Andreas Gryphius Biography

Dromo's Den

GRYPHIUS, ANDREAS (1616-64) . A German dramatic poet, whose real name was Greif. He was born at Grossglogau and passed a sad youth. He studied at Leyden, where he also lectured on a multitude of subjects, traveled in France and Italy, and, after refusing calls to professorships in Frankfort-on-tlie-Oder, Upsala, and Heidelberg, was appointed Syndic of the Principality of Glogau. The struggles of his youth and the envy of later years, as well as physical weakness, made his lyrics sombre and his epigrams sharp. But his dramatic work, which is more important, suffers little from his own experience of the tragedy of life; and the tragedies Leo Armenius (1646), Katharina von Georgien (1647), Cardenio und Celinde, and Papinianus, though marred by imitations of Seneca and of his own contemporary, Vondel, and though veritable cabinets of horror, show considerable power, though little action. His comedies are much better. Peter Squentz, or Absurda Comica (c.1650), is based on the main episodes of the Midsummer Night's Dream; Horribilicribrifax, of about the same date, has much the same motive as Plautus's Miles Gloriosus, save that it adds a pedantic scholar, besides a braggart captain; and Das verliebte Gespenste (1660) and Die geliebte Dornrose (the best German comedy before Lessing), written in the dialect of Silesia, are full of humor. The latter play is curiously incorporated in the former. Several of his plays and lyrics have been reprinted in recent times. His hymn Vanitas vanitatum vanitas is widely known. Gryphius also translated many Dutch, Italian, and French plays; wrote an epic in Latin, and was considered a marvel of learning, as he knew 11 languages and lectured on logic, anatomy, geography, history, mathematics, astronomy, and Roman antiquities. A fairly complete edition of his works is that published at Breslau (1657-63); also an edition of his dramas and lyrics, edited by H. Palm, in three volumes, in the publications of the Stuttgarter litterarischea Vereins (1879-85). Consult Hermann, Ueber Andreas Gryphius (Leipzig, 1851); Klopp, Andreas Gryphius als Dramatiker (Osnabrück, 1852); Wysocki, Andreas Gryphius et la tragédie allemande an XVIIème sieele (Paris, 1893); Manheimer, Die Lyrik des Andreas Gryphius (Berlin, 1904).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. X (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 428.