SOURCE: An introduction to The Poor Fiddler, by Franz Grillparzer, translated by Alexander and Elizabeth Henderson, Frederick Ungar, 1967, pp. 5-25.

In the following essay, Ivask places Der arme Spielmann within the context of nineteenth-century fiction and assesses its impact on Austrian fiction.

“ … For it is by perfection of form that poetry enters life, external life. True emotion can convey only what lies within. But it is the task of all art to exemplify the inner life by the outer surface.”¹

The Poor Fiddler, the story of a failure, is told with genuine sympathy and yet objective detachment. It could well have had as its author one of the great Russian novelists of the last century—Gogol, Dostoevsky, or Turgenev. The first-person narrator characterizes himself as a dramatist and a passionate lover of his fellow men, especially the common people. He also stresses his strong anthropological bent and psychological...