(A. Go.*)
GRYPHIUS, ANDREAS (1616-1664), German lyric poet and dramatist, was born on the 11th of October 1616, at Grossglogau in Silesia, where his father was a clergyman. The family name was Greif, latinized, according to the prevailing fashion, as Gryphius. Left early an orphan and driven from his native town by the troubles of the Thirty Years’ War, he received his schooling in various places, but notably at Fraustadt, where he enjoyed an excellent classical education. In 1634 he became tutor to the sons of the eminent jurist Georg von Schönborn (1579-1637), a man of wide culture and considerable wealth, who, after filling various administrative posts and writing many erudite volumes on law, had been rewarded by the emperor Ferdinand II. with the title and office of imperial count-palatine (Pfalzgraf). Schönborn, who recognized Gryphius’s genius, crowned him poëta laureatus, gave him the diploma of master of philosophy, and bestowed on him a patent of nobility, though Gryphius never used the title. A month later, on the 23rd of December 1637, Schönborn died; and next year Gryphius went to continue his studies at Leiden, where he remained six years, both hearing and delivering lectures. Here he fell under the influence of the great Dutch dramatists, Pieter Cornelissen Hooft (1581-1647) and Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), who largely determined the character of his later dramatic works. After travelling in France, Italy and South Germany, Gryphius settled in 1647 at Fraustadt, where he began his dramatic work, and in 1650 was appointed syndic of Glogau, a post he held until his death on the 16th of July 1664. A short time previously he had been admitted under the title of “The Immortal” into the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, a literary society, founded in 1617 by Ludwig, prince of Anhalt-Köthen on the model of the Italian academies.
Gryphius was a man of morbid disposition, and his melancholy temperament, fostered by the misfortunes of his childhood, is largely reflected in his lyrics, of which the most famous are the Kirchhofsgedanken (1656). His best works are his comedies, one of which, Absurda Comica, oder Herr Peter Squentz (1663), is evidently based on the comic episode of Pyramus and Thisbe in The Midsummer Night’s Dream. Die geliebte Dornrose (1660), which is written in a Silesian dialect, contains many touches of natural simplicity and grace, and ranks high among the comparatively small number of German dramas of the 17th century. Horribilicribrifax (1663), founded on the Miles gloriosus of Plautus, is a rather laboured attack on pedantry. Besides these three comedies, Gryphius wrote five tragedies. In all of them his tendency is to become wild and bombastic, but he had the merit of at least attempting to work out artistically conceived plans, and there are occasional flashes both of passion and of imagination. His models seem to have been Seneca and Vondel. He had the courage, in Carolus Stuardus (1649) to deal with events of his own day; his other tragedies are Leo Armenius (1646); Katharina von Georgien (1657), Cardenio und Celinde (1657) and Papinianus (1663). No German dramatic writer before him had risen to so high a level, nor had he worthy successors until about the middle of the 18th century.
A complete edition of Gryphius’s dramas and lyric poetry has been published by H. Palm in the series of the Stuttgart Literarische Verein (3 vols., 1878, 1882, 1884). Volumes of selected works will be found in W. Muller’s Bibliothek der deutschen Dichter des 17ten Jahrhunderts (1822) and in J. Tittmann’s Deutsche Dichter des 17ten Jahrhunderts (1870). There is also a good selection by H. Palm in Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur.
See O. Klopp, Andreas Gryphius als Dramatiker (1851); J. Hermann, Über Andreas Gryphius (1851); T. Wissowa, Beiträge zur Kenntnis von Andreas Gryphius’ Leben und Schriften (1876); J. Wysocki, Andreas Gryphius et la tragédie allemande au XVIIe siècle; and V. Mannheimer, Die Lyrik des Andreas Gryphius (1904).
GUACHARO (said to be an obsolete Spanish word signifying one that cries, moans or laments loudly), the Spanish-American name of what English writers call the oil-bird, the Steatornis caripensis of ornithologists, a very remarkable bird, first described by Alexander von Humboldt (Voy. aux rég. équinoxiales i. 413, Eng. trans. iii. 119; Obs. Zoologie ii. 141, pl. xliv.) from his own observation and from examples obtained by Aimé J. A. Bonpland, on the visit of those two travellers, in September 1799, to a cave near Caripé (at that time a monastery of Aragonese Capuchins) some forty miles S.E. of Cumaná on the northern coast of South America. A few years later it was discovered, says Latham (Gen. Hist. Birds, 1823, vii. 365), to inhabit Trinidad, where it appears to bear the name of Diablotin;[1] but by the receipt of specimens procured at Sarayacu in Peru, Cajamarca in the Peruvian Andes, and Antioquia in Colombia (Proc. Zool. Society, 1878, pp. 139, 140; 1879, p. 532), its range has been shown to be much greater than had been supposed. The singularity of its structure, its curious habits, and its peculiar economical value have naturally attracted no little attention from zoologists. First referring it to the genus Caprimulgus, its original describer soon saw that it was no true goatsucker. It was subsequently separated as forming a subfamily, and has at last been regarded as the type of a distinct family, Steatornithidae—a view which, though not put forth till 1870 (Zool. Record, vi. 67), seems now to be generally deemed correct. Its systematic position, however, can scarcely be considered settled, for though on the whole its predominating alliance may be with the Caprimulgidae, nearly as much affinity may be traced to the Strigidae, while it possesses some characters in which it differs from both (Proc. Zool. Society, 1873, pp. 526-535). About as big as a crow, its plumage exhibits the blended tints of chocolate-colour and grey, barred and pencilled with dark-brown or black, and spotted in places with white, that prevail in the two families just named. The beak is hard, strong and deeply notched, the nostrils are prominent, and the gape is furnished with twelve long hairs on each side. The legs and toes are comparatively feeble, but the wings are large. In habits the guacharo is wholly nocturnal, slumbering by day in deep and dark caverns which it frequents in vast numbers. Towards evening it arouses itself, and, with croaking and clattering which has been likened to that of castanets, it approaches the exit of its retreat, whence at nightfall it issues in search of its food, which, so far as is known, consists entirely of oily nuts or fruits, belonging especially to the genera Achras, Aiphanas, Laurus and Psichotria, some of them sought, it would seem, at a very great distance, for Funck (Bull. Acad. Sc. Bruxelles xi. pt. 2, pp. 371-377) states that in the stomach of one he obtained at Caripé he found the seed of a tree which he believed did not grow nearer than 80 leagues. The hard, indigestible seed swallowed by the guacharo are found in quantities on the floor and the ledges of the caverns it frequents, where many of them for a time vegetate, the plants thus growing being etiolated from want of light, and, according to travellers, forming a singular feature of the gloomy scene which these places present. The guacharo is said to build a bowl-like nest of clay, in which it lays from two to four white eggs, with a smooth but lustreless surface, resembling those of some owls. The young soon after they are hatched become a perfect mass of fat, and while yet in the nest are sought by the Indians, who at Caripé, and perhaps elsewhere, make a special business of taking them and extracting the oil they contain. This is done about midsummer, when by the aid of torches and long poles many thousands of the young birds are slaughtered, while their parents in alarm and rage hover over the destroyers’ heads, uttering harsh and deafening cries. The grease is melted over fires kindled at the cavern’s mouth, run into earthen pots, and preserved for use in cooking as well as for the lighting of lamps. It is said to be pure and limpid, free from any disagreeable taste or smell, and capable of being kept for a year without turning rancid. In Trinidad the young are esteemed s great delicacy for the table by many, though some persons object to their peculiar scent, which resembles that of a cockroach (Blatta), and consequently refuse to eat them. The old birds also, according to E. C. Taylor (Ibis, 1864, p. 90), have a strong crow-like odour. But one species of the genus Steatornis is known.
In addition to the works above quoted valuable information about this curious bird may be found under the following references: L’Herminier, Ann. Sc. Nat. (1836), p. 60, and Nouv. Ann. Mus. (1838), p. 321; Hautessier, Rev. Zool. (1838), p. 164; J. Müller, Monatsb. Berl. Acad. (1841), p. 172, and Archiv für Anat. (1862), pp. 1-11; des Murs, Rev. zool. (1843), p. 32, and Ool. Orn. pp. 260-263; Blanchard, Ann. Mus. (1859), xi. pl. 4, fig. 30; König-Warthausen, Journ. für Orn. (1868), pp. 384-387; Goering, Vargasia (1869), pp. 124-128; Murie, Ibis (1873), pp. 81-86.
(A. N.)