THE PLAYS OF GRILLPARZER by GEORGE A. WELLS Professor of German at the University of London PERGAMON PRESS LONDON • OXFORD • EDINBURGH • NEW YORK TORONTO • SYDNEY • PARIS • BRAUNSCHWEIG Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall, Oxford 4 & 5 Fitzroy Square, London W.l Pergamon Press (Scotland) Ltd., 2 & 3 Teviot Place, Edinburgh 1 Pergamon Press Inc., Maxwell House, Fairview Park, Elmsford, New York 10523 Pergamon of Canada Ltd., 207 Queen's Quay West, Toronto 1 Pergamon Press (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., 19a Boundary Street, e Rushcutters Bay, N.S.W. 2011, Australia Pergamon Press S.A.R.L., 24 rue des ficoles, Paris 5 Vieweg & Sohn GmbH, Burgplatz 1, Braunschweig Copyright © 1969 George A. Wells First Edition 1969 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 68-8871 Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co., Exeter This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise disposed of without the publisher's consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. 08 012949 8 (flexicover) 08 012950 1 (hard cover) MOTTO Mir ist auf der Welt nichts zuwiderer als die weithergeholten Deu- tungen dichterischer Werke. Ein guter Dichter ist im Stande zu sagen was er will, und was er mit Absicht verbirgt, soil man nicht gewaltsam hervorziehen, am wenigsten aber als Hauptsache in den Vordergrund stellen. Die Poesie ist eben die Gestaltung des Gedankens, der Gedanke aber geht zwar immer iiber die Gestalt hinaus, aber das nachstliegende, natiirlichste ist immer das wahrste. (Grillparzer, II, 11, 112-13, Tgb.) vii FOREWORD FRANZ GRILLPARZER (1791-1872), although the most famous Austrian dramatist, has attracted relatively little attention in Britain, and there is not, to my knowledge, an English monograph on the effectiveness of his plays. Douglas Yates' book correlates the plays with their author's personal experiences, and is not primarily concerned with dramatic technique. In the present volume I have tried to fill this gap. In the first three chapters I discuss the three main types of play Grillparzer wrote, and in Chapter 5 I attempt some generalizations about what character­ izes his tragedies and makes them effective. In the intervening Chapter 4 I discuss the salient features of his dramatic technique by reference to a single play, and I have selected Die Judin von Toledo for this purpose because it does in fact illustrate his methods so well. Libussa, which is, in contrast, quite atypical, is the subject of the brief final section of this chapter. Although what I have written is very straightforward, much of it is not generally agreed. For instance, Die Ahnfrau is widely regarded as a fate-tragedy, the cause of Sappho's suicide has been frequently misunderstood, the character of Rudolf II has been repeatedly regarded as inconsistent, the relation between Grillparzer's theory and practice in tragedy has not been properly appreciated, nor have the principles which guided his treatment of history in his historical dramas. It is premature to write about specialized niceties until agreement has been reached on these fundamentals, and I hope this book will provoke discussion which may lead to such agreement. Grillparzer is quoted from the standard edition of A. Sauer, Grillparzers Werke, im Auftrage der Reichshaupt- und Resi- denzstadt (Wien, 1905, etc.). The reference I, 7, 188 would be to ix X FOREWORD division I, volume 7, page 188 of this edition. The references to lines of Grillparzer's plays are given according to the numbering in this edition. Some other editors count the broken lines differently, so that their whole numbering is different. For bibliographies of the secondary literature I refer the reader to the Jahrbuch der Grillparzer-Gesellschaft (Wien, 1937), XXXIV and (Wien, 1953), I (Folge III). The former covers the years 1905-37 and the latter 1937-52. More recent literature is given by Joachim Miiller, Grillparzer (Stuttgart, 1963), and in Herbert Seidler's "Forschungsbericht", Zeitschrift fiir deutsche Philologie, LXXXIII (1964). Some of the most recent literature is listed in the short bibliography in Eleonore Frey-Staiger's Grillparzer: Gestalt und Gestaltung des Traums (Zurich, 1966), and the longer one in Ulrich Fulleborn's Das Dramatische Geschehen im Werke Grillparzers (Miinchen, 1966). Some of the material included in Chapter 3 appeared in German Life and Letters, XI (1958) and a small amount of Chapter 1 has been published in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, LXIV (1965). I am indebted to the editors of both journals for permission to reprint. I am also glad to record my thanks to Irene Wells, and to my colleagues Miss Margaret Jacobs, Pro­ fessor R. Tymms, Professor W. D. Robson-Scott, Dr. G. P. Butler, Mr. A. Stillmark and Mr. B. Thompson for their criticism of parts of my manuscript. CHAPTER 1 THE PLAYS OF ACTION 1. The Plays for the Popular Stage Grillparzer published two plays for the popular stage, Die Ahnfrau and Der Traum ein Leben. The former was written within three weeks in 1816 and first performed in 1817 at the Theater an der Wien—one of the surburban theatres of Vienna—not at the Burgtheater, which was reserved for more serious drama and according to an edict of Joseph II in 1776 was to "further good taste and moral ennoblement". Der Traum ein Leben, begun in 1817 and completed in 1831, was first performed at the Burg­ theater, but not until 1834, since the management was long un­ willing to accept such a play for this theatre. The Viennese popular stage usually provided fairies and magic (Mozart's Magic Flute is a good example) and also clowning and improvization. These features were even introduced into serious drama, and in 1763 Lessing's tragedy Miss Sara Sampson was played with Hanswurst replacing the part of Norton! (See ref. 40, pp. 153, 383.) Grillparzer's plays for this stage have some magic and supernatural elements, but no clowning, for he could not abide anything banal. For this reason these, like all his plays, are in verse—four-foot trochees in these two plays and five-foot iambs (for the most part) in his others. Furthermore, if I may use the word "action" in the sense of "outer action"—actions which advance the plot, not 'inner action' or psychological processes in the characters—then the two popular plays may be said to be characterized by their exciting action; the emphasis is on what the characters do, rather than on the people they are. In general, a distinction can be made between plays with exciting action but 1 2 THE PLAYS OF GRILLPARZER where the characters are uninteresting, and those where the characters are drawn in detail but fail to do anything of interest. The ideal lies, perhaps, between the two extremes, and is achieved by Grillparzer in his historical dramas. In his plays for the popular stage he neglects character—at any rate to some extent—in favour of action, while in his Greek plays the reverse is the case. Die Ahnfrau is the first play he published, but he had already completed Blanka von Kastilien, a tragedy written, as he himself confessed, in imitation of Schiller's Don Carlos. The situation and behaviour of the hero, Fedriko, is similar to that of Schiller's Carlos. Both feel a conflict between their passion and their loyalty to their king, both seek the king's confidence and are offended by his unwillingness to trust them; and both are led to take part in an already existing rebellion caused by the harshness of his rule. The style of Grillparzer's play owes as much to Schiller as does its content. It is well illustrated by the monologue in Act I, scene 2, where Fedriko, having treated a courtier with disdain, explains that he has sacrificed everything to virtue: Kein holdes Weib steht liebend mir zur Seite Und hilft des Lebens Sturme mir bekampfen, Und streichelt mir des diistern Unmuths Falten Mit suBem Lacheln von der finstern Stirne. The immaturity of the writer is clear from the way he tickets each of the principal nouns with a conventional epithet: "holdes Weib", sliBes Lacheln", and so on. The speaker then adds another illustration of his sacrifices: Kein muntrer Knabe jauchzet mir entgegen, Den theuren Vater kindisch froh umhiipfend. Here again are the conventional epithets; and as one would expect a man who renounces marriage in order to do his duty to be without children, this illustration does not so much convey new information as drive the point home in an attempt to rouse the sympathy of the audience. This long-windedness is characteristic of many dramas of this period which reproduced the heroism, idealism, rhetoric and loquaciousness of the heroes of Schiller's historical dramas. In E. T. A. Hoffmann's Nachricht von den THE PLAYS OF ACTION 3 neusten Schicksalen des Hundes Berganza, the dog complains of the mediocrity of these imitations, and the author replies that their long-windedness is a sort of pregnancy, in that each line of verse seems to give birth to ten more. A good example occurs in Fedriko's peroration, where the final couplet that makes the whole intelligible is repeatedly postponed by clauses introduced with "was": Denn was das suBeste dem Menschen ist, Was ihm die Leiden minder lastend macht, Was jede Freude tausendfach erhoht, Den Trieben der Natur, der Menschlichkeit Hab' ich entsagt. The language of the play shows other traces of Schiller's influence. It is full of sharp antitheses ("Himmel und Holle", "Licht und Dunkel", "Engel und Teufel") and the genitive frequently precedes the noun it qualifies ("des Lebens Stiirme", "des Unmuthes Falten"), making the speech (at least to the present-day reader) sound much more elevated than normal discourse. Personification is also frequent, and this is very characteristic of the dramatists who imitated Schiller at this time. Stahl, whose Das Schauspiel der Schillerepigonen sums up this chapter of German theatrical history, remarks that "wo einem Afterdichter die Fahigkeit abging, einen klaren Vergleich aufzustellen, da war er immer noch imstande, irgendein Abstrak- tum auf eine stupide Weise zu konkretisieren".* Grillparzer began to turn away from Schiller in 1810, after completing Blanka. A diary entry for 19 June criticizes Kabale und Liebe as "das elendeste Machwerk das je ein Mann . . . aus bunten, glitzenden Lumpen zusammengeflikt hat, und an dessen breiten Worten und hohen Stelzen man unmoglich die Absicht des Verfassers, ein Meisterwerk liefern zu wollen, erkennen kann" (II, 7, 48). It is not merely that a play in prose where the heroine is poisoned by a glass of lemonade was bound to appear banal to Grillparzer, who continued to abhor the burgerliches Trauerspiel, as a genre, for the rest of his life. The passage shows that he found the rhetoric and declamation equally distasteful. And he went on *Ref. 44, p. 209; cf. refs. 25 and 35, pp. 24-5. 4 THE PLAYS OF GRILLPARZER to complain of the "bombastischer Wortschwall in der Braut von Messina". Nevertheless, he obviously had not grown to full independence by the time he wrote Die Ahnfrau, which retains a number of the weaknesses of Blanka—for instance, the tedious length of some of the speeches. Old Borotin takes nineteen lines to tell us that he will not survive the winter: Wohl wird sich das Jahr erneuen (1. 42) Nie erneut sich Borotin, (1. 60), and when Jaromir admits that he is a robber, he goes on saying so for over a hundred lines. Moreover, the imagery is full of the personified abstractions that abound in the plays of Schiller's imitators. Fear, "mit Vampir-Russel", sucks the blood from Jaromir's veins (11. 757-8). The "schlaferwachtes Auge" of Bertha's "Neigung" has lighted upon him (11. 1146-7), and there is mention of "der Rachsucht gift'ger Hauch", "des Hasses Atem" (11. 1293-4), and "der Sorge Natterzahn" (1. 1507). In Jaromir's long monologue in Act V, "Laster", "Hinterlist", "Neid", "Mord", "Meineid", and "Gotteslastrung" are all personified in a catalogue reminiscent of the baroque lyric of the seventeenth century. To understand Die Ahnfrau it will be necessary to discuss its relation to fate-tragedy. The origin of the idea of fate can be readily surmised. The consciousness of a certain power in oneself of choosing between one act and another, represented as the "will", suggested a similar power presiding over the world at large. In Oedipus Rex the outcome is determined by a power of( 5) 3 this kind, a power which is malignant in the extreme. Elsewhere I have tried to show that the same is true of Schiller's Die Braut von Messina (1803), inspired as it was by Sophocles' play. And Schiller's play in turn acted as a source of inspiration to the fate- tragedies that dominated the German stage for fifteen years or more after his death. In these plays, someone pronounces a curse on a whole family whereupon a malignant supernatural power ensures that it is THE PLAYS OF ACTION 5 effective by sending catastrophes which tend to occur on the same day of the year and are often brought about by one and the same fatal weapon. Zacharias Werner's Der 24. Februar, written in 1809, is often taken as typical. Here we learn that a son was sharpening his scythe with a knife when his father provoked him. He threw the knife and the father died (at midnight on 24 February) cursing his son, the son's wife and their progeny. A son (with the mark of a blood-red scythe on his arm) is duly born to the young couple, and the action on the stage culminates in his murder by his father, at midnight on 24 F7,e b rpua3)ry4, 6with the same fatal knife. We may ask, with Carlyle/ - why the family had not "during all that half century . . . carried it to the smithy to make hobnails; but kept it hanging on a peg, most injudiciously . .. almost as a sort of bait and bonus to Satan, a ready-made fulchrum for whatever machinery he might bring to bear against them". But the text has anticipated the question and informed us that the family has become so impoverished that only this knife remains to them (1. 297)! The misfortunes leading over the years to this impoverishment all occurred on 24 February (11. 555-6). Werner's play comprises a single Act: the unities of time and place are kept. In fact the action lasts only one hour, from eleven until twelve midnight. It was Lessing who said that a play which keeps the conventions of French classical tragedy (in particular the unities) need not necessarily be effective. There could be no better illustration of the justice of this statement than Der 24. Februar. Milliner's Der 29. Februar (1812) makes the catastrophes even less likely to be mere coincidences by placing them on a day which is only available once every four years. It tells how (in Carlyle's words) "some old Woodcutter or Forester has fallen into deadly sin with his wife's sister, long ago, on that intercalary day," for which reason "his whole progeny must, wittingly or unwittingly, proceed in incest and murder; the day of the catastrophe regularly occurring every four years on the same twenty-ni(n>t 7h; ptilp3l h)4ap7pi_ly 8 the whole are murdered and there is an end". - There is a novel element, as compared with Der 24. Februar. The family