Hi all!  The following lines are just some meditations on the first
Lied of Schubert's Winterreise.  I am no musicologist, just a music
and especially Lied and opera lover.  Being a teacher of German in
Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), Germany, I consider myself an "expert" (and
vivid lover) of German poetry and prose.  I woud be very glad if my
musings on Gute Nacht are of some interest to some of you.

Gute Nacht

Wilhelm Mueller is not one of the more important German poets.  In fact,
he is not well-known and if Schubert had not composed his cycles Schoene
Muellerin and Winterreise he most probably would be forgotten by now.  Time
and taste are not just: Muellers poems are better than one may think - but
it is true: it is Schubert's music that makes them real unforgettable.
Gute Nacht is one of my favourite Lieder.  Why? Because it spans such a
vast variety of feelings: sadness, loss, happiness remembered, despair,
bitter irony, manly courage, resignation, tenderness, foolish but
heartmoving love.  All this is there in the verses and even more in
the Lied.  The first two verses to me are masterful: "Fremd bin ich
eingezogen, / fremd zieh ich wieder aus" (I came as a stranger, I go as
a stranger).  Without knowing more about the poor fellow who says this
we know his personal and even existential fate through this wonderfully
dense formula of unlucky socialisation.  He tells us about a wonderful May,
about prospects of love and happiness - and now all light and hope have
vanished ("Nun ist die Welt so truebe" - Now the world is dim/bleak), he
is to wander in winter snow.  This first stanza is a fantastic exposition,
using the stark contrast of May and winter to illustrate the poetic I's
fall from grace.  He came as a stranger (like we all do), he had all hopes
to stay as son and husband, now he is a stranger again in the hostile and
dead surroundings of a winter landscape - a moving and depressing image
of the existential plight of man (and certainly not Goethe's conviction
of man as a Wanderer guided by Nature as shown in Wanderer's Sturmlied or
Der Wanderer).  The Wanderer of the Romantiker is in most cases an unhappy
creature wandering from loss to loss, guided by false hopes, ending in
despair or death.  The second stanza deepens this depressing image: there
is no choice when to start the journey although it is winter ("Ich kann zu
meiner Reisen / Nicht waehlen mit der Zeit" - I cannot choose my own time
for my journey), there is no given way, no light, no map ("Muss selbst den
Weg mir weisen / In dieser Dunkelheit" - I must pick my way myself in this
darkness).  The poor guy has no companion but the shadow of the moon and no
given way but the footprints of the deer.  Especially the verses "Es zieht
ein Mondenschatten / als mein Gefaehrte mit" (The mooncast shadow goes
with me as my companion) heartmovingly illustrate this most pitiful case
of being left alone.  Now the focus shifts from the actual situation of
the unhappy and unwilling Wanderer to musings about his fate.  In this
third stanza a lot of different emotions mingle: pain, pride, courage,
despair, resignation, irony, even cynicism.  He has no choice, he cannot
stay, he is unwelcome - he has to go, if he doesn't they will drive him
away - the very people he wanted to be kin with!  Okay, he goes, he is no
mad dog who strays outside his master's house.  (But he is: the rest of
the cycle will show it, he can't let go the thought of his gone love, he
will stray outside his ladies house for 24 Lieder and the (brief?) rest
of his life.) He seems to be resigned, he wants to seem wise and stoic:
Well, love is like that, it is God's will, I agree.  (But he doesn't:
he still calls her "fein Liebchen" - Sweetheart.  No, he does not agree.)
And now this most unexpected turn.  Not anger follows, not pride, not new
orientation: he expresses his most tender love for the woman he cannot
have by leaving her a written "Gute Nacht" - Goodnight on her door.
He closes the door softly, he does not want to disturb her sleep.
Psychological theory has it that depression is aggression turned inward -
this Wanderer is the prime example.  It is true, in the second poem Die
Wetterfahne aggression will show its ugly (but necessary) face but it is
not enough to heal him from his fixation, he has bound himself to the love
he can't have and so he is bound to stagnate and cling to something dead
and gone like the whole cycle stagnates (there is no progress, no story,
just variations on the same theme: his broken heart).  And the guy is not
ridicolous: his pain is sincere, authentic, he is no dandy fascinated by
morbid things.  This Wanderer doesn't play with loss and death, loss and
death play with him.  And all this is encapsulated for me in this first
Lied, Gute Nacht.  Everytime I listen to it (to the first notes dim as a
winter's night, this fateful wandering and stumbling rhythm, the piercing
notes between the sixth and seventh lines of the first three stanzas, the
tender change of the music between the third and fourth stanza, at the
end the repeated "An dich hab ich gedacht" - I have been thinking of you)
I feel the same pity for this poor guy, the same sympathizing emotions.
He loves and he loves too much - who could be his judge?

Robert Peters
[log in to unmask]