6 - Poor Schubert: “Miserable reality”

Summary

Do not think that I am not well or cheerful, just the contrary. True, it is no longer that happy time when every object seems to us to be surrounded by a youthful glory, but a period of fateful recognition of a miserable reality, which I endeavor to beautify as far as possible by my imagination, thank God.

Schubert, letter to Ferdinand, 1824 (SDB 363)

After 1822, a surprising, yet revealing word crops up repeatedly in Schubert's letters: “miserable” (the word is almost the same in German). In addition to this letter to Ferdinand from the summer of 1824, Schubert elsewhere complains that “everything goes miserably,” that such is “the lot of almost every sensible person in this miserable world. And whatever should we do with happiness, misery being the only stimulant left to us?” (SDB 300, 374). He confesses to often living “through days of great misery” (sehr elende Tage), complains that “it is very sad and miserable here,” and so forth (SDB 375, 528). Whatever label psychiatrists today might apply, the “melancholic” side of Schubert's often “miserable” existence was a deeply felt reality.

In the aftermath of his illness many letters are quite bleak, and none more so than the famous one to Kupelwieser that opened the previous chapter. I consider this the key verbal document of Schubert's life, more important than any other surviving letter, “Mein Traum,” or his other scattered writings, because he not only offers a candid appraisal of his personal condition after enduring the worst of his health crisis, but also provides a declaration of the professional path he had planned for the future. (That Schubert sent the letter through a friend, and therefore had less need to worry about the authorities' reading it, may explain some of his frankness.) The complete letter reads:

31 March 1824

Dear Kupelwieser!

For a long time I have felt the urge to write to you, but I never knew where to turn.

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