Like his dramas, the works that Franz Grillparzer produced in other genres reflect probings of the human spirit that lay bare the fundamental conflicts of humankind’s existence. His poetry is reserved and thoughtful with strong confessional overtones. Especially characteristic in their melancholy self-analysis are the seventeen poems of the cycle Tristia ex Ponto (1835; elegies from the Black Sea). In these lyrics, the author captured the torment of his personal situation as he pondered love relationships that remained unfulfilled. He also wrote pointed political verse and clever, bitter epigrams. Two novellas, Das Kloster bei Sendomir (1827; the monastery at Sendomir) and Der arme Spielmann (1847; The Poor Fiddler, 1946), are closely akin to his dramas in their psychological penetration of life and in their intensity of dramatic effect. The Poor Fiddler, a coded portrait of Grillparzer’s own soul, is particularly powerful in its revelation of his passionate love for the common people. Many significant notes about theater and literature, filled with deep insight into the nature and enduring laws of art, are contained in the fragmentary autobiography and the diaries and letters that were collected, edited, and published after his death.

Only belatedly recognized as the most important Austrian dramatist of the nineteenth century, Franz Grillparzer mediated the influence of German classicism on productions created for the Viennese stage. In so doing, he integrated a multitude of impulses from folk theater, romanticism, Baroque and Spanish tradition, and Shakespearean tragedy, introduced uniquely Austrian historical and cultural substance, gave the resulting creations elevated literary form, and established them in an appropriate relationship to the great Weimar plays of Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Throughout his career, Grillparzer experienced alternating extremes of public success and rejection. His first produced drama, The Ancestress, was greeted with enormous praise when it premiered in 1817, although it also caused him to be branded as a writer of fate tragedies. This circumstance gave him a degree of notoriety in Vienna even when later works were misunderstood or received with harsh criticism. Because of the controversial subject matter of some of his historical tragedies, he encountered repeated difficulties with the Austrian censors; their intervention sometimes delayed performance and publication of individual pieces for years. Grillparzer was extremely sensitive to critical opinion, and the initial failure of the comedy Thou Shalt Not Lie! in 1838 caused him to withdraw from open theatrical involvement for the rest of his life.

At first, the more successful plays enjoyed short-lived popularity. After Grillparzer’s retirement from the stage, however, they were all but forgotten, even in Vienna. Not until Heinrich Laube began to revive the interest of theatergoers with new performances of the tragedies at the Burgtheater did these creations finally gain acceptance as standards of the Austrian stage. In contrast to the disastrous premier twenty years earlier, Laube’s production of Hero and Leander in 1851 was an overwhelming triumph. As a result, Hero and Leander eventually became Grillparzer’s most popular dramatic work. Because of its powerful influence on subsequent German treatments of material from Greek antiquity, the trilogy The Golden Fleece is now regarded as a high point of nineteenth century theatrical art, comparable to Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy (pr. 1798, 1799, 1799, respectively; pb. 1800), and a significant monument of world literature.