Success Quote by Franz Grillparzer

Grillparzer slices a familiar culture-war binary with a traveler’s metaphor that’s sneakier than it looks. Science and prose are cast as “journeys”: purposeful, destination-driven, accountable to an endpoint that justifies the miles. Art and poetry become “excursions”: movement without a utilitarian alibi, where the value is in the wandering itself. It’s an elegant reframing because it doesn’t insult either camp; it assigns them different contracts with time. One promises arrival. The other promises experience.

The subtext is a defense of “unproductive” attention at a moment when Europe was getting drunk on progress. Grillparzer lived through the 19th century’s acceleration: industrialization, new bureaucracies, a public newly trained to measure worth in outputs. In that climate, poetry can look like loafing. By calling it an excursion, he gives it dignity without forcing it to compete on science’s scoreboard. An excursion isn’t aimless; it’s deliberately unoptimized. You choose the scenic route on purpose.

There’s also a quiet warning embedded in the compliment to science. Journeys can become tunnel vision: when the goal is everything, the world between point A and point B turns into disposable scenery. Excursions correct that by insisting the mind is not only a problem-solving machine but also a perception-making one. Grillparzer isn’t arguing that art is “better,” but that a culture obsessed with arrival risks losing its capacity to notice.