Franz Schubert's generation was not given to political activism; not that there was much opportunity to begin with. His was the time Austrians call Biedermeier or, on occasion, Backhendlzeit, the "Days of Roast Chicken." It was a time much like the late twentieth century in America, a time of smug reaction and happy-face efficiency. Godless French Revolutionary-ism had been defeated once and for all by the fall of Napoleon; anything smelling of youthful passion was suspect; anything that appealed to the subjective was subversive; even Kant was banned from the schools. Criticism was possible only from behind the mask of the Volkisch, the guileless wisdom of the People. Johann Nestroy, the Viennese playwright and writer of lyrics, made a specialty of this. So did Schubert.
Schubert's song,
The Trout, is a deceptively simple folk-ballad: a trout is swimming in a stream; a fisherman tries to catch it; the narrator reflects that, as long as the stream remains clear, the fisherman has no chance. Then the fisherman muddies the waters, catches the fish, and the narrator looks down on the "betrayed one with burning anger." The word for "Trout" is feminine in German; there's an extra stanza in the original poem that points to the obvious moral: in today's terms the trout is the Woman Voter; the fisher stands for Certain Politicians who thrive on their own lack of transparency. Only by muddying the waters can they catch their fish. That last stanza was dropped, perhaps to make the message more subtle: Schubert's never one to jump the shark.
In one of his vertiginously perfunctory remarks, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu suggests that certain works of art are socially engaged to the extent that they suspend the type of closure that would define them. The "prise de position," the statement of the authority that is to explain the "real" meaning of the artwork, is perpetually delayed: in Schubert's case one thinks of the organ grinder in the last song of the cycle, Winterreise, but one might argue, also, that his handling of Volkisch themes is in itself a perpetual, deeply ironic postponement. With Schubert there's always some unfinished business; his strength and beauty is, that it's our business, too.
- Frederick Devious.
Senior Music Editor, WOID: a journal of visual language.
Reprinted with permission