of course style is variable in its pecularities of expression: in similar situations, the Spielmann is more apt to say, “Ich nahm mir ein Herz” (pp. 28, 31), while the Narrator will say “… ward die Ungeduld meiner Herr” (p. 16); but deeper similarities reveal that the stylistic timing is the same (“endlich” occurs before each expression); the contexts are structurally homologous (this will be discussed below); and the impulse, impatience, is identical (earlier, the Spielmann has shown this: “ich ward fast ungeduldig von Zuhören” [p. 24]).9
So far, we have concentrated on shared superficial and deeper affinities between the two major figures of the novella. We have, in other words, begun a reading of the universe of the self.10 This set of interrelations (similar differences) suggests what might be termed an “equi-valent” effect, by which all members of the story (it is not restricted to the Narrator and Spielmann alone) are implicated in a single mesh, all equally involved in a reflexive mirroring. The mesh is of language, self-reflecting, self-referring. In the crowd, for instance, the Narrator spies two lovers, “und in der jungen Magd, die, halb wider Willen, dem drängenden Liebhaber seitab vom Gewühl der Tanzenden folgt, liegen als Embryo … ” (p. 6). It is this same side-stepping that bonds the Narrator to the Spielmann (“Ich war, um das Original ungestört zu betrachten, in einiger Entfernung auf den Seitenabhang des Dammes getreten” [p. 8]), whose obliqueness persists up to the moment of his death: “… richtete er sich plötzlich im Bette auf, wendete Kopf und Ohr seitwärts, als ob er in der Entfernung etwas gar Schönes hörte …” (p. 54). Another instance of the equi-valent effect: Toward the end of the novella it is told that Barbara's son is named “Jakob” after the Spielmann (p. 52). He takes up the violin and even receives instruction from his namesake. But the child's progress is hampered by more pressing circumstances (“da ihn in der Woche der Vater beim Geschäft verwendet”) and consequently he can only play on Sundays (music and religion, again; we meet the Spielmann on a Sunday). Moreover, “er hat zwar nur wenig Talent,” though he has mastered to a certain degree “Barbara's Lied.” Little Jakob is thus assimilated directly to the image of the Spielmann. (The “zwar” in the preceding citation reflects an inference drawn automatically from the facts of the analogy between the two Jakob's, and means “it could only be so”; the equi-valent effect is a compulsory, overdetermined relation.)
The equi-valent effect, consisting basically in a vertical projection, has in addition a horizontal extension that originates in reading the perspectival multiverse of the other. In this multiverse, which is also the universe of explicit self-criticism, differences generate a system of cross-reference that raises an evaluation problem for the reader: which point of view is correct? can we verify one by another? So, for instance, the question of Barbara's beauty is disputed among the Spielmann (p. 44), his “Kameraden” (p. 27), and the Narrator (p. 55).11 By linking different points of view with identical referents (and with like but nuanced expressions), similar differences are distributed over a wide range of characters; the verbal echoes resonate through the whole of the text; and the resonances make it all the more difficult to assess characters either separately or in their ambiguous relations. Thus, the equivalent effect in its extension becomes the seed-plot of further difference, further discourse, that in turn becomes the subject of further assimilation. It is the differential, perspectival effect, however, that will take up our attention in the section to follow.
II. POINTS OF VIEW (METAPHOR AND METONOMY)
“Points of view (metaphor and metonomy)”: the poetic structure within realist narrative. Literature originates in, or rather anticipates, an act of communication that the language perpetually strives to recover. For the origin-act is less of an utterance than a gesture or posture, the index of an unexpressed content, and the literal presentation of the gesture can at best take the form of a figural representation of the same. Thus, the reduplication of the shadow of literal meaning is nothing more than a persistent memory. In Der arme Spielmann, the duplicity of the shadow is attested to by the futile process of verification that is installed in the structure of the text (through opposed points of view and voices). Moreover, the conflict of reliabilities, which has its parallel in a necessary difference within the structure of literary language, namely between metaphor and metonomy, is symbolically represented in a dramatic confrontation between the Spielmann and the Narrator, or to put it baldly, between the representatives of poetry and prose, respectively. The foundations of the difference are imperiled by the reversals and exchanges of roles and desires, and the ensuing confusions. By the same token, the metaphorical foundation of (realist) representation is brought to light. While realistic prose has been correctly identified with the metonymic principle,12 it is more correct to speak of a projection of the principle of equivalence onto the axis of combinative sequence,13 or in the words of one critic,14 the projection of a single moment of radical contradiction—the present—upon the temporal axis of a diachronic narrative.”
The figural interplay of points of view in Der arme Spielmann creates, on the literal level, indecision between sentimentality and irony. If the origin of the literary moment is already written into its vehicle of expression, (and hence already [dis]figures the content of the expression), are we forever banned from the “real” meaning of the expression? We indeed are, to the extent that such a meaning is literally undecidable, and since the figural reading ironizes expression in the measure that an expressive content encourages a literal response.
“Endlich, wie denn in dieser Welt jedes noch so hartnäckige Stehenbleiben doch nur ein unvermerktes Weiterrücken ist, erscheint auch diesem status quo ein Hoffnungstrahl.”15
The authority of the Narrator can be attested to only by examining the literary devices he has at his disposal and the way he deploys them, that is to say, disguises their strategic nature. Every position taken (“Stehenbleiben”) masks a shift, a contradictory transposition or new edition, that creates in turn the illusion of space, of a difference, of dimensions and perspectives. In Der arme Spielmann two perspectives are particularly responsible for controlling the reader's approach to the recessive text, and these will be the focus of our present discussion: the effectiveness of sentimentality and irony, taken as points of view. First we should determine how empathy and distance are given independent voice through the narrative discourse, and then we will consider their occurence at the more specific level of the sentence, where they coincide and interact. In this way, it will be possible to reconstruct the “sources” of these two, possibly incompatible, points of view.
To describe the emergence of an ironic point of view will involve tracing briefly the Narrator's gradual self-disclosure through the earliest paragraphs of the novella. Sweeping over the past through different time frames, returning to the present and finally retreating again into the past, the Narrator is concerning with establishing a fact (that of the “Volksfest”) and an atmosphere in which to appreciate this fact (the “long expected” event). By this recursive technique, the Narrator is able to simulate the expectation, and thus lend it verisimilitude. Once the day of the festival is obtained (“erscheint endlich das saturnalische Fest”) the Narrator continues in this strain of empathetic simulation, by incorporating the (literal) point of view of the masses within his own (figural) interpretation of the experience (the battling imagery—“siegreich,” etc.—is too elaborate and too consistent to be common property; and yet, the ones battling their way to the “Lustort” are, at this moment at least, the impatient “Volk”). Thus the Narrator preserves his distance while constraining the fullest expression of his point of view for the purposes of “realistic” (simular) description.
While the object of narration is approaching a “Stillstand” (“Von Sekunde zu Sekunde wird der Abstand zwischen Wagen und Wagen kleiner. … Bis endlich fünf bis sechs Stunden vor Nacht die einzelnen Pferde- und Kutschen-Atome sich zu einer kompakten Reihe verdichten. …” [p. 4]), the movement of the narration itself by mimesis slows to an empirical conscientiousness: “Zank, Geschrei, …” (p. 4). It is no mere coincidence that at the point of greatest fusion for the celebrants, the narrative discourse revels in atomic detail. The narration is moving toward an independent focus, then culminates momentarily in a well-wrought ring composition comprising the whole of the paragraph beginning with the lines quoted at the head of this section. This richly-worked passage is the most poetical moment of the overture; its self-contained symmetry (we are in the synchrony of a metaphor) contradicts the movement of the proceding lines (which were an attempt at immersion in sequential time), while its sheathed ironies are an inevitably consequence of the presentation of that movement: it too contains the seeds of an independent, almost frivolous, point of view: “… zu einem pays de cocagne, einem Eldorado, einem eigentlichen Schlaraffenlande vereinigen, das leider, oder glücklicherweise, wie man es nimmt, nur einen und den nächst darauffolgenden Tag dauert, dann aber verschwindet …” (p. 5). The passage deserves closer inspection, even at the cost of a brief standstill.
In keeping with his previously established acumen it is fitting that the Narrator descry “ein unvermerktes Weiterrücken” when others fail to notice. (The line actually refers back to an earlier observation, “… sitzen die geputzten Damen in den scheinbar stillestehenden Kutschen” [p. 4]). Even more typical is his antipathy to the “Stillstand”, and his acute orientation to the slightest break from the pause. “Stehenbleiben”—it is stasis, “the threat of an incompleted sequence,”16 of equivalence, and the possibility for the Narrator of being himself observed, “begafft, bedauert, bespottet.” The statement about “hartnäckige Stehenbleiben” does not agree with the present situation as closely as the thought which follows upon suggests: “auch diesem status quo.” Nobody is being obstinately immobile at this point. The incongruence of the remark (its present inapplicability) is reflected back upon, and internalized by, the person of the Narrator. First of all, the rhetorical status of the figure is put into jeopardy: what is presented here as a gnomic insertion, an accepted wisdom, is actually a disguised personal outlook on the world. Second, the patency of a given narrative assumption exposes the redundancy of narration in general: the Narrator's words will have a future application, with regard to the Spielmann (whose stance toward the world might fairly be described as a “hartnäckige Stehenbleiben”), and so they create a proleptic contrast between two view-points (represented by two discourse patterns—see below) that are radically opposed.17 Moreover, the temporality or the narrative sequence (“Weiterrücken”) has been inter-rupted by the recurrence (transposition) of an event that has not yet even occured, thus indicating how the Narrator is confined to the status (“Stehenbleiben”) of his own retelling, to a proleptic defense against constantly unstated objections. In the following lines the Narrator conceals his error by cloaking his viewpoint with that of the celebrants. In this tone, this half-convincing impersonation (simulation), or rather this simultaneous translation, the Narrator finishes the paragraph.
In between, a detectable and significant shift occurs in the Narrator's discourse, from the metonymic mode of description to the metaphoric. The former, based on the progress of a sequence, on the contiguity of details and their contextual intactness, has been identified as the underlying principle of prose, particularly of “realistic” prose.18 It is also the mode native to the Narrator, as not only his style but also his motivations and attitudes attest. He is prompted by this characteristic to investigate the history of the Spielmann, to follow a trail of contiguous clues (the thread, “die Faden”), and to assemble them into a meaningful context (“Ich zitterte vor Begierde nach dem Zusammenhange” [p. 9]).
The set of metonymic operations that ultimately seeks out mediated Difference for the Narrator makes a sharp contrast with the way the Spielmann operates in the world. The latter figure may be said to embrace the metaphoric mode of language, the underlying mode of poetry.19 Based on the principle of substitutibility, the metaphoric mode is actually opposed to temporal sequence and to the strictures of a context (“außer aller Zusammenhang” [p. 8]). The mode of metaphor naturally perceives Difference with Indifference. So the first response of the Spielmann to the Narrator's request that he tell his life-story is understandable in these linguistic terms: “Geschichte? … Ich habe keine Geschichte. Heute wie gestern, und morgen wie heute. Übermorgen freilich und weiter hinaus, wer kann das wissen?” (p. 19). That the Spielmann is baffled by a contextual orientation is evident in the school lesson scene (pp. 20-21): “Ich aber, der das Wort in meinem Innern und im Zusammenhang mit dem übrigen suchte, hörte ihn nicht.” The metonymic/metaphoric distinction, elsewhere in the novella a latent but systematic difference, is here an observable fact made explicit by another similar difference. While the Spielmann's brothers are capable of progressing along a metonymic chain “wie Gemsen von Spitze zu Spitze in den Lehrgegenständen herum,” the Spielmann never gets beyond his original station: “…ich konnte aber durchaus nichts hinter mir lassen, und wenn mir ein einziges Wort fehlte, mußte ich von vorne anfangen.” Spielmann is in essence the victim of what Jakobson in “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbance” terms a “continuity disorder”20 (“ … ich begann stockisch zu werden.”). His brothers do not necessarily suffer from the second type of disturbance, though their behavior is describable in terms of the metonymic principle the Narrator embodies, and whose behavior can truly be labelled a “similarity disorder.” One criterion for the difference in aphasics is the marked variance of their linguistic performance where contextual structures play a role: “The less a word depends grammatically on the context, the stronger is its tenacity in the speech of aphasics with a contiguity disorder and the earlier it is dropped by patients with a similarity disorder.”21 Jakobson's generalization implies its converse, which suits our own case study, the school lesson scene: The more a word depends grammatically on the context (viz. “Cachinnum”), the weaker is its tenacity in the speech of aphasics with a contiguity disorder. The pathological or even psychological roots of the disturbance in the Spielmann (or Narrator) are of less interest to us than the linguistic patterns that underlie this “contexture-deficient” speech perception, and that translate into consistent patterns of discourse: “Wußte ich das eine, so hatte ich dafür das übrige vergessen.” “Vergessen” is the key word here. Forgetfulness is the nemesis of anyone operating in the metonymic mode (which is also the mode of metalanguage and criticism), for whom details are not simply substitutible, and for whom a surplus of verbal denotations is tantamount to an amnestic condition;22 on the other hand, indifference to sequence, denotative surplus, forgetfulness, is the principle of metaphor, and the regulative principle of the Spielmann's life.
But it is precisely forgetfulness the Narrator strives to approximate when he describes the scene of the festival23 (“Alle Leiden sind vergessen”), by abandoning his prior careful application of the principle of difference and discrimination (“Aufmerksamkeit,” p. 4) for the sake of the infinite ellipsis; the Narrator is, so to speak, “zum ersten Male seiner Natur ungetreu” (p. 4): “Die zu Wagen Gekommenen steigen aus und mischen sich unter die Fußgänger, Töne entfernter Tanzmusik schallen herüber. … Und so fort und immer weiter …” The narration strains to be impressionistic, to give as many predicates to any one substantive as it can (this is pure polysemy): “Wald und Wiese, Musik und Tanz, Wein und Schmaus, Schattenspiel und Seiltänzer, Erleuchtung und Feuerwerk (the coupling suggests equivalence) sich zu einem pays de cocagne, einem Eldorado, einem eigentlichen Schlaraffenlande vereinigen …”24 This is the climax of the overture to the novella, which indicates that all along the Narrator has been resisting a tendency to lose himself in the metaphoric mode (“Der Unterschied der Stände ist verschwunden.” [p. 1]) that acknowledges not difference but sameness. His ambivalence toward metaphoric description is evident even here, in the slight ironies that color his expression, and in the explicit prevarication, or is it simply in-difference?: “leider, oder glücklicherweise, wie man es nimmt.”25 Nonetheless, if the Narrator is not entirely committed to the logic of the rhetorical figure he has chosen, he is committed to closing the passage in a rhetorically satisfying way: the activity of the “Fest” finally subsides as an undifferentiated whole (“wie der Traum einer Sommernacht”), leaving a residual memory (“Erinnerung”) and a lingering desire (“Hoffnung”). That these words reveal more than they should can be seen in the subsequent paragraph. There, the Narrator's praise for the totalizing powers of amnesia and the erasure of difference are clear: “besonders wenn sie in Massen für einige Zeit der einzelnen Zwecke vergessen und sich als Teile des Ganzen fühlen …”; but his inability to share in these collective experiences is even clearer from the sequel: “Wie aus einem aufgerollten, ungeheuren, dem Rahmen des Buches entsprungenen Plutarch lese ich aus … den einzelnen halb unwillkürlichen Äußerungen mir die Biographien … zusammen” (p. 5f.).26 By comparison with this cultivated simile, the extended festival-description is a rare and nearly subversive indulgence in metaphoric language. Its ringform composition is built upon the two pairs words chiastically ordered:
Hoffnungsstrahl Erinnerung
vergessen Hoffnung
From the first sign of “Hoffnung,” it was noted, the Narrator shifted into the metaphoric mode of description and into a certain oblivion. The final “Erinnerung,” however, does not restore him to the properly narrative mode, nor is the accompanying “Hoffnung” the same at the end as it was at the beginning. These last form a circle, they bear within the metaphoric process (“Er-innerung”) and do not lead away from it. The original “hope” was teleological, a “Hoffnungstrabl” opposed to “Stehenbleiben.” The final “Hoffnung” is an imaginative reiteration of the experience that resists temporality; it is locked into its own “Stehenbleiben” (“zurückbleibt”). The Narrator must forcibly wrest himself from this “vicious” circle in order to restore himself to his self, the tenacious subject: “Ich versäume nicht leicht …”
As the narrative makes its final increment toward the confrontation with the “arme Spielmann” (whose name in the title is enough to create an expectation and to justify the delays), the Narrator's point of view grows still less empathetic and more emphatically his “own.” The rupture in perspective requires a new mimetic strategy, and this in turn generates a rhetorical discontinuity in the Narrator's discourse: his distance is converted now into a tone vascillating between irony and sheer indifference; details are accordingly no longer exalted into, say, mythological figures, and if anything, their rudimentary, disfigured status is a glaring breach of the decorum demanded by their figural environment—the “klassische Boden” that recalls the earlier discussed “Stillestehen” (p. 7, cp. p. 5). “Eine Harfenspielerin mit widerlich starrenden Augen,” for instance, does not conjure up a Homer. The Narrator's tone works against his images, and is capable of freezing over an object of otherwise warm compassion; the description of “ein alter invalider Stelzfuß, der … die Schmerzen seiner Verwundung dem allgemeinen Mitleid … empfindbar machen wollte” (p. 7) is a case in point. This is a critical moment for understanding the uses of sentimentality in this novella. How is it that we are aware of a participatory empathy (what is its source?) and simultaneously of an incompassionate, mocking voice? It is almost as if the sentimental message is conveyed in spite of the Narrator. It is important to determine whether these two voices, present in one sentence, represent incompatible points of view, and if so, then we must identify their sources. There are other examples for comparison:
“Abends halte ich mich zu Hause, und”—dabei ward seine Rede immer leiser, Röte überzog sein Gesicht, sein Auge suchte den Boden—“da spiele ich denn aus der Einbildung … ” Wir waren beide ganze stille geworden. Er, aus Beschämung, über das verratene Geheimnis seines Innern; ich, voll Erstaunen, den Mann von den höchsten Stufen der Kunst sprechen zu hören, der nicht imstande war, den leichtesten Walzer faßbar wiederzugeben. (p. 11)
The Spielmann has just confessed his most inner self and the Narrator is incredulous; it is not the emotional content that interests or affects the Narrator, but the incongruence between statement and context, a difference that cries out for elimination. Whether the Narrator can successfully account for all differences through a process of elimination has to be seen.
Other instances of an emotive quality show a kind of design to the representation of sentiment: it most often occurs through the barest of descriptions which involve the least intrusion of narrative commentary; and it always relies on the description of hands, of hands over a face, of tears over cheeks, in other words of (nearly) unvoiced gestures, simple signs, which in the context of overt narrative direction perform a kind of muting effect, a sudden and significant contrast. One classic example is found early in the text: “‘Bitte! Bitte!’ rief der alte Mann, wobei er mit beiden Händen ängstlich abwehrende Bewegungen machte, ‘in den Hut! in den Hut!”’ (p. 10). Compare: “ … und dabei glänzten seine Augen wie feucht; er lächelte aber” (p. 13). “Dabei besah er mit auseinanderfallenden Händen seine ganze dürftige Gestalt” (p. 48). And so on. It is in moments when the Narrator reduces his commentary to a minimum, when he introduces his description with a perfunctory, formulaic “dabei” (as if to indicate, “this is the gesture that accompanied this word, that I have reproduced for you here in its unordained purity”) that we are aware of an effect to which the Narrator himself is not entirely susceptible. For the sentiment (to be significant) requires a basis in objectivity that does not in turn require the sentiment.
In the Narrator's eyes, compassion is significant only in so far as it can be used to signify the ideal rapprochement of an object and its representation; and the maudlin connotations that are generated from this perspective are at least partially due to the nostalgic appeal and memory of the original. Removed from its presence and relieved from the need to re-present it, the Narrator allows the object to slip entirely from mind: in the solitude of space (“die Stille des Ortes” [p. 14]), the Narrator has no stake in the Spielmann (“mich verschiedenen Gedanken überlassend, an denen der alte Spielmann nicht den letzten Anteil hatte …”); following his second contact with the Spielmann, the Narrator proves again his transient susceptibility to the presence of images and his infidelity to those which are removed from his field of vision: “Die neuen Bilder hatten die alten verdrängt, und mein Spielmann war so ziemlich vergessen” (p. 52). By the same token, sentiment is a useful pretext (“zum Vorwande” [p. 56]) for approaching a desired object of representation, for fulfilling an empty obsession to possess it; this is certainly the Narrator's motivation at the end of the novella: “daß ich die Geige des Alten als Andenken zu besitzen wünschte,” a doubly contorted pretext, since the Narrator is really after the confirmation of his representations as well as a final portrait (Barbara)—a crowning representation to represent all previous representations.
Sentimentality is a calculated effect and a special mode of representation.27 If the sentimental affectations of the Narrator are taken “seriously,” as genuinely representative of his point of view, then the affectation has been misleading; at the same time, sentimentality (in its emotive impact) is the reader's guide to a critical understanding of the work, and so must be taken “seriously,” up to this point. Following the affectative trail to its ultimate source, the reader will find himself abandoned, and frustrated by what turns out to be a mere literary device. In this way the operations of the Narrator will be laid bare, and what originally serviced as a compositional technique will be converted into an alienating de-compositional element.
How, on the other hand, are we going to account for the generous narratorial allowances made to irony in Der arme Spielmann that seem to achieve this alienating effect of themselves? Irony too is a calculated mode of representation, generally signifying the distance between the word and the thing, though here it is a sign not for the categorical impossibility of representation but for the mastery of this impossibility through a discriminating awareness of the hazards involved. For the Narrator, irony is in fact a sign-post that points to the only possible justification of representation: the objective, unaffected, and purely distantiated perspective—this is the ideal position the Narrator actually strives to assume, whether in his ironical or sympathetic moments. The result is an illusory convergence of perspectives at a common vanishing point: when ultimately the differences between the two points of view (empathy and irony) become identical; when the emotive content of language becomes insignificant and indifferent; when, in other words, language performs its mimetic function to the point of effacing itself before the object, then the act of representation has exhausted its only viable grounds and sentenced itself to death. This self-immolation is timed by the Narrator so as to coincide with the last sentence of the novella. The question of his success or failure, which will hinge on the question of the authority of the Narrator, must remain open for discussion below.
This brings us back to the problems of point of view and verification, of similar differences and the structural ambivalences of the text itself. Sentimentality and irony employed as points of view serve to heighten the ambiguity of relations between characters, by charging and discharging the emotional atmosphere, by simulating the frustrations experienced by the characters which ultimately lead to their alienation, and incidentally an alienation that can only be overcome by affinities that transcend the structure: “… wobei ihm die Finger auf den Saiten zitterten und endlich einzelne Tränen über die Backen liefen” (p. 24); “… sie hatte sich umgewendet, und die Tränen liefen ihr stromweise über die Backen” (p. 56). Spielmann and Barbara are lovers who cannot make contact on their own, but only through the agency of a third party (like the Narrator), or through the mediation of a structured description that allows difference to become identical. Sentimentality is ambivalent in Barbara too, who in this respect seems to have been assimilated to the Narrator's point of view. The similarity of their response to the Spielmann's monologues (it is minimal and judgmental) is evident from the line: “Dabei ließ sie mich aber immer allein sprechen und gab nur durch einzelne Worte ihre Billigung oder—was öfter der Fall war—ihre Mißbilligung zu erkennen” (p. 42).
Later Barbara tells Jakob point-blank, “Eigentlich verdienen Sie kein Mitleid” (p. 49) in words that belong and do not belong to her—words, that is, which testify to an inner-textual lexicality. By their general currency among differing points of view, “eigentlich” and “verdienen” are made thematic (i.e. disputable) in the text; but since in Der arme Spielmann no single viewpoint taken by itself can stand independently of the text that creates it (the text cannot determine its own value), these normative terms come to signify the very categories they appeal to, and not the judgment they are being applied to. “Eigentlich” here is being used to make an (apparently) objective reference—to a judgment Barbara could assent to under other conditions, if she were not already affected by her contact with the Spielmann (or if she were not she)—an objective reference that is as equally beyond her scope as any objective representation by the Narrator.
The same words, however, appear at the outset of the Narrator's story where they ought to carry the weight of his authorial point of view: “… ein eigentliches Volksfest, wenn je ein Fest diesen Namen verdient hat” (p. 1). The apparent univocity of the statement when unmasked reveals an orchestra of contradictions: “eigentlich” here expresses the kind of enthusiasm that might come from the mouth of a proud compatriot or from a patronizing visitor. That the narrated sequel neither confirms nor denies the Narrator's local origins is itself a meaningful ambiguity, and one which he himself experiences; for the sequel gradually comes to suggest a third likelihood, that the Narrator is actually neither (neither proud compatriot nor patronizing visitor), or rather both (an expatriot within his own land, withdrawn and withholding his own source of identity even from himself). The process of naming and identifying is, as we have seen above, at the center of the value-laden process of representation.
The repeated occurence of these key, inter-subjective terms itself qualifies the status of so-called “objective” representation; their very redundancy already points to the surplus-value inherent in the mimetic enterprise. An example of one such qualification: the Spielmann, figure of the object-original, for instance, already repudiates the narrative assumptions when he turns down the offer by the Narrator of an added bonus of a money contribution (“und dabei fuhr ich in die Tasche, um das früher gereichte gar zu kleine Geldgeschenk allenfalls zu verdoppeln”): “… eines andern Verdienstes aber bin ich mir zur Zeit nicht bewußt” (p. 13). The exchange is further problematized by the fact that even the original “Geldgeschenk” was not part of “die eigentliche Ernte” forfeited by the Spielmann when he turned back home (p. 8). This entire sequence, in turn, is duplicated twice by the larger sequence of which it is a pre-figural moment: once in the narrative gesture of recuperation (of the Real, through representation) that ultimately must fail; and once again in the transposition from literal event to figural sign of the event that can never fail—for while a figure necessarily duplicates a literal meaning, it also removes itself from the value determinations of the process of representation, in as much as the figure, as a purely self-reflective sign (i.e. as reflective of a universe of discourse that is entirely self-referential) is pure surplus-value: in the example above, the failed exchange signifies unproblematically the problematics of representation.28
The excess of wear on the terms we have been discussing ultimately results in the deflation of their meanings. Far from standing for determinate evaluations, they are often little more than gratuitous rhetorical figures easily susceptible to the ironies of trivialization (as in: “die eigentlichen Hierophanten dieses Weihfestes: die Kinder der Dienstbarkeit und der Arbeit” [p. 4]); or else they are the syllables of an exclusive language (“aber mit mir hat's eigene Wege” [p. 44]); or some conflation of the two (“Das ganze Wesen des alten Mannes war eigentlich wie gemacht, um meinen anthropologischen Heißhunger aufs äußerste zu reizen” [p. 8]). What is more, through their constant recurrence these terms become voided of all distinctive significance. In this world of the assimilative Self, dominated so by a tropological discourse, the literal Other does not have a language by which it can communicate (represent) its difference. The result is a confusion of viewpoints and sentiments such as we find in Barbara, whose words (“eigentlich verdienen Sie kein Mitleid”) cannot even be taken at face-value, so wrongly does her representation of her emotion obscure her actual sentiments, which in the context of the story can be better shown than told: “Sie hatte sich umgewendet, und die Tränen liefen ihr stromweise über die Backen.”
III. THE ORIGINS OF REPROACH, THE REPROACH OF ORIGINS
Now to return to the problem of representation itself where it is built most literally into the text, at a level of at least three removes from the unrepresented “reality”: namely, the scene in which the Spielmann procures from Barbara a reproduction of “das Lied” that occassioned his musical conversion—the scene where the Spielmann proves himself to be the literal “Original” of the Narrator. In narrative terms, there are two layers of discourse embedded here for recuperation which can be schematized as follows:
Reader r (Narrator1 r [Narrator2 (Spielmann) r Barbara])
The Narrator seeks to reproduce a discourse which in part consists of the narration of a discourse. This, however, simply sets forth the structure of a more perplexing issue. The Narrator's attempt at representation is mirrored in the Spielmann's eagerness to reproduce “das Lied” (“nachzuspielen”). The Spielmann's attempts are met by only a qualified success (“Wären Sie etwa gar derselbe, rief sie aus, der so kratzt auf der Geige?”) and the question of the Narrator's success is implicitly raised too. One obstacle to the Spielmann is the deficiency of his memory: “… das Kratzen rührt von daher, daß ich das Lied nicht in Noten habe, weshalb ich auch höflichst um die Abschrift gebeten haben wollte” (p. 29). How reliable are the Narrator's powers of recall?
Um die Abschrift? sagte
sie. Das Lied ist ge-
druckt und wird an den
Straßenecken verkauft. (p. 29)
“Geschichte?” widerholte
er. Ich habe keine Geschichte.” (p. 19)
Barbara's startled response to the Spielmann's request parallels the Spielmann's response to the Narrator. Both the Spielmann and Barbara are innocent of the difference their interlocuter is pressing after:
Nun ja, die Worte,
das Lied.
Heute wie morgen, und
morgen wie heute …
“Schreibt man denn derlei auch auf?” asks Barbara, and the question might equally be put to the Narrator. The interrogators persist:
Und wie haben denn Sie's
erlernt, werte Jungfer?
Wie es sich fügte - …
until recognition:
Ach, das wird wohl das
sein!
Das also nennen sie
meine Geschichte?
The sources ultimately volunteer their “originality,” and they make preparations to assume the necessarily stylized posture:
… setzte den Korb wieder
ab, stellte den Fuß auf
den Schemel und sang …
Seine Gestalt verlängerte
sich … (Er) schlug sitzend
ein Bein über das andere und
nahm überhaupt die Lage eines
mit Bequemlichkeit Erzählenden an.
But the problems do not end here. If the Spielmann is convinced he has arrived at the ultimate original, then he is mistaken. Barbara too is implicated in the problem of (qualified) reproduction: “Ich hörte es singen, und da sang ich's nach.” That the Spielmann is somewhat dissatisfied with the qualifications of his original is clear from his response. He goes on to praise her “natürlich Ingenium” and untutored “Talent,” but reserves the word “Kunst” for himself: “Es ist aber doch nicht das Rechte, die eigentliche Kunst.” “Eigentlich” recalls the difficulties (noted above) the Narrator falls into at the very outset of his effort (“ein eigentliches Volksfest”). The Spielmann cannot hide his despairing effort with the same ease (“Ich war nun neuerdings in Verzweiflung …”) and Barbara comes closer to stating the problem than anyone else: “Aber welches Lied ist es denn eigentlich?” (The “es” might just as well have been omitted.) Not surprisingly, there is no one “original,” but an unnumbered quantity of “originals” (“ich weiß so viele”). The Spielmann too seems to have discovered for himself more than one object of desire: “das Lied … so schön, so lieblich, daß, ehe sie noch zu Ende war, ich nach ihrer herabhängenden Hand fuhr.” Thus are the string of desires and the string of “originals” proliferated into an unreachable infinity. The schema of imbedded discourse/desires stands in need of revision:
Reader r (Narrator1 r [Narrator2 (Spielmann) r Narrator3 (Barbara) r?])
The string is graphically illustrated where the tales of the “Ohrfeige” are verified (p. 41). Barbara is busy in the store, standing on her toes, searching, “den Rücken mir zugekehrt und mit den erhobenden Händen, wie man nach etwas sucht, auf einem der höheren Stellbretter herumtastend. Und dabei sang sie leise in sich hinein.—Es war das Lied, mein Lied!” The Spielmann from behind is searching with his hands for her: “ … und faßte sie mit beiden Händen … ” With a small stretch of the imagination we can picture the Narrator standing behind the Spielmann with groping hands, and the reader behind him, etc. This scene follows a pattern of tensions familiar to the text: proximity leads to excitement (Spielmann: “Ich schlich näher und näher und war schon so nahe, daß … ” [p. 41]; Narrator: “ … ich war ganz nahe zu ihm getreten” [p. 10]); excitement leads to frustration. Barbara represents to both the Spielmann and the Narrator the ultimate “Original,” the object most neglected by, and most ineluctable to, reproduction; the reproachful object that is ignorant of, and ignores, Art (“Von Musik und Gesang war nie die Rede” [p. 41]; “und [sie] kümmert sich wenig mehr um Musik” [p. 52]; the object that must submit to other laws and provisionally deny the lure and risk of approximation in order to endure indefinately in the face of harsh realities (“Aber da ist kein Mittel.” [p. 49])—while for Art, the infinite duration of the moment, the expanse of the metaphor (the “Stillstand”), or the Center without periphery (“Mittel”) is the core of experience.
Barbara's inaccessibility, however, implies still another kind of reproach, a reproach aimed at both the Spielmann and the Narrator for having condemned her to the inaccessible, for having wrapped her in the “mystique” that surrounds the object-original. This other reproach particularly escapes the notice of the Narrator, who presents the final scene in his conventional, narcissistic terms (“Ihr Gesicht war dabei von mir abgewandt, so daß ich nicht sehen konnte, was etwa darauf vorging.” [p. 56]). The “last” glimpse she “affords” of herself, itself a pitiful commentary, is enjoyed as a perfecting conquest by the self-made hero of truth and detection. With all due conventionality, the Narrator makes his de-finitive statement with an appropriate gesture, by conceding the narrative entire to the object (since, according to the code of the mystique-(self-) worshippers, the last word—the silent word—must always return to the object):29 “Sie hatte sich umgewendet, und die Tränen liefen ihr stromweise über die Backen.” But the concession is only apparent: “stromweise” is a formal expenditure, a stylization or touch-up that lifts this object to the level of the other narrated objects: “[die] zwei Ströme, die alte Donau und die geschwollnere Woge des Volks” (p. 3). By refusing to concede to the object, the Narrator can protect its most precious “originality” from an exchange that would in turn fatally devaluate the “originality” of the narrative itself. The ultimate expense to the Narrator, the estimation of the Narrator's selfinvalidation, is for the reader to measure against his or her re-collection of the original original.
This study began with an appeal to logic just as, in a most basic sense, do all readings of a text: to establish the reason of words (“der Ursprung des Namens” [p. 14]). Reenacting the urge of Adam harbored equally by the text, we encountered a difference, unbridgeable and irremediable, between the names and the things named. The discrepancy is fundamental, and owes less to the arbitrary nature of linguistic signs than to the respective referential orientations of the immediate naming-agents in the text (the Narrator and characters and the tacit informant occupying the space between conflicting points of view, the implicit authorial point of view). The evaluative problem that arises from these conflicting strains of logic is first reproduced in the text's own attempts to define the normative concepts of “Eigentlichkeit” and “verdienen.” The text, however, cannot determine its own value, it cannot read itself. Ineffectual to name itself in this one respect (the individual voices mute one another, while the logic of the authorial “voice” is one of silent organization), the text anticipates without eclipsing the activity of reading by making this indeterminancy (this illegibility) descriptive of its own processes, by reading reading, with reading representing reading. Thus, the evaluative problem in turn becomes for the reader a problem of self-evaluation. And this, as I hope to have shown, is an activity without end.
Notes
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Franz Grillparzer, Der arme Spielmann, Erzählung, mit einem Nachwort von Emil Kast (1977), p. 3. Henceforth in the notes, “DAS.” All italics in the textual citations are mine, unless otherwise specified.
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As the aim of this paper is to suggest an alternative, and at times close, reading of DAS in light of the general problem of realism, of mimesis and representation, I cannot hope to deal in any extensive way with the substantial body of literature on either the general or specific topics. For my theoretical insights I rely heavily on the classic work of the Russian Formalists (Shklovsky, Ehrlich, Jakobson) and on that of the more recent structuralists (Barthes especially) and post-structuralists. With regard to the Grillparzer text, I found the critical studies by Brinkmann, von Wiese, Politzer, and Heine quite helpful. It is only appropriate, then, that I acknowledge my debt in discussing each of these critical works briefly.
Richard Brinkmann's Wirklichkeit und Illusion (31977) is the first analysis to identify the problem of realism in DAS as primarily a formal problem: what is “real” in a given work is not simply a (re)collection of identifiable artifacts; rather, the “real” is to be found in the formal organization of the work, in its structuration of experience, which is the visible projection of the assumptions and intentions the (implicit) author and/or narrator bring(s) to the work. So far, so good. In DAS, then, the Narrator has chosen a form of narration that commits him to authenticity, the “Ich-Erzählung.” By making himself accountable for a second narration, that of the Spielmann, the Narrator puts himself in a (formal) bind: how can he preserve the authenticity of his own and the Spielmann's narratives without counterfeiting one or the other (pp. 123 and 129)? His options are two: either to comply with the limits of (and thereby preserve) his “Ich-Erzählung” and represent the Spielmann's narrative through indirect discourse, or to resort to (apparent) omniscience, and to qualified authenticity, by presenting the Spielmann's story in direct discourse. Is this a fair assessment? I think not, for two reasons. First, there is no reason to label the narrative tactic in the reported speechof the Spielmann “omniscient.” By the conventions of realism, the Narrator is still working in his authentic first-person perspective: extraordinary retension of detail is in this kind of literature an uncontested given. Which brings me to my second point. Professor Brinkmann was right in challenging the authenticity of the narration where he did, at the juncture of the two narratives. But he failed to extend the challenge to other, equally crucial junctures: “Dagegen verstößt freilich nicht die gelegentliche Wiedergabe einer direkten Rede des Spielmanns” (p. 124). By this logic one could argue the briefer, earlier utterances of the Spielmann by their brevity alone would be the harder to retain; do they have any less of a claim to factitiousness than the later, reported monologue? “Nummer 34 im ersten Stocke” (DAS, p. 13). A few sparse hours after this remark is made, the Narrator has already forgotten where the Spielmann lives (DAS, p. 14)! Such signs encourage me to suspect that Grillparzer is toying quite deliberately with the “formal” problem of mimesis: by making salient the likely defects of mimesis due to the simple fallibility of memory, and by constructing an ambiguous two- (or even three- or more) way mirror of perspectives through which to observe and assess character, and through which we must learn to acknowledge the likely fallibility (or discrepancies) of perception. In short, Grillparzer both constructs and deforms the problem of realism: it is “problematized” by the structural organization of the text (in competing narratives, for instance), and it is replicated in each of the characters, but particularly in the person of the Spielmann, whose monologic representation is subject to the same pitfalls and doubts as the Narrator's. Moreover, the Spielmann is pathetic, and so the incongruities, the deformities, of his telling are all the more patent. “Der Spielmann sieht dabei mit einer Klarheit und Weite und mit objektiver Distanz, die dem Grundzug seines Wesens, der eigentümlich monomanischen Abgeschlossenheit wiederspricht” (p. 132). As much can be said of the Narrator.
Benno von Wiese gives a clear and sensible account of DAS in his Die Deutsche Novelle von Goethe bis Kafka: Interpretationen (1964), I, 134ff. The essay, in my opinion, overcomes the limiting nature of the format: it is designed to be a brief thematic exegesis set in the context of a genre survey. Focusing on ambivalences in the Spielmann's character, von Wiese comes closer to the heart of the problem than more recent scholars who make the Spielmann into a saint. Among them: Peter Schäublin, “Das Musizieren des armen Spielmanns,” Sprachkunst [1972], Heft 1/2, 32-55, see esp. p. 53; and Robert Browing, “Language and the Fall from Grace,” Seminar, 12 (1976), 215-235. Notwithstanding, the study remains a character study, not does von Wiese take adequate pains to distinguish “Autor” from “Dichter” (i.e. Narrator from the biographic writer Grillparzer). The terms “(implicit) author,” “narrator,” “Grillparzer” will be used in this paper to make this necessary distinction.
Heinz Politzer's “Franz Grillparzers Der arme Spielmann” (1967) approaches the novella as though it were a piece of psychological realism. (The “intimacy” of this approach is assured in namecalling: Politzer's Spielmann is a “Jakob.”) The theme of the story is successful “Begegnung” and alienation, and we have an example of each: the inner story of the Spielmann tends toward the tragic dysfunction of communication, while the outer narrative yields a promising comic solution: “Was Barbara mit Jakob nicht gelungen ist, gelingt ihr hier mit seinem Chronisten: er erlebt seine schöpferische Stunde, die Stunde der Begegnung, in der aus zweien eins wird, nämlich dieses Werk, dieser “Armer Spielmann” (p. 60). I cannot agree with this interpretation, though I find that Politzer is otherwise a close and sensitive reader. Politzer, however, comes closest to stating the “Similar Differences” thesis to be discussed below: “Daß zwischen diesen beiden Künstlergestalten … von vornherein tiefere Beziehungen gegeben sind, ohne daß der Erzähler dies bemerkte, gehört zu den vielen Ironien, die über ihrem Verhältnis walten” (p. 51). I would rather put it the other way around, that the “many ironies” are ordered under this most basic irony and “mishearing” which is easily translatable into the most persistant theme of the novella.
With the general hermeneutical perspective of Roland Heine's “Ästhetische oder existentielle Integration? Ein hermeneutisches Problem des 19. Jahrhunderts in Grillparzers Erzählung ‘Der arme Spielmann’ ( DVjs [1972], 650-83) I find much to agree, and in particular with several of his close readings. I do not find his conclusions compelling though, nor do I think the Dilthey hermeneutic model on which they are based is applicable to our text. The Dilthey model forsees two possibilities for integrating a life and its meaning, and these are stated in Heine's title: a “Bedeutungszusammenhang” is either given prior to one's understanding (“existentielle Integration”) or it is won through understanding (“ästhetische Integration”) (cp. p. 667); in the case of the Spielman, I think it neither. The point Heine would make is the following: “Im Erzählzusammenhang von Jakobs Lebensgeschichte hat sich auch erst der Sinnzusammenhang seines Lebens ergeben” (p. 677). But nowhere does he specify in what respects the Spielmann has reached an improved understanding of his life, or how he is any more thoroughly integrated with his life-meaning after his telling than he was before it. The text certainly does not suggest that the act of narrating his past has altered the Spielmann's conception of the present (“Und damit ergriff der Alte seine Geige und fing an, das Lied zu spielen, und spielte fort und fort, ohne sich weiter um mich zu kümmern. Endlich hatte ich's satt …” [p. 52]), precisely because it has not altered his conception of the past. If anything, the Spielmann has in an almost retrogressive act renewed his bond with that part of the past that is for him immutable: “[Barbara] hat sich zwar sehr verändert in den vielen Jahren, ist stark geworden und kümmert sich wenig mehr um Musik, aber es klingt noch immer so hübsch wie damals” (p. 52). On the other hand, I do not think the text gives us any reason to suppose the original state of ignorance we must assume if we are to see in the Spielmann the coming to (self-/historical-) consciousness Heine sees in the “Entdeckung and Lösung” (p. 65) of “die erkenntnistheoretische Frage” posed in his title. Otherwise what are we to make of the words of the Spielmann: “Möchte ich mir's doch selbst einmal wieder erzählen” (p. 19)? or those of the Narrator: “[er] nahm überhaupt die Lage eines mit Bequemlichkeit Erzählenden an” (ibid.)? Even if the Spielmann ever achieved “aesthetic integration” it is unlikely that he achieves it here for the first time. It is more likely that the Spielmann comes, in the course of his life, to repeated partial understandings of his situation, just as he makes repeated attempts to reproduce Barbara's “Lied,” but never achieving (total) integration, aesthetic or otherwise.
According to Heine, the Spielmann succeeds on a formal, hermeneutical level where he failed miserably existentially. I do not believe the two levels can be separated so easily as this, nor does the text encourage us to make this distinction. Heine himself notes the figural significance of the school-lesson scene: “Jakob muß erfahren, daß er in der Gesellschaft nicht am rechten Platze ist, daß er in sie ebensowenig hineinpaßt, wie ein unpassendes Wort in den Textzusammenhang” (p. 658). I would rephrase the formulation to: “… daß er in sie ebensowenig hineinpaßt, wie ein passendes Wort …” which could mean several things, but among them, that Der arme Spielmann heightens the fundamental ambiguity between a word and its context that stems from the general over-capacity of language. It is the words that fit the context (language in its ordinary, functional mode) that are susceptible to mis-readings (viz. to fictional narratives). The cohesiveness of Der arme Spielmann is due to its consistent figural representation of a literal problem such as this. Thus, the Spielmann's dyslexia serves as a metaphor for the general mis-reading of his life. The question remains, how is it possible for the Spielmann who fails so existentially (dyslexically) to succeed hermeneutically (to re-read his mis-reading), when the only difference between these two tests will be a new text? A closer look at the structure of Der arme Spielmann will show how the entire text is nothing if not a deliberate configuration of repeated instances of the same: in a world of duplicates everything fits, congruously: and so should (and do) the hermeneutical and existential events, viz. failures.
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Although this line of interpretation does not explicitly acknowledge these conditions, I am suggesting that the paradox is an inescapable corollary to any over-definition of the Narrator's role in “objective” description. For instance: “Ebenso ist es etwa mit der Abschiedsszene zwischen Barbara und dem Spielmann. Auch sie ist überlegen und ‘objektiv’ gestaltet und in Worten dargeboten, die der Dichter dem Spielmann in den Mund legt, die aber doch nicht die seinen sind aus möglicher Erinnerung, sondern die aus des Dichters ‘idealer’ Vorstellungskraft kommen … Der Dichter ist es, der in Wahrheit hier spricht” (Brinkmann, op. cit., pp. 134-135). One might object to these considerations on the grounds of interpretation alone; the Spielmann might well be capable of the same “clarity” of thought we look for and find in the Narrator, as I argue below. But another, more serious objection is a matter of theoretical interest. If we accept these conclusions, not only are we trammeling the conventions of realist narration that make great allowances for retention of detail by speaking subjects, we are also commited to the possibility that everything given by the Narrator is complete fantasy, that perhaps he is some kind of maniac who has concocted the whole story from ink for whatever motive (to conflate him with the author, in orher words). This seems to me both unnecessary and untenable. Below we will find an exact parallel for the Narrator's “fantasies” in the Spielmann; and seeing how the story is constructed in such a way that the narration of the Spielmann is “certified” by the appearance of Barbara, we should construe the narration of the Narrator in the same way—as ultimately certifiable, given the possibility. In pitting near-absurdities (the utterly fantastic narrator option) against conventions (that narrators are not generally that given to fantasy), Grillparzer is testing the bed-rock of fiction, not eliminating it. This kind of restraint is also a basic requirement of Professor Brinkmann's analysis: “… Grillparzer [steht] noch in der Tradition des ‘objektiven’ Dichters, obgleich nicht mehr so fest und fraglos, daß er auf realistische, das heißt hier: empirische Begründung und Legitimierung verzichten könnte” (p. 132).
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R. Jakobson, “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Linguistic Disturbance,” in Selected Writings (1962-1971), v. 2, p. 72.
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“Ich habe von Natur keine Stimme” (p. 25).
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In Jakobson's terms (see “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics,” in Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language [1960], pp. 353 ff.) the metalingual, (glossing), phatic (contact-prone) and poetic functions are reduced to different degrees, with the result that narrator-reader contact is radically modified. The speech-event functions are reduced to three dominants: emotive (expressive), conative (vocative and imperative), and referential (denotative). Consequently, the narrative discourse swings around emphatically to the Narrator's point of view. As the Narrator is less concerned with coaxing the reader along, the reader must now consume the Narrator's imperatives. The reader is thus somewhat impersonalized (“so kann man sich wohl leicht eine Idee von der Verwirrung machen, die daraus hervorging.” [p. 17]) and even hypostasized (“den Leser,” [p. 17])—which, it seems, puts a great restriction on his earlier, hypothetical role as “listener” (“sage ich” [p. 5]). And it is the referent which is made the object of intensive investigation (“der Gegenstand meiner Neugier” [p. 9]).
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“Of course,” because a complete exchange would be impossible: the possibility for exchange is a narrative fiction, a necessary ideal for forgetting that the narration is already mimesis.
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The hardships of mimesis are endemic. Even the “übrigen öffentlichen Musikleute” suffer from it: “Daher spielen sie auch aus dem Gedächtniss und greifen falsch mitunter, ja häufig” (p. 12).
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This phenomenon of “monologic” style is not restricted to Grillparzer. See, for instance, the article by Stephen M. Ross, “Voice in Narrative Texts: As I Lay Dying,” PMLA, 94 (1979), 300-310. Faulkner's novel is narrated by several “voices” which not only “perceive the same phenomena, but … employ the same metaphors to describe them” (p. 304). Ross attributes this univocality of narration to an intimated ulterior consciousness which is “constituted by voice rather than revealed by it”: “consciousness is the language used and shared by the narrators” (ibid.). Grillparzer is less concerned with consciousness than with the symbolic attitudes of his “notional” characters vis-à-vis the traditional “metaphysics” of meaning; representation is their language and constitutive consciousness.
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The six-numbered similar differences are not by any means intended to be complete or exhaustive, but only indicative of the kind of reading the text allows.
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Or the meaning of a word like “Ordnung” undergoes semantic torture: “Zweitens muß sich der Mensch in allen Dingen eine gewisse Ordnung festsetzen, sonst gerät er ins Wilde und Unaufhaltsame” (p. 11); “Kratzt der alte einmal wieder … und stört die ordentlichen Leuten in ihrer Nachtruhe” (p. 14); “… verdienen Sie kein Mitleid … wenn man so schwach ist, seine eigenen Sachen nicht in Ordnung halten zu können” (p. 49).
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Jakobson, “Closing Statement,” p. 275.
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See Jakobson again, p. 375, and compare Barthes, S/Z (1970), p. 97: “Le récit n'engendre pas le récit par extension métonymique (sauf à passer par le relais du désir), mais par alternance paradigmatique: le récit est déterminé non par un désir de raconter mais par un désir d'échanger: c'est un valant pour, un représentant, une monnaie, un pesant d'or. Ce qui rend compte de cette équivalence centrale, ce n'est pas le ‘plan’ … c'est [l] a structure.”
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Paul De Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (1971), p. 132.
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DAS, p. 5.
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Cf. Barthes, “Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits,” Communications 8 (1966).
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This peculiar redundancy is never more transparent than when the Spielmann trys to achieve a rhetorical effect the facts of the situation will simply not tolerate: “Die Verkäuferin mochte mir, wie gesagt, das alles erzählt haben, aber ich hörte nicht und stand regungslos” (p. 50). Again, it is the “Stillstand” the obstruction to sequence, that creates a dangerous pause for metonymic, narrative discourse. Narration is thus a self-interrogating and self-implicating discourse (“einsame Übungen” [p. 11]) that must forge elaborate questions to re-member intentionally forgotten answers: “Erinnern Sie mich auf einen Umstand, der schon früher meine Neugier rege machte!” (p. 10).
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Jakobson, “Closing Statement,” p. 375; “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Linguistic Disturbance” in Selected Writings, (1962-71), v. 2, p. 92.
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Ibid.
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Ibid.pp. 85-89.
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Ibid., p. 86.
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See A. R. Luria's remarks on amnestic aphasia in “Theory of Aphasia,” in Roman Jakobson, Echoes of His Scholarship, ed. D. Armstrong and C. H. van Schooneveld (1977), pp. 237-251: “Closer analysis shows, however, that underlying this symptom is not so much ‘forgetting’ of words and insufficiency of vocabulary but rather a SURPLUS of verbal denotations which may come to mind with equal probability and from which the patient cannot choose the one required.”
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Significantly, however, the Narrator can only attain this “Verbindungsweg” imaginatively; in the course of the story he never once sets foot on the other side of the bridge.
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Barthes' account of the descriptive properties of language (S/Z, p. 120), which I re-discovered after having written this section, is uniquely appropriate: “Le blason consiste à prédiquer un sujet unique, la beauté, d'un certain nombre d'attributes anatomiques … L'adjectif devient sujet et le substantif prédicat … La phrase ne peut jamais constituter un total; les sens peuvent s'égrener, non s'additioner: le total, le somme sont pour le nagage des terres promises [italics mine], entrevues au bout de l'énumération, mais cette énumération accomplie, aucun trait ne pe la rassambler …” Barthes would no doubt regard the Narrator's indulgence in this “Schlaraffenlande” of metaphor as a fleeting realization or re-territorialization of the dream and desire of language.
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The Narrator's inclination to willful blindness surfaces unmistakeably in a later passage where a second, significant “Stillstand” arrests momentarily the narrative sequence; and again, forgetfulness and in-difference are the essential ingredients of the experience: “Die Stille des Ortes, im Abstich der lärmenden Volksmenge, tat mir wohl, und mich verschiedenen Gedanken überlassend, an denen der alte Spielmann nicht den letzten Anteil hatte … Ich hatte die Hausnummer glücklich vergessen, auch war in der Dunkelheit an das Erkennen irgendeiner Bezeichnung kaum zu denken … Ich stand stille” (p. 14).
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In a sense, these words are prophetic of the deconstruction of the Narrator's point of view to come (“aus dem Rahmen des Buches entsprungen”).
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Provocative and persuasive are Victor Shklovsky's thoughts on sentimentality in “A Parodying Novel: Sterne's Tristram Shandy,” in Russian Formalist Criticism, ed. and trans. by Lee T.Lemon and Marion Reis (1965), p. 79ff.: “Sentimentality cannot be the content of art if for no other reason than that art does not have a separable content. The representation of things from ‘the sentimental point of view’ is a special method of representation … In its essence art is outside emotion … ‘Gore’ in art is not gory, it rhymes with ‘amor’ …”
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Respective discourses can be assigned different exchange values in like manner: metaphorical-discourse is satisfied by qualitative change (“die Nota sensibilis hinaufsteigt wie eine erfüllte Hoffnung” [p. 25]); metonymical-discourse requires quantitative change, total expropriation (“ein vorteilhaftes Geschäft” [p. 56]; original-discourse sets only one condition: equivalence of exchange (“So viel habe ich gehabt, so viel bring ich zurück.” [p. 48]).
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Barthes' brilliant reminder is apt here: “On en revient une fois de plus à la dure loi de la communication humaine: l'originel [italics mine] n'est lui-même que la plus plate des langues et c'est par excès de pauvreté, non de richesse, que nous parlons d'ineffable. Or c'est avec ce premier langage, ce nommé, ce trop-nommé, que la literature doit se debattre … On entend souvent dire que l'art a pour charge d'exprimer l'inexprimable: c'est le contraire qu'il faut dire (sans nulle intention de paradoxe): toute la tâche de l'art est d'inexprimer l'exprimable, d'enlever à la langue du monde, qui est la pauvre et puissante langue des passions, une parole autre, une parole exacte” (from the preface to Essais Critiques, [1964], p. 14).
Bruce Thompson (excerpt date 1981)
SOURCE: “Poetry and Prose,” in Franz Grillparzer, Twayne Publishers, 1981, pp. 80-94.[In the following excerpt, Thompson contrasts Grillparzer's two works of short fiction, Der arme Spielmannand Das Kloster bei Sendomir.]
In view of the fact that Grillparzer regarded poetry so much more highly than prose, it is more surprising that he should have written creatively in prose at all, than that he should have made only two contributions to the most popular genre of the nineteenth century in Germany, the shorter prose narrative. Grillparzer's two short stories, Das Kloster bei Sendomir and Der arme Spielmann, are dissimilar in content and atmosphere, and have also had markedly contrasting receptions. The former, published in 1827, has been generally regarded as a minor work and has received scant critical attention, but the latter, published in 1847, has been the subject of numerous critical studies, and has been acclaimed as one of the masterpieces in the history of the German Novelle. Both works are deeply rooted in Grillparzer's personal experience, treating respectively two of the dominant passions of his life, namely, love and devotion to his art. The autobiographical element is here even more than usually prominent, and it has been seen as the principal reason for Grillparzer's retreat in these two particular cases into the more protective form of prose narrative.1
With the sensational and improbable character of its subjectmatter, its atmosphere of tension and mystery, its lack of detailed characterization, and its violent, melodramatic conclusion, Das Kloster bei Sendomir [The Monastery of Sendomir] recalls aspects of Romantic horror literature, and Kleistian and Hoffmannesque qualities have been detected in it, both stylistic and atmospheric. Grillparzer had thus returned to the kind of material that had produced Die Ahnfrau, and to a genre that had really run its course. Yet it is a powerful story of dark passions and violence, treating the themes of adultery and murder, and presents a disturbing picture of an ill-fated marriage.
The story is narrated by a mysterious monk, who turns out to be the central character Starschensky, a Polish count who is lured into marrying a woman of voluptuous beauty called Elga, who accosts him at night on the streets of Warsaw. Though Elga is no prostitute in the technical sense, but the daughter of an impoverished nobleman, she ensnares Starschensky, who duly marries her and rescues her father from his precarious financial position. The couple settle down on Starschensky's estate and a daughter is born, but it is not long before their domestic harmony is disturbed. There are reports that a dark figure has been visiting the house at night, and Starschensky finds among Elga's possessions a portrait of her cousin Oginsky, which bears a strong resemblance to the child. The suspicious Starschensky returns to Warsaw, and inquiries reveal that Elga and Oginsky did indeed have a previous love affair. Later he reappears at home accompanied by a hooded figure whom he locks in a disused tower on the estate. In the final melodramatic scene Starschensky reveals to Elga that the figure is Oginsky himself, who has confessed to the paternity of the child. Oginsky flees, but Starschensky cuts Elga down with his sword and sets fire to the tower. Later he establishes a monastery near the site, becomes a monk, and does nightly penance for his monstrous crime.
Conceived as early as 1820, Das Kloster was based originally on Grillparzer's relationship with Charlotte, Oginsky's flight and Starschensky's violent revenge apparently representing Grillparzer's judgment on his own adultery with his cousin's wife. Yet the story was largely written in 1825, when Grillparzer had fallen under the spell of Marie and was already harboring suspicions about her character. Moreover, it is told from the viewpoint of the deceived Starschensky, rather than from that of the treacherous Oginsky, who remains a shadowy figure. Thus, as Douglas Yates has pointed out, the situation anticipates with uncanny accuracy Grillparzer's circumstances in 1826, when he felt himself betrayed by his friend Daffinger, who turned out to be the father of Marie's child.
Starschensky's story is narrated by himself, but in the third person so that he achieves a degree of objectivity about his own fate. His story is presented with sympathy, but also critically. Starschensky comes to Warsaw as an “innocent,” having led a solitary existence and having had little contact with women, but this was due to his own love of independence and isolation. Thus he is particularly susceptible to Elga's charms, as she virtually seduces him into marrying her.4 She takes the initiative in their physical relations, then tantalizes him by keeping him at a distance. When they are married, she indulges in a life of expensive pleasure-seeking. Yet Starschensky is still blissfully happy with her, blinded by passion, a victim both of his own naiveté and of this dangerously alluring creature. But though she is in some ways a forerunner of the coquettish Rahel of Die Jüdin von Toledo, no character in Grillparzer's work is reduced to such a level of cynical inhumanity as is Elga in the final nightmarish scene. This scene brings the work closest to some of Kleist's stories, when Starschensky threatens Elga with death, but indicates that he will spare her if she will kill the child. Elga at first protests, but soon she agrees in order to save her own life. But, before she can murder the child, Starschensky reveals that this was a trick, a test of her humanity, which she has failed, so he kills her nevertheless. In Elga the instinct for self-preservation has outweighed the instinct of maternal love; in Starschensky reason has become tainted with jealous passion, and the result is a cruelly difficult test of Elga's integrity, followed by brutal revenge. Perhaps a Kleistian Elga would have made an intuitive leap in the dark and perceived the meaning of Starschensky's test, but in Grillparzer's story there is no such salvation for the characters.
Just as Starschensky has been able to objectify his story through the medium of third-person narrative, so too has Grillparzer, through Starschensky, presented his own situation at an even greater distance. He has also exaggerated and distorted his experiences, translating his own pain, self-criticism, and, above all, his fears concerning both the nature of Marie and his own potential reaction, into a fictional situation. …
Grillparzer's second prose work, Der arme Spielmann [The Poor Musician], was begun in 1831, but not completed until about 1842. It is a more mature work than Das Kloster, but again a major problem concerns the relationship between author and subject, and the story has alarming implications for Grillparzer's misgiving concerning the value of his own art. The most immediately striking feature of the work is the framework which has been constructed round the central story of the musician. This takes up over a third of the work and is more elaborate than that used in his previous story. Like Starschensky, the musician gives his own account of himself, though here in the more usual form of first-person narrative. Yet Grillparzer again distances himself from his subject, in this case by interposing between reader and musician a narrator, a dramatist like himself, as though to discourage any assumption that the musician is simply a projection of Grillparzer's own self.
The narrator first notices the musician playing his violin to the crowds near the Augarten on the occasion of a popular festival, and the two have a brief conversation. Later that evening he listens to him from the street below as he plays in his room in the Leopoldstadt. But the musician's story is not told until the narrator actually visits him a few days later. Through the narrator's eagerness to get to know him Grillparzer convinces us that he is a case worth investigating. The impression received is that of an eccentric curiosity, for there is a striking element of incongruity in the musician's appearance and behavior. He stands alongside a group of beggar musicians, yet his dress and manner suggest a genteel and educated background, and he is serenely oblivious to his lowly surroundings. But his music is the most remarkable aspect of him. He is engrossed in his performance, which gives him obvious pleasure, and the sheet music on the stand before him suggests a more professional approach than that taken by the majority of his kind. Indeed, he tells the narrator that he practices daily difficult compositions by the best composers. Yet what he produces is a disconnected sequence of sounds without melody or rhythm, a confusion unrecognizable as belonging to any particular piece of music and which is even painful to the ear.
Thus far the musician has remained a mystery to the narrator and it is only by having him tell his own story that he can get close to the truth about him.2 As suggested by his appearance, the musician has indeed known better days, and his story constitutes a pathetic record of failure. Dull and painstakingly slow at his lessons, he becomes estranged from his father, who is an influential and ambitious man, and who obviously tries to forget his son's existence. He is given a menial copying job in the chancellery, and at home he leads a narrow and solitary life. When his father dies, he unexpectedly finds himself a rich man, but he imprudently entrusts his wealth to a rogue and is quickly ruined. This apparently empty and fruitless life is enriched by one engrossing experience, from which springs his passion for music. One evening he hears a girl in the courtyard below his room sing a song which entrances him, and which he finds he can play on the violin, an instrument he has not touched since childhood. The singer is a grocer's daughter, Barbara, and with timidity and embarrassment he seeks her acquaintance, initially to obtain the score of the song. She treats him with disdain, and when he visits her father's shop she ignores him. But, with the encouragement of her father, the visit is repeated, and gradually she begins to tolerate him. She even seems not to exclude the possibility of marriage when she advises him to take a shop, which she will help him run. Only when his financial ruin is discovered does she dismiss him, to marry a butcher whose proposal she had hitherto rejected. As for the musician, he is left to play his music and to give lessons to Barbara's children.
While the facts of the musician's story partly satisfy the narrator's curiosity, the story itself raises fundamental questions concerning our assessment of the man and his “music.” He emerges from the story as a pathetic and occasionally absurd character, but though he is outwardly incompetent, there is no doubting either the honesty of his intentions or his moral integrity. In his office-job he works so slowly that he is thought to be lazy, yet this is because he is a perfectionist. His love for his father is such that instead of protesting against the harsh treatment that he suffers, he feels he should apologize for causing his father trouble. He allows himself to be cheated of his wealth, never imagining that not all possess the same honesty as himself. He has a decency that is occasionally misplaced or exaggerated, and that is literally too good for the world in which he lives. That his moral standards are not those of his fellowmen is suggested by the symbolic chalk line that he draws across the room to separate his own territory from that of the other lodgers. The order and cleanliness of his sector contrast with the disorder and dirt of theirs, but it is significant that whereas he observes the division, they do not. It is a one-sided and futile arrangement, from which he cannot profit in any practical sense, and there is a clear distinction between his interpretation of the situation and actuality. He is one of life's innocents lacking the practical fiber and judgment necessary for survival.
Eventually it is his lack of judgment that leads to his death, which occurs about a year after the musician's narration of his story, and which conveniently completes the framework and rounds off the work. It is set in February 1830, at the time of Vienna's great flood, and the Leopoldstadt is a major disaster area. Fearing for the musician's welfare, the narrator returns there to offer him assistance, only to discover that he has perished. He had behaved heroically, rescuing children from the flood, but it was not this that killed him. He died of a cold caught when he had gone back in foolhardy fashion to save his landlord's tax returns. Both actions were undertaken in the same spirit of selfless generosity, but in the exercise of his virtue he failed to discriminate between a matter of life and death and a triviality.3
The musician's inadequacies are most cruelly exposed in his relationship with Barbara. When they first become acquainted in the chancellery, where she sells refreshments, she asks for a piece of paper on which to place her cakes, a casual request, but he goes to ridiculous lengths to please her. Instead of simply taking a piece from the office, which he dare not do, he fetches a whole quire of paper from his home a few days later, a response which is well-meaning and which serves to further the acquaintanceship, but which at face value is absurdly inappropriate. From the reader's viewpoint the relationship seems a particularly humiliating one for the musician, for Barbara scolds him incessantly for his clumsiness and general ineptitude, showing us exactly what marriage to her would have been like for him. Yet the reader can detect in Barbara signs of genuine affection for him. When they part, she is emotionally distressed, and at the close of the work she is seen weeping over his memory. Clearly she senses something of value in his nature and character, yet at the same time she is exasperated that he is so weak, gullible, impractical, and effeminate. The musician is both saint and fool, a paradox which is reflected in the ambivalence of Barbara's feelings toward him.
It is possible that Grillparzer is offering through his presentation of the musician's unhappy fate a comment on the unscrupulous harshness of his own materialistic world, and we can despair that one so pure in soul becomes an outcast and beggar. The implication is that sterner qualities are required for survival in an unsympathetic world, qualities which the musician does not possess. Yet if he did possess them, he would lose something of his essential nobility. A similarly ironic combination of nobility of character and impracticality has been observed in the portraits of Bancbanus and Bishop Gregor, but in Der arme Spielmann greater emphasis is placed on the hero's inadequacies. He has been justly identified as one of the first true anti-heroes of nineteenth-century literature. One incident in particular, which stands at the center of the story, suggests that the blame for his failure rests more with his own character and personality than with society. This occurs at the climax of his relationship with Barbara when he attempts to embrace her for the only time. Her response is to strike him hard on the face, but then to kiss him lightly on the cheek. She then flees from him, and as she shuts the glass door in his face, he returns her kiss by pressing his lips passionately against the glass. The emotions that prompt Barbara's contradictory actions here are clearly identifiable. The blow represents a spontaneous reaction, her genuine anger at what she regards as an impertinence. Her kiss is only a fleeting gesture of remorse, in no sense an expression of love. Yet the musician is thrown into ecstasies by the blow, and the memory of the kiss still brings tears to his eyes. His reaction is wholly inappropriate, for he invests in each of her actions a significance that is out of all proportion with reality. The gulf between reality and his own private view is symbolized by the glass which separates him and Barbara and in his ineffectual and grotesquely ridiculous attempt at a kiss. The incident both highlights his inadequacies as a man and suggests a profound division between himself and his fellow beings.
The musician's feelings for Barbara in themselves are also somewhat problematic. That this is no simple love story is suggested by the absence of any confession of love on his part. Nor is there any indication that he finds Barbara beautiful. Indeed, his colleagues find her pock-marked and generally unattractive, an opinion which he does not dispute. What does attract him is her song. It is the song that he finds beautiful, and it is his desire to possess the score of it that leads him to Barbara's home. It is when he finds her singing it that he attempts to embrace her; it is the song that he teaches to her elder child, that he plays after concluding his story, and that has retained its beauty for him over the years. The song thus possesses a unique significance for him and exercises over him a frightening demonic power. On the other hand, it affords him an ecstatic pleasure and is the only piece of music that he can play with any success. Indeed, he feels divinely inspired when he first plays it; it surpasses Bach and Mozart and provides access to God. When he dies, he smiles, as though he can hear something beautiful far away. It is thus arguable that his music has brought him close to “the divine source of truth and beauty,”4 providing his life with spiritual and aesthetic riches which it would otherwise have lacked, and which transcend the ephemeral values of reality.
Yet if the musician's ears are attuned to some loftier ideal realm, he is unable to demonstrate this, for in that it fails to communicate anything of the feeling that has inspired the performer, his music is artistically worthless. The pleasure that he finds in his song is entirely private, for both to the narrator and to Barbara it sounds just like any ordinary popular song. Moreover, although he claims to have a serious artistic mission, he is totally unsuccessful in performance. Because he lacks the ability to communicate, to “perform” the ecstasy he feels, value cannot be ascribed to it in any absolute sense.5Der arme Spielmann underlines the fact that the power of the artist's vision is without value for others if it is not translated into intelligible art. As Grillparzer himself insisted, the basis of every art is craftsmanship, and any would-be artist who does not possess this quality is an incompetent, a Stümper (SB I, 14, 73). The musician's aesthetic experience may have significance for himself, but it is for his own pleasure alone. His devotion to his art and the evidence of the ecstasy that he derives from this are indicative of the capacity of art for the enrichment of life, but in that his art takes him into a private world which he cannot share with others, it is sterile. The gulf between the musician and reality, which exists in any case because of his shortcomings as a human being, is accentuated by the privacy of his art. Thus, although he has given his own subjective account of his story, we have still not got to the bottom of the mystery, for his deepest secret, the pleasure which he takes in his music, has remained impenetrable.
It is not without significance that Der arme Spielmann was completed at a time when Grillparzer's doubts as to the validity of his own art had reached a critical stage. The autobiographical element in this story is strong, and in an exaggerated and distorted fashion the portrait of the musician does reflect Grillparzer's relationship with his father, with Kathi Fröhlich, his own devotion to his art, and his tortured self-doubts both as man and artist.6 If his earlier artist-figure Sappho also expressed Grillparzer's awareness of the gulf separating the artist from life, at least the value of her art was not questioned. But the value of the musician's art is questioned, and precisely because, in the true sense of the word, he is no artist. At most, he can represent Grillparzer's deepest fears as to the image that he himself might present to his unappreciative public. He is a distortion of the unsuccessful artist, and a warning of the dangers of an over-subjective, Romantic attitude to art. But he is also a forerunner of some of the sickly and decadent artist-figures of Thomas Mann, such as Detlev Spinell of Tristan, who enjoys the most exquisite, but uncommunicable private aesthetic experiences. In Grillparzer's musician's devotion to his song we may see an anticipation of the exclusive aestheticism and rarefied idealism that was to become such a cult at the turn of the century.
Notes
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W. Paulsen, “Grillparzers Erzählkunst,” Germanic Review 19 (1944): 59-68.
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R. Brinkmann, “Der arme Spielmann,” Wirklichkeit und Illusion (Tübingen, 1957), pp. 87-145, argues that despite Grillparzer's attempts to provide an objective, truthful depiction of the musician, he can only achieve a subjective account, whether from the narrator's or from the musician's own perspective.
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A point made by Benno von Wiese, “Der arme Spielmann,” Die deutsche Novelle (Düsseldorf, 1969), I, 147.
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E. E. Papst, ed., Der arme Spielmann (London, 1960), p. xxvi.
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J. P. Stern, Re-interpretations (London, 1964), writes: “What emerges as the sole positive value is … not the art which he has so faithfully ‘practised’ for a lifetime. … What emerges at the end … is the intention and the pure heart alone, the disembodied good will as the absolute and only value” (p. 72).
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As argued by Papst, Spielmann, p. xx.
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‘Der arme Spielmann’ and the Role of Compromise in Grillparzer's Work
Relocating the Author: A New Perspective on the Narrator in Der arme Spielmann