SOURCE: “Considerations on the Structure of Grillparzer's Der arme Spielmann,” in Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 3, No. 3, Fall, 1970, pp. 7-12.

In the following essay, Liedke compares the structure of Der arme Spielmann to a musical composition.

Grillparzer's Der arme Spielmann possesses the quality of all deeply poetic works to evoke responses of great variety, each one articulating the essence of the work through new insights into characters, incidents, images and language. Silz¹, examining social and psychological realism in Der arme Spielmann, points to the victory of the reality of ideas over the reality of things and people; Brinkmann², through an analysis of the narrative technique, sheds light on the discord between the ideal and the real at the core of Grillparzer's world; Politzer³ discusses the theme of “Begegnung” and reveals transformations and humanizing effects brought about by the encounters in this novella. These studies may serve as examples for...