The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 06: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes
General
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 06: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes
German literature -- 19th century -- Translations into English; German literature -- 20th century -- Translations into English
What are, then, the distinguishing features of the Austrians, and of
Grillparzer as one of them? Grillparzer said these features are an open
heart and a single mind, good sense and reliable intuition, frankness,
naïveté, generosity, modest contentment with being while others are up
and doing. The Austrians are of mixed blood, and partake of South
European characteristics less prominent among the purer blooded Teutons
of the north. They have life on easier terms, are less intellectual, are
more sensuous, emotional, more fanciful, fonder of artistic enjoyment,
more sensitive to color and to those effects called "color," by contrast
to form, in other arts than that of painting. The art of music is most
germane to the Austrian spirit; and we have a ready key to the
peculiarities of the Austrian disposition in the difference between
Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Johann Strauss, on the one hand, and
Händel, Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner on the other. Moreover, the
Austrians are in all respects conservative, in literary taste no less
than in politics and religion. The pseudo-classicism of Gottsched
maintained its authority in Austria not merely after the time of
Lessing, but also after the time of Schiller. Wieland was a favorite
long before Goethe began to be appreciated; and as to the romantic
movement, only the gentle tendencies of such a congenial spirit as
Eichendorff found a sympathetic echo on the shores of the Danube.
Romance influences, however, more particularly Spanish, were manifest
there even before the time when they became strong upon Grillparzer.
Franz Grillparzer was born in Vienna on the fifteenth of January, 1791.
His father, Wenzel Grillparzer, a self-made man, was a lawyer of the
strictest probity, who occupied a respectable position in his
profession; but, too scrupulous to seize the opportunities for profit
that lawyers easily come upon, he lived a comparatively poor man and in
1809 died in straitened circumstances. At home he was stern and
repressive.
[Illustration: FRANZ GRILLPARZER]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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