Youens Retracing A Winter's Journey
Youens Retracing A Winter's Journey
Youens Retracing A Winter's Journey
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Retracing a Winter Journey:
Reflections on Schubert's Winterreise
SUSANYOUENS
The meaning of Wilhelm Miiller's Die Winter- haunted by Doppelgiinger at every bend in the
reise, the source for Schubert's second Miiller road,3an alienated being who undergoesan exis-
cycle, has long been a matter of contention. It is tential death of the soul,4 and an enigmatic,
ironic that a poet who is often described as tragic creature who eventually goes mad and
"simple and naive" should have createda figure dies.5 Capell complained that Miiller did little
so baffling that different commentators see him more than sketch the outline of a mysterious
variously as a whining and slightly contempt- and unhappy man:
ible jilted lover-a dated and two-dimensional
cardboardcut-out of a bereaved Romantic,' an Wedonot trulyknow[him],thoughwe hearthe tale
atheist,2 a secular Christ-figurewhose journey of his soliloquyfromthe ironicalfarewell,through
parallels the Stations of the Cross, someone
3KlausGiinther Just, "Wilhelm Miillers Liederzyklen'Die
'H. Lowen-Marshall,in "Symbolism in Schubert'sWinter- sch6ne Miillerin' und 'Die Winterreise',"Zeitschrift ffir
deutsche Philologie 83 (1964),452-71. Justfeels that the cy-
reise," Studies in Romanticism 12 (1973),607-32, says that cle is full of Doppelgiingerfigures, that it is a deeply tragic
the cycle is "mediocre"poetry that has to do with no more
than the "downfallof a young man aftera greatdisappoint- secular Passion-storyin twenty-fourstations.
ment," "little more than the descriptionof a ratherweak in- 4Alan P. Cottrell in The Lyrical Song Cycles of Wilhelm
dividual pining aftera lost love" (p.630). Miller (ChapelHill, 1970), interpretsDie Winterreiseas a
2SeeJacquesChailley, Le Voyaged'hiverde Schubert(Paris, tragictale of self-alienation,very unlike my own views, but
he arguesconvincingly fora restoredrecognitionof Miiller's
1975),originallypublished as two studies.
originality and worth.
19th-CenturyMusic IX/2 (Fall 1985). ? by the Regents of SRichardCapell, The Songsof Schubert,2nd edn. (New York
the University of California. and London, 1957),p. 231.
128
stormsof reproaches, regrets,andplaints,to the final unable and finally unwilling to tear himself SUSAN
fanciesof theunhingedmind.Weguessat a character away, things he was never intended to hear.One YOUENS
moremature,moreintrospectiveandegotisticthan Schubert's
the youngmiller.Butwe couldsee the miller.Here of the principal sources of the cycle's power is Winterreise
only an outline is visible of the form that goes off surely this uneasy sense of spying on someone's
staggeringinto the snowstorm.6 private agony, of intruding on someone who
does not realize he is being overheard.In indi-
But surely we know more than that after vidual lyric poems, this tension between out-
twenty-four songs. ward revelation and the most inward content is
Until the final lines of the cycle, the wan- often quite strong, but a succession of twenty-
derertalks only to himself or to animals and ob- four such poems, with no breakor accession to a
jects in the surroundinglandscape-a crow, the more "public"persona, makes of that tension a
river, barking dogs, the "town of inconstancy." major element.
The creaturesand the inanimate elements func- As in later monodramas,time is measured(or
tion both as extensions of himself (the pathetic even measurable)only rarely, and then only be-
fallacy is alive and well in Die Winterreise)and cause two or three poems arelinked in a certain
as indices of his isolation-the reliance that he order. I am referringto the night/next-day rela-
cannot, until the end, place in other human be- tionship of Im Dorfe and Der stiirmische
ings is transferredto the world of nature. Only Morgen and the late evening/night/next-day se-
in the last verse of the last song does the wan- quence that is perhaps inferrablefrom the last
dererapproachanother human being. three songs in part I, Rast, Friihlingstraum,and
In twenty-three of the twenty-four songs, Einsamkeit.7 We seldom know how much time
then, in almost total solitude, the wandererre- passes from one song to the next or even within
veals each passing question, hope, sorrow, fear, a single song-at the end of Der Lindenbaum
fancy, and thought that occurs to him, subject- how far is the wanderer from the spot where,
ing everything he does and every emotion he ex- hatless, he "didnot turn back"?We never know
periences to intense scrutiny and analysis. Over what distance he has travelled. The journeyun-
and over again, he explains his actions to him- folds in what might be called "private time,"
self and asks "Why do I feel and act this way?" that of the wanderer's own ontological clock
In this respect, Die Winterreise is the forerun- (perhapsthis is one reason why the cycle is so
ner of those expressionist works in which a sin- musical). The wandererdescribes what he sees,
gle characterinvestigates the labyrinth of his or thinks, and feels at each stage of the journey,of-
her own psyche in search of self-knowledge or ten in great detail, but we never know his name,
escape from unbearablepain-a flight inwards, or any name at all for that matter, whether his
as in Marie Pappenheim's and Schoenberg's sweetheart's or those of the towns along the
Erwartung.These later monodramashave their way. We must even infer what he sees written
roots in Romantic soul-searching and the nine- on the signpost in Der Wegweiser. For why
teenth-century fascination with lunacy, genius, should he tell himself these things, and in what
solitary outcasts, and the inner life of creatures better way could Muillermake clear the inward
in extremis. Perhaps a felt, if not consciously and intimate nature of Die Winterreise?
observed, relationship between Miiller's work The constant self-questioning, the analyses
and its twentieth-century successors has in ret-
rospect influenced the views of those who find
only insanity and despair at the end of 7In Miiller's final version of the poetic cycle, Rast is the
nineteenth poem, while Friihlingstraumand Einsamkeit
Winterreise. are paired as the twenty-first and twenty-second poems.
Miiller's cycle is a monodrama,and the wan- The publication history of both the poetic cycle and Schu-
dererspeaks as if completely alone; he is alone, bert's setting is complex; see Arnold Feil, Franz Schubert:
Die sch6ne Miillerin; Winterreise(Stuttgart,1975),pp. 26-
except for us, and our presence is unknown to 31. For some, Mfiller's final orderingis more logical and
him. The reader or listener feels disquietingly more dramatically convincing than the orderingin op. 89,
like an eavesdropperwho hears at great length, the result of Schubert'sdiscovery of the poetic texts in two
different sources, but it is possible to arguethat Schubert's
is the better, the "right"order,and that the haphazardcir-
cumstances of composition provided the means to derive
6Ibid. from Mfiller'ssources the arrangementtruest to the subject.
129
19TH of every emotion, are rooted in the wanderer's eated surroundings are quite unlike the misty,
CENTURY sense of estrangement from the world and from indeterminate landscapes ("die weite Welt")
MUSIC
himself. The bereavement in love representsfar that stretch unendingly about the central char-
more to him than the loss of one beloved per- acters in works by Eichendorffand Tieck.
son: it is confirmation of his complete isolation The wandereris an unremitting realist: of all
from the world.8 While "the maiden spoke of the aspects of Miiller's characterizationthis is
love, the mother even of marriage"("Das Miid- among the most important. The cycle is in fact
chen sprach' von Liebe, / die Mutter gar von the tale of a realist who confronts his lack of
Eh'"in Gute Nacht), the wanderercould believe self-knowledge until the puzzle of his destiny is
himself no longer a stranger, as he had been solved and an answer is vouchsafed him. The
when he came to the town. The first word of the wanderer never attempts to transcend reality.
cycle, "Fremd,"is repeatedlest anyone miss its (One remembers Goethe, annoyed by what he
significance.9 With the loss of her love, he be- considered to be altogether too much of this
comes so conscious of his alienation from ev- trend, saying late in his life that one day the
eryone, not just her, that he imagines himself Germans would wake up and find that they had
driven from the town like a pariah and meets done nothing for thirty years but transcend.)He
that fear with a moment of defiance: "Why is not even religious, although his "atheism"
should I remain longer, until I am driven out?" has at times been over-emphasized. The two
brief but significant "atheistic" statements in
REALISM the cycle:
132
wanderer's vocal line for the first time as the Artists in Romantic literature are often de- SUSAN
wanderer asks, "Shall I go with you? Will you YOUENS
picted as eccentric geniuses who go their own Schubert's
grind away on your hurdy-gurdyto my songs?" way apart from the "helles, frohes Leben" and Winterreise
are compelled to do so, no matter how great the
THE WANDERERAS MUSICIAN desire for a more normal life.16 In the second
verse of Der Wegweiser,the wandererasks him-
Muiller's wanderer is a musician-this is self what "foolish longing" ("t6richtes
surely what he discovers written on the sign- Verlangen") drives him out into difficult and
post in the last verse of Der Wegweiser.He does deserted places, even though he has done noth-
not say exactly what it is he sees, only that the ing culpable for which he should shun people-
signpost marks the road he must take "from not that they should avoid him, but the reverse.
which no one returns" ("die noch keiner ging He has spoken before of the "versteckte Stege"
zuriick"). Previous commentators have taken he travels: when he does so for the first time, it
what seemed to be the path of least resistance is because a will-o'-the-wisp has beckoned him
and interpreted the road as either the route to into the "tiefsten Felsengriinde"of Irrlicht, but
death or-a slight variation-individual destiny later, that same explanation no longer accounts
leading to death. There is a problem with that for the "inhospitable roads" he chooses ("auf
reading of the poem, however, which has to do unwirthbarem Wege" in Rast). By the time of
not so much with Der Wegweiseritself as with Der Wegweiser, he is angry, mystified, and per-
the poem that follows, Das Wirtshaus. haps even somewhat frightened, at a phenome-
By this point in the cycle, the wandererhas non that he does not understand but that com-
said several times that he wants to die. Werethe pels him to act as he does. He bearsthe stigmata
signpost really to death, the awe he feels at the of the Romantic artist without knowing it.
sight would be understandablebut would surely Indeed, all he wants are a Biedermeier vie
be accompanied by relief, even joy, at the pros- quotidienne, domestic tranquility, and love.
pect of peace. (He has equated death and "Ruh"' Now he sees a prison sentence, an edict that
ever since Der Lindenbaum, where he found condemns him to travel on in continuing mis-
the temptation of death very hard to resist, and ery, and solitude. So far from being the Roman-
he longs for that peace once again in Der Weg- tic artist's cloak, his loneliness has been a con-
weiser.) But the wandereris not relieved by the stant grief: in Friihlingstraum, after his dream
signpost, he is bothered by it. Logically, if the "von einer sch6nen Maid," he laments "Nun
signpost says anything about death, it must be sitz' ich hier alleine" and asks "Wannhalt' ich
to withhold the promise of final rest from the mein Liebchen im Arm?" In Einsamkeit, he
wanderer longer than he wishes. Whatever it continues to mourn his isolation and solitude,
says, he can hardly believe it and hopes to evade and in Tizuschunghe breaks off his fantasy after
its directive until his path bringshim to a ceme- the words "und eine liebe Seele d'rin"-he lit-
tery ("Auf einen Totenacker / hat mich mein erally cannot continue. In both Tiduschungand
Weggebracht"), where he is turned away by the Die Nebensonnen, Schubert's abbreviation of
"unmerciful host," or death. The implication is the music that returns from the beginning cor-
that he has been brought there for one purpose: responds to the wanderer'sgrief-strickeninabil-
to confront and relinquish, finally, the death- ity to go on singing; in such loneliness, he
wish that has dominated the journey in part II, would be better off in darkness ("Im Dunkeln
from Der greise Kopfto Das Wirtshaus. wird mir wohler sein"). Until he sees and hears
The signpost pertains somehow to the wan- the hurdy-gurdyplayer in Der Leiermann-mu-
derer'slife; on it the wanderer sees his destiny sic itself is the catalyst-and discovers that he is
identified. He does not say what the destiny is not alone in the world, the road "fromwhich no
in Der Wegweiser itself, but thereafterhe twice one returns" seems very grim indeed.
speaks of singing-he has never mentioned be-
fore that he sings. If his fate is to be a musician,
then certain details of the story suddenly fall
into place and acquire a completed and fully 16GeorgeC. Schoolfield, The Figureof the Musician in Ger-
comprehensible context. man Literature(ChapelHill, 1956).
133
19TH The first time he mentions music is in Mut bert's ordering.'7 The wanderer hears the
CENTURY when he tries to drown out the inner voice of posthorn, the signal for the imminent arrivalof
MUSIC
lamentation with "brightcheery song," ending, a mail coach, and for no reason, his heart leaps
however, in defiance: "If there is no God on at the sound. He knows there is no letter for
earth / then we ourselves are gods!"Since there him, and yet he, or ratherhis heart, is drawnir-
is no God to dispel pain, men must somehow resistibly to the posthorn fanfares: "Was
create cheerfulness from their despair; only dringst du denn so wunderlich, mein Herz?"
fools lament what cannot be changed. The at- The only answer he can find to his own question
tempt is valiant, but does not work because the is that the strange sense of compulsion has its
grief he feels is real. When he tries to deny the origins in the past, a logical assumption in
lamentation in his heart, he denies a part of Schubert's ordering since the wandererdwells
himself and cannot sustain the enormous effort on his memories of a happier past so often in
it takes to do so; in Die Nebensonnen, he ad- part I. Since the coach comes from the "town
mits and expresses the grief he has tried to sup- where I once had a sweetheart," the tug at his
press in Mut. The second time he speaks of mu- heartstrings,he thinks, must have something to
sic is at the very end of the cycle: "Willst zu do with her.
meinen Liedern / deine Leier dreh'n?" The supposition does not seem quite right,
The few reticent but importanthints that the though, because he asks his heart still another
charactersare musicians come late in both Die question, a singularly tentative one. There is a
sch6ne Miillerin and Die Winterreise.At first, qualitative and quantitative differencebetween
they sing of their hopes and sorrows without the strength of the tug he feels at his heart and
seeming to notice that they do so, or calling the the ratherdiffident, almost indifferent,and rhe-
listener's attention to the fact. Only in Pause do torical query at the end of the poem, "I wonder
we discover that the miller-lad plays the lute what it might be like one day to go back there
and sings, when he hangs his instrument on the and just see how things are?"What if the wan-
wall and says that his "heartis too full" to sing derer'sheart--not yet his faculties of reasonand
any longer. Even before tragedystrikes he is too understanding, but his heart, the seat of the
overcome by emotion to transform any of his emotions-were respondingto the music itself?
feelings into music. He is therefore over- The postillion fanfares are announcements--to
whelmed by them, not because he lacks the the rest of the world, of letters and travellers;to
means with which to mitigate and mold the ef- the wanderer, of the power of music, even such
fects of adverse circumstance, but because he humble music as the posthorn calls or a hurdy-
lacks the resolution, the steel in the soul, to gurdy.There is no answer to the question "Was
make use of those means-music. The wan- driingst du denn so wunderlich?"until the last
derer similarly says nothing about songs and song.
singing until the cycle is almost at an end, in
Mut and Der Leiermann.But he seems to under- CONCLUSION
stand instinctively that music can be an instru-
ment of change, a way to sublimate sorrow, In E. T. A. Hoffmann's works, fellow musi-
even if he uses it mistakenly andfutilely at first. cians recognize one another instinctively and
The power of music to transformexperienceis a without words. "Secret bonds" or geheime Be-
common theme in the two Miiller-Schubertcy-
cles, but the outcomes are diametrically op-
posed. The miller, unable to sing, has no re- '7Capell(p.231), feels that the lightness of Die Post is out of
keeping with the tragic nature of Schubert's setting, al-
sources with which to bear his grief and drowns though it "does well enough in Miiller's sequence."Actu-
himself, while the wanderer, for all the misery ally, the wanderer's steps have slowed so much from ex-
he endures and can doubtless expect in the fu- haustion and despair that Die Post serves admirably to
revive the tempo and the "gehendeBewegung"of the jour-
ture, discovers companionship and a way to ney, to provide the impetus for the resumption of the jour-
continue the journey. ney in part II. In Miiller's ordering,the lackadaisicalrefer-
The wanderer's destiny as a musician is fore- ence to the sweetheart seems oddly placed so near the
beginning (the sixth poem in the final version),where Die
shadowed in Die Post, the sixth poem in Miil- Post first appears. It works much better in Schubert's
ler's final version and the midpoint of Schu- ordering.
134
ziehungen unite them in mutual experience. quent characterization of Miiller as inept, as a SUSAN
The bond that the wanderer feels with the el- poetaster whose mediocrity (or worse) is re- YOUENS
Schubert's
derly beggar,evident in the detail and the lack of deemed from oblivion only by Schubert's mu- Winterreise
pity with which he describes the old man, is sic. Psychologically the depiction of someone
also, in a more universal sense, the unspoken who first mourns the past and then must relin-
bond that springs into being between any two quish his grief with the passage of time in order
people who have until that moment felt them- to continue the journey/life foreshadows later
selves to be alone and without hope. An early Freudiandiscoveries about the workings of the
nineteenth-century German writer like Miiller soul-Mourning and Melancholy in verse some
would be likely to express such a profoundhu- seventy years earlier. (In Schubert's ordering,
man connection in terms of music, which was the reminiscences about the past almost disap-
for Romantic writers the elite of all the arts. But pear with the Fortsetzung, or part II.)The tragic
Die Winterreise and Schubert's op. 89 would discrepancy between the wanderer'sdesire for
not have such a profoundattraction for so many ordinary happiness and the hardships imposed
if it spoke only to a privileged few, if it lacked a on him by destiny leads not to the more obvious
broadersignificance. Miiller uses the musician ending in death or insanity, but to a hard-won
as the highest common denominator,as the par- accommodation with fate.
ticularized (andtypically Romantic)symbol of a The Kiinstlerberufung,the moment an artist
universal experience-the sense of being alone first becomes aware of his calling, is a conven-
with our individual fate, "the roadI must take," tion in Romantic prose. Although he would
and cut off from others. The marvelous and have known it from Eichendorff and Tieck,
hopeful statement at the end is that the wan- Miiller, a lesser writer, treats it with striking
derer does not remain that way. After a long originality. Here the Kiinstlerberufungis un-
time in isolation, hating his loneliness but un- sought and unwanted because it is in conflict
able to be otherwise, he says to another person, with the wanderer's longing for peace, happi-
"Should I go with you?", and the moment is a ness, and love; he is reconciled to the inevitable
wonderful one. The cold, the poverty, and the only when he realizes that through this me-
bleak surroundingsmake it all the more power- dium he may actually rejoin the human com-
ful: it is easy to reach out to another person munity ratherthan exist in perpetualexile from
when one is loved, warm, and sheltered, but not it. Beforehe knows that he is an artist, he is out-
when cold, alone, and without hope. side of life and apartfrom people. When he ac-
This is not to make excessive claims for Mill- cepts his fate, he takes the first step to forging
ler as a great poet. His rhymes are often quite human bonds once again. It no longer seems in-
poverty-stricken, and he is no doubt a little too explicable that Schubertshould have responded
reticent about what it is that lies at the cross- to Miiller's words with music such as this: for
roads. But there is far more of profundityin the universal human experience, what
poetry than one might suspect from the fre- other music would do? ,"
135