Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1890-09-04
RrSSISo races. Rockville fair, Sept. 4 and S.
An Austrian Female Poet OF Passion
Squelched by the Law.

From the New York Sun.
high priestess OF the school of passionate
poetry in Austria has just been tried in a Vienna
court and found wanting. Her name is Fran
Sidonie Zerkowitz- Grunwald and for several
years she las been publishing verses compared
with which Ella Wheeler Wilcox's ante-nup,ial
lines are but Mother Goose melodies of pas
sion Frau Zerkowitz- Grunwald in a preface
TO her last production, entitled The Gretchen
OF Today" acknowledged that she proposed to
show in the case of Gretchen, "a perfect pic
ture Of the swelling of unclaimed passion to
the point Of action, without any regard for the
adverse Judgment of critics that might object
TO her frankness" She, does this, she saws
with the high moral purpose Of revealing the
misery that may overtake the person who
caused the downfall Of another To prove the
great truth involved in this suggestion she
thinks ali means are iustifiable
AT the trial of Gretchen OF Today" Herr Won
Soos, attorney Tor the state, argued that there
was limit to all things. even to literary
naIurslsin IN teaching great moral lessons.
DIR. Edmund Benedict, attorney for the passion
poetess and her school. replied at length that
IN the revealing OF great truths the license of
the writer should be unlimited His little plea
Tor the passion school has become quite ceIe-
DRAFTED already III Germany and Austria as an
epitome OF the whole argument OF the school
OF passionate poetry among German-speakiny
people. He said:
1t Is exceedingly painful for this wife and
mother to see condemned as immoral A work
that she wrote with the sole purpose of giving
Us view OF the soul OF an unfortunate who
loved without reserve and was BETRAYED with
out pity. One-sided, stiff necked conventional
consideration Of this matter avails nothing
and means nothing. The idea Of an offense
against morality Is relative, and changes with
time and place, education and conceptions of
arr Lleonore OF Coinage allowed Titan to
record with his brush her unadorned beauty
Later Canoya perpetuated IN marble the m
yelled form of Elise Bacciochi. sister of Napo-
leon l. That was done, not long centuries ago.
and not with any detriment to public morals.
And now. here Is a book, a very little book OF
poems. The question concerns the lyric the
expression OF deep and real emotions of the
human breast Is There limit to this express
slonf Must We say TO the lyric. so far and no
iarther! Of course, there may be lyrical
poetry that treats the man as soul and soul
only But such a lyric teaches nothing and
means nothing, for its subject is an upwhole-
some ana unnatural man. and consequently tho
lyric Is unwholesome and unnatural "a well "a
false and inartistic. Why do we love the great
poesE Because they give US the undistorted,
uaado-ned man. Look at the works in which
they treat OF lore and passion Ii only the
spiritual be allowed in literature confiscate
the classics and our masters of the last century
suppress Goethes Diary Wieland's sAmadis'
AZ would seem that the circumstance tina, an
author Is dead was supposed to deprive his
influence attributed to a similar work of the
living"
The court ordered tho confiscatiou of .srhe
Gretchen Of Today" and no copy of this pas
sionate poetry may nov be had IN the Austrian
empire.