LITERATURE, CONTINENTAL, IN 1872. 



457 



tales, partly criticisms, but especially of his 

 autobiography. The complete edition of his 

 works which, at his special request, was issued 

 after his death, by the firm of Cotta, the pub- 

 lishers of Goethe and Schiller, is in ten vol- 

 umes. The greater part of the first and sixth 

 volumes, and the whole of the seventh, eighth, 

 ninth, and tenth, consist of matter hitherto 

 unprinted. Besides his tragedies already 

 known, " The Ancestress " (" Die Ahnfrau "), 

 1817, which established his reputation as a 

 " Schicksalstragode ; " "The Sappho" (1818), 

 which led Byron to utter the prophecy I have 

 mentioned; and the trilogy, "The Golden 

 Fleece," the third part of which, the " Medea," 

 is one of Grillparzer's most remarkable writ- 

 ings ; the historico-patriotic plays, " King Ot- 

 tokar's Fortune and End" (1825), and "The 

 True Servant of his Lord " (1828) ; the love- 

 tragedy, "The Billows of the Sea and of 

 Love;" the libretto "Melusine," written for 

 an opera, of which Beethoven composed the 

 music, but "in his head only;" and the 

 dramas on the Spanish, Grillparzer's favorite 

 model, "The Dream, a Life" (1834), and 

 "Woe to him who Lies; " there are the frag- 

 ments which have already been played 

 "Esther," and " Scipio and Hannibal "and 

 three new and entire dramas " Libussa," 

 "Ein Bruderzwist im Habsburg," and "The 

 Jewess of Toledo." The subject of the first 

 of these is the legendary Amazonian Princess 

 of Bohemia, whose hatred of the other sex 

 Clement Brentano has commemorated in his 

 romantic drama " The Foundling of Prague," 

 a subject treated by Grillparzer not in the con- 

 fused, bizarre, fantastic fashion of the "Mad 

 Clement," but w T ith fine, if unequal, psycho- 

 logical skill and pathetic power. The founda- 

 tion of the second is the dispute between the 

 high-spirited but irresolute Emperor Rodolph 

 II., and his equally feeble but intriguing 

 and grasping brother Mathias, the conse- 

 quences of which helped to bring on the Thirty 

 Years' War. The subject of the third is the 

 same as of Lope de Vega's " Las Pazes de los 

 Reyes y la Judia de Toledo; " but Grillparzer 

 has infused into his play a mystical element 

 peculiarly his own. The "Brother's Quarrel," 

 was brought upon the stage of his native city 

 immediately after his death, and has obtained 

 a popularity, due not only to the increased 

 reverence felt for the writer, but to its own 

 merits. Grillparzer set a great store upon 

 unity and simplicity of dramatic action, and 

 on that point he was an admirer of the An- 

 cients and of the French ; and although, ow- 

 ing to his residence in Vienna, he was not un- 

 influenced by the Romantic school and the 

 Schlegels, to whom he owed his liking for 

 Lope de Vega and Calderon, he disapproved 

 of the Shakespearian historical drama, which 

 he considered portrayed a series of scenes con- 

 nected only by the unity of the characters. 

 Still, in his " Brother's Quarrel," he produced 

 a set of historical pictures of the time of the 



great German religious war, in which almost 

 the only connecting link is Rodolph II., a 

 character the delineation of which was, to 

 Grillparzer, a labor of love. This extraordi- 

 nary saint, who shut himself up in his obser- 

 vatory, his library, his museum, and, for a 

 change, sometimes in his stable, because he 

 felt himself too weak to resist the innovating 

 spirit he detested, becomes in the play the 

 representative of the dramatist, who attributes 

 to Rodolph his own individuality down to the 

 smallest detail, his silence, his surliness, even 

 his partiality for Lope de Vega. To be unable 

 to go either with or against his time, was Ro- 

 dolph's tragic fate, and it was also Grillpar- 

 zer's own. It hindered him from giving an 

 unqualified adherence to the national develop- 

 ment of the German nation ; and hindered the 

 nation in its turn from fully recognizing his 

 genius. The nation has certainly to atone for 

 past wrongs, for neglecting one of its noblest 

 and most gifted spirits, while it showered 

 honors and compliments upon far inferior 

 men. Yet it is not to be denied that the 

 partly shy, partly bitter manner in which 

 Grillparzer held aloof from the intellectual 

 arena of his day, contributed to this result. 

 That he knew his own merits, is clear from 

 the statement which he makes in his autobi- 

 ography, a book well worthy of attention, that 

 he considers his plays to be the best contribu- 

 tions to the drama that have appeared since 

 Schiller and Goethe. 



In comparison with these rich accumula- 

 tions, the results of sixty years of Grillparzer's 

 poetic activity, half of which were unknown 

 to the reading public, the productions which 

 living writers have published during the year 

 seem, when taken singly, poor, although that 

 is hardly their fault. 



Since Paul Heyse, the novelist and versifier 

 par excellence, introduced the " Novel in 

 verse," this cross between poetry and prose 

 has flourished in Germany. Julius Grosse, a 

 poet, who adheres to a style strictly academic, 

 shows himself punctilious about purity of 

 classification in returning to the simple and 

 suitable title " Narrative Poems." The Italian 

 Idyl, "The Maid of Capri," is particularly 

 noticeable for delineation of character and 

 gorgeous descriptions of Southern scenery. 

 At home and abroad these striking tales will 

 secure for Grosse a sympathetic circle of read- 

 ers, which his polished but frosty plays failed 

 to attract. Next to these tales in ethical ear- 

 nestness, and in deep and passionate feeling, 

 stands the story in verse, "Emanuel d'As- 

 torga," by the Countess "Wilhelmina Wicken- 

 burg, nee Countess Almasy, a lady whose 

 Magyar origin hardly leads one to expect the 

 German earnestness, penetration, and remark- 

 able objectivity that her work displays. She 

 has before now published poems which sur- 

 prised the public by the didactic and epi- 

 grammatic talent they revealed. Her new 

 production, the joint work of the countess 



