Christian Schubart – The Trout

Schubart's text

Those who have managed to stay awake during our marathon tour through the biography of an almost forgotten eighteenth-century figure may just have enough energy left to agree that the poem Die Forelle seems now to be a allegory of its author's capture and imprisonment at the hands of Carl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg.

The happy trout flashing freely through the crystalline water is Schubart the journalist; the fisherman (Carl Eugen, Scholl and team) muddy the waters and the hapless Schubart-trout takes the bait of a meeting with a renowned academic and ends up 'twisting on the line'.

The indomitable readers of this website will not be surprised by the next announcement: there is more to it than that.

Let's look at the text of the poem in our usual obsessive-compulsive fashion and see what we turn up. ^[1]

Given the circumstances of its composition, the text of the poem has been 'improved' in minor ways by various hands in various unauthorized copies. The text we are using is that of Christian Friedrich Schubarts sämmtliche Gedichte, von ihm selbst herausgegeben. 2 Bde. Stuttgart, 1785/86, vol. 2. p. 139f. The fourth verse has a special status in the text and we will consider that verse separately from the first three. The clunky style of the English translation will be painfully familiar to visitors to this blog.

Verses 1-3, the capture allegory

Translation notes

1. In some texts launisch is replaced by launig. In Schubart's time both words could have the meaning of 'in a happy mood'. The modern meaning of launisch is 'moody'.
2. Gestade is an equivalent for the more usual Ufer, 'the bank of a stream or river'.
3. The text that Franz Schubert used had the variant Des muntern Fischleins Bade.

Textual notes

In einem Bächleinhelle,
Da schoß in froher Eil
Die launische Forelle
Vorüber wie ein Pfeil.
Ich stand an dem Gestade,
Und sah' in süßer Ruh
Des munternFisches Bade
Im klarenBächlein zu.

• Diminutives: characteristic of folk verse and song. Schubart changed Fisches to Fischleins.
• Happy words: happy, cheerful, sweet, happy.
• Clarity: bright, clear.
• Arrowlike: the trout is known for its lively, rapid, darting motion.
• The verse has two four-line halves. The dominant element is the trout, not the observer. The dominant feeling of the verse is one of peace in undisturbed nature. This bucolic world is indeed in Ordnung.

Translation notes

1. It is possible but unusual to use the word Rute for a fishing rod; it is predominately used for the instrument of punishment, as in the grim expression: 'spare the rod, spoil the child' (see also the textual notes). The use of the word sets the threatening tone of the second verse: Carl Eugen was punishing him.

Textual notes

Ein Fischer mit der Ruthe
Wohl an dem Ufer stand,
Und sah's mit kaltem Blute,
Wie sich das Fischlein wand.
So lang dem Wasser Helle,
So dacht' ich, nicht gebricht,
So fängt er die Forelle
Mit seiner Angel nicht.

• Diminutives: characteristic of folk verse and song.
• Negative words (three): rod(=punishment), cold bloodedly, catch.
• Supposition: the narrator assumes or supposes that everything will be well, despite the presence of the angler, which corresponds somewhat with Schubart's carefree state in Ulm.
• The verse has two four-line halves, as verse 1. The idyll of the first verse has been broken by the presence of the angler. Unlike the narrator, he is not entranced by this natural spectacle but cold-bloodedly indifferent. The second verse has introduced a threat and a tension into the situation, combined with the assumption that all will be well.

Translation notes

1. plözlich is Schubart's spelling of the modern plötzlich, 'sudden'.
2. tückisch implies 'tricky', 'cunning', 'deceitful', 'malignant'; certainly a lack of fair play.
3. trübe means 'muddy', 'clouded', 'turbid(!)'. An overcast or misty day can be trübe, as can a person's mood. The translation here, 'muddy', lacks this gloomy feeling.
4. zappelt means 'twisting', 'flapping' – exactly what a fish on a hook does.
5. mit regem Blute means blood/emotions that are 'moved', 'stirred', 'in motion', 'angry'.
6. betrogen means 'cheated', 'tricked', 'deceived'; die Betrogne (feminine, die Fische) is therefore 'the tricked one'.

Textual notes

Doch plözlich war dem Diebe
Die Zeit zu lang. Er macht
Das Bächleintückischtrübe,
Und eh' ich es gedacht;–
So zuckte seine Ruthe,
Das Fischleinzappelt dran,
Und ich mit regem Blute
Sah' die Betrogne an.

• Diminutives: characteristic of folk verse and song.
• Negative words (seven): thief, cunning/tricky, muddy, jerked, rod (Ruthe, the instrument of punishment in action), twisted, victim.
• Sudden alarm: verse 1: idyll; verse 2: anxiety; verse 3: sudden danger. In some texts of the poem plö(t)zlich, 'suddenly', has been changed into endlich, 'finally'. Both words have their justification, but 'suddenly' expresses the disruption of the idyll much better.
• Outrage: to be contrasted with the süßer Ruh, the 'sweet calm', of the narrator's mood in the first verse.
• This verse is different from the first two verses in its change of metre (the jolly, bouncy idyll has passed) and its closer enjambment of the two halves of the verse. In the first two verses there was a clear pause between the halves. In this verse, the calm idyll past, the first half runs urgently into the second with only the slightest pause.

Verse 4, the camouflage

It takes no great lyrical expertise to notice just how different the fourth verse is from its predecessors. Verse 1-3 told a tale with concrete imagery and a charming natural context. The fourth verse just contains vague generalities and abstractions. It is really not worth analysis.

Schubart was writing in prison and was terrified that, should the authorities take exception to his work, his time on Hohenasperg would be extended. We cannot really speak of a 'sentence', since there was no legal definition of the extent of his punishment. His torture was cruelly open ended: he might be freed that day, or tomorrow or in ten years' time or maybe never. Because his openly anti-aristocratic poem Fürstengruft, the 'Crypt of Princes' – much less oblique and allegorical than Die Forelle – had been published by 'friends' whilst he was in prison, when it came to the notice of the authorities it was made clear to him that he could forget about an early release, the poem being a sign that he had not yet fully repented of his troublesome ways.

When it was later published, Schubart added some oleaginous lines to the end of Fürstengruft to make it clear that the poem was not condemning aristocrats in any way at all.

In Die Forelle, we find that he did something similar: he added a worthy sexual moral as a fourth verse so that we can now pretend that the allegory in those verses was not about Schubart, the free and happy trout, being lured to his doom in Blaubeuren. It is really just an improving allegory for young girls in danger of losing their virginity. Coming from the womanising Schubart this moral advice may be taken as a fine jest.

Of course, anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear immediately recognizes the fourth verse as alien to the rest of the poem. The writing is risibly bad, the grammar and syntax execrable. Can there be any doubt that Schubart, the man who was capable of the sublimities of the first three verses, actually tried to write this verse as badly as possible so that his real meaning would not be misunderstood?

Schubert's Schubart

The observation that verse four of Die Forelle is terrible has led most commentators to assume that Franz Schubert took one look at verse four and dumped it without further ado. Schubert was a sensitive reader of verse – what else might we expect from the Liederfürst, 'The Prince of Song'? – and was quite prepared to take his red pencil to passages that could be improved.

It's a nice story. Unfortunately it is probably not true (we ruin a lot of good stories on this blog).

In 1993 Dr Lucia Porhansl^[2] discovered a Viennese edition of Schubart's poems, Gedichte von Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, which appeared as part 67 and 68 of the series Deutscher Parnaß, 'German Parnassus'. The two volumes were based on the poems from the Frankfurt Edition of 1803. Ludwig Schubart, the son of the poet, who expended much filial piety on preserving his father's work, selected the contents and wrote an introduction.

Porhansl was able to show that the texts of the Schubart poems that Franz Schubert set to music corresponded with the texts in An mein Klavier D 342, Grablied auf einen Soldaten D 454, An den Tod D 518 and – our ears prick up –Die Forelle D 550. The texts of these printed poems correspond very closely with the lyrics to Franz Schubert's songs.

Of particular interest for us, we note that in this Viennese edition Die Forelle does not have the fourth verse. This verse was originally added in Christian Schubart's handwriting in an early version of the poem. Ludwig Schubart, his father dead (1791) and Carl Eugen dead (1793), seems to have felt no further need to keep the fourth verse – this camouflage blot on the poem – any longer. We can only say: well done, that man!

Conclusion: Schubert did not cut the fourth verse out of the poem: he never even saw it.

How much did Schubert know of Schubart?

From this one unanswerable question flow so many others. Franz Schubert would almost certainly know of Christian Schubart's work on musical theory Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (Ideas for an Aesthetic of Music). Did Schubert know of Schubart's political journalism? Of his entombment in Hohenasperg for ten years? Of Schubart's own setting of Die Forelle? Most intriguingly: did Schubert, who also lived in repressive times, view Schubart's ordeal with political sympathy?

The short answer to each of these questions is: 'probably not'. For fully reasoned answers I have no space or time. In brief, though, Schubert was more than a generation removed from Schubart. Much of great political importance had happened in that time: the French Revolution, the Jacobin Conspiracy in Vienna, the turmoil and slaughter of the Napoleonic decades, the settlement of the Congress of Vienna. For Schubert, the past was indeed a different country and its population was long gone.

In our age of digital multimedia almost all our recent history is contemporaneously present. Today's generation has instant access to the documents and media of up to about a century ago. We have cheap books and almost free access to information via the internet. It was not like that in Schubert's time: the past disappeared rapidly, events rushed over a waterfall and once over that, they were almost inaccessible. Voltaire, for example, spent a lot of time writing and publishing the history of recent centuries. I believe he did this not just because he was an insatiable scribbler – which he certainly was – but because this information had to be gathered together in one place so that subsequent generations might remember their past and not be condemned to repeat it, to paraphrase George Santayana.

Schubert was an overworked and poverty-stricken teenager trying to make his musical mark. Is it reasonable to imagine that he managed to find a copy of Schubarts Leben und Gesinnung and so familiarised himself with Schubart's ordeal? The reasonable answer is no. We can say with some confidence that, by the time Schubert in his insatiable search for poems stumbled across Schubart's work, their author was almost as obscure as he is today.

That said, Schubert was not apolitical and moved in a circle of friends, some of whom were politically extremely active. Only a couple of years after the composition of Die Forelle his great friend Johann Chrysostomus Senn was imprisoned and maltreated for a year before being exiled into penury for the rest of his life. At the time of Senn's arrest Schubert nearly got himself arrested, so vocal were his protests. Other friends had connections with political troublemakers, a topic which exceeds our boundaries in this piece.

The young Schubert was busy doing what he did best, composing and performing music, so he remained an observer when it came to stirring up trouble. There is some evidence of his participation in 'free thinking' circles, but because of the repressive atmosphere of the time – spies and narks were everywhere, as the case of Senn showed – it was best not to write anything down and to be circumspect in what you said in public. The writings of his friends were often cryptic and hermetic; they were not printed but circulated in handwritten copies. What little has come down to us requires much exegesis.

So, in sum, some time in late 1816(?) Franz Schubert stumbled across an edition of Christian Schubart's poems. Four of them he set to music, guaranteeing that the Swabian hothead would not fall completely out of the mind of man. Beyond that, one of those four and its later variations made Schubart immortal: Die Forelle.

References

1. ^ A much extended and interesting text analysis of Die Forelle is available in German: Hans-Wolf Jäger, 'Von Ruten. Über Schubarts Gedicht "Die Forelle"' in Gedichte und Interpretationen, Bd. 2, Aufklärung und Sturm und Drang, Philipp Reclam, UB-7891, Stuttgart, 1983 p. 372f.
2. ^ Lucia Porhansl, 'Schuberts Textvorlagen nach Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter and Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart', Schubert durch die Brille, 1993, 10: p. 69-74.