SOURCE: “Grillparzer's ‘Der arme Spielmann,’” in The German Quarterly, Vol. XLV, No. 4, November, 1972, pp. 662-83.

In the following essay, Ellis investigates the function of the narrator in Der arme Spielmann.

Grillparzer's story Der arme Spielmann¹ has long been regarded as one of his best works,² and its popularity even seems to be increasing; since 1964 no fewer than ten interpretations of the story have appeared, a remarkable number in such a short period.³ Most interpretations have been concerned almost exclusively with the figure of the Spielmann, so that an evaluation of the story has seemed to be much the same thing as an evaluation of the Spielmann, and the question as to how we should understand the story has seemed to be identical with the question of how we should view the Spielmann.⁴ Very often there has been a strong biographical slant in this criticism, so that the Spielmann...