SOURCE: “Language and the Fall from Grace in Grillparzer's Spielmann,” in Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, Vol. XII, No. 4, November, 1976, pp. 215-35.

Grillparzer's most ‘prosaic’ work is also his most poetic. It is no doubt for this reason that it has found so many exegetes: with great poetry we are never done.¹ It is my primary purpose here to point out what seems to me to be a constitutive (but hitherto unnoted) theme of the novella—that of language or the word—and to offer some suggestions as to its possible meaning. In order to arrive at my main object I must unfortunately do what the novella also does, namely, adumbrate the themes introduced before the theme of language or the word itself assumes central importance, for it is this latter theme that shows the introductory themes in their true light, while they in turn give the theme of the word its real significance. Der arme Spielmann is structured on the principle of irony: what is first presented as of supreme importance is shown to be highly questionable and ethically hollow, while what at first appears insignificant and self-defeating turns out to be deeply meaningful and ethically salvational.

The opening frame, paragraphs 1-26,² introduces all the leading themes, with the exception of the one in which we are particularly interested, that of the word, though this theme may also be deduced. The overriding theme of the opening frame (as also of the closing one, but of that later) is the one and the many or the individual and the masses. It is first stated in terms of ‘Volk’ and ‘Vornehme’: the Brigittenkirchtag is a festival the lower classes ‘give themselves’; the upper classes, ‘die Vornehmen,’ can participate in it only in their capacity as members of ‘das Volk,’ that is, only by temporarily assuming the character of the lower classes and merging with the commonalty, thus returning for the time being to the roots from which they sprang. The narrator, who only too obviously does not belong to ‘das Volk’ in the sense of being a member of the working classes, regards such a return in a very positive light—or at least he claims to: ‘Ich versäume nicht leicht, diesem Feste beizuwohnen’ (para. 6). St. Bridget's Day is a feast of oneness: ‘Der Unterschied der Stände ist verschwunden,’ the narrator categorically informs us. The specific example adduced in the fourth paragraph, however, may hardly be said to bear this out—if anything, it indicates the opposite: ‘Begafft, bedauert, bespottet sitzen die geputzten Damen’ in their carriages stalled in the dense stream of the masses pressing towards the Brigittenau. The Holstein stallion seeks to take his way over the top of the plebian ‘Korbwagen’ filled with screaming women and children. The swift fiacre, immobilized in the traffic, ‘berechnet ingrimmig’ the lost time. These are images of divisiveness, not union.

Connected with the theme of (dionysiac) oneness is that of license and disorder. This is a ‘saturnalische[s] Fest,’ whose ‘eigentliche Hierophanten’ are ‘die Kinder der Dienstbarkeit und der Arbeit.’ The Roman Saturnalia were a time of celebration of freedom and equality, a memorialization of the Golden Age when man did not have to live by the sweat of his brow, but also a time of irresponsibility and license as the price of equality and oneness.³ This theme is developed through images of a tremendous force escaping its proper confines: a mighty river overflowing its banks, a dense mass passing through a narrow opening—the city gate, the Danube bridge, the lane leading from the Augarten to the Brigittenau—until finally ‘der breite Hafen der Lust’ opens up to receive it. The Volksfest is seen as an escape from reality: a ‘pays de cocagne,’ an ‘Eldorado,’ a veritable ‘Schlaraffenland,’ which dissolves after two days and a night ‘wie der Traum einer Sommernacht.’ It is a regression or rebirth (we can easily construe the image of release through a narrow passage as a birth image) into a dreamy, womblike utopia of equality perhaps, of irresponsibility and license certainly. It is an ‘Aufruhr der Freude’ and exhibits ‘Losgebundenheit der Lust.’

The crucial paragraph of the opening frame is the sixth, in which the narrator introduces himself in the first person singular. Here the theme of the one and the many appears in the variation of artist and audience. Emphatically a member of the upper classes, the narrator visits popular festivals in a double capacity: ‘als leidenschaftlicher Verehrer des Volkes’ and as a dramatist who finds here the opportunity to study character types. In a syntactically monstrous sentence, 95 words in length, the narrator enunciates the doctrine that the will of the people is the will of God and that submission to this will is equivalent to union with the divine. To him, as a dramatist, ‘der rückhaltlose Ausbruch eines überfüllten Schauspielhauses’ (a reprise of the image of overflowing) has always been ‘zehnmal interessanter, ja belehrender … als das zusammengeklügelte Urteil eines an Leib und Seele verkrüppelten [!], von dem Blut ausgesogener Autoren spinnenartig aufgeschwollenen [!] literarischen Matadors …’ For, ‘als ein Liebhaber der Menschen,’ he is convinced that there lies in the masses ‘besonders wenn sie … für einige Zeit der einzelnen Zwecke vergessen und sich als ein Teil des Ganzen fühlen … denn doch das Göttliche … ja, der Gott.’ For this reason every Volksfest must be for him ‘ein eigentliches Seelenfest, eine Wallfahrt, eine Andacht.’ This is certainly an astounding statement for a member of the upper classes, but its overheated rhetoric even more than its content is the thing that should give us pause. Here is a man who is trying to persuade himself of something; if we too are persuaded, it is because we have not been listening closely. (Parenthetically it should be noted that the narrator does not state that the outburst in the theatre must be an outburst of approval, as some commentators assume.⁴ Disapproval could be just as interesting and instructive. Approval or disapproval is not the point: in either case the many have spoken and the one must accept their judgment.)

The second half of paragraph 6 deals with the narrator's second reason for attending popular festivals: to study character types. It is obvious, however, that aloof observation is at odds with the attainment of dionysiac union with ‘das Volk,’ the narrator's passionately stated quasi-religious goal. Furthermore, the sentence pronounced with such a programmatic air: ‘und wahrlich! man kann die Berühmten nicht verstehen, wenn man die Obscuren nicht durchgefühlt hat,’⁵ shows that the narrator is not primarily interested in the ‘obscure,’ who are only a means to an end, but in the ‘famous.’ The final sentence bears this out: it is not the quarrels of drunken carters but the ‘Zwist der Göttersöhne’ that interests him; it is not the servant girl following her persistent lover away from the dance but the ‘Julieen, die Didos und die Medeen’ who are contained in her ‘als Embryo’ that he wants to fathom. The polarity between the famous and the obscure constitutes the third variation on the theme of the one and the many.

To summarize: the themes introduced thus far are: (1) the one and the many (shown forth in three variations: ‘Volk’ and ‘Vornehme,’ dramatist and audience, famous and obscure); (2) disorder and license as the price of voluptuous oneness; (3) union with the commonalty as union with the divine. Beneath, or concurrently with, these positively stated themes we become aware, almost subliminally, of certain inward contradictions, partly of a stylistic nature, partly in the form of images, partly as direct statements, that run counter to the doctrine of salvation through union with the masses, which is set forth with such evangelistic fervour. Our suspicions may be aroused that the narrator does not mean what he says or that he is not aware of what he is saying or that he does not know what he really means.⁶

The narrator (whom one should not naively equate with Grillparzer himself—he is a figure in a story by Grillparzer) is, we note, a dramatist. His way of achieving union with the ‘das Volk’ (the deduction is surely permissible) is through the power of the word. Though the masses themselves are inarticulate (we hear them murmuring, shouting, screaming, cursing, but never uttering a sentence), theirs is the final judgment on the verbal icon. Through his word the poet may either enter into oneness with the people or be excluded from it.

With the discovery of the Spielmann the themes stated in the first seven paragraphs begin to be inverted. The masses, described as ‘lustgierig’ (para. 7) and ‘genußlechzend’ (para. 8), stand in stark contrast to the Spielmann whose first words, a Horatian tag, speak of limits (‘sunt certi denique fines’) and whose decorous appearance contrasts so strikingly with the wild indecorum of the other mendicant musicians, this ‘Gruppe aus dem sozial-pathologischen Tartarus’ as Politzer (p. 14) calls it, posted along the narrow road to the Brigittenau. If the narrator, for all his protestations of quasi-religious yearning to merge with the ‘Volk’ and participate in the feast of oneness, now turns back just beyond the ‘hölzernes Gittertor’ that marks the boundary between the Augarten and the Brigittenau, between reality and dream, individuated separateness and oneness, it must be because there is something existentially more important to him than dionysiac union with the masses, namely, the fathoming of an individual who, even more emphatically than he himself, is not part of the masses.⁷ The thematic inversions we now observe point the connection between narrator and Spielmann.

Paragraph 8 brings an inversion of the theme of the one and many or, more specifically, an inversion of the second variation of this theme as introduced in paragraph six, that of the relation of artist and audience. There the artist who bows before the voice of the people because in it lies ‘finally’ the divine, here the artist who blithely refuses to recognize their judgment. We need not rehearse the description of the Spielmann and his playing. Suffice it to say that once the narrator's attention has been riveted by the old fiddler in the threadbare overcoat his prose acquires a tone of complete conviction and authenticity. Despite the ironical overtones and a certain pretence of aloofness, the reader immediately senses that here is a subject with whom the narrator identifies, here at last is an ‘Obscurer’ whom he finds it worth his while to try to fathom. But can he, through him, learn to understand the ‘Berühmten’? His ‘ravenous anthropological appetite’ is aroused by the contrarieties evinced by the Spielmann's appearance, behaviour, and station in life, in other words, by precisely those features which seem to contradict the doctrine of the oneness of mankind, for according to this doctrine the ‘invisible but unbroken thread’ spun between the obscure and the famous should run from the other mendicant musicians, not from the Spielmann. Everything about the Spielmann tends to cast doubt on the narrator's programmatic pronouncement concerning the connection between the high and the low. No wonder then that the narrator is “trembling with curiosity to discover the connection”(para. 9). The ‘Volk’ has now become merely an obstacle standing between him and his quarry and with the ‘misadventure’ that causes him to lose sight of the old fiddler he also loses all interest in the festival. Turning homeward, he hears in the distance the old man's fiddle and his pace quickens, he is filled with delight to find again the ‘object of his curiosity.’ It is a case of love at first sight.

A notable aspect of this passage is the irony of the narrator in describing the Spielmann, in whom he has such a burning interest, and which contrasts so emphatically with the quasi-religious fervency adopted in speaking of the masses, in whom, as his behaviour now proves beyond doubt, he has no true interest. This irony has a double function: it serves both to disguise the narrator's embarrassment at a sudden infatuation that contradicts his stated doctrine and it is an expression of Grillparzer's malicious delight in revealing the deeper nature of the narrator-artist, who is only half aware that he is concealing something not only from the world (i.e., the reader) but also from himself.⁸

When the narrator comes upon the Spielmann again, the latter is playing what he thinks is a waltz for a group of boys who in their turn are demanding that he play a waltz! Disgusted, they leave to gather around an organ-grinder. ‘Die Kinder kennen eben keinen andern Tanz, als den Walzer,’ says the narrator, trying to be kind. ‘Ich spielte einen Walzer,’replies the old fiddler pointing to his sheet of music, ‘Aber die Kinder haben kein Ohr.’ Brinkmann (p. 111) puts the situation succinctly: ‘Was die Welt von ihm [dem Spielmann] denkt, das scheint er von der Welt zu denken.’ He is absolutely unmoved by his failure to reach the ‘world’ —it is not he who is at fault, it is the public, a complete rejection of the doctrine of the infallibity of the masses enunciated by the narrator. The ‘question’ the story sets itself to ‘answer’ is: who is right, the Spielmann or the world? As a figure, the Spielmann fascinates the narrator above all because he is a fellow artist, however unsuccessful. His interest in him is an interest in that which occupies him most: in the nature of the artist and of art and their relation to ‘das Volk,’ to the ‘world.’

The next theme to be inverted after the narrator meets the Spielmann is that of license and disorder. The Spielmann is a person of pedantic order who considers it sinful ‘andere durch Spiel und Gesang zu einem solchen widerlichen Vergehen anzureizen’; ‘der Mensch [muß] in allen Dingen eine gewisse Ordnung festsetzen, sonst gerät er ins Wilde und Unaufhaltsame,’ he declares (para. 15), and we must add: like the masses at their ‘saturnalian’ festivals, which are for the narrator ‘ein Seelenfest, eine Wallfahrt, eine Andacht.’ Through license and disorder the masses return to oneness, the Spielmann through order: ‘Die drei ersten Stunden des Tages der Übung, die Mitte dem Broterwerb, und der Abend mir und dem lieben Gott, das heißt nicht unehrlich geteilt,’ he explains, his eyes gleaming with tears (para. 18, end). ‘Mir und dem lieben Gott'—the Spielmann also professes to find religious fulfilment in oneness, but not in union with ’das Volk.‘ It is not the first time he has betrayed emotion in speaking of how he spends his evenings: ’Abends halte ich mich zu Hause und'—his voice drops, he blushes and casts down his eyes—'da spiele ich dann aus der Einbildung, so für mich ohne Noten. Phantasieren, glaub‘ ich, heißt es in den Musikbüchern’ (para. 16). Such improvising is for him prayer and ‘gehört ins Kämmerlein’ (para. 18), a reference of course to Matthew 6:6: ‘Wenn du aber betest, so gehe in dein Kämmerlein und schließ die Tür zu und bete zu deinem Vater im Verborgenen; und dein Vater, der in das Verborgene sieht, wird dir's vergelten öffentlich.’ It is now the narrator's turn to blush, though we do not hear that he does, for he is like the heathens (!) of whom the Lord speaks in the next verse, a man of many words: ‘Und wenn ihr betet, sollt ihr nicht viel plappern wie die Heiden; denn sie meinen, sie werden erhört, wenn sie viel Worte machen.’⁹ The Spielmann's rejection of the doctrine of the supremacy of the masses is the corollary of his attitude towards union with something higher. The narrator must believe that in the ‘Volk’ lies ‘das Göttliche’ as long as he accepts the commonalty as the arbiter of his art; the Spielmann cannot, for in the ‘Volk’ he sees chaos and license—in God alone lies order.

The outward manifestation of the order the Spielmann worships takes an amusingly pedantic or a naïvely touching form so far as his behaviour towards others is concerned: he expresses himself in a stiffly ceremonious fashion; he refuses to look upon himself as a mendicant but insists that any alms he may receive are an ‘honorarium’ for services rendered; he takes leave of the narrator by executing ‘mit einer Abart von vornehmer Leichtigkeit einen ziemlich linkischen Kratzfuß’ (para. 20). His private interpretation of his position in the world is so at odds with that of the world itself that he is bound to be an object of derision as long as we regard him merely as a phenomenon, an ‘Original,’ but a figure of deep poignancy as soon as we have heard his story.

The most striking manifestation of the rift between the Spielmann and the world is of course his music-making. The order the Spielmann cherishes within and which guides his private life manifests itself in his music as disorder, ‘eine unzusammenhängende Folge von Tönen ohne Zeitmaß und Melodie’ (para. 8) that only arouses the risibilities of the crowd and brings him no ‘honorarium.’ So far is he from attaining his goal of ‘Veredlung des Geschmacks und Herzens … der Zuhörerschaft’ (para. 18). Why this dissonance between inward and outward? Paragraphs 22-5 begin the revelation of the mystery.

On his solitary way home from the Kirchtag, after refreshing himself in a tavern, where he thankfully enjoys ‘die Stille des Orts, im Abstich von der lärmenden Volksmenge’ (para. 21)—a phrase which again reveals the speciousness of his fervant declarations about the divinity of the masses and his true inward kinship with the Spielmann—the narrator seeks out the old man's humble dwelling in a suburban street.¹⁰ From the roadway he overhears him ‘improvising,’ that is, celebrating the divine order, at his garret window. To the neighbours, disturbed in their early slumbers, the Spielmann's concert not surprisingly sounds like ‘Kratzen’; to the narrator it sounds like a series of long held tones separated by harmonic intervals: ‘Hatte der Spieler sich vorher an dem Klange des einzelnen Tones geweidet, so war nun das gleichsam wollüstige Schmecken dieses harmonischen Verhältnisses noch ungleich fühlbarer.’ But even for the narrator's trained ear the whole is little better than a hellish cacaphony. ‘Und das nannte der alte Mann Phantasieren!’ he exclaims, realizing, however, that ‘es im Grunde allerdings ein Phantasieren war, für den Spielmann nämlich, nur nicht für den Hörer’ (para. 22).

When he seeks out the old fiddler in the latter's room a few days later, having delayed his visit because for him—like the Spielmann!—the morning hours when the visit was to take place are sacred, he overhears him practising the masters and discovers the principle upon which the Spielmann's music-making is based. The passage, though often quoted by critics, has never to my knowledge been analysed for its analogical meaning. It is highly revealing (para. 25):

Einige Zeit des Zuhörens ließ mich endlich den Faden durch dieses Labyrinth erkennen, gleichsam die Methode in der Tollheit. Der Alte genoß, indem er spielte. Seine Auffassung unterschied hierbei aber schlechthin nur zweierlei, den Wohlklang und den Übelklang, von denen der erstere ihn erfreute, ja entzückte, indes er dem letzteren, auch dem harmonisch begründeten, nach Möglichkeit aus dem Wege ging. Statt nun in einem Musikstücke nach Sinn und Rhythmus zu betonen, hob er heraus, verlängerte er die dem Gehör wohltuenden Noten und Intervalle, ja nahm keinen Abstand, sie willkürlich zu wiederholen, wobei sein Gesicht oft geradezu den Ausdruck der Verzückung annahm. Da er nun zugleich die Dissonanzen so kurz als möglich abtat, überdies die für ihn zu schweren Passagen, von denen er aus Gewissenhaftigkeit nicht eine Note fallen ließ, in einem gegen das Ganze viel zu langsamen Zeitmaß vortrug, so kann man sich wohl leicht eine Idee von der Verwirrung machen, die daraus hervorging.

To grasp the force of this passage one must first of all obviate a misconception that is almost universal in the critical literature, namely, that the ‘confusion’ resulting from the Spielmann's performance is due to mere lack of skill.¹¹ True, he is no Paganini, but the resulting cacophony is not due to this: it is not because he is forced to play difficult runs at too slow a tempo. The basic reason is that he either skips or avoids as far as possible the dissonances, however harmonically necessary. At the same time he stresses and lengthens, even repeats contrary to all musical sense ‘wohltuende Noten und Intervalle.’ In the last analysis his playing of the ‘revered masters’ is not different from his improvising: harmony alone is permitted, dissonances disallowed. The Spielmann is transported by his own playing, the listener tortured and confused. The reason is of course that the work of art, insofar as it is a transfigured version of our own world, is not comprehensible without dissonances. The Spielmann's playing is a peculiar kind of theodicy: not a theodicy that accounts for the necessity of evil by showing that it is only an aspect of the good (this would be what Beethoven's music does), but a theodicy that leaves out evil altogether. It is evident that the Spielmann lives in a realm without dissonances and that it is this realm that is reflected in his music. We can call it the world before the Fall and the Spielmann the pre-lapsarian man. This is the reason why we, the fallen, cannot understand him, that is, cannot understand his music, which is his existential expression. That he is wholly without guile every interpreter points out,¹² but only unfallen man is completely guileless, because untouched by the Father of Guile.¹³ That he cuts such a poignantly ridiculous figure in the fallen world only proves that he himself is not fallen: ‘For the wisdom of the world is folly with God’ and vice versa.¹⁴

Before the Spielmann begins to tell his story, the theme of disorder and license and its inversion is given unforgettable reinforcement in the ‘Ding-symbol’ of the chalk mark that divides Jacob's corner of the garret from that of the two journeymen: on the one side ‘ein schmutziges, widerlich verstörtes Bett, von allen Zutaten der Unordentlichkeit umgeben,’ on the other Jacob's couch, ‘dürftig, aber reinlich und höchst sorgfältig gebettet und bedeckt’ (para. 24). ‘Die Unordnung ist verwiesen,’ says the Spielmann, ‘Nur die Tür ist gemeinschaftlich’ (para. 25). The door into life is all that Jacob has in common with the ‘Volk.’ Once within (whether within his room or without), he lives utterly apart, sheltered by his own inner order which allows no dissonances.

When the narrator invites Jacob to tell his story (para. 26), we are not really surprised to learn that he is not aware that he has one. He lives timelessly: ‘Ich habe keine Geschichte. Heute wie gestern, und morgen wie heute.’ It is important to note—though seems not to have been noted!—that the narrator calls the Spielmann back into the realm of time by reminding him of the Latin words he uttered before picking up his music stand to leave the Volksfest. Mulling over the narrator's remark, the Spielmann begins to be recalled into time, the realm of ‘einmal’ and ‘lange her’: “Lateinisch,” tönte er nach. “Lateinisch? das habe ich freilich auch einmal gelernt, oder vielmehr hätte es lernen sollen und können. Loqueris latine?” wandte er sich gegen mich, “aber ich könnte es nicht fortsetzen. Es ist gar zu lange her. Das also nennen Sie meine Geschichte?” And with this he settles down to tell ‘wie es kam,’ if not exactly to his auditor, at any rate to himself: ‘Möchte ich mir's doch selbst einmal wieder erzählen.’ The boundary between the Spielmann and the world, even a sympathetic representative of the world, is still preserved. The narrator is merely allowed to overhear the story Jacob tells primarily to himself.

Jacob's narrative occupies paragraphs 27-73. It is here that the theme of the word assumes central importance. Already in paragraph 27 it is stated with all clarity. Jacob, we learn, was not always content to talk to himself; there was a time when he made a valiant effort to communicate with the world in its own terms—but he could not learn its language. ‘Wenn ich mich recht erinnere,’ he recalls, looking back into the vistas of the past, ‘so wäre ich wohl im Stande gewesen, allerlei zu erlernen, wenn man mir Zeit und Ordnung gegönnt hätte.’ His two brothers ‘sprangen wie Gemsen von Spitze zu Spitze in den Lehrgegenständen herum,’ but he could never skip a thing, never leap: ‘und wenn mir ein einziges Wort fehlte, mußte ich von vorne anfangen’ (para. 27, emphasis added). The order of the world in which his brothers are so thoroughly at home is not Jacob's order; it is an order he must laboriously learn, an order that in some inscrutable way is connected with words, and words are for him a source of excruciating difficulty. His lack of success makes him baulky and he takes refuge in his own order, an order without words: ‘Abends im Zwielicht [ergriff ich] die Violine, um mich nach meiner Art ohne Noten zu vergnügen…’ But the world, the other order, is adamant; if he is to live in it, he has to learn its language. The family confiscates his violin, claiming that his way of playing, that is, ‘Phantasieren,’ will ruin the instrument and that they cannot stand the torture. They tell him to wait for his violin lessons, but these lessons, also a kind of ‘language’ instruction, are for Jacob the true torture. Thus he comes to hate his violin.

The realm of time, which the Spielmann has now re-entered in memory, Grillparzer is pointing out, is also the realm of the word. The equation of the word with time is good theology, not so much because of John 1:1-6 (where the Word equals Christ) as because of Genesis 1:3: ‘And God said …’ The world, which is the embodied word / Word, man interprets and thus controls through words, i.e., by ‘saying’ creation again, however imperfectly. Once, of course, before the Fall, he could ‘say’ it perfectly, for he was then one with the Word. If now, however, he were to ‘say’ it in that way, he would not be understood, but could talk only to God. We can no longer understand the lingua adamica, the vox dei. This, as I see it, is—in analogical terms—Jacob's case. He ‘talks’ to God through his music, but when he tries to communicate with his fallen fellows in the same medium, he meets only with blank incomprehension and derisive laughter.

The firmest support for this interpretation is found in paragraph 38, where the Spielmann so eloquently lectures his listener on the nature of music and makes his famous pronouncement about ‘playing God’: ‘Sie spielen den Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart und den Sebastian Bach, aber den lieben Gott spielt Keiner.’ No one, that is, except the Spielmann himself. How he ‘plays God’ we already know from paragraphs 22 and 25. God, in whom all opposites are in concord, coincidentia oppositorum, is without discord like Jacob's music, which avoids the ‘Übelklang’ as far as possible and emphasizes (contrary to all earthly harmonic sense) the ‘Wohlklang.’ Nonetheless, he is quite aware of the role of the former: ‘…die Dissonanz [wird] herabgebeugt als wissentliche Bosheit oder vermessener Stolz…’ (para. 28, emphasis added). The ‘Übelklang’ equals the evil that came into the world with the Fall. For us, who live in the world of Time/Word, music without discord is incomprehensible. Jacob says this himself, though he may not realize the implication. ‘All but a few,’ he reminds his auditor, impurify the ‘breathing of the soul’ that is music, by the addition of words, ‘“wie die Kinder Gottes sich verbanden mit den Töchtern der Erde; daß es hübsch angreife und eingreife in ein schwieliges Gemüt. Herr,” schloß er endlich halb erschöpft, “die Rede ist dem Menschen notwendig wie Speise, man sollte aber auch den Trank rein erhalten, der da kommt von Gott.”’ ‘Rede,’ the word, is here equivalent to ‘Übelklang,’ dissonance, which the Spielmann, in his attempt to keep the divine drink pure, avoids.

Höllerer, as pointed out above (n. 11), does not make the mistake of attributing the incomprehensibility of the Spielmann's playing to mere lack of skill; rather he attributes it to his trying to give form to everything at once: ‘…er will Gott in seiner Kunst wirklich machen, alles auf einmal gestalten’ (p. 260). If I understand him, Höllerer thinks the Spielmann is trying to give form to the divine as reflected in the world of appearances, the world of Time/Word, what he calls the ‘Weltzusammenhang,’ and this is the source of his failure: ‘Wo er über das Menschliche hineingreift in den Weltzusammenhang, mordet er, so sieht es Grillparzer, die Kunst’ (p. 260). Höllerer connects this ‘playing the whole’ with the narrator's words (for him, the narrator equals Grillparzer himself) in paragraph 6 about the divinity that resides in the masses as a ‘whole’: ‘In der Kunst des…Spielmanns wird diese Idee, das Ganze, das Wesen schlechthin zu geben, zur Chimäre’ (p. 261). My own conception, as I hope I have made clear, is almost the reverse of this: paragraph 25 shows that the Spielmann's playing disregards reality as we understand and experience it, thus becoming—in our eyes—anti-art. The Spielmann does not try to embody the world or the ‘Weltzusammenhang’ as we know it in his art; he plays God as reflected in his creation before the Fall.

The interpretation here offered is even more radically opposed to Politzer's (p. 46), who speaks of ‘Jacob's Unfähigkeit, diesen Trunk [die Musik] rein zu erhalten, geschweige denn weiterzureichen…’ This, in my view, is precisely the reverse of what the novella conveys: because Jacob keeps the drink pure, he cannot pass it on to others. Politzer (ibid.) also calls the story ‘geradezu die Geschichte vom Sündenfall der Musik, ja der Kunst im Allgemeinen…’ It is rather the ‘story’ of art before the Fall, and therefore of art incomprehensible to the fallen.

If Jacob is now able to control the spoken word with ease and naturalness and to tell his story with great plasticity, it is because, first, it is a story, i.e., a past event, and, second, because it is essentially the story of that period in his life when he was in intimate touch with the realm of Time/Word. We have seen how stiffly ceremonial and ‘bookish’ is his language when dealing with a situation in the present: it is almost as though he were speaking a foreign tongue and had to take special care to see that he made no slips. Now, however, he is able to say with colloquial ease (and unintentional deeper significance): ‘Wir haben Zeit, und fast kommt mir die Lust zu schwätzen an’ (para. 26). There is the same kind of change (mutatis mutandis) in the Spielmann's language between the frame and the story proper as there is in that of the narrator between his expatiations on the ‘Volk’ and his description of the Spielmann. In each case the change is due to the speaker's having found a subject close to his heart. The equivalent of Jacob's manner of telling his life story, we are soon to gather, is the way in which he renders the one piece of music he is capable of communicating to an audience: Barbara's song.

Jacob would gladly have escaped the martyrdom of the word by becoming an artisan: ‘Ein Drechsler oder Schriftsetzer wäre ich gar zu gerne gewesen’ (para. 28), but his father did not carry out his threat to remove him from school and apprentice him. It is worth considering why Jacob mentions these two trades. The reason, one can hardly doubt, is that both turners and typesetters follow intricate patterns from which they are not allowed to deviate. The typesetter deals with words, to be sure, but not creatively, only mechanically. He merely copies words, as the turner merely copies a pattern. Later, Jacob is ‘recht an [seinem] Platze’ (para. 31) as a copyist in the chancellery, and when he inherits his money the scoundrelly secretary easily fleeces him with a plan for establishing an ‘Auskunfts- Kopier- und Übersetzungscomptoir’ (para. 54). As a copyist Jacob can deal with the word without becoming existentially involved with it; his only ‘social’ relation to the world of words is purely formal, though it makes him touchingly happy to be granted even this: ‘Ich hatte immer das Schreiben mit Lust getrieben, und noch jetzt weiß ich mir keine angenehmere Unterhaltung, [!] als mit guter Tinte auf gutem Papier Haar- und Schattenstriche aneinander zu fügen zu Worten oder auch nur Buchstaben’ (para. 31, emphasis added). But alas if there is a word missing or a false mark of punctuation in the material to be copied! This can cause him ‘bitter hours’ of anxiety, for he is quite incapable of supplying a word or even a comma from the context. His purely formal relation to the fearsome world of the word could not be demonstrated more clearly.

The only sample of Jacob's penmanship that we are ‘shown’ is from the music he has copied. ‘Musiknoten,’ he says, ‘sind nun gar überaus schön’ (para. 31), but the narrator's impression of his skill as a music copyist is hardly favourable: ‘Er zeigte dabei durchblätternd auf sein Musikbuch, in dem ich zu meinem Entsetzen mit sorgfältiger, aber widerlich steifer Schrift ungeheuer schwierige Kompositionen alter berühmter Meister … erblickte’ (para. 18). ‘Sorgfältig, aber widerlich steif’ would also describe his use of language before he begins to tell the story of his life. He can only ‘copy’ the language of others; he cannot use it to express himself. His attitude towards the word as used by the rest of mankind is like ours might be towards ancient hieroglyphs—we could copy them no doubt, but we could not use them creatively.

Jacob's most traumatic experience with the word takes place at school during the public examination in Latin attended by his father when he forgets a word in a memorized passage from Horace's Ars poetica. We have already heard the Spielmann quote Horace: the first words we heard him utter were from the pen of that urbane master of language, and the narrator emphasized that he pronounced them ‘mit der richtigsten Betonung, mit völliger Geläufigkeit’ (para. 9). But there is a word that will not come to Jacob's tongue during the examination in spite of all dishonest prompting. This word is cachinnum, ‘derisive laughter.’ Politzer (pp. 21ff) has explicated this passage in detail. He does not, however, relate it to the theme of the word in general nor does he, as a matter of fact, seem to recognize any such theme qua theme. The Ars poetica is a work dealing above all with the doctrine of ‘decorum,’ i.e., the necessity of harmony of utterance with the subject treated: ‘singula quaeque locum teneant sortita decentem’ (v. 92: let each style keep its fitting place), that is, it treats exactly what seems (but only seems) so conspicuously lacking in Jacob, harmony between expression and that to be expressed.

The lines (also quoted by Politzer, p. 21) in which the fatal word occurs are 112-13: ‘si dicentis erunt fortunis absona dicta, / Romani tollent equites peditesque cachinnum’ (‘If the speaker's words sound discordant with his fortunes, the Romans, in boxes and pit alike [knights and commoners], will raise a loud guffaw,’ Fairclough's translation). It is obvious that one reason young Jacob subconsciously suppresses this word is that he feels himself to be the object (or fears to become the object) of just such a guffaw. (The word itself, one notes, is by its weighted position in the verse hard to forget.) Like the speaker referred to in Horace, his own character and his speech, ‘his being and the expression of his being’ in Politzer's words (p. 22), seem to gape apart when he is forced to express himself in the language of this world. Furthermore, the term cachinnum itself signifies something of which Jacob himself would be utterly incapable. There is nothing in his being that corresponds to it and thus it is for him an un-word, an unsayable word. He can say it now of course, when it no longer makes any difference, and he could even say it the day after the examination, when it was already too late.¹⁵

This episode naturally also refers back to the opening frame (Politzer says nothing of this) and the crucial sixth paragraph with its enunciation of the doctrine of the necessity of the artist's submission to the voice of the crowd. It is not by accident, surely, that this is a heathen doctrine and that the Christian view is the exact opposite. We have already quoted 1 Corinthians 3:19: ‘For the wisdom of the world is folly with God.’ The world and its cachinnum are on the side of Horace, the Spielmann on the side of Paul.

His fiasco in the Latin examination leads to Jacob's ‘silencing.’ From this day onward his father refuses to speak to him, he is removed from school, made to take his meals alone in a restaurant, and treated altogether as a non-person. He has failed the test of the word and these are the awful consequences. He himself, to be sure, feels sorry for his father, whom he has so bitterly disappointed, rather than himself.

But Jacob's expulsion from the world of the word is more than compensated for by his re-entry into the wordless world of music: in his utter loneliness he hears Barbara's song. Not the words, as he himself stresses (para. 35), ‘Wie ich denn überhaupt glaube, die Worte verderben die Musik.’ It is the only piece of music he plays in a recognizable fashion. The narrator—and we can trust his judgment here—finds it ‘gemütlich. übrigens gar nicht ausgezeichnet’ (para. 35). But in playing it, Jacob is moved to tears. When one considers the matter, it is strange indeed that Jacob should be so moved by this very ordinary song: ‘Es war so einfach, so rührend, und hatte den Nachdruck so auf der rechten Stelle,’ he tries to explain (para. 35); then, describing how he had taken down his long unused violin and tried to play the melody, his words assume a positively mystical tone:

Als ich nun mit dem Bogen über die Saiten fuhr, Herr, da war es, also ob Gottes Finger mich angerührt hätte. Der Ton drang in mein Inneres hinein und aus dem Innern wieder hinaus. Die Luft um mich war wie geschwängert mit Trunkenheit. Das Lied unten im Hofe und die Töne von meinen Fingern an mein Ohr, Mitbewohner meiner Einsamkeit. (Para. 36)

Politzer (p. 46) speaks of the effect of Barbara's song on Jacob in pietistic terms as an ‘Erweckung.’ One could also call it a return to the other order, the order without words that is/was/ever shall be. Jacob, exiled in the world of the word, has returned home.

The paradox is that song itself is also a ‘word’ and for Jacob even the word. It is the only word he can really understand and the only composition whose content he has ever concerned himself with. ‘… das jeweilige Was der Musik,’ he states firmly, ‘mit Ausnahme jenes Liedes, [war] mir immer ziemlich gleichgültig und [ist es] auch geblieben bis zum heutigen Tag’ (para. 38, emphasis added). Barbara's song is the only ‘word’ he can ‘say,’ because it is the only word to which he has ever had any but a purely formal relation. It is his single point of contact with the created world of the Word, the world of fallen man, which is why, when he ‘says’ it, it is also intelligible to fallen man: ‘Er spielte, und zwar diesmal mit richtigem Ausdrucke, die Melodie … ’ (para. 35). The song, in short, is for Jacob the connecting link between the ‘two orders’: ‘Das Lied unten im Hofe und die Töne von meinen Fingern an mein Ohr, Mitbewohner meiner Einsamkeit.’

For Barbara of course the song is only words. When Jacob—after what difficulties and circumstantial preparations!—finally asks her for a copy of the music so that he may play the song properly, her incomprehension is total: ‘… die Abschrift? sagte sie. Das Lied ist gedruckt und wird an den Straßenecken verkauft. Das Lied? entgegnete ich. Das sind wohl nur die Worte.—Nun ja, die Worte, das Lied’ (para. 43). Barbara lives wholly in the world of the fallen, which is the realm of the word; she is perfectly at home with ‘das Volk.’¹⁶ One need only recall the scene in the ‘Grieslerladen’ when Jacob, having been surprised by Barbara's father ‘stealing’ produce displayed on the sidewalk, is dragged into the shop where the butcher—her future husband—is talking to Barbara: ‘Da lachte der … Fleischer laut auf und wendete sich zu gehen, nachdem er vorher dem Mädchen ein paar Worte leise zugeflüstert hatte, die sie gleichfalls lachend durch einen schallenden Schlag mit der flachen Hand auf seinen Rücken beantwortete’ (para. 48). Barbara understands ‘der Menschen Worte,’ Jacob only ‘die Stille des Aethers.’

In Der arme Spielmann it is not ‘das Ewig-Weibliche’ that draws us upward. It is Jacob who—for a time at least—raises Barbara to purer spheres, as she herself recognizes when she comes to take leave of him: ‘Ich muß nun hinaus unter die groben Leute, wogegen ich mich so lange gesträubt habe’ (para. 66). And yet—is not Jacob more a woman than a man? Barbara at any rate seems to think so: ‘Aber ändern müßten Sie sich!’ she warns him during their conversation about a possible future together, ‘Ich hasse die weibischen Männer’ (para. 61, end). Masculine and feminine are curiously reversed in this story, Jacob representing the feminine pole and Barbara, whose ‘mannish’ traits have often been noted, the masculine.

It is not through his music, however, that Jacob raises Barbara. For her, as for everyone else, the Spielmann's playing is merely ‘Kratzen.’ ‘Lassen Sie das Musizieren,’ she instructs him, ‘und denken Sie auf die Notwendigkeit!’ (para. 62). They never speak of music when together, nor will Barbara sing for him (para. 57). If then Jacob raises Barbara to a higher plane, and we cannot doubt that he does, it is through the nobility of his being, and perhaps even through his very ‘femininity,’ which stands in polar balance to her ‘mannishness.’

Barbara, on the other hand, as we have already indicated, connects the Spielmann with this world. She does this not only through her personality but also through her song, which is her existential expression and ‘gar nicht ausgezeichnet.’ Through words—'Nun ja, die Worte, das Lied'—Jacob is, for a while, embodied in the realm of time, the here and now—one could almost call it a creation. The way in which Barbara connects the Spielmann with this world, giving him a local habitation (and later a name), is shown most clearly in the passage (para. 57) where Jacob overhears her singing ‘his’ song as she works:

Einmal aber, als ich unbemerkt zur Tür hereintrat, stand sie, auf den Zehenspitzen emporgerichtet, den Rücken mir zugekehrt, und mit den erhobenen Händen, wie man nach etwas sucht, auf einem der höheren Stellbretter herumtastend. Und dabei sang sie leise in sich hinein.—Er war das Lied, mein Lied!—Sie aber zwitscherte wie eine Grasmücke, die am Bache das Hälslein wäscht und das Köpfchen herumwirft und die Federn sträubt und wieder glättet mit dem Schnäblein. Mir war, als ginge ich auf grünen Wiesen.

So at home does this new Adam feel in the world that he even dares to try to embrace his Eve. The result, as we know, is tragicomic. Barbara hands him one of her notorious slaps, then kisses the hurt. He pursues her, she runs into the back room and leans against the door, he kisses her—through the pane. All the same, it is the ‘Glückstag [seines] Lebens.’

The separation between the Spielmann and the world remains. This time, however, the chalk mark has been drawn by the world, not by the Spielmann, and Barbara later gives a clear indication that there is a possibility of its finally being erased. Having suggested that Jacob invest his money in a ‘Putzladen’ they can manage together, she says, ‘Was sich etwa noch weiter ergäbe, davon wollen wir jetzt nicht reden’ (para. 61, end). Whether the Spielmann would have been able to live in the world, however, whatever might have come to pass, is an open question. Barbara makes any future together dependent upon a radical change in Jacob's character: he must switch from the feminine to the masculine pole. Could he do that? Would he then still be Jacob?

The question never comes to a trial. Jacob's connection with the world is too tenuous for him to retain his foothold in it. He can live only in paradise with his Eve, not in the fallen world. His other-worldliness, which manifests itself as foolish saintliness, keeps him from even suspecting the world's wickedness and thus soon leads to his expulsion from it. The paradise myth is reversed: Jacob returns to the world of timelessness and worldlessness in which we first learned to know him. His sole connection between his world and ours is Barbara's song. It is the only composition he is later able to teach Barbara's son. It is the only ‘word’ he can ‘say’ and the summation of his ‘story,’ which is nothing more than an extended explication of the song. In playing it he only tells his story again, and even the narrator, who now knows its meaning, can bear to hear it repeated only so often. Jacob, however, tells it over and over again to himself. His tale ended, ‘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, stand auf, legte ein paar Silberstücke auf den nebenstehenden Tisch und ging, während der Alte eifrig immer fortgeigte.’

The closing frame is essentially an ironic reversal of the opening one. At the beginning the masses, which are likened to a great natural force, overflow all within view; at the end it is they whom a great natural force overflows. At the beginning ‘Aufruhr der Freude’ and ‘Losgebundenheit der Lust’ (para. 2); at the end ‘Von allen Seiten Weinen und Trauergeläute’ (para. 76). At the beginning the narrator sets out to seek contact with the masses, at the end to find a particular individual, who, as we have come to see, lives in hermetic isolation from the masses. This theme itself is also reversed: in death the Spielmann finds identity with the masses; not because he seeks identity, however, but because, grotesquely and ironically, his other-worldliness prevents him from distinguishing between the necessary and the unnecessary, between saving lives and rescuing a few gulden. At the moment of death he returns wholly to that realm whose harmonies only he can hear: ‘er … wendete Kopf und Ohr seitwärts, als ob er in der Entfernung etwas gar Schönes hörte, lächelte, sank zuruck und war tot’ (para. 76). He dies with the same ecstatic expression noted by the narrator when he surprised him at his morning practice, ‘wobei sein Gesicht oft geradezu den Ausdruck der Verzückung annahm’ (para. 25). What Jacob hears, we can never hear; what to us is cacophony is to him divine harmony; the two orders remain utterly distinct.¹⁷ His union with the ‘Volk’ is a grotesque irony, his life, from the standpoint of the world, that of an outcast, he himself the object of derision, cachinnum.

An object of derision—or at best of sentimental pity—for all, that is, except Barbara and the narrator, the only ones who know his story. Whether we can say that Barbara ‘loves’ Jacob in the commonly accepted sense seems dubious. That she reveres him is beyond doubt. When the narrator pays his Sunday visit to the butcher's family in the hope of acquiring the old man's fiddle as a memento, he finds ‘die Familie beisammen ohne Spur eines zurückgebliebenen besondern Eindrucks. Doch hing die Geige mit einer Art Symmetrie geordnet neben dem Spiegel einem Kruzifix gegenüber an der Wand’ (para. 78, emphasis added). Cross, mirror, fiddle—are we to interpret this constellation as an emblem of the world and the instruments of its overcoming? Here, in the final paragraphs, in contrast to the opening ones, it is fitting to apply Stern's term and speak of a ‘laconic mode.’ We are offered signs but no explication, as the story itself sinks into wordlessness. The final tableau shows us the butcher, who, ‘ohne sich durch den Besuch stören zu lassen, mit lauter Stimme sein Tischgebet anhob, in das die Kinder gellend einstimmten,’ while Barbara remains wordless, tears streaming down her face. The ‘world’ still has words, or at least formulas, but Barbara, who has been granted a glimpse of Jacob's realm and even been taken into it to a degree, has none. His life and its meaning remain finally unsayable, all that it meant symbolized in a precious relic to which, I think we must agree, Barbara has a better right than the narrator, his fellow artist. For Jacob touched the world, at least a tiny portion of it, by his being, not by his art.

Are we to read the story as a parable of the expressive dilemma of the artist? In my opinion, yes, although I would not maintain that reducing it to this formula significantly increases its depth and may even make it shallower. In Libussa Grillparzer treats the same theme in reverse and arrives at a similar conclusion: what is really worth saying cannot be said—the supernal order becomes disorder as soon as it is translated into the language of this world. When Libussa takes Primislaus as her interpreter of the divine order, this order becomes distorted beyond recognition and ‘Vernunft’ is degraded into ‘Recht.’ It is the same insight at which Rudolf has already arrived at the beginning of Ein Bruderzwist (v. 428f) when he tells Ferdinand: ‘Dort oben wohnt die Ordnung, dort ihr Haus, / Hier unten eitle Willkür und Verwirrung.’ The order of the stars, of which Rudolf is speaking, those lights that did not, like man, defect from the divine order, is also the order reflected in the Spielmann's life and music. The ridiculous and grotesque aspect arises of course from the fact that the Spielmann is unaware of the non-communication of his music, but assumes that his hearers are at any rate potentially open to a direct, non-dissonant revelation of the divine. But it is this same lack of awareness that makes us speak of his absolute good will and his saintliness, it is this that gives his story its deep poignancy.

Notes

1. I have consulted the following secondary literature which will be referred to in the text only by author and page: Bernhard Seuffert, ‘Grillparzer's Spielmann,’ Festschrift August Sauer (Stuttgart, 1925), pp. 291-311; Friedrich Gundolf, ‘Franz Grillparzer,’ Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts (1931), pp. 9-93; Richard Alewyn, ‘Grillparzer und die Restauration,’ Publs. of the Engl. Goethe Soc., NS 12 (1935-7), 1-18; Walter Silz, Realism and Reality (Chapel Hill, 1954), pp. 67-78; Walter Naumann, Grillparzer: Das dichterische Werk (Stuttgart, n.d. [1956]), pp. 20-32; Richard Brinkmann, Wirklichkeit und Illusion (Tübingen, 1957), pp. 87-145; Benno von Wiese, Die deutsche Novelle von Goethe bis Kafka (Düsseldorf, 1957), pp. 134-53; Walter Höllerer, Zwischen Klassik und Moderne (Stuttgart, 1958), pp. 240-94; J.P. Stern, Re-interpretations: Seven Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature (London, 1964), pp. 42-77; M.W. Swales, ‘The narrative perspective in Grillparzer's Der Arme Spielmann,’ German Life & Letters, 20 (1967), 107-16; Heinz Politzer, Franz Grillparzer's ‘Der arme Spielmann’ (Stuttgart, 1967); Günther Jungbluth, ‘Franz Grillparzers Erzählung: Der Arme Spielmann. Ein Beitrag zu ihrem Verstehen,’ Orbis Litterarum, 24 (1969), 35-51; Hertha Krotkoff, ‘Über den Rahmen in Franz Grillparzers Novelle Der arme Spielmann,’ Mod. Lang. Notes, 85 (1970), 345-66; Otto K. Liedke, ‘Considerations on the structure of Grillparzer's Der Arme Spielmann,’ Journal of the International Arthur Schnitzler Research Association, 3 (Fall 1970), 7-12; W.E. Yates, Grillparzer: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 76-83; John M. Ellis, ‘Grillparzer's Der Arme Spielmann,’ German Quarterly, 45 (1972), 662-83. Of these, one can single out only Jungbluth's contribution as almost totally worthless.

2. As printed in the critical edition of Grillparzer's works, ed. Reinhold Backmann (Wien, 1952), IV, 265-322, which is the edition followed here. In Grillparzers sämtliche Werke, ed. Sauer, 5. Ausg. in 20 Bdn. (Stuttgart, n.d.), XIII, 223-66. the story is printed in 77 paragraphs as opposed to 78 in Backmann, paragraph 15 in Sauer corresponding to 15-16 in Backmann.

3. Krotkoff, pp. 347f, believes Grillparzer (whom she equates with the narrator) ‘versucht … den christlich-religiösen Aspekt zu verwischen, indem er das Fest mit dem Beiwort saturnalisch charakterisiert.’ Ideas associated with this word, she adds, are: ‘Heidentum, chaotische Umkehrung der bestehenden Ordnung, lustbetonte Grundhaltung … ’

4. Ellis, p. 674, maintains that the narrator's ‘criterion of artistic success is simply public acclaim’ and implies that this is all he could be thinking of. Politzer, p. 12, is of a similar opinion.

5. Cf. Krotkoff, p. 358: ‘Auch läßt sich wohl annehmen, daß [diesem] Satz …programmatischer Charakter zukommt.’

6. I should hesitate to go as far as Ellis (p. 669) and call the narrator ‘simply an imposter,’ though Ellis, like Seuffert, Swales, and Politzer before him, is undoubtedly right in adopting a suspicious attitude toward what he terms the narrator's ‘gross and inflated posturing’ (p. 674).

7. Liedke (p. 7) finds the design revealed in the opening frame to be ‘a pattern of opposites in the form of intention and reversal or failure of intention.’ Cf. also von Wiese, p. 138, who points out that as much as the frame speaks of the ‘Volk’ and its divinity, the tale itself is concerned with the Spielmann only, ‘der aus diesem Rahmen der allgemeinen losgebundenen Lust gerade herausfällt.’

8. Ellis (p. 669 and passim) apparently sees no irony here. He denigrates the narrator as ‘unsympathetic’ and ‘prying.’ But mere ‘prying’ can hardly be the whole reason for his pursuit of an utter stranger; some personal, ‘existential’ reason has to be involved. Swales, p. 115, sees the situation much more clearly. The narrator, he points out, is connected with the Spielmann by his own isolation from the crowd. ‘It is because of this strange affinity between them that the narrator is so fascinated by the Spielmann; it is because he knows of this embarrassing affinity that the narrator ironizes the Spielmann,’ thus laying bare ‘his own uncertainty.’

9. One must agree with Ellis (p. 666) that J.P. Stern's contention (p. 63) that ‘here, in the narrator's point of view, the laconic mode of the tale is established’ is ‘most inappropriate to a text…remarkable for precisely the reverse.’

10. Ms. Lorelei Beer of the University of Connecticut (Storrs) has called my attention to the numerical symbolism in the novella. I have no right to anticipate her findings and will only titillate the reader by referring to the fact that Jacob lives at 34 Gärtnerstrasse (3 + 4 = 7) and that the Brigittenkirchtag takes place in the seventh month of the year (July). There are several other indications of the conscious employment of symbolical numbers in the work.

11. Cf., e.g., Naumann, p. 31 (emphasis added): ‘Im Arme Spielmann ist das Fern-Halten des Lebens dargestellt als Nicht-Können’; Jungbluth, p. 49: ‘Trotz aller Übung bleibt [der Spielmann] ein… Stümper’; Yates, p. 81: ‘the truth is that as a violinist Jakob is incompetent’; Silz, p. 79: ‘ludicrous self-deception as to the quality of his performance’; Stern, p. 70: ‘utterly lacking in skill.’ Further examples could easily be adduced. Höllerer seems to be the only exegete who clearly sees that Jacob's ear-torturing music is not due to mere inability (p. 259): ‘Die mißgeschickte Kunst des Spielmanns…wird nicht als ein Darunterbleiben unter dem, was Kunst erfordert, abgetan, eher als ein Zuviel-Wollen, ein Alles-zugleich-Wollen geschildert.’

12. Stern, p. 72, regards Jacob (if I understand him) as a symbol of ‘the disembodied good will as the absolute and only value.’ If by ‘disembodied’ is meant ‘not translated into action the world can understand,’ then Stern is correct. But Jacob's good will is surely not disembodied absolutely; on the contrary, it is continually being embodied, both in his ‘art’ and his actions; our incomprehension is a sign of our own sinful, ‘dissonant’ state. By acting according to the categorical imperative the good will is ‘embodied’; that is the only way we can recognize it. That Jacob thus acts, one can scarcely doubt; our consternation and amusement prove that we do not and would not. Perhaps Stern means something much like this when he speaks of ‘the substantial world…as a place radically incapable of yielding form and substance to the good will’ (p. 74).

13. Is it intentionally ironical that the Spielmann is named after the patriarch noted for his guile and deception?

14. The view we have been developing here, though perhaps more radically stated, is by no means without precursors in the critical literature. Brinkmann (p. 114) speaks of the ‘two orders’ that prevail in the story, that of the Spielmann and the world, adding, ‘Es ist an keiner Stelle deutlich, wer nun eigentlich “ver-rückt,” d. h. aus der rechten und richtigen Ordnung gerückt ist: der Spielmann order … die Welt,’ Von Wiese, p. 145, while regarding the Spielmann's music as ‘pure solipsism,’ admits: ‘Vielleicht wird sie noch von Gott gehört, so wie sie gemeint ist.’ Krotkoff, p. 364, sees three ‘worlds’ in the tale: that of the people, still in the grip of a now decadent baroque piety, that of the narrator with his ‘secularized religion of humanity,’ and, finally, ‘the pure filial relation to the divine’ of Jacob. Naumann, p. 32, on the other hand, speaks of the Spielmann as being ‘herausgelöst’ ‘[aus] der Menge des Volkes’ and claims (p. 22), ‘Das Leben des armen Spielmanns…ist nichts als das reine Abbild des Wesens eines Menschen,’ which would seem to mean that he sees Jacob as a representative of the ‘Volk’ in exemplary purity. If this is correct, Naumann's view is close to Alewyn's (p. 14): ‘Der Arme Spielmann ist die extreme Darstellung des totalen Privatmenschen, des idealen Untertans des Regimes Metternich.’

15. Politzer, p. 23, also interprets the forgetting of the word as a subconsciously purposive ‘Fehlleistung’ committed to gain a secretly desired end: to be removed from school and apprenticed to an artisan. I am sceptical of this explanation, though I cannot refute it. Jacob's contrition at having disappointed his father seems to me to speak against it.

16. Her name almost certainly indicates this connection, ‘Barbara’ equalling ‘Barbar.’

17. One is strongly reminded of the legend of the death of another Jacob, Jacob Böhme, whose namesake ‘our’ Jacob may be, rather than the patriarch's. Cf. final words of the ‘Erste Nachtwache’ in Nachtwachen. Von Bonaventura: ‘Den Sterbenden ist die Musik verschwistert, sie ist der erste süße Laut vom fernen Jenseits, und die Muse des Gesanges ist die mystische Schwester, die zum Himmel zeigt. So entschlummerte Jacob Böhme, indem er die ferne Musik vernahm, die niemand, außer dem Sterbenden, hörte.’