Alan Moss wrote: >The "truth", as I see it, is the realisation of his utter social isolation. >Whoever said that hell is other people had it totally wrong. Hell is no >other people. Hell is isolation from God and from man. This can drive >men to enlightenment - or to madness. That was of course a common theme >in the 19th C. Compare George Crabbe's Peter Grimes, George Eliot's Silas >Marner; many lieder by Schubert and Schumann with words like sehnsucht and >einsamkeit (even schone einsamkeit is still einsamkeit); and the strange >Goethe character in Brahms' Alto Rhapsody, the man who though surrounded >by love drank only the bitter cup of hatred, and hides himself away in the >thicket. I think you are absolutely right. Just today I have had a fantastic lesson on Erstarrung presenting my pupils first the poem, than the Schubert version. They very clearly found out that the wanderer is a totally isolated person, existing only in his fixation on his beloved, being isolated from God, from man and - worst of all- from himself, his resources, his own potential for happiness. BTW, I presented my pupils the Prey/Sawallisch and the Hotter/Moore versions. They absoluted favoured Prey and Sawallisch since they concentrad very expressively and intensely on the pain and despair the poor guy experiences whereas Hotter/Moore (brilliantly I think) stress the sadness and depression of the wanderer. Robert Peters