rvard University

Franz Grillparzer is the greatest poet and dramatist among the
Austrians. Corresponding to the Goethe Society at Weimar, the
Grillparzer Society at Vienna holds its meetings and issues its annual;
and the edition of Goethe's works instituted by the Grand Duchess Sophie
of Weimar is paralleled by an edition of Grillparzer's works now in
process of publication by the city of Vienna. Not without a sense of
local pride and jealousy do the Viennese extol their fellow-countryman
and hold him up to their kinsmen of the north as worthy to stand beside
Goethe and Schiller. They would be ungrateful if they did not cherish
the memory of a man who during his life-time was wont to prefer them,
with all their imperfections upon their heads, to the keener and more
enterprising North Germans, and who on many occasions sang the praises
of their sociability, their wholesome naturalness, and their sound
instinct. But even from the point of view of the critical North German
or of the non-German foreigner, Grillparzer abundantly deserves his
local fame--and more than local fame; for a dozen dramas of the first
class, two eminently characteristic short stories, numerous lyrical
poems, and innumerable studies and autobiographical papers are a man's
work entitling their author to a high place in European, not merely
German, literature.

It is, however, as an Austrian that Grillparzer is primarily to be
judged. Again and again he insisted upon his national quality as a man
and as a poet, upon the Viennese atmosphere of his plays and his poems.
He was never happy when away from his native city, and though his pieces
are now acceptably performed wherever German is spoken, they are most
successful in Vienna, and some of them are to be seen only on the
Viennese stage.

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,
naivete, 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 tha