Excerpt from Der Traum, Ein Leben: Dramatisches Marchen in Vier Aufzugen When about sixteen at the Gymnasium he formed a firm friendship with a young literary aspirant, Mailler. In spired by mutual admiration they each wrote a play: Mail ler a Roman tragedy, Grillparzer a comedy satirizing his teachers, as Lessing and Goethe had done before him. He also wrote youthful verses which promised well. But at school it was said he had no ear for verse. Later he learned the secret of rhythm from music, as he told Beethoven. At seventeen he matriculated in the university as a stu dent of law and philosophy. Here again he did little studying and much reading. His professors were very pedantic: the contempt felt for them he unfortunately transferred also to their subjects - then to scholars and learning in general. This prejudice never left him. In his reading at that period he busied himself much with dramatic literature and wrote a parody on the Eneid, called significantly Main Traum. Carried away by the storm and stress of Schiller's early dramas, he wrote a palpable imitation of Don C arlos in his Blanka van Kastilien a long play which shows de cided dramatic talent; but while the exposition is excellent, the development of the plot is obscure and prolix. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.