The poor minstrel
The poor minstrel is a framework novella by Franz Grillparzer published in 1848 .
Grillparzer had been working on the subject since 1831, initially as an attempt at an autobiographical novel. The text was revised several times and the writing was repeatedly interrupted. At the end of 1846 Grillparzer sent it to the publisher Gustav Heckenast , who published it for the first time in 1847 in Iris - German Almanac for 1848 in Pest ( Hungary ).
content
frame
The narrator mingles with the people at a parish fair in Vienna's Brigittenau . He meets an old minstrel who is playing some kind of cat music on his violin . When he hands him a coin, they briefly talk to each other. This makes the narrator curious about his fate and visits him one morning in his poor dwelling. There the old musician tells him his life story.
After this morning the narrator loses sight of the man. When the narrator is back in Vienna after a long time , parts of the city are devastated by a flood . The old man died of a cold after rescuing the neighbour's children from the flooded apartment.
Internal narration
As the son of a high and influential civil servant, Jacob, soft, dreamy and inwardly turned, fails before the demands of reality. He is taken from school by the ambitious and irascible father and has to work as a clerk in an office. But here, too, he eludes the noisy and raw environment; only his violin playing and Barbara, the daughter of a cake baker, whom he shyly loves, are his refuge and purpose in life. Barbara is attracted by his kindness and character, but despises him because of his inability to live. When, after the death of his father, he allows his father's secretary, whom he therefore trusts completely, to cheat him out of his inheritance, Barbara marries a butcher from Langenlebarn in Lower Austria. From now on the poor minstrel moves through Vienna playing the violin.
interpretation
The narrator, a Viennese poet, finds psychological interest in the minstrel.
The minstrel is very naive and foolish, almost incapable of living, but also a good-hearted person with principles that he adheres to. He is always well dressed, polite, and decent, but the deeper he sinks into society, the worse his experience becomes. The quarter that he shares with craftsmen is separated by a chalk line into its tidy part and the untidy part of his two flatmates. With his approach to life he almost drowns in society, and he barely survives with alms . The story also refers to the role of major disappointments, which can be a contributory cause of a slide into social failure.
The violin and the music mean a lot to the minstrel. He plays and fantasizes for God, but is not a gifted artist. He feels obliged to the old masters, but he can neither play them nor do people want to hear these songs. He only works better with freely invented melodies. But he especially loves to play a song that Barbara, daughter of the businessman in the house next door, used to sing. A peculiar relationship develops with Barbara: the minstrel seeks her closeness, but there is no decisive advertising . Whether the mere inability of the minstrel in "worldly (love) things" is responsible or whether a civil love affair is impossible for the "artist's soul" remains to be seen. Barbara's feeling alternates between rejection, affection and probably also love. An indication of the latter may be the refusal to sell the violin to the narrator (she gives the reason that her son, who is also called Jakob, is supposed to learn the violin). But, under pressure from her father and obeying her common sense, she decided against the impoverished but kindhearted minstrel and for the wealthier butcher, with whom she left Vienna.
Trivia
The minstrel alley in the district of Vienna Brigittenau is named after Grillparzer amendment and the person Ferdinand Kauer is considered a model for the character of "poor minstrel."
swell
- ↑ District history Brigittenau - street names and their history. Retrieved January 14, 2012 .
- ↑ styriarte ( Memento from January 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive )