SOURCE: “The Artist: Der arme Spielmann, ” in Grillparzer: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 1972, pp. 76-83.

In the following excerpt, Yates examines the portrayal of Jacob, the protagonist of Der arme Spielmann, and perceives the novella as a confessional work.

Der arme Spielmann, the last completed work that Grillparzer published in his lifetime, is the only other of his works in which the central character is actually an artist. It is also the only one of his works that is set in the Vienna of his own times. The city as a whole, indeed, is what the text begins with: Vienna in July. From there the focus narrows, first to the popular festival in Brigittenau (which lay by an arm of the Danube, to the north of the centre of the city), and then to the central figure, the mendicant fiddler who stands playing ‘with a smiling, self-approving...