SOURCE: “Grillparzer's ‘Der arme Spielmann,’” in The German Quarterly, Vol. XLV, No. 4, November, 1972, pp. 662-83.

Grillparzer's story Der arme Spielmann¹ has long been regarded as one of his best works,² and its popularity even seems to be increasing; since 1964 no fewer than ten interpretations of the story have appeared, a remarkable number in such a short period.³ Most interpretations have been concerned almost exclusively with the figure of the Spielmann, so that an evaluation of the story has seemed to be much the same thing as an evaluation of the Spielmann, and the question as to how we should understand the story has seemed to be identical with the question of how we should view the Spielmann.⁴ Very often there has been a strong biographical slant in this criticism, so that the Spielmann has been identified in certain crucial respects as Grillparzer himself. “Der arme Spielmann ist Grillparzers offenstes Geständnis,” said Alker in 1925,⁵ a position adopted by many critics subsequently. The biographical identification, whether true or false, is of little use for criticism of the story; even granted that this were in some sense a confession, so are most works of literature in the same sense, and the critical question still remains to be considered: what kind of human experience is represented in the story, and how relevant is that experience to its readers? Even granted we knew what the Spielmann meant to Grillparzer, our analysis of the story as a work of literature must proceed from what he communicated in it; it is more relevant to take the Spielmann as a challenge for the reader than as a self-image by Grillparzer.

Since critical examinations of the story centered for the most part on the personality of the Spielmann himself, very little attention was given to its other important character, the narrator; indeed, he was rarely recognized as a character at all. This was an important omission, for almost a third of the text precedes the Spielmann's story, and this section is largely devoted to the narrator's talking about himself, his attitudes to the Spielmann, to the “Volksfest,” and to other things. Klein's plot summary⁶ avoids these expressions of his attitudes on the part of the narrator, while Bennett's account minimizes the existence of the story's long introduction.⁷ This neglect of the function of so obtrusive a narrator is again partly to be traced to the biographical identification of narrator and Spielmann as two sides of Grillparzer;⁸ once more, this identification is irrelevant to (and deflects attention from) the critical question of the nature and function of the juxtaposition of the two figures in the story.

Only a few recent critics (for example, Brinkmann, Swales and Politzer) have examined the position taken in Der arme Spielmann by the narrator, yet the value of their studies lies more in individual perceptions about specific parts of the text than in the emergence of any comprehensive view of the function of the narrator. Brinkmann's painstaking discussion of narration in the story is mainly concerned with the literary historical category of realism, and as a result treats narration as a technical rather than thematic element in the text.⁹ Equating author and narrator,¹⁰ he investigates only the question of the objectivity or subjectivity of the narrator's transmission of the story to the reader, not the function of the narrator's highly specific character in its system of values.

Swales and Politzer are the only critics so far to have taken the first step towards an investigation of the narrator's intrusion into his story by according him full status as a character in it, with his own reactions (not necessarily ours or the story's taken as a whole) to the Spielmann. Swales concludes that the narrator is ambivalent about the Spielmann, part of him wishing to identify with the old man while he also feels the need to defend against this identification as against a weakness.¹¹ But the Spielmann's own direct narrative already makes the reader ambivalent about him in just the same way, for there too we feel drawn to and exasperated by him; can the space and emphasis devoted by the text to the narrator's personality be considered justifiable if this contributes nothing that we do not already feel without him? A view which attributes so little function to so much text must remain unsatisfying. Politzer's account of the function of the narrator also has its problems; for when he abstracts the thematic point that the narrator, unlike the Spielmann, undergoes a “Verwandlung” through genuine “Begegnung” with another person at the end of the story in his encounter with Barbara, and thus that communication with another human being makes an impact on him,¹² we must surely agree with his reviewer¹³ who points out that the text's ending contains no trace of all this. All the reader sees is the narrator's probing a sensitive spot in Barbara and looking without comment at the results, Barbara's tears, which he might easily have predicted. The function of the narrator must be derived not from non-existent material at the end of the story, but instead largely from the wealth of material in the first third of the text.

Though the Spielmann has often been said to be a problematic character, there are at least some important ways in which he is not. Much that is factual about him is not in any doubt; he tells his own story very openly, and there seems no reason to fear that he deliberately conceals anything from us. We do not feel that there are any secrets about him, or that we need further information and reports on more of his experiences; nothing new seems to be required to complete our picture of him. There seems also to be little difficulty in summing up and conceptualizing all that we know of his personality. I do not mean that there have not been misconceptions: when, for example, a critic asserts that the Spielmann's failures are compulsive, or another that he inhabits the ideal world of music, both seem to give insufficient weight to the fact that he is always shown to be genuinely simple-minded and incompetent;¹⁴this amply-demonstrated fact allows us neither to postulate a deep-seated efficiency behind it all, nor a world inside his head that can be thought of in terms of a communicable value like music. But these misconceptions are certainly very easy to clear up, and the available features of the text which show them to be misconceptions are extremely plentiful and obvious. Again, while one might take either a positive or negative view of the Spielmann, depending perhaps on one's taste,¹⁵ there will be little disagreement as to the nature of the positive and negative sides of Jakob on which the whole judgment would be based; its ingredients are not obscure. His main characteristic is a lack of a certain kind of judgment and competence, a simple-mindedness visible both in his dealings with others, and in his abilities whether musical or otherwise. This makes him defenseless in his human contacts, and renders him of little practical value to anyone else, whether as musician or provider. But this defect has attendant advantages. Because he is without suspicion, he is also entirely without malice; because he cannot conceive of others being dishonest, he is himself entirely honest; and because he cannot recognize self-seekingness in others, he is entirely generous. Above all, because he is not in the least competitive, and because his ability to recognize the difference between good and bad playing is so limited, he is entirely without pose or pretensions; his most noticeable feature is his complete sincerity in his music and in his relations with others. As far as his happiness is concerned, he is almost without ability to produce or preserve situations which will make for his security and happiness, but is possessed of a remarkable ability to be happy with what he has. It is by no means certain, therefore, that he does not have a happier life than his more gifted father and brothers. To them, achievement meant so much that they could not be happy without it. Paradoxically, then, although Jakob seems to be exceptionally vulnerable in the world, he is in one sense invulnerable too; and in that sense his competitive family are very fragile indeed. His father is so vulnerable to a decline in his influence that a stroke, and death, result. One brother makes too ambitious a wager, and dies; the other chooses exile to escape the consequences of a dishonest attempt to harm a competitor. The Spielmann, on the other hand, survives them all, and appears to experience great happiness in his playing. The question remains of the real human value of happiness which depends on the reduction of one's horizons to this extent. But that, once more, is a problem for the reader; and its uncertainty is not caused by any uncertainty as to the facts of the Spielmann's existence. It is not necessary to quarrel, as critics in the past have done, over whether he is or is not a saint; we can simply say that it is natural that he should seem so to the “Gärtnerin” at the end (264) of the story, though we should usually reserve the use of such a word for one who displays the attractive features of the Spielmann without these features being produced by, and thus dependent on, his simple-mindedness.

So much for the characteristics of the Spielmann; but if as the central character he is perfectly comprehensible from his own story, then what can be the reason for the well-developed narrative framework? For it cannot change what we know of the Spielmann. I am, of course, assuming here that the Spielmann's story is indeed his own, in his own words. One critic, Brinkmann, does not share this assumption, believing that the Spielmann's story is colored by its being retold by the narrator. The narrator's emphasis and bias would have crept into the direct speech of the Spielmann after all, and on such a view we should (though Brinkmann does not draw this conclusion) need the narrative framework in order to evaluate the Spielmann, since it would be a key to the kind of bias which has been at work in the retelling of the old man's story. But there is no need for this conclusion. Brinkmann argues from such factors as the feat of memory required for the narrator to remember the Spielmann's story word for word after two years,¹⁶ but overlooks the fact that this is one of those literary conventions without which fiction would be impossible. Direct speech in a work of fiction could never be given its full value if we did not accept the convention of the long memory of storytellers, just as theater is impossible without the acceptance of such conventions as the curtain, soliloquies, and so on. And so our question remains: given that the Spielmann presents himself fully enough, why the long preamble to his story? If with Jungbluth we want to call this device of two “Ich-Erzähler” a “raffinierter Trick,” we have condemned it as an ingenious piece of irrelevance;¹⁷ and if, with biographical critics, we say that Grillparzer here presents aspects of himself, we have still not considered their relevance to the Spielmann. Least of all can one agree with Stern that “the narrator's taciturnity about himself is one of its [the story's] minor triumphs,” or that in the narrator's introduction there is established a laconic mode “with a sparseness, an economy of means rarely achieved elsewhere in German narrative prose.”¹⁸ These judgments seem most inappropriate to a text which is remarkable for precisely the reverse, a conspicuous presence of the narrator's personality, achieved by a particularly lengthy and digressive introduction to the story of the Spielmann.

If we are to take seriously this large part of the text as relevant to the whole, it would seem unavoidable to consider the contribution it makes in presenting the narrator as one of the two main characters of the story. He is not presented to us through the events of his life story as the Spielmann is, but nonetheless becomes a distinct character in his own right through the attitudes he strikes, the emphases of the descriptions he offers us, and on occasion through his direct comment on himself. From the very beginning of the story we must constantly evaluate what he says, and build up an impression of him. When, for example, he professes to a love for the common people, it is not enough to take this as a simple fact, to be accepted at face value and then passed over. The fact that the assertion is made so directly and explicitly is important, and we must consider both why the narrator raises the issue, and whether his actions are consistent with his claim.¹⁹ Yet none of these questions is worth raising except in the context of the thematic structure of the whole story.

That there is something in these opening pages to which we instinctively react negatively seems clear; Alker, for example, found them a blemish on the story, badly and dilettantishly written.²⁰ Unlike many later critics, Alker allowed himself a direct response here, and yet his critical framework was inadequate to deal with it; what is unpleasant in these pages must be attributed not to the author's bad craftsmanship, but to the projection of an unpleasant character on the part of the narrator; and the particular kind of unpleasantness turns out to be very relevant to the Spielmann.²¹

The narrator begins his story by describing the July “Volksfest” in Vienna:

In Wien ist der Sonntag nach dem Vollmonde im Monat Juli jedes Jahres samt dem darauffolgenden Tage ein eigentliches Volksfest, wenn je ein Fest diesen Namen verdient hat. Das Volk besucht es und gibt es selbst; und wenn Vornehmere dabei erscheinen, so können sie es nur in ihrer Eigenschaft als Glieder des Volks. Da ist keine Möglichkeit der Absonderung; wenigstens vor einigen Jahren noch war keine. (225)

Two pages later the narrator follows this with the assertion that “Ich versäume nicht leicht, diesem Feste beizuwohnen” (227). But this turns out not to be the case,²² for he is very easily diverted from the festival by the sight of the Spielmann; and even when he loses the Spielmann he simply goes home instead of back to the festival. This is only one of the things said by the narrator which either immediately rings false, or turns out to be so in the light of later events. The rather self-conscious reference to the “Volk,” with the immediately following introduction of class-awareness in the word “vornehm” distances the narrator from the people rather than shows his feeling for them; the choice of word in contrast to “Volk” is one suggesting superiority and refinement, and the resulting impression is of condescension to the inferior “Volk” by a man conscious of his own status as “Vornehmer,” the pose of an aristocrat whose appreciation of a certain quaintness of the common people depends on his being quite safe from the realities of their life. These suspicions, derived from the tone of the first sentence, are confirmed in what comes later. There is a great deal of “Absonderung,” no visible dropping of class barriers, and no levelling of human beings, in the description of what happens on the way to the festival:

Schon mischen sich einzelne Equipagen der Vornehmeren in den oft unterbrochenen Zug. Die Wagen fliegen nicht mehr. Bis endlich fünf bis sechs Stunden vor Nacht die einzelnen Pferdeund Kutschen-Atome sich zu einer kompakten Reihe verdichten, die, sich selber hemmend und durch Zufahrende aus allen Quergassen gehemmt, das alte Sprichwort: Besser schlecht gefahren, als zu Fuße gegangen, offenbar zu Schanden macht. Begafft, bedauert, bespottet, sitzen die geputzten Damen in den scheinbar stille stehenden Kutschen. (226)

The narrator's description is concerned more than anything else with social levels. The “vornehme Damen” are as separate from the crowd as they could be, and description of the attitude to them of the people emphasizes that distance. The people behave as the “Vornehme” would expect them to, i.e. badly, thus allowing them a comfortable feeling of their own superiority.²³ The narrator goes on to reinforce this by a description of the “schreiende Weiber-und Kinderbevölkerung des Plebejer-Fuhrwerks” (226). There are here many pairs of words of opposite emotional force. “Plebejer” is as negative a word for the people as “Vornehme” was positive; the “Damen” of the latter correspond to the “Weiber” of the former, and while one group sits proudly and quietly on display, the other is “schreiend.” The narrator himself in his language is producing that very “Absonderung” the lack of which he professes to find so valuable a feature of his favorite festival. The narrator may claim (225) that “Der Unterschied der Stände ist verschwunden,” but it never disappears from his own consciousness or from the scene as he describes it. He separates himself from the people, remains always distant from them, and develops an interest in the Spielmann only after having heard him utter a piece of Latin: “Der Mann hatte also eine sorgfältigere Erziehung genossen, sich Kenntnisse eigen gemacht, und nun ein Bettelmusikant!” (229). The apparent move down the social scale is what attracts the narrator's attention, not the Spielmann's more evident (and more interesting) strangeness as a violinist. The phrase “sich Kenntnisse eigen gemacht” is an interesting key to the narrator's system of values too; education and knowledge is a possession of the privileged class, of which he too is a member. Throughout the story, the narrator is never really impressed by anything which represents the culture of the Viennese people as a whole. On the other hand, he is very impressed by the mention of Jakob's father, “Der Einflußreiche, der Mächtige” (238). And when Jakob gives the narrator his address, the latter responds to the information that it is “im ersten Stocke” with “‘I der That,’ rief ich ‘im Stockwerke der Vornehmen?’” (232). By contrast, the narrator's references to the people are always pejorative; they are noisy and “genußlechzend” (228), and he is pleased to be away from them: “Die Stille des Ortes, im Abstich der lärmenden Volksmenge, that mir wohl” (233). As one who claims to be a lover of the people, the narrator is simply an impostor, and his lack of sincerity is well shown in the exaggerated tenor of his claim to be one:

Als ein leidenschaftlicher Liebhaber der Menschen, vorzüglich des Volkes, so daß mir selbst als dramatischem Dichter der rückhaltlose Ausbruch eines überfüllten Schauspielhauses immer zehnmal interessanter, ja belehrender war, als das zusammengeklügelte Urteil eines an Leib und Seele verkrüppelten, von dem Blut ausgesogener Autoren spinnenartig aufgeschwollenen literarischen Matadors;—als ein Liebhaber der Menschen, sage ich, 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, ja, der Gott—als einem solchen ist mir jedes Volksfest ein eigentliches Seelenfest, eine Wallfahrt, eine Andacht. (227)²⁴

Both the tone of the passage, and its contradiction by all that the narrator says and does, inicate that this alleged love of the people is a pretentious artistocratic pose; only while safe from them, and feeling superior to them, can the narrator indulge it.

Yet this is only one example of the falseness of the narrator's claims about himself. Consider, for example, his claim to have an “anthropologischen Heißhunger” (229), or a “psychologische Neugierde” (265). Does the narrator show any real curiosity about or concern with other human beings, any desire to understand them? Again, his language is interesting. He refers to his meeting with the Spielmann not as something instructive, but as an “Abenteuer” (229). It is true that he is curious about Barbara and about the Spielmann, but it seems less the intellectual curiosity of the student of human nature than the kind of curiosity which we think of as prying into other people's affairs. He is always remote from both, and without any of that sympathy for them which would be necessary for him to begin to understand them. I am not here making the point that he is a neutral observer, since I believe that this is not the case;²⁵ on the contrary, the narrator shows a most unsympathetic attitude. When he leaves the Spielmann for the last time (262) while the old man is still playing his violin, the narrator's remarks are extremely cold: “Endlich hatte ich's satt, stand auf, legte ein paar Silberstücke auf den nebenstehenden Tisch und ging, während der Alte eifrig immer fortgeigte.” There is no farewell, no expression of sympathy or concern, but instead only the very unsympathetic “hatte ich's satt,” and the cold gesture of leaving some coins, as if to pay for his entertainment. Here, as elsewhere, the narrator never enters into the world of the Spielmann and his violin, instead recording his impatience with it. When going home after his first meeting (234) with the Spielmann, the narrator rather self-righteously congratulates himself on his (as opposed to the Spielmann's) “Phantasieren” being something that disturbs no one. That the old man's playing is a disturbance is clear, but the narrator prefers to emphasize this side of the matter rather than that his violin playing is for the old man something very precious. There are a large number of such ungenerous, impatient responses to the Spielmann and his playing, which grate on the reader for their obsessive denigration of the Spielmann; they gradually become a gratuitous harping on what we already know. Even his report on Barbara—that she could never have been beautiful—concentrates on the ridiculous side of the Spielmann, and unnecessarily, since the old man had told us as much already (243). Likewise, the narrator's off-hand remark on Barbara's tune (“gemütlich, übrigens gar nicht ausgezeichnet” [241]) seems, however justified by the nature of the tune, to concentrate on the negative side—it is after all the tune's associations that make it distinctive for the Spielmann. Even against the background of his earlier behavior, his action at the end of the story is extraordinary. He visits Barbara, as he admits, out of curiosity, but ostensibly to attempt to buy Jakob's violin. Predictably, the request reduces Barbara to tears; and then the narrator goes away, having satisfied his curiosity. He has probed Barbara's response to a considerable provocation and wounded her in the process. This is wanton self-gratification; a pursuit of entertainment rather than of knowledge of humanity. The narrator is frequently careless and inconsiderate in his dealing with the Spielmann. His offer of money, to the end, is always as from benefactor to beggar, though the Spielmann had early in the story shown his sensitivity on this score (230 and 233); his pride demands that he accept money only as a fee for his performance. The narrator's attempt to elicit the old man's story is clumsy and demeaning; clumsy, in his baldly announcing that he is “nach Ihrer Geschichte lüstern” (237), and demeaning, in that his mentioning the Spielmann's display of Latin erudition allows the old man to see that it is his fall to the level of a beggar that interests the narrator. Such instances could be multiplied, and together they show that the narrator has no interest in or ability to enter into the world of other people. He refers to the people on occasion as a “Haufen,” or a “Menschenwall” (229), and even the Spielmann is said, in a phrase whose overtones show his deeper attitudes to lesser categories of human being, to be “barhäuptig und kahlköpfig … nach Art dieser Leute” (228). His real interests lie in gratifying his idle curiosity, and in projecting a self-congratulatory image greatly at variance with reality.

The question must now arise: how is this personality relevant to the Spielmann? And the answer must surely lie in the fact that the narrator is shown to be the very opposite of the Spielmann. If the Spielmann's outstanding characteristic is his utter sincerity, that of the narrator is his complete lack of it, his incessant posturing and posing, his self-deception and pretense, even pretentiousness. The Spielmann is his opposite in every way, never worrying about social class, and being happy with any human being of whatever rank. He is concerned with other people, and respects them; he is saddened by their unhappiness, and always tries to be helpful, however inefficiently. The narrator, on the other hand, is always distant from everyone in the story, is insensitive to the Spielmann and his world, or to that of the common people around him, gratuitously hurts the feelings of the people he meets, and never shows a sign of regret at having done so. The Spielmann is so generous in his estimate of other people that he even thinks well of his father, in spite of the way his father has treated him. He is even sure that his father meant well, for after his death the Spielmann says that he hopes to find him again “wo wir nach unsern Absichten gerichtet werden und nicht nach unsern Werken” (250). On neither criterion would the Hofrat have done very well, but it is a touching thing that Jakob ascribes his own well-intentioned inefficiency to his father, whose qualities were in fact the reverse of his. The narrator, by contrast, is very ungenerous to the Spielmann and indeed to everyone else in the story. If at one point he calls the Spielmann his “Liebling,” he quickly underscuts that compliment, for he speaks of the “Mißklängen meines und, ich fürchte beinahe, nur meines Lieblings” (235).²⁶ This underlines the fact that no one else can be expected to have any interest in the old man, which would in turn rob the old man of any right to the attention of the narrator too; this is, by implication, an odd quirk of the narrator, not a response to a deservedly interesting person.

It is evidently part of the story's strategy to have the old man introduced by one who is his opposite in certain fundamental characteristics; thus a genuine but incompetent person is introduced by one who is capable but insincere. Yet the most interesting aspect of the contrast between the two lies in their attitudes to their art. The Spielmann's art is consistent with the rest of him: sincere, genuine, but so technically incompetent as to be of value only to himself alone. What of the narrator? He, we are told, is a dramatic poet, and we do not experience his dramatic work; however, we do experience his qualities as a storyteller. Some distinct impressions emerge. Consider, for example, his description of the “Volksfest,” and its metaphors:

Und so fort und immer weiter, bis endlich der breite Hafen der Lust sich aufthut und Wald und Wiese, Musik und Tanz, Wein und Schmaus, Schattenspiel und Seiltänzer, Erleuchtung und Feuerwerk sich 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, wie der Traum einer Sommernacht, und nur in der Erinnerung zurückbleibt und allenfalls in der Hoffnung. (226)

The description of the festival hardly matches the image of it as a midsummer night's dream; nothing could be less appropriate. The festival is raucous, while the image is that of a delicate fantasy. Yet this is typical of the narrator's usually forced and pretentious imagery, which always seems to strive for an effect rather than to illuminate a situation. His earlier image of the stream of people is another example:

Eine wogende Menge erfüllt die Straßen. Geräusch von Fußtritten, Gemurmel von Sprechenden, das hie und da ein lauter Ausruf durchzuckt. Der Unterschied der Stände ist verschwunden; Bürger und Soldat teilt die Bewegung. An den Thoren der Stadt wächst der Drang. Genommen, verloren und wiedergenommen, ist endlich der Ausgang erkämpft. Aber die Donaubrücke bietet neue Schwierigkeiten. Auch hier siegreich, ziehen endlich zwei Ströme, die alte Donau und die geschwollnere Woge des Volks, sich kreuzend quer unter und über einander, die Donau ihrem alten Flußbette nach, der Strom des Volkes, der Eindämmung der Brücke entnommen, ein weiter, tosender See, sich ergießend in alles deckender Überschwemmung. (225)

This time, the narrator has common speech to rely on: he is developing the metaphor inherited from ordinary speech, for in German as in English, we can quite normally speak of a stream of people. But he proceeds to develop this idea at length and in fact ad nauseum. He is obviously seeking after literary effect, but eventually mixes the metaphor disastrously. Over several pages the motif recurs: the crowd is “zuströmend” and “entgegenströmend” (229), it is a “weiter, tosender See,” the fairground is a “Hafen der Lust,” the festival itself constitutes dry land (226), while the German language allows the easy introduction of the embankment as a “Damm.” The development appears, even on the surface, to be rather forced. But the absurdity of the sequence comes to light when it becomes apparent that the stream is heading for the harbor and land: for a stream reaches its destination when it gets to the sea, not to dry land! The narrator has developed his watery metaphors in a grandiose way, but has confused the different perspectives of a stream running down to the sea, on the one hand, and a ship at sea looking for a harbor and land on the other; and so he has his stream reaching land, as fine an example of a mixed metaphor as one could wish for. The cry should not be “Land” but “Meer,” and in that the moving stream of people reaches a larger, stationary concentration of people, this would not be inappropriate. What Grillparzer wants to show here is that the narrator is not interested in metaphorical illumination of what he is describing, but only in the creation of impressive language; the metaphor is not a genuine one which springs from the nature of his object, but a false one piled on to increase the appearance of a “literary” effect. This fact of his artistic performance illuminates his claim to being a student of humanity²⁷ from another direction. This too is part of the narrator's posture as a literary figure, and of his developing his image as a great writer. Another example of his consciously posing as the poet-dramatist is the much-quoted passage on the common people as literary material:

Wie aus einem aufgerollten, ungeheuren, dem Rahmen des Buches entsprungenen Plutarch, lese ich aus den heitern und heimlich bekümmerten Gesichtern, dem lebhaften oder gedrückten Gange, dem wechselseitigen Benehmen der Familienglieder, den enzelnen, halb unwillkürlichen Äußerungen, mir die Biographien der unberühmten Menschen zusammen, und wahrlich! man kann die Berühmten nicht verstehen, wenn man die Obskuren nicht durchgefühlt hat. Von dem Wortwechsel weinerhitzter Karrenschieber spinnt sich ein unsichtbarer, aber ununterbrochener Faden bis zum Zwist der Göttersöhne, und in der jungen Magd, die, halb wider Willen, dem drängenden Liebhaber seitab vom Gewühl der Tanzenden folgt, liegen als Embryo die Julien, die Didos und die Medeen. (227)²⁸

This is a gross and inflated piece of posturing again, noticeable both for the triteness beneath the self-importance and, as usual, for its irrelevance to what comes after it in the story. There is a pointed contrast between the grand, heroic figures it mentions, and the old unheroic Spielmann; and the verbs “durchfühlen” and “verstehen” are conspicuously inappropriate to the narrator, who makes no attempt to understand the world of the Spielmann's feelings. This is surely stereotype utterance for an author, and more stereotype author behavior can be found, for example, in his rather crude request for the Spielmann's story.

The old man's incredulity reinforces this impression, and in a sense constitutes a rejection of the resulting unnatural and self-conscious situation: “‘Geschichte?’ wiederholte er. ‘Ich habe keine Geschichte … Das also nennen Sie meine Geschichte?’” (237). Grillparzer includes in the text equally self-conscious touches by the narrator when he seems to be taking notes in sentences without verbs; the impression created is that of image-projection on the part of that observant student of the world, the author, e.g., “Zank, Geschrei, wechselseitige Ehrenangriffe der Kutscher, mitunter ein Peitschenhieb” (226), or “Voraus die Schuljugend mit Kreuz und Fahne, der Geistliche mit dem Kirchendiener. Unmittelbar nach dem Sarge die beiden Kinder des Fleischers und hinter ihnen das Ehepaar” (265).

Just as his writing strives for effect, his criterion of artistic success is simply public acclaim, and hence his love of the people is, as he admits, greatest when they are applauding him; this is why he finds the “rückhaltlose Ausbruch eines überfüllten Schauspielhauses” more interesting and even instructive (though one might ask how it could possibly be so), than the judgments of his critics. Taken together with the evidence of his story-telling, this confession confirms that he is concerned with success but not integrity, and it also discredits his professed love of the people, for his concern with them seems now to be with their acclaiming him; and this will perhaps explain why it is that he shows no real interest in them for themselves, while claiming that he does. That we have here a truer profession of attitude is apparent, for the attack on the critics bursts in in an uncontrolled way, overriding the logic and grammatical shape of the sentence. Linguistically and in substance, it is an irrelevant intrusion. Grammatically it is out of place, as a clause having only a precarious link with the main clause by means of an adverbial phrase, and holding up the necessary arrival of the main verb; and as to the substance, it is just as much out of place to justify love of the people by referring to one's being applauded by them, or to express such a violent attack on the critics without any preamble or reported incident from which the attack would spring. In the absence of any reported incident we tend to draw our own conclusions as to the justifiability of the critics' strictures, taking into account the irrational tone of the outburst and the narrator's literary values as we have seen them; but the obsessive nature of the expression leaves no doubt that what the narrator says here is a genuine representation of his concerns, not another pose.

The contrast here with the Spielmann is striking. Rejection as an artist does not cause him to make such a vicious attack on his critics; he is without malice, resigned and forgiving. But this is in part due to another contrast between the two: the Spielmann plays according to his conscience, not to impress other people.²⁹ He is an incompetent, but not a compromiser. The two display very much the same contrast as artists that they show as men: the Spielmann technically incompetent, yet completely honest and sincere; the narrator technically slick and clever, conscious of literary effect, but without integrity, concerned with applause and a shallow kind of impact rather than with real artistic value. There are, to be sure, similarities between the two figures, and yet the main pattern is that of contrast; even these similarities function as common ground on which their differences may emerge in a more subtle way. An example of this is furnished by their both using religious terminology in the context of intensity of feeling. The Spielmann thinks of his music as something sacred:

Als ich nun mit dem Bogen über die Saiten fuhr, Herr, da war es, als ob Gottes Finger mich angerührt hatte … Ich fiel auf die Kniee und betete laut und konnte nicht begreifen, daß ich das holde Gotteswesen einmal gering geschätzt, ja gehaßt in meiner Kindheit, und küßte die Violine und drückte sie an mein Herz und spielte wieder und fort. (241)

As the Spielmann talks of music in these terms, the narrator reports an impression of intense conviction and involvement in what is said: “Ich kannte meinen Mann beinahe nicht mehr” (242). But the narrator has also spoken of his passions and needs in religious terms too; for him, it is the people who contain “das Göttliche” and the festival is therefore “ein eigentliches Seelenfest, eine Wallfahrt, eine Andacht” (227). Later, the narrator speaks of his need for something that will be spiritually uplifting early in the day:

Die Morgenstunden haben für mich immer einen eigenen Wert gehabt. Es ist, als ob es mir Bedürfnis wäre, durch die Beschäftigung mit etwas Erhebendem, Bedeutendem in den ersten Stunden des Tages mir den Rest desselben gewissermaßen zu heiligen. Ich kann mich daher nur schwer entschließen, am frühen Morgen mein Zimmer zu verlassen … (234)

The Spielmann, too, preserves the morning for an activity that is “veredelnd”:

“Indem ich nun diese Stücke spiele,” fuhr er fort, “bezeige ich meine Verehrung den nach Stand und Würden geachteten, längst nicht mehr lebenden Meistern und Verfassern, thue mir selbst genug und lebe der angenehmen Hoffnung, daß die mir mildest gereichte Gabe nicht ohne Entgelt bleibt, durch Veredlung des Geschmackes und Herzens der ohnehin von so vielen Seiten gestörten und irre geleiteten Zuhörerschaft. Da derlei aber, auf daß ich bei meiner Rede bleibe”—und dabei überzog ein selbstgefälliges Lächeln seine Züge—“da derlei aber eingeübt sein will, sind meine Morgenstunden ausschließend diesem Exercitium bestimmt.” (232)

Yet the differences are obvious; the Spielmann acts on what he says, while the narrator does not. The narrator gives up his supposedly devotional presence at the “Volksfest,” and also leaves his room in the morning to see the Spielmann. He seems to believe that the Spielmann's statements are as meaningless as his own; for though the old man has mentioned that his mornings are taken up exclusively with practicing, and that he would wish to be given advance warning of a visit in order to accommodate it into his round of daily tasks, the narrator ignores both points and exclaims: “So werde ich Sie einmal morgens überraschen” (232).

The most interesting of the contrastive parallels of the two characters lies in the narrator's early stream image and the flood through which the Spielmann dies. A precise and comprehensive account of this parallel is given by Walter Silz:

Despite this arithmetical discrepancy, the two frames give the impression of complete balance, and this impression is strengthened by a symmetrical correspondence of motifs, first and last. The public festival of the opening is balanced by the public calamity of the close, the flood of holiday folk at the beginning (a figure carried through at some length) by the flood of destructive waters at the end; a gateway in the park with the joyous living, a gateway in the flooded suburb with the bodies of the dead. Each flood casts its derelicts ashore: the wretched little company of ‘Volksmusikanten’ at the edge of the park road, and the corpses of the drowned awaiting the coroner.³⁰

Papst has correctly observed that what was metaphor in the one case has become reality in the other;³¹ but this is in a wider sense the contrast once more of the false and the genuine. The narrator's metaphor is a superficial piece of literary posturing, confused and inappropriate, while the flood and consequent deaths are harshly real.

The bearing of the narrator on the figure of the Spielmann is clearly a complex matter, involving many factors: among them his authorial pose, and the theme of descent in class. Also important here is his compulsive denigration of a man who is his opposite.³² But the broader reason for the inclusion and juxtaposition of the two is that they represent the two sides of the main thematic contrast on which the story is based. This theme is that of integrity in relation to efficiency, and throughout, the narrator and Spielmann are systematically contrasted with each other in terms of it;³³ this is the meaning of the story which gives it a relevance transcending its possible biographical content.³⁴ The Spielmann, and perhaps even the narrator, may well represent the kind of extremes not met with in everyday life; and yet the issue which is the basis of this contrasting pair is ever-present, and the need to balance the two sides of the contrast inescapable. It is easy to make the judgment that the Spielmann lacks competence in all that he does, and yet it is always possible for the honesty and trustingness which he preserves to become obliterated by the kind of technical expertness manifested by the narrator. The Spielmann's trusting nature has reached the point of sheer gullibility, yet the price of such gullibility may be excessive, bringing with it a permanently suspicious nature and a distance from all other human beings. All competence involves an act of emotional distance, and so a move away from the genuineness of the Spielmann's world, if continued too far, lands us in the narrator's world of insincerity and loss of contact with genuine feeling.

The ending of the story brings out the positive side of Jakob more strongly than had hithertoo been the case, since we are now shown not merely the narrator's reactions to Jakob, but those of Barbara and the “Gärtnerin.” The tears of the former and the words of the latter show what an effect Jakob had had on them. More objective evidnce of his effect on the world is available: his name given to Barbara's child, his saving the lives of the children who had been threatened by the flood. Thus, the story closes by shifting the balance somewhat in his favor;³⁵rightly, since if we have to err on one side or the other, sincerity or technique, gullibility or suspicion, we should all choose to lean to the Spielmann.³⁶

Notes

1. References are to: Grillparzers Sämtliche Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. A. Sauer (Stuttgart, 1892), XIII, 225-266.

2. Cf., for example, Papst's judgment that the story “bears comparison with the best of his plays as one of his great masterpieces” (Grillparzer: Der arme Spielmann and Prose Selections, ed. E. E. Papst [London and Edinburgh, 1960], p. xviii).

3. These recent interpretations are the following: J. P. Stern, “Beyond the Common Indication: Grillparzer,” in his Reinterpretations (London, 1964), pp. 42-77; J. de Cort, “Zwei arme Spielleute: Vergleich einer Novelle von F. Grillparzer und von Th. Storm,” RLV, 30 (1964), 326-341; H. Politzer, “Die Verwandlung des armen Spielmanns. Ein Grillparzer-Motiv bei Franz Kafka,” JGG, 4 (1965), 55-64; O. P. Straubinger, “Der arme Spielmann,” GFF (1966), 97-102; M. W. Swales, “The Narrative Perspective in Grillparzer's Der arme Spielmann,” GL&L, N.S., 20 (1967), 107-118; H. Politzer, Franz Grillparzer's “Der arme Spielmann” (Stuttgart, 1967); A. Gutmann, “Grillparzers Der arme Spielmann: Erlebtes und Erdichtetes,” Journal of the International Arthur Schnitzler Research Association, 6 (1967), 14-44; W. Paulsen, “Der gute Bürger Jakob. Zur Satire in Grillparzers Armem Spielmann,” CollG (1968), pp. 272-298; G. Jungbluth, “Franz Grillparzers Erzählung: Der arme Spielmann. Ein Beitrag zu ihrem Verstehen,” OL, 24 (1969), 35-51; H. Krotkoff, “Über den Rahmen in Franz Grillparzers Novelle Der arme Spielmann,” MLN, 85 (1970), 345-366. Even before this a number of separate interpretations of the story had existed: E. Alker, “Komposition und Stil von Grillparzers Novelle Der arme Spielmann,” Neophilologus, 11 (1925), 15-27; B. Seuffert, “Grillparzers Spielmann,” Festschrift August Sauer zum 70. Geburtstag des Gelehrten am 12. Oktober 1925 (Stuttgart, 1925), pp. 291-311; W. Silz, “Grillparzer: Der arme Spielmann,” in his Realism and Reality (Chapel Hill, 1954), pp. 67-78; B. von Wiese, “Franz Grillparzer: Der arme Spielmann,” in his Die deutsche Novelle von Goethe bis Kafka, I, 134-53; R. Brinkmann, “Franz Grillparzer: Der arme Spielmann. Der Einbruch der Subjektivität,” in his Wirklichkeit und Illusion (Tübingen, 1957), pp. 87-145; and the introduction to E. E. Papst's edition of the story (cited above). There are, of course, numerous treatments of the story in general works on Grillparzer and on the Novelle.

4. This is, for the most part, the emphasis of the interpretation of von Wiese, and on his p. 136 he gives a survey of previous critics who had a similar concern.

5. Alker, p. 17. Cf. also E. K. Bennett, A History of the German Novelle, p. 155: “It would seem rather that Grillparzer had at last arrived at the truth about himself.” That the story had many roots in Grillparzer's life and experiences is by now so well documented and common ground to such a degree that it is surprising to see that many of the recent crop of interpretations consider the point to need further assertion; e.g., Straubinger (p. 98), noting the “widerstreitende Meinungen” concerning the story, suggests that biographical facts need to be taken into account; Gutmann's essay is entirely biographical; while Jungbluth recommends a return to a biographical approach such as that of Alewyn, which he finds neglected: “Es ist eines der furchtbarsten und schonungslosesten Bekenntnisse der Weltliteratur” (R. Alewyn, “Grillparzer und die Restauration,” PEGS, N.S., 12 [1937], cited by Jungbluth, p. 38). Jungbluth also makes the assumption that in the narrator “man ohne Skrupel den Autor selbst erblicken darf” (p. 41).

6. J. Klein, Geschichte der deutschen Novelle, pp. 195-7. Klein himself calls his summary of the story a “Strukturskizze.”

7. Bennett, pp. 152-158. Cf. especially his statement that Grillparzer's aim is to “present a complete picture of a given character … ” (p. 158).

8. This is, in fact, now the most persistent cliché of Spielmann criticism, but is regularly “discovered” as if it were a new point. The first to make the point, according to Straubinger (p. 98) was WedelParlow, in his Grillparzer biography of 1932. But Seuffert (p. 295) made it in 1925. In the interpretations of the last twenty years, the point appears first in Silz, p. 74, and is repeated in von Wiese, p. 149; Brinkmann, p. 141; de Cort, pp. 340-1; Stern, p. 77; Swales, p. 115; and Jungbluth, p. 42. Papst warned against the dangers of this kind of interpretation in 1960, p. xxi.

9. Cf., for example, his conclusion on p. 131: “Was der Spielmann ist, was sein Wesen ist und wie er in der Welt steht, das erfährt man—formal—nicht durch entschiedene, zuordnende ‘objektive’ Aussagen, sondern nur aus den relativen Sichtweisen begrenzter ‘empirischer’ Subjekte, die da sind, nur insofern sie dem Erzähler wirklich begegnen.”

10. Brinkmann makes this clear in saying: “Daß auch der Erzähler Grillparzer selbst ist, bedarf kaum der Erwähnung (so wenig selbstverständlich das auch a priori so sein müßte)” (p. 141).

11. Swales says that this is a narrator who “intellectually is determined to report from the perspective of the real world, but who emotionally assents to the ideal, if impossible world of the ‘höchste Stufen der Kunst’” (p. 116).

12. Politzer, 1967, pp. 58-60.

13. F. Maxwell-Bresler's review of Politzer, 1967, in MLR, 64 (1969), 950-1. The point is actually not stated strongly enough; Maxwell-Bresler allows that this can only be “Vermutung,” not categorical statement. But some evidence is needed for the former, too; even “Vermutung” has its limits.

14. Politzer, 1967, p. 40: “Es gibt, scheint Grillparzer sagen zu wollen, kein Versagen in der Wirklichkeit, das nicht in einem Seelenwinkel des Versagenden zu Hause wäre”; and Swales, pp. 115-116. Stern's (pp. 76-77) introduction of a Christian perspective also gives insufficient weight to the Spielmann's defective judgment. His attractiveness is a consequence of that defect, rather than a matter of faith.

15. Only in this sense do I agree with Papst that “either of two apparently conflicting assessments of the Spielmann seems to be equally tenable.” These assessments are reactions to, not accounts of, the Spielmann.

16. Brinkmann, p. 126. Brinkmann's attempt to show stylistic features in the Spielmann's direct speech which are attributable to the narrator seems to me unconvincing.

17. Jungbluth (p. 43) does not draw this consequence of his view since he uses it as a bridge to a biographical excursion; the irrelevance can be explained (“findet daraus seine Erklärung”) in biographical material. But this view of the process of artistic creation—haphazard inclusion of anything that happens to concern Grillparzer at a given moment—is not at all generous to Grillparzer's artistic talents.

18. Stern, pp. 63-64. It is not clear in any case why taciturnity should constitute a triumph; it is rather unusual for epic narrators to obtrude their presence.

19. Almost all critics accept the narrator's professions of love for the people and his claims to have an “anthropologischen Heißhunger” at face value, in spite of their obsessiveness: e.g. Straubinger, p. 100; von Wiese, pp. 137-38; H. Pongs, “Möglichkeiten des Tragischen in der Novelle,” Jahrbuch der Kleist-Gesellschaft, 13-14 (1932), p. 79; Brinkmann, p. 88, and so on. Swales is the only critic who consistently evaluates rather than accepts the narrator's pronouncements concerning himself, though Politzer (1967, p. 13) questions the narrator's claim that he is “leidenschaftlich” about anything.

20. E. Alker, p. 18: “Doch die ersten drei Seiten können weder in stilistischer noch in kompositorischer Hinsicht als sehr glücklich gelten; sie machen einen jungdeutsch-dilettantischen Eindruck.”

21. Politzer (p. 9) finds the narrator here pedantic. But while his style can be criticized, it must be criticized from the other end of the spectrum; it is a rather mannered, self-conscious and pretentious style.

22. Swales (p. 110) notes that his interest in the Spielmann seems “to be somewhat inconsistent with the narrator's avowed purpose in attending the Volksfest.” Swales' interpretation of this discrepancy is mainly concerned with the relative importance for the narrator of Volksfest and Spielmann; I should think of it more as an indication of his insincere posturing.

23. It is unnecessary to introduce Grillparzer's possible fear of social revolution here, e.g. Brinkmann, p. 88 and Politzer, 1967, p. 10. The attitude of the narrator to the people is a motif in the story, only to be evaluated in relation to its other occurrences and to contrasting motifs. Only the complete results of this kind of analysis could be referred to Grillparzer's beliefs, or to anyone else's, not an isolated piece of text seen without the controlling factor of its position in the whole story.

24. It is strange to note how often this grotesque sentence has been taken at face value. Only Politzer appears to have responded to its style: “Dieser Satz ist nicht nur monströs; sein Gefüge straft auch seine Aussage Lügen” (1967, p. 12). My interpretation here, however, differs from that of Politzer; he believes that the narrator is interested in the people for their vitality, presumably because one with the temperament of “ein hochnotpeinlich-scharfsichtiger Beobachter,” feeling his deficiency, “sehnt sich nach der Begegnung mit einer Kraft … ” (pp. 12-13). This seems to me not to do justice to the element of pretentious self-inflation by the narrator, the only real point of the style of the sentence.

25. Stern's view that the narrator is aloof, and “wishes merely to register” (p. 64) cannot be justified by the text. Many other critics have viewed the narrator's unsympathetic attitude as that of a distanced observer without an attitude; cf., e.g., Politzer: “Er ist die Linse, in der sich die Welt der Erscheinungen spiegelt” (1967, p. 13).

26. At this point occurs another of the narrator's unfulfilled protestations, and the discrepancy between what he says and what he does is again instructive. For having said that he will spare his reader any further description of the old man's playing (“dieses höllischen Konzertes”) he in fact goes on to give a long description of it. Again, the discrepancy conveys his obsessive denigration of the Spielmann.

27. Swales (p. 111) is inclined to see this claim by the narrator as an attempt to excuse his interest in the Spielmann: “it is almost as if the narrator were ashamed of a moment of weakness for the Spielmann.” But self-inflation seems to me a better explanation than the postulation of a conflict in the narrator's mind; for the narrator has no real personal sympathy for the Spielmann.

28. Swales alone among recent critics finds this passage suspect: “ … do we not detect a certain strain, an element of self-deception in the language—does not our narrator perhaps ‘protest too much’” (p. 110). But he draws no broader conclusions from this. It is remarkable how often it has been taken as a true confession by Grillparzer, and even a literary historical manifesto important for the time—as if by 1848 such a thing were necessary! Cf., for example, Politzer, p. 6; and von Wiese, p. 138: “Diese viel zitierte Stelle zeigt einen wichtigen geistesgeschichtlichen Wechsel in der Auffassung vom menschlichen Schicksal.” Yet Seuffert already half a century ago found it an “etwas gezwungene Wendung,” and the juxtapositions it contains a “gewaltsame Verknüpfung” (p. 292). Seuffert responded very accurately to the tone of these and other phrases early in the story, and it was only his lack of the theoretical distinction between author and narrator which prevented him from proceeding to a better understanding of the story. Having seen so much, he pronounces the “Dichter” to be Grillparzer himself (p. 296) and proceeds to explain away the interesting material he observes as due to Grillparzer's experiences and character; no more instructive example can be found of a critic whose intuitive response is very fine, but his theory so poor as to waste that advantage.

29. Politzer (pp. 15-16) notes the contrast in the reception given by the public to the art of the Spielmann and of the narrator, and part of their contrasting reactions to that reception, but without relating this systematically to the thematic structure of the story.

30. Silz, p. 69. This parallel has been proposed again by later critics, e.g. Swales, p. 109, and Politzer, 1967, p. 10. But it was already noted in 1925 by Seuffert (pp. 293-4) and, as Silz points out, by Alker (pp. 21-22).

31. Papst, pp. xxx-xxxi.

32. Unlike Swales, therefore, I do not find the kind of ambivalence which has as one of its sides a wish to identify with the Spielmann: “He can only—and this in spite of himself—offer a personal and instinctive belief, an emotional assent to the person and life of Jakob, the ‘armer Spielmann’” (p. 116).

33. By contrast Stern says (p. 68) that “Jacob's devotion to his art (if we are to call it ‘art’ … emerges as the sole positive value intimated in the Novelle.” But it is certainly not his art that wins him people who love or admire him.

34. Thus Jungbluth's conclusion is both irrelevant and erroneous: “Die Erzählung Der arme Spielmann ist nicht allein eine gnadenlose Abrechnung Grillparzers mit sich selbst, sie ist auch ein Zeugnis für extremen Selbstgenuß” (p. 51).

35. To be sure, these positive signs do not occur without something of their opposite; the contrast is maintained by Jakob's actual death coming as a result of his indiscriminately risking his life to rescue what is important (children) and what is unimportant (a small amount of money).

36. The interpretations of Paulsen and Krotkoff came to hand as this study was completed. Paulsen detects social satire in the story, but only through equating the narrator's attitudes and those of Grillparzer, e.g., referring to the opening of the story, his “Gerade dadurch, daß Grillparzer das Volk derart mythologisiert … ” (p. 284), treats as authorial attitudes to society what should be viewed as part of the characterization of the narrator. Krotkoff's essay is concerned with the “Rahmen,” but in an unproductive way: “In den autobiographischen Angaben des Erzählers hat mehr weltanschauliches Gedankengut Grillparzers in dichterischer Gestalt Eingang gefunden als man zuerst annehmen möchte” (p. 365). Thus she takes the narrator's remarks on the “Volk” as truths for the story's purposes.