SOURCE: “Franz Grillparzer's The Poor Fiddler: The Terror of Rejection,” in American Imago, Vol. 36, No. 2, Summer, 1979, pp. 118-46.

In the following essay, Mahlendorf investigates autobiographical elements in Der arme Spielmann, particularly the theme of rejection.

Introduction

Grillparzer's story The Poor Fiddler (written from 1831–1842) portrays two artists, Jacob the fiddler, who is a total failure, and the narrator of the story, a dramatist in search of dramatic material, who lives and works in a manner entirely different from the fiddler. Narrator and fiddler are two different aspects of the author's own being. Both characters, though in different ways, are concerned with the problem of rejection. Through his two artist figures, Grillparzer compares and contrasts two different uses of art and two different media of art: in the case of the fiddler the medium of sound and in the case of the dramatist the medium of persons. The fiddler uses...