SOURCE: “Franz Grillparzer: ‘Der arme Spielmann’ and Die Jüdin von Toledo,” in The Split Self from Goethe to Broch, Bucknell University Press, 1979, pp. 103-21.

In the following essay, Waldeck underscores the similar themes of Der arme Spielmann and Grillparzer's play Die Jüdin von Toledo, maintaining that the play “is the public, dramatic counterpart to the more private genre of the short story.”

I

The split self has been widely acknowledged in Grillparzer's short story, Der arme Spielmann. The work has also been interpreted in unusual detail, particularly in the analyses of Richard Brinkmann and Heinz Politzer.¹ John M. Ellis has drawn together the numerous scattered critical references to the split self.² But Ellis believes that these lead into a fruitless biographism, and he prefers to dwell on the theme of “integrity in relation to efficiency” (p.134). This wariness of the biographical is justified only to the...