Franz Grillparzer between the diary and the autobiography

Abstract

The most important representative of Austrian Pre-Marchian literature, Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) kept a diary almost throughout his entire life, recording what he had experienced and seen during his travels. At the request of the Imperial Academy of Science he wrote his autobiography. The article describes the main features of Grillparzer's diary, his travel diary and autobiography. These texts show the dramatist, story teller and the lyric of the Biedermeir as a typical and authentic figure of a turbulent historical period (the Wien congress, the Napoleonic wars, the introduction of censorship, 1848). Grillparzer is both a patriot and a faithful subject of the crown but also a man seeking liberation from all kinds of shackles; he is an anxious man who retreats into himself because he had been broken by outer social- political relationships but also a defiant "revolutionary" who defends himself with the pen. Using comparative examples from two, almost contradictory authobiographical species - diaries and authobiographies - and correlating Grillparzer's autobiographical writings with Rousseau's Confessions , the author gives an analysis of Grillparzer's relation to power and censorship, a description of his creative process and his relationship towards colleagues- fellow literary figures. The differences in the style of writing and the choice of content between the diary, as a form of analysis, and the autobiography, as a form of synthesis, stem from the inner regularity of two kinds of autobiographical writing.