80. “Die Ahnfrau”

Trauerspiel in five acts by Franz Grillparzer
Performance at the Schiller Theater, Berlin

I have never been able to join in the unconditional Grillparzer rapture. I have often asked myself why the characters in his dramas leave me cold, even though they are characterized with such a high degree of poetic power. In Goethe's Iphigenia, Tasso and Gretchen I have the feeling that the deepest elements of human souls are revealed, that I am looking into the hidden depths of human nature. In Grillparzer's Sappho, Medea, Phaon, Melitta, Ottokar, the actual soul remains lifeless in itself, and its qualities appear to me like garments put on the invisible soul. That there is such passion, such pain, such dignity and renunciation as I encounter in Sappho is clear; I do not see these qualities oozing out of Sappho's soul. Only once did Grillparzer succeed in showing the true nature of a soul with all its contradictions: in Rachel in the "Jewess of Toledo". In this figure, I do not see a sum, an aggregate of human qualities, as in Sappho; I see a real soul.

Recently, I felt all this again when I attended the performance of Grillparzer's first work, "Ahnfrau", at the Schiller Theater. The management of this theater has earned a merit through this performance. The drama is particularly important for the knowledge of Grillparzer, and for a long time it could not be seen in Berlin.

A rigid fate, bending all human strength and goodness under a blind, wisdom-less necessity, is the driving force behind the events of this drama. The members of the Borotin household could be heroes or saints; their work cannot be beneficial, for the ancestress has transgressed and her sin continues to affect her entire family. I do not believe that Grillparzer was dishonest when he made blind fate the driving force behind his work of art. He did not want to experiment as Schiller did with his "Bride of Messina". He was a weak, will-less nature. He did not have the strength to say to himself: be your own master. He felt under the pressure of circumstances over which he had no power. He does not boldly take the helm of life and sail recklessly forward; he lets himself be carried by the waves wherever they take him. Such a feeling of dependence can be embodied with poetic truth by the idea of fate. This idea no longer appears in his later works. But there was no change in his basic feelings. He has merely subordinated himself to the general modern consciousness, which has nothing to do with the idea of destiny. The more modern conception of the world did not spring from within him as his own; he let it wash over him. A great poet dwelt in a weak-willed personality. This seems to me to characterize the Grillparzer phenomenon.